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firemblem-fics · 4 years

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Running With the Wolves [2]

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-> Pairing: Yuri x Fem!Reader

-> Gang!Au | Modern!Au | Enemies to Lovers

-> Word Count: 2.4k

-> Warnings: Blood, Violence, Cursing, Angst, Crack

-> Summary: You were just a normal college student, trying to find her way in a new place. You didn’t mean to get caught up in the wrong crowd. You just wanted coffee, but now you’re running with the wolves.

-> A/N: okok i know this is a lot shorter than the last chapter BUT y’all already heard my struggle with it so i’m actually kind of happy with this and liked where it ended. i’m sorry it’s boring, i think this was just a chapter where i do some introductions and go further into characters and a teeny bit more into the world of the gangs idk more info in later chapters because reader will NOT suddenly get a huge info dump of shit - also i hope you all like my two oc’s in here!

if you’d like to be put on the taglist, send me an ask or a message!

“Run.”

In that second, Yuri began firing shots at your pursuers again. Hapi gave her gun to Balthus, who began using both his and her pistols to keep them back as well. She turned and grabbed your arm- the same one that was bleeding before recoiling.

“Who hurt you?”

“Yuri dragging me around.”

Hapi scoffed and reached for the other arm, leading you out the back door and into a small white car. She cranked the engine and backed out before you could even get buckled, narrowly missing a larger black van parked beside it. You held onto the door frame, your fingers turning white as Hapi whipped the car down a smaller, empty street.

“Why are you driving like a fucking lunatic?”

“They could easily follow us! Look behind, do you see anything?”

You turned as well as you could as Hapi made another sharp turn. “No, there’s nothing behind us.”

She slowed the car just a little bit. “Keep checking. We don’t need someone knowing where we’re going.”

You stayed turned in your seat, heart jumping out of anxiety every time you saw a random car or person pass by. “My home is the other way.”

“Wh- Oh, honey, no. They think you’re a part of us, you can’t go home.”

“What? Why not? I could just explain to them what I was doing- they’ll understand-“

“No, they won’t.” The redhead leaned her head back against the seat and bit back a sigh before mumbling to herself. “We weren’t even involved in their little spats with the other places. Why the hell would Edelgard come after us?”

You checked back one more time. “Didn't she say something about how ‘she’s the boss now’? Whatever it’s about, it’s because she’s apparently in charge or whatever. I- I just want to go home.” Your nose burned as tears filled your eyes, but you willed them to not fall. Hapi would definitely be the kind to make fun of you.

You thought back to the others- Yuri, Balthus, and Constance. Ellie had said that they were just some random college kids, making money to get by. Obviously they were more than that.

“What about the others? We just left them there.”

“They��ll be fine. They’ve had their fair share of fights. We’ll meet them back at the house.”

You could only nod and try to soothe your shaking body. Your arm still burned from the wound, but you didn’t want to look at it. Knowing the severity of it would only make it hurt worse.

Eventually, Hapi pulled into a normal looking house. It seemed inconspicuous, with a fraternity sign hanging out front to complete the “normal college kids live here” look. You shuddered. Things are not as they seem with these people, and their house for sure isn’t a normal one as well. Hapi got out of the car and scouted around it, searching the entire car before once again muttering to herself.

“... Can’t believe I forgot to look for a tracker-“

“Look who’s finally home! Hapis and- who’s this?”

Suddenly a loud, annoying voice shouted from the front door of the house. You looked up to see a new man, slowly putting down his waving hand as he saw you. From the top of the brick stairs, he looked quite tall, but as you continued to ascend, the shorter and shorter he became until he was scarcely a few inches taller than you.

“Hiram, this is Y/N. She was, uh, put in an unfortunate circumstance and had to come with us.”

His white eyebrows furrowed and he looked at Hapi confusedly before nodding. “Uh, yeah, okay. Come on in, then. Rhys is out getting takeout. What’s the circumstance?”

“Edelgard attacked the café.”

Hiram was still confused, but it was cut short as the same black van you saw earlier pulled into the open garage. Hapi motioned for the two of you to come inside, saying that Yuri would explain everything.

The house was more normal than you expected. The living room walls were painted a light blue with a couch surrounding the fireplace and a TV on top of it. The colors of that room contrasted greatly against the honey yellow walls of the kitchen, where everyone had gathered and sat at the table. You squeezed yourself between Hapi and Constance, the only other girls there.

“We should wait for Rhys-“

“There's no time.” Yuri scoffed at Hiram and leaned back on his chair. “Somehow, Edelgard took power from her father and is now the leader of the Black Eagles. I’ve yet to figure out what her plans are- attacking us, out of everyone possible- but I’m sure they aren’t good.”

You sighed and leaned against your arm, but stopped. You really, really needed medical attention for your arm. You also really, really needed to go home. You stood up.

“Okay, well, have fun with that. I’m out.”

Yuri laughed. “No, you’re not. Sit down.”

You whipped around to face him, your cheeks burning in anger. “I am! I’m going to leave this house, go to a hospital, fix my arm, and go home. I have no business here.”

You moved to leave again, but a pair of pale arms wrapped around you. One arm gripped your waist tightly as the other flicked out a knife, holding it against your neck. You tried to struggle, but the person- a tall man- tightened his hold even further. Yuri rolled his eyes.

“Easy with her, Rhys. You started having business here the minute you decided to open your stupid little mouth. Hasn’t anyone ever taught you to shut up? To think rationally in the face of danger? Did you even realize the danger you were in, or are you really just that dense?” He sneered, walking towards you. “You, Princess, have gotten yourself into a Hell of a lot of trouble. You’re right, you shouldn’t be here, but now it’s time to reap what you sow.”

You grimaced at Yuri’s close proximity and spat at him, making him stumble back and wipe his face in disgust. This caused Rhys to lift your chin with the knife, pressing down enough to leave a small cut. A trail of blood dripped down to your collarbone.

“I suggest you learn to keep your mouth shut.” Hiram laughed almost maniacally from the table. “Rhysie’s silent but deadly. Don’t mess with us.”

Said man finally let you go, pushing you back to your seat, which you took with a huff. Constance handed you a tissue from the small pocketbook she carried and you thanked her, smiling wearily.

Hapi, who had stayed silent the entire time, coughed awkwardly. “So, what’s our next move?”

Yuri shrugged. “We’re no longer neutral, obviously. But we don’t know if the Golden Deer or the Blue Lions are on our side either. Edelgard had to have had a plan when she attacked us.”

The six others sat in thought for a minute while you, on the other hand, had never been more confused. “Wait, what’s even going on? Why do restaurants kill each other?”

Hiram giggled and plucked the bloody tissue out of your hand, beginning to mess with it and look at the new stains. “You’re tellin’ me that you really thought this was just some dumb restaurant rivalry? Hah! Sweetheart, we’re gangs. Y’know. Drugs. Illegal trades. Turf wars. The usual.”

You tried to put more pieces together. “So, Edelgard’s gang is the bad guys?”

“Exactly-“

“We’re not good. None of the gangs are. Our sins are irredeemable- we’re not the good guys. Edelgard’s people aren’t the bad guys. We don’t know what’s going on right now.” Hapi cut off Hiram.

Said man snorted and ran a hand through his ponytail. “Hey, Rhys, say fuck for me.”

Rhys’s freckled skin flushed a bright red and he avoided the eye contact of everyone around. “...I can’t.” He mumbled.

“See? Rhysie’s good.”

Hapi closed her eyes and suppressed a sigh again, and you wondered what was up with her and sighing. “The next move is to wait. Maybe do a little digging in their computers and communication, but that’s Hiram’s job.”

“We’ve got to figure out something for the rat to do.She can’t just sit here and be in the way.” Yuri mused. “Housekeeping, perhaps?”

“I am not a rat!” You hissed, “You are!”

The purple haired boy only smirked. “Whatever you say, Princess. Go upstairs to the first room on the left. There’s a big stack of manila folders with profiles on the desk. Bring them back down here.”

You rolled your eyes and stood up from your seat, practically stomping your way to the wooden stairs. Opening the first door on the left, you found the folders Yuri was talking about. You reached for them, but hesitated and looked out of the window beside the desk.

It would be so easy to leave, you thought, but jumping from this height would definitely lead to a broken bone.

You committed this room to memory and grabbed the folders, taking your time down the stairs to plan an escape route if needed. You were going home, whether they liked it or not, you decided. You were close to the bottom of the steps when a paper slid out from one of the folders. It was a profile with a rather familiar looking face on it.

Yuri Leclarc, It read, Age 24. Affiliation: Ashen Wolves. Family: Father (unknown), Mother (missing).

You heard footsteps walk through the living room and you quickly snatched up the paper, stuffing it in a folder before you finished reading it all. Hiram became visible, one hand carrying a large laptop and the other, a basket of cables and other equipment. He didn’t say anything to you. Instead, he barely spared you a glance as he walked back into the kitchen. You followed.

“Here.” You huffed and slammed down the folders. Hiram was busy plugging up different cords and routers to the computer, still completely ignoring your presence.

Yuri nodded and stood, sifting through the papers before landing on one labeled “Black Eagles”. He pushed the other folders to the side and opened that one. He laid out 8 profiles, all of people around your age. You could’ve sworn you’d seen some of them around campus, but you nearly vomited as your eyes caught one certain profile.

Ferdinand von Aegir.

“It’s up and running!” Hiram’s voice knocked you out of your stupor. “A piece of art, truly!”

Constance snorted. “A piece of shit, actually.”

Hiram ignored her comment and grinned, placing his hands on his hips proudly. “I call it the Computer of Chaos. COC for short.”

The silence in the kitchen was practically screaming.

Yuri looked up from the profiles. “The what?”

“The Cock, Yuri-bird. Didn't you hear him correctly?” Balthus nearly choked trying to hold in his laugh.

“Exactly! And it works for everyone here, you just have to say your name and it’ll unlock for you.” Hiram motioned for someone to give it a try.

Yuri still looked at the computer quizzically, but walked towards it nonetheless. He leaned down and said, “Yuri Leclarc.”

“Access Denied.”

“What?” Hapi questioned, pulling the computer toward herself. “Hapi.”

“Access Denied.”

“Ohhh, that’s right.” Hiram’s grin turned mischievous. “It only answers to the nicknames I gave you all.”

If looks could kill, Yuri would have committed a murder. He sighed heavily and violently moved the computer back to him. “Yuris.”

“Permission Granted.”

“Go die.” He growled at Hiram, who only laughed.

“What nicknames?” You had to ask, but regretted it once Hiram’s smile was directed at you.

“I add an -is to the end of everyone’s names! Yuris, Hapis, Constis, Balis, but I call Rhys ‘Rhysie’, he doesn’t tell me not to~”

Yuri rolled his eyes. “He doesn’t fucking talk, that’s why.”

“Can I have a nickname?” If you were going to be stuck here, you may as well make friends.

“Hmm,” Hiram pondered, “No.”

“Wh-“

So much for making friends.

Yuri interrupted the awkward moment by slamming his hand down on COC, making Hiram gasp in protest. “Fucking- Hiram, try to find something- anything- to find out Edelgard’s intentions. We had a neutrality pact, she shouldn’t have broken it.”

Your head was starting to hurt from the events today. Rubbing your temples, you stood up, making everyone look at you.

“Listen, I’m tired. I’m stressed. Is there like, anywhere I can sleep? I can’t do much more.”

Constance nodded. “I’ll take you up to the spare room!”

She led you up the stairs and past the room you had gone into earlier. Opening the door to one of the bedrooms, she gestured for you to enter.

“I’ll have to lock you in, but I’m sure you won’t mind. You’ll be sleeping, after all!” Constance smiled, “Goodnight!”

You waved back at her and waited for the click of the lock before turning on the lamp and peeling your sleeve away from your arm. You grimaced- blood had dried and caked around the wound, which was still slightly bleeding. You needed medical attention, but you didn’t blame the Wolves for not thinking about it.

They certainly were stressed- being previously neutral and suddenly attacked. They’ve got enemies now and you suspected that was something they haven’t had in quite a while. And then there was you, the epitome of ‘wrong place, wrong time’. Who would’ve thought that you’d end up accidentally in the middle of a gang war when you moved here? Certainly not you.

Guilt tugged at your stomach. These people were different from you. You didn’t belong here and you needed to get out of their hair. Yuri made it obvious that you stuck out like a sore thumb, unaware of what to do like they did.

You glanced at the window in the bedroom and stood up, making your way towards it. You could easily unlock it and risk an ankle injury. You’d already hurt your arm, it would be fine.

Your two choices were to try to survive a mob that wanted to kill you all, or get a foot injury while escaping and get back to your normal life.

Unlocking the latch on the window, and sitting on the edge, you had already made your decision. You jumped down and ignored a loud crack that resounded in your ankle, slipping into the depths of night.

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taglist: @fairyblue-alchemist @emperor-pizza @flavoredmilktea @sadies-stories-n-things @mifuyuyu @blviddyd @laurexlance @atomicchocolatecookie @mapesandoval @local-goth-lilz

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mandysimo13 · 3 years

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2020 has been a helluva year

I know it’s not technically new year’s yet but since it’s on my mind, let’s do a year in review.

This year has been so fucking disorienting, in so many ways, and it’s hard to believe anything is real. Every other day there’s new outrage, new disgust, new triumphs, new joys, new fears, new ways to cope with existence.

First we list the good from this year.

My two best friends welcomed brand new daughters into the world. I was lucky enough to spend two weeks with one of them, helping her out since her in-laws are too compromised to help and her own mother is gone. I got to see my brand new niece have her first few experiences in life, hang out with dogs, and spend lots of time with my sister-from-another-mister.

I got engaged to an amazing partner who is everything I’ve wanted in a spouse. He’s sweet and funny and makes me want to be a better person and work hard towards my goals. He’s the most supportive of my new career path and while he’s not always super interested in what I’m researching, he’s always willing to listen to me info dump when I get excited. He lets me help him and kick him in the ass when he needs it, lets me hold him when he needs it, and I never feel unloved or unwanted with him. Not to mention, the sex is really good, too, lol

I’ve started working on a new career path and trying to make history my job. I’ve been doing lectures on niche history and working towards making it a legitimate job and a legitimate company. I’ve been gaining a following and legitimacy as I make networking connections and getting my foot in doors that will open up opportunities for me.

I have not lost anyone very close to me during this pandemic, even if a couple have gotten sick or injured. I did lose an uncle to covid, though he was 90 and was already in declining health. The other people who have caught it have so far managed to recover and haven’t had any obvious long lasting problems (yet *knock on wood*)

I got on anxiety and depression medication this year and it has made all the difference this year; not only with the every day stuff but with some of the pandemic craziness. I honestly don’t know how I would be doing, mentally and emotionally, without it. I am very very very grateful for my meds, despite the very few side effects I’ve had.

Now for the bad

Every day there is something new and awful to be had. Whether it’s US politics continually shitting on struggling americans or murder hornets or natural disasters or covid deniers or police brutality or fear mongers or throw a dart at this bingo card from hell year we’ve had. It’s all been fucked up and Too Much™

The isolating and social distancing, while absolutely necessary, has been exhausting and terrifying, and it’s been rough. I’m an extrovert. I thrive around people. I miss crowds. I miss walking around through stores without freaking out about distance. I miss being able to give hugs to people other than the people I live with. I miss traveling, which was my previous job, and the students I used to expose to the world. I miss being able to actually be part of the world.

I’ve been fairly lucky that my closest friends have kept small bubbles so we’ve been able to hang out from time to time but nowhere near as often as I need in order to feel balanced. I miss my historian happy hours. I miss movie theaters. I’ve been to a few restaurants since they’ve opened but it’s definitely not the same and I feel bad for everyone (including myself) caught between having to go out and make a living and staying home and staying safe because this country’s “social safety nets” are a fucking joke.

And speaking of those safety nets, I’m on unemployment. For the first time in my working life I’m cashing in those tax dollars and all I’m entitled to is $450 a month. Thank fucking god I live with family and don’t need to pay rent. Thank fuck that my dad pays for our internet and majority of our food. Because aside from a few donations for my services every month, I **just** have enough to cover my few bills. This has been my poorest fucking year and you know what the kicker is?

It was supposed to be my most profitable. This was supposed to be my busiest year for tour work since I got into the business. I missed out on so much money, so many work experiences, so many opportunities because of this fucking plague. And because our government couldn’t get their shit together. Because people fucking suck and they’re selfish and they decided their convenience was more important than safety. And those people are still fucking denying its “that big a deal” and denying the need for a vaccine. I’m so tired of hearing people say that covid is a hoax or overblown or whatever the fuck. I’m tired.

In lieu of being around people, like most of you, I’ve taken to being on social media more. More zoom calls, more video chats, more messenger chats, and more facebook groups. And what I’ve found is that living almost entirely on the internet is doing something fucking awful to us: we’re forgetting there’s real people on the other side of the screen. We’re forgetting that humans are complicated beings, both capable of goodness and shittiness and we’re focusing too much on the bad because it is often louder than the good. I’ve seen so much infighting and gatekeeping and nastiness between people who are supposedly “on the same side” in every group from political to fucking memes. Like. It’s ridiculous and tiresome and it makes me want to clunk heads together. Or leave earth for awhile.

Just. All in all, this year has been hard. There have been highlights but for the most part everything is so heavy and dark and I feel like as a society nothing is actually getting better. I don’t have a lot of hope for 2021. I am not encouraged by what I’ve seen this year and how people insist on behaving and treating each other. I fear that 2021 is going to be worse before it gets better.

But hey. At least Biden won (don’t get me started, he was not my first choice) and I get to marry the love of my life in October next year.

And, if we’re really lucky, we’ll be able to celebrate with our friends.

Here’s to 2021, hopefully you’re not a giant suck salad.

#personal #my life #2020 fucking sucked #year in review #tldr highlights and lowlights of the year

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chickensarentcheap · 4 years

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Sanctuary - Chapter 20

Warnings: none really

Tagging: @c-a-v-a-l-r-y, @alievans007, @innerpaperexpertcloud, @valkyrie-of-the-light

She stares at the cellphone in her hands; trying desperately to keep back the flood of tears that threaten. Tears of worry. Sadness. Relief. Anger, even. And frustration. So much frustration. That he’s been sent into yet another shitty situation.

It’s willingly. Offering himself up for people that don’t even know him, putting himself into harms way like some sort of sacrificial lamb for strangers that…for the most part…don’t understand the choices he has to make on their behalf. The danger he puts himself in. The lives he has to take. The way that he’ll have to escape death just trying to keep them alive. Most never express thanks: very few of those who are rescued -and even less of their families- ever offer up even the smallest bit of gratitude. He’s being paid, they figure. He’s taking the money. Isn’t that enough gratitude?

“Mommy?” TJ is at her side, looking up at her with those huge blue eyes. One of which is going to be black and blue in a few hours; Millie had caught him square in the face with a right hook. A knee to the face causing a bloody nose.

“Let me see…” she sets her cell phone down and hooks a finger under his chin, tilting his head backwards. “She got you pretty good, huh?”

He nods, not even flinching when her fingertips press against the swollen orbital bone and the bridge of his nose.

Definitely his father’s son.

“Well nothing’s broken,” she says, a sigh of relief escaping her lips.

She’s tended to many of her husband’s injuries. Seen a lot of bloody noses and black eyes and a hell of a lot worse. Fractured ribs, both stab and gunshot wounds. She’s pulled shards of glass and other debris out of his skin with a pair of tweezers. In Dhaka she’d stitched up a wound on his right bicep with a needle and run of the mill sewing thread. Without anything to dull the pain. And she’s seen the aftermath of shoulder and knee replacements; the one that would clean the incisions and apply fresh bandaging when homecare nurses weren’t able to make it.

He holds up a sandwich bag with near melted ice cubes in, and she takes it to the sink and dumps it out before adding fresh cubes from the freezer and tying the bag up tight. “Does she look worse than you?” she asks, as she presses the ice to the bridge of his nose.

“I didn’t hit her back, mommy. She’s a girl. Daddy said never to hit a girl. No matter what. That it’s wrong. Did daddy ever hit you?”

“Daddy knows better. He knows I’d drop him. But he wouldn’t do that, anyway. He’d never hit any girl. Especially me.”

“I’d beat him up. If you did. Just so you know.”

She leans down and presses a kiss to his lips. “You keep the ice on it for a little while longer, okay? Just to keep the swelling down. You’re going to have a hell of a shiner tomorrow. You’ll get to show that off to daddy when he video chats with you guys. He wanted me to tell you that he’s safe and sound in Ireland. And that he loves you and misses you. He misses you so much.”

“I miss him too. Maybe he won’t be gone for very long.”

“Maybe. Hopefully. Here…” she takes his hand and places it against the back of ice against his nose. Then moves to the freezer once again and takes out three popsicles. “One for you and Tanner and one for Ovi. Can you ask him to watch you guys for a little bit longer? There’s something I need to do. Someone I need to call. Can you ask him, please?”

Her son nods, then turns his face up for another kiss.

“You’re my favourite,” she says with a wink, and pecks his lips. “And be careful out there, please. I don’t need you breaking an arm or a leg. Or a neck. Just take it easy, okay?”

“Okay mommy,” he chirps, as he rushes from the kitchen. Nearly colliding with the glass patio door that he’d forgotten he’d shut behind him.

“Tyler…” she sighs. “…really?”

“Ooops,” he giggles, then gives a shrug as he hurries outside.

She stands over the sink and watches him through the window, bounding across the deck in his bare feet, leaping from the top step and hitting the ground running. The landing never even breaking his stride; those long, lanky legs carrying him through the grass to where Ovi is pushing Declan in the baby swing and Tanner in the regular sized one. TJ begins handing out the popsicles and explains to Ovi what she had asked, and the teenager looks up towards the house and gives her an okay sign.

***

Picking up her cell phone, she flips open the cover of the case and plucks a business card from the inside fold. She wasn’t planning on hanging onto it; she’d taken their conversation at the park as a one off and was going to just throw the card away and get on with her life. Satisfied that she’d been able to give him the absolution that he’d desperately searching for. Finally able to put that long and dark chapter of her life behind her.

Instead, she finds herself dialling the number, leaning sideways against the counter as it rings on the other end. Nervously drumming her fingertips against the granite, tapping one foot against the floor.

“Are you busy?” she inquires, before he even manages to get a whole greeting out.

“Esme?” Shocked. But pleased.

“I really need to talk to you. Do you have a few minutes? I wouldn’t have called you if this wasn’t important. If I didn’t think you were the right person to go to.”

“I’ve got some time to spare. Anything for you. You know what. What’s going on? Are you okay?”

“Tyler’s in Ireland. On a job. And I don’t trust the person that he’s working with. The one that asked him for his help to begin with. I need you to look some things up for me. I’d do it myself, but with four kids to manage on my own…”

“Let me just grab a piece of paper and pen…” there’s a slight rustling noise as he searches for the items in question. “…go ahead. What is it?”

“I need you to look up the name Michael McCann. M…C…capital C…A…N…N…”

“Got it.”

“He says he’s ex IRA. I’m worried he’s still active IRA. That should be available info, right?”

“Should be. There’s always articles about those guys. They’ve been a little quiet the last couple of years, but there’s bound to be something. You know what his role was? Or might still be?”

“By the sounds of things, he might have been…or still is…some kind of intel. An inside man. He knows a lot of secrets. He’s done a lot of dirty work for them. He might still be doing dirty work for them. That’s what I need you to find out. I need to know what this guy’s story is. The real story. Not the line that he’s been feeding Tyler.”

“Is he falling for it? The line?”

“No. I think he’s starting to realize that something isn’t quite right. None of this is sitting right, Mark. It’s leaving a bad taste in my mouth. He is not who he says he is. He came to Tyler for help. He suddenly just showed up in Telluride one day. Said he’d even followed him while he was in Guatemala.”

“How did he know Tyler was in Guatemala?”

“There’s someone giving him information. Someone that works for Nik. I haven’t even started to look into that yet. But I will. This guy says that he tracked Tyler down through me. That he’d heard about what happened in Dhaka and somehow my name got out there as being connected to it. Which is weird, because Nik said she kept that on the downlow. I don’t even have a personal file with her. I was a ghost. I didn’t even exist as far as the outside world was concerned.”

“The worldwide web is vast, Esme. You can find information on anyone. And if he heard your name and somehow connected that to this Nik…”

“He told Tyler that someone I used to work with told him my name. Which makes no sense because how would that person even know I was in Dhaka? And how would they tie me to Tyler? We weren’t married then. I still had my maiden name. So where would they get Esme Rake from? It makes no sense.”

“Well they’ve gotten it somewhere. Information is easy to find if you know the right people. And have the right amount of cash.”

She sighs. “I suppose so.”

“This guy just showed up? In Telluride?”

“He asked Tyler for help. Said that his wife and his kids were taken by the IRA. Had videos of them and everything. All bound up, beaten to shit. I didn’t see them. Tyler watched them. He said they were legit. And Tyler’s instincts are never wrong. He’s being doing this a long time. He knows when something is bullshit. He would have known right away if it was just a game. He doesn’t just jump blindly into things.”

“Could it be some kind of elaborate ruse? It isn’t unlike terrorist organizations to do pull out all the stops. It could be someone that is after Tyler. Someone that feels slighted. Someone he crossed paths with or got the drop on.”

“Tyler says he’s never dealt with the IRA. He’s never even been to Ireland. Until now.”

“Doesn’t mean someone he’s pissed off doesn’t have connections to them. Strong enough connections that they’d do a favour for them. Loyalty runs deep, Esme. And money runs even deeper. I’m sure Tyler’s pissed off a lot of people. Not that I don’t agree with what he does. Because I do. I’m quite fond of vigilantism myself. I admire him for taking on other peoples’ shit and doing the dirty jobs no one else wants to do.”

“So what do you think?” she asks, as she moves to the fridge, opening it and taking out a bottle of water. Fingers briefly lingering on the wine before changing her mind and shutting the door with her hip. “Sounds weird, right?”

“I’ve heard weirder, to be honest. Could be something. Could be nothing. I’ll look into it for you.”

“Off the books, right?”

“What do you mean? What…?”

“Mark, I know what you do. My mom told me. I know you’re FBI.”

He sighs.

“You didn’t have to keep it a secret. It’s no big deal. So you’re a Fed, so what? This means you have connections, right? You have ways of finding out shit that normal people wouldn’t be able to do? And you must know people that know people. People that have even farther reach and deeper connections. Right?”

“Esme…”

“This is between the two of us. I do not want this getting out there. And I especially do not want Tyler finding out. Not yet. Not until you dig something up. If there is anything to dig up. Can you do that for me? Everything off the books? Between us?”

“I can. I probably shouldn’t. But I can.”

She sips her water, glances out the window and watches Ovi and the kids are they feed the chickens and goats. “There’s something else.”

“Go ahead.”

“I know this is a lot to ask of you. So feel free to tell me to fuck off.”

“I’ve gotten myself in this far. Might as well jump right into the deep end. What is it?”

“Do you know anyone in Ireland? And by that I mean people like you. Feds. Ex Feds. Ex Marines even?”

“I know a couple. Why?”

“If I send you Tyler’s info…his cell number, his SAT number, where he’s staying…can you get someone to monitor all that?”

“Doesn’t he have his own people keeping an eye on him?”

“An extra pair of eyes wouldn’t hurt. I just want someone to watch out for him. He’s going into this alone, Mark. With nothing but the word of this McCann guy to go on. If something goes wrong and Tyler’s people can’t reach him or find him…”

“You’re really stirring the shit pot here. I highly doubt he wants you doing all this. What’s going to happen when he finds out? Because he will. Find out.”

“I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it. Please Mark. I need your help. And I know you can do this. This isn’t easy for me. Asking for help. Especially from you. And it can’t be easy for you either. Me asking for help for something that involves my husband.”

“It’s a little…awkward,” he admits.

“He saved me, Mark. In every way a person can be saved. My life was so different after we broke up. I was in a really dark place that I didn’t think I’d ever get out of. That I didn’t know if I really wanted to get out of. I became a completely different person than the one you remember. Tyler came into my life at a time where I needed someone the most. And it shouldn’t have happened the way it did. It was stupid and it was dangerous, and it never should have gone down like that. But it did. And I don’t regret it. I don’t regret falling in love with him. Or staying in Australia. Or getting married and having kids. His kids. You said you just wanted me to be happy.”

“I do. That’s all I want, Esme.”

“Then help me. Please. Because I can’t lose him, Mark. I almost lost him once. And this time I don’t want to lose him for good. I need your help. And that’s what would make me happy.”

He sighs heavily. “Send me the information. Email. I have an account on a protected server. I’m sending you the address now.”

And with that, he disconnects the call.

*****

Tyler’s not sure how long how he’d been asleep for. After devouring three orders from room service and opening up another bottle of scotch, he’d stretched on one of the beds to watch the local news. Fully intending on staying up in case Yaz had already gotten to work and was able to dig up some information to send him. He’s still lying on his stomach in middle of the bed; fully dressed, sheets and blankets not even turned down, his cell phone lying next to him, feet up by the headboard. Jolted awake by a sharp rap of knuckles upon the door.

His head swims: a mixture of booze and the painkillers he’d taken after he ate. A dull ache in the base of his neck as he places his chin on the forearm he’d been using as a pillow, eyes blinking against the harsh light of the cell phone screen within the dark room.

12:53.

His time? Colorado time? He doesn’t even know anymore. It couldn’t be the latter. Not if it had already been one in the afternoon when he spoke to Esme. He was tired; but he wasn’t THAT tired. There’s no possible way he’d sleep that long. Even with the help of meds and alcohol. And he’s pretty sure he changed the time on his cellphone. Or maybe it had done it itself.

He clears sleep out of his eyes, rubs at the back of his neck. Internally yells at his muddled and disoriented brain to get shit its shit together.

The knocking continues. Louder. More insistent. And he attempts to ignore it, switching positions on the bed and resting his head back on one of the pillows. The smooth cotton of the pillowcase cool against the back of his head. Eyes closed; hands clasped together at his chest. Knowing if he just stays quiet, whoever it is will just fuck off and leave him alone. Whatever it is, it can wait until the morning. And he’s just beginning to nod off again when he hears whispering from in the hall; Irish accents, two female, one male. One of the female’s asking the other two if they’d seen the man that he’d checked into the room. Had he left sometime in the middle of the night? If he did, do they know if he came back? He can’t make out the reply, but there’s a heavy sigh followed by more knocking.

It’s louder. More intense. A different sound than what knuckles make against wood. The dull thud that ensues when you use the toe of a sneaker or a boot.

His eyes snap open and he reaches for the top drawer on the nightstand, quietly pulling it out and then slipping the Glock from the holster. Flicking off the safety as he slips off the bed and silently makes his way towards the door. Pausing with a hand on the deadbolt as he listens; trying to pick up any hints of a conversation or any other noises coming from the hallway. Palm resting against cool, smooth wood as he peers out the peephole.

She’s young. Twenty at the most. A simple grey hoodie and blue jeans. A ball cap pulled over bright red hair. Carrying a purse along her left forearm, cell phone in her hand. A file folder clasped in her right. She pounds at the door now, slamming her fist against it with all the power she can muster.

He holds the Glock down at his side, opens the deadbolt but leaves the chain across. A foot against the door, preventing her from trying to open it further.

“Who are you?” he asks.

“Are you the Australian?”

“Yeah, I suppose I am. Answer my question now.”

“Can I come in?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“Because I have no idea who the hell you are.”

“I’m Erin.”

“Erin what?” he presses.

“Ferguson.”

“What the hell do you want, Erin Ferguson? It’s almost one in the morning. How’d you know who I was? Where to find me?”

“A lot of people know who are,” she says. “You’re the Australian. Here to get Michael McMann’s wife and kids back.”

He smirks. “Word travels fast. Who’s they? And how did they find out?”

“They. As in the people who have them. The people who took his wife and his kids. The people who are watching your wife and your kids.”

Tyler’s blood runs cold. Hand tightening around the Glock. “What did you just say?”

She cocks her head to the side, a smirk curving her lips. “Can I come in now?”

“No. Whatever you have to say, you say it right where you’re standing. What do you mean they’re watching my wife and my kids? The IRA?”

She nods.

“Why?”

“Because you’re sticking your nose in other peoples’ business. You don’t belong here, Australian. This isn’t your fight. If you knew what was good for you…for your family…you’d leave. Right now.”

“If you knew what was good for you, you’d stop talking in riddles. And you’d know that I have a loaded gun behind the door and my finger is already on the trigger. So stop the bullshit and tell me who you are and what you want, or I won’t think twice about putting one between your eyes, you hear me?”

That wipes the smirk off her face.

“Who are they” he repeats. “The IRA? You’re working for them?”

“I work for a lot of people,” she says. “They asked me to give you this. As proof.” She offers the file folder.

“Proof of what?”

“That they aren’t messing around. That you’ve gotten yourself mixed up in something that you never should have wandered into it. What goes on between them and McCann is their business. Not yours.”

“It became my business when McCann hired me. So you go back to whoever you’re working for and tell that their games won’t work on me. I don’t scare easily. And it’s them that’s gotten mixed up in something they don’t want to be mixed up in. I don’t fuck around. I’ll find his wife. And his kids.”

“And the risk of losing your own?”

“They’ll never get near my wife or my kids. They can try. But it won’t happen. You tell them I said that. And you tell them that if they so as much go near my family, I’ll come after them personally. And they won’t like the results. Tell them that. You tell them exactly what I said. That I’ll bring them within an inch of their lives and then I’ll stop and start all over again. You got that?”

She nods, shoves the folder toward him.

“Put it on the ground,” he orders. “And then back away. Nice and slow. Keep your hands where I can see them.”

She places the folder on the carpet and does as she’s told, hands up as she slowly steps backwards, until she’s almost pressed against the door across the hall.

Tyler removes the chain from the door and pulls it open, casting a glance down both ends of the hall, keeping the Glock pointed at her. “Now go. Move. To the elevator.”

She walks backwards; hands still up, eyes never wavering from his. She never blinks. Never shows any signs of fear or nervousness with a gun trained on her.

“Press the button,” he orders. “Get on when the elevator gets here. Go back and tell them exactly what I said.”

He waits, gun still focused on her, until the lift finally arrives and she steps on. Not picking up the envelope and backing into his room until he hears the elevator doors slide closed and he knows she gone for good.

***

He hurriedly snaps the deadbolt back in place; refastens the chain and then stalks across the room. Tossing the gun into the middle of the bed and tearing at the envelope; splitting it down the middle as opposed to the flap or the seams. His heart pounds mercilessly in his chest; stomach clenching and brain swimming with a thousand different thoughts. None of them good. And the frowns when he finds two smaller envelopes inside of the first. Each one marked with the words PROOF OF LIFE. One dated two days ago, one just this morning.

What the fuck…

He rips into the most recent one first. Photographs. Of McCann’s wife and kids. The kids are no longer hog tied and restrained on a filthy mattress. Sitting in crude metal chairs, hands and feet bond by what he easily identifies as rock climbing rope. Both kids are naked from the waist up, most likely so whoever views the pictures grasps the extent of what’s been done to them: bruises covering the entire rib cage, finger marks from wrist to shoulder. There’s dried blood on their face: caked under their noses and around the corners of their mouths. And the skin is raw where the duct tape over the eyes had been cruelly ripped off.

He feels sick. Bile rising in his throat.

The wife is in far better condition. But still bears the marks of her ordeal. Her hair has been crudely chopped off; chunks missing, the edges just skimming the bottoms of her ears. Unlike the children, she’s in a wooden chair that’s in remarkable condition; polished, a clean, like new cushion. Bound only by her wrists. He frowns at that, holding her picture and one of the children side by side. It makes no sense. Why the children would be in such inhumane conditions while she…despite the hacked hair job and her own bruises…is still in pretty damn good shape. Normally the kids are treated better than the adults; it’s easier to beat on and torture adults, as they’re in far better condition and can take a hell of a lot more punishment before death finally takes over.

Photos still in hand, he wanders around to the side of the bed and grabs the SAT out of the drawer of the nightstand. Pressing three on the speed dial.

“Yeah?” Yaz simply greets. There’s no hint of sleep in his voice.

“Did someone just come to your door?” Tyler asks.

“I was just going to call you. A girl came here. Looking for you. Said her name was…”

“Erin,” he finishes.

“Yeah. I take it she found you? I wasn’t the one who told her. I acted like I had no idea what the hell she was talking about. But she obviously knows me. She talked about Dhaka. About me flying the helicopter that got Ovi out. She kept going on and on about how ‘they’ know all about us being here. About you being the one that killed Asif.”

“Well technically that was your sister. What else did she say?”

“Just kept calling you The Australian. Says that ‘they’ know all about us. All about you, especially. About Esme. And the kids.”

“Fuck…” he mutters. “…what the hell? How’d this get out so quick? How’d they know we were here?”

“I don’t know. I have no clue. I was going to call Nik after I talked to you. Maybe we’ve got a mole on the team. Someone is feeding them information. What did this girl want with you?”

She gave me pictures. Of McCann’s wife and kids. Proof of life as of six hours ago.”

“How they look?”

“Kids are fucked up. Wife looks pretty good though. What’s her name? The wife? We have any information on her? Maiden name, anything like that?”

“First and married name. That’s it. Why? What are you thinking?”

“Something isn’t right here. Why are they being held in different spots? When was the last time we ever saw that when we had multiple marks?”

“Never. Not in the ten years that I’ve been doing this, anyway.”

“The kids have been worked over pretty good. Whoever sent these wanted us to see that. Just how fucked up they are. But the wife? Worst she has is a shitty hair cut and some bruises. The kids are being kept in some shit hole and she looks like she’s just been tied up for shits and giggles in someone’s dining room.”

“You think we’re being played?”

“Yeah. But I’m not sure by who. You find out everything you need to know about the wife. Like right now. Don’t wait.”

“I’m on it,” Yaz says, and hangs up.

Tyler drops the SAT into the middle of the bed, followed by the photographs, then reaches for the second smaller envelope. Pausing before he opens it, stealing himself against what he knows is inside. He’d known as soon he saw the first selection of photos. Hell, he’d known as soon as Erin had brought up his own family. He also knows that it’s a scare tactic, that whoever is behind their existence is hoping it will cause him to give up the search for McCann’s wife and kids in favour of returning to his own family. The chances that someone will actually hurt Esme and the kids are slim to none. That’s not what these people want. Their endgame isn’t to hurt him. Just scare him enough to send him running home.

He tears into the paper, dumping a handful of polaroids into his palm. His heart once again pounding ferociously, ever muscle and tendon in his body suddenly tense. Hands remarkably still despite the trembling travelling through the rest of his body as he flips through the pictures. Ovi and Mille going into the ice cream shop, Esme and Millie while out of their girls day, him and the boys while leaving after their getting their hair cut, the entire family out together for dinner, him and Ovi at the shooting range, Esme and him, alone on that hammock in the backyard.

Fuck…fuck…fuck…

He grabs his SAT once again, this time calling Nik.

“Yaz just called. Talk to me.”

“They know, Nik. Whoever has McCann’s wife and kids. They know who I am and why I’m here. How the fuck do they know?”

“I have no idea. Yaz thinks there’s a mole on the team. Someone who has access to all your files.”

“Just how many people is that?”

“Half a dozen.”

“For fuck sakes, Nik! This was supposed to be kept quiet. McCann knew I was in Guatemala. He said he followed me for the entire week I was there. Now whoever has his wife and his kids know who I am and why I’m here. Explain to me how the fuck this happened?!

“I’m working on that, Tyler. You’ll have answers as soon as I get them.”

“I have pictures, Nik. Pictures of my wife and my kids. Even pictures taken in my backyard. What the fuck is going on?!”

“They’re trying to scare you, Tyler. They’re trying to force your hand. They want you to back out and go home. Don’t give in to them.”

“You get someone to my house,” he demands. “I don’t care if you have to go there personally. You get someone there to keep an eye on my family. I’ll stay here. I’ll see this job through. But you get someone to my place, Nik. Now. Not an hour from now. Not two hours from now. Not six. Now.”

“I’m already on it. What do I tell Esme? Do I tell her about the pictures?”

“No. Just tell her that you think it’s better that way. To have some folks there. That you sent people ‘just in case’. That will be good enough for her. At least for now. Don’t even tell her that I talked to you. None of this ever happened as far as she’s concerned.”

“Do you really think McCann’s wife has something to do with this?”

“I don’t know. Everything is fucked. Right off the hop this time.”

“We should call it off. I should just bring you and Yaz home.”

“The job’s not finished. We haven’t even started it.”

“The job is fucked, Tyler. We’ve lost the element of surprise.”

“Doesn’t mean the job can’t go on. I’ve got this under control, Nik. At least on this end. You just make sure that my family stays safe. Because if anything happens to my wife or my kids…”

“They’ll be fine. I’ll personally make sure of that. Keep your head on straight, Tyler. Don’t let them win.”

“I’ve got shit locked down over here,” he assures you. “You just make sure you do the same thing over there. Take care of my family, Nik.”

“I will,” she promises. And ends the call.

#tyler rake #tyler rake fan fiction #tyler rake fan fic #chris hemsworth character #sanctuary #extraction

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the-desolated-quill · 6 years

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The Witch’s Familiar - Doctor Who blog

(SPOILER WARNING: The following is an in-depth critical analysis. If you haven’t seen this episode yet, you may want to before reading this review)

Now that we’ve gotten past the pointless and mindless prologue that was The Magician’s Apprentice, I was hoping that The Witch’s Familiar would be where the meat of the story would be. Sadly there’s barely any meat on this thing.

Yes, while The Witch’s Familiar has more narrative coherence than the previous episode did, sticking to one time and location for the most part, it’s in fact just as bad as The Magician’s Apprentice, if not worse.

Let’s start with the biggest problem. Davros. Specifically how he’s utilised. Seeing boy Davros on the Skaro battlefield was quite an exciting development and could have opened up some interesting directions for the character to go down. Unfortunately that’s not the case. Turns out the story is not about Davros at all. It’s, once again, all about the Doctor. What? You thought Moffat had finally stopped the introspective bullshit in Death In Heaven? You thought the Doctor’s speech about being just a guy in a box was the end of the matter? Well you’d be wrong, wouldn’t you? It looks like brooding angst is going to be a staple of the Twelfth Doctor’s tenure, so you’d better get used to it.

Good God, I’m so fucking tired of this crap. Not only has the Doctor’s constant, guilt driven introspection been serving as a detriment to numerous plots, it also doesn’t make a pixel of sense, especially when you consider who he spends most of his time talking to in this story. Remember in the episode Journey’s End back in the RTD era where Davros started flinging moral judgements at the Doctor? Remember how bloody stupid that was? Well The Witch’s Familiar is like that, but somehow even stupider (and I didn’t even think that was possible). Once again the Doctor’s good guy credentials are being criticised with no justification whatsoever, and it’s hard to take it seriously because it’s fucking Davros. Davros is the one waggling his finger disapprovingly at the Doctor. Davros. Forgive me if I don’t consider Space Hitler fit enough to judge the Doctor’s moral standing.

It’s such a shame because both Peter Capaldi and Julian Bleach really give it their all and you can tell they’re really trying for something hard-hitting and emotional, but it just doesn’t work because the whole thing is utterly ridiculous. At one point Davros asks the Doctor if he’s a good man and whether he did the right thing trapping his own race inside pepper pots, which is clearly supposed to mirror the Doctor’s question to Clara in Into The Dalek, but it’s so fucking daft because... IT’S FUCKING DAVROS! He’s a racist, genocidal maniac who performed brutal experiments on his own people and was responsible for the deaths of billions. Let’s just say Santa Claus won’t be paying him a visit anytime soon. That got quite possibly the biggest laugh out of me this whole episode. And it just gets even weirder when you consider the Doctor’s response. I could buy the Doctor visiting his deathbed, taking pity on him and even sharing a laugh with him (they’ve had a long history after all). But giving him some of his regeneration energy?

IT’S FUCKING DAVROS!!!

I know I must sound like a heartless bastard, but I honestly wasn’t moved by the Doctor and Davros’ interactions. Not even slightly. It’s just too stupid and too unlikely for words. And it just gets worse when you find out that the two have been lying to each other through their back bloody teeth this all time. Were you moved by Davros’ emotional pleas to the Doctor? Turns out he was lying the whole time! He just wanted the Doctor’s regeneration energy for his Daleks (they never explain why or how this would benefit the Daleks. Moffat was too busy trying to be clever rather than filling in that little detail for us) and didn’t mean a single fucking thing he said. But it’s okay because the Doctor was lying too! Yeah, he knew all along that Davros was lying and so played him at his own game, so not only does this have no emotional weight whatsoever, there’s also nothing even remotely at stake! Isn’t Moffat a genius?

I really wish the story had stuck with the Doctor and boy Davros because that was interesting. I even liked the idea of the Doctor giving up his sonic screwdriver due to his own guilt (although that’s later ruined thanks to the sonic sunglasses. Seriously?! Sonic fucking sunglasses?!?! Give me strength!), and had they left it with the Doctor abandoning boy Davros to his fate, it would have been fine. Instead Moffat had to take it one step further.

This whole scenario is clearly taking inspiration from the classic Who story Genesis Of The Daleks. Specifically a line uttered by Tom Baker’s Doctor during a pivotal moment of the story:

"If someone who knew the future pointed out a child to you and told you that that child would grow up totally evil, to be a ruthless dictator who would destroy millions of lives, could you then kill that child?"

Now if you haven’t already, I strongly urge you to watch Genesis Of The Daleks. It’s one of the best stories in the whole of Doctor Who (some even consider it to be the best) and every Whovian needs to watch it at least once. One of the many reasons why Genesis is so fondly remembered is because of the morally complex question at the centre. Terry Nation smartly chooses not to answer it, instead allowing the audience to come to their own conclusions. Steven Moffat, on the other hand, chooses to tackle the question head on. The Doctor is given the opportunity to exterminate boy Davros, but instead ends up saving him. But you see, by doing so, Moffat completely misses the point of Genesis Of The Daleks. It’s not about what the Doctor would or wouldn’t do. It’s about the question itself. Rather than expanding on the legacy of Genesis, Moffat ends up tarnishing it, sweeping all the moral complexity under the carpet and spoon-feeding us a neat and tidy answer. No of course the Doctor wouldn’t kill a child! Are you crazy? And all the millions of lives destroyed are very quickly brushed aside with some bullshit about mercy. Not only is it too simplistic, it also makes the Doctor come across like a complete hypocrite. While he’s busy trying to decide whether killing Davros is the right thing to do, he’s setting up the Daleks so that they can kill each other. Obviously this kind of manipulation is very much in character for the Doctor, but it’s ironic how he shows a lot of guilt and angst over a humanoid child, but doesn’t even so much as bat an eyelid at killing all the non-humanoid Daleks.

Let’s quickly talk about the Daleks. They always tend to suffer in Davros stories, and this is a perfect example of that. Yes we do get a lot of new info about the Daleks (most of which doesn’t make sense. Why dump old, decaying Daleks in the sewers? Why not just kill them? Isn’t that their usual MO? Obsession with purity and all that. And while the Dalek machine altering your speech sounds like a good idea and adds to the trapped and claustrophobic nature of the Daleks, it also completely contradicts what we already know about them. How did Ian Chesterton manage to have a conversation with the First Doctor, Barbara and Susan when he was in the Dalek machine?), but they’re also not in the slightest bit threatening, and that’s because nobody takes them seriously. You’ve got the Doctor whizzing around in Davros’ chair asking them if they want to play dodgems, you’ve got the Master back to her annoying, goofy self (the bitch is back? Moffat, may I remind you this is a kid’s show) undermining the Daleks’ authority at every turn. Add to that apparently it’s easy as fuck to cheat death thanks to the Master’s teleport and the TARDIS’ newfound superpowers, and the Daleks don’t really have a leg to stand on. If the show isn’t going to take them seriously, why the fuck should I?

Speaking of the Master, what are she and Clara even doing here? They contribute precisely nothing to the story at all. You could just cut them out of the story entirely and it wouldn’t make the slightest bit of difference. And why does the Master try and trick the Doctor into killing Clara? What’s the point? Didn’t she bring the Doctor and Clara together in the first place? And why did she even do that? That’s never been explained. I wasn’t kidding when I said Missy was basically Moriarty in a dress back in my review of Death In Heaven because they both share the exact same problems. With both Moriarty and the Master, Moffat is trying desperately to emulate this kind of Joker style madness, but there’s more to the Joker than just being insane. He actually has consistent motives and morals, with his insanity serving that. With the Master and Moriaty, Moffat seems to be using insanity as a way to excuse his own shitty writing. There’s no need to create a consistent character with clear goals or proper reasoning behind their actions because they’re insane. It’s just incredibly fucking lazy and it’s an utter waste of the Master. Neither she nor Clara have any kind of agenda of their own, hence why they feel so superfluous.

Finally there’s the series arc. Usually bad arcs from Moffat are to be expected, but this is the first time I’ve ever been truly worried by the direction he’s going in. It seems that Moffat is going back into Listen territory and trying to redefine the important building blocks of the show. So there’s a prophecy about something called the Hybrid and apparently that’s why the Doctor ran away from Gallifrey in the first place. Like with Listen, it seems Moffat is once again trampling over one of the most integral parts of the Doctor’s character. His mystery. We don’t really know who he is, where he comes from or precisely why he left Gallifrey all those years ago, and we shouldn’t know either. It’s like dissecting a frog. Yes you could cut it open and find out how the insides work, but then you’d just be left with a bloody mess on the table. I have no idea where Moffat is going with this Hybrid stuff, but it seems like we’re going down a very dangerous path indeed and after all the damage he’s already caused over the years, I’m deeply concerned about him potentially lifting up the bonnet and messing with the vital components of the show.

Overall The Magician’s Apprentice/The Witch’s Familiar is a pretty rubbish start to Series 9. Nonsensical plots, pointless padding, non-threatening villains, recycling of tired ideas and an attempt to expand on a classic Doctor Who story that ultimately misses the point by several galaxies.

#the witch's familiar #steven moffat #doctor who #twelfth doctor #peter capaldi #clara oswald #jenna coleman #the master #michelle gomez #davros #daleks #bbc #review #spoilers

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askullinajar · 6 years

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The Shattered Frame (Part 2/7)

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7

Fic info: this is a sequel to my previous fic, The Living Ghost so go read that or this won’t make sense. Rating: General. Pairings: Lucy/Lockwood, Holly/Rani. Ao3 link: here.

A cluster of hauntings in a decrepit manor and the dripping spectre of a woman dressed all in black hits a little too close to home for Lockwood & Co’s newest member.

Part 2 – A New Case

“We’ve got a case!” George declared as we walked through the door, laden with shopping bags that he made no move to help us with. “A big one! Reckon it’ll take all of us to sort this out, even you, Skullykins.”

Skully glowered at the nickname. “Sleep with one eye open, b–”

“What’s the case?” Lockwood interrupted as he made his way upstairs to dump the bags in Jessica’s-turned-Skully’s room; so much for using it as a guest bedroom. “We’ve still got a lot of other cases lined up, remember?”

“Oh, but this is gonna be good, trust me,” George insisted, following us up the stairs. “Not to mention it’ll get us some serious spending money. More than all our recent cases combined. I’ll be able to get that new scientific equipment I wanted.”

“Keep it well away from me or watch your research burn,” said Skully.

“Why will it make us so much money?” said Holly, before George and Skully could get into an argument. With our recent fame, cases had been coming in by the bucket load, and our purses were much heavier as a result.

“Because, this guy is loaded,” George declared. “He rang up this morning. There’s this huge manor that he recently inherited. It’s been left abandoned because it’s so teeming with visitors, but he found out if he does it up it’ll be worth a fortune, and we’d be in for a cut of that if we helped clear it!”

“Interesting…” said Lockwood.

Holly held the bedroom door open for us to carry Skully’s new belongings in; her arm was still healing from our run-in with the Orpheus Society, so she wasn’t carrying as many bags as us.

Where the other bedrooms in Portland Row were cluttered with our personal belongings and decorated according to our personality’s, Skully’s was bare. It made me want to buy him a bunch of useless trinkets for his birthday, maybe draw him something as well, just so he had something of his own to display.

We dumped the bags on the bed, which looked like it hadn’t been slept in last night. Incidentally, it hadn’t; it had become a common occurrence that Skully slept on the floor in my attic bedroom by the window. He said it was because he missed annoying me at night, but I knew his newly living brain gave him nightmares, not that either of us said anything about it. I didn’t mind so much; my mind wasn’t so nice to me at night either, not after the things I’d seen. Our impromptu sleepovers gave me some comfort.

On the nights he wasn’t there, and I’d woken up from a bad dream, I’d creep downstairs to the library. Sometimes I’d draw in my sketchbook until my thoughts quieted, other times I’d find Lockwood there too, and we’d curl up on the sofa together and just talk. Occasionally about what we’d been through and what we’d seen on the Other Side, but mostly just random things – families, the cat that kept visiting our garden, the time Lockwood actually caught George in the act of stealing his Choco Leibniz… It was nice and helped clear our heads enough to fall asleep, propped up against one another until we woke up the next morning to a camera flash and I had to chase George around the house.

We left everything on the bed to sort out later, though Rani had to drag Holly away from trying to sort it all out, and gathered in the kitchen. At some point, while we were out, Kipps had returned and let himself in, something he did quite often but no one mentioned. I’d almost forgotten he didn’t actually live with us.

“So, what’s the deal with this mansion?” I said.

“According to the information Mr Taylor gave me,” George started, “there seems to be a cluster of hauntings caused by one powerful Visitor. And, boy, it seems like a biggy. Pretty much anyone who’s spent the night there over the past fifty years was found drowned by morning. The place is full of their spirits.” “Drowned?” said Kipps, alarmed. “How?”

“Well there’s a swimming pool outside,” George explained, “but the weird thing is it’s been empty for decades, yet a fair few people were still found at the bottom of it with their lungs full of water.” He removed his glasses and cleaned them on his shirt. “Aside from that, bodies were found near sinks, bathtubs… basically anywhere with pipes.”

I grimaced; I wasn’t a huge fan of water after my mother had taught me and my sisters to swim by throwing us in the deep end of the local pool.

Lockwood hummed thoughtfully. “Well, obviously we’ll need to do some research before we…”

“Actually,” George interrupted, “I already got that covered, seen as you lot took so long at the shops.” Skully sent Holly a dirty look which she pretended not to notice.

George quickly darted to his desk in the office downstairs and retrieved his research, which he then spread out on the kitchen table. Lockwood took a seat and examined the papers while I stood behind him, peering over his shoulder and absentmindedly rubbing my hand up and down his arm; this case made me a little nervous.

George wasted no time excitedly delving into the history of the manor. “Ok, so back in the late 1800s, Redwood Manor was owned by a Lord Arthur Moore, who lived there with his wife, Elizabeth, and their two daughters. Now, here’s the thing about Elizabeth –” He pushed up his glasses which flashed in the light as he grinned sadistically – “She used to be a maid working for the Moores family before she fell in love with young Arthur, here. Arty got into a lot of trouble with his family after that, and they carted him off to live away from the rest of the family, so he wouldn’t be such a disgrace. None of that stopped him from marrying Elizabeth, though…”

“How romantic,” said Holly, smiling softly.

“Disgusting,” said Skully. I elbowed him.

“Anyway,” George continued, “Elizabeth here didn’t have such a great childhood. Had a lot of siblings, but most of them didn’t make it past the age of nine, and both her parents died when she was fourteen. Fortunately, she was already working as a maid by then. But then her brother vanished…”

“What happened to him?” said Rani.

“No one knows,” said George. “Most likely starved in the streets or something. Elizabeth tried to look for him, but the police didn’t want to waste time looking for some random orphan.”

“That must have been awful for her,” said Holly.

“What was the brother’s name?” said Skully. It surprised me that he was actually paying attention; he usually zoned out.

George shrugged. “Dunno. Wasn’t a lot about her life before she got married. This stuff’s all I found out. Anyway,” he continued, “it gets worse. See, she settles down with Arthur, has a couple of kids, everything seems to be looking up, right? Except in 1890, her husband and daughters were involved in a fatal accident when the train they were in derailed, and Elizabeth, basically driven mad with grief, went and drowned herself in the pool.”

“Oh, god…” said Kipps.

“So, you think Elizabeth Moore is our main ghost?” said Lockwood.

George nodded. “Track down her source and we stop the other Visitors too. Then hello new chemistry set.”

“Sounds riveting,” I said. “Where exactly is this manor?”

“About that…” said George. “It’s kind of way up north. Near the seaside.”

Lockwood gave him a look.

“Hey!” said George, defensively. “Just goes to show how big this company’s gotten, right? They’ve heard of us even way up there!”

“And how exactly do you plan to get us up there?” Lockwood said. “What with all our equipment.”

“You could borrow my car,” said Rani. “Holly’s insured on it. And it’s a family carrier, coz I have to pick up all my siblings from school sometimes, so you should all fit.”

“Are you sure that’s alright?” said Holly.

“Yeah, yeah,” Rani replied. “I can always get a cab if need be. Just make sure you don’t get yourself killed before our anniversary; that wine was expensive.”

Holly stuck her tongue out at her.

“I don’t know, George,” said Lockwood, unconvinced. “It’s such a long way away for one case.”

“Trust me, Lockwood,” said George, “you’ll want in. Mr Taylor’s pretty desperate to have this place cleared; a lot of other agencies have failed. Here, I wrote down how much he’s willing to pay us.” He pulled a crumpled piece of paper out of his pocket and handed it to Lockwood.

Lockwood stared at the paper. I leaned over his shoulder and gasped. “Did you… did you miss a decimal point or something?”

“Nope,” said George, grinning. “I triple checked.”

“Well,” said Lockwood, still staring at the paper, “I guess we’ll be having a company road trip to the seaside.”

Previous Next

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polyrolemodels · 7 years

Text

Cautionary Poly: It Always Felt Like An Affair

"Poor Rob," my girlfriend Tina says.

"Who's that?" I ask.

She tells me Rob is her play partner from back home. The one she hooks up with once a year when she and her husband go to a conference in Ohio. She's mentioned Rob before but not by name. He's the whole reason that she's polyamorous.

"Oh," I say. "What's going on with him?"

"He and his wife Michelle have the hardest time finding partners. They have the worst luck. They really do."

I nod, knowing that feeling. Until I lucked out and found Tina, I'd been striking out left and right myself. She and her husband Don were recent transplants to Maine, on OKCupid looking for people to play board games with.

But something about her profile had tipped me off. Flashing the secret poly bat signal in the sky.

And several weeks later, here we are. Chatting in her kitchen, the morning after yet another wonderful overnight date.

I listen carefully as she details Rob and Michelle's dating hits and misses. And by the end of it, I feel bad for them, too.

"That's too bad," I say. "I hope they find someone soon."

The next time I hear from Rob, it's via my online dating profile:

Hey!

Heard you are friends with some other good friends of mine, Don and Tina!

Take care of them, now that they're not in the Cleveland area I miss them terribly!

Also, yay for a 97% match! :D

Wanting to make a good impression on my metamour, I write Rob back right away. We exchange a few messages back and forth, but I keep it strictly friendly, and our conversation dies off.

It isn't until 3 weeks later that Rob even crosses my mind again when Don lets it drop that Rob had congratulated him and Tina on snagging me, adding that I was terribly cute in my profile pics.

On a lark, I reach out to Rob again, telling him that if he ever visits his friends in Maine that I'd be quite happy to meet him.

Rob asks me for my Skype info, and we start chatting on a regular basis.

He's forward from the very beginning. He tells me during our very first conversation, after 4 hours of chatting, that it might sound crazy but that he already knows that he loves me. Because I'm someone who rejects the status quo. And that's incredibly rare.

I'm a bit unsettled by this admission. It's much too soon. But in other ways, it's a welcome change. To be pursued. Prior to dating Don and Tina, I had pursued a series of basically monogamous people, with painful results.

Even with Don and Tina, I always feel like the clingy one, the initator. They set a lot of emotional limits on our relationships with one another. And identify polycurious.

I've grown sick of being a salesperson for polyamory.

But with Rob, I'm being wooed for the very first time since I opened up my own marriage.

Rather than running screaming in the other direction (as perhaps I should have done), I start to consider Rob a possibility.

This feeling only intensifies when he talks about how much he loves his wife Michelle. And tells me stories of their life together. They've been polyamorous for 8 years, together longer than that.

It hasn't always been easy, but she's incredibly important to him.

I find his love for her attractive. It's good to know he values someone so much who is close to him.

When he talks about how positive polyamory has been as an experience for them, it doesn't quite square with what Tina has told me. But I quiet my suspicion and continue to foster an interest in him.

Over time, Rob and I switch to the phone and start to call each other every day. I love his voice.

And as we continue to learn more about each other, we start having phone sex. Really good phone sex. It's welcome, since my husband Seth always found the act goofy, and it's been years since I had anybody to do it with.

One night, Rob calls me on the phone after Michelle leaves for the library. We're just chitchatting. Not even having phone sex per se yet. Suddenly, he sounds stressed.

"I have to go. I'll talk to you online," Rob says.

He doesn't even wait for me to respond. He just hangs up.

I hear nothing for 2 hours (and what a miserable wait), and then Rob pops online to tell me that Michelle had come home early from the library to find him with his pants undone while talking to someone on the phone.

"I offered to delete your contact info and block you," he tells me. "But luckily, she said that wouldn't be necessary."

I sit there staring at the computer screen, gutted.

Stunned by how casually he is willing to cast me out of his life at the slightest resistance from his wife.

And unimpressed by how badly they seem to handle basic poly issues for a couple that's been at this for 8 years.

My own marriage has only been open a year, and I can't imagine my husband Seth and I handling things this way.

It always felt like an affair.

And in hindsight, that should have told me something. “She doesn't have to know how serious we are yet. She just wouldn't understand.”

I thought it was romantic that he would lie to her by omission. That we'd have little secrets that only the two of us would know. I thought they were harmless and bred intimacy. He'd tell me when he'd screwed up and bummed a cigarette, knowing I wouldn't yell at him, only encourage him to do better. Adding, “Don't tell her. She'd freak.” It made me proud. I was chill. I could handle the fact that he was imperfect. In reality, it should have made me nervous. Very nervous.

I became addicted to his confidence. To this feeling that he could tell me things he couldn't bear to reveal to her. Over time, I felt his loyalties shifting, subtly, then explicitly. “Tell no one this, but if I'd met you when I was dating her, I would have dumped her and gotten with you instead. You're the kind of woman I wish I'd married.”

I knew they'd become poly in the first place because the two of them kept cheating on each other, that all of their extramarital relationships had been full of dishonesty. That her ex-boyfriend of 4 years was married, and that the metamour, her ex-boyfriend's wife, never knew. That Rob had slept with another woman the week before he and Michelle were married and didn't let Michelle know for a few years after the fact. That he had broken rules with exes like “don't fuck in our bed” and “let me know beforehand.”

It was arrogance to think I could be anything but part of the pattern of behavior, that somehow I could break the cycle through love, support, and my own efforts at ethical communication.

It got a lot worse before it got better. I tell the full story of what happened with Rob and Michelle in my book Poly Land: My Brutally Honest Adventures in Polyamory (https://www.amazon.com/Poly-Land-Brutally-Adventures-Polyamory-ebook/dp/B0719VNFZF/).

But I did learn a lot of lessons through Rob and Michelle. Here are just a few:

Pay close attention to how a lover speaks about their other partner. And whether or not they're honest to them. It's a great indicator of how they'll treat you, too.

Just because someone has been polyamorous longer than you have, it doesn't mean that they're better at managing relationships.

When communicating, do not assume the other person has understood you. Dig. Confirm. If something seems a bit off, don’t bridge the distance in your brain. Challenge it.

Whenever possible, do not rely on a third party’s assurance that someone else will be fine with an agreement. Speak directly to the source. If you neglect this step, it is at your peril. It is hard enough to ensure you’re being understood when communicating directly with someone else. When you’re playing telephone with a third party in the middle? Holy monkeys.

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Support Inclusive Polyamorous Representation at https://www.patreon.com/PolyRoleModels

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Cautionary Poly: Teachable Moments in Polyamorous Relationships is a special feature of Poly Role Models. The goal of this feature is to highlight the fact that successful polyamory isn’t always free of mistakes…and those mistakes can definitely be gained from. Now accepting submissions. If you’ve got a story to share please post it here or email me at [email protected].

#cautionary tale #polyamory #communication #dishonesty

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nirah10 · 7 years

Text

Let’s get a bit personal

So, here’s a bit of an info dump after me vanishing again. This is only partially to let you guys know what’s up and partially just so that I can get a little bit of stuff off my chest. I have a really hard time connecting and sharing the important stuff with people in person, partly because I shut down and partly because everything in my brain screams at me to not be a bother. I don’t want to worry my mum. I don’t want to stress out my boyfriend. I don’t want people to think that I’m being dramatic. It’s something I’m working on but is still ridiculously difficult for me. So here it is--very personal and very raw and mostly just to get it out so I can be done with it.

Basically, this month is the closest I’ve ever come to killing myself in my adult life. I became completely (and still kind of am) convinced that my depression was going to kill me and it just started making sense that sooner would be easier than later. I spent two weeks essentially doing nothing except lying around my house attempting (and failing) to sleep and barely working up the energy to go to work. I isolated myself completely. I mentally planned out ways to make sure someone would know to check my apartment before my animals ran out of food or water. I cleaned my apartment a bit because part of my mind was telling me that it wouldn’t be fair for my loved ones to have a mess to clean up when they eventually came. It was pretty messed up. I think the only reason that it didn’t happen was because one of the ladies I work with knows me enough and I feel comfortable enough with that I admitted to her that I had been having some “urges”, as I put it. I don’t remember exactly what she said (something about having a lot of people there for me), but I remember that I sat there, nodded awkwardly and said “thanks” but, in my head, it was taking every ounce of control I had not to burst into tears. I don’t think she realizes that she probably saved my life and I don’t really have the strength to tell her that, but I really think she did. I wasn’t suddenly better and optimistic or anything, but it was enough that I knew that the “real” me didn’t want to die.

After the first couple of weeks, I started experiencing a lot of pain. At first I thought it was menstrual cramps (I was about to be due), but it much more intense than I was used to. I was getting headaches every day and I developed a horrible, itchy rash on my arm. I still couldn’t sleep and, even when I did, I still felt exhausted when I woke up. I explained these things away to myself as being the result of not taking care of myself and not sleeping. I needed to get outside, I needed to start working out again, I needed to start eating healthy, etc. I was sure I’d feel better if I could just bring myself to try but I couldn’t seem to. I started thinking that once I got past my period, my hormones might stabilize a little bit and I’d have the strength to start trying then.

My boyfriend came home for the weekend and I put on the bravest face that I could. I knew that he knew I was struggling and I told him that I hadn’t been well, but I really didn’t want him to know how bad it was. He’s so stressed out with school that I always feel like it wouldn’t be fair to put that much more stress on him, especially because there’s nothing he can really do about it and it’s “my problem”. On Monday, I took him back to the ferry so that he could return to school and I suddenly realized that I was three days late (I’ve never, ever been more than two) so I picked up a pregnancy test on the way home. It was positive. Faint, but positive. I was still experiencing a lot of pain, but had no bleeding, and I really didn’t think it was normal. I booked a doctor’s appointment and I took three more tests over the few days that I had to wait to go in. They were all negative and the pain got worse. I suddenly found that, insomnia aside, I couldn’t sleep because I simply couldn’t find a comfortable position to lay in.

When I did see my doctor, he had me take another test (another negative) and told me that he wanted to do a blood test to be sure. My mum said that she had experienced pregnancies where she repeatedly got negative tests after a positive but she was still pregnant. Before he sent me to the lab to have my blood taken, he poked about my pelvic area a bit to explore the pain. Everything hurt but I got an awful sharp pain when he put pressure on my left side. He told me to wait until the tests came back, but I know a thing or two about medicine and he didn’t have to tell me that pain on one side is not good. If I was still pregnant, there was a good chance that it was ectopic and I would end up losing it anyway and possibly require surgery.

Luckily, the labs in my area have a new system where you can check your results online and I was able to see them as early as that evening. The test came back negative. I was pregnant, but it was nonviable and I was told that my body would likely reabsorb the tissue it had grown. This was good news really, as ectopic pregnancies can be fatal and, even if the pregnancy was healthy, this would be an extremely inconvenient time to become a parent. The pain was still horrible but started to subside (it still lingers a little now but is slowly disappearing) and my hormones started to settle down. Some other side effects that I hadn’t even noticed at the time started subsiding too (my sense of smell had gone insane--I’m sure now that I threw away perfectly good chicken because I was convinced it had gone bad).

I’m doing much better in general. All the logical parts of my brain keep reminding me that I’m so lucky that I didn’t need surgery or that I wouldn’t have a newborn while my boyfriend is still in school. The logical part of my brain keeps telling me that it was just a small bundle of cells that simply stopped growing--that they needed to stop growing because they were going to die anyway and put me at risk with them. But, no matter how logical the 90% of my brain is about it, there’s still a teeny tiny portion that just keeps getting stuck on the thought that I lost a baby. I tell myself that I didn’t, because it wasn’t a baby yet, but that little small part of me just simply disagrees. I had a small bruise and a tiny little dot of a scab on the back of my hand from where they took my blood and, for whatever reason, that odd little part of my mind got kind of attached to them, thinking: that’s all that’s left. And I’ve gotten weirdly sad about it as they’ve faded. Sometimes I touch the skin and I’m always surprised that it’s smooth, like I’m expecting it to be all rough and scratchy or something. I can’t really explain it. I’m fairly confident that it’s just lingering hormones and, as I finally manage to sleep and feel more like myself, I really do hope that the feeling goes away with the rest of it.

It’s odd that something seems so small and so big at the same time. It’s literally something that didn’t happen and yet I feel like it impacted me. I never had a baby, so why do I keep thinking that I lost one?

I had some really nice visits in some of my family in the next week. I didn’t realize how long it had been since I’d seen anyone until my four-year-old nephew got my sister to video call me so that he could literally beg me to come visit. “Please, please, come my house.” It was adorable. She sent me video of him and his little sister sitting by the front door while I was on my way there, jigging about excitedly and opening the mail slot to yell my name outside. It was a pretty nice lift for me that I really needed (though I don’t know if their neighbours appreciated it).

I’m okay now. I’ll be okay. Little by little, this whole crazy experience will fade away into the past and I’ll move on from it all. Being able to unload it all on a blog is surprisingly helpful, if anything just to process the thoughts a bit. At this point, the only thing I’m really worried about is if I ever become pregnant again that the extreme depression and suicidal thoughts will come back. I don’t know how I could possibly handle that for a whole nine months. Hopefully, it won’t be a problem and, if it is, at least I’ll have some sort of heads up.

#this time it's personal

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theclacks · 7 years

Text

Buffy Thoughts - S6E19 (Seeing Red)

Thirteen year old spoilers below the read more.

Actually it wasn’t as bad as that.

I was spoiled for the Buffy/Spike attempted rape scene even before I started watching the show. And I’m actually kind of glad it happened? Like, I’m not glad that it happened, but I’m glad it happened where it did because for whatever reason, I thought it was going happen in Season 7. I thought it was going to be, like, ANGST for the rest of season 6, some relationship repair in season 7, and THEN the attempted rape, and then STRAIGHT BACK TO ANGST for the rest of the show.

So in that sense, the attempted rape scene was like an angst bandaid being ripped quickly off.

...that might be the worst metaphor I’ve ever written.

I blame Joss Whedon.

...

And then Tara.

Whoo boy. I’ve had so many conflicting spoilers with them.

I went into this show thinking Willow was going to die (I’m 96% sure she doesn’t now). Then I got that spoiler somewhat corrected with another spoiler, aka Tara dying but not really dying because it was a memory loss thing like Donna Noble losing all her memories in Doctor Who. So when Glory brainsucked her in Season 5, I thought that was the end of Tara.

But then it wasn’t.

And THEN when looking up character details for a completely other random character, in the extra info section, there was a footnote about Tara. AKA Tara’s last episode is the episode that she’s in the opening credits. And I was like “FFFFU----” because now I’d be pre-warned.

But I was only half-paying attention to the opening credits for this episode.

And then the gunshot happened.

And Tara fell.

And I was like “........no. I didn’t see Tara in the opening credits. This can’t be it. They’ve just gotten back together. She wasn’t in the opening credits. I didn’t see her in the opening credits.”

And then as soon as the end credits started rolling I went back to the opening credits and, sure enough...

And I was just like:

SHE WAS SUCH A BRO THIS SEASON TOO. WHICH ALMOST MAKES IT WORSE BECAUSE I’M SURE JOSS WAS LIKE, “HEY? DO YOU KNOW WHAT BE GOOD FOR THIS CHARACTER WE’RE PLANNING TO KILL OFF? LET’S GIVE HER EXTRA AWESOME LINES AND AWESOME LOOKS AT THE CAMERA AND JUST MAKE HER AWESOME, JUST SO THAT THE KNIFE DIGS IN THAT MUCH DEEPER.”

And then I immediately thought, “Willow can raise Buffy from the dead! She can totally raise Tara, morality be dammed.”

And then I thought, “WAIT. SHIT. She needed that super rare urn thing to do that and that went and got broke in S6E2.”

And then now part of me wants to do a ranting thing on the death of lesbian couples in fiction, except part of me wants to give Whedon some slack because this Buffy and characters have a high mortality rate in general, except THEN I really think about it, and none of the other Scoobies have permanently died yet, except THEN I think back to actual relationship and how it got afforded pretty much all of the same things that the het relationships on the show did: meet cute, to growing friendship, to actual relationship status (and the Oz/WIllow/Tara episode remains the only episode I’ve cried at because Amber Benson’s acting was that raw), to an entire season of together, to rocky patch, to break up, to slow reconciliation...

And, it’s like, I look sideways and there’s IDK, Steven Moffat’s current incarnation of Doctor Who, which has a lesbian married couple, but it’s pretty much their whole identity and they always talk about being wives but they don’t have any domestic or physical interactions and, to date, their one filmed kiss was a super zoomed in shot of them having to “share breath.”

And suddenly I can’t get mad at anything Willow/Tara when there’s that kind of shit in the world.

So yeah.

Now that I’ve got the serious stuff out of my system, I want to end this reaction post on a somewhat lighter note and give out a special “aww hell no” to Buffy, who finally disclosed her relationship to Spike (sort of) but did it in a way that left out the part about her dumping him weeks ago so that everyone (most notably Dawn) was all, “OMG Spike, how could you sleep with Anya when you knew it would hurt Buffy so much?”

Like SHIT. I already ranted about this in the last episode. Anya got dumped. Spike got dumped. THEY DON’T HAVE TO ANSWER TO ANYBODY.

And obviously that is nowhere near as bad as the attempted rape, but I am judging them individually for their separate actions. (I am Team Punch Spike for Trying to Rape Buffy, not Team Punch Spike for Sleeping With Anya.)

On a completely lighter note, Clem is now official the best character.

If he dies too, I’m done.

#buffy the vampire slayer #btvs #///#////#/////#clacks from theclacks

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idekman-ao3 · 7 years

Text

like the dead grown old

“When Stark tears through his arm like it’s tissue paper, it feels like dying all over again. No. That’s not right. It feels like the shards of memory rattling around his brain – the ones that crawl frost across his body, the phantom pains of an arm trapped under a rock, of cutting through his tendons with a pen knife, of the coppery stench of blood and rotten flesh and pain that is raw and electric.”

Tony won’t stop digging up information about the Winter Soldier. Bucky and Steve decide to fill him in.

Also available on ao3!

The problem is, it’s sort of like picking at a scab.

He knows it’ll hurt, and he knows that he should stop pulling up dead skin with his fingernails, but he can’t stop himself.

Except the picking is in the act of google searches and trawling through wikileaks and info dumps and hacking into any sort of source he can get his hands on and, finally, when he makes it through all of that too, he starts digging up paper files too.

Rogers calls him three weeks in.

‘Didn’t think I’d be hearing from you, Captain.’ He’s aware how cold it sounds. Aware that the title sounds like an insult. His throat feels impossibly tight. Someone shuffles in the background on the other end of the line and something curls up in his stomach, horrid and acidic.

‘Stark.’ All-business. ‘Whatever you’re looking for, just…’ A pause. A breath. Rogers sounds shaky. In the background, the shuffling stops – as if someone had been walking past and come to a rest. ‘Just stop.’

The problem is, the problem is, he thinks, is that he’s not sure what he’s looking for at all. Just knows that he can’t stop.

Rogers tacks on a little please just before he hangs up. It sounds broken in two.

When Stark tears through his arm like it’s tissue paper, it feels like dying all over again.

No. That’s not right.

It feels like the shards of memory rattling around his brain. The ones that crawl frost across his body, the phantom pains of an arm trapped under a rock, of cutting through his tendons with a pen knife, of the coppery stench of blood and rotten flesh and pain that is raw and electric.

He allows himself to be numb, on the floor of that base. He stares out at the snow, feels the razor wire tang of shredded nerves and the odd taste of metal that somehow overwhelms him, his synapses lost and confused at what sensations he should be feeling. At one point, he thinks he grabs at Stark’s ankle – enough to distract him, snatch Steve a few spare seconds, perhaps. He’s not sure, later, if he dreamed it.

He manages to keep it together until they get to the jet. Until Steve’s buckled him in, hands ever-so soft. Shaking it so hard that it takes him three attempts to get the buckle in.

It’s when Bucky moves to help him, when he makes an aborted lurch with his left arm and looks down to see it’s not there – that’s when it comes to him. That’s when he puts his right hand – his live hand, his only hand, flesh and blood and a little cold at the fingertips – to his mouth and screams through the gaps. That’s when Steve rests his forehead against his and tells him breathe, breathe with me, forces his hand up onto the blue softness of his uniform, breathes with him, for him, even as tears roll off his chin and into the conclaves of Bucky’s neck, his lap, one across his knuckles.

When Stark starts digging around three months later, the two of them holed up in some flat they haven’t left in six days, it is immediately obvious. Steve’s angry, because Steve is always angry about something. He just feels a little flat, and quite tired, falls asleep on the sofa half-watching some old movie. When he wakes up again a few hours later, Steve is curled up beside him, head just barely resting on his shoulder, warmth coming from him in waves. Bucky traces a thumb across the shadows resting beneath his eyes and goes back to sleep.

He thinks he might just be looking for an answer to the eternal why that winds round and round his head, looking for a way to get to get it all to be a little quiet when it’s three am and he hasn’t slept in thirty-six hours and his entire body feels like a livewire, taut and aching and old.

It starts off with his parents. Of course it does. Hydra wanted the serum. No witnesses remaining.

It’s too simple. It doesn’t satisfy the itch at the pit of his skull. He digs deeper.

The problem is, the more Stark finds, the more he sees, the more everyone else sees it too.

It’s not as if the guy’s livetweeting everything he manages to haul from the dark recesses of the internet, but once he’s de-encrypted certain files, or broken past certain walls, it opens the flood gates.

It starts off small. A YouTube video that gets taken down within thirty minutes. Odd, off-the-wall conspiracy websites chattering.

And then it swells, and swells, and he wakes up to the sound of his screams vibrating through the wall.

For a moment, he thinks it must be coming from him – it’s not unusual, one or the other of them waking up to find their throats cracked and raw with it. But he opens and closes his mouth, clears his throat, puts his fingers to his throat to see if he can feel the vibration. Nothing.

He stumbles, bleary and half-awake, to the next room. Steve isn’t even sitting – he’s stood, every inch of him immobile.

Bucky forces himself to look at the television screen for a little while. He remembers this. In patches. But yeah – it was early on, before the chair, before he realised that he wouldn’t die no matter how much pain they put him through. After they stopped pulling his fingernails out one by one, but before they started shredding the soles of his feet for kicks.

This had been – there’d been blood in his mouth and in his eyes and he couldn’t remember what they were actually, physically, doing to him, but it had felt like they were peeling the skin off of him and pouring acid into the wounds. He stops looking at the screen. Stops being able to stand, really, falls before Steve can catch him, face wet and curled into something he’s never seen on him before. Later on – later, he’ll parse it through and realise it was agony and fury rolled up into one. Now, he can still hear himself screaming and it’s four o clock in the god damn morning and the news is bleating viewer discretion is advised and graphic images and he’s on the floor, Steve sobbing into the soft juncture where his neck meets his shoulder.

That’s the day Steve calls Stark.

He wants to stop, after he sees it on the news. Not for the Soldier, necessarily. For Steve.

Problem is, problem is, he can’t. Picking a scab.

He always was a glutton for self-torture.

‘We could just send him everything,’ Bucky heaves out, two months later. They’ve stopped watching the news. Steve punched a hole through television. He pauses, fork caught halfway between his plate and his mouth, to stare across at Bucky. When he breathes, it’s quaky and sharp.

‘What?’

Bucky shrugs. Twiddles his fork. Suddenly, he’s not so hungry.

‘I have everything. Everything on me, I mean.’

Steve’s staring at him like he’s just been punched in the face.

‘What, like –’ he clears his throat. ‘Like the stuff on the news.’

Bucky can feel his face flitter before he can stop it, forming an expression that says worse than what’s on the news, and Steve stands up so fast his chair clatters to the floor. For a moment, Bucky thinks about standing too because Steve jerks, kind of oddly – flinching, Bucky realises. Delayed response. When Steve comes back ten minutes later, he picks up his chair. All delicate and slow.

‘Did you,’ Steve starts up, painfully careful – and then breaks off, swipes a big hand across his face, doesn’t pull away when Bucky picks up his free hand, tilts his fingers across the lines of his palm, the sensitive skin of his inner wrist. ‘Did you watch it?’

Bucky nods.

It had been excruciating.

There were hours of it – Zola had insisted on recording almost everything he did – it had taken days. There hadn’t been much to do in between D.C. and Bucharest besides torture himself.

‘Where –’ but then Steve is already cutting himself off, his voice a crackle of realisation. ‘The rucksack.’

He nods, feels his hair twitch into his eyes. Leaves it until Steve looks up and, fingers still trembling, pushes it behind his ears before him. Not that he can’t do it himself, just likes the way Steve’s fingertips brush against his temples. Steve nods.

Bucky goes out for coffee three days later, gets chatting with the barista like he isn’t an internationally-wanted fugitive. Gets waylaid at the market, swipes a trinket he thinks Steve might enjoy, in his pocket in the space of a blink. Goes back and tucks ten dollars into the space where it had sat a few minutes later, because Steve hates it when he steals.

In all, it takes him an hour or so to wander back to the apartment, two stone-cold coffees in hand. He bumps clumsily through the doorway, having struggled with his key for about ten minutes, trawls in shouting out something about I’ll have to heat it up in the microwave – trails off when he sees Steve.

Steve, on the sofa, laptop shut but headphones still plugged in. Steve, hands covering his face, shoulders shaking something fierce.

A little memory stick pokes out of the side of the laptop.

He should be cross.

Steve is sobbing.

He really should be cross.

But he knows exactly how far Steve had gotten. Ten minutes in. The point where Bucky’d had to shut his own laptop and scream into the well of his fists and then sleep for sixteen hours straight, hoping against hope that he just wouldn’t wake up.

Except he had, and he’d kept watching, and nothing after that, that ten-minutes-in moment, had been as bad.

He kneels in front of Steve and presses a hand to the back of his neck, lets him know that he’s there. The little twitch under his palm tells him Steve feels him, that he won’t freak out as he pulls his earbuds out, tugs and tugs until his hands come away from his face.

‘C’mon, Stevie,’ he says, whisper-soft, the same kind of soft he’d used for when Steve was a foot shorter, all warm skin and ribcage, when he’d gotten beaten so hard he couldn’t get back up again. ‘S’ok. I’m here, I got you –’ he’s burbling, incoherent, just wants the horrible keening noise Steve’s making to stop. He pulls him close, lets him burrow into his neck. Feels Steve pull himself into the lines of his sternum, the press of his elbows, until they’re almost one whole person, pushed so tightly into the sofa they might as well disappear into it.

Steve calls him.

‘Can you stop? If – if we show you all of it? Everything we have? Will that help?’

Steve sounds like lead. He sounds as if he’s died. There’s that ever-present shuffle in the background, and Steve’s we and he realises – it’s the Soldier. In the background. A pot clangs softly. The click of a kettle. Domestic.

‘It can’t hurt,’ Tony sends down the line, and the little, exhausted scoff he gets back makes his stomach lurch.

Ridiculously, Rogers refuses to post the damn thing.

He’s expecting boxes and boxes of stuff, but when Rogers unfolds himself from a far-too small car, he’s holding a tiny god-damn envelope.

‘That’s it?’

‘That’s it.’ Rogers looks, as usual, infuriatingly and implacably calm – but there’s a tic in his jaw that Tony can at least commend himself for.

‘Christ, this is what you made me drive all the way down to Philly for?’ Tony snaps, tearing open the envelope and letting the memory stick fall into the palm of his hand. ‘You just wanted a little Deep Throat moment?’

Rogers blanches at that, opens his mouth to protest – but there’s a little movement out of the corner of his eye, and –

Bucky watches Stark watch him and he shuts his eyes and he’s back on the ground, arm searing and electric and he’s screaming through his teeth and his hands on the jet and he’s on an operating table in Wakanda as they smooth off the arm and he wakes up early, too early, from the anaesthetic, they underestimated his botched version of the serum and his recovery times, and – and –

‘You brought him here?’

A breath spools out of Rogers all at once.

‘Tony.’ The name is a plea, the informality of it unfamiliar, and for a second they could be back on that helicarrier, back when the most complex thing they had to worry about was Loki who, in all honesty, feels like peanuts in comparison to this tangled mess of a thing they’ve all ended up in. ‘He hasn’t let that thing out of his sight in two years. Give him a break.’

He feels his jaw clenching on autopilot, feels that same anger rear into his throat like bile – give him a break? He killed my mother, give him a break, I – forces himself to swallow it down. He nods, once, jerkily.

‘Call me when you’re done with it,’ Rogers tells him coldly. Pauses, then relents. ‘Take your time with it. We’ll be here until you’re ready.’

Tony nods. Feels his heart thrum in his chest, has no idea what it will help, or how, but hopes it soothes the unnameable something in his chest nonetheless. He looks down at the ground, at his shoes, one of the laces loose, at the memory stick in his hands, until he hears the click of the car door and, after a delayed moment, the rumble of the engine as they pull away.

When Steve gets in the car, the first thing he does is lean over the gear stick and press a kiss to the sharp corner of his jaw. It helps, somehow.

He gets ten minutes in.

Three a.m. and someone’s knocking on the door of the crummy motel room they’ve rented out.

He’s barely awake and he thinks maybe Steve had slipped out for some ice, so disorientated that he doesn’t even realise Steve’s warm, sleeping body is back in the bed until the door’s halfway open.

Tony Stark stands in front of him.

He rears back as if Bucky had just slapped him, at around the same time Bucky flinches – and it had been bad, to see him in the car from thirty paces away, but this is worse, to see those dark eyes staring across at him, to feel the familiar presence and stockiness of him. The stump of his arm throbs with phantom pain. The way he curls in on himself is immediate and humiliating.

The tiny, keening gasp that peels out of him is enough to wake Steve up. He can hear the jolt of him, watches Stark peer over his shoulder, blanche at something. The shared bed, Bucky realises. Bucky shirtless, Steve hauling himself out of bed in just his underwear, calling out his name – soft, always so soft, Buck?, confused and hurt until he realises that Bucky hasn’t run away, is just distant for a moment. But it’s always the same, the same presumption of abandonment that socks Bucky in the stomach with the ache of it, that Steve thinks he would leave him now, after all of this.

‘Tony?’ Steve slurs out, blinking across at the doorway.

‘I’m just going to –’ have a panic attack. Scream. Tear my skin off. He leaves the sentence jagged and escapes into the bathroom, snapping the orangey overhead light on as he glares in the mirror. He looks like death.

The memory stick is a weight in his palm.

‘That was fast,’ Rogers tells him dryly. Tony swallows past the lump in his throat, tries to speak. For perhaps the first time in his life, he can’t think of a quip for this. ‘How far did you get?’

Rogers is leaned against the door frame, had taken Barnes’ place immediately, brushing an arm across the crook of his elbow as they passed on another, a sort of quiet intimacy Tony isn’t sure he’ll ever understand. But now he looks – he looks faux-casual and furious, jaw clenched around something tangible and Tony, because he is Tony, spits out;

‘Well, you know. I got to the point where he starts screaming your name and I was pretty much out after that.’

He’s never quite sure if what he remembers is the memory or the recording filling in the blanks. But he remembers the coldness of the chair’s restraints on the inside of his wrists, remembers how they’d clamped metal to each side of his face and he’d thought that it could never get more painful than that, that it was the worst he’d ever felt and the worst he ever would.

Something had knocked loose in his head that day – something they spent a very time burning out of him afterwards. But the name had curled around his ribcage and his lungs and his oesophagus, and he remembers them scrambling to turn the camera off. Even after they’d stopped sending electricity through his synapses he’d still screamed it, over and over until his throat was raw enough that he’d coughed up blood. He didn’t stop, couldn’t, not even when they kicked him until his chest was black and blue and he was just wheezing it, barely a sound but the instinct still there, not even when they threatened to tear his tongue out. They’d had to sedate him, eventually.

That was the first time he’d gone in the chair. It was a good, long time until they put him in it again.

He’d expected a rise out of Rogers. Expected horror, or at least anger. He gets a touch of irritation, but most of it is just sorrow, settling like lead across Rogers’ features.

‘You knew?’ Rogers’ gaze flicks to something over his shoulder. There’s nothing there, Tony realises; just doesn’t want to meet his gaze. ‘You – you’ve seen it.’ He gets a nod in response.

‘Got about as far as you did,’ he murmurs. Deliberately, something rattles in the bathroom. Rogers’ voice lowers so that it’s barely above a whisper. ‘Felt disrespectful, after that.’

Tony nods. He’d felt something of that too.

It had quelled the itch. He’s not sure if it had just replaced it with something worse, enough fuel for his nightmares to last the rest of his life, but the urging need to rid that strange, unsatisfiable something is absent, now.

He presses the memory stick into his hand.

‘Just tell him…’ He trails off. Starts again; ‘just tell him –’

Stark and Steve’s voices vibrate through the walls and he’s abruptly, irrationally furious.

He moves slowly, though, calm as he opens the door, watches Stark cut himself off with a little flinch. He goes to the doorway, doesn’t look at Stark – can’t -

(because as much as he wants, desperately, and with all every inch of his skin, to apologise, he can’t. Too scared. Not of – of apologising. Just of Stark. Every time he meets his eye he’s being flung across the room by a repulsor beam, having a limb torn from him.)

He looks to Steve instead.

Steve, because he is everything more than he deserves, switches into a different person somehow. Becomes loose-limbed and kind as he pulls Bucky a fraction closer, presses a kiss to his forehead and murmurs go back to bed into his temple, the thumb dragging across his jaw effusing warmth through his entire body. He stumbles away.

Stark watches as the Winter Soldier crawls back into bed.

The little room is cluttered, shoes and clothes abandoned on the floor. Empty take out containers are stacked up neatly by an already-full bin. Two dog-eared books sit on the night-stand; Pride and Prejudice and some thick history book that must be Steve’s. There’s a thick leather jacket draped over a chair, the smell of lime shower gel, as if someone’d had a shower before they got into bed, a softer tang of sweat –

He has no idea why he came here. Intruding, so messily and so noisily, on such a precarious bubble of intimacy.

Steve waits for him to speak. When he doesn’t, he offers;

‘I’ll see you around, Tony.’

Tony nods. Gives him a mock-salute. Tries not to glance over his shoulder to where the man who killed his parents is sleeping in polkadot-print pyjama pants.

‘Night, Steve.’

He turns away. The door click shuts.

Steve hauls himself into bed with a long sigh. Bucky tucks an arm around his waist and goes back to sleep.

#stevebucky #steve rogers #bucky barnes #stevebucky fic #stucky fic #idk what this is forgive me #literally wrote it in the space of three hours TAKE IT #i'll probs do a proper edit tomorrow #lmaoooo #just wanted some stevebucky cuddles and also seeing them from a different perspective #i guess #?

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jeffrmayhugh · 4 years

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BITCOIN COUNTDOWN BEGINS!! BTC PRICE WILL EXPLODE IF THIS HAPPENS WITHIN 24 HOURS!!!!

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

Four. Wow. Can Bitcoin get a weekly candle close in the golden pocket of the last two and a half years for the first time since February 3rd of 2020? The Bitcoin price charts are actually hinting at an exciting breakout, one of the most exciting breakouts since the summer of 2019. Bitcoin currently testing the top of this 2.5 year resistance, yet again, the third time in just days. What are the chances Bitcoin explodes and what are the chances that maybe it doesn’t explode? We’ll take a look at what specific target Bitcoin would have to reach today to really indicate bullish momentum and more specifically, what weekly level that we have to get this Kamela close at. Just in a few hours coming up here for this to be a very bullish goal on the weekly yet again. How close are we to breaking this entire cryptocurrency market cap triangle? It may be closer than you think. And as well, the Bitcoin transaction fees are soaring after the Bitcoin having. What is the purpose of this? What is the downside? And in fact, what is a maybe solution to this happening? Let’s get into it. Well, what’s going on, everyone? Welcome back to another exciting up. So we have a lot going on today. In fact, maybe Bitcoin is pumping yet again. What are the chances that we do see Bitcoin break above 10K? We’re only a few hundred dollars away as we record this video. And again, is that a bad thing? Because will we be creating a gap to the downside while so much to get into today, guys? A lot going on. If you near the channel make sure to leave that comment like subscribe so you can enter to win this ledger. And as well, guys, we’re still doing a sale on our best course yet. Guys, make sure to enter juice at checkout while guise as well. This is the very last day to get 50 percent off your ledger, Nanos. When you order. Make sure to take advantage. Guys, last day, you’re not going to come across an opportunity like this again for a long time. 50 percent off when you had a reasonable run at checkout link pin to the comments and into the description. Check it out wirelessly. Huge, guys. So let’s get this data. Here we see Bitcoin actually breaking above 98. Currently, it’s actually a little below that. But will we continue to see this pump over the next roughly eight hours from metonymy recording this until we get the clothes on the weekly? These weekly candles are primed and specifically the target we want to look for this weekly candle to get a very nice, healthy clothes. Anything above what we’ve been talking about, OK. Ninety 90, 200 U.S. dollars. Currently, we’re almost six hundred dollars above that. And we have, as I’m recording this, about eight more hours until we get the clothes for this weekly candle. Will Bitcoin be able to close above that level? I think there’s a pretty good chance unless we would get a massive dump in just a few hours here. What that would do is signal some nice strength on these longer-term charts. And as well, we could continue with this potentially massive Macnee cross. You can already see this bad boy is just full of life so far in the Maddi. We want to see that happen there. People talking about a golden cross on a daily. That hasn’t come to pass just yet. What are the chances that happens? It has happened in the past where we get death crosses and golden crosses that actually do the opposite of what a lot of people expect. So, for example, some golden cross has actually dumped the price and some death crosses actually have pumped the price slightly. OK. They can be false indicators, but for the most part, they can indicate very strong shifts in momentum. And guys, really, just to sum up the rest of the weekly chart, we’ve had such strong bounces on the 200 weekly the 100 weekly moving average. And as well, even most recently, the 21 weeks moving average. So overall, the momentum is really shifting to a very good level here. I think it’s very likely that we could be in there. We could potentially be in this actual disbelief phase where guys, you know, what happens after this absolute rally mode? I think it’s the perfect timing for what it could be. And as well, there’s absolute disbelief in these markets. People are just not ready because they’ve suffered their two and a half years of fake-out after fake-out. The guys are the good times just around the corner. Yes, we definitely think that is very likely the second half of this year. OK. Coming up very soon and especially the whole year of 2021. I personally think is going to be absolutely game-changing game-changer status for cryptocurrency, not just Bitcoin guys, because, you know, we love Bitcoin, but there are some select few Alz that will definitely pump. And for the most part, most likely, a lot of these coins could be pumping at some point. They won’t have the longevity at all of Bitcoin, but would be foolish to say that’s over the next two years, Bitcoin will be the only coin that increases substantially. There will be a handful. OK. In my opinion, for sure, it’s up. It’s your job to find out which ones those are. So, guys, as you can see here, we are just still doing it after finding support and support on these higher lows right here. We’ve gotten like higher lows. We’ve gotten lower highs. Consolidation pattern, guys, a break is coming, a massive break and overtime, it’s looking more likely that break could actually be to the upside. Absolutely massive. So let’s zoom out. You guys can see again, this is it’s still testing this. It is still testing these highs here. It just wants to it just continues. The moving averages on a daily continue to support specifically the 21 daily simple moving average, continuing to support big Bitcoin. And it just wants to push this thing higher. Now, keep in mind, guys, if we do get a nice pump within the next few hours or before the CMU opens tomorrow, again, what that’s gonna do is create a gap here. For example, let’s say we go to 10000. Let’s say we open up at 10000 CMG. We’d start the press here and there’ll be a gap in this area here. So, again, gaps tend to be very. Liable and we could come down and fill that during the week if we do pump, which again is not something that would be unexpected if we break 10K. And if we break this long term trend here in the short term, this trend specifically, we would most likely still have some sort of a pullback on our way up anyway, because we would want to test and make sure that’s actually valid support. And we could see a very big week to the downside. Like we saw a pretty big, very clear filling of this gap, pretty much to a T.. I see. Completely fill the gap exactly. Then went back down. Now, importantly, here on the weekly, we’re actually in this golden pocket of the last two and a half years of this macro trend. We can zoom out and show you everything here. We’re still within this trend. And actually, for the first time, we might be getting a candle close within this time. We’ve gotten Wicks. Last week we got a week. And the week before that, we got rejected off of there. But we could be actually getting a weak closing as long as we close above ninety-six hundred. So right now we’re about two hundred dollars above that as I’m recording this. If we close above 96, then again, that’s even more bullish than ninety-two is something we basically need to close above to be short term bullish. But then again, if we’re close above 96, that is even much, much, much better in my opinion. The last time we had some closes here, we had four closes for weekly closes here back at the very beginning of February. So three months ago and then we got completely rejected out of this golden pocket. So that was our first major rejection out of this two and a half year golden pocket in a very long time. Now, this is a crucial area, again, because we could be spending some time trading at these levels or we could end up just blasting right past his golden pocket, because specifically this level that we’re at now is exactly where the golden pocket is now. And it was not back here in February. OK, it was a little bit higher back here in February. So it’s making or break time, do or die, right. Or fly time and overall for the health of the market. That’s what let’s take a look at because let’s take a look at this article now about Bitcoin’s price chart, hinting at a massive breakout here. Bitcoin pressure its hints at one of the most exciting breakouts in over a year. So if Bitcoin closes above what we agree with the ninety-two hundred dollar level, it’s very bullish. So it’s actually going over some of this info here. The renewed post having retail interests certainly does look like it helped. And potentially even J.K. Rowling tweeting to fourteen point six million followers asking about Bitcoin may have been interesting. But this is what I really want to point out here. It definitely could have sparked public interest in Bitcoin, renewed the public interest, though, if crypto Twitter didn’t blow it by acting like absolute donkey’s absolute knuckleheads with cringe replies that no one found funny. Let me know what you guys think about that. So I haven’t talked about this in the video or mentioned anything about it. But do you guys personally think the way that a lot of people responded to J.K. Rowling, a.k.a? the creator of Harry Potter, about her question about Bitcoin, apparently? I mean, I didn’t participate in it. I think it’s kind of silly to start spamming her. But pretty much everyone, from what I’ve seen was just like tweeting at her. Anything they could. There were thousands of replies to her. And I’m just curious, do you think that was good or bad exposure for Bitcoin? Technically, anything is good exposure. Technically, any exposure is good exposure. You could say. But at the same time, do you think that she thinks that the crypto community is worse off now because of that interaction? Or if. Do you think that maybe she’s more likely to be interested in and researching it? I’m really curious because apparently, apparently a lot of people on Twitter were acting kind of crazy each week that supports get lower within the channel. So generally, while this author is bullish on Bitcoin, he does not think a breakthrough above 10K would hold for long. And that’s kind of what I actually just said earlier in the video. If we break 10K, we’ll probably come back to retest some levels before actually blasting off anyway. When you break major, major support like that, it’s not just straight to the moon. There’s usually a time where you come back and the market decides, hey, did we really were you really supposed to break this? And if so, continue. And if not, you know, you get rejected again. So to sum it up, closing above 90, 200 today would be the single most bullish sign. Bitcoin is seen since this author says before the 2017 Bullrun. This would put ninety-nine eighty as the next level of resistance. So basically, this is a huge area. It’s very crucial that we get a very important break here. Not manage to hold above 92 could push us actually back to about 88 hundred, which is what we’re talking about, as had to hold his support over these last few weeks. And it has so far. But that would actually be a short term, very bearish sign on some of these days and for our indicators here and guys as well. Bitcoin transaction fees saw after Bitcoins having the average transaction fee continues to rise. So let’s talk about this a little bit because if you guys remember if you guys were here back in 2017, some of you were some of you weren’t one of the big problems with Bitcoin and something that really slowed down or just completely, you know, ensuring that Bitcoin was topped out at 20 K. Is that transaction fees were ridiculous. They were extremely expensive and they were extremely slow. It could even take days to receive a Bitcoin transaction. Back then, everything was so clogged up. I remember looking at I remember people reporting on it. It was an absolute it was chaos. Now, obviously, Bitcoin has gotten better since then. However, you can see it is getting a little clogged as of like all the hype of the last few days, especially the having the average fees continued to soar post having average fee hit an 11 month high of over five dollars on May 15th and May 14th. The blockchain men pool is backed up with 56 megabytes of unconfirmed transactions. Average transaction costs increase over 160 percent in four days alone. Bitcoin fees have been on the rise. Ever since the turn of the year, especially since the ramp-up of the block reward, having typically the transaction fees on the Bitcoin network experience, heavy usage, competition for space in these blocks caused a race to the top as you’d compete to have their transactions included in the next block. So an increase in average transaction fee forces users to choose between sending transfers that are fast but expensive or cheap and slow. So pretty much you have to pay more money if you want to get through faster and then deliver change. However, again, the fact that it is getting clogged up a little bit is not the best sign. And again, whether you guys like it or not. Bitcoin has a lot of life, OK? Years and years of promising advancement ahead of it, in my opinion, however. In the meantime, you would be kidding yourself if you didn’t think that people were not going to speculate on other cryptocurrencies. And in fact, those cryptocurrencies would also get massive valuations. Okay. Even if they don’t deserve massive valuations, which most of them do not most don’t. But that doesn’t mean they’re not going to get those massive valuations. They are. Some of them will. OK, don’t be a nincompoop, guys. Awesome. Well, thanks so much for joining guys. Make sure to check out T4 in the description as well. Get your ledger, guys. The last day for 50 percent off, you would be silly if you wanted one of these to not be buying right now. Is a perfect effort to keep your whistles wet. And let’s get whistling.

source https://www.cryptosharks.net/bitcoin-countdown-begins-btc-price-will-explode/ source https://cryptosharks1.tumblr.com/post/618656585342959616

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heatherrdavis1 · 4 years

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BITCOIN COUNTDOWN BEGINS!! BTC PRICE WILL EXPLODE IF THIS HAPPENS WITHIN 24 HOURS!!!!

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

Via https://www.cryptosharks.net/bitcoin-countdown-begins-btc-price-will-explode/

source https://cryptosharks.weebly.com/blog/bitcoin-countdown-begins-btc-price-will-explode-if-this-happens-within-24-hours

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scottmapess · 4 years

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BITCOIN COUNTDOWN BEGINS!! BTC PRICE WILL EXPLODE IF THIS HAPPENS WITHIN 24 HOURS!!!!

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

source https://www.cryptosharks.net/bitcoin-countdown-begins-btc-price-will-explode/ source https://cryptosharks1.blogspot.com/2020/05/bitcoin-countdown-begins-btc-price-will.html

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cryptosharks1 · 4 years

Text

BITCOIN COUNTDOWN BEGINS!! BTC PRICE WILL EXPLODE IF THIS HAPPENS WITHIN 24 HOURS!!!!

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

source https://www.cryptosharks.net/bitcoin-countdown-begins-btc-price-will-explode/

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hgfstreamchats · 5 years

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Jason Goes to Hell

Come on Kast... Kast, just once. Just. Once. Hello! Remember when we used livestream and the only thing we had to worry about were the many, many problems inherent in livestream? Hello, night human! I remember it fondly. Those were the days. I still have no audio. Hmmm... is there--yeah, me neither Still no audio? Nope. Still none Oh afts. Mmmmaybe you have something muted in kast itself? I cannot hear the terrible dance. Drat. It's very possible. It went through some kind of hideous update. Great. Glorious. Hmmmm. Nothing? Nothing Nothing. I hear it! there it is! GLORIOUS!

And it just cut out And it's back There. There we are. What was the problem? Wonderful! Emulator nonsense, the usual. Ahhh Look at that pumpkin man go. He's certainly got the music in him. What precisely is this? ohhhhh jeez I'm also wondering Either an underrated found footage film or pure garbage. We're watching now so that if it's filth, we still have time to end the month on a high note. I see... "remember that name" Once again, I already care nothing for these characters! This filming format is so obnoxious. I'm sure there's a totally normal reason he's setting up a camera in his RV like that Whichever one did that is now Smokescreen. Somehow I guess it didn't occur to me that haunted houses would run for more than one day The general idea of the thing sounds fun. I'd do it if I were human or capable of fitting into human buildings. There you go! Just make a found footage film starring me! Just stick your head in, it'll be fine "I'm here, you all figure out the rest." There are outdoor haunts. Or haunted corn mazes. You could possibly attend one of those. Yeah! Just drive around in it As I suspect a maze loses some of its charm when you can just step over the walls Don't tempt me. I'll do it and the Autobot pets will whine to the Autobots. I would tempt you just to get the pets to whine about it. I guess you could also see if someone from one of those universes where they can project holoforms further, is willing to share If I do, I demand a copy of the report so I can frame it. This is how to get kicked off a property. ... yikes I hate them all immensely. So, do you think that these terrible people will die, or just annoy us for an hour and a half? So do they die, or what Ugh. Even the Blair Witch humans weren't this obnoxious. These wretches would fit in with the pretentious Book of Shadow humans. Shut up! ?? Them, not either of you. I feel like even if your conceit is "found footage", you can damn well edit it to only the interesting bits But if we don't see the worthless chaff, then how will we know it's "art"? If they don't stop talking, ever, how else can we be expected to care whether they live or die? And you get that same "wait, why were they even filming this in the first place" feeling At this point, I'm solidly on Team Clown. Ah. So they are being stalked by the actors from the first haunt they pissed off. So spooky. I think so? Why did they... let them in For maximum spooky. "okay this isn't so much 'scary' as 'awkward'" What exactly did they do at the first haunt? I, uh, may have gotten up for a minute to get the kettle If anyone has suggestions for real horror movies that would go down nicely after this, do feel free to throw them out, because we're not touching the sequel with a 40 foot pole. And apparently missed Vital Plot Info (tm) They climbed an unattended ladder, and screeched at the waiting line crowd. Ohhhh. Yeah, not cool Do you want a real good horror movie, or a real silly horror movie? Either, any! Well, there is always Jason Goes to Hell. Or Texas Chainsaw 3D OH! Yes! Either is infinitely more fun than this. Jason Goes to Hell it is! OH WHAT A SHAME IT'S THE END AND THEY'RE DYING. HOWEVER DID THIS HAPPEN. WHO COULD HAVE PREDICTED Are they actually dying? Hopefully? BUT THEY'VE LOST NONE OF THEIR USUAL CHARM, CLEARLY. Shaun! Damn it, don't make me laugh when I'm about to drink something Oh no! He got vaguely attacked in the dark. And she got red kool-aide on her sweater. She'll never get those stains out! The true tragedy. The frag would this be filmed? Uh oh, is it time for snakes Why does that one get cushions and kool aide doesn't? ...who's filming that She got a snack instead. I don't despise kool aide like I do beard-face. By all means, none of you try to push out while the dirt is pile on soft and shallow. *piled Oh, shut up. Thank you. I think that was as much of that as we needed to see They didn't have the decency to *die* entertaining. This should be much more entertaining. People die in ridiculous ways. Do you know what irritates me most of all? It had such a compelling title. That's what lured me in. I assumed nothing with a title that good could possibly be bad. If it had been a real documentary on the haunted house industry, then I think it would have been good. It would have been! Yeah, that could have been interesting! This is already more interesting. What a necessary scene, I'm sure It is a horror movie. Jason looks...bloated. He's a bit worse for wear. Comes of being in the lake all that time Oh hey So she was the bait Was that an air strike And then he explodes. That should do it. Graphic design is their passion. It just does this the rest of the movie. The longest mid-credit roll of them all. Ha. Just keep poking it. What I'm getting is that there were just a whole bunch of people who wanted prominence in the credits, and sacrifices had to be made The scale numbers changing is a nice touch Uh Ew ...Huh. I feel bad for that guy This is the Friday movie that was made just after New Line purchased the rights. They... did not know how to make a proper Jason movie. Oh boy o oh Hi! is this a youtube poop Hey! It's Jason Goes To Hell Smokescreen! Woojit! What is this? You barely missed the credits! Oooh! I did it! I came just in time! What you missed: a military op killed Jason, then when the coroner was disecting him, his heart started beating and he possessed the coroner. That's just how it is sometimes! Apparently! Oooh, this is like a scraplet horror fantasy novel I read like, vorns ago It is? Like, the body snatching? Oh! ... are they smoking in the cafe??? is that allowed? Used to be. does everyone do that or is he just doing it because Apparently they're all just...like this? That's how it is. ... Can I smoke in here? I would prefer you did not. Oh, good, important information to be imparted later! I'm sure everyone will survive until then Since when do you smoke, Smokescreen? Well, one or two times, Wheeljack gave me something and it wasn't bad! "haha just a joke, only like eighty people have died there" This certainly is how people talk. Uh. Ugh. I mean, I wouldn't want to be in the tent after whatever slag they're getting int-oh "I'll just sleep outside and listen." Like any good friend on an awkward camping trip. Of course. Nothing says "third wheel" like being the one who gets to sleep OUTSIDE the tent, half-naked You'd think they might have brought an extra tent. Sometimes, you just want to frag a tree .....*What?* Not everyone has your love of plant life, Smokescreen. What? NO I didn't mean it like that! Like... Some humans really are tree huggers? Nothing wrong with tree-fraggin! . . . . There was a human in the last film that frags pumpkins. We thought of you. Woojit, I'm gonna find an owl movie just for you. It won't be anywhere near as painful as said last movie. Unless it is a found footage owl movie. "nah, we don't need a condom, we're not surviving the movie anyway" w Primus, was the last movie THAT bad? It was wretched. Just intolerable. From what we saw, it seemed to be about 10 minutes of plot drawn out into an hour and a half of movie With zero (0) likeable characters I have to admit, this wasn't really what I was expecting This movie's just all over the place. Oh dear. It's the worst Friday movie. But still entertaining in a terrible way. No, I don't know why this is happening. That is definitely how reflections work. Magic! Wait, this is a friday movie? Yes. Jason Goes to Hell, part 9. Oh, I thought all Jasons were just like that. ... I saw a Jason movie with a bot not that long ago, huh! So... did he shave him out of like... vanity? he didn't want a moustache? christ The classic 'A body swapped Jason killed that lady' misunderstanding. Agent Scully! Man, how many people do you think were like "jason swapped bodies with me :(" in court ..... is jason the baby No? Oh so that's the asshole bounty hunter or whatever Now I want, no, need Jason to be the baby. I know, right? With a tiny, baby sized knife and hockey mask? What the hell is wrong with this guy Who doesn't enjoy breaking fingers to pay off the exposition dump? Man, I'm pretty sure I would've gotten kicked out the autobots and broken everyone's fingers if I broke someone's fingers everytime I started expositioning It sounds like a Soundwave method more than anything. Yep. Its name is Jason. I hope he didn't just taste that Facebook Oh good, the Necronomicon See, because it had a face in the cover-- How did he manage to steal a body? what the fuck Hopefully HE'LL--yep, guess so! Bleh Well, that takes care of that. She's crying because her shower stream is so weak. Kidnap her. Women love that. I feel like maybe he could have accomplished more by calling her from jail or something Instead of all these shenanigans oh UGH UGH. UGH. Are you not entertained? Uh oh Hah! ...Did that do it? Did the right person kill him? Nope. Ah Jason was more interesting when he only cared about his mother and his lake. I did mention this was worst Friday movie. ...I'm not sure that WAS him I mean, Jason hasn't actually... talked, so far It was a terrible worm thing, this whole time. I didn't think he could downgrade from the spaghetti-gut rotting corpse but here we are. Ohhhh shit There he is! I have to admit, I wasn't expecting that Oh what that pit sure came in handy Not the puppet hands! And there you have it. What a twist, kind of! Well! Still better nonsense than the last one. A marked improvement. And to think I thought this movie was going to be about him going to hell and, I don't know, stabbing demons or something. You're not the only one. I want a toyota beef! That would have been more fun, and that's not allowed. Hehehe. TWO things are wrong in the picture! ... isn't the kid pushing floating The boy is floating! What What. ... Does primus does primus have a good question doesn't he hang out on tumblr? you could ask him next time you see him Oh yes, that sounds like a good idea. That won't go wrong, I'm sure. Technically I didn't say it was a good idea It's an awesome idea! Primus adores me Then go right ahead, Smokescreen. You got it! It'll at least go better than calling Unicron a dilf ...You called Unicron a what a dilf? Why did you do that? To bug him? Oh, well then. One day that may come back to literally bite you in the aft. Well, that's all I've got! Well, once again, thanks for the stream! woojit woojit woojit I've got a horror movie for us for sometime! Thank you for that stream salvaging suggestion, Starscream. Oh, what? *listening face* The Brave Little Toaster? Yes, thanks! You know the sene It was the least I could offer. This was much better than the other thing Absolutely not. I'm not that sadistic. Oh. ... Am I that sadistic Oh my It's, uh, it's a pretty gruesome movie in some ways I'm sure nobody thinks you're sadistic, Smokescreen I think he tries. Oh, he already left. Unless that's Kast being weird again. The Brave Little Toaster is the sadistic one. Well, goodnight! Goodnight, All. Good night, everyone!

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