#but there had to have been other survivors

[jeanmoreauss]

I think what bugs me the most about what happened today other than the fact that I was the one getting vagued is the fact that the conversation got warped into one that is about morality and not simply theorizing on The Ravens and how The Nest works

my original post essentially said two things:

The Ravens are victims and to erase that because they don't fit the model of the perfect victim and some have even become abusers erases all nuance from that portion of Jean and Kevin's lives and the surrounding discussion

Cults are weird. I grew up in one. And it is very easy to manipulated by one and to feel trapped and to also be completely in the dark about what is happening in a cult even when you're in the heart of it

I did not say anyone had to forgive the Ravens (they're fictional characters. fake people. that wasn't even on my mind) or that any of them are by any means good people. i also didn't say that they were all oblivious or that there weren't some of them that were abusive. I also never made this a conversation about morality and whether or not the Ravens are good or bad people for staying in a cult.

For some reason that got warped into what we are currently discussing and involved some highly insensitive language surrounding cult victims including things being said like it's not crazy to expect people to walk away from things like scholarships, financial security, or career security if it means being complacent in abuse and that it's "just basic morals".

And I'm sorry for getting personal on this but as a cult survivor I think that's one of the most upsetting and insensitive things I have heard come from these conversations today.

It doesn't matter what x thing is whether it's money or food or housing or a career. In a cult they use whatever it is you need and make you dependent on them for it. Also with the Ravens in particular keep in mind it wasn't simply being complacent in abuse. They were being abused.

If you have been in a similar situation, if you are grappling with the guilt of leaving a cult or anything like a cult, know that you are not a moral failure for having stayed for as long as you did. You are not moral failure for staying for whatever reason you did. It is not just basic morals when it comes to living in a cult. Morality becomes warped and the concept of what is immoral and moral is something completely different and that is intentional.

It doesn't matter whether you think the Ravens were aware of Riko's abuse or not. Having differing opinions on that is completely okay. What you don't get to do is turn it into a conversation about morality where you then get to insult cult survivors like we're evil people for not walking away at the first red flag because we needed something. Because we were in survival mode and we weren't able to focus on other people.

We still don't have all the details on how the Ravens function or the type of abuse players even outside of the perfect court face other than it was extreme. It's fun to theorize. And it's okay if people disagree. But if you can't be mindful about where your opinion switches from theory to some huge declaration of moral high ground then you've lost the fucking plot.

I would love to talk more about the Ravens and my theories on them. I would love to talk more about how cults work and why I think it's possible they were completely unaware of Riko's abuse. There's a lot of nuance in those conversations and I would love to take the time to treat them with the care they deserve. I'm also still incredibly upset by a lot of the things said today and I can acknowledge that this is a topic that is very personal to me. So this is me opening up that can of worms (again) and I'm more than happy to have those conversations and answer questions but please be patient with me because if it isn't already obvious this is a topic that is incredibly sensitive to me

#idek what i'm saying with this anymore #i'm just tired #aftg #tsc #the sunshine court #all for the game #jean moreau #kevin day #neil josten #riko moriyama #andrew minyard #jeremy knox #david wymack #tetsuji moriyama #thea muldani #edgar allan ravens #palmetto state foxes #aaron minyard #nicky hemmick #matt boyd #allison reynolds #renee walker #dan wilds #tsc spoilers #ish ig #personal.txt

[bonni]

people who ship asuka and rei don't ship them because they actually believe that the narrative is inviting a romantic reading of them or that they have any real chemistry within the show, it's about exploring the fact that the two of them are foils who are continually pitted against each other in every possible way. it's about the fact that they actively hate each other because in the other person they see the parts of themselves they resent the most. it's about considering the ways in which their relationship could be different if they didn't find themselves in the situation they're in, if they had had the space to be normal teenagers. it's about unpacking each of their relationships to their sexuality: it's about reading asuka as a queer girl who lashes out at other girls and instead pursues an adult man and a boy she hates as a way to repress her sexuality because she hates everything about who she truly is, and it's about reading rei as a girl who has never even had the opportunity to know what true reciprocal love and attraction feel like because she's been groomed her entire life and feels a disconnect from her physical body in a way that is very familiar to survivors of sexual abuse, especially queer ones.

people who ship misato and ritsuko ship them because they have clearly had actual sex in canon.

#chatter #neon genesis evangelion #asurei

[neversetyoufree]

Alright. Okay.

So the entire time I've been reading VnC, I've been assuming that Noé is the sole known survivor of the Archivistes in a relatively normal way. I've been assuming that something happened to the Archiviste clan within Noé's lifetime, just before his human "grandparents" found him in the snow. Obviously I wondered about what happened—who slaughtered them if they were killed and what else might have happened if they aren't all dead as we've been told, but I never questioned the timeline. I assumed that the Archivistes must have been alive and kicking until recently, even if Noé's last remaining family was living in hiding from the rest of vampire society or something like that.

But. We don't actually know that that's true. We don't know a single thing about the timeline of the Archivistes' extermination other than what Nox says about them having all died "long ago." Noé is nineteen years old, and we have no idea how old Nox is. Could the fifteen to seventeen years between Noé's first adoption and the present day be enough to count as long ago?

This is Jun Mochizuki we're talking about. There is extensive precedent in her work (by way of Pandora Hearts) for characters turning up seemingly out of nowhere, often with no memory, and in Pandora Hearts, these cases never had a simple answer. It was always caused by the time-bending properties of the Abyss.

It is entirely within the realm of possibility for the rest of the Archiviste clan to have died years, decades, or even a century or more before Noé was found by his human grandparents. We don't have precedent yet for anything that messes with time in VnC like PH's Abyss, so I don't know how this could have happened, but I don't think we can fully discount the possibility. The outer bounds of world formula rewriting as a power are yet to be fully explored, so it's hard to say firmly that anything's impossible. There might be a way for Noé to exist in the present even if the rest of his clan was killed well over nineteen years ago (be it by PH style time-bending or by some entirely different mechanism).

It's still possible (and even likely) that the Archivistes died or disappeared less than twenty years ago, but it's not quite the concrete fact that I've been thinking of it as this entire time. It's entirely possible that Noé's backstory contains Mochizuki Timeline Fuckery, and now that I've had that thought, I can't unsee it. The author of Pandora Hearts going out of her way to say that her protagonist was found mysteriously alone and crying with no memory of how he got that way is. conspicuous as hell.

#chloé seems like she might be unaware that the archivistes are all supposed to be dead #so let's say that means their extermination took place *after* 1702 #that's still almost 200 years of time to play with #what the fuck #like them dying out recently is still the simplest and perhaps most likely explanation #but now that I've had the thought that this is an option I cannot unthink it #we know that Mochijun loves a good timeline twist. and noé's backstory is very gil ph #mysterious amnesiac child gets found and nobody knows where he came from. hm. #and machina has presumably been hiding her identity in public for a LONG time. if we're assuming the rest of the senate doesn't know #so she could fit into either explanation #vnc #the case study of vanitas #noé archiviste #noé archiviste my beloved #vanitas no carte #theory #vnc spoilers #the archiviste clan #long post

[the-bitter-ocean]

Howdy! As you know the lovely @pixxyofice made a timeloop support group au for ISAT featuring mine and other mutuals aus that we made. I wanted to post the writing I did based on the awesome fic that Pix wrote, which you can read here! This writing as well as the Au in general is set post game so full game spoilers are expected.

(The order of the loopers arriving is Odile -> Mirabelle -> Isabeau -> Siffrin) so for chronological order read Odile’s POV first, then Mira’s then, Isa’s POV. WRITING IS UNDER THE CUT:

{ It is 7:07 pm.}

{ You are currently walking back home to your family, carrying a bag of books in your left hand and a bag of fruits in your right. }

{ You are very excited!!}

{ Your whole family is going to read stories alongside you together!}

{ You whistle to yourself happily.}

{ You hadn’t had the chance to do a book club meeting in practically forever- Madame Odile insisted that you wait until your health fully recovered back to normal. }

{ It was a smart idea to listen to her, so you did your best to not over exert yourself.}

{ You knew that she was right but you still couldn’t help feeling anxious and restless during that time.}

{ You hadn’t fully adjusted to the idea of not needing to heal anyone or not being able to do something productive.}

{That initial week was kind of a nightmare in more ways than one!}

{ You cringe a little at the thought of it.}

{ But it’s different now!}

{ You’ve been doing really good lately! }

{…}

{ Some days are easier than others.}

{ None of that matters though! You’re almost home!}

{ You approach the clock tower.}

{ You wish you could be more honest in how you feel with your family.}

{ You wish that your family could be able to truly understand how the loops changed you.}

{You wish for the courage to be able confide in your family again without fear.}

{ You sigh.}

{ There’s no use daydreaming about that now!}

{ This is a new day for you!}

{ There’s no need to think about the loops at all! }

{ With newfound resolve you reach out to open the door and you-}

{ …?! }

{ WHERE THE CRAB ARE YOU?}

{ You look up to see a sign on a building that has “TIME LOOP SURVIVORS SUPPORT GROUP” plastered on the front. }

{ You stare in disbelief. }

{You don’t know where you are. You don’t see anyone familiar. You try not to panic. }

{ You pinch yourself hard, once twice thrice!}

{Your arm is lightly bruised now.. so you’re probably not dreaming?}

{ A familiar dread kicks in and you reach to touch your ears in confirmation. }

{ The crescent moon earrings sway back and forth- going ding ding! }

{ Not in the loops. Probably. Hopefully.}

{ Change please give you strength to not have a meltdown in the middle of nowhere. That would be embarrassing. }

{You breathe in and out slowly.}

{ The quicker you figure this all out, the quicker you can return home.}

{ You can do this Mirabelle! Just go inside and ask for help on how to get home! }

{ You cautiously go inside the building.}

#timeloop support group au #in cycles and cessation #isat spoilers #in stars and time #in stars and time game #in stars and time spoilers #isat act 6 spoilers #isat fanfic #in stars and time fanfic #isat au #in stars and time au #isat mirabelle #in stars and time mirabelle #isat odile #in stars and time odile #the bitter ocean writes #isat #isat game

[drdemonprince]

I recently finished reading your book Unlearning Shame, and I absolutely loved it. I found the conceptual framework of Internalized Shame and your techniques for it so very helpful, especially when most ideas of mental health (anxiety and depression, trauma, etc.) have seemed insufficient and useless to me.

However, there was one thing that kind of bugged me the whole way through reading it. Your primary focus was the shame people face as part of marginalization, but often, this too felt insufficient for me. Like, I do face a lot of this flavor of shame: I'm an autistic trans woman, feeling like I'm cringey or childish or creepy or obscene or whatever are things that bug me daily, and restrict a lot of my freedom.

However, a lot of the shame I deal with stems from some kind of awful things I've done in the past, and this is perhaps the loneliest and most difficult kind of shame I deal with. To be fair, I think a lot of this has been very closely linked to my marginalization: people would interpret genuine mistakes of mine as signs I was some awful, manipulative predator, and quickly oust me from their friend groups as a result. If I had been an allistic cis man I would have faced far gentler behavior, or at least far more people would have justified the shit I did.

Regardless, very little in the book dealt with shame tied to guilt and wrongdoing. I remember there was mostly just this one tantalizing line about how even previous members of neonazi groups can benefit from speaking shame, but other than that, I didn't see much.

So my question here is, do you know how to deal with the shame of doing something really bad, and facing the consequences?

Thank you for asking, I'm glad you liked the book!

There are answers for you throughout the book, I think. Arguably, many of the examples of shame I outline involve feeling regret or shame over one's actions. People who do not recycle "enough" and feel profound shame and anxiety about it are people who have done something "wrong," in their minds. So are people who have repeated internalized transphobic/racist/fatphobic/etc messages to other people who share the same identities as them. These people's actions are systemically caused, and they are suffering from those same systemic forces that provoked them to take actions they feel bad about.

You aren't any more morally culpable than any of them, and you aren't qualitatively different from them -- even if you are likely telling yourself that what you did is so much "worse" and so much less justified.

You can find much of the advice that I apply to people who feel ashamed about an experience (a rape survivor, say), apply equally to you as someone who might have done something you view as "wrong." You can also look to the material in chapters 7 and 8 about finding grace and perspective for others who have done wrong to us, and apply much of that yourself. A person must be held in community before they can be held accountable, for example. Understanding the circumstances that contributed to your behavior is important, which it sounds like you've already done some work on, as is contemplating the needs you were attempting to meet with your actions, and the social supports you currently still need in order to move forward.

If someone has taken actions that go against even their own morals and they feel profoundly ashamed about it, I'd say they are generally still in a state of far-reaching systemic shame that goes far deeper and requires far more healing and support than just addressing the morality of their own actions. There's usually a lot of shame about one's identities, deprivation one is facing, fears of abandonment and attachment insecurities, and other major issues going on. Because a person wouldn't just violate their own moral precepts for no good reason.

No one wants to feel that they are a horrible person according to their own personal standards of goodness. A person's actions always make sense within their own context, and so when someone does something "wrong," either they have done something that they do not actually believe to be wrong, but fear societal judgement for, or they have been pushed to the brink by extreme distress, deprivation, abuse, indoctrination, political repression, exclusion, or likely a combination of those things.

I hope this is making sense. If you feel ashamed of something you have done, you need the exact same healing, safe vulnerability, social support, and trust as someone who is ashamed about something over which they have no control. There is no difference, you are no more deserving of that shame, and shame still will not prevent you from changing your behavior for the better. You can believe wholly that your actions in the past were wrong, and uphold your current values in the present, without deserving to feel any more shame about it.

[phxntomhives]

About the reaction of Gregory in the latest Kuro ep

Here are some theories about his scream and his reaction at the fire. I love that they don't have much background info so we can just say whatever we want. It's not like anyone can tell me I'm wrong ✨ so here is some angst xoxo

I genuinely hope not one of these is true

1) His house burned down

I mean it still happens today, accident happens. So yeah, his house could have burned down. It doesn't matter your age, that would be traumatizing. On top of that, if a fire suddenly spread out, it is possible that some people may have not survived, adding more fear of fire. Anyone, from the servants to his family could have died in a similar accident, maybe he himself barely survived. Of course he wouldn't want anyone to get close to that hell, and will react badly if they try to do it. And you won't really stop to elaborate, especially if you see possibly seeing flashbacks of the scenes you already saw once.

He feels hopeless while staring at the fire and I wouldn't be surprised to see a tiny Gregory looking at the same scene and just be normally scared, a fear that will remain with him for life. It's the other prefects that somehow snap him back to reality, hopefully freeing him from the bad memories.

2) alternative: a friend's house burned down

Basically the same as before, but his house is lucky enough to not be the victim here. Just like Lizzie saw the Phantomhive manor burning down, he could have seen the house of a friend being devoured by the flames. And unlike the previous version... There is no guarantee there was a survivor. In the worst case scenario, he may have seen the people inside being able to run out of the building, but with high degree burns so extended and dangerous that they weren't able to survive. Maybe he had to see his friend/relative/fiancé come out screaming in pain, burned to the point of being unrecognizable, and later watch them die before his eyes without being able to help. And he just doesn't want to go through all of that again. He isn't letting anyone of them go any closer to the fire and put their life at risk.

3) Lost works

He is an artist. He made 4 different sketches (ok one was the labyrinth game BUT STILL) completely different one from each other, in something like 10 minutes? If that's is his average time to create a piece of art, just how many has he made in the years he has been living there? Thousands probably? Some may be silly or stuff that he doesn't like and he was just waiting to throw away, but others may be drawings he cared about, in which he put all of himself. Hell, maybe there are paintings that took him MONTHS or YEARS to make. And they are all vanishing in a single night. All the effort he puts in them, all the memories he saved as a picture, gone. Turned into ashes without him being able to do anything. Everything he has ever worked on burning in front of his eyes. He can't retrieve anything of those and is likely mourning them already. When the other students want to enter he wonders if they will put themselves in danger to maybe retrieve them. I think Edward trying to enter in particular triggered him, maybe the other students don't know him a lot but Edward has been with him for a while now, since he was Herman's fag/drudge. He can't NOT have noticed that Violet spend his time drawing and maybe he even saw some pieces that Violet was proud of. So he knows that the moment Edward steps in the building, he is likely to try to save anything that he can carry out, because it is important to someone out there. But getting any of those works may put him in danger. And therefore, Violet is scared. He is scared there can be other knightly heroes among the students, that will put themselves in danger to retrieve anything they can still save. "I can remake a drawing, but I can't bring you all back to life." and so he tries to stop them. He tries to do it as an introvert that is having a very bad internal crisis and mourning. But he tries, because while he cares of his art, he can't put it above other's people lives.

4) There are nudes

Hopefully I made you laugh with the title. What I mean is: it's their dorm, they have likely decorated it in the best way to suit their taste and expose themselves in the most true way they can. It's their place and they can be themselves in there. But they are aware they are considered the "weirdos" of the school. Some probably don't care but some may have decided to be truly themselves only inside the comfort of the house. This could also be true for Violet himself. So not only you are watching your home burning down, but now the same strangers that made fun of you, made you feel badly about themselves, want to enter? And potentially learn more secrets about the poeple that lived there? What they cherished and didn't want to share because they didn't feel comfortable to show? It would all be there in plain sight for anyone to see. And so Violet screams at them to not enter. The house can burn down for all he care, but he will let the precious secrets burn down with it so that none of them will have to risk their reputation at school (and later outside) because of him.

#kuroshitsuji #black butler #black butler season 4 #gregory violet #purple house #violet wolf #kuroshitsuji theory

[autistic-robin]

more dynamics i need to see in st5 for my mental wellbeing

1. el and dustin. that’s it send post. they were genuinely so sweet in season 1 and i miss their mad scientist/test subject vibe immensely. i know el and lucas are going to be paired up this season because of their shared connection (polyamory) to max, but i would love to see more scenes between dustin and el— maybe some lighthearted bonding over their matching leg injuries or daddy issues.

2. mike and robin. i don’t think you understand i need this like i need air. will has already had his gay awakening he doesn’t need a queer life coach!! mike on the other hand is out here in the TRENCHES. this man is down critically horrendously morifyingly BAD for will but is convinced el needs him and that will could never reciprocate his feelings. he needs robin’s gay intuition and advice if anyone does.

3. steve and jonathan. HELLO??? FOR THE LOVE OF GOD HELLO???? i know this is pretty much guaranteed to happen in st5 because full-circle character development and hammering in themes and blah blah blah but i’m still gonna talk about it because listen. steve got his shit rocked by jonathan one (1) time and immediately decided “fuck my idiot friends” developed a moral conscience and SHOWED UP AT HIS HOUSE to apologize. he wasn’t there for nancy he had no idea nancy was there!!! he bought jonathan a new camera!!! he was so respectful of nancy and jon even when nancy dumped his ass a season later!!! yet we never get closure between him and jonathan or even a conversation and i’m PISSED about it. matt and ross duffer rectify this or else.

4. hopper and jonathan and will. you see the vision. these kids have never had a stable father figure who truly understands them (i love bob but he was only there for st2 and was sweet but naive) and everything they’ve been through. jonathan DESPERATELY needs to be de-parentified and released from the emotional burden of constantly putting will and joyce before his own needs and dreams, and hopper desperately needs to feel like he can protect his family instead of “cursing” them. will needs a loving father figure who supports his queer identity, and hopper only had a fire lit under him in s1 when joyce mentioned it could have been a hate crime. this is like textbook recipe for healing and closure for these characters.

5. joyce and karen? i just think it would be neat. we know karen’s getting more involved this season and i think she should get to be a little gay for joyce as a treat. we had crumbs of their dynamic in s1 and on a more sincere note i honestly think joyce could help give karen the courage to leave ted or demand better from him moving forward.

6. nancy and mike. if they don’t have a genuine conversation i’ll actually be fuming raging pulling my hair out. i get it i get that they’re both emotionally repressed but GOD i wish we had more moments with them talking about their trauma or empathizing with each other’s survivor’s guilt and crippling savior complexes. all the “max and mike are the same character in a different font” business is very valid and i agree madwheeler is like ten shots of espresso injected directly into the bloodstream HOWEVER, nancy and mike’s traumas and emotional issues are so so similar please let them talk about it!!!!

7. steve and robin???? please for the love of god????? literally what the fuck was happening in s4 they were NOT given enough screentime together. not cool. i want them BACK on their queerplatonic bullshit in s5, fully codependent disgustingly clingy like god intended.

8. jonathan and el. i just want them to be siblings together!!! we got a lot of willel sibling vibes in s4 and some sweet jon-and-will moments, but i would love for them to delve into jonathan and el’s dynamic. this girl is a big reason why will was saved in s1 and we just… never really see the byerses address that? jonathan has a lottt of self-blaming tendencies when it comes to will and i’d love for el to help remind him he isn’t responsible for protecting and saving his brother all the time. conversely, i’d love for jonathan to remind el that she’s just a kid and that the weight of the world shouldn’t be on her shoulders. they’re both really soft-spoken and sweet characters with hard veneers and i feel like they’d pair well together for more emotional scenes.

9. literally the entire byers-hopper family they are the heart and soul of the show and i will never forgive the duffer brothers for losing that in s3-4 in favor of expanding the scope of the story. i miss them.

10. steve and el. i would maim and kill for this dynamic actually. both of them are involved in love triangles and have arcs centered around independency and platonic/found familial love, and steve has his whole mom-of-the-group shtick that could be really endearing paired with el’s plucky weird-little-girl vibe. idk i just think they would be a cute team, maybe paired with dustin or lucas.

11. stoncy and robin. literally give me this team or give me death. i miss stoncy’s iconic end-of-season-1 monster-hunting trio dynamic SO MUCH i would give anything for them to go on a sidequest and really just hash it all out with each other. and robin could offer steve moral support and comic relief— while we’re on the subject i would also kill to see her and jonathan interact!! like they are so similar in that brooding-noncomformist way and i feel like they would either immediately gravitate toward each other based on values OR immediately clash due to their personality differences. jonathan is all quiet and avoidant and robin can be… A Lot (said with love) when she’s not masking like s3. i just think they’d be funny together.

12. this is devolving quickly so scott clarke and the party. no i will not elaborate. thank you for your time

#stranger things #st5 #mike wheeler #will byers #el hopper #st the party #willel #jonathan byers #steve harrington #stonathan #stoncy #byler #< target audience

[comradekatara]

Hi! Sorry if this has been asked before/you’ve answered this before, but I’m curious what you think of how Sokka acts just… overall.

To me, he’s always read as being someone who’s emotionally repressed, and doesn’t quite know how to deal with his emotions and blames himself for a lot, and micromanages as a way to try and overcompensate for things in his past that have been out of his control. (And he’s definitely a prodigy. I don’t think that, especially after the massacre, the southern water tribe would have many scrolls to read on, so it’s my personal hc to believe he taught himself physics lmao. But even without that, definitely a prodigy.) Who is, unfortunately, doomed by the narrative. But he’s still a loving guy, and very protective over his family.

But I’d love to see how someone else sees it! He’s one of my favorites ever lmao.

sorry for leaving this ask to fester in my inbox for over a month (hastily shoves away the asks i’ve been sitting on for multiple years) but at the time I had received a bunch of asks about sokka’s tormented psyche in quick succession, and I was trying to get through those first before approaching this broader, more open-ended question. I mean, obviously you could always just peruse my sokka tag, because at this point I’ve clocked so many hours analyzing him that it’s actually quite dire, and I’m pretty sure that you already have. but if I was to distill “sokka’s whole deal” into a few key sentences, I would first emphasize that his survivor’s guilt/martyr complex really underscores who he is and how he operates in any given situation in a crucial way.

I don’t think any of what you said in this ask is remotely incorrect, for the record, but focalizing the formative traumas that defined him: his mother’s sacrifice, and his father then passing that mantle onto him (in fairness, not deliberately on hakoda’s part, but when kya sets such a blatant precedent for what it means to “protect your sister,” it’s hard not to internalize that logic). he feels personally responsible and implicated in every single thing that could go wrong, because unlike katara, who (very understandably) gets angry when bad things happen and are done to her, sokka gets guilty. he was never able to process his grief in a remotely healthy way, so he has internalized that his singular role above all else is to die so that others may live, without ever actually acknowledging that this mentality is a byproduct of his trauma (because, like you said, he is absurdly repressed), and he feels guilty every time he is unable to prevent anything bad that happens to anyone he cares about, whether it’s remotely his fault or not.

he wants control over every situation because he feels responsible and thus guilty no matter what happens. not only is control the one thing he has, but he’s even more controlling when leaving his tribe because unlike with his grandmother, whom he trusts, he does not trust 99% of people on the planet, and is constantly wary of any ulterior motives they may have (which is why it’s a very good thing that all his friends are so sincere it’s almost concerning), or just their sheer stupidity leading them (and him by association) into trouble (in fact I think sokka would far rather ally with a two faced bitch than with an idiot, because at least you can reason with a two faced bitch). as katara rightfully points out (frequently), sokka is a paranoid cynic, but it’s hard not to be a paranoid cynic when the last time you had any shred of hope whatsoever is when you thought the southern raiders were retreating from your village and then you went home to find your mother’s charred corpse in the living room.

moreover, his trauma at the hands of imperialist violence has informed so much of who he is to the point that he genuinely feels that he isn’t, because that’s how throughly he has been dehumanized by the fire nation’s colonial project. it’s not just that he feels worthless, it’s that he feels unpersoned. due to assuming the mantle of protector before he was old enough to form a coherent sense of self, that role became his entire sense of self, and now he feels that he is nothing more than a shield with which he can protect katara (and others, but mainly katara), and can’t detach himself from that role even though it’s unhelpful and unhealthy, because (in his mind, at least) it is truly all he has.

so in summary, he’s a paranoid, miserable, depressed misanthrope who is repressing a fuck ton of grief and trauma to simply get through the day, including the fact that he feels it is his duty to die for his people and his loved ones—especially katara, to the point that he has an unhealthy codependent attachment towards her because he stakes his entire identity to her existence—and has no sense of self beyond his role as provider, protector, and (inevitable) martyr. obviously that’s just what his deal is psychologically, which is different from his personality (cue the, here I was thinking he’s just a fun, silly guy!) but you will also never get anywhere in understanding sokka if you think that he somehow has less trauma than katara, rather than the fact that unlike katara, who is able to process her emotions in an open and healthier way, sokka simply ignores it. but he also does a pretty bad job of hiding it most of the time, because he literally acts like a trapped prey animal in basically every situation once you look past the sarcasm and witticisms that provide his favorite tried and true coping/deflection mechanism. you just have to care enough to look past the surface, which most people don’t, including himself.

#luriuan #asks #sokka #analysis #obviously I have so much more to say but I’m pretty sure I’ll never stop stuffing the sokka + analysis tags with my thoughts so … tbc .. #cptsd fish…. swimming in circles #hes just a nice silly guy who kills people sometimes don’t worry about it

[ghouljams]

im not super caught up on ur cowboy au (i LOVE goose n ghost, the dynamic of simon being with price's kid who ACTS like she's prices kid tickles my brain so well) and i dont want to come across as rude... but why is bee with konig lmao. ive been reading the recent discourse and if she's a DA survivor, what draws her to him? what could he possibly do to make her forgive and move on from him being such a piece of shit to goose and making such an ass of himself? like, if he calls a woman a whore and a dog because he was butthurt about getting his ass kicked by someone he doesnt respect just bc she's a woman and small, then why would bee think highly of him or even feel SAFE around him? i really don't mean to be rude about this lmao i just wanna pick your brain

as an abuse victim, even after YEARS of 'calm' and 'changes of ways', i would never be able to completely get rid of the lingering fear after seeing something like that. i can't imagine bee wasn't scared of konig in that moment

and as someone from a small town, making an ass of yourself like that will never be forgiven nor forgotten lol. konig will forever be remembered as the lumbering instigator that fucked around and found out, and if bee stayed with him, that reputation would get stuck to her too

again, i dont know bee's character super well (and i support womens rights and wrongs; she can be flawed and choose to look past things other people won't ignore to stay with someone she cares about) but i just wanna know your author thoughts lol these are your boobahs and i like to hear the thoughts. ill have time later today to read through your posts more too, i havent dug into bee's mostly bc i don't care for konig, but if they're all getting interlinked like this id like more context. just a heads up i might come back later and be like "AND ANOTHER THING-" or whatever lol

thank u hugs kisses i like ur cowboy stories :) <3

GREAT QUESTIONS

So I will say that in the overall context of the cowboy au I will be slotting Goose fighting König into the realm of "very dubiously canon" because you're right, there's no way Bee would trust him again after this.

I'm going to attempt to answer all your questions, but please bear with me because I can get long winded.

So to start off I will say that while Bee's backstory has been hinted at, it's never been officially written down. In my mind, the abuse she suffered at the hands of her (now dead) ex husband was mostly mental and emotional, I think if there was physical abuse that was her last straw that she had to get out.

Bee's relationship with König is interesting because I think in her mind, he is a sort of savior figure. He's always been there when she needed him, he never pressured her into anything, he was always kind and respectful, etc. König is big and scary, but he truly has always treated Bee incredibly well, and despite his *ahem* unorthodox methods has always had her best interest at heart. Bee is also VERY recently divorced, and he took EVERYTHING. König has been her rock since she moved to town and she's sort of imprinted on him to a certain extent.

For König... I have talked before about how I think he views women, but I will condense it into how I think he views Goose specifically before/after/during their fight. König has only met Goose once before in written canon and she pulled a gun on him immediately. It's not that Goose is a woman, it's that she is associated with Ghost. That is what I would consider the bottom line in König's thinking. If Goose was just some random woman in town he wouldn't care but she specifically occupies the space of "enemy combatant" because she's with Ghost.

I will say also König already has a reputation as a weird freak in town. People don't really care for him, but now he's also the guy that Goose beat up. So... not great for him. Bee on the other hand is fairly well liked. She's sort of clueless but she's well meaning and generally willing to learn or correct her mistakes. Like I said this fight fic is pretty dubiously canon I don't think it will actually effect the story the way it would irl, but those are Bee/König's standings in town.

As for whether Bee would take König back after watching him go after someone Bee sees as smaller and weaker than him(though König sees Goose as just another enemy to be taken down, women or not)... I don't know. That's why I say this fic is really dubiously canon, because you're right I don't see her taking him back after this. I think this would be the end of it, and I really love the love story I've crafted for the two of them. So it's a big old shrug from me boss. IDK

I think a genuine apology from König to Goose would help a lot. I think König sitting down and explaining his past to Bee would also help. If there was some added context, that it's a long standing beef between himself and Ghost and he made a bad judgement call, then that would be good for getting on the road to healing. Bee would also have to sit down and explain her feelings to König, all in all it would have to be a complete open communication between them, likely with a therapist moderating. But I don't want to write that because I genuinely don't think I would be able to do it justice.

Bee's story is one of my favorites, it's her fairy tale ending, it's her rebuilding her life and finding love despite her trepidation. It's a story of self healing and love, and I don't want to sabotage it with a fight.

#ghoul speaks #if you don't like König I have heard from other König haters that mine is palatable

[odinsblog]

Saying israel isnt related to judaism is antisemitc, brah. Bar none. Israel is the second word in our most important daily prayer and "next year in jerusalem" our annual call to action during the Zionist holoday of passover where we celebrate going HOME to ISRAEL 😱. if you keep listening to the small majority of self hating, white passing american jews on tumblr you're gonna keep being called antisemitic cause you are.

netanyahu and the right wingers suck. So do the arab colonizers whove refused peace since the un told the muslim occupiers they had to share their atolen land with native and returning diaspora jews

[re: this post]

OMG, anon is this really what you wake up for in the morning?

I want anyone reading this to note that anon had to create a strawman argument to attack me for something that I never said

It’s weak sauce, “brah”

This is how some people have to argue when they cannot actually defend their feeble, misguided, deadass wrong opinions

Show me where I ever said that “Israel isn’t related to Judaism,” and I’ll delete my blog

What I said was, “Jewish people are Jewish whether they're religious Jews who have been to a synagogue, or not. Non-religious, non-observant Jewish people are still Jewish people. Intentionally conflating ‘religious Jews’ with all Jewish people is antisemitic,” and then I said that “conflating Israel with all Jewish people is also antisemitic”

It’s all right there in the post, “brah”

And how tf are “Arab colonizers” and Muslims “occupying” a place where they’ve been living since forever? Do you think that Native Americans are also occupiers??

Please stop talking

You’re embarrassing yourself

Arab peoples are Semitic, as are Jewish people. Jon Stewart once touched upon this extremely salient point, and I haven’t forgotten about it ever since. BTW, he wasn’t on Tumblr when he said this (and neither was Seth Rogan), but EYE definitely brought it to tumblr

And I think it’s cute that you think I care what Zionists call me. Like, I haven’t ever been called antisemitic, but it wouldn’t carry much weight coming from Islamophobic, racist zealots who routinely call other Jewish people antisemites just because they disagree with them—the bulk of the students protesting at Columbia University are Jewish (many with direct ties to Israel, or descendants of Holocaust survivors), but I guess somehow their voices aren’t supposed to count, because they don’t agree with YOUR fuckery?

Pfft

Please STFU and don’t bother me again

But just for added clarity: This is not a “religious” war, this is about ethnic cleansing, illegal settlements and land grabs that Israel has been doing nonstop and continuously since 1948

In conclusion, anon you are full of shit and about to get blocked if you continue with dropping this bullshit in my inbox, because I refuse to debate every rando with a keyboard and an internet connection—maybe try Discord or find a subreddit for r/assholes?

But before I go, I’ll leave this video (the transcript is in the original post)

and a link to this post, where people who actually know what they’re talking about explain it far better than I ever could.

#anon #ask #answered #palestine #israel #weaponized antisemitism #weaponized zionism #weaponized identity politics #identity politics #idpol #anti zionism ≠ antisemitism #columbia university #student protests #campus protests

[gallifreyianrosearkytiorsusan]

Surprise Guest

Author's note: More mermay, some world building with Poor Unfortunate Souls AU, and a dash of Space Marines Sentient Husbandry. Oh boy, I wrote a little over 1K words for this one.

Summary: Hura finds a stranger in his den, it's a wounded Loyalist Scout, so he calls for back up, as well as teases some of his younger cousins, because he finds them Hilarious.

Warnings: Mentions of injuries, light bullying? Or is it intimidation. Hura's being a bit of a lil' shit head. Let me know if I need to add more.

Tagged: @sleepyfan-blog, @egrets-not-regrets, @barn-anon, @bleedingichorhearts, @c-u-c-koo-4-40k, @kit-williams

Tagged again, just in case: @kit-williams

Catius Past

Hura Past

Hura had finished with some tasks he’d been meaning to do, helped out some of his fellow Chaos Mer-Astartes, he’s swimming back to his underwater cave system, when he smells something off about the waters immediately around and inside is caves. He huffs, as he readies himself, whether for a fight, or to scare whoever it is thought they could so foolishly take over his cave. He pauses as he swims deeper into his cave system when he smells the scent of blood. Astartes blood.

Ah- perhaps someone had tried to come to his cave seeking treatment… Unusually bold, or more likely desperate. He retracts his claws and spines mostly as he shifts his gear, wondering who his newest patient is going to be. And if they had friends with them. What he comes across gives him pause. By the coloration, that deep, vivid blue and spots, that eel-like tale that flows like a long ribbon in the wind, this is an Ultramarine, or one of their successor chapters, before their scales shed and into their pod’s hues.

As Hura carefully approaches the other mer-astartes, he notices, he’s large for a normal Son of the 13th Primarch. Hura’s face breaks into a grin as his eyes sparkle. Oh- oh he’s heard of this! A Primaris! Oh- those youngsters from the farthest in the future that near enough any of them can determine. And, so far, none have yet to fall to Chaos or to turn Renegade. But that is most likely because they are all brainwashed Scout-lings who haven’t had much life experience out of the drudgery of basic training and have yet to really sink their teeth into the poisonous, wonderous horrors of the wider galaxy.

Hm… he’s not heard of a new Primaris Marine, of any chapter coming into any of the local pods. Perhaps he’s new? Poor thing, arrived upon Ancient Terra, and unknowing of where and when he is. Likely caught in a vicious battle as Hura continues to silently approach the Scout-ling. While his wounds are stitching up, due to his Astartes constitution he notices how the poor thing was almost pulled apart by Warp Predators. Ouch. Likely the sole survivor of his Primaris Pod, unless he was the only one strong enough to survive ancient Terra’s waters and collapsed into the nearest place where he’d be able to sleep off the worst of his injuries.

Poor little scout, unknowing of the dangers and beauties of this new world and time. He does send a message on his vox through to his fellow Apothecaries, of the Alliance of Loyalist, Renegade, and Chaos factions, the youngster is not going to react well to him at all, and as, while he’s recovering, is still badly wounded and will react with far more hostility. Those Primaris Space Marine Scout-lings can be ever so vicious and suspicious of the Chaos-embracing brothers and cousins. Its likely part of their training to be so, which is a pity, as he’d so dearly love to meet with a Primaris and be able to observe their mannerisms and behaviors up close, as well as teach any who’d have the capacity, skill, and heart for being an Apothecary. He’s been one for a very long time.

Not a few moments later he’d gotten a response and an Imperial Fist Apothecary, as well as a couple of younger Apothecaries would come to his cove to gently scoop up the wounded, sleeping youngster, and hopefully get to him before the youngster woke up and then panicked at the Sight of Hura watching him from the entrance of the cave. Little brothers and cousins could be so adorable at times, and he’s slow to anger and understanding of… youthful misadventures and shenanigans.

The young Primaris Ultramarine is starting to wake, his face scrunching up and snuffling at the currents as his fins flare and curl as his senses start to inform him of the Danger that’s nearby. Hura does back off, no need to scare the poor thing absolutely silly for unknowingly entering the nest of someone else when he was so wounded and unknowing of everything that was going on around him. He waves to the Imperial Fist and other assorted Loyalists and the young Black Templar Apothecary, who doesn’t have armor, but really should get some at time hisses and growls at him, flaring his fins and his scales rucking up.

“What a wonderful threat display,” Hura coos to the youngster who thinks he’s So Scary.

Hura has seen things that would drive lesser beings mad or commit suicide. He was on one of the ships that were trapped within the warp, unable to die, unable to help his brothers and they suffered, grew sick, yet didn’t die as they were trapped in the Warp for an eternity or two until their Gene-father cracked and gave in and begged for Grandfather’s blessing, who’d happily given it to all who’d joined him. He blocks out Unpleasant memories, the past was the past and thinking about Before was… well.

No. Not a good idea. Youngsters to playfully tease. The young Primaris Ultramarine has woken up, and is skittish and an anxious youngling, but perks right up when he spots the young black Templar. He sure does think he’s scary as well, growling at Hura like he is, poor dear, his fins are torn and he can’t do a proper threat display, although he tries. It’s interesting how the Primaris Space Marines, despite being from, or at least assigned to different chapters seem to know one another, or at least of each other enough to perk up when the spot each other. Or at least, that’s what he’s heard from those that have met some of the youngest of their cousins. It’s such a terribly fascinating little puzzle that he wants to solve, but alas he can’t get near because they Really Don’t Like Chaos Space Marines.

“Hura,” One of the older Apothecaries say with a sigh.

“Yes, Kordito?” He trills out amused.

“Stop scaring the Scouts,” Kordito says with another sigh.

“But I’m not doing anything!” He protests with a pout, “I’m just floating here, near my nest.”

#warhammer 40k #space marine husbandry sentience #space marine husbandry #warhammer #adeptus astartes #mermay #mermay 40k #mermay 2024 #poor unfortunate souls #poor unfortunate souls au #oc: Hura #oc: Cedric #oc: Catius #oc: Kordito #black templar #black templar oc #death guard #death guard oc #ultramarine #ultramarine oc #imperial fist #imperial fist oc

[quitealotofsodapop]

Im sobbing and jsut imagining MK and the Noodle Gang doing a visit to FFM during Slow Boiled (either not the version where DBK dragged Wukong to live st the palace or a version where Wukong managed to convince them to let him live in the conforts of his own home) and see him working on building a shrine. First, they immediately stop him because "Wtf you're pregnant! Put the hammer down!" before asking what the shrine was for.

"Ah, it's a bit... personal. I'd been meaning to rebuild this old thing for a while after it got destroyed in... the Burning..." Wukong's face faltered a moment here at the memories, "but hadn't been able to bring myself to do it. I figured I'd finally get around yo it."

It doesn't take long to realize this shrine was to honor an ancestor of some sort, although with Wukong being well known for not having parents (as far as they knew) they were confused and asked who the shrine was for. Wukong had a sad, almost nostalgic smile as he calmly, yet somehow enthusiastically, explained.

"He was the Elder of the troupe that led us when I was a cub, before I became the Monkey King. He-"

"Wait! You weren't always the Monkey King!?"

"*sigh* Yes, kid. Once upon a time, I was a cub just like anyone else. Anyways! He was a storyteller at heart and ancient, like, old enough to remember the Great Floods ancient! See, the thing about him is that he was like me, a stone monkey. So when I hatched, he took me in and raised me, taught me about our people. As much as he could, anyway. His memory was going, and he wasn't long for the world even when I was still a cub."

"THERE WERE MORE-"

"Yes, scholar... I was not the only Stone Monkey."

DBK can't keep his little bro locked up at the Bull palace for long. Red would sneak Wukong out if he asks nicely. PIF and DBK just sigh, they can't cage a free spirit.

Wukong getting the drive to fix things up around FFM, only for the Noodle Gang to stop him from doing heavy construction. You know Pigsy makes a choked squeal the first time he sees Wukong trying to climb a ladder unassisted.

When Wukong finally explains what he was trying to fix, the gang's hearts just drop. Is it well known that The Monkey King did in fact lose people in the War - to think that he lost the closest thing to a parent even before that surprises them.

Tang ofc is nosey and must known More.

Wukong: "He was called Elder Shítougùshì. He was the only other Stone Monkey I had ever met." Tang: "Another stone monkey!?" Wukong: "Yes. He stayed behind on the island after the Great Flood even as the other survivors left for higher ground. He wanted to make sure no one forgot the original troupe." MK: "Then... you were born into a whole troupe of monkeys like you..." Wukong: "Not exactly. I still popped out of a stone egg - the "Boulder" that held me... it was my mother." The Noodle Shop Gang, thinking hard about the King's current Egg issue: "OH." Wukong: "Yeah... Elder and my Stalwarts had been the ones to find me when I finally hatched. He tried his best to raise me with help from the monkey demon troupe, but he still passed on sometime after we rediscovered the Stone Palace. Then I set out to find my first immortality." Tang, jttw-brain firing: "HE! He was the old monkey that passed away and set you on the path to find Master Subodhi!" Wukong, smiling sadly: "Yes. Yes he was." Sandy: "He sounds like a fine man- monkey Mr King. Hope he's happy to see where you are now." Wukong, tracing the old shrine with his fingers: "So do I big guy."

After the convo takes place, the Noodle Shop gang conspire to fix up some of the shrines and statues around the island. They get DBK involved since he remembers what the island was like pre-Burning. The Bull King would also jump to help honor the man that raised his little brother into the King he became!

Wukong comes home one day and finds that the shrine to Elder Shítougùshì has been reparied - not exactly how it was before the Burning, but finally clean and completed. A little ceramic monkey figure sitting on the altar.

Wukong cries like a cub when he realises MK and his friends fixed it.

#slow boiled stone egg au #stone matriarch au #stone monkies #sun wukong #pregnancy mention tw #lmk mk #qi xiaotian #lmk tang #lmk pigsy #lmk mei #lmk sandy #lmk #lego monkie kid

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: James B. Meigs

Published: Spring 2024

Michael Shermer got his first clue that things were changing at Scientific American in late 2018. The author had been writing his “Skeptic” column for the magazine since 2001. His monthly essays, aimed at an audience of both scientists and laymen, championed the scientific method, defended the need for evidence-based debate, and explored how cognitive and ideological biases can derail the search for truth. Shermer’s role models included two twentieth-century thinkers who, like him, relished explaining science to the public: Carl Sagan, the ebullient astronomer and TV commentator; and evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould, who wrote a popular monthly column in Natural History magazine for 25 years. Shermer hoped someday to match Gould’s record of producing 300 consecutive columns. That goal would elude him.

In continuous publication since 1845, Scientific American is the country’s leading mainstream science magazine. Authors published in its pages have included Albert Einstein, Francis Crick, Jonas Salk, and J. Robert Oppenheimer—some 200 Nobel Prize winners in all. SciAm, as many readers call it, had long encouraged its authors to challenge established viewpoints. In the mid-twentieth century, for example, the magazine published a series of articles building the case for the then-radical concept of plate tectonics. In the twenty-first century, however, American scientific media, including Scientific American, began to slip into lockstep with progressive beliefs. Suddenly, certain orthodoxies—especially concerning race, gender, or climate—couldn’t be questioned.

“I started to see the writing on the wall toward the end of my run there,” Shermer told me. “I saw I was being slowly nudged away from certain topics.” One month, he submitted a column about the “fallacy of excluded exceptions,” a common logical error in which people perceive a pattern of causal links between factors but ignore counterexamples that don’t fit the pattern. In the story, Shermer debunked the myth of the “horror-film curse,” which asserts that bad luck tends to haunt actors who appear in scary movies. (The actors in most horror films survive unscathed, he noted, while bad luck sometimes strikes the casts of non-scary movies as well.) Shermer also wanted to include a serious example: the common belief that sexually abused children grow up to become abusers in turn. He cited evidence that “most sexually abused children do not grow up to abuse their own children” and that “most abusive parents were not abused as children.” And he observed how damaging this stereotype could be to abuse survivors; statistical clarity is all the more vital in such delicate cases, he argued. But Shermer’s editor at the magazine wasn’t having it. To the editor, Shermer’s effort to correct a common misconception might be read as downplaying the seriousness of abuse. Even raising the topic might be too traumatic for victims.

The following month, Shermer submitted a column discussing ways that discrimination against racial minorities, gays, and other groups has diminished (while acknowledging the need for continued progress). Here, Shermer ran into the same wall that Better Angels of Our Nature author Steven Pinker and other scientific optimists have faced. For progressives, admitting that any problem—racism, pollution, poverty—has improved means surrendering the rhetorical high ground. “They are committed to the idea that there is no cumulative progress,” Shermer says, and they angrily resist efforts to track the true prevalence, or the “base rate,” of a problem. Saying that “everything is wonderful and everyone should stop whining doesn’t really work,” his editor objected.

Shermer dug his grave deeper by quoting Manhattan Institute fellow Heather Mac Donald and The Coddling of the American Mind authors Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt, who argue that the rise of identity-group politics undermines the goal of equal rights for all. Shermer wrote that intersectional theory, which lumps individuals into aggregate identity groups based on race, sex, and other immutable characteristics, “is a perverse inversion” of Martin Luther King’s dream of a color-blind society. For Shermer’s editors, apparently, this was the last straw. The column was killed and Shermer’s contract terminated. Apparently, SciAm no longer had the ideological bandwidth to publish such a heterodox thinker.

American journalism has never been very good at covering science. In fact, the mainstream press is generally a cheap date when it comes to stories about alternative medicine, UFO sightings, pop psychology, or various forms of junk science. For many years, that was one factor that made Scientific American’s rigorous reporting so vital. The New York Times, National Geographic, Smithsonian, and a few other mainstream publications also produced top-notch science coverage. Peer-reviewed academic journals aimed at specialists met a higher standard still. But over the past decade or so, the quality of science journalism—even at the top publications—has declined in a new and alarming way. Today’s journalistic failings don’t owe simply to lazy reporting or a weakness for sensationalism but to a sweeping and increasingly pervasive worldview.

It is hard to put a single name on this sprawling ideology. It has its roots both in radical 1960s critiques of capitalism and in the late-twentieth-century postmodern movement that sought to “problematize” notions of objective truth. Critical race theory, which sees structural racism as the grand organizing principle of our society, is one branch. Queer studies, which seeks to “deconstruct” traditional norms of family, sex, and gender, is another. Critics of this worldview sometimes call it “identity politics”; supporters prefer the term “intersectionality.” In managerial settings, the doctrine lives under the label of diversity, equity, and inclusion, or DEI: a set of policies that sound anodyne—but in practice, are anything but.

This dogma sees Western values, and the United States in particular, as uniquely pernicious forces in world history. And, as exemplified by the anticapitalist tirades of climate activist Greta Thunberg, the movement features a deep eco-pessimism buoyed only by the distant hope of a collectivist green utopia.

The DEI worldview took over our institutions slowly, then all at once. Many on the left, especially journalists, saw Donald Trump’s election in 2016 as an existential threat that necessitated dropping the guardrails of balance and objectivity. Then, in early 2020, Covid lockdowns put American society under unbearable pressure. Finally, in May 2020, George Floyd’s death under the knee of a Minneapolis police officer provided the spark. Protesters exploded onto the streets. Every institution, from coffeehouses to Fortune 500 companies, felt compelled to demonstrate its commitment to the new “antiracist” ethos. In an already polarized environment, most media outlets lunged further left. Centrists—including New York Times opinion editor James Bennet and science writer Donald G. McNeil, Jr.—were forced out, while radical progressive voices were elevated.

This was the national climate when Laura Helmuth took the helm of Scientific American in April 2020. Helmuth boasted a sterling résumé: a Ph.D. in cognitive neuroscience from the University of California–Berkeley and a string of impressive editorial jobs at outlets including Science, National Geographic, and the Washington Post. Taking over a large print and online media operation during the early weeks of the Covid pandemic couldn’t have been easy. On the other hand, those difficult times represented a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for an ambitious science editor. Rarely in the magazine’s history had so many Americans urgently needed timely, sensible science reporting: Where did Covid come from? How is it transmitted? Was shutting down schools and businesses scientifically justified? What do we know about vaccines?

Scientific American did examine Covid from various angles, including an informative July 2020 cover story diagramming how the SARS-CoV-2 virus “sneaks inside human cells.” But the publication didn’t break much new ground in covering the pandemic. When it came to assessing growing evidence that Covid might have escaped from a laboratory, for example, SciAm got scooped by New York and Vanity Fair, publications known more for their coverage of politics and entertainment than of science.

At the same time, SciAm dramatically ramped up its social-justice coverage. The magazine would soon publish a flurry of articles with titles such as “Modern Mathematics Confronts Its White, Patriarchal Past” and “The Racist Roots of Fighting Obesity.” The death of the twentieth century’s most acclaimed biologist was the hook for “The Complicated Legacy of E. O. Wilson,” an opinion piece arguing that Wilson’s work was “based on racist ideas,” without quoting a single line from his large published canon. At least those pieces had some connection to scientific topics, though. In 2021, SciAm published an opinion essay, “Why the Term ‘JEDI’ Is Problematic for Describing Programs That Promote Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion.” The article’s five authors took issue with the effort by some social-justice advocates to create a cute new label while expanding the DEI acronym to include “Justice.” The Jedi knights of the Star Wars movies are “inappropriate mascots for social justice,” the authors argued, because they are “prone to (white) saviorism and toxically masculine approaches to conflict resolution (violent duels with phallic light sabers, gaslighting by means of ‘Jedi mind tricks,’ etc.).” What all this had to do with science was anyone’s guess.

Several prominent scientists took note of SciAm’s shift. “Scientific American is changing from a popular-science magazine into a social-justice-in-science magazine,” Jerry Coyne, a University of Chicago emeritus professor of ecology and evolution, wrote on his popular blog, “Why Evolution Is True.” He asked why the magazine had “changed its mission from publishing decent science pieces to flawed bits of ideology.”

“The old Scientific American that I subscribed to in college was all about the science,” University of New Mexico evolutionary psychologist Geoffrey Miller told me. “It was factual reporting on new ideas and findings from physics to psychology, with a clear writing style, excellent illustrations, and no obvious political agenda.” Miller says that he noticed a gradual change about 15 years ago, and then a “woke political bias that got more flagrant and irrational” over recent years. The leading U.S. science journals, Nature and Science, and the U.K.-based New Scientist made a similar pivot, he says. By the time Trump was elected in 2016, he says, “the Scientific American editors seem to have decided that fighting conservatives was more important than reporting on science.”

Scientific American’s increasing engagement in politics drew national attention in late 2020, when the magazine, for the first time in its 175-year history, endorsed a presidential candidate. “The evidence and the science show that Donald Trump has badly damaged the U.S. and its people,” the editors wrote. “That is why we urge you to vote for Joe Biden.” In an e-mail exchange, Scientific American editor-in-chief Helmuth said that the decision to endorse Biden was made unanimously by the magazine’s staff. “Overall, the response was very positive,” she said. Helmuth also pushed back on the idea that getting involved in political battles represented a new direction for SciAm. “We have a long and proud history of covering the social and political angles of science,” she said, noting that the magazine “has advocated for teaching evolution and not creationism since we covered the Scopes Monkey Trial.”

Scientific American wasn’t alone in endorsing a presidential candidate in 2020. Nature also endorsed Biden in that election cycle. The New England Journal of Medicine indirectly did the same, writing that “our current leaders have demonstrated that they are dangerously incompetent” and should not “keep their jobs.” Vinay Prasad, the prominent oncologist and public-health expert, recently lampooned the endorsement trend on his Substack, asking whether science journals will tell him who to vote for again in 2024. “Here is an idea! Call it crazy,” he wrote: “Why don’t scientists focus on science, and let politics decide the election?” When scientists insert themselves into politics, he added, “the only result is we are forfeiting our credibility.”

But what does it mean to “focus on science”? Many of us learned the standard model of the scientific method in high school. We understand that science attempts—not always perfectly—to shield the search for truth from political interference, religious dogmas, or personal emotions and biases. But that model of science has been under attack for half a century. The French theorist Michel Foucault argued that scientific objectivity is an illusion produced and shaped by society’s “systems of power.” Today’s woke activists challenge the legitimacy of science on various grounds: the predominance of white males in its history, the racist attitudes held by some of its pioneers, its inferiority to indigenous “ways of knowing,” and so on. Ironically, as Christopher Rufo points out in his book America’s Cultural Revolution, this postmodern ideology—which began as a critique of oppressive power structures—today empowers the most illiberal, repressive voices within academic and other institutions.

Shermer believes that the new style of science journalism “is being defined by this postmodern worldview, the idea that all facts are relative or culturally determined.” Of course, if scientific facts are just products of a particular cultural milieu, he says, “then everything is a narrative that has to reflect some political side.” Without an agreed-upon framework to separate valid from invalid claims—without science, in other words—people fall back on their hunches and in-group biases, the “my-side bias.”

Traditionally, science reporting was mostly descriptive—writers strove to explain new discoveries in a particular field. The new style of science journalism takes the form of advocacy—writers seek to nudge readers toward a politically approved opinion.

“Lately journalists have been behaving more like lawyers,” Shermer says, “marshaling evidence in favor of their own view and ignoring anything that doesn’t help their argument.” This isn’t just the case in science journalism, of course. Even before the Trump era, the mainstream press boosted stories that support left-leaning viewpoints and carefully avoided topics that might offer ammunition to the Right. Most readers understand, of course, that stories about politics are likely to be shaped by a media outlet’s ideological slant. But science is theoretically supposed to be insulated from political influence. Sadly, the new woke style of science journalism reframes factual scientific debates as ideological battles, with one side presumed to be morally superior. Not surprisingly, the crisis in science journalism is most obvious in the fields where public opinion is most polarized.

The Covid pandemic was a crisis not just for public health but for the public’s trust in our leading institutions. From Anthony Fauci on down, key public-health officials issued unsupported policy prescriptions, fudged facts, and suppressed awkward questions about the origin of the virus. A skeptical, vigorous science press could have done a lot to keep these officials honest—and the public informed. Instead, even elite science publications mostly ran cover for the establishment consensus. For example, when Stanford’s Jay Bhattacharya and two other public-health experts proposed an alternative to lockdowns in their Great Barrington Declaration, media outlets joined in Fauci’s effort to discredit and silence them.

Richard Ebright, professor of chemical biology at Rutgers University, is a longtime critic of gain-of-function research, which can make naturally occurring viruses deadlier. From the early weeks of the pandemic, he suspected that the virus had leaked from China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology. Evidence increasingly suggests that he was correct. I asked Ebright how he thought that the media had handled the lab-leak debate. He responded:

Science writers at most major news outlets and science news outlets have spent the last four years obfuscating and misrepresenting facts about the origin of the pandemic. They have done this to protect the scientists, science administrators, and the field of science—gain-of-function research on potential pandemic pathogens—that likely caused the pandemic. They have done this in part because those scientists and science administrators are their sources, . . . in part because they believe that public trust in science would be damaged by reporting the facts, and in part because the origin of the pandemic acquired a partisan political valance after early public statements by Tom Cotton, Mike Pompeo, and Donald Trump.

During the first two years of the pandemic, most mainstream media outlets barely mentioned the lab-leak debate. And when they did, they generally savaged both the idea and anyone who took it seriously. In March 2021, long after credible evidence emerged hinting at a laboratory origin for the virus, Scientific American published an article, “Lab-Leak Hypothesis Made It Harder for Scientists to Seek the Truth.” The piece compared the theory to the KGB’s disinformation campaign about the origin of HIV/AIDS and blamed lab-leak advocates for creating a poisonous climate around the issue: “The proliferation of xenophobic rhetoric has been linked to a striking increase in anti-Asian hate crimes. It has also led to a vilification of the [Wuhan Institute of Virology] and some of its Western collaborators, as well as partisan attempts to defund certain types of research (such as ‘gain of function’ research).” Today we know that the poisonous atmosphere around the lab-leak question was deliberately created by Anthony Fauci and a handful of scientists involved in dangerous research at the Wuhan lab. And the case for banning gain-of-function research has never been stronger.

One of the few science journalists who did take the lab-leak question seriously was Donald McNeil, Jr., the veteran New York Times reporter forced out of the paper in an absurd DEI panic. After leaving the Times—and like several other writers pursuing the lab-leak question—McNeil published his reporting on his own Medium blog. It is telling that, at a time when leading science publications were averse to exploring the greatest scientific mystery of our time, some of the most honest reporting on the topic was published in independent, reader-funded outlets. It’s also instructive to note that the journalist who replaced McNeil on the Covid beat at the Times, Apoorva Mandavilli, showed open hostility to investigating Covid’s origins. In 2021, she famously tweeted: “Someday we will stop talking about the lab leak theory and maybe even admit its racist roots. But alas, that day is not yet here.” It would be hard to compose a better epitaph to the credibility of mainstream science journalism.

As Shermer observed, many science journalists see their role not as neutral reporters but as advocates for noble causes. This is especially true in reporting about the climate. Many publications now have reporters on a permanent “climate beat,” and several nonprofit organizations offer grants to help fund climate coverage. Climate science is an important field, worthy of thoughtful, balanced coverage. Unfortunately, too many climate reporters seem especially prone to common fallacies, including base-rate neglect, and to hyping tenuous data.

The mainstream science press never misses an opportunity to ratchet up climate angst. No hurricane passes without articles warning of “climate disasters.” And every major wildfire seemingly generates a “climate apocalypse” headline. For example, when a cluster of Quebec wildfires smothered the eastern U.S. in smoke last summer, the New York Times called it “a season of climate extremes.” It’s likely that a warming planet will result in more wildfires and stronger hurricanes. But eager to convince the public that climate-linked disasters are rapidly trending upward, journalists tend to neglect the base rate. In the case of Quebec wildfires, for example, 2023 was a fluky outlier. During the previous eight years, Quebec wildfires burned fewer acres than average; then, there was no upward trend—and no articles discussing the paucity of fires. By the same token, according to the U.S. National Hurricane Center, a lower-than-average number of major hurricanes struck the U.S. between 2011 and 2020. But there were no headlines suggesting, say, “Calm Hurricane Seasons Cast Doubt on Climate Predictions.”

Most climate journalists wouldn’t dream of drawing attention to data that challenge the climate consensus. They see their role as alerting the public to an urgent problem that will be solved only through political change.

Similar logic applies to social issues. The social-justice paradigm rests on the notion that racism, sexism, transphobia, and other biases are so deeply embedded in our society that they can be eradicated only through constant focus on the problem. Any people or institutions that don’t participate in this process need to be singled out for criticism. In such an atmosphere, it takes a particularly brave journalist to note exceptions to the reigning orthodoxy.

This dynamic is especially intense in the debates over transgender medicine. The last decade has seen a huge surge in children claiming dissatisfaction with their gender. According to one survey, the number of children aged six to 17 diagnosed with gender dysphoria surged from roughly 15,000 to 42,000 in the years between 2017 and 2021 alone. The number of kids prescribed hormones to block puberty more than doubled. Puberty blockers and other treatments for gender dysphoria have enormous potential lifelong consequences, including sterility, sexual dysfunction, and interference with brain development. Families facing treatment decisions for youth gender dysphoria desperately need clear, objective guidance. They’re not getting it.

Instead, medical organizations and media outlets typically describe experimental hormone treatments and surgeries as routine, and even “lifesaving,” when, in fact, their benefits remain contested, while their risks are enormous. In a series of articles, the Manhattan Institute’s Leor Sapir has documented how trans advocates enforce this appearance of consensus among U.S. scientists, medical experts, and many journalists. Through social-media campaigns and other tools, these activists have forced conferences to drop leading scientists, gotten journals to withdraw scientific papers after publication, and interfered with the distribution of Abigail Shrier’s 2020 book Irreversible Damage, which challenges the wisdom of “gender-affirming care” for adolescent girls. While skeptics are cowed into silence, Sapir concludes, those who advocate fast-tracking children for radical gender therapy “will go down in history as responsible for one of the worst medical scandals in U.S. history.”

In such an overheated environment, it would be helpful to have a journalistic outlet advocating a sober, evidence-based approach. In an earlier era, Scientific American might have been that voice. Unfortunately, SciAm today downplays messy debates about gender therapies, while offering sunny platitudes about the “safety and efficacy” of hormone treatments for prepubescent patients. For example, in a 2023 article, “What Are Puberty Blockers, and How Do They Work?,” the magazine repeats the unsubstantiated claim that such treatments are crucial to preventing suicide among gender-dysphoric children. “These medications are well studied and have been used safely since the late 1980s to pause puberty in adolescents with gender dysphoria,” SciAm states.

The independent journalist Jesse Singal, a longtime critic of slipshod science reporting, demolishes these misleading claims in a Substack post. In fact, the use of puberty blockers to treat gender dysphoria is a new and barely researched phenomenon, he notes: “[W]e have close to zero studies that have tracked gender dysphoric kids who went on blockers over significant lengths of time to see how they have fared.” Singal finds it especially alarming to see a leading science magazine obscure the uncertainty surrounding these treatments. “I believe that this will go down as a major journalistic blunder that will be looked back upon with embarrassment and regret,” he writes.

Fortunately, glimmers of light are shining through on the gender-care controversy. The New York Times has lately begun publishing more balanced articles on the matter, much to the anger of activists. And various European countries have started reassessing and limiting youth hormone treatments. England’s National Health Service recently commissioned the respected pediatrician Hilary Cass to conduct a sweeping review of the evidence supporting youth gender medicine. Her nearly 400-page report is a bombshell, finding that evidence supporting hormone interventions for children is “weak,” while the long-term risks of such treatments have been inadequately studied. “For most young people,” the report concludes, “a medical pathway will not be the best way to manage their gender-related distress.” In April, the NHS announced that it will no longer routinely prescribe puberty blocking drugs to children.

Scientific American has yet to offer an even-handed review of the new scientific skepticism toward aggressive gender medicine. Instead, in February, the magazine published an opinion column, “Pseudoscience Has Long Been Used to Oppress Transgender People.” Shockingly, it argues for even less medical caution in dispensing radical treatments. The authors approvingly note that “many trans activists today call for diminishing the role of medical authority altogether in gatekeeping access to trans health care,” arguing that patients should have “access to hormones and surgery on demand.” And, in an implicit warning to anyone who might question these claims and goals, the article compares today’s skeptics of aggressive gender medicine to Nazi eugenicists and book burners. Shortly after the Cass report’s release, SciAm published an interview with two activists who argue that scientists questioning trans orthodoxy are conducting “epistemological violence.”

There’s nothing wrong with vigorous debate over scientific questions. In fact, in both science and journalism, adversarial argumentation is a vital tool in testing claims and getting to the truth. “A bad idea can hover in the ether of a culture if there is no norm for speaking out,” Shermer says. Where some trans activists cross the line is in trying to derail debate by shaming and excluding anyone who challenges the activists’ manufactured consensus.

Such intimidation has helped enforce other scientific taboos. Anthony Fauci called the scientists behind the Great Barrington Declaration “fringe epidemiologists” and successfully lobbied to censor their arguments on social media. Climate scientists who diverge from the mainstream consensus struggle to get their research funded or published. The claim that implicit racial bias unconsciously influences our minds has been debunked time and again—but leading science magazines keep asserting it.

Scientists and journalists aren’t known for being shrinking violets. What makes them tolerate this enforced conformity? The intimidation described above is one factor. Academia and journalism are both notoriously insecure fields; a single accusation of racism or anti-trans bias can be a career ender. In many organizations, this gives the youngest, most radical members of the community disproportionate power to set ideological agendas.

“Scientists, science publishers, and science journalists simply haven’t learned how to say no to emotionally unhinged activists,” evolutionary psychologist Miller says. “They’re prone to emotional blackmail, and they tend to be very naive about the political goals of activists who claim that scientific finding X or Y will ‘impose harm’ on some group.”

But scientists may also have what they perceive to be positive motives to self-censor. A fascinating recent paper concludes: “Prosocial motives underlie scientific censorship by scientists.” The authors include a who’s who of heterodox thinkers, including Miller, Manhattan Institute fellow Glenn Loury, Pamela Paresky, John McWhorter, Steven Pinker, and Wilfred Reilly. “Our analysis suggests that scientific censorship is often driven by scientists, who are primarily motivated by self-protection, benevolence toward peer scholars, and prosocial concerns for the well-being of human social groups,” they write.

Whether motivated by good intentions, conformity, or fear of ostracization, scientific censorship undermines both the scientific process and public trust. The authors of the “prosocial motives” paper point to “at least one obvious cost of scientific censorship: the suppression of accurate information.” When scientists claim to represent a consensus about ideas that remain in dispute—or avoid certain topics entirely—those decisions filter down through the journalistic food chain. Findings that support the social-justice worldview get amplified in the media, while disapproved topics are excoriated as disinformation. Not only do scientists lose the opportunity to form a clearer picture of the world; the public does, too. At the same time, the public notices when claims made by health officials and other experts prove to be based more on politics than on science. A new Pew Research poll finds that the percentage of Americans who say that they have a “great deal” of trust in scientists has fallen from 39 percent in 2020 to 23 percent today.

“Whenever research can help inform policy decisions, it’s important for scientists and science publications to share what we know and how we know it,” Scientific American editor Helmuth says. “This is especially true as misinformation and disinformation are spreading so widely.” That would be an excellent mission statement for a serious science publication. We live in an era when scientific claims underpin huge swaths of public policy, from Covid to climate to health care for vulnerable youths. It has never been more vital to subject those claims to rigorous debate.

Unfortunately, progressive activists today begin with their preferred policy outcomes or ideological conclusions and then try to force scientists and journalists to fall in line. Their worldview insists that, rather than challenging the progressive orthodoxy, science must serve as its handmaiden. This pre-Enlightenment style of thinking used to hold sway only in radical political subcultures and arcane corners of academia. Today it is reflected even in our leading institutions and science publications. Without a return to the core principles of science—and the broader tradition of fact-based discourse and debate—our society risks drifting onto the rocks of irrationality.

[ Via: https://archive.today/j03w3 ]

==

Scientific American now embodies the worst of far-left anti-science nonsense.

#SciAm #Scientific American #James B. Meigs #academic corruption #ideological corruption #ideological capture #wokeness #cult of woke #wokeism #wokeness as religion #woke #unscientific #anti science #antiscience #religion is a mental illness

[edelweissbarnes]

• Sunshine and a little bit of hurricane •

Bucky Barnes x supersoldierF!reader Edelweiss (OFC)

A therapy session can change the perception of oneself? (Angst, mention of torture, mention of su!cide, bad self talk and bad self image, fluff)

Dr Reynor’ studio is neat and tidy, the giant picture of a forest, on the wall behind the sofa you’re sitting on, is placed to soothe the frustration of being closed between four walls. You watch the rain fall incessantly outside on the not so busy streets of Brooklyn Heights, the gentle pit pat against the glass is relaxing but the brisk click of your therapist’s pen brings you back to reality. You look at her and let out an exasperated sigh.

“You don’t talk, I write, remember?” She murmurs looking at you.

You exhale and you lower your gaze to your hands.

“since we talked about the tub, my nightmares got worse.” Your tone is more harsher than you wanted to, but it’s difficult to hide your frustration to not be able to sleep peacefully with your boyfriend. It’s a strange thing but you feel like you have a rock in your chest, a weight that makes it difficult for you to breathe, let alone sleep.

“Do you want to talk about what happens in your nightmares?” She asks, her tone is calm and even motherly.

“I’d prefer not to but I’m sure you’d be pushing it by telling me something like ‘talking about it makes it easier to move on’… easier my ass…” you reply bitterly before getting up from the sofa and nearing the window. “ there’s only one thing that I know for sure: I don’t want to feel ever again the way I felt back there…” You whisper looking outside.

“If you’re not ready to talk about your nightmares I’ll wait…it’s ok, Y/N.” Dr Reynor replies gingerly, like she’s talking to some scared animal.

“None of this is fucking ok…” you bite back. “ being here is not ok, what happened to me is not ok, what I became is not ok. They broke me and I’ll never be fixed” you can’t help the bitterness in your tone.

“What makes you think that you need to be fixed?” She asks quietly, you can feel her eyes on you.

You chuckle and you turn to look at her “ can’t you see?” You gesture to yourself with a scoff.

She smiles at you “ you’re not the darkness you endured. You are the light that refused to surrender. You’re a survivor Y/N, but you don’t need to be fixed. you need to understand the person you are now and you need to remember that you’re not alone. You have James…and now even the Avenger’s crew” her words hit you hard, even if it’s difficult for you to really believe them.

You turn again to look outside “ after the tub, they couldn’t wipe me because doing both would had been too much for my already fried brain. That’s when I had some glimpse of my memories…fragments…I remember lying on the bed into my cell and even if I was exhausted I couldn’t sleep or even breathe sometimes…. Everything in that cell remembered me of James… every bloody time they left us alone, every kiss, every scar or bruise that we left on each other…we were so emotion starved that sometimes even pain was ok…just because it made us feel something…and the fact that he was gone without me was overwhelming” you murmur quietly closing you eyes, your memories so vivid.

“back there I thought several times about what it would be like if I killed myself...if he would miss me...would he cry?…but then the thought that he was gone and he left me there got me like’ why should he care?’ Why should I care?” You pause “ you know that he wants to propose? Did he tell you? I found the ring hidden in our closet…” you chuckle bitterly. “If he thinks that he was fucked up, when he was the winter soldier, he must reconsider because I got worse…really worse…In that cell I shutted down, I went completely numb…and every time they got me out for some mission it was always a bloodbath ….the more gruesome, the better…they wanted a killer machine? I obliged them…sometimes even enjoyed the killing…” you confess, your tone heavier then before, shame and disgust easily recognizable. “How can he desire to marry a damaged good like me?” You whisper just before the timer rings gently reminding you that your time is up.

“Don’t mind showing me the exit…I know the way…” you murmur pushing both your hands in your leather jacket’s pocket before moving toward the open door, as you are her last patient of the day and the two of you are the only ones left in the building.

She stands from her seat “You’re not damaged good, Y/N. What you did back there was a survival behavior. None here can judge you for that…. We’ll talk about that next time” she murmurs calm without trying to stop you.

Once outside the building you turn up your face to look at the cloudy sky, it’s raining heavier than when you get here. The chime of your phone claims your attention and when you take it out of your pocket you notice a message from Natasha.

“ mission alert. Meet me at the tower. Hill’s office in 30.”

“Copy. I’m on my way” you reply before getting your hood up and stepping into the rain. You make just a couple of steps before your vision goes black and you collapse on the sidewalk.

When you open your eyes, the white light on the ceiling is blinding you and you let out an annoyed whimper before you squint and turn your head to the side trying to evade that annoyance. Your head is pounding and you feel disoriented.

“She’s awake” you hear a feminine voice whisper gently.

“Thanks God…love, I’m here…” The voice of your boyfriend is low, you can feel the relief in his tone and finally you open your eyes to look at him.

“Where…where am I? What happened?…” you pause for a moment “ my head hurts so bad…” you murmur quietly trying to sit in the bed.

“We’re at the tower, at the medical bay…you went to you therapy session with dr Reynor…you had to meet with Tasha a couple hours ago…when you didn’t show up she alerted me and then dr Reynor called, telling me she found you collapsed on the sidewalk outside her studio…you scared the shit out me, doll” he explains while his hand caress lightly your face. You sigh loudly before slumping against the pillows. You feel an itch on your arm and when you look down you see that you have an IV attached. Before you can articulate any of your concerns you hear the door of your room open and Bruce made his entrance.

“Well, well…look who’s awake!” He murmurs too cheerfully for you taste. You let out a frustrated groan.

“ you scared us a little but don’t worry..it’s seems you just got a mild concussion and you’re a bit dehydrated…nothing too concerning for your condition…” Bruce replies with an encouraging smile.

“My condition? What do you mean?” You murmurs, looking at him with concern, you know for sure that you boyfriend got the same expression looking at the scientist.

“I…I thought you already knew…” Bruce stutters, trying to arginate the situation.

“What are you talking about Bruce? Am I dying?” You retort with a hint of panic in your voice.

He starts to laugh loudly and you give him a murderous look.

“No no…for heaven sake no! You’re going to be a mum” he murmurs giving you a reassuring smile.

“Wait, what?” Bucky asks with wide eyes. You try to rise from the bed but you feel your head spinning and nausea coming up leaving a disgusting taste on your tongue so you slump again on the pillows.

“Bad time for a joke Bruce…” you reply bitterly while you search for some water. The scientist is looking you movement and promptly gives you a glass with some ice cubes and water.

“ recently have you experienced some brain fog, nausea, maybe throwing up sometimes? Sensibility to smells? The sudden urge to eat ice or to take a nap in the middle of the day?” He asks politely.

“Yeah, my health hasn’t been great lately and so? My bloody nightmares are keeping me awake most of the nights…it natural that I want to nap during the day!” You reply quietly.

“When you had your last period, Y/N?” He asks you.

You look at him with wide eyes and for a moment you’re speechless. You don’t know when your last period was. You turn your head to search for your clothes, you know that your phone has the answer you need.

“My phone…I need my phone…” you whisper and you see Bucky promptly searching your jacket to give you your phone. With trembling hands you search the app where you track your menstrual cycle and to your surprise,when you open it, you see that your period is 4weeks late.

You gasp quietly and you lift your gaze from the phone to your boyfriend.

“Ok, I get it, you need to talk… I’ll leave you to it…” Bruce murmurs before exiting the room leaving the two of you alone.

The silence between you two is heavy. You look at him, his jaw clenched and his gaze low, as it’s too much to bear. He feels responsible to put this weight on your shoulders, who would want to carry the former winter soldier’s child?

“ I… I can’t be a mother…” you whisper, your eyes full of tears, the words you spoke with dr Reynor are haunting you: why would he want YOU to be the mother of his child? You and your fucked up brain.

He sighs quietly.

“ I know it’s a difficult situation and I know that’s my fault…I should‘ve been more careful…” he murmurs, guilt in his voice “ I shouldn’t burden you with this situation…I know that you love me and I’m grateful for that every single day and I’ll be for the rest of my life but I know it’s too much to carry my child.. who would want a father like the winter soldier?” He concludes with a whisper lowering his head.

“No, no…” you whisper cupping his face to look at him in the eyes, you can feel his pain and it kills you every time he felt so insecure due to the past he endured, he never had a choice. “ no James, you’d be a wonderful father…attentive, generous, protective, a perfect father…it’s me…I’m the one fucked up…I can’t be a mother…after all they did to me, I’m too damaged…I can’t be a good mother…and this child don’t deserve a mother like me…” you started to quietly pouring down all your doubts, all the fears that are haunting you, your sense of unworthiness, the “truth” that you think you had the choice to become what you become.

“Don’t you ever, EVER, speak like that again!” The way he’s grasping you by the arms, shaking you slightly to gave his words more power leave you speechless.

“You’re not too damaged, you’re the bravest, kindest being I’ve ever known in my entire life, despite what happened to you, you managed to explore your own darkness and save your heart. You stayed pure even if you walked through a fucking hell.” His choice of words is kicking you in the gut.

“I’m not as pure as you think!” You shout with desperation.

“ you are! Do you think I don’t know what if feels like to numb yourself and become what they wanted you to be? It’s easier than being wiped out every single time! You did what you had to do to survive and you can’t forgive me and do not forgive yourself for living and experiencing the exact same damn thing!” He shouts back.

Your sobs start silently before taking every fiber of your being and you fully start to cry, he hugs you tightly and you realize that the weight you felt on your chest is disappearing.

“You’re not too damaged. You’re not what they made you become.you’re strong as vibranium, love.and yes, you’re pure… You’re not even a ray of sun, you’re the fucking sunshine….and a little bit of hurricane…”he whispers in your ear while gently caressing your hair until your sobs subside.

He sits on the bed and he gently maneuvers you to sit in his lap so he can look at you in the face.

“Love, I know it’s a difficult situation and I’ll accept and I’ll love you no matter what you choose to do. It’s your body and it’s your choice. Do you want to make a family together?” He murmurs quietly.

“I’ve always wanted a family of my own…” you whisper “ I want a family with you…but I’m scared…” you confess. He hugs you.

“ that’s ok…if you want this…if you’ll have me…we’re in this together…” he murmur kissing the crown of your head.

“ you know that Dr Reynor will freak out when she’ll know that we’re having a baby?” You joke and the laugh that vibrates in his chest makes you giggle while now you feel the weariness of the whole day upon you.

" I think I'll take a nap..." you whisper softly before snuggling against your boyfriend.

“I’ve got you mama…” he whispers holding you tight against his chest and lulling you gently into sleep.

#bucky barnes x reader #bucky x reader #bucky x y/n #buckyxedelweiss #edelweiss #bucky barnes x yn #bucky x you #bucky barnes fanfic #bucky barnes #bucky angst #bucky fanfic

[eccentrcks]

gone through time ; the prelude

Chapter Title: "The Prelude" Word Count: 4k Synopsis: Nearly tortured to death and just almost at death’s doorstep when she was recuperating. Marlene regained her determination and to continue on living just to ensure that her loved ones are safe, unable to bear if they were to die on her watch. Yet thrown back in time, five decades behind, and found herself in an undesirable situation that leaves Marlene unsure if she’s able to go back home while meeting unlikely allies and enemies in beginning of her new journey. Author's Note: I might cross-post this on Ao3 and Wattpad eventually in the future. I don't know, we'll see. This is a different take than I genuinely anticipated, but my brain had been scrambling for another approach to this series and I followed my gut. Glad I did a lot of improvisations for the first part of the series. Comment to be tagged on, or removed from the taglist if you want! Have a lovely day and night. Taglist: @revnah1406, @welldonekhushi, @alypink, @littlemissclandestine, @walder-138.

“We made it, kid! Just hold on!”

“Tell my mom that… I’m sorry and I never meant what I said.”

“Oh no, no, no! NO! Marlene! MARLENE! NO! Don’t die on me!”

“If you knew it all then? Would you do it again?”

“Where am I?”

“I promise… I didn’t do it.”

“They would’ve been disappointed in you right now.”

“... Just like them to you as well…”

“Hey. You’re a goddamn survivor, kid. Just like your mama. Four times and going. No one with guts like yours could’ve done what you did. Let alone endure the ridiculous shit you’ve been put through. Think about it. You’ve lost and learnt, but it’s all about perseverance in the end.”

“I wish you were my dad...”

“Don’t do it, Marl. You don’t want to end this way.”

…

…

…

The consideration of ending it all had always been in her thoughts ever since losing Anthony. She was just nineteen years old at the time. Her bestest friend, her better half, her soulmate. Her breathing had hitched when she looked down from the window, placed in one of the top floors after getting liberated, with the breezy winds hitting her face.

Until the base had been attacked by an unknown group of operators who definitely knew their shit due to the lack of casualties on their side while she was getting dragged off by Phillip and covered by David with the other Shadows after they jumped out of the floor to the bottom when a grenade was thrown at them.

Lucky or not, she’d survived the impact, sprawled on the floor with the inability to pull herself together. Her breathing was so weak despite having an adrenaline rush. Marlene couldn’t even comprehend her surroundings. The helplessness was there all over again, she couldn’t help herself, or the others, to get out of the danger zone.

It felt like Marlene was slowly dying in the midst of destruction- or so she’d hoped. They didn’t want her to give up so soon, but she held no resistance for the darkness that's consuming her blurred vision. Incoherently mumbling apologies and weakly leaning on Phillip’s shoulder before getting laid down somewhere. Leaving a large amount of blood trails behind them.

They needed to leave her and she desperately pleaded for them to go, which sounded like a wheezy whisper, before she eventually fell into the deep slumber with her heartbeat decreasing by each second. She felt one of them shaking her limp form, shouting her name, and felt their anguished grief. It pained her numbed soul so much, especially when her unmoving face was buried onto someone’s neck while they cradled her in their grasp.

Marlene can’t let anyone else die on her watch. At this moment, she’d die this time for good. Even if it meant without saying properly goodbye to everyone else, although the mere thought of seeing him again to wherever he was brought some little hope to her broken self.

She imagined seeing his stupid, goofy ass dimpled smile. The beautiful light in those vibrant brown eyes that held so much life. The curls at ends of his perfectly brushed short dark hair just bouncing whilst he happily greets her. Nostalgia painfully hits her hard. Remembering she would bury her tearstained face onto his shoulder when they were together, when he was alive, inhaling his soft fragrance, and tightly clinging onto her better half as if he were gonna vanish.

Anthony… I’m coming…

…

…

…

Then her heartbeat was beating once again. Instead of being embraced with death as expected, she was met with the feeling of a long syringe plunging deep into her thigh. Monotonous and disembodied voices were heard with machineries whirring.

Someone mumbled something about her vitals becoming more steady now and got off their knees to walk off after getting called over to assist the others. It sounded like they needed her alive more than dead, otherwise she wouldn’t be slowly waking back up right now.

Her breathing slowly went from shallow to normal, or at least close to what normal as it gets, as Marlene felt like she was laid onto the cold floor, her limbs sprawled, with the ability to move around slowly coming back to her. Regaining and stabilizing her senses too.

Groaning softly and her eyes fluttering open just to see herself in the garage of the overruned base. Largely spacious with crates scattered all over and a group of numerous operators moving around to activate some sort of device. Barely noticing her regaining consciousness and busied with whatever they were doing.

Marlene’s fingers twitched as she struggled to push herself off the floor with a soft grunt. Leaning against a nearby crate after managing to crawl on all fours, without making a single sound, so she can hide behind one of them.

What the hell happened? Why aren't I dead? Why am I still alive? These thoughts ran through her distorted mind as the young woman readjusted her brown jacket over her shaky form and peered over her shoulder to search for a way out.

Unable to understand why and how she is still alive, Marlene knew better than to sit around and wait before something bad happened to her, so her instincts were telling her to evade and think later when it's safe. Just like her mom always says.

Marlene quickly picked at the corner of the crate and yanked some of it, without getting any splinters, although she did chipped a couple nails and didn’t really care about it, to make a handmade weapon. It was the size of her hand, but it was more than alright. Using her nails to make a sharp end and inspected it in her hand after she was done.

Perfect.

Thankfully no one noticed her disappearance and she peeked over to see most of them were still busy. Marlene grunted under her breath when she quietly walked around the shadows while crouching, despite her injuries aching badly, before stopping behind a black bronco.

“Detonation will be ready in five and we have the target subdued,” She hears one of them announce to the radio. “Do you copy? Over.”

The radio cackled in response before another voice was heard. “Copy. We’ll be there in three. We lost visual contact on the other targets, but it doesn't matter, we got the girl. So we’ll be there with the commander. Over.” Someone monotonously answered.

“Copy that. Over.”

Then Marlene noticed one of the operators that was keeping guard, far away from the group, walking towards her area. They wandered closer to her range before pausing in mid-step after hearing a little rustling sound.

Stepping closer to the source of the sound, they cautiously peeked over the hood of the bronco and saw nobody there at all. Straightening up and just stood there for less than a minute before they shrugged it off.

“Huh…” They shook their head, assuming they were just hearing things, or maybe it was a rat, and turned around just to have a wooden weapon shoved right in their jugular and slicing across the throat as they gagged and choked hard before Marlene quietly laid them on the floor so no sound was made.

Breathing heavily as she let them bleed to death before yanking their weapon off them. Heckler & Koch KH94A3. Checking the safety and ammunition. Safety on and magazine full, just what I actually need, thank fuck. She also unstrapped their knife, holstering it at the back of her jeans, before limping off in a crouching position still.

Whatever they injected in me with… I’m not completely immobile compared to before… She considered just leaving before her situation could get any worse, but then they’ll just come after her- or worse, after the ones who she cares about too. I don’t know if they made it out or not…

Marlene decided to take a stand and not yield to these assholes. Hurrying to the other side after hiding and disposing of the body, she mustered whatever strength induced into her, and regained through one's will, they weren’t gonna get away with this. Her morality bar got low a long time ago anyways, she isn’t opposed to taking down whoever is responsible for attacking them.

Mom would do the same thing… She thought grimly before cocking the weapon in her hands.

One of them went to check on her before realizing that she wasn’t laying there unconscious anymore as Marlene rushed up to the unfortunate soul and shoved the end of her weapon below their chin and pulled the trigger.

The gunshot startled the others as blood and clumps of brain splattered on her clothes down to the floor. She couldn’t care less and began creating carnage among them with whatever energy she had left.

Using the crates and unignited vehicles for cover, they didn’t last much due to their weapons and group of numbers, occasionally grabbing onto one of them to use as a meatshield before blowing their head off and dumping them aside, as Marlene didn’t waste a single bullet.

Taking the dead ones discarded guns with the magazines to replace her current empty one. Heckler & Koch MP7A2. Quietly crawling fast underneath an obstacle to sneak up behind another to stab the back of their right calf before using her submachine gun to take them down.

“She’s over there!” One of them shouted to their teammates- which ended with a few bullets through their visor of the helmet, dropping dead as she sprinted, her bad leg making her stumble a little, as Marlene tackled an unsuspecting operator from behind and plunged the knife through the back of their neck. Twisting it roughly before pulling it out. Snatching a flash grenade from the vest and tossing it over with a clicking sound towards a group of seven.

“Goddamnit!” One of them snapped in frustration while removing his helmet, carelessly dropping it aside on the ground, to rub his eyes so he could try to recover from the temporary blindness. “Don’t kill her! We need the target alive!” Squinting and looking around for her whereabouts. She wasn’t nowhere to be seen, much to his displeasure.

Until the sound of an engine being ignited, headlights getting flashed upon them, caught him off guard once most of them were rammed by a bronco. Dropping almost like dominoes and most of them succumbed from the impact.

“... I should’ve known why we were selected for this operation.” The incapacitated operator groaned in discomfort and slowly rolled to his side to try to stand back up on his feet. Just hearing the vehicle’s door opening and slammed shut with the sound of staggering footsteps coming towards him. He looked up at her, seeing the gun barrel aimed at his face, as his target just stared down at him apathetically. No remorse for her actions. He actually has a good amount of respect for that.

Her mother raised a killing machine for sure… He internally commented to himself.

“Before I blow your brains out from your skull. All I wanna know is… Why?” Marlene asked with her hand trembling a bit. Looking down at him, he is a caucasian male seemingly in his late-twenties, short messy dirty blonde hair, grayish blue eyes, and looked like shit from what she just did to him not too long ago.

He remained unresponsive just for a minute before giving her a serious look. “We’re just following orders here, kid. This was just bound to happen sooner or later.” The operator gave a cryptic response instead of a direct one.

This answer barely made her happy at all. This just irritated her and she wanted nothing more than to tear his throat apart with a bullet through his skull. Marlene bit the tip of her tongue in frustration and looked aside to see some sort of heavy looking device, but what caught her attention was that it had a timer on it.

Fifty-nine seconds left.

It looked like it could take the entire building down with that amount of explosives on it. Someone clearly wanted to get rid of any evidence of this attack on this base. Although she was quite unfamiliar with a blue glowy, bioluminescent-looking substance inside some glass tubes tied between wires and whatever you’d need for a bomb.

Shit… Marlene blinked owlishly and turned her head to look down at the man.

As if reading her mind, the nameless man just gave her a blank stare in return. “There’s no point. You won’t be able to disarm it – even if you tried.” He grunted when she kicked him right on the sternum before dropping back down onto his back on the floor when he tried getting up.

“I’d ask who the hell are you, or who are you working for, but I'm not gonna waste anymore of my precious time when you clearly aren’t gonna give me straight answers.” Marlene said coldly and just turned around right after shooting his left thigh and right ankle, he screamed and writhed in pain, as she pushed herself towards the exit. “You can just die here for all I care…” She mumbled under her breath.

I need to make sure they’re still alive… I can’t live with myself if something happens to them… not again… I can’t go through this again...

Just before Marlene can reach for the door handles, it suddenly bursts open, making her stagger backwards slightly, as she is met with an intimidating, masked and heavily armed individual who raises their gloved fist and swiftly pounded it against her face.

Her mouth opened in a silent shriek from the sudden punch as she fell on her backside onto the floor. Ignoring the pain coming from her face. Hastily pushing herself back up with a grunt, looking back up to see her attacker marching towards her, whipping out some sort of electric baton from their thigh holster.

Marlene shouted in pain when they managed to lunge forward to swing the weapon and hit right onto her gut. Almost stumbling on her feet like a newborn fawn, she turned and began running around the garage to avoid the hits while trying to steady her breath at the same time.

“I literally don’t have time for this bullshit!” She can already feel the adrenaline leaving her. This wasn’t good at all. Marlene needed to get the hell out before this place imploded in less than a minute. Unable to think properly while getting chased, she simply found a barrel filled with gasoline ahead of herself, raising her weapon to shoot at it just in time, running past it as being pursued at the same time.

Getting ungracefully flung forward onto the floor, with her attacker flailing to the side, roughly landing against the wall and crates. Their weight crushed them as they laid limp in the pile, meanwhile Marlene sighed in exhaustion against the cold floor, unbothered by the heat against her backside, and pushed herself off the floor to on her knees.

Barely able to fully stabilize herself in a short span of time. Marlene felt her wrist getting toughly tugged by the same operator she’d just incapacitated not too long ago. He yanked her closer and slapped some sort of device, or whatever weird looking watch it was, onto her wrist. She winced when the sharp feeling pierced into her flesh. Recoiling away as the young woman felt like writhing right there when the device triggered something within her.

A gasp slipped from her lips once the device imploded. Flashes of a blinding whitish, bluish hues filled her vision as it felt like gravity became nonexistent.

Then everything became black.

-

It was all bright and everything happened so fast. She could barely comprehend and wondered if she was actually dead this time, or somewhat survived, because this was getting ridiculous for her.

Marlene felt the left side of her face just numbingly cold and wet. It’s snow, she’d know the feeling. Breezy winds hitting the exposed side of her face as she softly groans, slowly pushing herself up, and those brown eyes fluttering open just to see she was in the middle of nowhere.

She felt fine- which shouldn’t be fine. Marlene was painfully aware that she wasn’t born normal like other people, her mom had tended to constantly remind her that since she was young girl, but this hasn’t happened to her once before.

However her head was throbbing real bad with the nauseous feeling hitting her. She couldn’t barely recall the last time she’d felt this whiplashed. Now Marlene could barely recall the entire event that just happened before literally landing here. It’s like recalling bits of scenes of a broken film or something.

And Marlene wasn’t entirely sure if her attire would keep her warm long enough to seek refuge. Her brown jacket wouldn’t be enough against the snow just as her blue hoodie underneath it.

“Whatever, at least I’m not half naked.” She muttered to herself and dragged herself through the thick snow. “I can keep whatever is left of my dignity.” Snorting in disbelief to herself after saying that.

“I need to wait this weather out somewhere warm in the meantime. Something tells me that I’m definitely not in Alaska or Wisconsin.” Marlene sighed, slightly annoyed due to her circumstances, and trudged along into the blizzard. Her boots weren’t suited for winter as well. She can already feel the snow going into them.

The temperature was bringing back some bad foggy memories and she was just glad that nobody was pouring steaming hot water on her at the same time.

~

Marlene shivered and her teeth chattered, wrists twitching against the leather binds, as she was barely able to recover from the bucket of cold water with ice in them getting poured right on her before the bucket of hot water after that.

Dissociation was her friend in this moment as she zoned out while muting out their voices.

Biting onto her tongue and cheek from the inside of her mouth to prevent herself from screaming when the process was repeated. Soon pneumonia would catch up to her if they don’t use the blowtorch on her later.

“Bluebird, tree frog, ladybug… bluebird, tree frog, ladybug…” Marlene kept repeating those words under her hoarse breath and rocked herself at the same time. It helps her pass the time, soon she’ll be back in her claustrophobically small cell, and a few hours of peace will be granted to her before they bring her back out of there again.

~

How long can this go? It felt longer than ten minutes since she’d been walking in this cold hellhole. Huffing and almost wheezing as Marlene pushed her legs forward while rubbing her arms. On the bright side… At least this isn’t the desert where I could've passed out from a deadly heat stroke by now… She tried to be optimistic about this, really, she did.

The device on her wrist wasn’t helping either.

Something sharp that felt like needles was digging deep into her wrist whenever she tried to yank at it, or make an attempt to take it off, but her attempts were futile for now as it remained on her. Chopping her hand off wasn’t an option.

“Bluebird, tree frog, ladybug, bluebird, tree frog, ladybug, bluebird, tree frog, ladybug…” Marlene repeated and continued on as pausing in mid step once she heard sounds of a helicopter, or more than one, above her. “Oh, I don’t like that.” She muttered and shook her head before increasing the pace throughout the thick snow.

Something caught her eye from the right above as a figure moved through the trees with such speed. Barely able to react and just kept going faster so she could find some civilization with someplace warm to recuperate for the meantime.

Hearing someone yell from the distance with some gunfire as it lasted for about a minute before it abruptly stopped. Quite unsettling for her, but Marlene had to keep her cool, no pun intended, and decided to check it out by changing her direction.

Snow got lower and easier for her to move around. Hopping once Marlene got onto the solid ground and practically jogged towards the source of noise until she ungracefully slipped on the unnoticed ice beneath her, grunting in pain when she landed on her bad side, and went to get back up before stopping when droplets of blood dropped next her to hand.

“Huh?” Looking up and almost slipping again once Marlene immediately noticed a dangling corpse, what appears to be a soviet uniform, or what's left of the body, hanging from a tree with a black wire wrapped around their mangled neck. Her breathing stopped there for a moment.

“What in the- oh, what the actual fucking hell!” Cursing when realizing the blood was getting on her clothes and hastily got back on her feet. Messily wiping it off her sleeve and regulating her breathing pattern before a panic attack hits her.

Furrowing her eyebrows and inspecting the mess noticing the necessities, which is a pistol with ammunition, a few grenades, and a small medkit onto the body. Marlene thought about this for a minute and due to her condition being on the thread right now, her moral compass was completely gray at this very point.

… This is so wrong, but I’m gonna need those… Sighing to herself and reluctantly grabbed a long branch after looking around for a second and began climbing onto the nearby tree with ease. Then jumping onto the same branch that held onto the hanging body, her body ached, but ignored it, she began hitting the pistol off. It took some hits for the weapon to fall off as it landed on the ground.

Letting go of the branch and landing on her feet, well, onto her knees due to staggering slightly. She reached down for the weapon and checked if it was full, which it was, before looking back up to aim for the wire after turning the safety off.

It dropped once she shot it loose as Marlene looked around cautiously before kneeling down next to the corpse to take what she needed. “I’m sorry…” Mumbling under her breath and standing back up right after just looting a dead body.

Somebody would've done the same if they were in my position…

Grimacing when the blood continued flowing and the red liquid almost surrounded the body in the snow. Then Marlene made a move on and kept a wary eye over her shoulder just after that, knowing she likely wasn’t alone out here. It wasn’t safe for anyone like her to be roaming around in the snowy woods.

Jesus… How long will it take for me to get to a nearby town? Marlene was sure enough that she might have to take camp for the night sooner than later or else a wild animal will have her for dinner.

“It would be un-bear-able for me if I got wolf-ed down… heh…” She chuckled dryly to herself for making such a wildlife joke, it was good in her personal opinion, when nobody else was around to hear it.

“Bluebird, tree frog, ladybug, bluebird, tree frog, ladybug, bluebird, tree frog, ladybug…” Marlene continued with the mantra and climbed over a log, wincing with everything in her entire body and began to ache again, as she was mentally and physically overwhelmed.

It wasn’t long before she crumbled down onto the ground with a pained sound. One of the most painful headaches pounded at her head as well. The gun slipped from her shivering hands, she could barely move a limp without feeling like she was back in that dark hole again, getting tortured all over, and it only hurt more when she tried moving.

Tears swelled up in those brown eyes as she eventually stopped writhing with her breathing becoming shallow and black dots blocking her blurred vision.

The last thing that she heard was snow crunching nearby with branches moving as a pair of boots stood in front of her limp form.

#call of duty #cod bo #cod black ops #cod black ops cold war #bocw #cod mwii #call of duty mwii #cod oc #cod original character #philip graves #david mason #gone through time

[charlunday]

Dedicated to @foxdoodles, Annie to go with your Mucha Finnick <3

#i should really start an art tag #the hunger games #annie cresta #odesta #alphonse mucha #people dont talk about her games enough #like when they say a dam broke and she was the best swimmer #it gives the image of just a bunch of people being wiped out immediately #which probably happened #but there had to have been other survivors #so just imagine them #out there for days and days #starving and drowning and freezing #and this is annie just before her victory #floating on her back waiting for it all to end #one way or another