#especially when the person that mutilated him didn’t face any consequences

[shvroyism]

no, I don’t think Aemond should get over the fact that he was permanently mutilated actually

#especially when the person that mutilated him didn’t face any consequences #i say this as someone who is mostly neutral about him

[today-only-happens-once]

clarity

Word count: 5463

Summary:  Hakoda had been hearing rumors about the Fire Lord's son for years. That doesn't mean he is ready when the truth finally comes to light... especially when the truth only confirms the worst. Companion piece to “out of focus” but can be read separately. 

Warnings: injury/burns, angst, some mentions of trauma and PTSD, canonical child abuse/mutilation, Sokka gets angry protective and yells a little, blink-and-you-miss-it mention of nausea, please let me know if I missed anything. 

A/N: Turns out, I really wanted to explore Hakoda’s POV of the events in “out of focus”. So much so that not only did I write this, but’s longer than the original. Woops. Hope you enjoy it!

Read on AO3.

...

His son is good at many things, Hakoda thinks, but his poker face is not one of them. 

He’d had never been particularly good at it, if Hakoda is being honest. He’d usually been able to tell with one glance when Sokka was at fault for something breaking and would blame Katara, and Kya had been even better at reading the micro-expressions of their son. Sokka is older now—and in more ways that Hakoda is comfortable with, he carries those extra years around like a weight on his shoulders—but he still hasn’t quite mastered the art of subtlety. It was something he’d need to work on if he wanted to be chief of the Southern Water Tribe one day. 

Sokka shifts in his seat across from him, his brows pinched slightly in evident annoyance. Hakoda sees the shared glance between his son and the Fire Lord. Zuko’s mouth twitches in something like amusement. 

“I want immediate release of all war prisoners,” the Earth Kingdom ambassador, Bashi, beside Sokka demands.

Hakoda inclines his head. “I second that. I have men in those prisons that haven’t seen their family in a decade.”

Hakoda couldn’t imagine what that would be like. Two years apart from his children had caused him to feel like he’d already missed out on so much of their lives. The idea of going five times that without any news from the outside… Suffice it to say that Hakoda did not envy those men.

“Of course,” the Fire Lord says, but his voice is nearly swallowed by the loud demand down the table, “Absolutely not!”

The hard glare that Fire Lord Zuko sends down the table at the Fire Nation Admiral makes Hakoda grateful that he is not on the receiving end of it. “Admiral, people who were arrested as prisoners of war have no need to remain so after the war has ended.” Zuko meets Hakoda’s gaze, the heat in his glare lifting at the redirection of attention. “I’ll draft that mandate tonight and will ensure its circulation as soon as possible.”

The Fire Lord—dressed in the traditional royal robes and his hair pulled into a top knot—is a stark contrast to the first time Hakoda had met him back in Boiling Rock. At the time, Zuko had been Fire Nation public enemy number 2 behind Aang. The tattered red tunic of Fire Nation prison uniforms had hung off his thin, borderline-malnourished frame. He looks better now, a little. Zuko is still lean, but not quite as gaunt as he’d looked in the Fire Nation prison. Hakoda’s biggest concern when it came to the Fire Lord’s well-being these days was the dark circles around his eyes that, though he tries to hide it, indicate too many sleepless nights.

“This is an outrage!” The admiral slams his fist against the table, leaping to his feet.

Hakoda feels his jaw clench in frustration. He has little patience for men who try to assert themselves through aggression and yelling rather than calm rationality. Even so, it doesn’t surprise him, exactly. Hakoda had been around long enough to know that Fire Nation men had long been taught there was power through anger, and to wield it as they see fit.

Zuko rises to meet his feet, slowly and deliberately. “Admiral--”

“Where is the justice for the Fire Nation families whose sons and daughters were slaughtered by those criminals?”

Hakoda presses his hands together to keep them from curling into fists. Did the Admiral not realize just how many Fire Nation soldiers walked free after slaughtering  innocent people, let alone soldiers? Even the person who killed Kya--

“Admiral.”

“I remember a time when you cared about Fire Nation soldiers! And it’s hard to believe you’ve forgotten, seeing as you ought to be reminded every time you so much as look in the mirror--”

Hakoda frowns. The comment rings vague bells in his head, though he can’t remember why…

“Enough!” Zuko snaps sharply. “You will watch your tongue or you will be escorted out. You approach insubordination.”

“You are a child,” the admiral says, spitting the word child like it disgusts him, “though one that ought to know a thing or two about insubordination, given your father’s attempts to brand you with a permanent reminder of its consequences--”

“Warriors!”

“Then again, he always was twice the leader you never will be. Long live the Phoenix King!” 

Sokka is suddenly on his feet. “Zuko—!”

“Sokka—!”

Hakoda leaps up just as the admiral punches a fireball at the space between his son and the Fire Lord. His heart jumps to his throat, but Zuko is fast. He shoves Sokka’s shoulder down with one hand and dispels the fireball with the other. Hakoda leaps over his chair as he sees the glint of his son’s boomerang hook through the air. 

The admiral’s gaze locks onto him for a moment and Hakoda instinctively ducks, diving underneath a bolt of scorching flames. He feels the ground tremble, hears the roar of dying flames above him. Hakoda risks a glance towards his son just in time to see Zuko step in front of him, bending the burst of flames to split on either side of them, rather than hit Sokka straight on. 

The door ricochets open. Two Kyoshi Warriors spill into the room, and in a flurry of quick strikes, the admiral drops to the floor. Limp.

Bashi unbinds his feet with the bending from earlier—it’s only now that Hakoda realizes that tremble in the ground a moment ago had been earthbending—and the admiral hurls insults at Zuko as he’s dragged unceremoniously through the doors. 

The silence that follows echoes in the room. 

Hakoda takes a quick, calculating sweep of the room. Kovrik, the Northern Water Tribe ambassador, is wide-eyed but appears unharmed. Bashi is panting but standing upright. Sokka is hidden behind Zuko who shifts awkwardly in the silence.

He clears his throat. “Apologies for the, uh, disruption. It won’t happen again.” He looks, for all the world, genuinely apologetic. Embarrassed, even.

Which is foolish, Hakoda thinks. Zuko couldn’t reasonably be expected to have weeded out all of the Ozai sympathizers in a month. Ozai may have been one person but there was an entire ideology and system that allowed his tyranny in the first place. A sixteen-year-old couldn’t be asked to single-handedly dismantle it all, and certainly not so quickly. 

“It’s not your fault, Fire Lord Zuko,” he tells him. 

“I appreciate that, Chief Hakoda,” Zuko says. Behind him, Sokka sucks in a breath through his teeth and Hakoda feels his chest twinge in concern. He had fought in a war long enough to hear the pain laced through the noise. Zuko turns around to look at him, then turns back around sharply to address the room. “We will adjourn the meeting for today. We will reconvene tomorrow.”

Zuko hides it well, Hakoda thinks, but there’s an urgency to his words hidden behind a carefully constructed mask of stoicism that leaves no room for doubt in Hakoda’s mind. Sokka is hurt.

“But Fire Lord Zuko—”

“I think we could all use a breather, Kovrik,” Hakoda jumps in, not eager for another argument to break out. “Coming back tomorrow with a clear head is a good decision.” Besides, the sooner he can clear the room of other people, the sooner he could check on Sokka who Zuko was—almost protectively—keeping from view. 

“Yes,” Kovrick acquiesces, though Hakoda can tell he’s still not pleased. “Yes, I suppose that’s fair.”

Zuko nods his appreciation. Kovrik, Bashi, and the few other dignitaries that had been in the room bustle out the door. Hakoda waits until it’s latched shut behind them before he turns his full attention towards his son. Zuko has already turned his full attention to him, saying something in a low voice. 

Hakoda can sees the clench of his son’s jaw and the slight wince as he places his hand in Zuko’s. Hakoda steps up behind the Fire Lord, peering over his shoulder. His chest tightens a little in sympathy when he sees the blistering, angry red skin on the back of his son’s hand.

“Do you have anything that can help?” he asks of the Fire Lord, frowning. He thinks briefly of calling Kovrik back in before he remembers that the Northern Water Tribe’s men, even when benders, didn’t typically learn its healing abilities. 

“Yes, sir,” Zuko replies, not taking his gaze from Sokka’s hand as if he could heal it by staring at it hard enough. “Though it’s not quite as immediate as waterbending healers. But it should help with the pain and prevent infection. Follow me.”

Hakoda follows as Zuko guides Sokka by the elbow out the door of the meeting room and through a network of hallways. There’s something almost jarring about it to Hakoda. The image of the Fire Lord leading his Water Tribe son through the palace to get him help, rather than as a prisoner, has a part of Hakoda’s mind reeling. Sokka’s blue clothing stands out against the dark reds and blacks that adorn the walls and pillars around them.

How quickly times had changed.

Hakoda thinks back to the conversation in the meeting a few moments ago as he watches the back of Zuko’s head, moving quickly down the corridor with Sokka in tow. Rumors and propaganda about the Fire Nation, and especially about its leader, flew quickly amongst the ranks of soldiers in the war. It had been difficult to know fact from fiction, especially as it related to the royal family. 

A year ago—the memory comes crystal clear to Hakoda now—one of the men on his crew named Horrak had told him what he’d been certain was an exaggerated, hyperbolic story. Something about the Fire Lord and his thirteen-year-old son. On Tui and La, I swear it’s true. Heard it from the mouth of a Fire Nation soldier myself who was actually there.

He’s a tyrant and cruel, Hakoda had said, rolling his eyes because the idea was just… incomprehensible, but there’s no way Ozai would do that to his own flesh and blood. He’s too proud of his bloodline anyway. 

Zuko glances over his shoulder at Sokka, and Hakoda sees the angry scar across half of his face. The words of the admiral in the meeting whisper in the back of Hakoda’s mind in a way that makes his stomach turn. Your father’s attempts to brand you… Hakoda had thought that surely, surely, even Ozai had a line in the sand when it came to his own family. 

He’s less confident of that now.

Zuko says something to two of the guards stationed at the set of double doors that Hakoda doesn’t quite catch, and then slips through the door. Hakoda follows close behind. 

“Wait here,” Zuko says, and then vanishes through a door on the far side of the room.

Hakoda glances around the room. It was a bedroom, but Hakoda had a hard time believing it was Zuko’s. It seemed too simple of a room to belong to the Fire Lord. Then again, Zuko had been full of surprises from the very first time Hakoda had met him. 

He looks to his son, noticing the tight grimace to his face and the very slight sway and grabs the chair beside the bed to get his son to sit before he falls face first into the floor. 

“You had good reflexes in there,” Hakoda says. He’d dealt enough with injured Water Tribesmen to know that distraction was usually the best way to help them deal with the pain of a burn. He had no doubt that his son was no exception to that. 

“Lots of practice,” Sokka replies, obediently taking a seat. He hisses out another breath as his grip around the arms of the chair stretches the skin across the back of his hand. He swears under his breath.

“Easy,” Hakoda says softly, bracing a hand on his son’s back. 

The comment from his son makes his chest twist, but he can’t very well deny it. His son had seen more combat in the past year than he’d hoped he’d have to in his lifetime. Hakoda knows that it was an unreasonable expectation for his son to somehow be the exception to generations of pain. It wasn’t that he didn’t think Sokka would be able to handle the fight—Sokka always been able to hold his own—but could you blame a father for wanting to spare his son the experience of waking up from nightmares, haunted by the people he couldn’t save?

Hakoda dealt with that enough for the both of them.

“Wish Katara was here,” Sokka says. 

“I know,” Hakoda tells him. “Unfortunately, I don’t think she’s coming to Caldera for a while. She’s still in Ba Sing Se with Aang.” She and Aang were working on their own negotiations of reparations and treatises. Caldera was only one location of many that were in the middle of such conversations.

“Yeah, yeah, I know,” Sokka sighs. “Her magic water comes in handy, though… Get it? Hand-y?”

Hakoda snorts. That’s the kind of joke he used to make to get Kya to smile.

The door across the room opens again. Zuko emerges with his arms wrapped around a giant tub of water, several vials and rags gripped in his hands. He’d also pulled his hair out of the top knot so that it falls into his face, shaggy and unbrushed. It makes him look younger somehow. 

Spirits, he really is only sixteen, isn’t he?

The Fire Lord seems to be studiously avoiding both his and his son’s gaze as he crosses back to him and sets the washbasin at Sokka’s feet. The realization twists uncomfortably in Hakoda’s stomach. 

“Can I see your hand?” Zuko says in what is perhaps the softest voice Hakoda has ever heard come from the teen’s mouth. 

Sokka blinks. “Yeah. Sure.” 

Hakoda crosses his arms over his chest and watches as Zuko examines his son’s hand. The Fire Lord handles it with care, mindful of the injury even as he inspects closely. His brow is furrowed in concentration and there’s a long beat of silence. Sokka is almost uncharacteristically quiet, but Hakoda doesn’t miss the very slight way his shoulders seem to ease. There’s a familiarity between them, Hakoda realizes, and it makes him wonder in the back of his mind if maybe this wasn’t the first time they helped each other. 

“I don’t think it’ll have permanent damage,” Zuko says eventually. “But I still need to treat it so it doesn’t get infected. It… might hurt a little. But then it should feel better.”

Hakoda sees his son swallow. “No permanent damage. That’s good.” He nods, evidently steeling himself. “Okay.”

Zuko looks for a moment like he’s about to say something else, but seems to change his mind. Instead, he busies himself with wringing a cloth in the basin of water, into which he had emptied the contents of the vials. Hakoda’s gaze flickers again to the scar on his face and wonders if he might be so intimately familiar with the care of burns from his own experience. 

Hakoda wonders if there was someone else to help him and teach him. Perhaps that uncle that he and Sokka had mentioned. Iroh, Hakoda thinks his name is, though that would mean the uncle was General Iroh, as in the Dragon of the West. That seemed unlikely to the chief. No way this “wise old guy” who apparently spent his free time giving advice and making tea was also the same person who laid siege to Ba Sing Se for six-hundred days.

He watches Zuko press the rag gingerly to the back of Sokka’s hand and Sokka yelps, yanking his hand back. 

“I’m sorry,” Zuko says immediately with a bit of a grimace. “This part is painful, but it’ll stop hurting in a minute.”

Hakoda listens to the strained breathing of his son, taking a step towards him before Sokka manages, “Right. Right, sorry.” 

“Don’t be,” Zuko tells him. “I know it hurts.”

Hakoda watches from behind Sokka as his son places his hand back in Zuko’s, who slowly but gingerly presses the rag back to his hand. There’s a casual intimacy to the way that Sokka willingly gives over his injury to the Fire Lord. An assured immediacy to Sokka’s movement combined with the extraordinarily careful way in which Zuko handles it that surprises him. He’d known, intellectually, that his children had become close with the Fire Lord. But the moments in which Hakoda got to be witness to that friendship sometimes still caught him off guard, even all these months later. 

It even folded into the way they fought beside each other. Hakoda had gotten very fleeting glimpses of it back in Boiling Rock, but he’d seen it more clearly in the meeting room a few minutes ago. They watched each other’s back, protecting one another without getting in each other’s way, like it was a rehearsed dance. Hakoda had watched the way Zuko stepped in front of flames to protect his son and had seen the way Sokka had timed his boomerang through to ensure the next fireball directed at Zuko would be kicked wide. 

For a long moment, the only sound heard in the room is the quiet splash of water as Zuko submerges the rag again and wrings it out. Hakoda glances at the Fire Lord’s face and wonders if Zuko had always had a habit of facing flames head-on. 

“What did the admiral mean,” Sokka blurts out suddenly, breaking the silence, “when he talked about insubordination?”

Hakoda’s lips press into a thin line, his gaze flickering briefly to his son before flitting back to Zuko. Zuko’s eyes had gone wide, the rag in his hand frozen half-out of the bowl. He blinks. “What--uh. I, uh.” Hakoda sees his hand clench around the rag and the way he takes a careful, intentional breath. “When I was younger, I spoke out at a meeting.”

Zuko busies himself back to tending to Sokka’s hand. Hakoda, however, feels something sink like an anchor in his stomach. He goes very, very still.

“After the stuff at Ba Sing Se? When you went home?” Sokka asks, and Hakoda realizes that he hasn’t heard the same rumors he had. Rumors that were at least a little bit true, but surely not all of it. Surely--

“No, I uh.” Zuko coughs a bit. “Before that. Before… yeah. Earlier.” 

“What happened?”

Hakoda stays quiet but he keeps his eyes on Zuko, who looks for all the world like a wild snow leopard caribou that had been cornered. His shoulders tense and Hakoda wonders, very briefly, if he might make a run for it. His jaw clenches, and he shifts to the balls of his feet.

Zuko doesn’t run.

Instead, he seems to focus even more on the administrations he’s giving to Sokka’s injury, as if healing something else might be able to protect him from his own old wounds coming under scrutiny.

“My uncle allowed me to attend a war meeting,” Zuko begins after a long beat as he wraps a fresh bandage around Sokka’s hand, “where they were talking about some battle strategies to use against an Earth Kingdom battalion. There was a general that wanted our newest fleet to serve as a distraction while we mounted an attack from the rear.”

Hakoda feels for a moment like he’s standing on cracking ice. He heard about that attack. The few members of that battalion spoke of how victorious they’d felt, decimating an entire fleet of rookie Fire Nation soldiers only to be attacked from the rear. Hakoda had spoken two years ago with one of the Earth Kingdom soldiers that had escaped, had listened as she recounted the bloodbath it had been. 

They must have known, she’d been saying with a haunted, far-away look to her eyes, that we’d win against a bunch of newbie soldiers. It was like they were served up as goat-dogs for slaughter. Just a… distraction. Ozai doesn’t even care about his own people. 

That conversation had been two years ago. Which meant—

“That’s not fair,” Sokka says. “Your newest recruits? They’d be slaughtered by an experienced battalion like that.” Hakoda feels a brief flicker of pride through the growing tightness in his chest. His son is far smarter than he gave himself credit for. 

“Exactly,” Zuko sighs, bitterness dripping from his voice like venom. “And that’s what I told them. I wasn’t thinking. I just… yelled at him.” Zuko secures the end of the bandage to Sokka’s palm slowly, as if reluctant to be done with the process. “My father didn’t… take it well. I was challenged to an Agni Kai, and I thought I would be facing the general in it, so I accepted.”

The steadily growing tightness in Hakoda’s chest snaps around his lungs like a steel band. So even the worst rumors—the ones he’d been certain couldn’t possibly be true, not about that, not even Ozai—had been true. And it was all because he tried to save people’s lives. 

Hakoda does not have a weak stomach, but it rolls with the lead weight of realization. 

Zuko still doesn’t look at either one of them. Unable to keep his attention on helping Sokka’s injury, he turns his attention instead to gathering the basin of water and the empty vials and used rags. Something to keep his hands—his attention—busy. Hakoda had seen some of the men he fought with do the same thing when talking about stories they mostly tried to forget. 

“No…” Sokka says in a low voice, and Hakoda knows from the horror in his voice that his son is starting to put the pieces together too.

“It wasn’t the general,” Zuko confirms, his voice quiet and heavy in the silence around them. “It was my father.”

“You faced your father in an Agni Kai?” Sokka asks.

“Not exactly. I…” Zuko stares down at the bowl, his gold gaze looking a thousand miles away. “I couldn’t fight my own father. Instead, I begged him for forgiveness. I was met with a fist full of flames.” Zuko waves a hand towards his face. 

I begged him for forgiveness. 

Hakoda thinks of the version Horrack had told him. I heard the kid was kneeling in front of him when it happened—

“He--” Sokka also sounds at a loss of words, his voice choking off. 

“I was banished after that,” Zuko continues and his voice is hollow in a way that ricochets like shrapnel. Hakoda watches him meet his son’s gaze. “I was told to bring the Avatar back and all would be forgiven, or to not come back at all. That was before you and your sister woke Aang up from the iceberg.”

He hears what Zuko won’t say.  It was before there’d been confirmation that the Avatar was still around at all. He’d been banished from his home and told to chase a ghost. It was an impossible task. Ozai didn’t want his son to come home at all, Hakoda realizes. And from the tight way Zuko swallows, he’s pretty sure Zuko knows it too. 

Hakoda clenches his grip into a fist to mask the tremble to his hands. Zuko had done the right thing at that meeting—had tried to spare lives—and had still asked for forgiveness. Begged for it. And Ozai had lit his hand on fire and… and… painfully mutilated his own son and then kicked him out, telling him to chase a legend. In some ways, Hakoda thinks, it was crueler than telling him not to come back at all. 

Zuko is sixteen. But he is still a child, though saddled with the weight of righting a century of conflict on his back. And Hakoda knows that the Agni Kai had been three years ago. 

“How old were you?” Sokka asks tightly. 

Spirits above, he was only—

“Thirteen,” Zuko says, and Hakoda sighs, shutting his eyes against the confirmation. 

“Thir--” Sokka cuts himself off, his voice strained. “Thirteen. Tui and La, when I was thirteen--” he breaks off again.

Hakoda knows what Sokka is thinking about. Sokka was thirteen when he’d left to join the war effort. He’d tried so hard to keep Sokka as safe as he could. Protect his childhood from being stolen more than the war and the loss of his mother already had. He’d seen the stubborn set to Sokka’s jaw when he’d chased after him onto the ship gangplank, and Hakoda knew that Sokka was just as protective as he was. He’d asked him to look out for the village, for Katara. 

Hakoda would have done anything in the world to keep Sokka safe. He still felt that way, despite all the ways that Sokka had proven he could hold his own. He couldn’t help it. He wouldn’t want to. Sokka was his boy. Not so little anymore, not so innocent. He’d seen and been through too much, and Hakoda had missed most of it. But he’d tried. He’d tried to keep him safe for as long as he could manage. 

At thirteen, Zuko had been hurt by a person he’d loved and then thrown out into the world with barely a second thought. The Fire Nation had robbed him, too, of so much. Too much. 

Sokka takes a sudden step towards him and Zuko visibly tenses as if expecting a blow. Sokka freezes in place. “Zuko…”

Zuko shakes his head quickly, and there’s a small part of Hakoda that uncoils when he sees the way Zuko’s gaze doesn’t look quite so distant anymore. “Anyway. That’s--that’s what the admiral was talking about.”

“You…” Sokka sounds close to tears. “You were his kid.”

“Yeah, well.” Zuko looks at Sokka again. “He spent most of my life wishing I wasn’t.”

Hakoda’s jaw tenses. He looks at Zuko who looks, for all the world, like a sixteen-year-old kid, with his shaggy hair falling into his face and in Fire Lord clothes that are maybe just a touch too big for him. At thirteen—barely a teenager—he’d spoken up out of an intense desire to keep more people safe. To save lives. In Hakoda’s eyes, Zuko was a hero. Just for that. 

How anyone could look at him and not be proud was far beyond Hakoda. 

“Zuko,” he says, and Zuko’s gaze flashes over to him almost like he’d forgotten Hakoda was there in the first place. “I… hope you understand that you didn’t deserve that.” 

The words fall short of what he wants to say, of what he means. But they feel important to him. Zuko deserved better from his nation and especially from his own father. Hakoda doesn’t know very much about the former royal family, but he doesn’t get the impression that Zuko heard that a lot. And if nobody else was going to make sure Zuko knows that he deserves better, Hakoda will at least try. 

Something softens a little in Zuko’s gaze. “I know, sir,” he says. “It… I didn’t at first. It took me a long time to understand that it was wrong of my father to do that. But I know that now.”

Hakoda inclines his head. It is a small mercy against the tremendous pain the kid carries on his back, but it’s something. And as far as Hakoda is concerned, it’s not a small thing, either.

“Where is he?” Sokka demands in a near growl.

Zuko blinks, looking far more surprised by Sokka’s outrage than Hakoda is. “Where’s who?”

“Ozai.”

“Sokka, what are you going to do? Fight him?” Zuko looks completely bewildered. “He already lost.”

“Against Aang, not against—did Aang even know?”

“Um, I guess I don’t know. I never told him. I… never told any of you.”

“Yeah--and what’s that about, huh?” Sokka takes a step forward. “Why didn’t you tell us?”

Hakoda takes a step towards his son. “Sokka,” he warns. 

He wants to explain to him that sometimes things are hard to talk about. Spirits know there were things Hakoda had seen in his days involved in the war that he didn’t want to talk about and hoped he never would have to. He wanted to explain that events like that, things that linger on the edges of your nightmares and follow in lock-step with your shadow, had a nasty habit of strangling in your throat so that the words don’t come. That it is easier to carry those things close to your chest rather than lay them bare for the world to see. 

But Sokka is fuming and cuts his father off. “What, did you think we wouldn’t care? That it wouldn’t matter?”

“It doesn’t matter!” Zuko hurls back at him, waving a hand towards the bedroom window. “My father already lost to the Avatar, Sokka. The war is over. The fighting is over. Aang took his bending. And that—I don’t know about you, but that’s the best, most justified end to his legacy I can think of.” 

There’s a long, heavy moment of silence. Hakoda watches the way his son’s shoulders heave with angry breaths, his non-injured hand curled into a fist. Sokka had always been fiercely, desperately protective. It runs in the family, Hakoda thinks idly. But this wasn’t something Sokka could protect Zuko from. The damage had already been done. 

Hakoda thinks, perhaps, that such a truth only makes it harder for his son to deal with. 

“Wherever he is,” Sokka growls, “I hope he rots. He deserves worse.” 

Zuko blinks, his eyes wide. Hakoda wonders briefly if Zuko has ever had someone be angry on his behalf, rather than angry with him. 

Sokka evidently doesn’t understand his surprise. “Don’t tell me you disagree—”

“No,” Zuko says quickly. “I just… nothing.” He offers the barest hint of a smile at Sokka. The reminder of the familiarity between them relaxes some of the tightness in Hakoda’s chest just a fraction. 

There’s a long beat as Hakoda hears his son suck in a deep, slow breath. Zuko’s gaze falls from Sokka’s, drifting back to the basin of water beside him. Zuko’s fingers twitch at his side. He looks suddenly uncomfortable, Hakoda thinks. Nervous, almost. 

“Thank you for helping Sokka’s hand, Firelord Zuko,” Hakoda says suddenly, and maybe it’s a foolish way to convey to him that this didn’t change their opinion of him. At least, not for Hakoda… and from his surge of protective anger, he’s pretty sure the same goes for his son. Zuko was still Zuko. And if maybe he made sure to call him Fire Lord as a quiet reminder that Hakoda did not think him less of a leader either, then maybe that was okay too.

Hakoda sees the slightly pink tinge to Zuko’s cheeks as he meets Hakoda’s gaze. But he reads the understanding in those gold eyes as well. “Oh. Uh, of course, sir. And… just Zuko is fine.” Thank you, is the unspoken words that flit across the teen’s gold eyes.

Hakoda smiles a little, inclining his head. “Understood.” He turns his attention then to his son. ”I should draft a letter to Bato tonight to update him on the treaty. Will you be okay without me?”

Sokka rolls his eyes, but the corner of his mouth is tilted up in a half-smile. “Yeah, dad. I think I can manage.”

Hakoda gives Sokka’s shoulder one last squeeze and a nod to Zuko before he ducks out of the room to give them both a moment to talk more. He closes the door behind him, pausing long enough to take a breath. 

Generations of conflict had been ended a few months ago by a bunch of kids with too much weight on their shoulders and too many shadows clinging to their edges. But at their heart, they were good people trying to do good things. Spirits know they all had plenty of reasons to be otherwise. War had a nasty habit of bringing out the worst in people, of demanding sacrifices to who you are. It could latch onto the darkest parts of you and pull until it was all that remained. He’s grateful that the group of kids that ended the Hundred Year War managed to keep the best of themselves despite everything, and that they continued to do so.

Hakoda had learned a long time ago that goodness is a choice. And he’s grateful that the world was in the hands of people like his kids, like Aang, like Zuko. Kids who, despite everything and all the ways people tried to pull their darkness out of them, continued to make that choice.

#atla #zuko #avatar the last airbender #atla fanfiction #hakoda #zuko fanfiction #hakoda fanfiction #injury #argument #child abuse #mutilation #please heed warnings #ptsd #trauma

[xparadisexlostx]

Palaemon

So this is a ficlet I’ve been working on for a while now. I don’t know if it’s really going to go anywhere, but I’ve worked on the first chapter, editing and deleting shit for a while and while I have some issues with it, I wanna post it just because of all the work I’ve put into it.

This story will have some body gore/mutilation, and especially as it goes on just elements of things that are Not Ok (and I mean that in a SHIELD brought Coulson back to life against his will and I fully believe they do shady/potentially immoral experiments way). 

I have a whole profile for Winnie that I’ll link when I find it lmfao.

“Data log six-four-seven. Project name: Palaemon. This is project head Dr. Winifred Fletcher.” She wanted to make her voice a monotone over the recording, but as she passed the guards at the entry point and headed up the drive she could feel a shiver of fear crawl up her spine that caused an unconscious little quiver in her tone. It’d been a long time since she’d personally done any field documentation. Years, even. Back when she’d been young and zealous and determined to make a name for herself at SHIELD. Now she had dozens of low-level researchers and new hires in those same shoes she had been, eager to run headfirst into danger if it meant getting her approval. She didn’t have time to deconstruct how she felt about that. SHIELD had always kept her too busy.

She pressed the button on her recording device again. “It is May twenty first two-thousand-and-fourteen. I have been called in to assess a scene at cite three-nine-nine. All seven agents deployed are active participants in Palaemon and were last administered compound HDR 3-00-1 six days ago: the fifteenth of May, two-thousand-and-fourteen. All participants were cleared by medical staff before deployment two days ago, with no unusual side-effects documented during examination.”

Her voice had returned to its normal, professional drone, but something was making her deeply uneasy.

She wasn’t afraid of death. She wasn’t even particularly afraid of pain. It wasn’t the dark gravel drive only illuminated by headlights, or the dilapidated building that leaned like its tired wooden bones might snap at any second that sent chills up her spine. Part of the lure of SHIELD was the thrill of danger, and the morbid, twisted curiosity that came from the unknown. She didn’t fear any external force… only herself and the consequences of her own actions.

Her foot pressed just a little too hard on the brake as she stopped, and it threw her roughly against the seatbelt, which locked like a retractable leash around the neck of an ill trained poodle. A little cough left her, and she groped blindly beside her for the gear shift before finally freeing herself of her bindings. She snatched a bag from the passenger seat and pushed open the door. Immediately the night air rushed around her, heavy and humid, clinging to her skin, laying on her chest, and making it harder to breathe. Cicadas were droning a loud, repetitive song in the trees around her, and by the time she began ascending the stairs to the porch, her heavy breathing had fallen in sync with the alien music.

There was a terrible smell coming from the house, like that of wasting fish and burned fat. And someone was crying. Soft piteous whimpers that turned into wails that escaped the cracks of the open windows. Winnie recognized the voice as Veronica Cooper---one of the field agents who had recently joined Project Palaemon. There were other voices, talking in soft, short sentences that she assumed were platitudes that would make the agent calm down, but she couldn’t quite make out the words. She did note, as she pulled on a pair of sterile gloves, that the attempts apparently failed. The crying only grew louder and more desperate. 

She opened the half cracked door and felt a hard lump form in her throat. When the stench hit her eyes they immediately began to burn in their sockets. Directly inside the doorway, a dead agent was lying prone on the floor, his face straight down in a puddle brown vomit streaked with blood that, upon further investigation, appeared to be his own. His body was covered in bites and scratch marks, his shirt was ripped away to reveal a bloated stomach, and in his still clenched fists he was clutching shards of glass. Winnie looked around, her headlamp only illuminating fractions of the hall at a time, each just as bloody and horrific as the scene in front of her. She determined he must be holding onto the remnants of a light fixture that had been ripped forcefully from the ceiling. Wires were hanging from the hole, and directly below, the metal fixture had been discarded---it’s lightbulbs torn out. Why? The shards were too small to use as weapons. Perhaps he’d been holding onto the light as he was being attacked? Possible. But…

From her bag she produced a tongue depressor as she knelt down by the body. Carefully, she pulled back his lips as best she could. Shards of glass glittered in the bright light of her head lamp. They were deeply embedded in his gums and crushed between his teeth. He’d been eating them when he died. That possibly explained the vomit. But what could possess a man to do something like that? 

“Doctor Fletcher?” A man’s voice called. An agent she didn’t know. She heard Cooper screech and then begin to violently sob. The old, thin floors shook as the vibrations from the other room carried down the hall. That same male agent swore, and there was a scraping sound of wood on wood as if someone had run into a table or a chair. She was going to have to make her assessment of the dead wait until she had dealt with the living.

Winnie carried on down the hall, gingerly stepping over and around everything she could. Blood was smeared along the peeling remnants of wallpaper. And there were no lights except for that which came from her flashlight. Fixtures were ripped out of the ceiling, and there was a lamp on the floor that had been violently shattered with three disembodied, mangled fingers laying in the wreckage. She passed the dining room, her light just barely illuminating three mutilated figures. Each with swollen stomachs and eyes that had been torn from their sockets. They had fallen close to the entryway, each with a single bullet hole in their heads. But she couldn’t stop to observe them the way she wanted to.

By the time she reached the living room, Cooper’s wailing was so loud it made her ears ring. There was no light at all coming from the doorway, and she frowned. Her confusion didn’t last long. The second she stepped into the room, headlamp blazing, Veronica Cooper began to screech and howl like a wild animal. She was handcuffed, but it still took two other agents to restrain her. They were trying to keep hold of her arms while a third agent was attempting to put a blanket over her completely nude upper half. 

“Will you cut that fucking lamp off?!” One of the agents hissed as Veronica bit into his arm like a rabid animal. Blood began to bubble out of the wound and dribble through Cooper’s parted lips before the third agent managed to forcibly pry her jaw off.

The doctor hesitated for a moment, needing to get at least a preliminary glance at the agent Cooper. She looked much like the dead bodies in the dining room. Her stomach was heavily bloated, and one of her eyes was missing from its socket. Claw marks and bites were all over her exposed upper body, and her hand was missing three fingers that Winnie assumed matched those she’d seen in the hall. 

She turned off the headlamp. 

Immediately Cooper went from a raving wild woman, to a crumpled, sobbing creature. When the blanket was brought back to her, she didn’t resist. At least not that Winnie could see. Granted, she couldn’t see much. The only light in the room came from a trickle of moonlight that snuck its way through the torn curtains.

“Agent Cooper.” The doctor stepped forward blindly. It didn’t draw any visible or audible response from the agent. “Agent Cooper, can you understand me? It’s Doctor Fletcher. Can you tell me what happened?”

No response.

One of the agents restraining her chimed in. “When we arrived at the house Agent Cooper and three others were alive. Cooper was in the hall, and we managed to restrain her. I heard crying coming from the downstairs bathroom. There was also gurgling and---running water. No one responded when I called out for them, but when I stepped into the room and they saw my headlamp, they started screaming. I ran, thinking I could calm them down or find some way to restrain them if I could get back to the other agents, but they pinned me down in the dining room, and Tillman and Renolds were forced to open fire. When the scene was secured we attempted to speak to Agent Cooper, but she was confused. She hasn’t said much aside from ‘I’m sorry’ or ‘please’ or ‘water.’”

She nodded and bit the inside of her cheek. “And the others? This was a seven man team. We’re missing two agents.”

“We searched the house and the two exterior buildings but they were clear. Best guess is when things got weird they bolted.”

 “Or they did this to them and fled the scene.” The man who had been bitten growled. He was holding onto Veronica with a vice grip now. She couldn’t see him properly, but the way the poor girl’s shoulder was awkwardly raised while the rest of her shadowy form slumped lifelessly toward the floor was proof of his tight hold on her. “We got a search team out in the forest looking for the-shit!”

Fletcher saw his shadow contort awkwardly as he tried to maintain his grip and distance himself from Veronica all at once.

“Jesus fuck-Renolds grab her. Grab her!” 

“What--why? You’ve-”

There was a thud as the agent dropped her completely and stepped back. “She’s licking the blood off my fucking arm!”

“Water.” Agent Cooper was hoarse from all her screaming, and there was desperation in her tone. The men shuffled awkwardly as Veronica attempted to get closer to the bleeding man again. “Please! Water!”

“Can’t you give her something?” 

“No.” Fletcher said, her response automatic. She wasn’t sure what was turning faster, her mind or her stomach. But she knew that they couldn’t give Veronica anything. Not yet. “There’s a medical transport outside parked behind me. They’ve been instructed on what to do, but ride with them back to HQ and help them keep her contained. Afterwards my staff will assess any injuries you have and release you back to your duties.”

There was a long silence.

She was glad it was dark. If her light was still on, she would have likely seen disgust on their faces. It was on hers. Here she was denying Veronica even the slightest semblance of peace. It was callous at best, and unforgivably monstrous at worst. But HDR 3-00-1 was one of the most bizarre drugs she’d ever worked with and these were their first human trials. Any drug, even a mild sedative, could interfere with accurate lab results. As soon as she’d been given a full examination, her team would give her the best care SHIELD could offer. Fletcher would make sure of it.

One of the men cleared his throat. “The search party will radio you directly if they find anything.”

The agents had to carry Veronica out of the house. She fought them all the way down the hall, but once she saw the light of the med-transport there was no containing her agonized screams. When her cuffs were released she began clawing at her own face, and when the agents pulled them away, she fought them like a wild animal. One of the med staff caught a foot in the jaw as they laid her onto the metal gurney and pulled the straps up to restrain her. Even after one of the men pulled off his jacket and draped it across her face to blot out the light, she continued to howl and buck against the restraints, nearly tipping the gurney onto the ground. The last thing she heard as they pulled the doors shut was Veronica Cooper’s raspy, haggard voice begging for water.

[sirrriusblack]

Prompt(its probably wierd so u don't necessarily need to do it) Remus does bad on a test (actually bad,please don't let it become good in the end) and sirius/marauders/lily (whoever u r comfortable with) talk or do something to comfort him Maybe this could be jily if u don't wanna write wolfstar

I loved writing this, thank you!!

PS: I had no intention of making it this long, but here we are :)

* * *

Remus’ POV:

“What’d you get?” James asked as we made our way back to the common room. James’ face was lit up, a big, loud grin adorning his face. He’d gotten 100 percent on the transfiguration test we’d had. James had every right to be proud, he’d studied to no end. The only problem I had was that I’d also studied just as much, and I’d gotten 17 percent. I’d failed the test. It wasn’t like I’d gotten on the verge of failing and passing either—no, I was nowhere near passing. 17 percent. But the boys didn’t need to know that. I forced a small smile to my face, hoping it was convincing enough.

“83,” I lied through my teeth. Pete clapped me on the back. The four of us had just finished transfiguration, our last class for the day. Sirius had linked his hand in mine the moment we’d left class.

“Well done mate,” Womtail said. I nodded, wanting to just get alone for a moment. Sirius and I locked eyes, and I dropped his hand and quickly looked away from the concern in his eyes.

“Oh, I forgot, I need to go to the library to grab a book. I’ll be back.” I turned and made to walk away before Sirius chimed in.

“I’ll come with you!” he smiled, taking a step closer. I wanted nothing more than for him to come with me, to tell him about the test, to have him talk me down from the downwards spiral I was falling into. But it was just a stupid test. I’d get over it.

“No, uh… I’ll be fine thanks.” I muttered, just needing a moment to myself, to calm down, to gather my thoughts. Sirius’ brows furrowed and he took another step toward me, causing me to take one back.

“I’ve gotta grab a book too though, it’s fi—”

“No.” I knew I was being unfair—being stupid, really—but I’d worked my ass off on this test and, well, a fail was just like a massive blow to the gut. “Sorry,” I said, and walked away.

I didn’t go to the library—I wasn’t planning on it in the first place. I didn’t necessarily know where I was expecting to end up, but it definitely wasn’t outside of Professor McGonagall’s office. I was about to turn away when the door opened and a first year Gryffindor walked out, a biscuit in her hand. I smiled at her when she looked up at me and I tried not to notice as she took in the scars on my arms and neck.

“Mr Lupin do come in,” McGonagall called out from where she sat at her desk. I smiled again at the kid as she walked away, and, seeing no way out if this, I closed the door behind me as I stepped into the office. “How can I help you?” the professor asked once I’d taken a seat across from her. I swallowed my nerves and lifted my eyes to meet hers.

“I was wondering if I could talk to you about the score I received on the test today?” McGonagall’s eyes softened as she looked at me and a wave of—of emotion hit me. I hated that I was here, about to grovel to a teacher about some stupid test score that bothered me for absolutely no reason but my pride.

“Ah, yes,” Professor McGonagall started before I could make an excuse to leave. “What would you like to talk about?” she asked, her hands clasped together on the desk in between us.

“I was—could I possibly retake the test?” I blurted out before I could think about it. Maybe—maybe if I re-did it I’d miraculously pass. I doubted it. And I knew I’d never find out when I saw the pity in McGonagall’s eyes.

“I’m sorry Mr Lupin, but if I let you retake the test I’ll have to do the same for everyone, and you know I can’t have that.” I nodded, wanting more than ever to get out of there.

“Yeah, okay that’s fine, thank you Professor.” I got up to leave but McGonagall motioned for me to sit down.

“Mr Lupin if you’d like me to help you understand why you got that score and maybe help you with some sort of studying schedule, I’m more than happy—”

“I studied my ass off!” I immediately regretted saying it. I leaned back in my chair as if it might swallow me whole and I opened my mouth to say something, but the professor held her hand up, silencing me. McGonagall’s lips were pursed, and amusement danced in her eyes. Amusement—not anger. I ran a hand through my hair and waited to hear what she might say.

“Mr Lupin, you understand that you cannot always have perfect scores, yes?” she asked. I furrowed my brow.

“What? Professor I—”

“People make mistakes; people fail. It’s a part of life, Mr Lupin, and sometimes all you can do is know how to improve for next time.” She paused. “Was that all you wished to talk about?” Professor McGonagall smiled at me and I didn’t know whether to be relieved or angry. She was the only teacher who didn’t treat me like I was a diseased child. She was the only teacher that didn’t stare at my scars and look at me like I was a broken doll. So I guess I was relieved. But I was also still angry. More at myself than her.

* * *

Sirius’ POV:

Remus had finally gotten back to the dorm an hour later, no book in sight. He obviously hadn’t gone to the library then. He’d held a brief conversation with James, not looking any of us in the eye, before he’d grabbed a seemingly random book off the shelf and gone back down to the common room. James and Pete had told me to let it go, that he was probably just in a mood. But it had come out of nowhere. And it was definitely more than a mood.

I found him sitting in a dark corner of the room, staring at the book in his hands. I watched him for a moment, the way his hair fell over his eyes, the curls at the back of his neck, his fingers drumming against the cover of the book. I shook my head and sauntered over, finally sitting against the arm of the chair.

“Are you actually reading that?” Remus glanced up at me for a moment before drilling his gaze back into the book. I pushed his hair out of his face.

“What else would I be doing with a fucking book, Sirius?” he muttered. I chose to ignore it and instead pulled the book from his hands. I also chose to ignore the string of curses he muttered at me after that.

“The founders of Hogwarts, Rowena Ravenclaw, Godric Gryffindor, Salazar…” I closed the cover of the book to see what he was reading. Hogwarts: A History. “You had this book memorised halfway through first year, Moony, why are you reading it?” Remus snatched it back and stood up to leave.

“No. Sit back down.” I told him, holding an arm out in front of him. He shoved that arm away.

“Get the fuck out of my way, Sirius.” He made to move past me, but I stepped in front of him, well aware of how annoying I was being. If I knew anything about Remus Lupin it was that he could never get over something unless he talked about it

“Remus, something is clearly bothering you and I’m here, ready to listen, so stop being a twat and sit down.” To emphasise my point, I sat down on the red armchair, motioning for him to sit on my lap. He leaned against the arm of the chair instead. I shook my head. “Moony, what is it?” I reached for his hand and he grabbed it, his back still turned to me.

“I failed the test,” he admitted quietly.

“But you said you got 83…” and he’d lied because he was too embarrassed. I almost asked why he even cared that much but I thought better of it. Remus hated homework, but he always did it. He always got things in on time and he always got good marks. Because he tried. We’d talked about it once. About the times he’d thought he’d never get to go to school, never get a proper education. He’d spent so long thinking he’d go without, so when he got in, he used it to his full advantage. When I didn’t say anything for a moment, Remus turned to face me. “What’d you get?” I finally asked. He lowered his head.

“17 percent,” he whispered. Oh wow.

“It was the full moon a couple of days ago, I’m sure, given the circumstances, you could retake the test,” I suggested. It was the wrong thing to say. Remus turned his body fully toward me now, amber eyes wide. He pulled his hand from mine. I felt very cold suddenly.

“No, Sirius, you don’t get it, I can’t use that as an excuse every time!” I looked at him, took in the burning passion, emotion, radiating from him.

“Why not? It’s not exactly easy to study when you’re body is mutilating itself!” I was angry suddenly, not at him but at the injustice of it all. At what he had to go through every month, and the consequences of it.

“Because then they’ll be right!” I locked eyes with him then, faced the full force of his burning light. In that moment, he was as bright as the sun, and I was staring right at him.

“What?”

He lowered his voice. “If I admit that I can’t do this, that I can’t do well at school and hand everything in on time, if I use my lycanthropy as an excuse to not do work then I’m proving that everyone that’s ever degraded or dehumanised werewolves is right. I’m proving that my dad is right.” I sucked in a breath. Remus was shaking, from sadness or anger, I couldn’t tell, but his eyes were glazed over too, and I shuddered, wanting nothing more than to bring back the light, the laughter that usually filled them. “And that’s the last thing I want,” he finished. I nodded, understanding. The defiance, the need to be better than they thought you were, the need to prove them wrong. I understood.

“So you’ll just do better on the next test. You’ll prove them wrong then,” I said searching Remus’ face for any sign that he might forgive himself. There was no point telling him to drop it, to move on. Remus was the type of person that carried everything with him, remembered everything. There was no changing it.

“But, I don’t know how,” he told me, linking his hand back with mine and tucking a strand of hair behind my ear. My heart ached for him. “I tried so hard this time, I put everything into that test, especially because I knew McGonagall would grade it fairly, and she did. I studied so hard, I thought I had it, but when I got the test back, I failed. There’s no denying it.” Remus voice was thick, like it was a struggle to get the words out. He’d taken to staring at my hand, tracing the lines in my palm. I nearly kissed him at the sight of it. I pulled him onto my lap instead, holding him around the waist.

“I don’t meant to sound like McGonagall or anything, but sometimes people fail, and you’ve just got to try to be better next time.” He locked eyes with me, and I was almost disappointed at the shadows hiding his face from view as he looked at me with something — more in his eyes. Something like love. A chuckle escaped his mouth and his teeth flashed.

“She basically said that exact thing to me earlier.” I smiled.

“It’s true though, everyone fails. Even Evans.” Remus snorted. His whole body seemed to relax, to lean into my touch. I loved every part of it. I didn’t entirely believe that Evans had ever failed anything, but that probably wouldn’t help right now. I wrapped my hands around his neck instead, not knowing how else to comfort him.

“Thank you,” Remus said, his eyes softening. “And I’m sorry I was complaining it was stupid but — “ I cut him off before he could continue, pulling back slightly.

“No. No, Remus never think that any of your problems are stupid, okay? I want to hear everything you have to say, problems and all.” I smiled, trying to brush off the vulnerability of what I’d just said. Remus wasn’t buying that. He looked lost for a moment, sitting in my lap, playing with my hair, and for a moment, I thought he’d take it all back. I thought he’d tell me he couldn’t do this, he couldn’t deal with me, with my baggage.

“Stop it,” he said.

“What?”

“Stop looking at me like you’re going to lose me. I’m here for good okay?” I nodded, blinking back the tears in my eyes. I leaned forward and pressed my lips to his, my arms still around his neck as his fingers kept playing with my hair. I nodded again, my forehead against his. “Plus, in case you forgot, I was complaining, you self absorbed ass-hat.” Remus cracked a smile and I kissed him again.

* * *

thank you so much hglb!!!

#Sirius Black #Remus Lupin #remus x sirius #sirius x remus #wolfstar #wolfstar fluff #wolfstar angst #thank you hglb! #i literally appreciate you so much #thank you #my writing #thanks for the prompt :)

[ckret2]

I'm probably a little bit late for the hype, but for your radiosnake fic, was sir pentious being behind on current technology because he was just really heartbroken or bc he was somehow cursed? Sorry, sometimes i'm bad at understanding, so i wasn't sure if the karma bit meant that there really was some kind of supernatural intervention or not

It is never, ever too late to talk to me about one of my fics! People talk to me about stuff I was writing over a decade ago and I love it, you're good.

It's neither one, actually. He isn't too heartbroken to keep up, and he isn't cursed. He just lost so many resources that he can't keep up with new technological developments any more.

Long explanation below the cut!!

... god I think tumblr just, fucking deleted the cut. If there isn't a cut below this line I APOLOGIZE I tried to edit it back in, tumblr sucks.

Like, say in '64 someone comes into hell with knowledge of how to make a new weapon that's gonna change the game. Sir P's got a web of like a hundred informants who know they're gonna be rewarded when he has power, so he finds out about the weapon in three days and can snatch up the soul that knows how to make it in under a week. He's got a dozen mines from which he can extract the raw materials needed to make the weapon, so that takes a week; dozens of engineers working under him to figure out how to replicate the weapon based on the newly dead dude's half-remembered math, so that takes a week; and Sir Pent himself, the mastermind of this operation, has no more pressing needs to attend to--his airships are defending his turf without any need to call him in for help, he doesn't have to worry about collecting supplies because they have control of all the materials they need, nothing's disrupting their supply train in the sky, etc--so he can turn his whole attention to improving on this weapon, and he's done so in a week. So only a month has passed between this weapon entering hell and Sir Pent becoming not only the only person that has it, but the only person with the next generation version of it.

Compare: a new weapon enters hell in '76. After getting his ass stomped by the Radio Demon a decade ago, Sir P's lost most of his allies because they no longer have faith he can conquer hell (and even if they do, they don't want to risk getting on the Radio Demon's bad side—they don't know why he attacked Sir P, how do they know he won't attack his allies?) so he's got like, five informants. It takes him a month to find out about this weapon. If another overlord finds out about the weapon first and snatched up the weapon-maker, then Sir P has lost all opportunity to replicate it until the other overlord has made and started using it and he can get his hands on a copy to reverse-engineer, by which point this weapon's probably already on the way to being obsolete.

But say he DOES somehow get to this soul before anyone else: he's got like, maybe one or two mines under his control, so it takes a lot longer to extract the necessary raw materials, and that's assuming those mines have the materials this weapon needs. He might need to attack other factories or warehouses to steal the supplies he needs—and these factories & warehouses are probably being guarded by people armed with weapons he hasn't had a chance to replicate because a different overlord snatched up the weapon-maker before he ever heard about them, so they might overpower him, might even take out one of his airships. But say his raids succeed; they could take a couple of months, between planning and carefully executing the needed attacks.

It could take a couple more months for his heavily reduced number of engineers to figure out how to replicate the weapon, especially if it's outside their fields of expertise and he needs to find and recruit someone new to help—and what if he can't recruit anyone, because Sir P is no longer a top overlord that people will want to work for?

Meanwhile, Sir P is busy viciously defending his now very small turf with only a couple of airships at his disposal, AND he's got to plan and lead the raids for supplies, AND he's got to find and recruit new followers, AND he's got to organize repairs and do damage control if another overlord takes an airship out... so it might take him ANOTHER month to get around to looking at the designs himself and seeing if he can improve them. And maybe he's so stressed and overworked and tired he can't think of a way to improve the weapon.

So six months have passed and they have a rushed weapon that they might have had to make with shoddy stolen materials... and in that time, maybe someone with a weapon designed to overpower this one has died, and Vox has already snatched them up and made that weapon in a month, and so Sir P's new weapon is worthless before he uses it. Now he's six months behind.

Except he's not JUST six months behind. All his airships—which are his main bases, his main weapons, his main defenses, and his main transportation all in one—got blown up in '66, so he probably spent all of '66 and probably the next few years airshipless while he tried to rebuild them. Except while he tried to rebuild them, other overlords were stealing his turf because he had no airships to defend it—if he hears a facility of his is being attacked fifty miles away, he's powerless to go defend it. He's got no airships he can send to fight off the attackers. He's got no choice but to lose it. And that happened over and over, and he lost the very facilities he needed to rebuild his airships. So now it's gonna take twice as long to build half as many airships. And during all those YEARS he's trying to rebuild his airships, he's NOT going to be able to expend resources on keeping up with the latest weapons tech.

So in '76, he's not actually struggling to snatch up the newest weapon maker; in '76, he's finally built five airships, and they're all running on '66 technology. How is he going to even BEGIN replicating '76 technology if he completely missed out on learning about the '70 technology it's based on? By the time he's learned about '70 technology and is ready to face '76 technology, it's now '78.

Oh except another overlord who knows he's currently weak and fears what a threat he'll pose when he's strong again goes and crushes all his airships and now he falls behind five years again as he rebuilds AGAIN. And at this point Sir Pent is getting desperate, so he starts making stupid rushed mistakes in a scramble to gain some ground. (Stupid rushed mistakes like charging into Cherri Bomb's turf right after an extermination, or stupid rushed mistakes like aiming a giant cannon at Alastor just because he happens to be there.) And those stupid mistakes lose him more airships and set him back AGAIN.

It's an endless cycle. He lacks the resources to catch up with the latest developments; without the latest developments, he can't get the resources he needs.

History lesson! The fact that Sir Pent was a top overlord for so long was part luck and part momentum. When he died in 1888, he was THE first supervillain. In life he had no peers, and in death he had no peers. He was THE ONLY ONE who knew how to make the weapons of mass destruction he made. He was the ONLY human soul that could make a machine that could slaughter hundreds. The only ones stronger than him were fallen angels and proper demons (not souls who had died, but entities like Lucifer or Stolas) who had proper borderline-godly powers.

In 1933, the Radio Demon took out the power of a vast majority of those proper demons, and that's what buoyed Sir Pent up to being in a position where he could start conquering hell properly. Again, in '33, he was THE ONLY human soul who could do that. (Except, perhaps, Alastor himself, but he has no interest in claiming turf.) Other human souls began gaining power the way he had—both in the living world and in hell, there were people specifically following his example as a supervillain—but he was doing it first, and he was doing it with a lifetime (and afterlifetime) of experience. By the 60s, there were other human overlords around who'd gained some experience and were now just as good at him... but they didn't have his resources. He had a head start on them of decades. So all of them were the ones taking six months to make a weapon because he held all the supplies and personnel they needed to make the weapons. That's the primary reason he was ahead of them. Yeah, he's brilliant... but his overlord opponents are all brilliant too in different ways. The difference was, he's brilliant AND he had ten factories already.

(And it's worth remembering that he also had the Radio Demon, who's basically a walking tornado, on his side for fifteen years; so every once in a while one of Sir Pent's enemies would just have an entire facility mutilated by this dude. Not only is that a powerful weapon to be wielding, but who's gonna wanna go work for one of the guys that might be targeted by the Radio Demon?)

So! That's why Sir Pent fell behind and stayed behind. No heartbreak, and no curse. Just mathematics. Just resources. He stayed ahead because he came into hell with more resources than anyone else and stayed behind after Alastor reduced him to less resources than everyone else.

As for the "karma" section in the fic—not one single word of that scene reflects what's happening in hell in the slightest. Every single word of that scene reflects what's happening in Alastor's head. Fifty years after screwing over Sir P, he feels so miserable that he feels like he's being specifically punished. After seeing how massive and unintended the consequences of his actions are, he feels like he must be some kind of walking curse designed to torture Sir Pent.

On the one hand, seeing everything that's happened to himself and Sir P in the last fifty years and describing it as "karmic punishment/our assigned tortures in hell" is a reflection of how cataclysmically sublimely unhappy they both are. He's like, I'm so damn miserable it's GOTTA be divine punishment because nothing else could be this awful. On the other hand, it lets Alastor push some of the blame off of himself (because this REALLY IS all his fault!) and onto fate instead, like, oh, I couldn't have avoided this, it's our divine punishment. And if it's divine punishment, then there's nothing he can do to change it, is there? There's no point in trying. There's no need for him to say "I'm sorry" and try to make up for his mistakes. Because they aren't really his mistakes. He's just acting out some sort of karmic role. Right?

(And remember that a chapter earlier he was waxing poetic about how hell's not actually a bad place, really, he and Sir Pent deserve to be in hell together because it's the place they'll be happiest. :) :) :) Like, that's a direct contradiction to his "karma" theory. In both cases, neither scene is saying true things about the nature of hell—it's just Alastor's speculation based on how he currently feels.)

The logic fueling his "Sir Pent and I are each other's assigned punishments and there's nothing I can do about that but grin and bear it" is the same logic fueling his "dead sinners can't be redeemed, they had their chance in life and wasted it, now they're in hell forever" to Charlie in the pilot. The message behind both is the same: we can't and shouldn't be forgiven for our past mistakes; why bother trying to make up for them?

#(welcome to my blog I answer questions about my fics with essays) #(it's an act of love I promise) #anonymous #ask #about my writing #meta #sir pentious #alastor

[thekraziesreside]

A Potential Solution where Emzawa can be the Endgame we deserve

(if it’s nonsensical and full is mistakes, forgive me, it’s 4am and I tried to compile all the info about bnha em that i could find)

ALT TITLE: Let Em Be Loved, I Want Her to Feel Wanted

Aizawa doesn’t like recklessness in other people, I won’t contest that. I might suggest that he’s especially harsh on Em because he’s fond of her - a complicated relationship for him as a mentor (feeling personally responsible for her growth and safety) and potential love interest (admiring her independence and aware that she’s an adult). She isn’t something he’s had to deal with before, so he is cautious, but given the way he lets some of the kids (Midoriya et al) get away with easy punishments for what are usually very serious and life threatening situations, I can’t imagine him being too upset that in emergency situations (like the USJ attack) Em uses her quirk in the harsh near suicidal way that she must. He himself took outrageous damage to save the kids. 

I asked my hubby about his interpretation of Aizawa’s character and how he might react to a situation like that, just to make sure I wasn’t getting too off base, and he thinks that Aizawa, as a prohero, married to his two careers, if he didn’t feel responsible for Em, would probably have a sense of pride that she did her job as a hero and put herself in grave danger to save someone else. That’s their job, after all. He would do it. All Might would do it. Mic and Midnight and Thirteen would do it. So he might be scared for her well being, and wish that she could have fought more safely with her quirk(s), but at the end of the day (and perhaps with some sitdown prompting from the other teachers and/or Nedzu) he has to realize that not only was he doing the same thing, rewarding the same behavior in the other students, and might have died a painful death without the assist, that it was a brave, heroic call to make, and was the right thing for a hero to do.

I think it’s just as likely that he might double down his efforts to help Em learn to fight without mutilation because he would shoulder some responsibility himself that she had to resort to those old tools. If he’s disappointed in her for reverting to old ways, he is disappointed in himself for not making sure she had better alternatives. I think this dynamic would leave their future relationship more open to the eventuality that she will “rejoin” the villains to protect Bakugo, but I’ll get to that in a minute. 

With Em’s true identity now revealed to the LoV and staff at UA, there’s no way someone (Nedzu) wouldn’t find out everything about her past, if he didn’t already know. Along this vein, Aizawa might be suspicious of her for hiding her identity, but like you said before, had seen her intentions and motivations laid bare in a moment of desperation. He knows she’s not evil. Anything about her abusive family and tenuous relationship with AFO that he’s briefed on would only fix that further in his mind, that she was a troubled child in a troubled world, trying to make herself into the hero she wants to be. He knows it takes a lot of work and sacrifice, and while he may doubt that she has the guts to put in the hard work to turn over a new leaf, even when she abandons them, he would know, through any betrayal that he felt, that she still wasn’t evil. 

Perhaps he’ll think evil is the easier choice for her. Or, more harshly, that she isn’t cut out for hero work, too weak to face her own evil and keep pushing on (not when her first instinct is to martyr herself, die, and escape the immediate consequences of whatever killed her, pain or not).

This is all assuming they have minimal contact during this time, banking on Aizawa’s observational skills and his connections within UA. If, as I’m sure both of us want, their relationship has changed with the revelation that Em is an entire adult lady, with a complex story and lifetime career in the industry. He isn’t  responsible for her. She isn’t a child. He helps her continue learning and working at first because it’s his job, and he’s as fond of her as he is any other student, but moving forward things are allowed to change. He’s allowed to be charmed by her good graces and laughs. He’s allowed to share his lunch, take her out for coffee, and have the kind of friendship among colleagues that can develop a flutter in his stomach, and pretty blue eyes filling his daydreams. 

With that, maybe Em explains her plan before she runs off. Maybe they’re both heartbroken for each other and worried as she sits with the League, watching over Bakugo, as it aches Aizawa’s heart to denounce her publicly. If that jives with your ideas for both of them, it replaces Em’s imposter syndrome with Aizawa at her bedside when she wakes up in the ICU. AFO’s gaslighting of her (and All Might), while harsh and painful, has the opportunity to be soothed by scratchy beards and calloused hands, as Em puts in the work to be the kind of hero she wants to be. 

*falls to my knees and cries in gay* 

TBH Em is the definition of dumb bitch with her quirk sometimes because she’ll just do it by instinct, and then realize “Oh fuck I know how to fight  🙃 “  She’s not doing it to make people feel bad for her, in fact she often forgets that “hey you know when you get hurt like that- you get blood all over your team mates? Right? It’s kinda tramatic Em.”  Em is dummy, maybe dummy thicc, but mostly dummy. 

tbh she’s real good at hand to hand combat, like my other Em’s but like- I had to give her a flaw, and that flaw being she forgets to think and just acts, and that usually involves her running infront of danger to human sheild the attack from hitting whoever it was originally intended for. Though if she does get appathetic- she stops caring, and then if you fight state with a sword or something  you’re fucked. She’s going to let you stab her and she’s going to hold the blade there so you can’t pull away and attack again, but also now you’re stuck and she’s going to round house kick your skull into the groud so hard you better hope your skull doesn’t shatter. (But that’s OP so I don’t usually talk about how she can actually kick asshahahaha OOF) 

Also I would love for Aizawa to be the one who tries to help her learn to use her head and not her heart in battle. Like- she knows how to fight, she just needs to over ride her instincts, it’s silly because one simple counter attack to block harm from someone is a lot smarter than her just standing there and taking the initial attack.  I feel like she couldn’t bring herself to actually battle with Aizawa, she just dodges and blocks his hits, and will only use a small amount of force when she counter attacks him because she doesn’t want to hurt him. (Not cause he’s fragile but because she doesn’t want to hurt someone she cares about. She won’t even really hit Tomura, in battle, unless he’s risking someone else. But her main way to fight people she cares about is to tackle hug them, they can’t fight if they can’t move. She also can use acupressure like Ty Lee from Avatar, but that is kinda painful so she wouldn’t use it on Aizawa in training either.  😔

But you’re super right with that analysis, it might be easier for Em to be a villain. >:3 //slaps self  But if she had a reason to be good she would, like Aizawa, but tbh in the back of her mind she wonders if the heroes are keeping her around to keep her at bay. And that hurts, but she’s not good talking about her feelings. Hell if anyone brought up her childhood she’d be like “ahahik haihd whha- noo.  No it’s not as bad as it seems.” Just totally blowing it off, she doesn’t like talking about it to anyone. 

BUT HGGOD THAT SOUNDS SO NICE. Em waking up in ICU but she’s there and WDHIHWDIEH COMFORT STUFF KILLS ME *knees buckle, and cries into the ground*  Like- jebus- y e s.  God between you and Darthsuki yall have helped me develop a story line much more plausable with Em. Like maybe I can make use of that Overhaul Em drawing  😏 maybe after the redemption Fanfic Suki wrote, maybe Em learns to discuss her plans and she goes undercover for the Overhaul case, that way it’s not a part 2 (part 3?) betrayl to the heroes. 

EHIhiwhfdi All in all, THanK  YOU ??!! FDheiFFEJH I’m sorry I can’t shut up about Em stuff. 

#submission #Nice things for Krazie #Boku no Em

[amandabe11man]

a VERY LONG post about Hell on Wheels

YEAH i forgot about this post in my drafts... it’s been like a year since i finished the show now and i feel i’ve barfed everything out into this post (that i can think of), so here it goes (you’ll have to shield your eyes after the spoiler warning if you don’t wanna be spoiled btw. i can’t seem to be able to add a read more-link...) :

SO... i finished watching “hell on wheels” at last, pm half a year since i started. it’s funny because i was under the impression that i’d sOMEHOW be able to binge all five seasons within just one month (reason: i wanted to watch it before my free trial on HBO’s website went out). honestly, that wouldn’t have been possible because it was a LOT more emotionally draining than you’d think at first glance... after being gutpunched three times in a row in season 4, any reasonable human would need a little break.

anyway, it feels-- weird. i’ve never been big on following tv-shows so i haven’t been able to relate to that feeling ppl describe once they’ve finished a show they’ve become so attached to, except NOW i can relate. the show’s not groundbreaking, it’s not perfect, but i’ve had a lot of fun. what a ride it’s been...

looking back, i’d say HOW’s biggest weakness is its tendency to forget or ignore certain plot points. i guess that’s not too weird, with such an arsenal of characters, but still, i find that’s what bugged me the most, if anything bugged me at all. for example--

[SPOILERS for those who might wanna watch it after seeing me go on abt it, idk]:

first off, what REALLY grinds my gears is how ezra dutson’s plotline was handled. it was set up perfectly in the beginning; having him escape from the swede (who promised him that, and i quote: “i’ll find you, ezra! i always do”), the original plan was obviously for ezra and the swede to “reunite” some time in the future so that ezra could tell everyone that the swede killed his parents, thus tying up loose ends and giving some closure to that whole arc. some might say this would’ve been too predictable, but i would rather have that predictable storyline than having it just end unceremoniously like it did, with ezra dying ACCIDENTALLY and off-screen by sidney snow’s hand, simply as a way to further bohannon’s pain and set the stage for ruth’s final arc. this might’ve been fine, if the writers had made it so that ezra actually, y’know, TOLD SOMEONE WHY HE’S AN ORPHAN TO BEGIN WITH. but they didn’t even give the viewer that form of closure, instead just deciding to use him as a plot device for the other characters’ increased angst... bohannon and the others were never even made aware of ezra’s last name, and this is all what bugs the everliving SHIT outta me: the only ones who know, or will EVER know, ezra’s full story is the swede and the viewer, tho after season 4���s end, ezra is never mentioned or acknowledged again-- not by bohannon, and not even by the swede. ezra went from convenient character with a PURPOSE to “nameless” orphan forgotten by history. thanks, writers...

then there’s the whole deal with campbell coming to town to reinforce The Law™, which wasn’t a bad arc, mind you-- campbell and his goons were the most infuriating little shits for a while there-- but the thing is; didn’t campbell LIE to his men about the president giving him the position as governor? i might’ve misunderstood it, but i’m PRETTY sure the president didn’t give him THAT much of an upstanding role, but that campbell just went ahead and took that position anyway? if that was indeed the case, then that’s another plot hole, cause nobody finds out about campbell’s possible trickery to become the governor. nobody rats him out, despite literally no one in “his” town liking him all that much, so they’d have no reason to protect his “secret”. (correct me if i’m wrong on this one though. i might be misremembering things)

then there’s the other pretty infuriating issue of bad guys never getting called out for doing bad shit (unless it’s the swede, who gets all the blame, all the time), for example:

major dick bongbendix(???idk he had a silly name like that) is presented VERY MUCH as a bad guy in the beginning. y’know, just casually beheading natives on all his missions and collecting those heads and taking them to the bar like a fucking nutcase-- those little details. he also seemed to believe in racial biology, so yeah, definitely not a good guy. but by the end, he’s been watered down into some quirky guy who’s ALMOST on friendly terms with the main characters. yeah, uh-- seems everyone (writers included) collectively forgot the whole public display of cut-off heads he had going on...

aaron hatch: started off as a guy too proud for his- or his family’s own good when he shot the police officer, BLAMED IT ON HIS FUCKING SON and then just kinda let bohannon hang the kid even though it was pretty obvious hatch was just shifting the blame away from himself. THEN he reappears with some other mormons and causes a full-on shootout in the town (probably getting some people killed, i don’t remember), TAKES EZRA (also a mormon) HOSTAGE SO THAT BOHANNON WILL COME WITH THEM WILLINGLY and passive aggressively forces bohannon to marry his daughter who bohannon knocked up. somewhere along the line, hatch’s bad side is just thrown to the wind, and bohannon at one point describes him as “a good man”. yeah, ABOUT THAT--

sean and mickey mcginnes: unlike the ones mentioned above, these two started out as seemingly decent dudes, but ended up pm as secondary villains in the end. however, like the ones mentioned above, they hardly face any consequences for whatever crap it was they did in boston, OR the fact that they killed and fucking mutilated/dismembered a man in cold blood (a man who WAS gonna kill them, yes, but HE did it because he thought they had killed his friend, which wasn’t a farfetched idea since mickey DID brag about killing the dude even though he didn’t actually do it). sure, they face their OWN demons as time goes on, they get ostracized, and they start losing faith in each other as well, which ends up with mickey killing sean before the latter can confess(?) his/their crimes. so, while sean was spineless and a creep, at least he thought about finally owning up to what he’d done in the end, whereas mickey lives on to keep doing shady shit, killing people, and getting increasingly more corrupt. he does end up pursuing new goals in the end, but it’s obvious he’s not happy about it anymore. that’s-- really all the comeuppance he ever gets, and the only one who knows about his shady businesses are pm just bohannon, durant and eva (also, personal gripe here-- they seemed to not settle for “just” tarring and feathering the swede and publicly humiliating him, but i’m pretty sure i recall mickey telling bohannon they were thinking about having the swede killed too. keep in mind, this was BEFORE the swede truly lost it and started killing people left and right. apparently, being kind of a douche about taxes is bad enough to warrant being tortured and cast out by the entire community... i’m obviously biased here, but still-- the mcginnes bros’ double standards are amazing to behold)

now that i’ve aired some of that out-- here are some highlights, according to me:

unexpected friendships, like that between eva and durant. i’d say the swede finding that stray dog and fawning all over him qualifies into this category too

durant and campbell fighting in the mud before finally coming to an agreement -- just- durant and his competitors being petty as fuck, honestly. it’s hilarious

bohannon trying to get through to elam by reminiscing about their friendship, especially since bohannon isn’t one to show his feelings often OR get sappy -- in fact, EVERY time bohannon loses his stoic facade is a good moment. when he was gonna bury elam and he just broke down completely for the first time since we were introduced to him... that shit had me in tears as well, but man was it a great scene

jimmy two-squaws

every time the swede opens his mouth (yes, even when he’s spouting some lies and bullshit like that)

ruth’s character development. i admit i didn’t like her at all in the beginning, idk something just felt off about her, but man did she ever grow on me. just-- how everyone kinda relied on her eventually, even though she’s only like in her 20′s or something... she still became a pillar of the community. bless ya, ruth :’ı -- also, her essentially adopting ezra was Pure as heck. I Lov it

the fact that this was the 1800′s and the only backlash the (openly) LGBT characters faced for it was pm just “yeah they’re a bit confused maybe but they’re not hurting anyone”. maybe that’s not very realistic but WHO GIVES A SHIT AMIRITE

mr tao just being a sweet old man

chang’s sunglasses, straight out of Django Unchained

mr toole’s complete heel-turn from racist POS to someone who sticks by his word to turn himself around. that shit was impressive coming from him, tbh

bohannon just calmly running into a buffalo by the train tracks

mei posing as a grown man instead of a boy (which is what she looks and sounds like, oml)

another thing i realized is that bohannon is a classic gary stu. there’s just no getting around that fact after seeing him being revered by most everyone he meets, how he’s somehow the only person able to build the railroad(s) fast and efficiently, and even wooing the literal PRESIDENT and becoming close friends with him-- all this despite his Bold and Brash personality. of course, there’s more to bohannon than these gary stu-symptoms, but i felt someone should bring it up, for the lulz

#hell on wheels #amc

[imagines-r-s]

So Many Reasons

A/N: sorry that this was so overdue. I finally got a good idea for it and I hope you all enjoy. 

Word Count: 1.6k

Could you please write a Sweet Pea imagine where him and the reader have been dating for a couple of months and they get into a decently sized fight and he shows up at her house late at night and he text her to look outside her window and stands in her yard telling her about all the little things she's does/little moments they've shared that made him realize he's in love with her?

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

Riverdale, a town easily divided against itself. Northside and Southside, two parts of the same old messed up town. None of us asked for it to be like this, it just is. We can’t really change it, because we’re just kids. I honestly didn’t expect to date a Southside Serpent, but I wouldn’t change it. Sweet Pea and I have been together for about 3 months and those few months have been the best months of my life. When he and I met I didn’t expect to ever end up being in a relationship with him, but I’m very glad that’s what happened.

“Please, Y/N/N, you need to come to FP’s party. Archiekins and I are going to be performing. There might also be a cute guy there for you,” Veronica said, grinning.

“Yeah, Y/N, you should definitely come,” Betty agreed with Veronica.

“Fine,” I finally agreed, knowing well enough that I wouldn’t win the argument.

Betty, Veronica, and I all got ready for the party at her place and had Andre come to pick all of us and take us to the White Wyrm. When we finally got there, Betty went to go find Jughead and Veronica went to find Archie, and I was left all alone.

I hadn’t noticed how out of place I looked until Sweet Pea came up to me.

“I see your friends left you here by yourself.”

“And I see you have no friends,” I snapped, turning around to face him.

“Based off that comment I’m surprised you have any,” he retorted with a smirk on his face,  “Anyways, what’s your name?”

“I’m Y/N. I didn’t catch your name either?”

“I didn’t throw it,” he said, the smirk on his face growing, “the name’s Sweet Pea.”

“Sweet Pea, as in like the flower?”

“Yeah, it was my mom’s favorite flower, so when she passed, it became my nickname.”

“Aw. I’m sorry, I love the nickname though. It’s cute,” I said, sincerely.

“It might be, but it’s definitely not as cute as you,” he winked.

“Oh, uh, I-,” I struggled with my words as I felt a blush creep up to my cheeks.

“I have that effect on a lot of people,” he smirked and walked back to the place he was standing earlier.

I didn’t see him for a while, but I made sure to keep an eye out for him. I finally saw him again when Veronica and Archie had started singing. I went and stood by him.

“Couldn’t resist, I see,” he calmly stated, throwing his arm over my shoulder.

I didn’t respond, I just watched Veronica and Archie singing. I didn’t even make an attempt to move his arm, it felt surprisingly comforting. The only surprise came when Veronica ran off the stage with Archie following close behind. I was about to run out too when I felt Sweet Pea’s arm tighten around me.

“I wouldn’t follow them,” he stated, still looking towards the stage.

“And why is that?”

“It’ll get messy,” he paused clearly distracted by what was occurring on stage.

I looked over to see Betty taking over the karaoke performance. Everything was okay until she started stripping. I could see the other serpents looking back at Jughead, who was clearly shocked by her actions.

“Oh, shit,” I said, in shock.

Sweet Pea just chuckled. “Who knew Jughead’s girl would pull that stunt?”

“ She told no one.” She gave no warning or anything, she just did it. I saw Alice walk in and by the look on her face, I could tell she didn’t want Betty to continue, but she couldn’t necessarily stop her.

I felt Sweet Pea lean his face down close to my ear, “I personally think you should try that dance, but only for me.”

“You wish,” I retorted.

He only smirked in response and moved his arm from over my shoulder to around my waist.

FP went on stage and covered Betty with his serpent jacket.

“Man, tonight got really messy,” I turned to look at Sweet Pea.

“It sure did.”

“Wait a minute.”

“What?” His eyes met mine.

“My ride home left. I need to get home soon, it’s already late.”

“I can give you a ride home. Unless-”

“Unless, what?”

“You want to come to my trailer,” he winked.

“Ok.”

He grabbed my hand and rushed out the door. He handed me the helmet to his bike and we were on our way.

Once we reached his trailer, we went inside. We talked for a few hours and then, him and I fell asleep cuddled up together.

Ever since then, Sweets and I have been inseparable. We started dating a few weeks after this and everything was perfect until the snake charmer had to show up again in Riverdale.

Sweet Pea, Fangs, and I were walking when the two of them got a message to head to the quarry. Sweet Pea left after we shared a quick kiss. I hadn’t heard from him or any of his or my serpent friends, and I was concerned that something had happened. It wasn’t until the next day at school that I had heard from them. All of them seemed off. I didn’t want to pry and ask since I wasn’t a serpent, but it was obvious that something had happened. I didn’t really ever ask him, until a few months later.

I had gone with Sweets to the White Wyrm to help him and Toni at the bar for the night when an unorganized serpent meeting was called. I was told I could stay, I just couldn’t be over where they were.

I couldn’t hear exactly everything that was going down, but I could hear most of it. The lady there, her name was Penny Peabody and apparently, Jughead and the younger serpents had helped him carve off her tattoo. I knew what they meant by younger serpents she meant all of those I was friends with. I couldn’t believe that they had done that. I didn’t say anything to Sweets on the way home and he took notice.

“Baby, what’s wrong?”

I stayed quiet. I wanted to ask, but it wasn’t necessarily my place to know.

“Baby, what is wrong? Please talk to me.”

“Who was that Penny Peabody there tonight?” I asked, my voice not going any louder than a whisper.

“Babe, it’s nothing.”

“It’s clearly something. Especially, if there was a whole serpent meeting about it and Jug might get kicked out of the serpents for it.”

“Penny isn’t a good person. She’s done favors to help a lot of us serpents, but they always came with a price. We simply had to return those favors, and when Jug asked for help and didn’t want to do any more favors, she got mad and got back to FP. Jug wanted to retaliate by cutting off her serpent tattoo.”

“What kind of favors?” I asked, figuring I knew the answer.

“Drug dealing.” Sweets stated, bluntly.

“Oh my god.” Tears were welling up in my eyes. “Please tell me-”

“I didn’t have a choice.”

“You always have a choice, Sweets. Please just take me home, I can’t be here right now.”

“Y/N/N, please talk to me,” he pleaded.

“Just the fact that you helped mutilate this woman, I know she did stuff, but honestly you shouldn’t have even helped. I really don’t want to discuss the fact that you didn’t see an error in your ways at this. And the drug dealing, do you not know the consequences for doing that type of stuff? I can’t be with someone who doesn’t-”

“Do you not think I don’t feel guilty? I felt awful for doing it and keeping it from you. You Northsiders don’t understand the stuff we have to deal with on the Southside. You won’t ever get it because you aren’t one, you might be in a relationship, or were, I don’t know. Y/N, you wouldn’t ever understand, that’s why I tried to stop this relationship from happening.”

“What do you mean tried to stop it?”

“Doesn’t matter. Let’s go.”

“No, it does matter, what do you mean?”

“At the beginning of us talking or whatever, I told your friends to try and talk you out of it and tell you that I was an awful person and stuff, but it obviously didn’t work.”

“Take me home,” I said, as the tears welling up in my eyes finally fell.

He took me home and after that night I honestly didn’t talk to him for a while. Toni and Fangs both tried to get me to talk to him, but I couldn’t after what he said.

One night after school while I was studying I heard noises on my window. I simply ignored them until they got more persistent. I opened my window to see Sweets standing in my yard with a bouquet of flowers.

“Y/N, I’m so sorry. I feel awful for doing what I did and not being honest. I only tried to push you away because I was afraid of hurting you. I miss you so much. I miss your laugh and your smile and the way that you scrunch your nose and stick your tongue out when your concentrating. I miss the way that you smell and how gentle you are with me. Truth is I’m afraid of losing you because I love you, Y/N and I don’t know what I would do without you.”

“I love you, too, Sweets. You could have just knocked on my door, ya know.”

“But that would ruin the fun of what I just did.” He said, shrugging her shoulders.

“You’re right. Want to go to Pop’s?”

“I already brought some with me.” He said, dropping picking up the bag that had been by his feet.

#sweet pea #sweet pea imagine #sweet pea x reader #riverdale #riverdale imagines #southside serpents #riverdale southside

[bountyofbeads]

'The War Machine Is Run on Contracts'

America's wars wouldn’t be possible without contractors, but presidents usually ignore the thousands who have died.

By KATHY GILSINAN | Published January 17, 2020 7:00 AM ET | The Atlantic | Posted January 17, 2020 |

Mike Jabbar never met his replacement. But when Nawres Hamid died in a rocket attack on a military base in Iraq after Christmas, Jabbar saw photos of the wreckage and recognized the American flag he himself had helped paint on the door of a room now mangled. That was his old room, on his old base. It could have been him.

“Imagine something like that happens, knowing that you were supposed to be there and you weren’t there, and the person that replaced you is gone,” Jabbar, who like Hamid served as a translator for the U.S. military, told me in an interview. “It absolutely feels horrible.”

Jabbar was one of the lucky ones. He left his home country of Iraq last fall, at age 23, for the United States, where he’s now a permanent resident living with a friend in North Carolina.

The U.S. has relied on thousands of contractors like him and Hamid to help conduct its wars, in roles handling translation, logistics, security, and even laundry. America cannot go to war without its contractors, but presidents usually ignore the thousands who have died, including U.S. citizens. They are ubiquitous but largely unseen by the American public, obscuring the real size, and the real cost, of America’s wars. This also means that a president can selectively seize on one contractor’s death in the service of other goals.

Senior U.S. officials invoked Hamid, an Iraqi-born U.S. citizen, repeatedly to explain why they brought America to the brink of an all-out conflict with Iran—days before the public knew his name. Donald Trump, who has vowed to end wars in the Middle East, was willing to risk a new one to avenge an American contractor’s death—including by killing the Iranian general Qassem Soleimani, a step previous presidents worried could unleash a violent backlash. Yet when a terrorist attack killed two more American contractors and one U.S. soldier in Kenya about a week later, Trump barely reacted. “We lost a good person, just a great person,” he said of the soldier. He didn’t mention the contractors.

As America's interventions abroad have become more complex and open-ended, the country has relied on contractors more and more for essential jobs like guarding diplomats and feeding the troops. Even as the U.S. tries to end those wars and bring more troops home, contractors can stay behind in large numbers to manage the aftermath—especially since many of them are local hires in the first place.

The government has no data on exactly how many American contractors have died in the post-9/11 wars; in fact, it’s hard to get a full picture of how many contractors have been involved in those wars at all. The Defense Department publishes quarterly reports on how many it employs in the Middle East—close to 50,000 in the region as of last October, with about 30,000 spread through Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria. Americans make up less than half the total, in a region where U.S. troop numbers fluctuate between 60,000 and 80,000. The contractor numbers fluctuate too, and the military’s data don’t include contractors working for other agencies, such as the CIA or the State Department.

The death toll is murkier still, though Brown University’s Costs of War Project gives a figure close to 8,000, counting Americans and non-Americans. “They are,” in the words of Ori Swed and Thomas Crosbie, researchers who have studied contractor deaths, “the corporate war dead.”

Jabbar told me he was happy to take on that risk. Like Hamid, he was born in Iraq; from his middle-school years, he said, he wanted to become an American, and taught himself English in part by listening to Eminem and watching Prison Break. He dropped out of college at 19 to serve as a translator in the U.S. fight against the Islamic State, and wound up alongside U.S. troops as they pushed toward the group’s Iraqi capital of Mosul in 2016. Instead of studying English and earning an information-technology degree, he was in the middle of a fight to wrest back territory from insurgents, translating battlefield instructions for the Americans’ Iraqi partners.  

He later ended up with a Navy SEAL unit in Kirkuk, near where he grew up, and became all but officially part of the team; he lived with them, ate with them, patrolled with them, went to the front lines with them. Jabbar even once got beaten up and arrested while getting groceries for them—a case, he said, of mistaken identity, resolved only after he’d spent the night in jail.

“It is hard for me [to] emphasize enough how critical these dedicated people were to our military mission,” Joseph Votel, the former commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East, who retired last March after three years helping direct the anti-ISIS fight, wrote to me in an email. Interpreters on contract with the U.S. military were more than just language translators. “They helped with our understanding; they provided cultural context to the events playing out on the ground; and, they came to us with networks of their own that [were] always very useful in navigating complex situations … They did all this at their own personal risk.”

America’s reliance on private contractors in war didn’t start with 9/11, but it exploded in the wars that followed those attacks. The political imperative to keep troop numbers limited, and the need to rebuild amid conflict, meant that contractors filled gaps where there weren’t enough troops or the right skills in the military to do the job. They could often work more cheaply than U.S. troops. They might get limited compensation for death or injury, compared with a lifetime of Veterans Affairs benefits; they could deploy to places where the U.S. didn’t want to or couldn’t legally send the military, Steven Schooner, a professor of government procurement law at George Washington University, told me.

Even before the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, Leslie Wayne documented the rise of contractors in The New York Times, noting their roles in training U.S. troops in Kuwait and guarding Hamid Karzai, then Afghanistan’s president. “The Pentagon cannot go to war without them,” she wrote. “During the Persian Gulf war in 1991, one of every 50 people on the battlefield was an American civilian under contract; by the time of the peacekeeping effort in Bosnia in 1996, the figure was one in 10.” In Afghanistan, according to the latest U.S. military figures from last fall, the ratio of American contractors to U.S. troops is almost 1 to 1; including local and third-country contractors, it’s about 2 to 1.

Iraq contributed further to the trend. “At the beginning of the Iraq War, expectations, foolish as they may have been in retrospect, were that this would be a pretty easy thing,” Deborah Avant, a professor at the University of Denver who has researched the industry, told me. But as the situation deteriorated, it would have been difficult to mobilize tens of thousands of additional troops to provide security. So contractors filled the gap—and not just for the Defense Department. “If ABC News was there, they needed to have security,” Avant said.

They weren’t just providing security, though, and they weren’t just American. They came from a range of countries in addition to the U.S. and did a range of jobs that in prior years the military had handled. “When I went into the Army … everybody was trained as a soldier, and then after you were qualified as a soldier, you might have trained to be a cook, or a laundry specialist, or a postal specialist, or a transportation specialist,” Schooner said. “Today, we train trigger-pullers, and we’ve outsourced all support services.” Because many U.S. missions overseas now involve reconstruction, contractors can also provide thousands of local jobs in struggling economies.   

With contractor support, Schooner said, “We can send innumerable troops anywhere in the world, any distance, any weather, any geography, and we have them taken care of better than any army has ever cared for its people, for as long as you need.”

But the biggest benefit of all may be political. “Americans really don’t care what war costs,” Schooner said. “All they really care about is win or lose, and how many of our boys and girls come home in bags and boxes. So if you can, intentionally or unintentionally, directly or indirectly, artificially deflate the number of body bags or boxes, you’re winning.”

This doesn’t always work, however—and Iraq in particular has shown how contractor deaths or missteps can have severe political consequences, or even escalate conflict. Contractors have committed crimes that have hurt U.S. prestige and destroyed lives in Iraq—including the torture of inmates at Abu Ghraib prison in 2003, and the 2007 massacre of 17 civilians in Baghdad’s Nisour Square. In 2004, four armed contractors were ambushed in Fallujah, their burned and mutilated bodies hung from a bridge. An “angry and emotional” President George W. Bush then directed the Marines to seize the city, the historian Bing West told a BBC reporter. The result was a vicious urban battle that left 27 American troops dead, along with roughly 200 insurgents and 600 civilians.

In Hamid’s case, Jabbar thinks Trump got some justice in having Soleimani killed. “[Hamid’s] gone now,” Jabbar said, “but if he knows somehow that all this happened because of him, he would be so happy. And I’m so glad that at this point interpreters are being looked at as very valuable.” Jabbar himself left Kirkuk as soon as he could, because he said he was facing threats. He received a rare visa to come to the U.S. through a program for interpreters that the Trump administration had slashed. He believes that the visa saved his life, and he wants to serve again—this time in the Air Force.

As for Soleimani, Jabbar is glad he’s dead. “He’s the guy who orders others to go and kill ‘traitors’ and interpreters.”

*********

Donald Trump Stumbles Into a Foreign-Policy Triumph

The president, however inadvertently, may be reminding the world of the reality of international relations.

By TOM MCTAGUE | Published January 17, 2020 1:00 AM ET | The Atlantic | Posted January 17, 2020 |

A year and a half into Donald Trump’s presidency, Henry Kissinger set out a theory. “I think Trump may be one of those figures in history who appears from time to time to mark the end of an era and to force it to give up its old pretences,” he told the Financial Times. “It doesn’t necessarily mean that he knows this, or that he is considering any great alternative. It could just be an accident.”

A term has been coined to describe this notion: Ryan Evans of War on the Rocks calls them “Trumportunities.” It is the idea that, whether by accident or design, Trump creates chances to solve long-running international problems that a conventional leader would not. His bellicose isolationist agenda, for instance, might already be forcing Europe to confront its geopolitical weakness; China, its need for a lasting economic settlement with the U.S.; and countries throughout the Middle East, the limits of their power.

The president’s erratic behavior might be doing something else as well, something even more fundamental. Through a combination of instinct, temperament, and capriciousness, Trump may be reminding the world of the reality of international relations: Raw military and economic power still matter more than anything else—so long as those who hold them are prepared to use them. The air strike that killed Qassem Soleimani was a reminder that the U.S. remains the one indispensable global superpower. Iran, or indeed anyone else, simply cannot respond in kind.

While it is clearly too early to judge the long-term ramifications of the president’s decision to order the killing (my colleague Uri Friedman has set out the dangers of accidental escalation), the initial assessment among many in the foreign-policy establishment here in London is not quite what you might expect. The attack—in the view of analysts and British officials I spoke with (the latter of whom requested anonymity to discuss government discussions)—has, at a stroke, reasserted American military dominance and revealed the constraints of Iranian power.

Although Trump’s foreign-policy strategy (if one even accepts that there is such a thing) has many limits, his unpredictability and, most critically, his willingness to escalate a crisis using the United States’ military and economic strength has turned the tables on Iran in a way few thought possible. What is more, the strike has exposed the gaping irrelevance of Europe’s leading powers—Britain, France, and Germany—in this whole crisis. The “E3,” which have long sought to keep the Iranian nuclear deal alive by undermining the U.S. policy of “maximum pressure” on Iran, have so far failed to do so. This week, they were finally forced to admit the apparently terminal collapse of the Obama-era nuclear deal, releasing a joint statement to announce that they were triggering its “dispute resolution” clause because of Tehran’s failure to abide by the terms of the agreement. The reality of the situation is startling: Europe’s attempts to keep the deal alive have achieved little in Tehran because of the Continent’s powerlessness. And European opposition to Trump’s Iran policy has achieved even less in Washington. In an interview, Boris Johnson all but admitted defeat in keeping the nuclear deal alive, calling instead for a new “Trump deal.”

To some extent, one British diplomat told me, the air strike that killed Soleimani was an extreme snapback to the hyperrealist, Kissingerian principles that largely guided American foreign policy after the Second World War. In this view, Barack Obama and his cautious multilateralism were the break with the norm, not Trump.

While Obama showed the possibilities of this approach—the Paris climate accord and Iran nuclear deal being prime examples (both of which have since been dumped by Trump)—he failed to adequately address its weaknesses, those who spoke with me said. Principal among them, according to a British government official, was that under Obama, the West had forgotten the power of escalatory dominance. In other words, he who carries the biggest stick retains his dominance, so long as he is prepared to use it.

The argument for escalation is simple: If the response to any aggressive act by a foreign adversary is always to de-escalate in order to avoid a spiral of violence, then the advantage borne by military and economic dominance is lost, creating more chaos, not less. A logic has been allowed to develop among countries such as Iran and Russia, the British diplomat said, that the West will not escalate a crisis and will remain boxed into its cautious, multilateralist view. Trump has changed this.

Take Russia, for instance. The Western response to its incursion into Ukrainian territory was always proportionate and almost entirely economic. While there were very good reasons for this, that response meant that Moscow could escalate the crisis by moving more assets into territory it sought to control, safe in the knowledge that, having tested Western resolve, it would not be challenged militarily. In effect, the United States’ failure to enforce red lines empowered its adversaries.

With Iran, according to analysts at the Royal United Services Institute, Britain’s leading military think tank, Trump’s seemingly disproportionate response to Tehran’s aggression has left the Iranian regime shocked and unsure how to respond. At a briefing in London on Monday, I asked a panel of RUSI staffers whether, given that assessment, they considered the air strike a triumph for the president. No one on the panel demurred. Michael Stephens, a former British diplomat who is now a research fellow at RUSI, told me later that it was clear how badly the Iranians had been hurt, both in practical military terms and in pure national pride. “This has fundamentally changed the game and opens up the space for de-escalation,” he said. “It was a sucker punch which has scrambled their understanding of how the Americans might react in future. In the short term, it’s a triumph for Trump.”

Every option available to Iran now comes with huge risks, and the lack of serious response—so far—has damaged the Iranian regime’s reputation. The recent accidental downing of Ukrainian International Airlines Flight PS752 has also hit it hard, revealing a frightening incompetence as well as a limited retaliatory power.

But while the air strike itself might be a limited foreign-policy success for Trump now, the geopolitical gains he has won through escalatory tactics might yet dissipate if the killing turns out to be little more than an isolated incident, signalling nothing but the president’s capacity for shock. He has history in this area, after all. In 2017, Trump dropped the “mother of all bombs,” the largest conventional bomb the U.S. has ever deployed, to kill more than 90 militants in eastern Afghanistan, and the following year, he authorized, alongside France and Britain, air strikes on Syria in response to Bashar al-Assad’s use of chemical weapons. On neither occasion was the action followed up in any long-term fashion.

The lessons of the Soleimani killing also do not fit neatly into Trump’s worldview, suggesting the need for clear and consistent red lines, as well as the willingness to commit U.S. military resources to enforce them. It’s America back as global policeman.

At the moment, in the assessment of the British diplomat I spoke with, the only clear strength of Trump’s foreign policy is his unpredictability, which has the power to unsettle the United States’ adversaries. The diplomat said that Trump appears to understand American strength more instinctively than Obama but, unlike his predecessor, doesn’t seem to have anything close to a strategy to go alongside this insight.

So while there are “Trumportunities,” there are also “Trumptastrophes.” The president, accidentally or otherwise, has identified real problems, including Iran’s ability to act with relative impunity and China’s disrespect for the rules of global trade. With regard to Iran, Trump appears to have stumbled upon an effective mechanism to advance U.S. interests. But he has yet to show himself to be any better than his forerunners at solving the long-term problems he has identified—and may yet make them worse.

*********

We Can’t Afford to Ignore Lev Parnas’s Explosive Claims

We can’t afford to accept them at face value either.

By David A. Graham | Published January 16, 2020 | The Atlantic | Posted January 17, 2020 |

Irony is thriving in the Trump administration. Consider this: The president spent months, and was ultimately impeached for, badgering the Ukrainian government to announce a probe into the natural-gas company Burisma. Yet all it took was the release of some text messages by Lev Parnas, an accused criminal with a checkered past, for Ukraine to quickly announce it is investigating alleged illegal surveillance of former U.S. Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch.

The supposed surveillance, which is described in documents that Parnas turned over to the House Intelligence Committee, is one of several explosive claims to emerge this week. In the messages, Robert Hyde—who had contacts with the Trump family and is a Republican candidate for the U.S. House—described surveillance of Yovanovitch in Ukraine. She was abruptly fired in May 2019 after a pressure campaign directed by Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s lawyer. (Parnas, for the record, told Rachel Maddow on Wednesday that he believed Hyde was telling tall tales.)

Parnas turned over notes that again suggest—as House testimony from Ambassador Gordon Sondland previously attested—that Trump and Giuliani were only interested in the announcement of a probe, not the fact of one. This both undermines Trump’s claim to have been trying to fight corruption in Ukraine and indicates that the president’s goal was hurting Joe Biden and enhancing his own reelection chances.

[David A. Graham: Trump wanted an announcement—not an investigation]

Parnas also produced a May 2019 letter from Giuliani to Ukrainian President-elect Volodymyr Zelensky requesting a meeting with Trump. Giuliani began the letter, “I am private counsel to President Donald J. Trump. Just to be precise, I represent him as a private citizen, not as President of the United States.” This is the latest evidence to debunk Trump’s claim to have been acting in an official capacity when he pressured Ukraine.

In an interview with The New York Times, Parnas also explained how Giuliani came to represent him and his partner, Igor Fruman. In Parnas’s telling, he was worried about acting as go-betweens for Trump without an official capacity to ensure their safety and access. Parnas first proposed that Trump make the two men special envoys, but after speaking with Trump, Giuliani offered a new idea: He would represent Fruman and Parnas, as well as the president, thus making them all subject to shared attorney-client privilege.

The Parnas allegations go on and on. Parnas has said that Trump was kept apprised of all of his actions by Giuliani, although Parnas said he did not communicate directly with the president about them. (Though Trump has claimed not to know Parnas, there are many photos floating around of them together.) If true, this would also debunk any claim (already implausible) by Trump that he was unaware of Giuliani’s actions.

As the Senate prepares to hold a trial for Trump, with acquittal a foregone conclusion, impeachment remains a strange duck. For anyone who has seriously considered the evidence, it’s impossible to conclude that Trump’s behavior was appropriate (although it remains possible to conclude that impeachment, or removal, is still excessive.) Yet even though the House has finished impeaching Trump, and despite the appalling facts uncovered,  there is much that remains unknown  about the president’s actions with regard to Ukraine, thanks to both Trump’s obstruction and the haste of the Democratic House.

[David A. Graham: The arrests of Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman]

This makes it impossible to ignore Parnas’s claims. If true, they make the case against Trump that much more damning. They help to fill in some of the missing information, they underscore the president’s abuse of office, and they come from someone with firsthand knowledge.

And yet it’s also impossible to take Parnas at face value. Parnas, you may recall, first became a household name in October, when he was arrested with Fruman while attempting to leave the country, and charged with violations of election-related laws. This is a man who started a company called “Fraud Guarantee,” reportedly so that he could bury Google results about his own previous shady actions. If he is telling the truth now, he was both involved in a dastardly and preposterous scheme, and lied about it in the past.

Some of Parnas’s claims here deserve particular scrutiny, especially those not backed by documentary evidence. Though he claims Trump was aware of what was going on, he does not claim direct knowledge that this was the case. The fact that Parnas’s account squares with others, including Sondland’s, lends it some credibility. He also told Maddow that “Attorney General Barr was basically on the team,” but offers no evidence for the allegation, and no other evidence has emerged so far to support it. (A Department of Justice statement called that claim “100 percent false.”)

The dilemma posed by Parnas’s claims recalls the one created by Michael Cohen’s testimony to the House last February. As Republicans eagerly noted then, Cohen was a convicted liar, preparing to go to prison on tax-fraud, campaign-finance, and other charges. His testimony was self-interested: He both had reasons to exact personal revenge on Trump, and hoped that his cooperation might induce authorities to lighten his sentence. All of this was true, but Cohen (like Parnas) brought documents to back up his claims, and his testimony has largely been substantiated since.

Parnas is like Cohen in another way: Each was once a part of the Trump circle, and the president and his defenders now dismiss him as a liar and scoundrel. And as with Cohen, the defense is troubling even if true. If Cohen and Parnas are such obvious villains, how is it that they came to be close to the president, putatively working as part of his legal teams? The same question applies to any number of other criminals, con men, and charlatans we’ve come to know over the past four years as Trump associates. The fact that he is surrounded by such people says a great deal about either his judgment or his probity. (Probably both.)

The investigations into Trump have often had to rely on questionable witnesses like Parnas because other, supposedly uncompromised people with direct knowledge have declined to speak. The Trump administration blocked testimony from Acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and Energy Secretary Rick Perry, to name only a few, and Trump has declined to speak under oath. Former National Security Adviser John Bolton has conducted a bizarre public striptease, vacillating between hints he will and won’t testify, while saving his stories for a book; on the eve of the impeachment trial, he was spotted strolling around Qatar’s capital city.

In the absence of their testimony, the search for truth has had to depend on uncomfortable encounters with the likes of Lev Parnas. His claims can’t be believed at anything near face value. Yet they also cannot be dismissed out of hand, for the stakes are too high. As long as it’s Parnas’s story versus Trump’s, the question is which proven liar to trust.

*********

The Iran Plane Crash Is the Big Story

The accidental shoot-down of the Ukrainian passenger jet is a glaring example of how the conflict between the U.S. and Iran can spiral out of control even when neither party wants it to.

URI Friedman | Published January 14, 2020 | The Atlantic | Posted January 17, 2020 |

The downing of Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 and the deaths of all 176 people on board—newlyweds flying home from their wedding, graduate students charting ambitious careers, whole families returning from visiting relatives—have come to be portrayed as a tragic asterisk tacked onto the dramatic tale of how Donald Trump and Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei nearly went to war in the early days of 2020.

Over the weekend, for example, The New York Times published a comprehensive and vivid account of the week-long U.S.-Iran showdown. While the article ran more than 6,500 words, it included only one sentence on the plane crash. “In the confusion, a Ukrainian civilian passenger jet was destroyed by an Iranian missile,” the reporters wrote.

Trump, meanwhile, has claimed vindication for his handling of the crisis with Iran, but has barely mentioned the demise of Flight 752, other than to speculate about what caused the aircraft to explode. He has tweeted  often (including in Farsi) about the anti-government protests currently roiling Iran without referencing the impetus for them: the Iranian military accidentally shooting down the airplane, whose passengers were mostly Iranian nationals, and the country’s leaders then lying to their own people and the world about it for days.

But the shoot-down isn’t just some side event in the latest chapter of this story. It is the story, just as much as the U.S. and Iranian governments deciding to de-escalate hostilities is. The incident is a glaring example of how the months-long tit for tat between the two countries—which is far from over, even though their confrontation is for the moment less violent—can spiral out of control even when neither side wants it to. And it should serve as a counterweight to any notion that the parties have full command over the struggle they’ve been stepping up ever since the Trump administration withdrew the United States from the Iran nuclear deal in 2018.

It’s revealing that the most recent round of hostilities between the countries was bookended by mistakes and misperceptions. The Times  reported that the triggering event—a rocket attack by an Iranian-backed militia in late December that killed an American contractor at an Iraqi military base—was intended to exert pressure on the United States but not escalate the conflict, according to U.S. intelligence assessments. “The rockets landed in a place and at a time when American and Iraqi personnel normally were not there and it was only by unlucky chance that [the contractor] was killed,” the paper noted.

Whatever Iran’s intention, the attack did indeed leave an American dead. Which prompted the Trump administration to kill dozens of militia members in retaliatory strikes. Which led to supporters of that militia storming the U.S. embassy in Baghdad. Which resulted in Trump ordering the targeted killing of the Iranian general Qassem Soleimani in Iraq. Which moved Iran to fire missiles at Iraqi military bases hosting U.S. forces. Which caused the Iranians to brace for blowback from the United States, creating the conditions in which an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps missile operator apparently mistook Flight 752 for an American cruise missile and, with 10 seconds to act and his communication channels malfunctioning, blasted it out of the sky above Tehran.

Iran seemed to carefully calibrate its missile barrage on Iraqi bases—which damaged U.S. military airfields, blast walls, and various facilities but inflicted no casualties—to symbolically avenge Soleimani’s death without dramatically ramping up its fight with the United States. And the Trump administration chose to respond with similar restraint, asserting that the Iranians were “standing down” and that Washington effectively would as well, by limiting its retaliation to additional economic sanctions. The two foes even exchanged de-escalatory messages over encrypted fax via the Swiss embassy in Tehran. But if one needed an illustration of the difference between intentionally escalating hostilities during a crisis and unintentionally doing so, there’s no starker one than the Iranian military (more or less) precisely firing missiles at specific U.S. military targets and then, hours later, accidentally launching a missile that obliterated a plane with Iranian citizens on board.

The downing of Flight 752 “shows how even restrained retaliation could quickly turn into inadvertent escalation” and how actors in international crises are often less capable than their adversaries assume they are, especially when they’re in a defensive crouch, Jacquelyn Schneider, a national-security expert at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, wrote on Twitter. (In this case, the incompetence of the Iranian military has been particularly noteworthy.) And while Iran and the United States are likely to proceed cautiously with their deliberate escalation—Iranian leaders know that they would lose a direct conventional war with the U.S., and Trump doesn’t want to get sucked into another protracted conflict in the Middle East—the biggest risk in ongoing tensions is inadvertent escalation, Schneider argued: “More mistakes will be made.”

Yes, the parties seem to have looked war in the face and recoiled, but they may simply be channeling their escalation in new directions rather than truly de-escalating. As the Trump administration heaps economic pressure on Iran and shines a spotlight on anti-government demonstrations there, and as Iran’s leaders grapple with this serious internal challenge to their rule and act out further by, say, launching cyber attacks, mobilizing proxy forces, or backing out of their commitments under the nuclear deal, the conflict could spin out of control again.

To confidently conclude that escalation is a manageable force would be reckless. Imagine, for instance, that those Iranian missiles had killed Americans, something Trump has deemed unacceptable and threatened to counter with overwhelming force. Troops at one of the Iraqi bases that came under assault told Reuters that a soldier came “very close to being blown up inside a shelter behind the blast walls.” And Lieutenant Colonel Staci Coleman, the U.S. Air Force officer who runs the airfield there, told The Wall Street Journal that she thought the Iranians “really wanted to target our [air] assets and if they so happened to kill Americans in the process, that was okay with them.” Or imagine if Americans had been on board Flight 752. How would the world look today? To channel Leon Trotsky, you may not be interested in escalation, but sometimes escalation is interested in you. It’s a fallacy to presume that state actors can completely control a crisis. After all, who would have predicted that Iranians would be in the streets this week calling for the downfall of the supreme leader as Trump cheers them on?

“Most obviously, humility is in order,” Robert Jervis, an international-relations theorist at Columbia University,  wrote  recently, regarding the lessons of the U.S. standoff with Iran. “My guess is that neither President Donald Trump nor the Iranians know what they will do next (and what they think they will do may be different from what they will do when the time comes).” Next time—and there will be a next time—the Swiss and their encrypted fax machine may not be sufficient to avert a war no one wants.

*********

Iran’s Response to Soleimani’s Killing Is Coming

The killing of Qassem Soleimani was a monumental blow to the country’s regional ambitions. It could be about to go back to basics in its response.

By SAM DAGHER | Published January 14, 2020 | The Atlantic | Posted January 17, 2020 |

BEIRUT—About two years ago, Qassem Soleimani delivered a speech at a ceremony in Tehran marking a decade since the death of Imad Mughniyeh, the senior Hezbollah commander killed in a car-bomb explosion in the heart of Damascus, an attack carried out by the CIA with support from Israel. Standing in front of a huge portrait of Mughniyeh superimposed against a panorama of Jerusalem, Soleimani addressed an audience of senior Iranian officials, as well as representatives of Iran’s proxy militias in Iraq, Lebanon, the Palestinian territories, Syria, and Yemen.

Soleimani hailed Mughniyeh as “the legend” responsible for practically all the achievements of Iran’s so-called axis of resistance, which according to the Iranian general included building Hezbollah and the Palestinian group Hamas into formidable threats to Israel and killing 241 American service members in the 1983 bombing of a U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut. “The enemy knows that punishment for Imad’s blood is not firing a missile or a tit-for-tat assassination,” he told the crowd. “The punishment for Imad’s blood is the eradication of the Zionist entity.”

Following Soleimani’s killing in an American air strike this month, it is worth remembering the man’s own words. Soleimani, Mughniyeh, and the current Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah, formed a trio of men who carried out Iran’s strategy across the Middle East under Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. And so it is hard to overstate the magnitude of the blow that Soleimani’s death has delivered. The focus in the days since his killing has been on the perceived impulsiveness of Donald Trump’s decision, Iran’s retaliation—limited thus far to the firing of 22 missiles at two U.S. bases in Iraq, with no reported casualties—the public displays of grief for Soleimani in Iran, and the national- security implications. But as with Mughniyeh’s death, to paraphrase Soleimani himself, the response to the Iranian general’s killing will not be restricted to a lone missile attack or a tit-for-tat move—Iran is not yet done.

Take the case of Mughniyeh. In the summer of 2012, a Hezbollah suicide bomber killed five Israeli tourists and a driver in an attack in a Bulgarian resort town. U.S. and Israeli officials  suspected that the bombing, which occurred four years after Mughniyeh’s death, was retaliation for the Hezbollah commander’s killing, as well as for the assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists, which Tehran blamed on Israel. “I have received many messages from brothers in the resistance asking for permission to carry out martyrdom operations” to avenge Soleimani’s death, Nasrallah said during a speech aired at memorial services for Soleimani held throughout Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley and the country’s south. Revenge, he continued, will be a “long” battle.

For now, in responding to Soleimani’s killing, self-preservation and maintaining staying power mandate restraint. The strike that killed him also killed Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, who commanded the largest of the seven main Iraqi proxy militias working for Iran, according to Hisham al-Hashimi, a Baghdad-based security analyst with the European Institute of Peace. Iran’s ability to retaliate is also complicated by the fact that it is loathed by most Iraqis, including its fellow Shiites, who recently attacked Iran’s missions in Baghdad and the south of Iraq. Iraqi Shiites blame Iran and the militias and parties affiliated with it for killing more than 500 protesters in Iraq since October, and they see these same actors as being behind much of the corruption and plundering of the country’s resources that has hobbled Iraq’s ability to deliver services and economic opportunities to its citizens. Mounting economic sanctions imposed by the Trump administration on Iran and its allies in Iraq will also restrict their room to maneuver.

Read: The Soleimani assassination is America’s most consequential strike this century

Similar dynamics are at play in Lebanon, home to Hezbollah, Iran’s most powerful regional proxy force. Once beloved as a resistance movement that liberated southern Lebanon from Israeli occupation in 2000, Hezbollah is now regarded by many Lebanese as part and parcel of the corrupt, dysfunctional, and sectarian political class that has brought the country to the brink of economic collapse. Residents of predominantly Shiite cities in southern Lebanon such as Nabatieh and Tyr, which are seen as bastions of support for Hezbollah, have even joined their fellow Lebanese in protests that have been ongoing for months. “The prevailing mood now is ‘Give me money and I’ll come out on the streets and chant against America and endorse any of your illogical propositions. But you do not want to give me money and still want me to come out against America, no,’” Ali al-Amine, a journalist and politician who is among the most outspoken anti-Hezbollah Lebanese Shiites, told me.

Given these limits to Iran’s short-term capabilities, it will likely focus on assessing the impact of Soleimani’s killing, plugging holes and vulnerabilities in its intelligence and security apparatus, reevaluating its strategy and approach, and streamlining its operations throughout the region. Tehran will also seize opportunities for détente with its regional archnemesis, Saudi Arabia, and seek rapprochement with the region’s Sunni Arabs, whose animosity toward Iran worsened after it partnered with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to crush an uprising in Syria, primarily carried out by the country’s Sunnis, that began in 2011.

Over time, the United States, Israel, and their allies—and all those perceived as harming Iran’s regional strategy—will face retribution, though, most likely in the form of covert operations and actions that will be much harder to trace back to Tehran. It would, in a way, be back to basics: bombings, assassinations, and stealth tactics long attributed to Mughniyeh. Indeed, Soleimani himself touted such efforts both at the memorial service for Mughniyeh and in a rare TV interview he gave in October. As Soleimani put it, it is the technique of “appearing like a sword and disappearing like a ghost.” It’s as if he were instructing his soldiers on the path they would have to take after his demise.

During the memorial for Soleimani, Nasrallah vowed to avenge his comrade’s killing by driving U.S. troops from the region and returning them to America “in coffins,” echoing the vow Soleimani made in 2018 to avenge Mughniyeh by “eradicating” Israel. Hezbollah will not shy away from carrying out operations against the U.S. and its allies, and may even resort to the campaign of assassinations and bombings that it turned to in Lebanon starting in 2005, when it felt under siege and compelled to defend its existence.

Elsewhere, having reconciled with Hamas after the two sides fell out over Iran’s support for Assad, Tehran could turn to the group to ratchet up confrontation with Israel in Gaza. In Syria, both Iran and Hezbollah will seek to maintain their presence and influence—Assad, for one, knows his survival hinges on patronage from Iran and Russia; Tehran, meanwhile, sees Syria as the second-most-important country in its axis of resistance, after Iran itself. And in Iraq, Iran’s proxy militias “have the wherewithal and expertise to escalate the situation and deliver painful blows to the U.S.,” Hashimi told me. There, too, he said, the focus will be on mobilizing assassination squads and mounting other special operations, rather than on carrying out conventional attacks on American forces.

In his October TV interview, Soleimani fondly recounted how, in 2006, he traveled through back roads to get to Beirut from Damascus during the 33-day summer war between Israel and Hezbollah, and how he, Mughniyeh, and Nasrallah oversaw the conflict from a command center in the Lebanese capital’s southern suburbs. He said that Israeli bombers were bringing down buildings all around them, and that they survived by moving around and dodging Israeli reconnaissance drones.

Soleimani hinted in the same interview that even if the trio were to all die, an entire generation had been groomed by them to continue the fight—in asymmetric warfare, he warned, there are no traditional fronts. “The enemy,” Soleimani said, “must contend with an expansive and smart field of land mines.”

______

By SAM DAGHER, the only Western journalist based in Damascus at the start of the Syrian conflict, is the author of Assad or We Burn the Country: How One Family’s Lust for Power Destroyed Syria.

*********

#trump scandals #trumpism #president donald trump #trump administration #trump news #us iran #iran deal #iran news #iran #sanctions against iran #trump corruption #trump cult #trump crime syndicate #trump crime family #ukrainian #ukraine plane crash #ukrainegate #ukraine #pentagon #military intelligence #u. s. military #u.s. military #military #u.s. news #u.s. presidential elections #iraq news #iraq #iraq protests #islamic state in iraq and syria (isis) #worldpolitics

[themattress]

Regina & Rumple

I still think these two were once-excellent characters and villains whom A&E proceeded to mutilate by turning them into some of the most whitewashed, morally offensive, overexposed yet poorly written, wish-fulfillment characters that I have ever seen. But with that said (and this may be part of old biases showing), I think Rumple ended on a better note than Regina.

Don’t get me wrong. I still think Rumple’s ending should have happened in the S5 / series finale that should have been, with him being the Final Boss and putting the whole multiverse in danger out of selfishness, but has an atoning death when Belle and his unborn son are put in danger too as a result, with him literally standing up to his dark side and overcoming it. 

Otherwise, his ending should have happened in “The Final Battle”, with his atoning death, happening during the face-off with his dark side, being done to save Gideon from having to kill Emma: breaking the Black Fairy’s spell on his heart by merging his own heart with it just as he actually did with Rogers’ heart in the real finale but without a follow-up afterlife scene.

But the ending he got, as it stands? It’s serviceable. He killed himself and his dark side (now embodied in Wish Rumple) in order to save the life of his friend (an alternate reality version of his biggest victim, at that), showing clear anguish at the possibility of said friend dying so that there’s no doubt in his sincerity, and even saying he knows he won’t reunite with Belle afterward, but that truly doing the right thing is “doing it because it’s right, not for a reward”. Even his afterlife scene with Belle, which I still say weakens the power of his sacrifice, wasn’t as bad as it could have been due to there being no solid on-screen confirmation that he and Belle went on to Heaven (which Rumple doesn’t belong in) and instead stayed in limbo or Purgatory or whatever you call it to have a second chance at marriage, without any of the abuse and dysfunction that unfolded throughout all of S4-6. Yeah, remember all of that?

Really, that’s my biggest issue here (besides the bizarre and kind of creepy emotional Regina monologue over his carcass): Rumple’s entire character in S7 is completely reliant on the audience just completely forgetting that S4-6 ever happened, or accepting that the bare minimum, token decency (that really wasn’t even all that good when you think about it) he displayed at the end of “The Final Battle” means that he’s redeemed and that all should be forgiven, which is bullshit especially since it ignores him becoming the Darkest Dark One in the 5A finale. There being no consequences for that move whatsoever (it was ignored as a factor even before Wish Rumple claimed the Darkness completely for himself via the Author’s pen and made it a moot point) is galling and just reinforces what a Nice Guy fantasy Rumple is for A&E. Any competent showrunner would have had that action spell Rumple’s doom. Having an atoning death is fine, but he shouldn’t get a hero’s death after all he did in S4-6.

However, other than that, the way Rumple went out was OK. Regina’s ending, though...

It’s funny - had “The Final Battle” as it is, with Rumple surviving and being totally forgiven by everyone, been the end of OUAT, then I’d say his ending was the worst and most offensive one, with Regina’s (Mayor titled “Queen” with dwarves bowing to her in one realm, actual Queen in another) only coming in at a distant second.  But as it turns out, his ending in the actual finale was decent while Regina’s...WOW. Where do I even begin? The conclusion to her battle with Wish Henry would’ve been bad enough as it is, but then came the last act of the episode. Regina gets the idea to make a “good version” of the Dark Curse completely out of nowhere - it’s not necessary to happen, but she just decides that it should and all the idiots around her decide so as well because of course they do. Flash forward to the realms being merged, and Regina is crowned Queen of the whole thing (with it being said that it was decided by a vote that overwhelmingly went in her favor), with it being done by two of her biggest victims, while a crowd mostly made up of her other victims smile, applaud and even fucking bow to her. She makes another cheesy speech and the entire show ends on that (oh, and scenes from the past play during this monologue of her’s, and when she addresses that everyone has suffered loss, Graham’s death is even shown. I wish I was making that up.) 

And she’s now called “The Good Queen”. Gag me.

I’ve seen Regina fans gush over this ending because Regina began the show so unloved and now she’s surrounded by people who love her.  To which I pose this question: what the Hell did she do to EARN that love? To DESERVE it? She ruled oppressively over them, killed their loved ones, manipulated them, tortured them, constantly belittled and abused them (yes, even after she’d reformed), whined about how unfair her life was while ignoring the pain in their lives (much of which she’d caused), and generally accepted all of their love and help and support while giving little back in return. They did all the heavy lifting to support her, whereas a proper redemption should have had her do the heavy lifting to support them, the people she’d wronged. Almost all of her heroics that they benefited from were for her own self-benefit, and her goal never stopped being her own personal happiness, just as it was when she was a villain. RUMPLE actually learned that “you do the right thing because it’s right, not for a reward”, and yet Regina never truly did learn this. The only person she ever was shown to personally sacrifice for was Henry - but he was the exception, not the rule.

Moreover, while you could argue that the status she gets at the end here was a result of her doing good, let’s actually look at all she gained from being evil that she still has? Her status as a Queen and/or Mayor (both of which coming about from evil-doing), her money, her magic, custody over her son - hell, she even kind of got to get revenge on Snow and Charming by killing the Wish Realm versions of them and suffering no repercussions, even getting a second loving son out of it! And what did she truly sacrifice by the end? She got closure with her dead loved ones in the Underworld (including the one she killed), got to keep a motherly relationship with Henry so her sacrifice in 3x11 didn’t stick, she never sacrificed her magic like Zelena did even if that didn’t stick, she never sacrificed her life like Rumple and Hook both did twice even if it only ever stuck with Rumple the second time....she basically got everything she could have ever wanted. The real kicker is that the start of Regina’s story had it so that being Queen is something Cora was forcing on her since birth and she herself didn’t want it - and yet her Happy Ending is being Queen of EVERYTHING?

But the ultimate thing that gets me down about this ending is the simple fact that OUAT started out as Emma’s story. Emma’s fairy tale. That was how the series was portrayed in the beginning: with Emma as a lonely lost princess who felt like an unloved, unlovable orphan. An ending where Emma, the rightful princess of the realm, is crowned Queen by her parents and surrounded by people who love her, including her son and husband, would have been a perfectly natural ending to that story. But instead, it becomes the story of the character who was portrayed as the villain and Emma’s arch-nemesis, the one responsible for Emma growing up so miserable, and SHE is the one who gets that kind of ending as the last scene of the show? Are you fucking KIDDING ME!? If it wasn’t clear already, this solidifies it: Regina Mills is one of the biggest, most blatant Mary Sue Creator’s Pets in all of fiction. 

Rumple may embody OUAT warts and all, but Regina is the embodiment of its sad decline.

#Once Upon a Time #ABC #Regina Mills #The Evil Queen #Rumpelstiltskin #Mr. Gold #Weaver #Finale #Opinion #Analysis #Bad Writing #Character Derailment #Mary Sue #Creator's Pet #They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot #They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character #Jumping the Shark #This Show Got Screwed Up #Anti-Regina #Anti-Regina Mills #Anti-Evil Queen #Anti-Rumple #Anti-Rumpelstiltskin #Anti-OUAT #Anti-A&E #Those ABOMINATIONS!

[taaroko]

Post-IW MCU Rewatch: Avengers: Age of Ultron

Time for the Long Weekend of Ultron. If you’re looking for a negative review, this will not be that. Maybe I am easily satisfied, but I dislike zero of the MCU movies. As long as characters I love are onscreen and being awesome and especially when they’re interacting with other characters I love, I’m going to end up with overall positive experience. That being said, this movie is my least favorite in which Thor appears, and it’s probably close to the bottom of my ranking.

I saw a post yesterday pointing out that this is the only movie in which Thor uses lethal force against humans. In the opening sequence when they’re taking down the latest in a long series of Hydra bases, he’s wasting a bunch of dudes without hesitating. Like the person who made that post, I’m pretty sure Thor is not cool with your fascist BS, especially if he knows that they love using Norse symbolism.

Is this the only time Steve uses his motorcycle as a projectile? Because I kind of think it’s not, but I can’t remember for sure. 

“Can we hold them?” “They’re the Avengers!”

I love Thor and Cap’s combo moves so much.

“Good talk!” “No it wasn’t.”

“Please be a secret door please be a secret door please be a secret door—yay!”

The lullaby is always going to be hilarious now.

Well that was an extremely effective way of activating Tony’s guilt complex.

What’s Wanda’s deal? She saw what Tony saw, right? She knows Tony’s greatest fear is failing to stop an alien invasion and Earth’s destruction—of surviving all of that while his friends don’t (ooooouch). Is she already doubting the plan, or what?

“Tales of sprained deltoids and...gout.” Thor is so very wonderfully bad at backtracking from a foot-in-mouth moment.

Oh wow, Tony asked Thor for permission to keep the Scepter long enough to check it out before he’d take it back to Asgard.

“Will...Thor be there?” SAME, GIRL.

“We don’t have time for a City Hall debate.” This is the last time Tony will be so averse to oversight.

Okay so I’m confused. Did Tony recycle part of an interface Hydra was building? Because that would kind of explain how it ended up thinking humanity was too defective to be allowed to live?

Ultron killing JARVIS hurts so much worse than I ever would’ve expected it to hurt to watch an electronic butler get killed.

Thor is telling a bunch of old veterans war stories! That’s so great!

“This was aged for a thousand years in the barrels built from the wreck of Brunnhilde’s fleet. It is not meant for mortal men.” Wait a second. Brunnhilde? As in, Valkyrie from Ragnarok? Seriously? She gets a name in this movie but not the one she’s actually in? But it’s pretty cool they made kegs out of her ships. I’m assuming this wreck happened before the disastrous attack on Hela, which means Brunnhilde could probably decide how to repurpose all the wood. Barrels of mead definitely sounds like something she’d sign off on.

Also does this mead get Steve drunk? I feel like it should at least be able to do that. And it’s great that Thor hands some to him in the same breath that he says it’s not for mortals. He thinks very highly of Steve.

I wonder how often Steve hangs around with old veterans.

I’m completely fine with Bruce/Natasha. ...But my ship is Bucky/Nat.

Hehe, it’s Steve’s turn to be Natasha’s wingman.

The hammer scene is fantastic.

I saw a review thing where someone talked about how there’s a stupid gag where Bruce’s face lands on Nat’s boobs, and I couldn’t for the life of me remember what that was. Well I just found it, and...that is not how you play something like that for cheap laughs. They don’t linger on it, they don’t make risqué comments. Nat is so not bothered by it that she doesn’t even acknowledge his apology, and Bruce doesn’t even seem that embarrassed. Nat is entirely focused on making sure what’s happening around them isn’t enough to make him hulk out.

Okay yeah, Ultron went straight back to the Hydra facility after they killed all his Iron Legion bodies, which definitely makes me think they used some of Hydra’s interface to make him. And I think Tony was so willing to do it because of how Wanda messed with his brain, cranking up the paranoia about alien threats.

Thor is not happy that Tony spent the time he graciously allowed him before taking the scepter back to Asgard messing around with it like this.

Is it weird for Andy Serkis to play human characters after doing so many mo-cap roles?

“Keep your friends rich and your enemies rich and wait to find out which is which.”

Ultron has so far talked about evolution, quoted scripture, and quoted famous poetry. He’s gotten remarkably cultured already, and he’s let it make him super pretentious.

I’m pretty sure they realized going in that they were never going to top Days of Future Past’s version of Quicksilver, so they didn’t really try and then also killed him off so they wouldn’t have to. But where that Quicksilver is ridiculously fun, this one has more emotional weight. And an arc.

Okay. So I think Wanda tapped into Tony’s fears (born from his glimpse through the portal) and Thor’s slight aptitude for foresight (as indicated in his dreams of Asgard burning in Ragnarok). Steve has neither of those things, and she made him see a messed up version of the past he wishes he could go back to. She made Nat see the past she regrets, and she just made Bruce hulk out. I don’t think Wanda herself has any ability to see the future.

Oh hey, Wolfram & Hart are in Thor’s dream.

Also foreshadowing to his level up in lightning powers. Hmmm. I wonder if Heimdall’s warning is that Ragnarok will pave the way for Thanos.

The entire Veronica sequence is awesome. But the best part is Tony’s jackhammer punches/Chinese finger trap. Also Tony’s face after Hulk spits out a tooth.

The wind down of the fight is the origin of “Earth hate Hulk.” Aww.

I do not understand the hate Clint’s family gets. I could not have been happier to discover that the reason he doesn’t have a girlfriend is that he has a wife and kids. Statistically, it’s nice that at least one Avenger has a family. It’s okay for there to be a stay-at-home mom somewhere in the MCU. And it’s wonderful that Natasha has kind of been adopted by the Barton family.

Thor and Steve’s faces during the whole bit where Thor steps on a toy house are hilarious. Awwwwwwwww Thor left because he’s worried he’s a danger to them, because of his vision! That’s so sad!

Ooh, was that the first time Clint’s been called Hawkeye in the movies?

I don’t understand the vitriol against Natasha’s attitude about being sterilized as a young teenager. That moment was the rite of passage that sealed her role as a KGB assassin. To her, it is symbolic of everything she did for them and gave up for them. And it’s their philosophy that motherhood could compromise an agent, not the movie’s. This doesn’t mean she wishes she could be Laura Barton. She plays all these different roles and weaves all these different lies because it makes it easier to hide from her past, and Wanda just brought that all back to the surface. She’s allowed to be upset that she let a hostile government agency mutilate her and limit her options for the future. It’s tragic, not problematic, that she, as the sum of her entire past, considers herself monstrous. This is just more “I’ve got red in my ledger.” And she’s a little bit playing this up because she wants Bruce to stop fighting what they could have together. She doesn’t want him thinking something like that she deserves more than someone like him.

You don’t have a dark side, Steve. Don’t be silly. But here are sown the seeds of Civil War. Winter Soldier has made Steve very opposed to using force as a preventative measure, and it has also made him very mistrustful of putting someone else in charge, but now Tony’s giving him reasons not to trust him either. For Steve, there will never be a time to retire. This is why I’m convinced he’ll die in Avengers 4, and why I desperately hope Tony will be allowed to retire.

“I need your help. It’s dangerous.” In the deleted scenes, yeah.

“Guy’s multiplying faster than a Catholic rabbit.” *snort*

Clint’s darts game is great.

“Hoo, I’m decrypting nuclear codes and you don’t want me to.”

What is this power Ultron has to make big chunks of stuff move? Is it magnetic? Because that wouldn’t explain him moving chunks of road.

Bruce and Tony interacting is so great.

AHAHA! There’s a reason Ultron didn’t do something obvious like launch all the nukes! JARVIS was stopping him! JARVIS’s surviving protocols were making sure he didn’t do everything you’d expect an AI with internet access to be able to do. Okay. Biggest plot hole isn’t actually a plot hole. Boom. However I do think that Ultron’s plan to destroy the Earth meteor style was part of his melodramatic god complex personality.

Ultron 3.0 looks awful. Should’ve streamlined a bit. He looks like he’s on steroids.

I very much do not like that Vision can fly without visible means of propulsion. It looks doofy. And Vision is a doofy name. However, points for taking Thor as inspiration when it comes to style.

Not a fan of Clint’s weird tunic/coat thing. Would’ve worked better if there was a belt.

Wow I never realized how often “monster” gets tossed around in this movie. Nat, Bruce, Vision, the Avengers collectively. Even Cap makes a joke, “What kind of monster would let a German scientist experiment on him?” This movie is pretty much asking if they have any right to do what they do. If they’re a menace or a benefit. In the end, the answer is pretty unclear. They did kinda make Ultron. They save the world from him and come out with Vision and Wanda on the team, so it’s probably a net gain, but the Sokovia Accords are an extremely understandable consequence. Wanda has that dilemma herself. She thought she had to destroy the Avengers to save the world, and she nearly destroyed the world by helping Ultron, but then she helped save it by defeating him. At great personal cost.

Yay another Thor+Cap combo move!

Pietro is so petty and obnoxious to Hawkeye, and it’s great.

Aww it’s the nerdy guy from Winter Soldier! And thankfully he survives this movie.

“I am Thor, son of Odin, and as long as there is life in my breast...I am running out of things to say. Are you ready?” His grin is my favorite.

The Maximoffs are the most functional, affectionate siblings in the MCU. :/

The number of Ultron robots somewhat strains credulity. Also, why didn’t he just send one to go chill across the world as a failsafe? Ultron is kind of stupid.

Rhodey’s reaction to Vision is priceless.

Aaand there Hulk goes. Apparently through a portal to trash planet, eventually.

If the meta-narrative of the first Avengers was “Can this exist?”, then the meta-narrative of Ultron was “...But should it?” The answer to the first question is “Absolutely it can.” The answer to the second is “Only if it doesn’t get arrogant or reckless.” I think Infinity War’s question is “Can it keep getting bigger like this and still survive?” and Avengers 4 will determine the answer. My guess is that it’ll be “Not without sacrifice.”

Anyway, that “are we monsters” thing is pretty much the individual arc of most of the main characters—except Steve. He makes a reference to it, but he is constantly the voice of caution and reason and he’s the one who pushes for zero civilian casualties in the city. This is the beginning of “We don’t trade lives.” It’s okay to sacrifice yourself, but not to play a numbers game with other people’s lives. Steve is and always has been rock solid. He’s a good man. He trusts his instincts, and they are pretty much always right. But that means he can never stop. He never gets to rest.

Clint is the other character who doesn’t have an “am I a monster” arc. His arc is just the kinda adoptive dad thing he has with the Maximoffs, and us finding out so much more about his life. He’s trying to retire, like Tony, but he’s willing to die for this if he has to. (I hope he doesn’t. But if most or all of his family got Snaptured, then it’d kinda be okay, though devastating, for him to sacrifice himself so they could come back.)

Natasha, Bruce, Tony, and Thor all have the monster arc, and I think Vision is supposed to be the answer at least for Tony and Thor. They created something good. Natasha didn’t get the guy, though, because she betrayed him to get Hulk back for the battle. And Bruce lost big time.

Maybe the reason Ultron is so low on my ranking of MCU movies is that it’s kinda muddled. There are great character moments and the main theme is an important one for the MCU, but in the end we have a snarky, grandiose villain with an army of disposable soldiers (again, only the villain is waaaay less interesting than Loki), coupled with the same plot as “I Robot, You Jane,” one of the worst Buffy episodes of the entire series. (Demon ends up in the internet because of the negligent actions of the good guys, tries to get impressionable young people to work for it, has a robot body built for itself, then gets locked inside that body and out of the internet, then destroyed.) I think it got spread a bit thin trying to set things up for Phase 3, too. Setting up Wakanda, Ragnarok, Civil War, and even Infinity War. Maybe if it didn’t need to do all that, it could’ve been more focused.

#avengers: age of ultron #avengers #mcu rewatch #marvel #infinity war spoilers #iron man #thor #captain america

[journeysintowebcomics]

Worm Liveblog #63

UPDATE 63: Just Like Them

Last time Jack Slash had encountered the person he wanted to recruit. It went badly for the potential recruit – Oni Lee. Theo will pursue Jack Slash and try to kill him with a time limit of two years. Meanwhile, Labyrinth was visited by Burnscar, who didn’t try to recruit. It didn’t go well either. Who is next in the Slaughterhouse Nine’s potential recruits? Let’s find out!

It takes me a moment to realize the significance of this candidate. It’s Colin, or as he used to be known when he was a hero: Armsmaster. Well this has the potential to be quite the interesting situation! Because despite everything, I don’t think Armsmaster would join the Slaughterhouse Nine unless he’s really upset about the consequences of his actions during the Leviathan attack. It doesn’t seem to me like he’s delusional, thinking it wasn’t his fault or anything like that. In my opinion, he’s of sound mind and has relatively stable moral opinions. He should be okay.

What worries me is which one of the Slaughterhouse Nine will visit him, though, because it’s very likely they’ll cause havoc no matter who it is. The question is how destructive they’ll be.

So! Armsmaster is at his house because where else would he be during his house arrest, when he hears a noise like tinkling glass. Shatterbird, perhaps? Better step away from anything made of any kind of glass, just in case. Armsmaster does precisely the opposite to that, contacting Dragon, who is currently busy examining a boring code. Hah! An AI is getting bored of code! This is great. Through the microphones, Dragon tries to listen and find out where the tinkling noise is coming from. This is good, I think. If anything happens to Armsmaster, Dragon will know immediately what it was.

There’s nothing to be seen outside through the window, which of course doesn’t mean he’s safe. The noise is coming from the vent, and I think it’s clear for anyone that anything that has to come from the ventilation can’t be benign. To defend himself, Armsmaster takes a small knife that seems to have disintegration based on nanotechnology, and considers going for his helmet.

The vent exploded from the wall with enough force to fly across the room and embed in the opposite wall. It was hard to make out in the cloud of plaster dust, but Colin saw a hand, all white, each joint segmented, fingers splayed, palm facing the room.

The hand tipped forward, and then dropped to the floor alongside the attached forearm, a length of chain stretching from the vent to the ‘elbow’.

…I remember in the crime scenes the Wards had fought the Travelers at one of the bodies looked like this – joints attached with chains and stuff separated. This has to be the person who made it. I can’t avoid wondering how exactly this parahuman can survive with such mutilation, from the description I’m reading here it should be an impossibility. This person must be a tremendously skillful tinker, because I suppose it relies on technology to work.

Do you know how creepy the idea of seeing exposed organs at work is? How do surgeons endure such thing? Golly!

He knew this one from the briefings.  Mannequin.

Well the name is very fitting. From the physical description alone I’d say this one is the most memorable of all the Slaughterhouse Nine so far. There’s something extremely unsettling about him that goes beyond the fact he’s a shambling mess of a person walking and moving. Has someone drawn Mannequin? I’m certain there is. If you know some pretty good Mannequin art please show it to me! Call it morbid curiosity, because I’m sure I’ll kind of regret it once I see it, haha

Armsmaster reacts immediately, lunging forward with his weapon ready to hit while Mannequin is still lying on the floor unmoving, but of course it doesn’t work. What kind of Slaughterhouse Nine member would get killed like a chump? A large blade emerges from the hand, and Armsmaster dodges because he got lucky. Will Mannequin approve this? I think he will, it’s not like he expected a warm welcome, right?

The head is the last thing that gets to the body, and it truly is like a mannequin’s head. It doesn’t even have facial features, so I suppose that means Mannequin’s brain is the only thing inside? I’m imagining that’s what’s going on with him. Goodness, my imagination is flying about how biologically possible it could be. Mannequin seriously is such a weird character.

Dragon noticed what’s going on and help is already on its way. Will she use her speedy suit to come all the way from wherever she is, like she did with the Undersiders’ attack to the Protectorate? Maybe not because this isn’t a somewhat average villain from the city, this is a member of a worldwide threat. Launching yourself carelessly against Mannequin can’t end well...for Armsmaster because he’s the one who is vulnerable here.

Mannequin does what can only be intimidation tactics such as showing Armsmaster his spinning fingers and trying to ward him away with them, as if threatening to slice his face off with them. Instead, the blades touch the leg, and it bounces around in what may or may not have been a calculated move because of this:

All at once, it ricocheted, shearing through the computer, bouncing violently off of Mannequin’s head, then his leg again, the desk, then his arm.

It hit the computer. Maybe Mannequin heard Dragon talking, even if she was careful not to be too loud. I don’t think they’d be so careless as to make the computer what allows Dragon to listen, but Mannequin may not know that, to them any voice he heard may just be someone Armsmaster was talking with.

The blades stopped, Mannequin still isn’t saying anything. Just like I suppose, the destruction of the computer doesn’t stop the connection with Dragon, she’s able to give some useful information about Mannequin. It’s of interest to me too!

“Mannequin. Original name Alan Gramme. Tinker, originally went by the name Sphere.  Specialty is in biomes, terraforming and ecosystems… or it was.”

Well this is the most information I know of any Slaughterhouse Nine member yet. Of course he’s a tinker, no surprise there, although now I can’t avoid wondering how exactly he turned himself into his current state. It doesn’t say he was a former hero, maybe he was like Canary, a rogue? His specialty is biomes and ecosystems. His, uh, his being right now may be related to that, if he can make a self-sustaining environment for what little remains of him. Who knows what kind of stuff is inside that mannequin. All in all, useful information.

“He became newsworthy when he took on a project to build self sustaining biospheres on the moon.  He had ideas on solving world hunger, and building aquatic cities near cities plagued by overcrowding.  And he was putting it all into effect.  Until-”

“The Simurgh,” Colin finished.

So he was a genius, a veritable world-saving genius. Self-sustaining biospheres and aquatic cities are concepts that seem so science fiction it’s amazing to hear he was putting it all into effect, but the Simurgh...something happened with the Simurgh. That sounds familiar. Wasn’t the Simurgh one of the Endbringers? Behemoth, Leviathan and the Simurgh, if I recall correctly. The city he was in must have been obliterated, and he changed then.

“His wife and children were killed in the attack, years of work ruined.  Everything fell apart.  He went mad.  He cut himself off from the rest of the world.  Literally sealed himself away.”

Literally sealed himself away, no doubt. It’s a real pity such a promising mind went insane and is now one of the Slaughterhouse Nine. I can understand why he joined, though, or at the very least I can imagine why he’d be willing to take part of this group.

In what must be the world’s least surprising fact ever, Dragon says Mannequin has a body count. What’s important is what kind of person he prefers killing, though.

Like other serial killers, Mannequin favored certain types of people as victims.  His prey of choice included rogues, those individuals seeking to make a profit from their abilities, especially those looking to better the world… and tinkers.

Pretty meaningful targets, if you ask me. I can’t say I know what’s going through Mannequin’s head, but I suspect he’s killing them out of rancor or envy, like they deserve getting killed for being altruistic or because he envies they’re actually being able to help the world without things going badly for them. Maybe this is also why Mannequin is here to try to recruit Armsmaster. He was trying to do what he thought was the right thing to do for the sake of the world – and his own reputation, but that’s beside the point – yet got punished for it, dishonored and thrown aside. His fall from glory was nowhere as dramatic or painful as Mannequin’s, but it’s close enough.

Being killed isn’t something Armsmaster is afraid of, he even welcomes it because he has nothing left in his life. That’s when Dragon reveals to him what the Slaughterhouse Nine may be doing in Brockton Bay. He didn’t see it coming, he’s not happy to hear he’s under consideration to join one of the global menaces. Yes! Just like I hoped he’s not interested. I hope my judgment of him isn’t wrong!

Mannequin doesn’t seem capable of talking. I suppose vocal functions are one of those functions that aren’t important, or at leIast I doubt he left his vocal chords intact. Instead of talking, he takes some of the keys from the keyboard to try to communicate. Somehow this isn’t the kind of communication I expected with a known murderer...communicating through keyboard keys. Somehow that doesn’t really increase the scare factor.

Mannequin swiveled his upper body to face the other direction and reached for the shattered monitor.  He picked out a piece of glass and a piece of glossy black plastic.  Pressing them together, he raised it to the right side of his face, looking down at Colin.  Slowly, Mannequin changed the angle of the shard of glass with the black backing.

It took two long seconds before the villain’s intent became clear.  Colin tensed, and Mannequin froze, fixing the angle of the shard.

With the black backing, the glass reflected an image.  With the angle Mannequin had carefully found, the image reflected was half of Colin’s own face, overlapping with Mannequin’s head.

It took me a while to realize what Mannequin was trying to communicate. What can I say, I’m not very good with charades. After a moment I realize he’s trying to indicate he thinks Armsmaster and he are similar. Looks like I was correct! This is why he went to find Armsmaster and invite him to join! And unlike me, Armsmaster isn’t pleased. He refuses to think they’re anything alike.

“I didn’t date, I didn’t have kids, because I wanted to be out there, helping!  I knew that any attachments could be used against me, so I went without!  I was fucking smart enough to do that!”

Given how their deaths is part of what pushed Sphere over the edge, mentioning this seems like a ticket straight to getting your head bashed in. Mannequin doesn’t even do that, he’s silent even when Armsmaster demands a reply. He’s so upset Mannequin insinuated they were similar he’s throwing all caution to the wind, even with Dragon begging him to shut up. It’s because he’s certain he’s going to die, so may as well die telling the madman what’s what.

“You want to compare us, freak?  Maybe we both had bad days.  Days where nothing went right, days where we were too slow, too stupid, too weak, unprepared or tired.  Days we’ll look back on for the rest of our fucking miserable lives, wondering what we would have done different, what we could have done better, how things could have played out.  The difference between us is that I actually did something with my life, and I’m still trying to do more while I serve my sentence!”  He stopped and took a breath.  “You started your big projects, got every fucking person in the world to get their hopes up, and then you failed to finish anything because you couldn’t hack it when your fucking family got killed!  You insult their fucking memories every motherfucking second you exist like this!”

I won’t lie, I’m kinda impressed. It can’t have been easy to say all that to a serial killer’s face, knowingly pressing all the buttons and aiming to enrage him as much as possible. I’m also pleased to know he’s trying to do something productive even while he’s trapped in his own home. Maybe there’s hope for this man. I’m not going to expect much because he did something rather extreme that cost a few villains’ lives and that’s not forgiven easily, but I’m glad he’s not sinking into hate for heroes or anything like that. He’s the first hero Taylor had contact with, and as such I’m sure Mr. Wildbow has plans about how to use Armsmaster’s character. Will he die here in this intermission? I doubt it, given how much potential he has.

As expected, Mannequin isn’t happy at all. He slams Armsmaster against the wall and stabs him three times, and slashes him across the face. Not only now he has lost one arm during Worm, he also is minus one eye now. Nothing that can’t be fixed with tinker technology, I’d say.

None of it hurt as much as it felt like it should have.  More serious wounds didn’t tend to, odd as it was.

It’s the adrenaline, I suppose. He’s not letting the attacks stop him, he’s going to stab Mannequin with the knife. Praying it works so nobody else is killed by this monster, Armsmaster tries to stab and...well, he fails. Figures. He’s not giving up, though, he tries to drive the knife into Mannequin’s chest cavity – since it’s nanotechnology like the one his halberd had that means it should be able to cut through the materials of Mannequin’s body, right? Even if he doesn’t apply lots of force.

How many blades does Mannequin’s weird body have, geez!

Still resisting, Armsmaster makes the knife inch closer, Mannequin positions his face less than an inch from the edge of the blade. It’s so close the material of the casing is being affected, but...it’d be quite anticlimactic for the most interesting Slaughterhouse Nine member so far to get killed because he was sticking his face near a dangerous weapon as if he was a kid with a fork wondering what an electrical socket is for.

He was toying with me.

That he was. I’m glad Armsmaster did such an effort to try to win, even if he didn’t really have a chance.

Armsmaster is too weak to continue moving, he has to let the knife fall and collapses onto the floor, chance Mannequin takes to use the knife to cut the wall apart to make a daring escape. All Armsmaster can hear before falling unconscious is Dragon begging him to stay away. She even says ‘I need you!’. Huh!

She’s there to greet him – well, there’s a laptop. That’s good enough. Better this than waking up and finding a large armor right beside your bed.

Looking around, he saw a laptop propped up beside him, and a get well card from Miss Militia.  She must have put the laptop there when she left the card.

For some reason I’m very amused by Miss Militia leaving a get well card, as if Armsmaster is just resting after an appendix surgery or something. Is there a ‘Get better soon!’ balloon tied to the bed, and a vase of flowers on the nightstand? Heh, but yeah, at least she was here. Nice.

“Your heart stopped nine times on the operating table,” Dragon said, “A lesser man wouldn’t have made it.”

Okay, that’s a feat of endurance. Most of the reason why he survived is because of the artificial parts Dragon invented that are now holding Armsmaster’s face and body together. I can’t avoid making a connection to Mannequin and the fact he also has artificial parts to keep him alive.

There’s still many surgeries Armsmaster has to go into, but he’s fine with it. With Dragon’s help he knows he can survive, and he’s not so far gone into his regrets he’s just going to stop caring about what’s being done to him now that he’s not staring at death to its plastic weird face. Props to Dragon for inventing stuff to save Armsmaster, too.

“You’re a fucking idiot, Colin.  That was the stupidest fucking thing I’ve ever seen.”

List this sentence under stuff I never thought I’d read Dragon say. She always seemed so proper and composed, this is not composed at all. Must be because Armsmaster was the one to get hurt, all because he wanted to hurt Mannequin where it hurts.

“Wanted to provoke him.  See if I couldn’t find an opening.”

“I repeat: Stupidest fucking thing I’ve ever seen.”

“Was going to kill me anyways.”

“Was he? He could have killed you there. He didn’t.”

“He tried.”

...I hadn’t realized it before, but Dragon is bringing up a good point, now that I think about it. Mannequin Is a serial killer. He’s not going to fail just like that. He must have known what he was doing. Dragon’s suspicious is that Mannequin deduced Armsmaster was talking to her. He also left a photo that says ‘BRB’. Is he going to visit Armsmaster while he still is in the hospital? For everyone’s sake I hope not.

Trying to make the situation a bit less tense, Armsmaster brings up what Dragon had said right before he passed out, that she needed him. It doesn’t go well, there’s such a long silence even Armsmaster knew he had said something he shouldn’t have.

The silence stretched on for so long that he knew he’d made some faux pas.  He just wasn’t sure what.  Stupid.  This was the kind of thing that had cost him his position, started the dominoes falling in such a way that they’d led him to being prisoner in that room, led to him being an easy target for Mannequin, to him being here, in this bed.  Never knowing what to say, or how to say it, or who to say it to.

He really is starting to change, the first step to achieve that is acknowledging your flaws, and here he’s doing it. I almost can’t believe I’m actually seeing it happen! For once I have a purely positive opinion of this man.

There we go! Anyway!

He was about to apologize when Dragon said, “Those prosthetics I gave you?  They were part of a bigger project.  Something I’d intended to use for myself.”

Ah...perhaps she’s planning to make a body for herself? One that isn’t a battle armor. Interesting plans, hm...well, giving Armsmaster some of these prosthetics doesn’t mean she has to delay her plans, surely she has schematics and specifications, she can make more for herself. It should be matter of time before she finally has a body. Armsmaster thinks this is because she’s a cripple, he doesn’t suspect anything. The logic for these thoughts makes sense, it’s just that they’re incorrect, that’s it.

The intermission ends with a line that makes me wish this chapter had kept going:

“No, it’s not that,” she paused.  “There’s something you need to know about me.”

Looks like she’s going to tell him the real nature of her existence. I really wish the chapter had continued, I’d have liked to see how she worded it, what his reactions were, what their thoughts were. I hope it goes well, I like Dragon and it’d be awful if this went badly for her. Mr. Wildbow will mention how it went later, I suppose. This is too interesting of a plotline to just toss aside.

That marks the end of the fourth interlude, I’ll check the next one right now.

The fifth interlude is...heh, call me impatience, but I’m immediately going to search for a name.

Hookwolf walked between the groups of his sparring recruits.

...I can’t decide if he would join or not. Back to the start of the interlude! One paragraph above. There seems to be a fight going on right now – it’s sparring, to be more precise. Looks like Hookwolf is currently supervising the training of his recruits, for his racist organization. Needless to mention, highly trained soldiers can hold their own against parahumans and special forces if they have the right moves and weapons. Bullets and knives are quite good equalizers in many cases, as seen before. What Hookwolf is doing, all this training, is a certifiable threat. This man is serious. Although...it makes me wonder what Purity’s group is doing? She’s not trying to use brute force, that much I know, but I’m not sure what she and the others in her faction have been doing.

Hookwolf isn’t the only one looking closely at the recruits’ movements, Menja, Cricket and Stormtiger are here too, watching and waiting to see which recruits are the best ones. They all have specific people already selected. After giving some positive encouragement to the troops, a person named Bradley is called forward to fight Menja. She’s not going to crush him into pieces in a one-sided fight as she’d do if she was using her full power. Bradley is already in disadvantage, being a common human who is tired from sparring, while Menja is fresh and using her powers a little. How well is Bradley going to do? That’s what everyone is waiting to see.

At first Menja easily gets the advantage, by virtue of having powers and all, but Bradley adapts quickly to the situation and manages to get a grip. True, he’s still at disadvantage for a variety of reasons, but Hookwolf judges he has seen enough once Bradley shows to not give up and endures Menja’s kicks.

“Enough,” Hookwolf said.

It wouldn’t do to let the man defeat Menja, and it was looking increasingly possible that he might.  It would hurt her pride and weaken the position of his powered lieutenants in comparison to the unpowered ones.

Yeah, he might, if you give him like two hours. He wasn’t exactly kicking ass and taking names a second ago. Hookwolf judges him capable enough, though, and congratulates him. Welcome to the elites, Bradley! Who is next? Some gal named Leah. It’s her turn, and Menja wants her to give a try to fighting Cricket. It’s all about speed, you see.

Cricket stood from her seat in the corner and limped forward.  She’d refused the same help that Othala had granted Stormtiger, both for the injury to her leg and the damage she’d taken to her vocal chords when she’d had her throat slashed, in a time before he’d met her.  It would have taken a few days at most to restore her to peak condition, but she valued her battle scars too highly.

It’s kind of hard to think of Cricket as a hardened warrior when everything she has done onscreen is get hurt. I know she fought the Undersiders, but it didn’t end that well for her. The other big injury she had from what I remember didn’t even show her fighting. This is her chance to show she be in a fight without getting injured!

Of course. Of course she didn’t get the chance. Why would she have the chance. Not that I’m complaining, I’m not particularly fond of Cricket and these developments are of extreme importance:

The windows shattered with an explosive force, knocking the majority of the people in the room to the ground.  Hookwolf was one of the few to remain standing, though he bent over as shards of glass tore through the layer of skin that covered his metal body.

Yeah, this is what Shatterbird does! Making glass explode! I remember someone once told me the Slaughterhouse Nine announce their presence by making all glass in a city explode like this. Does this mean they’re announcing their presence, in middle of their recruiting? True, it’s not like the heroes didn’t already know – judging by what Dragon knew – and there’s no way they’d tell the general public because there’d be widespread panic. This’d be the way to make all the civilians know.

A few of the recruits and one of the graduates are dead because glass exploded in their face. Many others are injured because they had cellphones in their pockets while sparring – who the heck does that? – and I honestly can’t feel too bad for any of them, given that, well, you know what they were hoping to do by being part of this organization. Also I bet Cricket is slumped against the wall, injured for the fifth time today. The Leah woman who was going to fight Cricket is currently bleeding out from a nicked artery. This whole thing pretty much delayed Hookwolf’s plans of having new useful recruits, it’s going to take a long while for everyone injured to recover, leaving aside the few who died.

He knows all glass exploding means the Slaughterhouse Nine are attacking, so he prepares himself for further attack through some invulnerability. I’ll take that as a sign the villain groups don’t know about the Slaughterhouse Nine trying to recruit. He also takes the time to think about his odds of winning against specific members of the Slaughterhouse Nine. Good! This should be enlightening.

He was virtually invincible in this form.  That left few that could actively hurt him.  Burnscar.  The Siberian. Crawler.  There was Hatchet Face, the bogeyman of capes.  With the exception of Hatchet Face, the group wouldn’t be able to do much harm to him unless he was forced to stay still.

Of course Burnscar could hurt him, thanks to her fire powers. The Siberian is a fearsome opponent who outclasses a lot of parahumans. Crawler...I don’t remember what Crawler does. Hatchet Face sounds of special interest. The boogeyman of capes, eh? Quite the lofty description, given it’s of capes instead of a specific subset, so it’s like he’s a problem for all capes in existence. I already have high expectations for this Hatchet Face, I hope they live up to them.

More troubling were the Nine he couldn’t put down.  The Siberian was untouchable, an immovable object, invincible in a way that even Alexandria wasn’t.  Even if he were capable of hurting Crawler, he wouldn’t want to.  Mannequin, he wasn’t sure about.  He knew the crazed tinker had encased himself in a nearly indestructible shell.

For some reason he doesn’t want to hurt Crawler, but he doesn’t say why. A personal connection, perhaps? I remember Crawler is a monstrous thing who isn’t seen very clearly in the one photo there’s of him. Mannequin does seem rather tough, but from what I saw in Armsmaster’s interlude, it’s not impossible to damage its carapace, but you’d need some specialized weapons to do that, which I doubt Hookwolf can get access to.

Who else? He wracked his brain.  Jack Slash was the brains and leader of the operation. Not a threat unto himself. Shatterbird couldn’t harm him, he was almost certain.

I wouldn’t underestimate Jack Slash, after seeing him. True, his power doesn’t sound like an intimidating concept, but who knows how cleverly he’d use them. Better be careful, anyway. Shatterbird...well I guess as long as Hookwolf doesn’t have anything with glass inside him he’ll be okay. That’s been seven killers, there’s one still yet to be mentioned.

Bonesaw. She was the wild card, the most unpredictable element in terms of what she could bring to the table.  So often the case with tinkers.

Ah, so Bonesaw is a tinker. I like her name. It’s rather ominous, I can only imagine what kind of stuff a tinker named Bonesaw does. A tinker really is like a wildcard, who knows what this Bonesaw may have with her at the time of an attack. Hm.

Outside, all the windows and stuff is broken. Inside,

Surprisingly, Cricket is intact. Good for her! The reason why she felt something was off was because the glass was ‘singing’ to which I think it means it was vibrating. Hookwolf decides to go outside, so he leaves the care of all the injured in Menja and Stormtiger’s hands while he jumps through the window and lands in the pavement.

Cricket and Hookwolf hurry, running over the many, many shards of glass on the ground. Shatterbird is making barriers in front of them with the glass, barriers Hookwolf runs through without any problems. Dozens, hundred of barriers were one strike isn’t enough to clear the way.

Through the mess of dozens of dirty and wet panes of glass, he saw her. Shatterbird.  A sand nigger, going by memory and the color of her exposed skin.

Wow. What classy narration, Hookwolf. Not slimy at all, nope, not at all, the slurs are just added charm, why’d that be bad. Then again, it’s not like it’s surprising, given who is talking right now.

To get through the barriers quicker, Hookwolf makes very big spears with his hands and punches through the barriers, shattering a couple dozen every time. He’s not moving as fast as he’d like, but he’s moving forward. Behind him I guess Cricket is following the pace. Shatterbird changes tactics once it’s clear he won’t be deterred, instead using the glass to form a big spike she makes hover in the air, and drops it down on him with strength.

Even if Hookwolf is very sturdy, a big spike of glass hitting you at full speed isn’t something you just shrug off. It hits him and he goes sprawling down while Cricket gets hit by glass shards and scraps of metal.

“Stand,” Shatterbird said.  Her voice held traces of a British accent, and her body language and the crisp enunciation made her sound imperious, upper class.    “I know you survived.”

‘Unlike the woman you brought with you. What an unfortunate demise’

Not wanting to overexert himself, Hookwolf absorbs the metal and tries to save energy, instead facing Shatterbird without any fear and preparing himself for what the Slaughterhouse Nine may plan. He doesn’t like hearing she’s here alone because it’s arrogant.

She shook her head, her helmet sparkling in the light cast by the setting sun.  “I’m the Nine’s primary recruiter.  I have an eye for people who can thrive among us, and I have brought more than five individuals on board.  I thought long and hard before settling on you.  I am not about to let you turn me down.”

...ah. The odds of Hookwolf being the one to join them just skyrocketed, by virtue of Shatterbird being the most successful recruiter. She not only has done a good job at that, judging by all the crazy killers currently in the group, she also is ready to force Hookwolf to join. I don’t know what exactly she’ll do to force Hookwolf to join...perhaps she’ll destroy his organization? I don’t think that’d be beyond her. If Hookwolf’s plans are completely obliterated, he’d have nothing to do other than join – or so some people would say, but I don’t think he would, he seems like the kind of guy that’d put his pride above everything else.

So that was why she hadn’t hit the entire city with the blast, shattering the glass and maiming or killing hundreds.  She hadn’t wanted to kill any prospective members, wanted to reserve her power for when it would be most dramatic.

Ah, so it wasn’t to the entire city, it must have been only to the place Hookwolf was at. It was dramatic, yeah, and maybe it’ll make Hookwolf realize she’s completely serious when she says she’s not going to take a no for an answer, even if there’s no reason to doubt it in the first place.

Given Shatterbird’s pushiness, I suppose that means it’s settled: Hookwolf will be the new member of the Slaughterhouse Nine. Maybe she was the one who brought Burnscar into the group, since she doesn’t seem to be there completely willingly.

“You ally with the Aryan groups.  Run one, but your motivations seem to be different.  I have guesses as to why, but I’d rather you tell me.”

Eeeeh…well I suppose it’s within the realm of possibility Hookwolf’s ideologies aren’t the only reason why Hookwolf is running his group, but I don’t doubt he really is a racist asshat. I mean, the narration established it quite well, it’d be deceitful if it turned out Hookwolf’s thoughts and all that were a lie.

When Hookwolf keeps defying her, Shatterbird seems to try to use her power, but it doesn’t work as she intended. It’s Cricket, she’s using subsonics to cancel Shatterbird’s power. Right, of course she’d be capable of that, she noticed stuff like the glass ‘singing’, she could counter that. Kind of foolish to reveal it to Shatterbird like that, though. It’s not that I think this killer didn’t know already what Cricket is capable of, but…yeah, confirming it is a bit imprudent. What was it again, Hookwolf? Pride goeth before the fall?

“And here I was thinking you’d won the lottery with powers.  Incredible range, fine control, devastating force, versatility… and all it takes is the right noise and it all falls apart?”

“Guess the men who bought my power should ask for a refund.”

O-kay! Cauldron stuff! They’re shaping up to be very relevant to the current state of affairs in the Worm world, more than I thought they would be! I’m having a hard time deciding what I’d like to see more of first, if focus on the Slaughterhouse Nine, or focus on Cauldron.

Not wanting to waste any time dealing with this whole thing, Hookwolf decides to just end this as soon as possible, and Shatterbird doesn’t seem to be in much of a hurry. She just takes out a gun and aims. While she did intend to take Cricket out so she’d be able to use her powers properly, she didn’t hit her with bullets, she did it with pieces of glass. Looks like she still could use them to some extent.

Okay, I was joking all this time that all Cricket does is be intimidating and then get injured, but I didn’t expect it to happen. Oh, geez. Yeah, she’s out of commission for real now. Of course Hookwolf doesn’t accept these developments, he intends to kill Shatterbird, and he’s sure he can do it by himself. He did indicate in his thoughts earlier Shatterbird wouldn’t be able to hurt him, after all. Maybe he really could do it, Shatterbird doesn’t outright deny it.

She can make herself levitate by moving the glass of her costume up! Well that’s a clever way to do that.

While she attacks, she tells Hookwolf what she thinks of him. The first thing she says isn’t unexpected, she says he’s a born warrior, and despite all of Hookwolf’s bad traits, he really is, and he knows it. What Shatterbird doesn’t know nor can understand yet is what Hookwolf is trying to do with his group. Hm. Want to enlighten me on this one, Shatterbird? Because I can’t think what he may be doing with them if he’s not completely sincere about his rhetoric.

Stormtiger turns out to be useful when he makes Shatterbird lost control of her flight and she crashes onto the ground. She even falls badly, she’s injured, and therefore an easy target for Hookwolf. I must say, this isn’t being as one-sided as I expected. I had thought Hookwolf was being too cocky when he thought he could defeat one of the Slaughterhouse Nine, but it seems he wasn’t. There he is, crushing her with a foot and burying some blades into her.

“A sword age, an axe age.  A wind age, a wolf age.  A world where none have mercy.  I can believe this is your goal, your ultimate objective.  Do you crave to reduce this city to darkness, blood and ash, so that only the strong will survive?  Do you tell your followers that it is only the pure will rise to the top in the new world order?”

...well I hadn’t considered that. Hookwolf does seem like the kind of person to want that, theoretically, but I don’t know, for some reason I can’t believe that’s what he’s aiming to do. I fully believe he subscribes to the might makes right philosophy, but not to that extent. Guess I’ll know for sure once things continue here.

The second time Shatterbird offers him to join the group he again declines, planning to kill her, and she keeps twisting the knife by aiming to hit what Hookwolf cares about.

“Then kill me.” A thin smile crossed her face, though her expression was drawn with pain.  When she spoke, it was in more short sentences. “But know that your dream is over.  Unless you come with us.  Once nominated you’ll be tested.  By others, whether willing or not.  I have left notes.  Urging them to kill your soldiers.  To raze any place you might call home.  To bestow fates worse than death.”

As if they weren’t going to do that anyway. It’s effective enough, though, because Hookwolf raises his claws off her and actually considers the situation. Joining the group will make Shatterbird rescind the orders to kill and destroy everything Hookwolf had done so far, but he doesn’t plan to be there for long, just long enough to kill them, to destroy the Slaughterhouse Nine before they leave Brockton Bay. Okay, now he is being very cocky. No way he’d be capable of killing all eight members.

He wasn’t going to accept this.  They’d insulted him, hurt his people.  They wanted to subvert his mission and twist it to their own ends?  No.

See? I think it’s likely Shatterbird is right, but maybe not to the extent she believes she is. There’s some loyalty here in Hookwolf’s behavior. There’s something deeper here than it seems at first sight, I’m sure of that.

Heck, he’s so against joining the Slaughterhouse Nine, against turning his back towards his group, he’s realizing he can’t deal with the situation alone. He’s going to need help. Is he going to ask Purity’s organization for help, perhaps? I think they’re the most likely people he’d ask for help. Maybe Purity would agree to aid him, since one of the Slaughterhouse Nine members tried to kill her daughter and Theo. How successful they’d be in fighting this worldwide threat...well that remains to be seen. I’m not going to get any high hopes; I don’t think they can do much.

That’s the end of the intermission! Who is next? I’ll see next time!

Next update: in two updates

#worm #worm liveblog #serial novel #liveblog #book liveblog

[thelegendofclarke]

So I loved your post on Jaime's reaction/PTSD moment surrounding Dany and seeing Aerys in all the fire around him. (And no, it is not Anti-Dany in any way, so I don't know why people are seeing that) Do you think moving forward (if the show is consistent in any way), Jaime will continue to be, for lack of a better word, triggered by Daenerys/Dragons/fighting fire?

Hey, thank you so much! And sorry this took me like 25 years to answer, I was on Tumblr kind of sporadically this week and am infamous for neglecting my inbox…

Yeah I think a PTSD style reaction was definitely what they were going for, it reminded me a lot of the reaction Theon had in 7x02 when he saw the man getting mutilated. And I especially think so after reading this article about the episode and that scene in particular. 

They made the specific point not of saying Dany is Aerys, but that she made Jaime think of Aerys:

“Watching the daughter of Aerys rain fire upon her enemies – determined to “burn them all”, to borrow her father’s favoured phrase – would have reminded Jaime of the horror he risked everything to evade, and spurred him on in his mad charge.”

And honestly, I think the word “trigger” is a pretty accurate one to describe Jaime’s reaction. I mean, a trigger is something that “re-triggers” trauma in the form of flashbacks and/or overwhelming emotional reactions. They are something that are unique and specific to each individual person and their individual trauma. I think Jaime’s reaction was a combination of seeing the fire, the dragons, and seeing a Targaryen again for the first time since Aerys. But if I had to guess what the specific trigger was here for Jaime, I would say it was seeing the soldier being burned alive (just like Theon’s trigger was seeing someone being mutilated). 

It makes sense if you think about his quote back from 5x03 (”Kissed by Fire”):

The Mad King was obsessed with it. He loved to watch people burn, the way their skin blackened and blistered and melted off their bones. He burned lords he didn’t like. He burned Hands who disobeyed him. He burned anyone who was against him. Before long, half the country was against him. Aerys saw traitors everywhere. So he had his pyromancer place caches of wildfire all over the city, beneath the Sept of Baelor and the slums of Flea Bottom. Under houses, stables, taverns. Even beneath the Red Keep itself. …Finally, the day of reckoning came. So we opened the gates and my father sacked the city. Once again, I came to the king, begging him to surrender. He told me to… bring him my father’s head. Then he… turned to his pyromancer. “Burn them all,” he said. “Burn them in their homes. Burn them in their beds.” Tell me, if your precious Renly commanded you to kill your own father and stand by while thousands of men, women, and children burned alive, would you have done it? Would you have kept your oath then? First, I killed the pyromancer. And then when the king turned to flee, I drove my sword into his back. “Burn them all,” he kept saying. “Burn them all.” I don’t think he expected to die. He- he meant to… burn with the rest of us and rise again, reborn as a dragon to turn his enemies to ash. I slit his throat to make sure that didn’t happen.”

Killing Aerys cost Jaime his reputation, his vows, and cause his father to disown him, but he still considers it his “finest act.” He sees it as something he had to do, regardless of the consequences, regardless of how traumatic it was. He had to stop Aerys from burning the whole city to the ground… I think in 7x04 he was taken right back to that moment and he wasn’t going to “stand by while thousands of men, women and children burned alive.” Just like it was always Theon’s reaction to always get away from Ramsay/things that remind him of Ramsay, so too would it be understandable that Jaime’s reaction would always be to attack dragons/dragon fire/anything that made him think of Aerys and do whatever he had to to make it stop.

I know a lot of people are pointing out that this parallel makes no sense and isn’t as significant due to the fact that Cersei is the one who is actually Aerys 2.0 but that Jaime is still banging her into their headboard and doing her bidding. But I think there are a couple significant points there:

Jaime didn’t actually see the Great Sept blow up, he wasn’t there to see the wildfire. It makes sense that he would have a more severe emotional reaction when he actually sees fire and men burning alive due to Aerys Targaryen’s daughter and her dragon. 

If there’s anything Jaime is consistent about, it’s that he will always go back to Cersei. No matter what she does, no matter who else she sleeps with, he will always go back to her. Like Olenna told him, he is in over his head and he has no control when it comes to Cersei. 

But, going along with that, I think there WILL be something that causes Jaime to turn on Cersei. And it wouldn’t surprise me if that thing is something that finally causes him to come face to face with the mad, cruel tyrant that Cersei is becoming. 

The article I linked above put it really well I think:

Jaime may well have seen Aerys reborn when he saw Daenerys, sat aside a flame-breathing dragon. But the question remains: who exactly does he see when he looks at Cersei?

Jaime has always remained willfully blind about Cersei and seems to take a “don’t ask, don’t tell” approach to their relationship. But I am pretty confident that something will come along and basically force him to face who she really is. 

As far as consistency goes and whether or not they will have him react like that to dragon fire again in the season, omg I have no idea haha. I mean, I could definitely see them just leaving it with that powerful moment to make the parallels for the audience and then moving on. But I wouldn’t be surprised if he continued to react like that to dragon fire in particular. 

#thank you so much! #sorry this took SO LONG! #i am The Worst #jaime lannister #got spoilers #got for ts #trigger tw #ptsd tw #fire tw #alys answers #the-eagle-girl #alys meta

[thesecondmate]

reading: wk50-52

3 weeks + 3 journal entries for how i was gonna start this post. in essence: goodbye 2020, my god has it been a rollercoaster, albeit one sloping gently downhill into familiar melancholy. i never thought i’d feel like this again, yet it’s like slipping into a warm ocean where i can float forever, safe in the salt and waves lapping at my face.

stay tuned a ‘best of 2020′ list and what i want to read next year that isn’t my damn textbooks. and maybe some personal updates depending on how much wine i drink this evening. happy new year, my loves.

week 50: penultimate week of o+g rotation: i would say the end is in sight but in fact i have lost all motivation, hate my degree (well, specifically, the course administration), had a breakdown outside my exam followed by the most embarrassing brain freeze ever during a panel discussion that i was speak on, took several days to reply to everyone about said exam breakdown, am convinced i will fail my 5th year exams, aaaand dealt with all of this by handpainting christmas cards all saturday. welcome 2 the fun house !

week 51: final week of placement: i struggled through the final week of my placement (literally popped into my placement for 2 hours to have a tutorial, get signed off, and collect my things), failed my mock osce, and went home. so unbelievably drained.

week 52: christmas & post-christmas liminality: feeling vaguely restored by the virtue of reading many books, watching many movies, curling up by the fire, eating many christmas cookies, and having barely any social interaction outside of my family and our cat and dog. still absolutely drained; still very terrified of my next placement and of failing this year. all i want is to move to a city where no one knows me and i can be something new, but alas. eighteen months until i graduate; forty-two until i finish my foundation programme and can truly set off into the big blue yonder of the world.

books

✩ The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo - Steig Larsson (finished) so i actually would have much preferred this to have kept its original swedish title, ‘män som hatar kvinnor’ (’men who hate women’) - it’d have been less manic pixie dream girl and more reflective of larsson’s point, even if larsson is v guilty of the former. it’s a good book - larsson’s grasp of plot is really excellent and i really enjoyed the twists and turns, even if the pacing of the big reveal was a little too rushed for my liking. however, i find his characters a little off - many of them are great, especially berger & henrik vanger, but i find blomkvist a little self-insert at times (he’s a financial journalist! but not like other financial journalists! and he has a sexy editor lady with whom he has an open relationship! and he sleeps with this cool hacker girl who immediately trusts him!), and lisbeth is...very ‘traumatised manic pixie cyberpunk girl’ if you ask me. which is a little uncomfortable. also not to mention the rape scene - which is vile. overall: good, intrigued to see if larsson will flesh lisbeth out to be less of a caricature in the sequels.

✩ The Orphan Master’s Son - Adam Johnson (finished) this book has lost none of its magic for me, absolutely none. if anything, re-reading it a few years later has made me appreciate so many things: the characters (even more than before! if that’s possible!!), the abject heartbreak of the second mate and his wife, the trip to texas (i got far more out of the political side this time), the relationships in the camps (the captain of the junma and li mongnan - hold me whilst my heart BREAKS), the way that johnson plays with narrative from the loudspeakers to the interrogator to the dreamlike quality of jun do’s own new life in pt 2. as a teenager, i was fascinated by the setting, the double-farce of the propaganda vs life, the passages about the second mate’s wife and her silken yellow dress - i thought that jun do was a bland narrator, which i now see couldn’t have been further from the truth. i have so, so much respect for johnson as an author and this book really is a formative part of who i am, in ways that i could not express.

✩ Dark Matter - Michelle Paver (finished) another re-read. michelle paver is the queen of ghost stories and things that go bump in the night (see: spirit walker in the chronicles of ancient darkness) - this book absolutely terrified me the first time that i read it, so i made a point of finishing it in the daytime this time. perhaps that’s why it didn’t hit as hard this time - it was less terrifying. however, really appreciating her choice to make the narrator gay, without ever making a deal out of it or naming it - it’s the lil things like working class arctic explorers being disgustingly in love with their charismatic expedition leaders, ya know? big fan. also huge fan of her descriptive prose - she is also the queen of arctic imagery. her prose, combined with the gorgeous black and white photos at the start of each chapter, have not helped my desire to sack it all off and go work as a doctor in the faroe islands or iceland.

✩ The Diet Myth - Spector (on hold) i left this book at uni bc i didn’t want to ruin my own christmas with his awful writing style, if you want an indication of how much i dislike this book.

✩ Smoke Gets In Your Eyes - Caitlin Doughty (in progress) a christmas gift that i’m currently reading. i’m so morbid and am learning so much, although i feel like some of the chapters are burbling on with anecdotes but don’t hammer home many points (although maybe it’s bc as a medical student i’m less easily shocked than your average reader) - bit confused as to where we’re going but i’m along for the ride.

✩ Calling a Wolf a Wolf - Kaveh Akbar (in progress) beautiful. in progress - his imagery is quite beautiful but i struggle to sit and read poetry.

✩ The Secret History - Donna Tartt (in progress) re-read. i sink back into old books like familiar lovers, like hot baths. so much comfort.

films

✩ Dead Poets Society (1989) why were the deleted scenes deleted. WHY. rewatching it, i felt some of the character development and relationship development was a little rushed - yet the deleted scenes could have fixed that. WHY WERE WE ROBBED. as ever, emotionally devastated as someone who loves languages and books and words, but ultimately chose medicine and science. as ever, very very sad over neil perry and aching for todd anderson. newfound appreciation for meeks + dalton. that punch at the end? *chef’s kiss*

✩ Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001) i am inducting my sisters into lotr and they are powerless to stop me.

✩ Harry Potter & the Half-Blood Prince (2009) my favourite of the hp movies.

✩ Atonement (2007) this film and i have a long history - i first saw the start of it many years ago, when i did not know what c*nt meant, so was understandably a little bit lost, but also keira knightley in that green dress was a true gay awakening moment. i love the cinematography - it’s so ridiculously dreamlike and gorgeous, and the set design for the house is just beautiful. as are keira knightley and james mcavoy. also, the soundtrack with the use of the typewriters and lighters as drumbeats - my GOD, so beautiful. the second half of the film felt very rushed to me - the reveal that some of it was briony’s fiction made sense, but it lacked the stunning quality of the first half, both plot-wise and camera-wise (although the dunkirk scene was brilliant; love a long, revolving camera pan). i particularly hated every scene with briony in it - v lacklustre - and also the scene with luc remembering cecilia, it just felt forced and gimmicky. the novel definitely wins out for me.

podcasts

i haven’t listened to any podcasts in a while, bar a few episodes of the magnus archives whilst cooking and running errands, BUT i did record one!! the episode will be up in the new year but we have a few back episodes on Right to Refuge, which covers refugee/asylum issues and is by the charity that i work for!

articles: medicine / nature

✩ Mass die-off of birds in south-western US 'caused by starvation' - Phoebe Weston, The Guardian

✩ Eradicating Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting: Human Rights-Based Approaches of Legislation, Education, and Community Empowerment - Williams-Breault (2018), Health Hum Rights i just finished my obstetrics & gynaecology rotation and was appalled by the prevalence of FGM/C in the UK and wanted to learn more. this article is truly excellent in terms of understanding cultural issues and barriers to ending FGM/C.

✩ Female Genital Mutilation: Health Consequences and Complications—A Short Literature Review - Klein et al. (2018), Obstet Gynecol Int. a short america-centric lit review that i read whilst writing up my reflective pieces - not as good as the above one but has more (horrifying) statistics: 200 million women affected worldwide; 6,000 girls cut each day; 85% will have some form of medical complication in their lives, from psychological/sexual to gynaecological to obstetric including death; estimated death rate of 1 in 500; 60.5% of affected women reported fear when their spouse wanted sex compared to 2.4% of unaffected women.

✩ Gender equality and human rights approaches to female genital mutilation: a review of international human rights norms and standards - Khosla et al. (2017), Reprod Health intersection of two things i spend a lot of time thinking about: human rights & medicine. interesting - to re-read again and consider and learn more about things like treatment-monitoring bodies, etc.

✩ The macho sperm myth - Robert D Martin, Aeon a wonderful friend sent me this! i am somewhat lost by the meandering course of the article but interesting points are raised. also the idea that some scientist was like ‘i absolutely KNOW that the heads of sperm contain tiny homunculi; i cannot see them but they are THERE’ is just hilarious.

articles: covid-19 nb: i am not linking every covid article i read bc that would be so depressing but rest assured i’m up to date on a surface level. i am not on a medical level bc i am emotionally exhausted.

✩ Covid vaccine: 'Disappearing' needles and other rumours debunked - Jack Goodman & Flora Carmichael, BBC pls don’t even. let me think about anti-vaxxers. i simply wish to know the current conspiracy theories so i can argue with people more effectively.

✩ Covid at Christmas: 'Chris Whitty is more popular than Britney Spears' - Emma Harrison, BBC please someone get me a chris witty prayer candle i am BEGGING

✩ Covid-19: Doctors call for rapid rollout of vaccines - Nick Triggle, BBC

articles: culture

✩ Art in 2021: The highlights to hope for - Will Gompertz, BBC yayoi kusama is coming to the tate modern!! which i can actually get to relatively easily on public transport from my uni city!! gonna take myself to see the infinity rooms omg i am so EXCITED

✩ History: Quileute Nation this is the official site of the quileute nation, whose history and mythology stephanie meyer butchered in the twilight saga.

✩ The Archers tackles the 'hidden' connection between disability and modern slavery - BBC something i’m ashamed to say that i knew nothing about until this article. the archers keeps on giving in terms of social issues.

✩ Gollancz gets Sims’ ‘horror for the Netflix generation’ - Tom Tivnan, The Bookseller jonny sims is writing a BOOK??! the EXCITEMENT i feel

#weekly #reading 2020 #last one! i cannot wait to read more next yr...degree pending

[maneaterwithtail]

Villain sues or why Adam Taurus is to me a waste

Procedural writing helps undermine character as plot device because if that's all they are then it's best to see something operated. It's like having someone get from point A to point B without actually seeing the journey. Weather that swimming or driving the sweet ride.

-

well it doesn't get much better when they subvert common expectations for story structure. But do effectively the same thing. Let's talk about Adam Taurus here now I don't honestly think he's a villain Sue but he gets a lot of the same hate as one. For 1 he's something of a knight of cerebus implying that both sexual abuse to a young girl who was very obviously designed and presented to the audience as someone to both sympathize and wants to have feelings of empathy and protection for has been altered abused and stalked by him. That alone changes a lot of the presentation theming and expectation for the show. And then he went contemptuous he's does the pseudo rape that has been Mastered by years and years of Cinema getting around restrictions such as even in comics with the death of Elektra by bullseye

And then he permanently and with contemptuous he's dismembers the most attractive and yet most openly powerful character. Seemingly out of raw misogynistic jealousy for a Sapphic lover that has been chosen over him

Nobody like this because it was against both how fights were presented it made them uncomfortable with the thinning and of course they didn't want to view their Heroes as punk bitches who needed to run even though that's exactly what happened. Gigabytes in gigabytes have been sacrificed in telling us how much of a tool he is how evil he is how he's awful awful awful. And then the show capitalize on this by basically making sure he's always pseudo violating women being presented as an evil ex-boyfriend writ large and also simply winning by doing everything off screen but showing up for the big finish. It really hurt to see him kill Sienna Khan but not because I thought that she was a compelling character but because the idea of a extremist power struggle as a group representing both the will of the faunus as well as its corruption going out of control is really interesting to see.

Contrast and compare two shades from the first season of Luke Cage which I just finished binging last night. Both are effectively doing the same thing they're meant to be a sort of devil figure especially towards female. But one thing that makes them interesting and compelling is that we actually get to see them operate as well as in contrast with the heroes who are themselves negotiating similarly murky and complex situations trying to get Justice but also struggling with their own impulses negativity and Desperation to do the wrong thing thinking that will end up with good results.

Never forget what monsters the characters are but we do get the satisfaction of seeing them operate even at the end of certain plot twist such as when it turns out a critical Witnesses finally flipped Call of Duty killed by a cop that's on a mob bosses payroll. The most absurd example might be when a noted stays off the streets keeps her hands as clean as humanly possible older woman he's probably a foot and a half shorter takes out a mob boss with the wine bottle and then smashes him to death with a mic stand. But not only are they able to sell the emotion of the moment it's the result of an obvious buildup in terms of what's been going on in her head you know that also as family members they share this sort of weird viciousness that's also tied into a sort of cold emotional explosion. What's particularly hilarious is you figured that was going to go the other way around

I can both by that cottonmouth Black Mariah and shades can operate on a day-to-day basis but they also have obvious gaps in their competencies. The closest thing to a villain Sue is Diamondback and even that kind of works because it's established and he's built up for quite some time and he never quite leaves out of his skill-set which is vicious violence as opposed to smooth operation. Also the very natural consequences of him constantly killing and threatening everyone comes to term when people actively start trying to undermine him with whatever bit of wiggle room that they have. More importantly when he's defeated it's a matter of technique vs response. Which in fact centralizes a lot of the themes going on with the series. Luke figures out that the hammer tech power armor that he's wearing get supercharged whenever he keeps throwing more power on it.

This is conveyed with a boxing flashback and of course an allusion to that classic strategy of RRope a dope. Sometimes to win you actually do have to do nothing listen weight understand the situation and then strike at the most opportune moment to undermine your opponent as they throw too much out that they can't recover.

Inshort East defeated by the fact that he thrives and explosive immediate in your face from the Shadows conflict. But it's weak when he can't control the reaction of those around him were they strike from an angle he takes for granted or can't cover for himself. Even more importantly it doesn't feel like the plot is acting through him so much as he is enacting the plot to a self-destructive degree. He keeps going out of his way to set up this Grand confrontation with the brother he perceives as having stolen his spot. Rather than focus on actual business in a reasonable plan which again isolates his subordinate shades and open semi for betrayal and ends up having him risk it all on a street brawl that he losses due to Smart boxing strategy

 Adam Taurus basically keeps stalking people and killing women until he can provide the cheap catharsis of defeating the evil boyfriend  evil terrorist 

And even his moral struggle is invalidated in doing this because apparently he was never motivated by personal mutilation being an oppressed minority or any of that nope he was always a crazed sadistic abusive boyfriend who only pretended to actually have a point and fall to extremism. After all the show keeps insisting on this

[jimdroberts]

Is it just me, or is everyone going crazy?

I’ve often entertained myself by thinking of the chaos that could be brought upon mankind if mental illnesses were, like physical ones, contagious . Imagine, a man who goes to bed one night with a slight headache and a runny nose, wakes up the next morning in a psychotic hallucination, covered in a mixture of his own sweat and the blood of strangers, charging up and down the high street, head thrown back, laughing maniacally, waving a chainsaw. As the psychosis virus infects more and more of the population, the uninfected are forced underground, moving stealthily through the post apocalyptic wilderness. Essentially it’s replacing zombies with mental illness. Today zombies are more politically correct, society is more comfortable with the idea of  your dead relatives trying to kill you than your mentally ill living ones. Although that hasn’t stopped Hollywood producing many movies exploiting mental illness for the sake of box office revenue: The Silence of the Lambs, Black Swan, American Psycho, Shutter Island, Secret Window, and Misery, to name but a few.

    This slideshow requires JavaScript.

  Still I’m left wondering, what if mental illnesses were contagious?

We can all relate to sitting in a doctor’s surgery, waiting our turn. I suspect fewer of us would admit knowing what it’s like to wait for an appointment to see the psychiatrist. From personal experience I can say that initially both waiting rooms look very similar, there’s more people talking in the waiting room at the psychiatrist, random people break out into erratic and  impassioned conversations with people that don’t exist. In essence, performing convincing monologues with greater conviction than even the most accomplished Shakespearean actor could dream of. Meanwhile, at the doctor’s surgery there are only whispered, fragmented conversations, punctuated by nasal ejaculations, snuffles, and of course an abundance of coughing and throat clearing. In short you can enter a doctor’s surgery with a mild case of hemorrhoids, but leave incubating  a new, exotic virus, or disease. The patients waiting at the psychiatrist’s are unable to play the game of pass the psychotic/neurotic parcel, because thankfully, psychiatric conditions aren’t contagious. Are they?

  Are Mental Illnesses Contagious?

In his book “The Quantity Theory of Insanity“, British author, Will Self, tells a story that proposes the idea that within any given population, at any given time, the level of insanity is a constant. You might think that contradicts what I just said about people getting crazier, let me explain. The state of being mentally ill is tacitly defined through a person’s conformity to the social norms of their society, and diagnosis can only be achieved through the observation of a person’s behaviour. Take the picture below:

Symbolic of his devotion not to eat meat for a month, I imagine he’s also going to struggle with soup.

The majority of cultures around the world would regard a person displaying this behaviour as being  mentally unwell. However, when performed in Phuket, Thailand, on the eve of the ninth lunar month, such a person becomes the life and soul of the party. His actions display his devotion to the nine emperor gods and his commitment not to eat meat throughout the ninth lunar month. Perhaps I’ was just fortunate to have grown up in a society that didn’t feel it necessary to measure my determination to achieve something by the amount of sharp metal I was willing to stick through my face.

Most of us would think of cannibalism as the ultimate, universal taboo, well not if you’re from the Yanomami tribe. The Yanomami are horrified by the idea of burying their dead, they believe that eating the dead ensures that the spirit goes on living in those who have consumed them, especially in those who helped themselves to seconds. With a population at any one time of over thirty thousand, it’s reasonable to assume that the Yanomami have a steady supply of protein.

Now in western culture, getting dressed like Tony the tiger and eating a dead relative attracts all sorts of negative attention, but it’s just another day for the Yanomami

There are scores of examples of behaviour from around the world where what is normal in one area, would be considered quite insane in another. QED, insanity is a classification largely determined by the context of society. Unlike physical ailments, a broken arm is a  broken arm, whether you’re an Inuit living in Greenland, or a member of the Tuareg traipsing around the Sahara. Likewise cancer is cancer irrespective of what culture you’re from, religion you might practise, or language you speak. Mental illness however isn’t a constant, rather it is determined through the context of social norms.

Let’s reconsider our chainsaw wielding psychotic. Place him on the high street covered in other peoples blood, and he’s regarded a lunatic, who must be locked away for the safety of the society. Put him on a battlefield in a foreign country, wearing army fatigues covered in other people’s blood, and he comes home a hero and gets a medal, probably going on to appear on a variety of day time television shows.

  This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Generally any behaviour, or cognitive deficiency that falls outside of societal norms will be classified a mental illness. The problem is that after  removing the person least conforming to the norm, inevitably leads to another person replacing them, taking on the mantle of now being the group’s “craziest” member. This is a phenomenon that I have first hand experience of.

Having worked in classrooms for over fifteen years I have seen this dynamic conformed to without exception. Every class has its clown, or trouble maker, and some days the teacher is lucky because they will be sick and not come to school. The teacher naturally believes, that with the instigator of most of the classroom trouble away, they’re in for an easier day. WRONG! Because what happens is the role of classroom clown simply gets passed on to someone else. It’s like there’s been an understudy who’s almost equally as proficient, waiting in the wings for their opportunity. It’s like they’ve been the understudy waiting for the role the whole time. Every group dynamic requires roles to be fulfilled, the classroom being no different. Remove the “crazy” person from society and the title simply gets passed on to the next, least conforming, “craziest” person that remains. Just like Self implies, the quantity of sanity is static, but dynamic on account of it being passed from one person to another. The role of classroom joker can’t be removed, only transferred to someone else.

This suggests that society plays a significant part in determining the our role within it. This also implies that society influences our behaviour, and asks the question, how free is free will?

Unless an individual has a particularly strong character, the rigidness of societal norms often forces its members to conform, whether consciously or not, and regardless of whether conformity has negative implications. Indeed, any negative implications are disregarded because they fall outside of those defined by the society’s norms. And that’s how it becomes acceptable for a group of people to eat the dead in South America, for people to practice self mutilation on the streets of Thailand, and how a nation of people can be convinced into pursuing genocide. The desire to conform to others’ expectations, particularly if their expectations are regarded by the majority as being unquestionably right, can lead to a strong urge for conformity, irrespective of what the consequences of conformity might be.

“It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.” ― J. Krishnamurti

This six minute video is an example of how our desire to fit in overrides common sense. The participants may only be standing up or sitting down, but the compulsion to follow others is clear enough for us to ask the question, what lengths will people go to, to fit in?

  Group dynamics and environmental factors are immensely powerful determinants of behaviour. The Stanford Prison Experiment, conducted psychologist, Philip Zimbardo in 1971, to this day it remains one of psychology’s most infamous and divisive pieces of research. Initially scheduled to last fourteen days, the experiment was abandoned after only six. Zimbardo wanted to simulate prison conditions using participants  arbitrarily assigned  the roles of prisoner or guard. Zimbardo expected to see some degree of participants conforming to their roles, but what unprepared for the complete collapse of basic human behaviour. Despite the experiment rapidly spiraling out of control Zimbardo failed to notice and act accordingly. It wasn’t until someone, not involved in the experiment, witnessed what was happening and told Zimbardo to abandon the research immediately. All the participants had embodied their roles far quicker, and more completely than Zimbardo had anticipated. Perhaps even more worrying is that Zimbardo himself admits to playing a role within the experiment, that of prison warden, and losing all impartial objectivity. The environment and the circumstances of the experiment overpowered everyone’s objectivity.  The prisoners, despite having done nothing wrong, assumed their roles as prisoners and accepted the guards authority. The guards were quickly corrupted and showed the most disturbing behaviour. They devised degrading, non-physical means of punishment, much of it in elaborate, creative, disturbing ways. The Stanford prison experiment has received enormous criticism, ranging from its ethics to its results. I believe that there are reasons to believe that there is some truth in what Zimbardo discovered. One of the most compelling reasons was demonstrated by American reservists at the Abu Ghraib prison, Iraq.

  Abu Ghraib

What happens when  you ask inexperienced, untrained people to do a stressful job in dangerous conditions, in a foreign environment, supported by no clear chain of command?

The events that took place during August and September, 2003 at the  prison complex at Abu Grahib is one the more shameful stories to have come out of American involvement in Iraq. The American Army, desperate for intelligence on the whereabouts of Iraqi weapons that were falling into the hands of Iraqi citizens determined to resist the American invasion. The Abu Grahib detention centre was put under the control of American reservists, with no experience of working in prisons or detaining people, they received no training that might in any way have prepared them for being given such a task. Like the Stanford Prison Experiment, things got out of hand quickly.

In a Lord of the Flies type of scenario, untrained, inexperienced guards, with no chain of command taking responsibility, established a societal norm of barbarity and humiliation. When interviewed today, each of the participants confesses to knowing what they were doing was “stupid”. Their need for conformity was greater than their need to uphold moral integrity, but then isn’t this an essential requirement of any soldier in combat?

      This slideshow requires JavaScript.

  Nazis

History provides us with too many examples of what happens when environmental circumstances, the need for conformity, and a morally bankrupt ideology conspire to lead a large group of people to behave in uncharacteristically cruel, barbaric ways.

Perhaps the most striking example of the evil that can occur when people are motivated to conform to a society with corrupted norms id the Nazis. And within the Nazis the case of Adolf Eichmann stands out. Eichmann, was responsible for overseeing the logistics of the holocaust. Eichmann was responsible for the efficiency of a process that led to the deaths of over six million Jews, as well as many more Romani Gypsies, gay people, the mentally ill and priests.

After the war Eichmann fled to Argentina and was in hiding there until Israel’s intelligence agency, Mossad, captured him and took him back to Israel to stand trial for war crimes. From a combination of  Eichmann’s court testimony and historical documents, Hannah Arendt concluded that Eichmann wasn’t a monster, or a sociopath. In fact Eichmann appeared mundanely normal. Eichmann recounted how he was responsible for arranging the transportation of Jews to the death-camps. He saw it as a logistical, theoretical task that he wished to make as efficient as possible. During his trial, Eichmann chillingly stated on several occasions, “I was just doing my job”. In short, Eichmann was conforming with the abhorent societal norms of a society that respected abhorrent behaviour. Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil 

Whether madness, evil, or just bad behaviour, none of these are values set in stone. Instead our interpretation of these they are dynamic, subject to being defined by our society’s changing morality.  Was Nazism an epidemic of madness and evil? It’s not unreasonable how it might be viewed this way. Humans are social creatures with a predisposition to fit in with others, throughout our evolution conformity  has been necessary for survival. What society expects of us has a great bearing on how we act. As the saying goes “evil will prevail when good men do nothing”, but understanding what is evil and what is good, in a society that is changing rapidly, is far from easy, but must never be used as an excuse to forget our fundamental responsibilities as humans.

  Next time I  will continue from here and look at memes, mind viruses, and why bad ideas spread quicker than good ones:

  Memes Religion and Nazis

      Contagions of Madness and Evil Is it just me, or is everyone going crazy? I've often entertained myself by thinking of the chaos that could be brought upon mankind if mental illnesses were, like physical ones, contagious .