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#i guess if they were trying to ID an unconscious person you could swing this but i still think it's WEIRD when it's like
mixelation · 3 years
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TODAY ON FANDOM VS BIOETHICS (DOUBLE HEADER):
1. It’s a common “fix-it” in Naruto fics to just have...... Orochimaru use consenting test subjects. Like, that’s it. The MC goes “yooo what if you asked permission first?” and then dusts their hands off as a job well done. Like it’s an improvement but it’s not even close to all the things you’d need to have in place for ethical biomedical research and i always get a kick out of all the in-universe characters (and sometimes commenters??) acting like it is. why won’t you deliver me a ninja village institutional review board, fandom. smh
2. It’s pretty common in Star Wars time travel fics for there to just be spontaneous ancestry.com genetic testing on time travelers, frequently without their permission or knowledge. You know it’s very weird and kind of fucked up to do that sort of genetic analysis on non-consenting patients, right? Like why are we assuming it’s standard procedure in-universe to just run a paternity test as part of a medical exam. Like does the Galactic Republic just keep a database of all Jedi DNA and then just run everyone against it like YOOOOO GUESS WHAT YOU CAME IN FOR A STANDARD LIPID PANEL AND YOU’RE ABOUT TO FIND OUT YOU’RE YODA’S THIRD COUSIN. i realize we live in the 23andme era but also please let us take a moment to reflect on what you’re implying here lmao
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octothorpetopus · 5 years
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I Forgot That You Existed (Part 2)
Link to part 1
"Wow, Eds, you've really come a long way from wine coolers in high school." Eddie cracked a smile and looked down into his glass.
"Rich, can I ask you a... weird question?"
"Shoot."
"I mean, I guess I just... like..." Eddie trailed off, looking for the words. "I didn't know you liked guys."
"Is that a question, or...?"
"Come on, Rich." Eddie sighed exasperatedly. "You know what I mean."
"Well, I didn't know you were gay either, Eds. That is, if you are gay, 'cause..." They both took a long, long sip of their drinks in awkward silence.
"I am. Gay." Eddie nodded with an odd half-smile.
"Oh. Me too."
"It's a hell of a funny coincidence, you know?"
"How's that?" Eddie laughed brightly.
"On the one day I happen to be in LA, we get matched on the one dating app I have, and you just happen to be one of my best friends from high school. How's that for batshit?"
"I'd say we're three for three on the batshit scale." Eddie held up his glass, and Richie knocked his against it. "Cheers, to a night of crazy coincidences."
"Cheers."
"Hey, uh, Eds?"
"Yeah?" Richie bounced his leg on the leg of his stool.
"Is this a date? I mean, it's cool if you just want to catch up, but-"
"It's like I said, Rich. It's a hell of a coincidence, and I think it'd be a shame to pass that up, don't you?" There was a twinkle in Eddie's eyes that Richie wasn't sure he'd ever seen before. He quite liked it.
"Agreed."
The rest of the night passed in a curious sort of way. In some ways, it didn't feel any different than when they'd used their fake IDs to sneak into a college bar in Bangor in their junior year of high school. But in other ways, in all the important ways, it was different. Because this time, there was a chance of something. What, exactly, neither of them could have said. But it was something.
”Shit,” Eddie muttered as he checked his watch. It was quiet, but Richie still turned to look at him.
”What?”
”Nothing, just...” Eddie rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly. “I have a meeting in the morning. And it’s getting kind of late.”
”Say no more, Eds.” Richie set a thin stack of bills down on the bar and tossed back the last of his drink (he had switched to club soda an hour ago when Eddie reminded him he had to drive.) “I’ll walk you back.”
”What about your car?”
”Eh.” Richie waved a hand. “It’ll still be here when I come back.”
They walked along the busy sidewalk shoulder-to-shoulder, Richie’s hands shoved in his pockets, his shoulders hunched in a familiar posture. Eddie studied him carefully ask they walked, wondering how it was possible that up until tonight, he had forgotten Richie. Forgotten how wonderful he was, how he could make you laugh with just a twitch of his voice.
At the same time, Richie was wondering how it was possible to have forgotten Eddie. The way he ran his hands through his hair when he was on a roll. The way he laughed when Richie interrupted with a stupid joke. In all his years without him, he’d never met anyone quite like Eds.
”Penny for your thoughts?” Eddie asked, his voice rough and clear and deeper than it had been the last time they had seen each other, but still somehow the same.
“Nothing. Just... I missed you, Eds.”
”Yeah. I missed you too, Rich.” Richie let his hands fall out of his pockets and swing by his sides. They were walking shoulder-to-shoulder, and they were so close that their knuckles brushed every time Richie took a step. His face grew hot and he worried he was blushing, but when he looked over, Eddie was blushing too.
”Isn’t this you?” Richie stopped suddenly and pointed at the building in front of them. Eddie shook himself, as if in a stupor, and nodded.
”Thanks for coming with me, Richie. It was... it was nice to see you again.”
“You’re welcome.” Eddie slipped into Richie’s arms for a last hug (he was surprised at how well they fit together) and stepped back. “I should go.” Richie took two steps backward and smiled. “Take care, Eddie Spaghetti.” Eddie didn’t know if it was the childhood nickname that convinced him to do what he did next, or the coolly smoky Los Angeles air, or the hand of god himself, but whatever it was, Eddie was swept away by his feelings for Richie, letting the warmth and excitement overtake the nervous electricity running through him.
”Richie, wait.”
“Hm?” Richie hummed, and before he had even turned all the way back around to face Eddie, Eddie had his hands wrapped around the collar of Richie’s shirt. He had to stand on his tiptoes in order to reach, but he tugged Richie down just far enough that he could meet Richie’s lips in a kiss, their first kiss since a brief and forgotten moment in a game of truth or dare when they were twelve.
Richie, quite frankly, was not expecting the kiss, but didn’t stumble back or push Eddie away in a moment of panic. Instead, something in him steeled him, and he leaned into Eddie until he was almost falling into him.
”Holy shit,” Eddie said for the second time that night.
”Holy shit,” Richie replied.
“I can’t believe I just did that.”
”I can’t believe you didn’t do it earlier.” Eddie looked deep into Richie’s eyes... and then burst out laughing.
“You’re something else, Trashmouth.”
”I could say the same for you, Eds.” Eddie mellowed and took one of Richie’s hands.
”Hey, if... if you’re not too worried about your car... do you want to come upstairs?” Richie arched his eyebrows, but nodded.
”Yeah. I do.” And he did.
Eddie woke up to the sound of his alarm (the first of many to keep him on his strict schedule) and found himself unable to sit up. For a moment, he found himself thinking of sleep paralysis and the horrific nightmares that plagued him throughout his college years. And then he realized that there was just a heavy, hairy arm draped over him, the attached hand just barely brushing one of the two star tattoos Eddie had gotten during his very brief rebellious phase.
"Would you shut that shit off?" Richie's voice came from behind Eddie, clouded with sleep and a hangover. Eddie reached over and hit the snooze button before rolling onto his other side so he was facing Richie, bare chest to bare chest.
"Good morning."
"What time is it?"
"Seven." Richie groaned. "What? I have meetings today."
"Right." Richie rolled his half-open eyes and flopped onto his back. "Or... you could play hooky with me." Eddie smiled and nudged Richie's side with his knee.
"I wish I could, but if I ever want this company off the ground, I need investors. And in order to get investors, I have to go to meetings." Smiling, Richie considered.
"Eh, I don't know. I mean, a limo company? Eds, I get that you've always been practical, but it's just not... sexy." Eddie laughed. "I'm serious." And when Eddie turned to look at him, he was. "Look, you could do anything you wanted. Anything at all. And yet, you chose to start a business you're not passionate about in the dirtiest city in America. That's not the Eddie I know."
"And who's the Eddie you know?"
"The Eddie I know wanted to pick up and move to Italy after high school. And he wanted to be an interior designer, or maybe a city planner. New York's not your home, Eddie, and neither is Royal Crest Limos."
"So what do you think I should do?"
"Move here. To LA." Eddie laughed again, more out of shock than humor.
"Yeah, right. Beep-beep, Richie."
"I'm serious." Richie propped himself up on his elbows and looked into Eddie's eyes. Or maybe his forehead. To be fair, he didn't have his glasses on so he couldn't really see. "What's stopping you? You told me last night you don't have time for friends because you're too busy trying to start a business that you're not even excited about. If you came out here, you could do what you want to do. And..." Richie sat up now and looked at Eddie in a way Eddie hadn't been looked at since they were just two kids in an underground clubhouse. "And then we could be together. All the time." Almost unconsciously, Eddie took his hand and squeezed it.
"Okay."
"Eddie, really, I- wait, what?"
"Okay. I'll move."
"Wait, you're serious?"
"Yeah, were you not?"
"No, I was, I just-" Richie seized Eddie's face in his hands and kissed him, long and hard. "I didn't think you'd actually say yes."
"Think again, then. I'd hate to be predictable."
Six years later, Richie Tozier wakes up in the bedroom of his Santa Monica condo to the mid-morning sun streaming in through the window. He sits up and rolls his shoulders, wincing at the sharp cracking of his spine. He fumbles blindly for the bedside table, puts on his glasses, and looks at the empty left side of the bed. He yawns and then goes quiet, hearing the soft sprinkle of the shower coming from the bathroom.
"Morning!" He calls through a yawn. He is still not a morning person, even after living with one for the last six years (Eddie stayed with him during the move from New York, and never moved out).
"Morning, Rich," Eddie responds over the water. Richie feels as though his heart is going to explode. He is, for the first time in his forty-year existence on this earth, totally and completely happy. And then the phone lying facedown on the left nightstand starts ringing.
"It's yours, babe!" Richie reaches over and checks the screen. "Someone from... holy shit, it's someone from Derry!"
"Can you get it?" Feeling unsettled, somehow, Richie hits the Accept Call button and holds the phone to his ear.
"Hello?"
"Hi, is this Eddie Kaspbrak?"
"No, he's, uh... indisposed at the moment." From behind him, Richie hears the water shut off and the shower curtain slide aside. "Can I get your name so he knows who to call back?"
"Yeah, I guess. Tell him Mike Hanlon called, from Derry. He'll know-" But Mike doesn't have the chance to finish. Richie feels a wave of nausea slide over him.
"Mike?" There is a pause on the other end of the line. Then:
"...Richie?"
"Holy shit, Mike."
"Who is it?" Richie jumps and turns around to see Eddie, who has come up behind him. Richie swallows hard and covers the receiver with one hand.
"It's Mike. Hanlon." Eddie looks confused for a moment, and then shock and horror register on his face.
"Holy- Mike?" Richie holds the phone up to his ear.
"Uh, Mike, Eddie's back, I'm gonna put you on speaker." He does, and holds the phone out between them. Eddie sits on the edge of the bed, water still dripping out of his hair and landing in dark dots on the bedspread.
"Hey, Mike." Eddie's voice is startled, but not scared. Not yet.
"Hi, Eddie. I'm glad to see that some of us stayed friends after we left." Richie and Eddie look knowingly at one another.
"Yeah, something like that."
"Anyway, I bet you're wondering why I'm calling."
"Yeah," Eddie responded. He does sound scared now. In fact, he sounds exactly like he had 27 years ago. And that's when Richie remembers. 27 years.
"It's back, isn't It?" He asks, interrupting whatever Mike had been saying.
"...yeah. It is." Eddie makes a strangled noise and lunges for the nightstand drawer, where he keeps his inhaler. He hasn't used it in 21 years, but he still keeps it there in case of emergency. He takes two quick gasps off of it and exhales slowly. Richie reaches over and slips his hand into Eddie's.
"And we need to come back."
"Yeah."
"Fuck," Richie mutters under his breath. "How soon?" He asks, wishing he had just hung up the phone when he heard who it was.
"Tomorrow. Everyone needs to come back, guys. Everyone." Richie rubbs the bridge of his nose and looks over at Eddie, who is staring, wide-eyed, right back at him. They both nod and look back at the phone.
"We'll be there," Eddie says, sounding only a little less muffled than before. Before Mike can get another word in, Richie hangs up the phone and stands, pacing the room, his hair standing up in frantic spikes.
"This is stupid. We shouldn't go. We should just take off, go to Buenos Aires or Madagascar or Iceland- Iceland's nice this time of year, right?"
"Richie." Eddie's voice is even now, and calm. "We have to go." He speaks haltingly as he rises to his feet and takes both of Richie's hands in his.
"I know." Richie smiles bitterly. "I know." He laughs, a caustic, harsh sound. "I guess I'll cancel our dinner reservations, then."
"I'll start packing."
"Don't worry about that. I've got it. Get dressed and then we'll make a plan. Okay?" Eddie smiles gratefully at him and kisses him gently before standing up and returning to the bathroom. Richie is hit with the same wave of vertigo and barely manages to stumble out onto the terrace before vomiting over the railing. He wipes his mouth and stares out at the crashing ocean in front of him. They will go to Derry and their life together will never be the same. Of that, he's sure. But he's also sure of one other thing, and that's that he loves Eddie Kaspbrak like he's never loved anyone else ever before. He goes back inside and pulls two suitcases out of the closet. He begins packing, and when Eddie comes out of the bathroom, he joins him.
They load the suitcases into Richie's Mustang and get in the car, not looking at each other. Then Richie gasps and opens the door. "I forgot my, uh, my toothbrush. Give me just a minute." Eddie smiles and nods, but it's a sad smile. Richie races back inside and up the stairs, not bothering with the elevator. He digs through the nightstand, still open from Eddie's mad scramble for his inhaler, and finds what he's looking for under a stack of self-help books (a sarcastic Christmas gift). He slips the tiny wooden box into his pocket and silently thanks God that Eddie didn't see it.
"Did you get it?"
"Yeah," Richie says, and smiles. He leans across the console to kiss Eddie again, then starts the car. "Let's go home." Eddie looks out the window thoughtfully as the city fades into wilderness and back again a dozen times. Derry isn't their home anymore, he thinks. But neither is Los Angeles or New York. Their home is with each other now. And it always will be.
Hey guys! Thank you so much for reading. I’ll be posting the sequel to this, probably in three parts, pretty soon, but both are also posted on my AO3, minnesotamemelord, along with all of my other reddie fics, and I’d be super appreciative if you guys checked it out! Thanks!
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nadziejastar · 4 years
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What do you think Axelnort would have been like if he had been targeted as a vessel instead?
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In Jungian psychology, the “shadow”, “Id”, or “shadow aspect/archetype” may refer to (1) an unconscious aspect of the personality which the conscious ego does not identify in itself, or (2) the entirety of the unconscious, i.e., everything of which a person is not fully conscious. In short, the shadow is the unknown side.
To be perfectly honest, Axelnort probably wouldn’t have been a very interesting Seeker of Darkness, from a story perspective. He was too similar to Sora and Ventus. Lea was naturally cheerful and wore his heart on his sleeve. He seemed like he had really good self-esteem. He didn’t really have any crippling insecurities to exploit. Isa was more like Terra and Riku, which is why he was a better choice. Like the Moon, he had more unconscious sides to himself than Lea. I’m having trouble thinking of what Axelnort would even be like, other than just a sarcastic humorous version of Xehanort. I just don’t think Lea had enough of a Shadow Self to even get fully Norted.
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The ‘shadow’ is the side of your personality that contains all the parts of yourself that you don’t want to admit to having. It is at first an unconscious side. It is only through effort to become self-aware that we recognize our shadow.
As an adult, Axel kept his feelings hidden from Roxas and Xion, but he was still very self-aware. His feelings were painful, but he didn’t try to actively suppress his feelings or avoid them. He cherished his memories of the past. He tried and tried to fix things between him and Saix. Saix was the one who put up the barriers, not Axel. Axel was very straightforward. He was more like Sora. Saix was more like Riku, in denial and trying to fool himself.
For the most part, Axel had a weak Shadow Self. He had a strong dark side, but not much of a Jungian shadow. Even when he tried to convince himself that Roxas and Xion were his REAL best friends, he wasn’t fooling anyone, especially himself. Axel was just not very good at lying to himself.
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“Shadows are the lower parts of the psyche everyone has… Suppressed human thoughts given physical form. When people are unable to face their darker selves, they break loose, free from all control.”
In the Persona universe, a Shadow is the person’s suppressed thoughts given physical form. IMO, that’s what a Seeker of Darkness is. This is what Ansem Seeker of Darkness, Riku Replica and Saix were. Suppressed human thoughts given physical form. They are simply an aspect of the person, though. Not literally them. Shadow Aqua was not the real Aqua. Namine was just an aspect of Kairi.
To be a good Seeker of Darkness, you need a REALLY strong Shadow Self. You need an interesting weakness or insecurity in your heart to exploit. Sora had some shadow, but overall he wasn’t really a good choice to be a Seeker of Darkness. Kairi definitely didn’t have enough of a Shadow Self. Namine was still really pure. Same with Ventus, which is why Xehanort had to forcibly extract Vanitas. Roxas had darkness, but he still wouldn’t have made a great Seeker of Darkness IMO. Aqua only had a strong Shadow after being in the Realm of Darkness for so long. Before that, she was confident, strong-willed, and had good self-esteem.
Huh? I’ve just been talking about things I hate, but… don’t love and hate come from the same place? It’s not like that’ll be interesting to talk about. Well, I guess it could be. Things I love… What can I say I like—oh, that’s right, I don’t like anything. Everything sucks. So, if I say I hate something, I don’t want anyone getting the wrong idea that I have any special feelings about it or anything like that.
Marluxia and Larxene were pretty good choices. Especially Larxene. She had a strong Shadow Self. She had an aspect of her personality she couldn’t accept, which was love. Among the main cast, Riku, Terra, and Isa were definitely the best choices because there was a part of themselves they couldn’t accept. Let’s compare them.
Terra
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— Is that to say that there’s a possibility that within Xehanort’s Heartless, the darkness that sleeps in Riku’s heart, there might remain something of Terra…?
That’s also a riddle connected to the next story, so everyone please use your imagination.
I think Ansem Seeker of Darkness was essentially Terra’s Shadow Self.  
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Terra’s Shadow Self: I embrace darkness. Darkness is the heart’s true essence. I have given myself over to darkness. Darkness is strength. I do not fear the darkness.
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Terra’s Suppressed Feelings: I’m afraid of the darkness inside me. Darkness is bad. It makes me unworthy of Eraqus’s love. Even Aqua doesn’t trust me anymore. I’m not worthy to be a master. No matter what I do, I can’t get rid of the darkness inside me. I can control the darkness. I don’t have to give into it. Right? Right!?
Riku
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Riku’s Shadow Self: Riku’s a weak coward who’s afraid of the darkness. I’m nothing like that. I’m strong. I don’t need Sora to worm his way into my heart. I’m better than him. I’ll rescue Namine and finally prove it. I’m the real Riku.
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Riku’s Suppressed Feelings: Sora is better than me. Even Kairi likes him more. Sora and Kairi are leaving me behind. They probably wish they could take the raft and leave without me—just the two of them. They don’t care about me as long as they have each other. I’m a third wheel.
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Riku’s Suppressed Feelings: Now Sora is the Keyblade’s chosen one. That was supposed to be me! He really is superior to me. Maleficent was right. He’s got new friends and doesn’t care about me anymore. Maybe if I save Kairi, she’ll care about me, unlike Sora.
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Riku’s Shadow Self: I’m superior to Sora. I’m so much better at stuff than him. I’ve been showing him up ever since we were kids. He can never beat me at anything.
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Riku’s Suppressed Feelings: Sora’s better than me. I wish I could be more like him. Just following my heart and connecting with other people so easily.
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Resolution: That’s not true. I am more like Sora than I think.
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Quasimodo: Master Frollo–he made me live inside the bell tower, but the real walls were the ones I built around my heart. You helped me see that, Riku.
Riku: I was…speaking from…personal experience.
Phoebus: I’d say you still keep a lot locked inside.
I just need to let the walls of my heart down.
Terra: No more borders around, or below, or above, so long as you champion the ones you love.
I can connect with others, just like Sora can. After all, Terra chose me for a reason. I just need to champion the ones I love and I will have no more borders. I can confront my darkness and insecurities and be the person I want to be. The “other me” can have that broken Keyblade. I don’t need it anymore.
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Riku had a strong connection to Terra’s Shadow Self and it helped him overcome his own. I think that was supposed to be what happened after Riku got swallowed by the Demon Tower. He’d confront his inner Shadow Self and have a boss fight where his Keyblade breaks. But he’d be strong enough to get a new one and leave the broken one behind. It felt like we got some kind of  Cliffnotes version of everyone’s development in KH3…
Isa
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According to Jung, the shadow, in being instinctive and irrational, is prone to psychological projection, in which a perceived personal inferiority is recognized as a perceived moral deficiency in someone else.
Saix’s personality is essentially Isa’s Shadow Self. Not really Isa, but an aspect of him, like Shadow Aqua. Saix gives voice to Isa’s feelings he doesn’t want to admit to having. And you can tell that Saix was HUGELY insecure a master of projection.
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Isa’s Shadow Self: I am strong. Xion is weak and useless. A failure! She failed her mission and fails at life. She’s nothing like me at all. I am strong and a TRUE member of the organization. Nothing like that worthless puppet. Why is Axel so attached to her?
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Isa’s Shadow Self: I am very mature and independent. It’s pathetic and childish to rely on someone like Axel for everything. Roxas needs Axel to hold his hand and walk him everywhere. I’m certainly nothing like that. Grow up, Roxas.
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Isa’s Shadow Self: Lea is such a loser. He’s lame. And laughable. I try to forget him all the time.
Even as a kid, Isa had a strong Shadow Self. It wasn’t anything malicious or bad. He was just similar to Riku and Terra in that he had a tendency to suppress his feelings and probably had a hard time admitting them to himself. To what extent Isa was like that, I don’t know. 
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“He worries too much. Thinks he has to help Sora do everything…” Axel grimaced in irritation. 
“But, Axel, aren’t you the one worrying about Riku and Sora?” Naminé giggled softly. 
“Me, worry? You think I need to be worried about those two?” He stretched backward and rocked the chair back and forth, like a restless child.
I think it’s safe to say he was a lot more insecure than Lea. He was probably ashamed of his tendency to be clingy with Lea.
Genie sounded really worried about his friend–some guy named Al. But then he said that you have to respect your friend’s wishes. I guess you can’t always jump in and do everything for your friends– even if you want to..” Xion bit her ice cream, swinging her feet.
Axel leaned his head to one side. “Your friend’s wishes, huh…” It feels like I have heard that before, a long time ago, when I was human.
And it seemed like he was embarrassed that Lea would try to do everything for him. But he probably was nowhere near as bad as Saix. Saix is an exaggeration of Isa, like Riku Replica.
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Isa’s Suppressed Feelings: Lea is very special to me. He’s the only one I can come out of my shell with. I can’t connect with other people as easily as him. I don’t have other friends besides him. He means everything to me. I need Lea. I don’t like how he picks up other stray puppies. He’s my best friend. I don’t want him to make other friends like Ventus. What if he starts liking them more than me? I want to be the most special person to him.
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Isa’s Shadow Self: Axel’s a worthless traitor to the organization. I hate him. I don’t care about him at all. I’m glad he’s dead. He sacrificed himself for Roxas? How stupid. Nobodies can’t feel friendship. He was deluding himself if he thought he and Roxas were actually best friends like me and him were when we were human! Axel got what he deserved. He was foolish and weak. I’m certainly nothing like that.
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Isa’s Suppressed Feelings: I need you, Lea. I’m so jealous that you have new friends. I want you to coddle me, not them. Please love me again. Please!
I don’t think Lea could have been a Seeker or Darkness like Isa could. I don’t even think Lea’s feelings for Isa were suppressed or unconscious. I think he was well aware that he loved Isa. 
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lirlovesfic · 6 years
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The Choice
A Doctor Who fanfic Summary: After GitF, the TARDIS brings the Doctor, Rose, and Mickey back to the estate to solve a problem involving the TARDIS herself. But when they see a familiar face, the face of someone who should not exist, they realize the problem is deeper than they thought and could endanger the Doctor’s very existence. Primary characters: Ninth Doctor, Tenth Doctor, Rose Tyler, Mickey Smith, Jackie Tyler. Genres: Romance, mystery, adventure, drama, character study, HN AU, fobbed!Nine, sick TARDIS. Pairings: Nine/Rose, Ten/Rose Rating: Adult
Warning: None for this chapter
a/n: I am currently working on editing this chapter-by-chapter, with the hopes of completing a chapter a day until I catch up with myself. As I mentioned in a previous post, I’m doing it to try to get back into the swing of writing and to build some momentum in order to finish this. Also, there have been some tiny things nagging at me for a while (grammar, punctuation, etc.) so I’ll be correcting as many of them as I can find as I go. The story will not change. In fact, most of the changes are going to be so minor that I doubt anyone (besides myself) will notice. But to keep me on target, I’ll be posting it all here as I go, with links to the other websites it’s on. I hope you enjoy it.
This chapter: on AO3, on TSP, on ffnet
Prologue–London, 1 January, 2007 Six months ago… Fire. Searing heat. An inferno of red and yellow and orange rushing through the deep red grasses of the plains. Red flames igniting the trees. The delicate silver leaves ablaze, turning the trees into torches that illuminated the night sky. Screams. Running. Monstrous metal creatures of silver and black with glowing eye stalks. Shooting beams of energy. Killing everything in sight. "Exterminate! Exterminate!" Disjointed faces. Circling, swirling in front of his eyes. Voices. Echoing… An elderly man. Straight white hair. Beaky nose. "One day I shall come back. Yes, I shall come back..." Dark, straight hair. An expressive face. "Jamie, stay with me, don't wander off." White hair. Piercing eyes. "Courage isn't just a matter of not being frightened, you know. It's being afraid and doing what you have to do anyway." Brown curls. Floppy hat. Lots of teeth. "Just touch these two strands together, and the Daleks are finished... Have I that right?" Straight blond hair. A young face. Pleasant features. "Brave heart, Tegan." Blond curls. Haughty, arrogant. Filled with righteous indignation. "Power-mad conspirators, Daleks, Sontarans, Cybermen - they're still in the nursery compared to us. Ten million years of absolute power. That's what it takes to be really corrupt." Dark hair. A Panama hat. "Every great decision creates ripples. Like a huge boulder dropping in a lake. The ripples merge and rebound off the banks in unforeseeable ways. The heavier the decision, the larger the waves, the more uncertain the consequences." Dark curly hair. A grave expression. "It's not my war. I will have no part of it." An elderly man. A warrior. "No more!" Explosions. Fire. Fire everywhere. The ground on fire. The sky on fire. The sounds of screaming– Suddenly cut off. Silence. The silence of space. The silence of the Void. The silence of the dead. After a moment that could have lasted a second or a year or several millennia, new images, new sounds, emerged out of the blackness. New faces. New voices. Plastic people. A hand in his. A glimpse of blonde hair. "Run!" "Are they students?" "Nice to meet you… Run for your life!" "The turn of the Earth… I can feel it. Now forget me…" "It wasn't my fault! I couldn't save your world! I couldn't save any of them!" Someone swinging on a chain, saving him. Another glimpse of blonde hair. A pretty face. Warm brown eyes and a generous mouth. "You were useless in there. You'd be dead if it wasn't for me." "Yes, I would… Uh... I don't know... you could come with me." "You could come with me…" "You could come with me…" The feel of something repetitively poking him in the ribs drew him slowly back to consciousness. As awareness returned, he gradually realized he was lying face down on something hard. Rough. Asphalt. Cutting into the side of his face. "Oi, mate. Wakey, wakey," said a deep male voice. The poking became harder, more insistent. He opened his eyes a crack. Even that slight movement made his head pound. Despite lying horizontally, he was struck with a wave of dizziness and nausea. "Come on, time to wake up." This was a different voice. Lighter, younger. Feminine. He wondered where he was, and cautiously he opened his eyes wider. Someone, probably the person poking him, was shining a torch in his face. Through the glare, he could see a series of bins in front of him. All sorts of rubbish lay on the ground around and under them–pizza cartons and takeaway containers, empty glass whisky bottles and half empty pop bottles, cast off bits of clothing and used condoms and fragrant nappies, and large black bin bags filled so tightly they threatened to burst–as if the people who had left it all couldn't be bothered to actually lift up the lids of the bins and put it inside. He turned his head, wincing at the throbbing pain that shot through his head at the move. Black shoes led to black trousers led to radio equipped utility belts led to bright yellow rain slickers and black helmets. Police officers. One, the female–petite with dark brown skin and closely cropped hair–was looking at him with a frown, while the other, the male–large with a red, beefy face–was still prodding him with a baton. "Ow," he complained. "Sir, are you hurt?" the policewoman asked. He groaned. Now I am, he thought. "Sir, have you been mugged?" she asked. "He hasn't been mugged, Seward," her partner said. "New Year's, unconscious in an alley, he's sleepin' it off. And now he needs to go home." The policeman turned back to him. "So you need to get up and go home, mate." "I don't smell any alcohol on him, Rutgers," Seward told him. "Doesn't mean anything," Rutgers said. "Alcohol, drugs… whatever he took, he needs to sleep it off at home, not in the alley." "Shouldn't he go to A & E?" "Not if he's not hurt," her partner replied. "And I don't see a mark on him." As they spoke, he felt an overwhelming wave of drowsiness. His eyes drifted closed. "Oi, don't go back to sleep!" Rutgers said, poking him again. "Wake up." "Sir, can you tell us your name?" He opened his eyes again. The policewoman, Seward, was kneeling over him now, concern written all over her face. "Can you tell us your name?" she repeated. "Is there someone we can call?" He opened his mouth to answer… and realized he didn't remember. Not whether he had any family, not where he was from, not how he had ended up in the alley. Not even his name. Nothing. "Told you he was drunk," Rutgers said. He couldn't argue with that. He didn't remember, so for all he knew he had been. "Check his ID," the officer continued. Seward reached forward as if she was going to check his pockets, and he held up a hand. Slowly he pushed himself up to a sitting position and patted down his jacket. All he could find was a slim wallet in an interior pocket. He handed it to her. "Looks like he's… John Smith from Manchester," she said. She handed her partner the wallet. "Manchester, eh?" Rutgers said. The officer examined the contents before handing the wallet back to him. "You're a long way from home." He flipped open the wallet. Only one thing in it, a driving license made out in the name of John Smith, Manchester, with the picture of a man with short cropped hair and a big nose and big ears. Him, he guessed, although the face didn't look familiar. Frowning, he searched the wallet. Beyond the license there was nothing in it. No money, no credit card, no NHS card, not even an old ticket for the Tube. He returned his attention to the driving license. There was something odd about it. For just a second, he could have sworn it was just a blank piece of paper… "Yeah, guess I am," he replied. He put the wallet back in his pocket. "So what's your story? Drunk or mugged?" John tried to remember, but he couldn't. The name sounded familiar, but odd at the same time, like it could be his but really wasn't. But until he could figure out who he was, it was as good a name as any. "If you were drunk, we could let you go with a warning," Rutgers continued. "But if you were mugged, we'd have to bring you in to file a report. Now which was it? Drunk or mugged?" There was only one answer he could give. If they brought him in to file a report, he'd have to admit he didn't remember who he was, and that could mean a stint in the local psychiatric ward. No. If he was sectioned, he'd never figure out who he was. "New Year's," he said, remembering that the officer had mentioned it earlier. "Was celebratin'. Had a couple too many at the local and got pissed. Was on my way home, but obviously didn't make it." Rutgers nodded sharply. "Right. We'll be on our way, then. And next time, make sure you head home before you're so drunk you can't walk." He headed out of the alley, but Seward hung back for a moment, a worried expression on her face. "Are you going to be able to make it home all right?" she asked. "Absolutely," he told her. She nodded. John could tell she didn't believe him, but she stood and headed towards the mouth of the alley anyway. Just before she left, he stopped her. "Hey," he said impulsively. "What year is it?" She stared at him in shock. "It's 1 Jan, 2007. Are you sure you're alright?" "Don't worry about me," he told her. "I'm fantastic. Absolutely fantastic." She gave him another disbelieving look before turning and following her partner out of the alley. John gave them a several minute head start before he stood up. His entire body ached, as if it had been pummeled repeatedly. Maybe he had been mugged after all, he thought. Without knowing where to go, he slowly staggered out of the alley, never noticing the tall blue box he was leaving behind.
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babylon-bitch · 7 years
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Surprise ~ Just Friends (part 37)
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Harper White is best friends with Luke Hemmings, they always have been. Not only is she friends with the rockstar, but with the rest of 5 Seconds Of Summer, as well as a really nice girl named Erika.
Harper has a few secrets, she can play all the instruments the boys play and many more. It’s a talent she has kept hidden, only very few people know.
What will happen to the six teens, wondering around the world together?
Warnings: mentions of self harm and depression, language, and overwhelming fluff
***
I’ve passed my driving test on the first try and now I’m officially road legal. It went really smoothly, didn’t mess up one time, and when I came home I took everyone out for a drive and they said that I was a good driver. All of my immediate family passed their driving test on the first try, so I’m proud to say I kept up that tradition. My grandpa took about 4 attempts, he is an absolute shit driver, he focuses on what’s out the window rather than the road.
It was Ashton’s birthday the other week so we all went out for a couple drinks, it wasn’t a full on night out. We went out to a bar, then came home and had a bonfire whilst drinking some more alcohol. It was very chill, and I liked that. We all have a rule that we don’t get each other gifts, of course if someone got them something we won’t turn it down, but we usually don’t get each other anything. We bought Ashton some shots in return.
Luke’s birthday is coming up soon and I’m trying to organise some stuff for that. We’ve all decided to throw a surprise party for him. I told Liz to take him away for the weekend, that’ll piss him off a lot because his birthday is on the Saturday, so he won’t be able to spend his birthday with his friends, but it’ll be worth it. I don’t exactly know where she is taking Luke, but somewhere away from town. I’m really looking forward to it.
I’ve never been big on birthdays, I’ve never been excited for my own birthday, weather I’m getting a super awesome gift or not, I just can’t get excited, even when I was kid. Luke used to get so offended by that.
“So Calum and Ashton, you go get balloons and like party stuff.” Maddie orders.
“Where do we get those from?” Cal asks.
“There’s a good place in town next to the wig shop.” I suggest.
“And you know that because?” Ashton questions.
“Shut up.” I snap.
“Harper and Michael you go get drinks.” Maddie tells us.
“Ah what?” I pout.
“I really wouldn’t moan when she’s in this kind of mood.” Erika whispers in my ear.
One thing we’ve all learnt is that Maddie is a replica of Monica from Friends. Loves bossing people around, is very organised, and cleans all the fucking time, for fun.
“Anyone got any ideas for what food?” She questions.
“Y-” Michael starts off.
“Okay, so me and my sister made a load of food yesterday.” She cuts Michael off.
“Fucking psycho.” Michael mutters.
“And you sleep with her?” Calum asks Erika and points at Maddie as she lists off names of many foods.
“Unfortunately.” She sighs.
“Salad,” Maddie says whilst smacking Erika on the back of her head.
“Why oh why did I choose her out of all the girls.” Erika mutters with wide eyes as she walks away.
“Erika and I are gonna clean this place as well as move some furniture around.” Maddie explains.
���Honestly.” Erika says with her hands up in surrender.
“C'mon Michael.” I nod my head towards the door and grab his arm.
“Bye guys.” We wave and I fetch my car keys out of my pocket.
Michael closes the door behind him and we make our way to my car. Slamming my door closed and putting my keys into the ignition before turning them, causing music to blast out of the speakers. I quickly turn it off because it was one of my songs.
Is that vaine?
“Why’d you turn it off? It was good.” He whines.
“You barely heard it.” I claim.
“Well it was getting into something and I wanted to hear it.” He pouts.
I ignore him and put on The Pretty Reckless.
Pulling out of the driveway I make my way into town.
“I miss Luke.” I whine and lean my head on the steering wheel as we wait for the light to turn green.
“Geez, he’s only been gone a day, get over it. How did you cope when we were on tour?”
“I didn’t.” I shrug.
“Do you regret y'know that whole thing?” He asks.
“Kinda yeah, I did some things I’m not proud of but it’s made me the person I am today.”
“Wha-what did you do?” He questions.
“I took some stuff I shouldn’t.” I sigh and concentrate on the road. “I got so high one night, I didn’t even enjoy the effect, but I did it anyway. I tried to consume everything I could to forget everything, whether it was forever or just a couple of hours, I needed something.” I tell him.
Michael and I have these chats every now and then. Besides Luke, he’s the only person I talk to about my past.
“What was Luke like?” He asks.
“Well he was worried as fuck about me, seeing your best friend and girlfriend on the floor, unconscious on the floor with blood pooled around her is never something you want to see. Obviously he wasn’t with me in England but it always felt as if he was watching me. He was disappointed in me when I admitted what I did, drugs and all, but you can’t undo the past. I’m here now and I’m healthy.” I sigh. “I’m not proud of it at all and I had my little cousins watch me go through that. They really look up to me, they should’ve looked up to Evie or someone. I’m also a role model to lots of young teenage girls, if they saw how I really am/was I don’t think they would even want to throw a look at my direction. It’s not that I’m fake in the videos Erika and I make, I’m just not that happy and I don’t think anybody could be that happy all the time.”
“I totally agree, I’m not the best role model for our fans and definitely not the best in our band. Most of the time it’s really good to be a role model because you can project all these good things, to the people, but sometimes you just get so tired of putting on a fake smile, acting as if your life is pulled together. I often worry that if they see how I truly am, they won’t like me for me. That’s not to say I’m fake, it’s almost like a different persona.” Michael agrees.
“The only person who I truly think doesn’t put a ‘mask’ on, is Erika. Her life is so simple, name me one problem she’s had, apart from coming out.”
“Uh, sh- no, I can’t think of any.” He furrows his eyebrows.
“Exactly. Erika’s had this smooth life, without any bumps along the way, at least not yet or that we know of. This isn’t being mean in the slightest, just an observation. I can’t help but be a tad jealous of her life so far, she’s got her whole life sorted out.”
“Fucking bitch.” Michael mutters and I laugh.
Pulling into a parking spot and turning the engine off. Grabbing my bag from the backseat before opening my door, waiting for Michael to climb out before locking my car. Swinging my bag onto my shoulder and holding the side so it doesn’t bash me against my leg.
“I bet you five dollars that I’m gonna have to show them my ID.” I bet.
“You’re on, you look 40.” He smirks, causing me to smack the back of his head.
“I hate you sometimes.” I pout.
“You love me really.” He says in an overly sweet voice and a shit eating grin.
Michael pulls me into a hug and I rest my head on his shoulder as we walk.
Pushing the door open to the liquor shop, being hit by a very strong smell of red wine. “Couldn’t stay in here for longer than 10 minutes, let alone work here.” Michael mutters.
“I guess you would become immune to it.” I shrug.
“What type are we going for? Like, Luke’s mum is gonna be there, we can’t just get fucked.” Michael questions.
“Liz isn’t the only adult that’s gonna be there, pretty much Luke’s whole family will be there. Get wine, beer, oh gin, Luke’s grandma likes a gin and tonic, maybe some whiskey.” I suggest some.
“What abouts some champagne?” He questions.
“I mean, sure, I won’t be drinking any though.” I tell him.
“I kinda want to get everyone really drunk and just watch.” Michael snickers.
“Have you ever been at a party or club or something, being completely sober and just watch everyone being stupid and making regrets?” I ask.
“I don’t think I’ve been completely sober, but I’ve been less drunk than others and seen some rather amusing stuff unfold.”
“You should try it some time, it can be better than actually being drunk and part of the whole scene.” I laugh.
We go off on a tangent, talking about drunken stories we’ve had together. By the time we get to the check out, we’ve laughed till our stomachs hurts and I wouldn’t be surprised if I have a abs.
“Can I see your ID please,” the man behind the counter requests.
“Sure.” I mutter and search through my bag for my passport.
Opening up the page that has my picture and information on it and passing it to him.
“You owe me 5 dollars.” I whisper into Michael’s ear.
“You should’ve bet more.” He smirks.
***
“I can create milk, what can you do?” Erika asks.
“Turn alcohol into regrets.” I say.
“Wait, if you and Maddie ever have children, what will you do?” Calum asks.
“I’ll be your sperm doner.” Ashton chimes in.
“I don’t fucking know, I haven’t really thought that far ahead.” Erika exclaims.
“What about you and Luke?” Michael questions.
“We’re the opposite gender, that’s how it works. I’m not having children for at least 10 years, I’ve got school and stuff to do before I even think about starting a family. Plus, I’ve already been pregnant, it’s the most terrifying thing.” I state.
“What was that like? We didn’t really get to talk about it?” Ashton questions.
“Probably one of the worst thing I’ve ever had to go through. Luckily I had Luke and I couldn’t of been more greatful and lucky I had Luke to go through it all with. He was so supportive through it all. It was quite emotional to be honest, I’ve never experienced anything like that, to be quite honest I’m not sure if I ever want to be pregnant again, I’ve never been into that lifestyle, could you imagine me as a mum? I think I’d be way too selfish to have a child.”
“What about Luke, doesn’t he want to have kids?” Calum asks.
“We’ve never really spoken about it. Luke probably does want a child, he’s father-material. We’d have to discuss it all, I need to get to a stable place in my life first, get school out the way, live where I want to, have Luke be able to stay in one country for a good few years.” I tell them.
“So you don’t want to have children at all?” Michael asks.
“There’s probably room for discussion, but it’s never gonna be my priority in life. Of course if I ever had a child, I’d love it to pieces and do anything for him/her.” I shrug.
“What about getting married?” Erika questions.
“Same with that, I’ve never been into marriage. Of course I love Luke so much, but I hate being grounded, y'know? I’m not scared of commitment, I just don’t like that fact that once you’re married, you kinda have to start being a proper adult. I might be open to the idea in the future. It doesn’t mean I don’t love Luke enough to marry him, it’s just not for me.” I sigh. “Do you think Luke will be upset with me?”
“Of course not, have you seen the boy? He’s head over heels for you, Luke worships the ground you walk on, he’d do anything for you, or in this case, nothing. I wouldn’t worry about it, Luke does want children though, not anytime soon of course.” Ashton says.
“I’m here!” The voice of Maddie fills our ears.
“Baby.” Erika grins and walks up to Maddie with open arms.
They wrap their arms around each others waists and embrace each other, before kissing each other.
“Ugh, I want Luke, I miss him.” I pout.
“I’ll fulfill his duties.” Calum smirks.
“Don’t come anywhere near me, Hood.” I warn.
“In all honesty do you think I’d be a good boyfriend?” Calum asks.
“You’re a great boyfriend to me.” Michael winks.
“I’ve never really seen you or Ashton or Michael be all coupley. I used to think Erika and Ashton had something going on, but evidently not,” I say and gesture towards Erika and Maddie who are cuddling and whispering stuff into each others ears.
“That used to piss me off so much when you guys would ship us. Like, Erika is a nice girl and all, but I never liked her in that way.” Ashton comments.
“See how Luke and I used to feel.” I tell them.
“That was different, you guys clearly liked each other.” Ashton says.
“Shut up.” I flip him off.
“Can we start decorating now?” Maddie excitedly ask.
“Sure I guess.” I shrug.
“Okay, Michael, Ashton, Harper and Calum you guys do the garden and kitchen, while Erika and I do the inside.” Maddie instructs.
“Ugh, why can’t we get professionals?” I whine and lean on Calum.
“Because it’s Maddie.” Calum sighs and puts his arm around my shoulders, walking me towards the kitchen.
“Okay, Calum and Harper do the kitchen and Michael and I will start the garden.” Ashton tells us.
I start gathering some fairy lights and stringing them around. “Cal, could you pass me the balloons please?” I request.
“Sure.” He nods and throws them towards me.
“Thanks.” I smile and open the package.
Pulling out a green one and start blowing it up, before letting it go, causing it to fly all over the room. Calum squealing and running out of the door.
I bend over, clutching my stomach in laughter. “Harper!” Calum scolds.
“Sorry about it.” I wink and properly blow it up then tying it in a knot.
Many balloons later I’ve blown most of them up, only a couple left. Going into the garden and having a look at what the boy’s have created. “Looking good guys.” I complement them.
They’ve got fairy lights hung up, banners that say Happy Birthday, balloons in the shape of the number 18, and some other useless things.
“Thanks.” Michael grins.
Coming up behind Michael and pulling apart the balloon opening, making it make a squeaky noise.
“Ah, Harper!” Michael pouts.
Tying the balloon up and sticking my nail into it whilst holding it by Ashton. “Hey, Ash.” I smile and when he turns around I dig my nails in deeper, causing it to pop.
Ashton screams and runs around. “Ash, Ash,” I laugh and try to get him to stop running.
“That’s not cool Harper.” He whines.
“I’m sorry.” I say and hug him.
“You will be,” He smirks as he grabs the hosepipe.
“Ashton Fletcher Irwin! Don’t you fucking dare.” I warn.
“Revenge is a thing, Harp.” Ashton wiggle his eyebrow.
“Revenge is best served cold, Irwin.” I tell him.
“I mean, this is quite cold.” He shrugs.
“That’s not how it works.” I say. “If you spray me, I will not be your friend.”
“Oh no, how will I live without you?” His voice dripping with sarcasm.
“Y'know, sarcasm isn’t very nice.” I say and make a b-line to the back door.
“Harper, could you help me with the tables?” Calum asks as he stands by one end of a table.
“Yeah, sure.” I nod and pick up the other end.
Calum walks backwards as I walk forward, we gently ease it out through the doorway and are met by water being sprayed at us.
“Ashton!” I squeal.
“Dude, the fuck?” Calum exclaims.
Ashton starts to spray some more water from the hose and I start to run away, but Ashton wraps his arm around my waist and pulls me towards him, before pointing the hosepipe at me, some getting him.
“You are so dead, Irwin.” I glare at him and take the hose pipe off him and point it at him, making him scream and run around. “Michael,” I call and gesture for him to come over.
“Yeah?” He asks as he walks towards me. What an idiot.
I quickly shove the hose pipe down his jeans and the look of horror on his face. “Harper you son of a bitch.” He curses and take it out of his jeans.
“Yes?” I sweetly ask.
“You are so getting it.” He shakes his head.
This all turns into a water fight, with all of spraying each other or using each other as a human body shield. Luckily it’s hot as balls today.
“I’m gonna go home and get changed.” I tell them and we all follow each other into the house again.
“What on earth happend?” The voice of two girls ask.
“Didn’t you hear the screaming?” Calum questions in disbelief.
“I didn’t really think much of it.” Maddie shrugs.
“We’re going, see you later.” I say.
“Oh, everything is set up out there, just the food and tables need to be set up and stuff.” Ashton tells them.
“Ew, I can’t handle this anymore.” I whine and take my top off as I walk out the door. “Calum stop staring.”
***
“Liz has just texted me, they’re about 3 minutes away.” I tell everyone.
Everyone starts to crouch down or hide behind some furniture, I turn the lights off, not that it did anything anyway because it’s still quite bright outside, the sun is setting.
“Bloody hell, I’m getting a cramp here.” Luke’s grandmother says after a minute and everyone bursts out laughing.
“Pheobe.” I call as she walks out.
She runs back to me and I wrap and arm around her so she doesn’t ruin it all.
We all hear a car pull up and we all get ready to jump out. Hearing the keys jingle in the lock and voices talking, then laughter.
“SURPRISE!” We shout as they enter the house.
“Oh my god.” He laughs. “You lied!” He says and points to Liz and Andy.
I walk over to Luke and smile. “Happy Birthday, Luke.” I grin and give him a small kiss.
“Thank you, really didn’t expect this.” I says and wraps his arm around my waist. “You look great by the way.” He whispers into my ear.
“Thank you.” I smile and kiss his cheek before letting other people talk to him.
“I’m so glad he’s home.” I smile and observe him from afar with Calum.
“You really love him, don’t you?” Calum asks.
“Yeah, I mean it’s Luke, I’ve known him pretty much my whole life. I don’t think I’d be able to live without him, he’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me. I’m so lucky to have him in my life, let alone date him. I love Luke with all my heart, if we ever break up, I’d be so broken, empty, and depressed. Luke is my other half, partner in crime, best friend, what ever you want to call it.” I confess.
“I think it’s greatly returned.” Calum smiles making me blush.
After a while everyone has settled down and are in the garden. Luke and I are sitting on the grass, Luke’s sitting with one leg bent and I’m leaning against it. “Kiss me.” Luke pouts.
“No.”
“Why?” He asks.
“Because your whole family is here.” I point out.
“And…”
“I’m not gonna kiss you with them here, let alone watching.” I say.
“Didn’t stop you earlier.” He raises an eyebrow.
“I was excited to see you.” I whine.
“I can go away and then come back again if you want.” He offers.
“I’m not gonna kiss you Luke,” I laugh.
“One kiss.” He reasons.
“One kiss on the cheek.” I tell him.
“Deal.” He smirks.
I place my hand on his neck and lean up slightly before bringing my lips to his cheek, only for Luke to turn his head at the right moment and our lips collide.
What’s the worst that could happen?
I move my lips against his and Luke’s arm holds my waist, while the other one is in my hair.
“Steady on, lovers.” Luke’s aunt says.
We pull apart wide eyed and stare at each other. “I fucking told.” I tell him.
“Sorry.” He smirks and kisses me again.
“I’m gonna hit you later.”
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thebibliomancer · 7 years
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Essential Avengers: Avengers #121: Houses Divided Cannot Stand!
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March, 1974
Hey, Vision. Word of advice. Don’t try to go through the glowy energy field when there’s a perfectly good floor to float through.
Also, ‘Cannot Stand‘ should be in italics but I guess I can’t italicize a title.
Anyway. Last time: the Avengers encountered a partially new group of Zodiac. They got their collective asses kicked in a single page and then turned around and kicked Zodiac’s collective asses a little while later. They thwarted a mad scheme to kill off every Gemini in Manhattan with a Jumbo Star-Blazer. But because Mantis is so emphatic, she got star-blazed unconscious and teetering on the edge of the roof. If the Avengers don’t let Zodiac go, they’ll star-blaze her again - to her death.
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This time: Vision says ‘eh go ahead then.’ She’s not an Avenger, she’s merely a hanger-on. Her life isn’t worth letting Zodiac escape.
Taurus claims that she’s a lot more than Vision says but it was all a ruse.
On Vision’s part, I mean.
While he was distracting Zodiac by being callous, Scarlet Witch was moving out of Zodiac’s line of sight so she could prepare one of her hexes.
And she destroys the Star-Bl- *ahem* Star-Slayer, apparently, with a FOOM!
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Without the Star-Blazer-Slayer nothing is holding the Avengers at bay and they leap forward to fisticuffs some more.
It isn’t really worth it to go into specifics. The Avengers are stronger individually than Zodiac, who have vague powers, but the handheld Star-Blazer is strong enough to give even Thor pause. Oh and Virgo sneaks up on Scarlet Witch and WAM!s her in the head with a piece of scrap.
I guess Zodiac had the Avengers at a disadvantage but then Cap shows up to CLANG! them with his shield. He’s pretty dependable in that way.
Even if Cap’s accused of crime, he’ll always show up at the nick of time.
Anyway, with Cap here, the odds are much better
But then Aries decides to take matters into his own hands. And by matters I mean Mantis and by own hands I mean he throws her off the roof.
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Without hesitation, Vision jumps off the roof after her and manages to reach her only twenty floors above imminent splat. Since he can’t fly while carrying a full grown person (his flight is based on reducing his density to be lighter than air) and since catching her after landing would have destroyed her skeleton bones (she doesn’t have Hawkeye’s amazing skeleton after all), he has to get creative.
And very much collateral damagey.
He jams his hand into the side of the building and lets the drag from that slow their fall.
And they still hit hard.
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But also, the damage threatens to have the whole building fall down. Which is slightly awkward when you remember its the World Trade Center.
There’s no choice but for the Avengers to abandon the battle and save the building. Zodiac, of course, takes the opportunity to skedaddle, although its clear there’s some discontent against Taurus for his plan failing.
So Thor holds up the building while Iron Man uses heat blasts to... weld? Can you weld concrete? Well anyway, he patches up the cracks.
Once again, the Avengers have saved New York from the damage that they inflicted to New York.
Scarlet Witch has been checking on Mantis. She seems okay, if shaken, but Mantis claims she has slight injuries to her internal organs from the shock of the landing but she will rest and recover.
And then she just puts herself in a healing trance. She may be a Jedi. Or perhaps a Kryptonian.
The Avengers decide to take her back to the mansion to have her examined. And Cap runs off to go clear his name. The Avengers can’t help him, not unless they want to end up sharing a cell with him so they haven’t seen him -wink-.
Back at the mansion, Swordsman is alarmed that Mantis has been hurt.
Iron Man tells him not to worry. Heck, Swordsman is in worse shape, with his infected wound. They even had the Avengers’ personal physician, Donald ‘Not Thor’ Blake check her and all she needs is rest.
But then Blake and Iron Man take a little walk and have a secret conversation. Because they are the two Avengers who know each others’ secret IDs, giving them a special, unique bond that lasts probably until Tony made a clone of Thor, which is a big friendship-ending no-no.
But basically, Donald Blake has never seen anything like Mantis. She’s already improved from how she was right after the battle. It’s like she’s curing herself.
Its a mystery. And they have some downtime so why not investigate a little? Iron Man asks Swordsman if there’s anything he can share about Mantis’ backstory.
But the simple truth is Swordsman knows little more than the Avengers. He met her when he was working in the South Vietnamese black market for a man called Monsieur Khruul.
As has been established, by this point, Swordsman had hit real rock bottom. This was sleazy work. And to cope, he had started drinking.
He met Mantis in a waterfront dive and she took an interest in him. Tried to talk him into rehabilitating himself. But Monsieur Khruul sent him on ‘one last job’ to raid a rival’s warehouses.
It didn’t go as planned.
Mantis found him hours later, lying smeared with mud and blood and lice. And hey he had managed to mine a tunnel through rock bottom to find a new bottom.
She took him to her apartment and nursed him back to health for days, even going without food so that he could eat.
And that whole time he was so wrapped up in his own wasted life that he never asked her about herself. Which, in hindsight, he regrets and wants to make it up to her. He wants to go after Zodiac with the rest of the Avengers.
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But Black Panther pops in and tells Swordsman that he’s in no shape to travel.
Yup, he’s temporarily back from Wakanda. He was making a special set of wings for Falcon and decided to stop in. So he’ll be joining in on this mission.
Before they go, Vision has a weird conversation with Swordsman apparently fraught with sub-text.
Vision: This is quite a woman, Swordsman. Even in pain, her control of mind and body approach perfection.
Swordsman: Why... yes, Vision. I know.
Vision: I am aware that you do. Goodbye.
Swordsman: What -- did he mean by that? Could he -- No!
I don’t really get it.
Anyway, Zodiac! There’s some unrest in the house of Zodiacs. With Taurus’ plan a bust, Aries yells that he should lead Zodiac.
And then like goats, they decide to headbutt for dominance. These comics... Couldn’t make it up if I tried.
Aries comes off the worst and calls for a time-out but Taurus butts him again. And yells that the house of Taurus rules this Zodiac.
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Aries seems to concede but thirty minutes later, he has gathered a bunch of the Zodiac to talk coup.
Gemini, Virgo, and Capricorn were not invited to the sedition. Gemini because he owes Taurus for busting him out of jail and Virgo and Capricorn are Earth signs like Taurus is so they’ll probably side with him.
BECAUSE.
Geez, Zodiac takes their theme so seriously, they even import in some cliques.
These guys are a bunch of crimelords that have formed one giant cartel that they patterned after Zodiac because they’ll rule humanity just like the stars do, or something. But then they got super into their roleplaying and formed cliques based on the signs. Not to mention, this is a team comprised of a bunch of top dogs. No wonder they never play well with each other.
Anyway, the water signs Pisces, Cancer, and Scorpio throw their lot in with Aries. As does Sagittarius, Leo, and Aquarius. But the air signs are divided right down the middle. Gemini will probably side with Taurus, Aquarius is siding with Aries, and Libra?
Libra represents balance so he’ll be sitting this one out. The other houses kind of expect this kind of neutrality from him by this point so they don’t even mind. But Cancer does warn him to maintain his neutrality and not swing his weight to Taurus’ side.
Now there’s just one more aspect to Aries’ revolution.
And a phone rings in the secret headquarters of...
Cornelius Van Lunt?? The asshole who bankrupted the Avengers to force them to act as his muscle and then was trying to force Red Wolf’s Cheyenne tribe off their land. And then he seemingly died when the dam he built ruptured.
But I guess he survived because here he is. But he’s been hiding out because the Avengers exposed his criminal activities.
Anyway, Aries wants to meet with him. Van Lunt arranges a meeting for the following dawn at one of his New Jersey warehouses.
Just before that dawn, Thor happens to spot the Zodiac Star-Craft on their way to that meeting while searching over Manhattan. After they land, Thor uses a signal device in his belt to contact the Avengers.
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Dang. It looked like an Asgardian belt but the buckle flips open and there’s science inside. Guess it makes sense when Tony Stark is Best Mortal Friend Forever.
The Avengers arrive and just... peep in the window. Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, everyone.
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Inside the revolting Zodiac try to rope Van Lunt in on their schemes. See, Van Lunt is apparently the financier of Zodiac so they need his money to obtain a deadlier arsenal to combat Taurus’ Star-Slay-Blazers.
But from their peeping spot, the Avengers see that Zodiac is completely preoccupied talking and instead of trying to gather information, the Avengers just OH YEAH! right through the window and start lariating people.
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This is why the Avengers need Black Widow. She knows how to spell subtlety.
While the Avengers are punching Zodiacs in the face, Van Lunt sneaks out the back.
Nobody misses him. They’re too busy fighting.
Like Leo tries to wang Vision in the head with a wrench but it just breaks off his diamond hard cranium and makes him very unhappy.
But all of a sudden, steel plates slam shut over the windows and doors.
Iron Man demands to know what the deal is but Aries doesn’t know.
And he doesn’t. Because as Van Lunt broadcasts in on a screen to tell them - this trap was set up by him to deal with the rebelling houses of Zodiac. The fact that the Avengers got caught up in it was a nice bonus.
Aries wants to know what Taurus offered to make Van Lunt double-cross them but Aries just doesn’t get it. Zodiac thinks that Van Lunt is a backup player because he’s just a money man and doesn’t wear a costume.
WELL GUESS WHAT, SOMETIMES HE DOES.
And no, its probably not a sex thing. Because he pulls out Taurus’ mask from off-camera and puts it on. Revealing that Van Lunt has been Taurus all along.
He feels pretty okay with revealing that bombshell plot twist though. Because neither the renegade Zodiacs nor the Avengers will be able to profit from the revelation. Because he’s going to launch them into space.
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See, the warehouse was secretly a rooooooocket shiiiiiiiiiiiip
and it blasts off with a BAROOM!
Van Lunt stole my idea for how to get rid of people! That jerk!
Hey, why not follow @essential-avengers? I’m cleaning up the old Essential Avengers posts, adding some more images, and reblogging them there.
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claremal-one · 4 years
Text
Did Sexism — And Fear of Sexism — Keep Warren From Winning The Nomination?
cwick: To mark the end of Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s campaign, I’ve gathered some of FiveThirtyEight’s finest thinkers on the topic that has dogged the Democratic primary for months: electability. Warren’s campaign had a slow and steady rise last summer, but seemed to peak when her opponents took issue with her support for Medicare for All. From there, her support dropped as Sen. Bernie Sanders’s rose, and now Sanders is again the standard-bearer for the progressive wing of the party.
Clare, Amelia, Maggie: Much will be written about how Democrats didn’t think Warren was electable. But if needed, let’s dispense with euphemisms right away. In this case, were voters’ “electability concerns” really just sexist concerns?
clare.malone: Let’s talk about sex(ism), baby.
I think we should define “electability” first.
maggie: Basically, for the 2020 cycle, we’re talking about “can this person beat President Trump.”
clare.malone: There’s a political science definition of it where you can say, “Oh, women are actually really electable when they run for office.” And then there’s the 2020 pundit definition that makes it a shorthand for “Who will appeal to white male swing voters in six states?” That brought us to a lot of national handwringing over what these voters like, don’t like, and on and on. By the way, voters probably aren’t wrong at all to assume some sexism is in play.
ameliatd: Right, Maggie, which is just voters making a lot of guesses and assumptions about what will make someone a strong opponent for Trump. I think voters’ concerns about “electability” were largely — but not entirely — about sexism. Some people thought Warren was too liberal to get elected. Which isn’t unrelated to her gender — there’s research showing that voters generally think women are more liberal than they actually are. But it seemed like a different bucket of worries than “Will sexism doom a woman against Trump?” which is also something I heard a lot on the campaign trail.
cwick: Maggie, you wrote about whether electability is real. What was the verdict?
maggie: The basic gist is that some people are more likely to be elected than others. But if you’re trying to mentally strategize which of several candidates will be able to win a general election months down the road … you’re probably playing yourself.
ameliatd: And then there’s the question of whether “electability” is just a polite cover for a voters’ personal unwillingness to vote for a woman, or their genuine concern about whether other people would vote for a woman. (Or a little bit of both!)
clare.malone: That’s the most interesting part to me. On Super Tuesday, TONS of liberal voters decided to cede to the electability argument. Thereby bolstering … sexism!
maggie: I kind of love the fact that you get these polls where people say, “Well, I have no problem voting for a woman, but I know all my neighbors would.” They remind me of the surveys of doctors that are like, “I can take a sandwich from a pharma rep and not be compromised. But all the other doctors would be.”
cwick: And we know — or at least some data shows — that many Democratic primary voters are sexist themselves, and that may have held Warren back.
ameliatd: Is “electability” the “likability” of 2020? I think people have mostly figured out that “likability” is a pretty sexist conceit.
cwick: “You’re electable enough, Eizabeth.”
ameliatd: I think we can say pretty confidently that outright sexism did hurt Warren with some voters. Whether it doomed her candidacy, though … that’s the million-dollar question.
clare.malone: From my inbox just now:
People are fascinatingly, stubbornly against entertaining the idea that societal sexism trickles down into voter preferences.
ameliatd: And also, based on what I’ve heard on the campaign trail, getting people to understand that sexism is a factor could inadvertently make them less willing to vote for a woman. It’s a weird, self-defeating conundrum. You get people to accept that sexism in politics is real and it shakes their confidence in whether women can win.
cwick: Delaney definitely did not lose because he was bald.
maggie: Well, I mean, given what we know about people’s preferences for who they think “looks presidential,” all those things could actually be true. Including Delaney and his vote-losing pate.
Amelia, I’m curious about the dichotomy between the data that shows women who run for congressional office do just as well as men in elections and these big, executive elections where the pattern from congressional races doesn’t seem to hold.
ameliatd: Yeah, that’s such an interesting question, Maggie. Part of the issue is that with presidential elections, we’re kind of flying blind because there have been so few. But there is evidence that gender stereotypes align better with legislative races (people tend to be more comfortable with women in collaborative roles, for example) than executive races. The presidency is kind of the last frontier — it’s much harder to get people used to the idea that a woman could inhabit that role.
Also, I think what people don’t understand is that 1) there is sexism in politics, but 2) women candidates have gotten pretty darn good at responding to voters’ sexism, to the point where they do mostly win at the same rates as men. The sexism is there. It’s harder for women to run a campaign. But that doesn’t mean they can’t win.
maggie: I think that’s a pretty good encapsulation of some of our oversimplified ideas of what sexism (and racism) must look like. It doesn’t have to be blocking someone out completely. It just means making it harder.
cwick: Amelia, how much of this is also about Trump, since Democrats have seen how Trump runs against a woman?
ameliatd: I think a lot of it has to do with Trump, and Democrats’ sense that Trump somehow managed to tap into the country’s sexist id during the 2016 election, and that he’ll do it again this year. Which isn’t wrong — there’s plenty of research showing that Trump appears to have motivated more sexist voters in that election. But it also makes the assumption that all female candidates are the same, and that with Warren you’re just getting Clinton 2.0.
clare.malone: Right, this is where I throw in the “Clinton and Trump were each historically disliked candidates” line.
ameliatd: It’s not even clear that Clinton lost because of sexism! It was a weird election, and there’s evidence that some Democrats were motivated to vote because of Trump’s sexist attacks.
But I think it’s hard for a lot of Democrats to shake the visceral feeling that Trump did something akin to sexist black magic to defeat her, and that he can do it again to another woman.
cwick: Sexist black magic conjured up Comey’s letter.
clare.malone: I think it was also the demonstrated capacity of GOP or independent, conservative-leaning women to still vote for Trump despite the sexism and the “Access Hollywood” tape. That also jarred Democratic voters.
maggie: Which comes back to the inherent mystery of who is electable. If former Vice President Joe Biden wins in November, that doesn’t prove he was more electable than Sanders or Warren. It just proves he was more electable than Hillary Clinton.
cwick: And maybe not even that, Maggie! Given this is a whole different cycle.
maggie: True!
cwick: How much does Sanders’s treatment tell us about Warren? Take, for example, that he was not punished at the polls — at least noticeably — for his support for Medicare for All. Does that tell us something about whether a woman running for president has to be “just right?” Not too liberal, not too impractical, not too shrill.
ameliatd: I have heard many a Warren supporter complain about Sanders’s yelling. Why should he get to yell when Warren can’t?
clare.malone: Well, lemme start with this fact: Biden tends to do better with women voters than men (or about the same between groups), whereas Sanders does better with men, according to the exit polls.
ameliatd: That’s right, Clare — Sanders consistently gets more support from men than women. Including in states where he did well (like New Hampshire) and states where he lost (like Minnesota).
clare.malone: And I think some of that has to do with the perception that Sanders’s campaign and its supporters — not necessarily the man himself — are sexist and are critical of Warren in particular in a gendered way.
ameliatd: I think it might go back even further than that to the way some of his supporters refused to coalesce behind Clinton back in 2016.
And I’ve also seen some signs that women are especially likely to prioritize beating Trump over choosing a candidate they align with on the issues, which could also help explain why they’re moving toward Biden.
maggie: I think issues like Medicare for All really get into the subtle ways that unconscious bias can affect how you view the candidates. We know people assume female candidates are more liberal than male counterparts, even when that isn’t true on a policy basis. Was Warren punished because voters didn’t like women, because she seemed waffly on Medicare for All, or because people assumed she’d be to the left of Sanders and were then even more pissed off when she was a little waffly?
clare.malone: A great point to bring up. I do think Warren had the electoral baggage of being actually pretty damn liberal. And generally we see more centrist people elected as president.
So she was pushing the envelope on a couple of fronts.
maggie: She was! And yet I kept hearing anecdotally people complain that she wasn’t lefty enough. Which, once I found out about the “women are more liberal” assumption, seemed more about what people thought she should be.
ameliatd: What I will say is, a lot of people consistently liked Warren. And continue to like her. That’s very different from Clinton. And I was actually surprised by how few voters compared her to Clinton in my conversations with them. Or when they did, it was to say how different she was. So even though I’ve seen a lot of depressed Warren supporters talking about sexism in my Twitter feed today, I think Warren probably did expand voters’ views of what a woman candidate can be.
clare.malone: She styled herself as a candidate — and like, literally styled herself — as a person who wasn’t “of the elite,” which was the big Clinton critique. Target runs, sweaters, not the power suit. “Look at my cute dog!” Her persona was all about accessibility.
ameliatd: Warren was always wearing sneakers on the campaign trail! That made me happy every time I went to one of her events.
cwick: We’ve been focusing on what Warren didn’t win, but what did she earn through this campaign? What power has she now amassed? And how can she potentially use it for the rest of the campaign or a new administration?
ameliatd: I think she still has a lot of power, even though she’s out of the running for the nomination. The wealth tax is her baby, and it’s extremely popular. She’s got a zillion plans for the taking. I will also be interested to see how Biden and Sanders try to appeal to her voters. Because, as we were discussing earlier, I don’t think it’s obvious at all that her supporters will automatically flock to Sanders.
clare.malone: I think her voters tend to be more establishment-leaning, so Biden voters more than Sanders ones.
maggie: Which is interesting, given that the policy positions between her and Sanders are much closer.
cwick: It’s clear what Sanders needs from her (her voters). But what does Biden need from her, given his coalition and momentum?
clare.malone: Right, Maggie. But I guess if this primary is turning into a pragmatic one — beat Trump above all else — voters whose preferred candidates have already dropped out might just turn to the “electability” metric once more.
ameliatd: And now it might be Sanders’s turn to get burned by “electability” as Warren’s supporters look for an alternative. It would be ironic if Warren supporters who were upset about how the “electability” narrative hurt their candidate rejected Sanders for similar reasons.
maggie: I think it’s really interesting that both Sanders supporters and Biden supporters right now seem to think the other side is making an obvious and idiotic mistake in choosing a clearly unelectable candidate. At least if my Facebook feed is any indication.
clare.malone: Intraparty polarization.
maggie: And also goes back to what the scientists told me about electability. When figuring out who’s electable, people first figure out who they like more, then say they like them because they’re more electable.
cwick: If only there was a third candidate to split the difference, Maggie.
maggie: TULSI GABBARD
cwick: Now there’s a good electability chat.
clare.malone: I would most like to get a beer with Tulsi … to ask her what’s going on???
maggie: Out of all the candidates, a night drinking with Tulsi feels like it has the most potential to be memorable. I mean, now that Marianne Williamson is out.
ameliatd: This gets back to what we were discussing earlier, Maggie — how much of the “electability” worry for Warren was really just a socially acceptable cloak for sexism? Maybe even an unconscious cloak?
maggie: Exactly, Amelia. And there’s just no way to quantify that. Because even the people who did have sexist reasons for not liking her, most of them probably feel like it was just, “Well I don’t like her as much.”
clare.malone: Here’s my theory of sexism and the presidency and why it’s different from women running for office at lower levels: When you vote for your female member of Congress, you don’t actually ever see her that much. She probably doesn’t have enough money to do tons and tons of TV ads, etc. You probably don’t watch her debate. But with the presidency, you’re CONSTANTLY exposed to the woman candidate. You analyze her every move in debates, what she looks like, what she wears, how she talks to other people. And either you relate to her and like her or she just brings out every sexist pet peeve that’s been ingrained in you societally. She becomes home to all your projections, “likeability” tropes about librarians and teachers and on and on. She becomes every woman in your life you’ve liked and disliked.
ameliatd: I also really do think that growing awareness of sexism in politics — because of Clinton, because of #MeToo, because there are more women in politics talking about their experiences — spooked some voters this year, and those fears had a lot of power because many people are extremely risk-averse. So I wonder what the next presidential race will look like, hard as it is to imagine life after 2020. Do voters put less emphasis on their fears and awareness of sexism?
That is, assuming a woman runs of course.
maggie: Does whoever gets the nomination have to choose a woman for vice president at this point?
ameliatd: I would think yes?
clare.malone: I mean … Biden probably will.
ameliatd: A female VP would be interesting for your theory of sexism in politics, Clare — would four years of exposure to a woman almost at the top of the government make people less inclined to judge and analyze her? I’m genuinely not sure. In some ways the presidency feels kind of sui generis.
clare.malone: Yes, totally, an interesting thought experiment, Amelia.
cwick: Hillary Clinton’s time as secretary of state suggests people are OK when women are in high-profile positions of power for several years, it’s just different when they seek those positions of power.
OK, I think we can wrap it there. Anything else, everybody?
clare.malone: Nada
maggie: Nope
ameliatd: We have solved electability.
maggie: I just checked twitter to find a video of Bailey the dog stealing someone’s burrito. Vote Bailey.
ameliatd: Ugh, yes, pets for president. No more people. Too unelectable.
from Clare Malone – FiveThirtyEight https://ift.tt/2PUaCRJ via https://ift.tt/1B8lJZR
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theliberaltony · 4 years
Link
via Politics – FiveThirtyEight
cwick: To mark the end of Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s campaign, I’ve gathered some of FiveThirtyEight’s finest thinkers on the topic that has dogged the Democratic primary for months: electability. Warren’s campaign had a slow and steady rise last summer, but seemed to peak when her opponents took issue with her support for Medicare for All. From there, her support dropped as Sen. Bernie Sanders’s rose, and now Sanders is again the standard-bearer for the progressive wing of the party.
Clare, Amelia, Maggie: Much will be written about how Democrats didn’t think Warren was electable. But if needed, let’s dispense with euphemisms right away. In this case, were voters’ “electability concerns” really just sexist concerns?
clare.malone: Let’s talk about sex(ism), baby.
I think we should define “electability” first.
maggie: Basically, for the 2020 cycle, we’re talking about “can this person beat President Trump.”
clare.malone: There’s a political science definition of it where you can say, “Oh, women are actually really electable when they run for office.” And then there’s the 2020 pundit definition that makes it a shorthand for “Who will appeal to white male swing voters in six states?” That brought us to a lot of national handwringing over what these voters like, don’t like, and on and on. By the way, voters probably aren’t wrong at all to assume some sexism is in play.
ameliatd: Right, Maggie, which is just voters making a lot of guesses and assumptions about what will make someone a strong opponent for Trump. I think voters’ concerns about “electability” were largely — but not entirely — about sexism. Some people thought Warren was too liberal to get elected. Which isn’t unrelated to her gender — there’s research showing that voters generally think women are more liberal than they actually are. But it seemed like a different bucket of worries than “Will sexism doom a woman against Trump?” which is also something I heard a lot on the campaign trail.
cwick: Maggie, you wrote about whether electability is real. What was the verdict?
maggie: The basic gist is that some people are more likely to be elected than others. But if you’re trying to mentally strategize which of several candidates will be able to win a general election months down the road … you’re probably playing yourself.
ameliatd: And then there’s the question of whether “electability” is just a polite cover for a voters’ personal unwillingness to vote for a woman, or their genuine concern about whether other people would vote for a woman. (Or a little bit of both!)
clare.malone: That’s the most interesting part to me. On Super Tuesday, TONS of liberal voters decided to cede to the electability argument. Thereby bolstering … sexism!
maggie: I kind of love the fact that you get these polls where people say, “Well, I have no problem voting for a woman, but I know all my neighbors would.” They remind me of the surveys of doctors that are like, “I can take a sandwich from a pharma rep and not be compromised. But all the other doctors would be.”
cwick: And we know — or at least some data shows — that many Democratic primary voters are sexist themselves, and that may have held Warren back.
ameliatd: Is “electability” the “likability” of 2020? I think people have mostly figured out that “likability” is a pretty sexist conceit.
cwick: “You’re electable enough, Eizabeth.”
ameliatd: I think we can say pretty confidently that outright sexism did hurt Warren with some voters. Whether it doomed her candidacy, though … that’s the million-dollar question.
clare.malone: From my inbox just now:
People are fascinatingly, stubbornly against entertaining the idea that societal sexism trickles down into voter preferences.
ameliatd: And also, based on what I’ve heard on the campaign trail, getting people to understand that sexism is a factor could inadvertently make them less willing to vote for a woman. It’s a weird, self-defeating conundrum. You get people to accept that sexism in politics is real and it shakes their confidence in whether women can win.
cwick: Delaney definitely did not lose because he was bald.
maggie: Well, I mean, given what we know about people’s preferences for who they think “looks presidential,” all those things could actually be true. Including Delaney and his vote-losing pate.
Amelia, I’m curious about the dichotomy between the data that shows women who run for congressional office do just as well as men in elections and these big, executive elections where the pattern from congressional races doesn’t seem to hold.
ameliatd: Yeah, that’s such an interesting question, Maggie. Part of the issue is that with presidential elections, we’re kind of flying blind because there have been so few. But there is evidence that gender stereotypes align better with legislative races (people tend to be more comfortable with women in collaborative roles, for example) than executive races. The presidency is kind of the last frontier — it’s much harder to get people used to the idea that a woman could inhabit that role.
Also, I think what people don’t understand is that 1) there is sexism in politics, but 2) women candidates have gotten pretty darn good at responding to voters’ sexism, to the point where they do mostly win at the same rates as men. The sexism is there. It’s harder for women to run a campaign. But that doesn’t mean they can’t win.
maggie: I think that’s a pretty good encapsulation of some of our oversimplified ideas of what sexism (and racism) must look like. It doesn’t have to be blocking someone out completely. It just means making it harder.
cwick: Amelia, how much of this is also about Trump, since Democrats have seen how Trump runs against a woman?
ameliatd: I think a lot of it has to do with Trump, and Democrats’ sense that Trump somehow managed to tap into the country’s sexist id during the 2016 election, and that he’ll do it again this year. Which isn’t wrong — there’s plenty of research showing that Trump appears to have motivated more sexist voters in that election. But it also makes the assumption that all female candidates are the same, and that with Warren you’re just getting Clinton 2.0.
clare.malone: Right, this is where I throw in the “Clinton and Trump were each historically disliked candidates” line.
ameliatd: It’s not even clear that Clinton lost because of sexism! It was a weird election, and there’s evidence that some Democrats were motivated to vote because of Trump’s sexist attacks.
But I think it’s hard for a lot of Democrats to shake the visceral feeling that Trump did something akin to sexist black magic to defeat her, and that he can do it again to another woman.
cwick: Sexist black magic conjured up Comey’s letter.
clare.malone: I think it was also the demonstrated capacity of GOP or independent, conservative-leaning women to still vote for Trump despite the sexism and the “Access Hollywood” tape. That also jarred Democratic voters.
maggie: Which comes back to the inherent mystery of who is electable. If former Vice President Joe Biden wins in November, that doesn’t prove he was more electable than Sanders or Warren. It just proves he was more electable than Hillary Clinton.
cwick: And maybe not even that, Maggie! Given this is a whole different cycle.
maggie: True!
cwick: How much does Sanders’s treatment tell us about Warren? Take, for example, that he was not punished at the polls — at least noticeably — for his support for Medicare for All. Does that tell us something about whether a woman running for president has to be “just right?” Not too liberal, not too impractical, not too shrill.
ameliatd: I have heard many a Warren supporter complain about Sanders’s yelling. Why should he get to yell when Warren can’t?
clare.malone: Well, lemme start with this fact: Biden tends to do better with women voters than men (or about the same between groups), whereas Sanders does better with men, according to the exit polls.
ameliatd: That’s right, Clare — Sanders consistently gets more support from men than women. Including in states where he did well (like New Hampshire) and states where he lost (like Minnesota).
clare.malone: And I think some of that has to do with the perception that Sanders’s campaign and its supporters — not necessarily the man himself — are sexist and are critical of Warren in particular in a gendered way.
ameliatd: I think it might go back even further than that to the way some of his supporters refused to coalesce behind Clinton back in 2016.
And I’ve also seen some signs that women are especially likely to prioritize beating Trump over choosing a candidate they align with on the issues, which could also help explain why they’re moving toward Biden.
maggie: I think issues like Medicare for All really get into the subtle ways that unconscious bias can affect how you view the candidates. We know people assume female candidates are more liberal than male counterparts, even when that isn’t true on a policy basis. Was Warren punished because voters didn’t like women, because she seemed waffly on Medicare for All, or because people assumed she’d be to the left of Sanders and were then even more pissed off when she was a little waffly?
clare.malone: A great point to bring up. I do think Warren had the electoral baggage of being actually pretty damn liberal. And generally we see more centrist people elected as president.
So she was pushing the envelope on a couple of fronts.
maggie: She was! And yet I kept hearing anecdotally people complain that she wasn’t lefty enough. Which, once I found out about the “women are more liberal” assumption, seemed more about what people thought she should be.
ameliatd: What I will say is, a lot of people consistently liked Warren. And continue to like her. That’s very different from Clinton. And I was actually surprised by how few voters compared her to Clinton in my conversations with them. Or when they did, it was to say how different she was. So even though I’ve seen a lot of depressed Warren supporters talking about sexism in my Twitter feed today, I think Warren probably did expand voters’ views of what a woman candidate can be.
clare.malone: She styled herself as a candidate — and like, literally styled herself — as a person who wasn’t “of the elite,” which was the big Clinton critique. Target runs, sweaters, not the power suit. “Look at my cute dog!” Her persona was all about accessibility.
ameliatd: Warren was always wearing sneakers on the campaign trail! That made me happy every time I went to one of her events.
cwick: We’ve been focusing on what Warren didn’t win, but what did she earn through this campaign? What power has she now amassed? And how can she potentially use it for the rest of the campaign or a new administration?
ameliatd: I think she still has a lot of power, even though she’s out of the running for the nomination. The wealth tax is her baby, and it’s extremely popular. She’s got a zillion plans for the taking. I will also be interested to see how Biden and Sanders try to appeal to her voters. Because, as we were discussing earlier, I don’t think it’s obvious at all that her supporters will automatically flock to Sanders.
clare.malone: I think her voters tend to be more establishment-leaning, so Biden voters more than Sanders ones.
maggie: Which is interesting, given that the policy positions between her and Sanders are much closer.
cwick: It’s clear what Sanders needs from her (her voters). But what does Biden need from her, given his coalition and momentum?
clare.malone: Right, Maggie. But I guess if this primary is turning into a pragmatic one — beat Trump above all else — voters whose preferred candidates have already dropped out might just turn to the “electability” metric once more.
ameliatd: And now it might be Sanders’s turn to get burned by “electability” as Warren’s supporters look for an alternative. It would be ironic if Warren supporters who were upset about how the “electability” narrative hurt their candidate rejected Sanders for similar reasons.
maggie: I think it’s really interesting that both Sanders supporters and Biden supporters right now seem to think the other side is making an obvious and idiotic mistake in choosing a clearly unelectable candidate. At least if my Facebook feed is any indication.
clare.malone: Intraparty polarization.
maggie: And also goes back to what the scientists told me about electability. When figuring out who’s electable, people first figure out who they like more, then say they like them because they’re more electable.
cwick: If only there was a third candidate to split the difference, Maggie.
maggie: TULSI GABBARD
cwick: Now there’s a good electability chat.
clare.malone: I would most like to get a beer with Tulsi … to ask her what’s going on???
maggie: Out of all the candidates, a night drinking with Tulsi feels like it has the most potential to be memorable. I mean, now that Marianne Williamson is out.
ameliatd: This gets back to what we were discussing earlier, Maggie — how much of the “electability” worry for Warren was really just a socially acceptable cloak for sexism? Maybe even an unconscious cloak?
maggie: Exactly, Amelia. And there’s just no way to quantify that. Because even the people who did have sexist reasons for not liking her, most of them probably feel like it was just, “Well I don’t like her as much.”
clare.malone: Here’s my theory of sexism and the presidency and why it’s different from women running for office at lower levels: When you vote for your female member of Congress, you don’t actually ever see her that much. She probably doesn’t have enough money to do tons and tons of TV ads, etc. You probably don’t watch her debate. But with the presidency, you’re CONSTANTLY exposed to the woman candidate. You analyze her every move in debates, what she looks like, what she wears, how she talks to other people. And either you relate to her and like her or she just brings out every sexist pet peeve that’s been ingrained in you societally. She becomes home to all your projections, “likeability” tropes about librarians and teachers and on and on. She becomes every woman in your life you’ve liked and disliked.
ameliatd: I also really do think that growing awareness of sexism in politics — because of Clinton, because of #MeToo, because there are more women in politics talking about their experiences — spooked some voters this year, and those fears had a lot of power because many people are extremely risk-averse. So I wonder what the next presidential race will look like, hard as it is to imagine life after 2020. Do voters put less emphasis on their fears and awareness of sexism?
That is, assuming a woman runs of course.
maggie: Does whoever gets the nomination have to choose a woman for vice president at this point?
ameliatd: I would think yes?
clare.malone: I mean … Biden probably will.
ameliatd: A female VP would be interesting for your theory of sexism in politics, Clare — would four years of exposure to a woman almost at the top of the government make people less inclined to judge and analyze her? I’m genuinely not sure. In some ways the presidency feels kind of sui generis.
clare.malone: Yes, totally, an interesting thought experiment, Amelia.
cwick: Hillary Clinton’s time as secretary of state suggests people are OK when women are in high-profile positions of power for several years, it’s just different when they seek those positions of power.
OK, I think we can wrap it there. Anything else, everybody?
clare.malone: Nada
maggie: Nope
ameliatd: We have solved electability.
maggie: I just checked twitter to find a video of Bailey the dog stealing someone’s burrito. Vote Bailey.
ameliatd: Ugh, yes, pets for president. No more people. Too unelectable.
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