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theartofimagining13 · 3 years

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“Heirs: “And Justice for All.” (Final Chapter)

Summary: Jeremy is the owner of an important company in London, which will be inherited by his oldest son, Tom. Sebastian, his jealous youngest heir, craves power and desires to take what’s Tom’s. To achieve his goal, he’s plotted horrendous things alongside his lover who’s got interests, issues, and secrets of her own. Mysteries begin to unravel when Jeffrey, an old colleague and friend of Jeremy’s, and Bill arrive in town.

Originally based on: [Imagine 1] [Imagine 2]

Written by: A.Wölf.

CAST:

Jeremy Irons

Tom Hiddleston

Sebastian Stan

Chris Evans

Jeffrey Dean Morgan

Bill Skarsgård

Jared Leto

Chapter teaser: [ Twitter feed ]

Masterpost: [ Previous Chapters, posters, gifs, etc ]

Author’s notes: Welcome to the LAST chapter of HEIRS. (I can’t believe I’m actually saying this!) I just want to thank every single reader of this story. Those who began this journey with me in 2017 and those who just joined us. Thanks for your engagement, the theories, the feedback, the love and hate for some of these crazy characters I made up, and for your patience. Trust me when I say that I infinitely enjoyed writing this and coming up with every teaser, poster, gif and whatnot to share with each one of you, and I couldn’t be happier about finishing it at last because we all (and the story itself) deserved it.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you♥

Enjoy.

~A.Wölf.

The judge’s lips seemed to be moving in slow motion but Sebastian could not hear a word.

He looked at the ground as his mind took off and left only his numb body on earth. Jeremy’s hands were shaking on his lap and he instinctively tried to hold onto the back of the bench in front of him as he learned the fate his youngest would face; it weakened him. Sitting next to him, Tom felt a hole in his chest but reached out and placed one hand on Jeremy’s back and used the other to hold his right arm, as if trying to prevent his father from falling to pieces.

Sebastian had ignored his lawyer’s advice and kept on denying any involvement in the crime throughout his trial, but newfound evidence contradicted and doomed him; he was inevitably found guilty and sentenced to prison. The woman pounded the gavel and the noise echoed loudly in the courtroom.

Reporters were pushing one another when Jeremy and Tom exited the building.

They were suddenly in the eye of yet another storm of questions and camera flashes as the media tried to get a word out of the father or the brother of the defendant. They had been there since the first trial hearing and it was Jeremy’s personal hell; throughout the whole legal procedure, endless gossip and rumors had spread all over the world. Some of them even claiming that Tom and Jeremy were probably involved in the murder of The Clock’s editor in chief too even though they had testified and denied it, but people loved a family crime story.

Endless days of headline after headline had come and gone. The trial. The sentence. The Irons family and their fall from grace. Hashtags were trending on social media platforms; #MurderFamily #JusticeForChris

They were equally feared and mocked. Everything Jeremy had ever dreaded was now part of his life and it was caused by his very own blood. Days and weeks went by, and all they could do was quietly disappear until the storm blew over and strangers found someone new to hate.

Sebastian was escorted by an officer to the large visiting room.

But once he stood in front of the partition glass and saw his brother on the other side, he froze. He hesitated and stayed put several seconds until he grudgingly took his seat and picked up the phone to his right. Tom slowly mimicked him but looked at the floor, anywhere but directly at the orange jumpsuit his brother was wearing.

“Hello, brother.” Sebastian sang without emotion.

Tom blinked several times and inhaled and exhaled through parted lips, hoping for this to be quick and painless.

“Hello, Sebastian.” He gave slight nod and did everything in his power to avoid his little brother’s gaze. “I… I came here to say goodbye.”

Sebastian furrowed his eyebrows and waited for Tom to elaborate.

“I’m moving.” He announced. “To Paris.”

“What?” Sebastian inquired with annoyance. “What do you mean you’re moving?”

“This city has become unbearable.” Tom explained with resentment.

“B-but…” Sebastian cocked his head. “W-what about… what about me? What about… the company?”

Tom let out a tired chuckle while shaking his head.

“Why am I not surprised?” He muttered under his breath but he finally looked up and into his brother’s soul. Sebastian subconsciously sat back in his chair as he noticed the anger and disappointment in his blue eyes. “That is all you ever cared about, didn’t you?” Tom accused.

Sebastian clenched his jaw and took his turn to avoid eye contact. It took him a long time to be able to speak.

“I… wanted things. Yes.” He confessed. “But I didn’t do this all by myself, William.”

Tom frowned. Sebastian rarely called him by his middle name.

“Really?” Tom cocked his head.

The condescendence in his tone irritated Sebastian a little bit.

“My lawyer advised against it because… I have no proof but you need to know the truth. You and dad need to know the truth.”

Sebastian could see the disinterest in Tom’s semblance when he didn’t say a word and just waited for him to elaborate. It made Sebastian twice as nervous as he prepared to finally come clean.

“Tom…” He carried on. “Your ex-wife… she is not who you think she is. We-” He hesitated. “We met in Romania when I was working on the Orphanage project. Sh-she’s been… doing all these things with me from the start. Your marriage was a lie. She was never in love with you. She got into bed with our father to damage your relationship. She helped me get rid of Chris but then she fucked me over and-” Sebastian stopped talking when Tom chuckled with disbelief.

“Are you even listening to yourself?” Tom inquired amused. “You know what you sound like, Sebastian?” He turned serious. “You sound like a child. You’re suddenly 6 years old again trying to blame someone else for the mess you made.”

“Tom, listen to me!” Sebastian pleaded. “She destroyed this family an-”

“No, Sebastian.” Tom cut him off with a glare. “You destroyed this family.”

Sebastian’s face fell and his heartbeat faltered. Tom had never been so cold. It even frightened him how much he resembled their father all of a sudden. And out of all people, it was his brother who no longer believed a word he said and it truly caused a crack in his heart of stone, but he could only try harder.

“Come on, Tom. Think about it.” Sebastian begged. “I was convicted for murder based on a security tape of me walking into the fucking Clock’s offices?”

“You were convicted for your own confession.” Tom corrected. “That tape just confirmed your motive. Sebastian, the last time I spoke to you, you looked me in the eye and you lied to me. You said-”

“I was tricked into saying those things, Tom!” Sebastian exclaimed in a louder tone. “For fuck’s sake! You saw me. You saw me with your wife in our father’s office. She clearly recorded the whole thing and sent it to the fucking authorities. Just like that fucking tape.”

“Enough with the lies, Sebastian.” Tom warned.

“I am not fucking lying!” He jumped out of his chair making it screech against the floor as it was pushed backwards. He gripped the telephone tighter.

“Sit down, inmate.” The guard standing near the door ordered but Sebastian ignored him.

“What reason could she possibly have to cause so much damage? Or to murder Chris?” Tom inquired. “For crying out loud.”

Sebastian shoulders fell as he realized that he had no answer to that.

“What do I fucking know? She fucking framed me! She put me in jail when she’s just as guilty if not more. So if I’m going down, I’m taking her w-”

“That’s enough with the bloody lies, Sebastian. ENOUGH!” Tom yelled when his sentence overlapped his brother’s, and mimicked him by standing up as well.

Sebastian flinched with widened eyes. Tom leaned in closer to the partition glass.

“You killed our cousin, Sebastian. How could you!?” His voice broke. “You broke our father into a million pieces, you betrayed me, you betrayed us both by sending those photographs and God knows what else to The Clock, and you tore this goddamn family apart, for what? For something I didn’t even ask for? For something I was born into?” He paused as his eyes welled up with tears but he scowled at his brother. “The worst part, Sebastian, is that if you wanted my bloody seat in that company so much, you could’ve just fucking asked for it.” Tom snarled then lowered his voice again. “But you chose to hurt me instead… in every possible way you could think of.”

Sebastian swallowed hard as his eyes began to well up too.

“Look what it cost you…” Tom murmured. “Your integrity. Your freedom, Sebastian…” He sighed with deep sadness as a tear escaped his left eye which he quickly wiped away.

The youngest was doing everything in his power not to cry and the exertion had him shaking.

“Where the fuck is she, Tom?” He insisted in a lower tone. “Have you even tried speaking to her?”

Tom shut his eyes and shook his head with frustration.

“And you don’t even have the decency to try to apologize for the unspeakable things you’ve done.”

“Tom…”

“I must go now.”

“Listen to me.” Sebastian pleaded.

“I can’t even look at you anymore.” Tom confessed.

“Tom, please don’t do this.”

“Goodbye, Sebastian.”

Tom ignored his pleas and hung up the phone. Sebastian snapped. He let go of it and banged his right hand the partition glass.

“No. No. No, Tom. You can’t leave me in here! TOM!”

Tom glanced at him over his shoulder and noticed the guard standing behind him about to take him back to his cell. But Sebastian resisted and kept on desperately screaming at the top of his lungs. Tears of pain and horror rolled down Tom’s cheeks while he witnessed the lack of sanity and full transformation of his little brother as he was restrained and taken away; from promising young man and heir to caged animal.

Jeremy was holding a bouquet of fresh white roses.

He was standing in front of his late wife’s tombstone with a broken heart, in a dark trench coat, and filled with nostalgia and melancholia. He put the roses down.

“I had a feeling you would be here.” Tom confessed as he joined him.

Jeremy stood up straight but continued to stare at the grave.

“I would never forgive myself if I missed her birthday…” He sighed.

Tom stared at his mother’s grave too as the best memories of her flashed in his mind. He smiled. He missed her.

“I never imagined that one day I would actually feel relieved by her untimely death.” Jeremy confessed which earned him a certain look from Tom. “Your brother’s-” He trailed off abruptly and took a deep breath while shaking his head. “It would’ve killed her.”

Tom looked at the ground, hurt by the mental image of Vera witnessing what her youngest son had turned into if she was still alive.

“I visited him a couple days ago.” Tom said. “To say goodbye.”

“Right.” Jeremy nodded. “You’re leaving tonight.”

“Are you ever going to visit him?” Tom inquired.

“I can’t bring myself to it yet.” Jeremy confessed. “Frankly… I don’t know if I ever will.”

Jeremy turned around and put his hands inside his pockets as he moved slowly towards the cemetery’s exit where his chauffeur awaited. He would do anything in his power to avoid envisioning his son behind bars.

Tom followed him.

“He’s…” Tom hesitated and changed the question instead. “Have you heard from… her?”

“No.” Jeremy said feeling quite uncomfortable.

“So, she just… disappeared?”

“Can you blame her?”

“Sebastian certainly does, says she was involved in everything.”

Jeremy chuckled and shook his head.

“The lengths your brother will go to… they just never cease to amaze me. It’s absurd!”

“I don’t know. There’s something that still doesn’t make sen-”

Tom’s sentence was cut short when Jeremy stopped walking and faced him all of a sudden.

“William, stop that.” He ordered. “What your brother did was beyond horrid. Of course he’s looking for a patsy now. Just let him deal with the consequences of his own actions for once. It’s about time you stopped trying to excuse the damage he’s done.”

“It’s not about that. It’s just th-”

“Son...” Jeremy placed his hands on his son’s shoulders, interrupting him again but staring into his blue eyes. “We both fell for each one of your brother’s lies. But I also did things I am not proud of, and for that… I apologize.”

Tom frowned and stared at his father.

“Thank you.” Tom said a little doubtful.

Jeremy let go of him.

“And when I said it should’ve been you taking my place in the company, I meant it. Have you considered…?” He trailed off.

“Part of me has.” Tom confessed. “But when I think about Sebastian and all the things he did to get there, I just… I can’t imagine sitting in that office. At least not now.”

Jeremy gave an understanding nod and kept walking.

“Go to Paris. Take some time off and think about it but… you know it was and always will be yours.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Well, I haven’t set foot in the company since this whole mess began.” He admitted. “The lawyer’s been dealing with it all but I’ll have to face the bloody board sooner or later.”

“So, no retirement after all?”

“It seems that way.”

“For now.” Tom teased with a warm smile.

Jeremy imitated him with hope as the two of them reached his car and his chauffeur opened the door for him. He took one last glance at Tom.

“William, before you leave…” Jeremy began. “Would you like to join me for dinner at home?”

Tom realized that he wouldn’t see his father again in a while, and for the first time in a long time, it seemed that they were finally and truly patching things up. The unfortunate events had put things into perspective for both of them and the ugly past was starting to fade. At the end of the day, Jeremy and Tom had only been pawns in Sebastian’s game, and without him or Tom’s ex-wife around, they only had one another.

Tom gave a nod, accepting his father’s invitation, and got into his car to follow.

“What the hell?” Tom murmured behind the wheel as he entered the driveway.

His father’s house was completely cordoned off. Tom could see Jeremy banging his car door shut and throwing half a lit up cigarette on the ground as he strutted in an angry fashion towards a man in a beige suit who was holding a file folder. They started arguing when Tom got out his vehicle but he was distracted when he saw Carol standing nearby, in tears.

Tom rushed to her side.

“What is going on?”

“Oh, Thomas!” She sobbed. “They’re not letting us in. They… they say your father’s been evicted.”

Tom’s lips parted with a furrowed brow.

“Ev-?”

“Evicted!? I beg your pardon!?” Jeremy exclaimed angrily as Tom joined him.

“What the hell is going on here?” Tom demanded.

The stranger man stared at him with a bored expression.

“Like I’ve already told Mr.Irons here, this is private property and you are hereby required to vacate immediately.

“Of course it’s private property. This is my bloody house!” Jeremy snarled.

“Not anymore.” The man said indifferently. “Failure to vacate will result in serious legal proceedings.”

“On what grounds?” Tom asked.

“This is clearly a huge misunderstanding.” Jeremy said while grudgingly pulling his cell phone out of his patch pocket. “I am calling my lawyer.”

“By all means, Mr.Irons.” The man said uninterested and handed him an envelope. “Here. I was instructed to give you this.”

“I’m sure there’s been a mistake but,” Tom began, “if that was the case, legally speaking, there should’ve been a written notice delivered days before.”

“There was.” The man clarified and glared at Jeremy. “An ownership transfer, to be precise.”

Jeremy’s face fell and he went pale as he realized that among all the chaos his son had brought on, his head had been all over the place and he had forgotten something very, very important. Jeremy stared at the envelope in his hands and opened it in a rush. He was staring at an invitation that froze his spine.

“Oh, good God.” He breathed out.

Jeremy thought he was having a nightmare when the chauffeur pulled over at Irons Enterprises and the place was crowded.

A black tie event was taking place inside the building. An event he had not allowed nor even been informed of until ten minutes prior to their arrival. It pretty much resembled the party they had hosted weeks earlier, with a red carpet and lots of reporters all over the place. Jeremy and Tom got off the vehicle and pushed through the crowds to learn who was behind this.

They rushed up the stairs and into to the ballroom.

As soon as they entered, both father and son froze in place once the crowd erupted into applause and they witnessed what was taking place right before them. A member of the board stood on the podium and spoke about reformation and new beginnings. Hope even, after everything that had happened in the last months and the scrutiny surrounding the company.

Jimmy located father and son, and approached them with a martini in one hand and a file folder tucked under his left arm.

“Mr.Irons! Just in time for the main event.” He said with an excited tone. “I believe this is yours.” He said handing him the folder. “Now, don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

Tom brusquely snatched the folder away, opened it and began to read in a rush and between the lines until his lips parted and his chest felt hollow. His widened blue eyes found his father.

“What have you done?” Tom breathed out.

Jeremy’s mind was miles away, back in his lawyer’s office.

“30 days. Transfer your ownership to someone you trust for 30 days. Once the deadline is met, it’s all yours again with one signature. Worst case scenario, you forget your appointment and your company will be floating in the air but no one will know, now will they?”

But someone did know. Someone who was sitting next to him that day.

“And I doubt you’d forget something as delicate, Jeremy.”

He had forgotten. How couldn’t he when his youngest son had been arrested and then trialed for murder? There was no space in his troubled mind for anything else. And someone had taken advantage of it. Someone he thought he could trust. But the pain and shock were almost unbearable when the board director introduced the new leader of the company along with his offspring.

The crowd erupted into applause once more and both Jeremy and Tom watched with widened eyes as Jeffrey took the stage followed by Bill and their former lover.

Jeremy was violently hit by several memories at the same time, all of them overlapping in his head; Jeffrey showing up at Chris’ funeral after years of not speaking to him.

“So how are the children?”

“Good. One of them’s right here. The other one’s working, I hope.” Jeffrey joked.

His lover’s endless questions while they were lying in bed one morning.

“Who… who was that man you were talking to at Chris’ funeral?”

“Jeffrey is… a very old friend of mine. We used to work together.”

“Where?”

“He’s… he is actually a co-founder of Irons Enterprises. Was.”

“What do you mean ‘was’? That’s not something that can be undone, now, is it?”

“In this world… yes, it can. I did. The company wasn’t always called Irons Enterprises. It was actually called J&J in the very beginning. He was voted out of the company.”

“But… didn’t you get a say in it? I’m sure you could’ve done something to st-”

“I voted too. Against him.”

“He was your best friend, Jeremy. How could you do that?”

“He took his ideas elsewhere. He moved away and started his own business. He did good. It took him a while but he made his money… bought a big house, raised two children on his own. He always wanted to be a father. He turned to surrogacy. Twice.”

“Jeremy, don’t you feel at least a little bit guilty?”

“Why should I? He’s doing great. I’m doing great. Worked out for everyone in the end.”

“He had to start all over again. Your little dispute certainly put things on hold for him. Even parenthood. Because of you.”

“Why are you defending him? You don’t even know him.”

Jeremy’s world came crashing down as he finally realized what he had done. How blind he had been. How played. While he had love on his mind, she had vengeance on hers. Cold, and thoroughly calculated by her father.

His mind flew again to a different destination.

“We’re staying. The children and I, I mean. For an indefinite time”, Jeffrey announced.

It travelled again.

“What are friends for?” Jeffrey had said once with a smirk.

And one last time, to a crucial moment he had been groomed for.

“I’m not going to lie, Jeffrey. This is… madness.”

“Would you like these vultures to chew you up and spit you out instead? They’re merciless. I would know. You can trust this guy. If he says you have to transfer your business it’s because he truly sees no other road to salvation at this point.”

Jeremy’s heartbeat stuttered. He had walked right into the insidious trap. He couldn’t breathe when he remembered how he had kissed his lover’s left palm in the billiard room that day after his meeting with the lawyer.

“I’m in your hands.” He had said but, at the time, he would’ve never imagined that she already knew that and had known for months.

Jeremy’s road to perdition had been meticulously paved by Jeffrey, every single step of the way.

Thoughts were racing through Tom’s mind as well. All of a sudden, Sebastian’s voice took over and Tom was back in that prison visiting room.

“Your ex-wife is not who you think she is. We met in Romania. She’s been… doing all these things with me from the start. Your marriage was a lie. She got into bed with our father to damage your relationship. She helped me get rid of Chris but then she fucked me over.”

But a specific memory was triggered when he noticed the elegant purple silk dress his former wife was wearing.

“Did you know that purple used to be considered the color of royalty?”

Tom stared at her, listening intently and waiting for her to continue as she tied the purple silk tie into a perfect Windsor knot.

“The dye was so rare and its cost utterly outrageous, affordable only to royalty and the wealthy”.

Tom hummed, mesmerized by her.

“You should wear it more often then, my Queen”.

She smiled.

“When the time is right, my King”.

Her words echoed in Tom’s mind as he returned to the present and the million-piece puzzle came together. His eyes welled up with tears out of sheer shock as he brought his knuckles up to his lips. Sebastian hadn’t lied, but he had done it so much in the past that he had turned into the Boy Who Cried Wolf in the eyes of his brother and father.

Jeffrey, Bill and his sister were looking at Jeremy and Tom straight in the eye as evil smirks appeared on their faces. They raised their champagne flutes, sending shivers down their spines as they toasted to sweet revenge. But it was no sin to them; they were simply getting back what had been taken away from them.

Before Jeremy and Tom, stood the true heirs.

“She really fucked you in the ass, didn’t she?”

Jared laughed as he stared at Sebastian’s shocked and enraged expression on the other side of the partition glass in the prison visiting room. He had finally learned the whole truth about the woman he thought loved him and he loved to think he could control. Putting his trust in her had sealed his family’s unfortunate fate for she was looking for nothing but revenge.

“It’s funny because… I thought you guys liked to keep it in the family but I didn’t know shit now, did I?” He scoffed as he cradled the phone between his shoulder and head to rifle through the papers in the black folder in front of him. “Turns out Jeffrey discovered that his daughter and sonny were pulling some Flowers in the Attic shit and he sent Bill away to a Swiss rehab facility.”

Jared banged a photograph of Jeffrey’s son against the partition glass for Sebastian to see. He finally realized why he had looked familiar to him in the past once the memory of him visiting Tom in Switzerland under false pretense hit him.

“But if you ask me, that’s kinda on Jeffrey, don’t you think?” Jared began again as he put the photograph back in the folder and sat back comfortably in his chair, “With the whole surrogacy issue, there was no mommy in the picture, and daddy was always working. Who was going to teach those fucking kids anything about love? They only had one another. But anyway… Tell me,” He cleared his throat. “How does it feel to be behind bars for something you didn’t do? Or… half do? Were you even an accomplice or just a big moron?”

“She’s a fucking snake and I had shit lawyer.” Sebastian spat.

“Oh, Sebby, Sebby...” Jared sang while shaking his head with condescendence. “I gotta admit I was surprised when you had the guts to call asking me for help… but at least I get to enjoy the downfall of the Irons Empire from up-close.”

Sebastian made a face.

“My father isn’t just going to sit back and let Jeffrey get away with this. And neither will Tom.”

“I’m not so sure, Sebastian. Clearly, the lawyer’s been on Jeffrey’s side this whole time, and if he put you in prison, he must’ve certainly had Jeremy sign something that got him stuck in a dead end. But hey… at least the fucking dumbass got to keep the beach house.”

“So, Jeffrey plotted all of this with his daughter and used our family problems against us while he has a much bigger problem at home himself?” Sebastian scoffed. “What makes that hypocritical asshole think we won’t use that against him?”

“Oh, jee, I don’t know.” Jared scratched his chin feigning confusion. “Maybe because A, he’s behind pretty much all of your family problems. B, you’re in prison. And C, no one will believe a word that comes out of your mouth ever again?”

“I need to get out of here.” Sebastian said ignoring Jared but then he looked him in the eye again. “I need to get the fuck out of here and you’re going to help me.”

Jared froze and stared at Sebastian with disbelief before he started laughing.

“Sebastian, you’re lucky I even took your collect call and agreed to investigate these sickos but I am done.”

“Oh, because you’re all about dignity now?” Sebastian mocked. “We both know you love money, so stop playing dumb and just name your fucking price.”

“I’m not gonna get you out, Sebastian, why the fuck would I do that? Are you even aware of the amount of effort it would take? Just the thought of it is making me bald as we speak. Besides, no one wants you out. Don’t you get it? Not your father. Not even Tom, which was pretty clear after what he did.”

Sebastian was glaring at Jared but frowned at his last sentence.

“What are you talking about?” He asked with annoyance.

“The video.”

But once Jared saw the confused look on Sebastian’s face he scoffed and cocked his head.

“Oh. Oh, Sebastian…” He shook his head with pity but undertones of amusement. “You really don’t know?” He paused. “How can you be a complete prick and so fucking dumb at the same time? I’m talking about The Clock’s security footage.”

“Yeah, she fucking sent that to the authorities. What’s your fucking point!?” Sebastian asked exasperated.

“Oh, this is… I wish I had a camera with me.” Jared readjusted in his seat, eager to elaborate. “Sebastian, she had nothing to do with that. It was your brother Tom.” He paused and spoke slower. “Tom gave that video to the authorities.”

Sebastian went pale and felt a hole in the pit of his stomach.

“You’re making this shit up. He was here a couple days ago… Tom would never lie to me.”

“Well, it’s not uncommon at all for siblings to pick up habits from one another.” Jared said with a grin. “Tommy boy must’ve definitely learned a thing or two from his criminal of a baby brother.”

Sebastian tightened his jaw and Jared could see how his breathing pattern had changed from irritation which encouraged him to keep going.

“But I was surprised too, I mean… Tom! Your own brother put the last nail in your coffin, because if he hadn’t done that, maybe you would’ve had the chance of getting away with murder, pun intended. But knowing how Jeremy loves to solve all his problems with money, they both must’ve been beyond sick of your shit to choose law over power, because your father obviously gave Thomas his consent to hand that video over.”

Sebastian’s soul left his body. His hurt ego caused him to avoid Jared’s blue eyes and look at the ground instead while he added salt to the wound.

“You’re in here… because of them.”

“Shut up.”

“While she’s still out there because of daddy. Oh, how the tables have turned!”

“Shut the fuck up.” Sebastian hissed through clenched teeth.

“Sorry, kiddo. It is what it is.” Jared carried on with a shrug. “And I can’t believe I’m about to say this but… I’m gonna have to side with old Jeremy on this one. You’re not getting out. You’re gonna stay in this shithole and you’re gonna pay for what you did. Maybe, if you’re a good boy, you’ll be up for parole consideration one day. Who knows?” He said as he gathered his papers. “Just hang in there.”

Sebastian’s blood was boiling as he kept replaying in his head each time he had been manipulated by his lover and how it had led to this moment in his life. He was in denial. He would not accept this, especially not her success, as the ending of this chapter in his life. Jared was about to hang up the phone and leave but stopped at the sound of Sebastian’s low and serious tone of voice.

“Jared…” He began as he met his eyes. “I’ll do anything.” He insisted. “I swear... on my mother’s grave... just... Name your price.”

Jared stared into Sebastian’s soul while deep in thought and drummed his right index and middle fingers on the surface. For the first time since they had met, Jared could actually see honesty in the eyes of Jeremy’s youngest son, and desperation; it was almost palpable. Invaded by curiosity, he leaned closer to the partition glass and gripped the telephone tighter.

“Tell me something, Sebastian. What exactly would you do… if I got you out?”

Sebastian’s blue eyes darkened while a smirk spread slowly across his face.

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#Heirs #Jeremy Irons #Tom Hiddleston #Sebastian Stan #Chris Evans #Jeffrey Dean Morgan #Bill Skarsgard #Jared Leto #Fiction #Fanfic #Fic #Fanfiction

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itsclydebitches · 3 years

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so ironwood was confirmed to be dead by Miles in a $42 cameo session, where the person who bought it had asked for "comforting words to soothe our anguished souls" bc she was an ironwood fan and wanted a pick-me-up after that devastating finale. miles' response was to essentially mock his fans (it really sounded like that, especially since he ended with "thank you jimmy, may you rest in pieces, crushed beneath the weight of the kingdom you tried so hard to hold up above your head."

apparently the VA, jason rose, confirmed it in DMs w the same fan who sent in the cameo ask. so like, quite apart from how rude and disrespectful it was of miles to make a mockery of james in a cameo where he'd been specifically asked for comforting words regarding the character, ngl but i think that if you have to confirm a MAJOR CHARACTER is dead outside of canon bc you failed to actually show it on screen.....you've failed as a writer. and also that kind of thing shouldn't be confirmed in an expensive and exclusive interview lmao like how hard would it have been to just talk about good aspects to james' character instead of calling him a dickbag and saying 'don't do a genocide, guys!!'

it reeks of unprofessionalism and also it just makes everything surrounding ironwood's character arc even worse since apparently 'his fate was sealed' from the moment he was introduced to the show.

Me, who received the first Moderna shot yesterday (🎉 🎉 🎉 ): Ugh I feel too crappy to answer asks today

Me, upon hearing this news: You know, I have suddenly found an untapped source of energy

Okay, all joking aside, I watched the vid and it’s definitely a lot. I don’t have any information about the request itself except for what Miles mentions in the recording, so I can’t speak to what the fan may have been looking for outside of that, but some highlights include:

“This is for the filth in my degenerate discord server” - Yeah, that’s how a lot of us (fans) talk about ourselves. It sounds like someone who really enjoys Ironwood and makes joking, self-deprecating comments about their love of a character. That’s familiar to me and speaks to the expectation that they hoped for something other than what they got. At least, if I’d sent in a request like that I wouldn’t be happy with the vid, but that’s obviously my own perspective and not this fan’s. I’d be very curious to know their own thoughts though...

“Sometimes a character we like doesn’t make it, does something we don’t agree with... or both!” - That is indeed how characters work! The real question is whether their death/actions make sense within the story, which is not addressed here. Many fans who enjoyed Ironwood don’t have a problem with him dying or turning into a villain — I’ve been honest about my acceptance of either/both, regardless of personal preference, provided it was written well — and that was always the issue. Not what happened to Ironwood, but how it happened.

“James Ironwood’s fate was sealed the moment his character was conceived many years ago.” - Personally, I don’t believe this. RT makes a lot of grand, sweeping statements about what’s been planned “for years” or “since the beginning” and too often we’re faced with writing that directly contradicts that. Though it’s unlikely we’ll ever know the truth, neither option paints the writing team in a good light. Either they’re straight up lying about what’s been planned (or twisting tossed out possibilities into assurances after the fact. For example, someone once suggested Ironwood might become a villain somehow at some point and now that’s presented as, ‘We’ve deliberately been working towards this specific ending for years’), or they’re being truthful and just... can’t write what they want to write. It doesn’t sound good when a writer says, ‘I’ve planned this the whole time’ and a good chunk of the fandom responds, ‘Then why couldn’t we see that planning this whole time?’

“When James was introduced we intentionally made him look like kind of a big dickbag, but then we realized that dickbag had a heart and was also half metal, and that was pretty cool!” - I don’t even know what to make of this. I’ve deconstructed his introduction before, but to summarize here, he’s presented as no more of a “dickbag” than Ozpin who may not be doing enough to protect the people, Winter who allowed herself to get taunted into a fight on campus, or Qrow who deliberately started that fight while drunk. Glynda is the only one who is arguably innocent here. The implication seems to be that obviously Ironwood became a villain because “we intentionally made him look like kind of a big dickbag” but then... does that mean Qrow will become a villain too someday??

The comments about them realizing he had a heart and was half metal just speak to that lack of planning. No, you obviously didn’t plan this downfall from the start if you “realized” something as basic as him caring for others partway through writing him and then allowed that care to drive his character for so long that the decent into villainy read as OOC, rather than inevitable. You obviously weren’t writing him with a backstory that influenced his character — of which his semblance is a major part — if you “realized” he was half-metal... whenever that happened. The fact that we never saw that backstory, or the semblance on screen, or returned to his half-metal nature outside of a ‘That’s coding for evilness’ theme again speaks to the fact that either a) none of this was actually planned or b) the execution is seriously lacking here.

“Let us all take a moment to thank General James Ironwood for his service to the Kingdom of Atlas, but... at the end of the day, don’t do a genocide [laughs]” - I’m having trouble articulating why I dislike this. I’m really too tired to be unpacking this right now (lol), but it has something to do with — as you say, anon — that mocking tone. Something else to do with the surge of purity culture in recent years. The tone feels like it’s tied up in an unsaid, ‘You like the character who tried to commit genocide?’ accusation when, you know, he’s a fictional character. People can like characters who do bad things. More significantly, he’s a fictional character Miles wrote. There’s something particularly distasteful about writers who feel like they’re laughing at fans for liking something when they created the thing with the intent that we would like it. And many did. So they gave attention, time, money, passion, etc. to the work and then when that part of the work finished, the creator appears to make light of that investment? Idk, I’m speaking about more than just this one line — the tone of the vid as a whole, really — but it feels much less like “You enjoy Ironwood! 😄” and more “You enjoy Ironwood... 😬” Like yeah, fans enjoyed the character that you wanted them to enjoy who you wrote to have a heart and then suddenly commit genocide instead. There’s definitely nothing complicated in all that.

“Thank you, Jimmy. May you rest in pieces crushed beneath the weight of the kingdom you tried so hard to hold above your head. Amen.” - All of the above x2 with the added issue that this was never shown on screen. Miles presents Ironwood’s arc like this seven year long plan when in fact they couldn’t even manage the basic move of telling the audience what happened to the character in his final hour. The fact that a fan had to pay to find out whether Ironwood is dead is not a gold star for the writing.

Every time the RWBY crew speaks about the story in supplementary material the canon itself gets worse. Hyping Clover/Qrow on social media pushes the canon closer to queerbaiting. We’re way closer to that with them hyping Blake/Yang. Long ago comments about Ozpin’s cane suddenly make Volume 8 a retcon. A Q&A about Ironwood’s semblance makes his arc a thousand times more confusing about how we’re supposed to read his character — to name just a few. Now this. When a friend first told me this info had dropped I thought, “Thank god. He’s not coming back then. I don’t want them writing Ironwood’s character anymore,” but really... can we believe anything the crew says? “Crushed beneath the weight of his kingdom” doesn’t mean Ironwood won’t show up in Volume 9 if it’s a spirit world type adventure. It doesn’t mean he won’t show up three years from now with even more metal in his body and a, “We said he was crushed, not that he was dead ;)” explanation. Hell, it doesn’t even mean he won’t show up with no explanation at all because, as established, what’s said in supplementary works and what happens on screen are two entirely separate things. Iffy as the vid may come across to those who did like Ironwood, I was initially happy that it at least gave us some closure... but now I’m not even sure about that.

#rwby #rwde #mymetas #Anonymous

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animatedminds · 3 years

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Star Wars: Visions - Episode 7: The Elder

Onward into the last trio of Visions episodes! This has been nothing but enjoyable thus far, and I’ve heard good things about these last three. Episode 7: The Elder Produced By: Trigger Inc. Directed By: Masahiko Otsuka After six episodes, we finally have one that definitively takes place in the Republic era. I’ve been regarding these shorts’ indeterminate time periods as I see them, but with a bit of misfiring: the one I thought worked perfectly in the post-ROTJ era turned out to take place far in the past (and in an alternate take on the series), and the one I thought would have worked well as an Old Republic piece turned out to be intended as a far-flung sequel. But this time, we’ve got a relatively solid timeframe established in the short itself. Some time during the time of the Galactic Republic, two Jedi - a master and his padawan - patrol the Outer Rim when they are suddenly distracted by a sudden flare-up in the Force: a call to something dark and unknown. Arriving on a backwater planet, they track this disturbance to a mysterious old man who traveled into the mountains recently. But something seems wrong, and the more they investigate the more it they find ties from this old man to the thought long-dead Sith, as well as hints that the whole encounter might just be a trap...

This is another “Jedi arrives at a simple village, and is forced into a battle with a darksider“ story - unsurprising, when narratives like that are so popular, and each of the short films were made independently of one another. This time, much more attention is placed on the darksider themselves. The setting of this one illustrates its tension: this is a time period before The Phantom Menace where the Sith were believed extinct, so sudden clues to imply they may still be around are unbelievable and deeply unnerving to the main characters - and this slow unsettled atmosphere composes the center of the short. In the end, the heroes defeat the villain, but obtain no answers - as they must not, for the Sith won’t reveal themselves for some time - and the story ends with them moving on, unsure.

The master and apprentice are fun characters. Not quite as developed as some of the other characters we’ve seen thus far, but they do have a fairly fun banter to them. It’s a trend that masters and apprentices end up countering each other in personality to a degree in Star Wars - wilder masters beget more serious padawans, and vice versa - and it continues here: the master being a dour, cautious and somewhat paranoid sort, whereas the padawan is emotionally expressive, lacking in worry and ever-direct in his words and actions. You can tell that they are wildly unprepared for what they are about to walk into - even the master, who is knowledgeable and powerful enough to face it regardless - and that endears them to the audience as the story goes on.

The antagonist is is the biggest draw, however. A murderous swordsman type: obsessed with nothing but the fight and proving his skills in battle by luring hapless opponents into battles to the death. It’s a character type that’s fairly common in samurai narratives, and thus one which I’ve always been surprised to see so little off in Star Wars media. Eschewing most of the Sith ideology, the Elder only cares about bigger and bigger challenges, deadlier and deadlier stakes. He is introduced having massacred a giant monster, and ends gleefully throwing himself into a fight with someone he knows may be his better, murdering and manipulating all the way to ensure that the fight happens. And the fight itself reminded me somewhat of the fights from the Filoni series, particularly the Obi-Wan and Maul fight in Rebels where the visual direction was all about getting more out of less. The motions are less elaborate, but are instead quick and deadly, which ups the impact. The Sith having a pair of light-shortswords made espeiclaly for an interesting fight - digressing again, but I’ve always felt branching out into different kinds of lightsaber weaponry would allow the series to evolve the swordsmanship aspect of the Jedi and other force users a bit more. The idea of giving Rey a light-pike, for instance, was one that got a lot of traction for a while and one I wish the films had adopted. There’s a degree of baby steps in regards to how versatile the Jedi can be that the main series tends to adhere to whereas these short films in general have not felt constrained by - whereas the light-weedwhacker of The Duel is obviously a bit excessive, the idea of shortswords or longswords for Jedi, or other varieties of bladed weapons, is something imo the series could well look into. If there was one thing that felt off about his one, on the other hand, it was the animation as a whole. It isn’t something I’m unfamiliar with, watching anime as much as I do you’re sure to find a few series that do the same thing, but it may be a bit jarring to go from the previous short films - which were very fluid and expressive in animation - to this one, which is a lot more stiff. Everything is very intricately and elaborately drawn - with deeply etched character designs and vivid backgrounds - but very limited in animation, with less physical emotion and range. A curious choice, given how Trigger’s other film - The Twins - in this set was the complete opposite: extremely animated in all respects. Characters mostly just move their lips and incline their heads, until the fight starts - and the fight itself is, again, an example of getting more out of less. There are thus times in the short where the shot almost appears to be static for long periods of time. This is, once more, a stylistic choice which I am not unfamiliar with, but I’m not as sure that it affords well to the film’s story. But it does have the effect of also drawing attention to the antagonist - The Elder himself is by far the most vividly animated character in the story, and it makes him and his menace fly off the screen in comparison. All in all, a good episode. But that’s not the only thing we’re here to look at. As you’ve probably cottoned onto by now if you’ve been reading all of these, the Visions shorts are all currently non-canon. However, in a franchise like Star Wars it is not uncommon for installments like this to get examined for official continuance if they have a lot of support from us, the fans, and - importantly - if they fit well into the universe. So here, we’re also looking at whether each short fits into the universe, and how well. And what are the chances of this one fitting into the universe? Pretty Good Odds. This short was careful to design itself such that it could easily fit into the time period it takes place in: another backwater planet with a sheltered culture, making it unlikely to contradict anything, two remote Jedi with a far flung assignment also unlikely to contradict anything, and the characteristics of the setting are actually baked into the plot: the Jedi of this time have no idea extant Sith still exist, and thus are left stymied by the mystery this Elder presents. In the end, they obtain no answers, either: only smoke and ambiguity of a lost lead. So I could easily see this being popped right into the continuity with no hassle to anyone. And it would definitely be interesting to see: did the Elder really leave the Sith to pursue his own bloodlust. If so... that was his history? If this short accomplishes one thing, it’s delivering on the mystique surrounding the SIth. Not to mention giving the world a few more nightmare faces to dream about - nobody in the Star Wars universe is scarier than a Sith on the prowl...

#star wars: visions #the elder #star wars #disney+#trigger inc #studio trigger #masahiko otsuka #dan g'vash #tajin crosser #creepy old sith #noncanon #good episode #pretty good chances #sci fi anime #star wars anime #Animated Minds for Animated Times

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larktb-archive · 3 years

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Hi! I'm too shy to come off anon, but I need your help understanding something. I hope I'm not bothering you!!

I don't want to interact with anyone who is a fascist, but I'm not entirely sure what makes someone fascist. Can you please explain it to me?

I know I could look it up myself, but I know that not all definitions online can be correct and I just want your perspective;;

Thanks!

Hi anon! Well, fascism comes in many forms so “sussing out who’s a fascist” is technically a little harder to do than having a simple checklist. After all, doesn’t a White Supremacist have different beliefs to a Japanese fascist? And doesn’t a Japanese fascist have different beliefs to a Wahabist? These beliefs clash don’t they? Well, yes and no. Sure the surface level beliefs are different but the underlying core beliefs of these groups are actually quite similar; it’s the specifics which are different. Even though it isn’t a “bible” on what is fascism and shouldn’t be taken as gospel, Umberto Eco has an essay called “Ur-Fascism” which contains 14 points, which can help us identify whether certain beliefs are fascist no matter the specifics of their belief system. I’ll explain the points in short and give some examples. Quick disclaimer, I am not an expert on fascism or any of the ideologies I’ll discuss by any means so if you aren’t taking Umberto Eco’s writing as the 100% correct truth, definitely don’t take mine as that either (this is how you should treat most sources tho):

1. Cult of Tradition and 2. Rejection of modernity

I put these two together because they’re kind of inseparable. This is basically the idea that there was a “glorious past” that people need to return to and modernity is a corruption of that “glorious past”. In British fascist thought, this past is generally the 19th century at the zenith of the British Empire or mid-20th century Britain. The latter is more common for people who wish to be a little more PC with their writings; instead of trying to use a by-gone era that pretty much no one alive can remember, they use a much more recent time with nostalgic ideas of “the good old days” which doesn’t seem threatening on it’s surface but is dogwhistling for a time when there weren’t as many immigrants in the country.

You may have seen the “reject modernity, embrace tradition” meme and it’s pretty much the most obvious incarnation of this idea. Similarly you may seen people online use “degenerate” as an insult. If you look at the meaning of the degenerate it means “having lost the physical, mental, or moral qualities considered normal and desirable; showing evidence of decline”; it’s microcosm of these ideas put into a single insult. This is why you tend to see conservatives use it more than progressives.

I’d also argue that terfs obsession with 2nd wave feminism and their utter rejection of intersectionality and modern feminism is another manifestation of this idea.

3. Action for actions sake

This is less detectable in terms of individuals but still important to note that these people tend to support action without a cause. Sure the insurrection at the white house earlier this year was action, but it had no substance behind it. It was action for actions sake, which is why any principled leftist didn’t support it. Fascists will tend to openly just call for action but won’t be very specific about the purposes of the action; as long as they agree with the ideology behind it they’ll support it. It’s why fascists love harassment campaigns and mindless acts of terror. Take Wahabist terrorist orgs like Al-Qaeda or ISIS, it doesn’t matter if bombing an Ariana Grande concert has no point, the only point is the action itself.

4. Disagreement is treason

This one’s pretty self explanatory, they will ostracize you if you disagree with them. Again, terfs tend to do this, and I had a long conversation with an ex-terf I called a dumbass, who basically said that she was ostracized by them and mocked for having different beliefs (hope she’s doing well actually). There’s numerous stories from ex-terfs like this.

5. Fear of difference

There’s a tendency for fascists to group people into “us” and “them”. “They” are considered to be intruders who need to be removed whereas “we” are the people who deserve to be here because it is “our” right to be here. In Zulu Nationalism, this tends to be any non-Zulu speakers who they deem to be “Shangaan” even if they aren’t actually Tsonga, it’s just a pejorative at this point. If you see vague references to the “elite” without any reference to who they are and what makes them “elite”, this is tends to be a dogwhistle for Jewish people. Western Fascists have very little issue with the workings of capitalism itself or the accumulation of wealth by capitalists, they just don’t like “them”, taking “our” stuff. Any references to “us” and “them” is pretty much a red flag.

6. Appeal to Social Frustration

Fascists will tend to brush upon actual issues faced by the poor today but will instead blame it on an outside force. You’ll see job loss being blamed on immigrants or vague “elites”. Terfs do this too. They’ll see young girls who are genuinely struggling with patriarchal issues and divert all that pent up rage towards trans people and the “q*eers” (which they do tend to use as a slur unlike what most people would have you think).

7. Obsession with a Plot

Everything is a conspiracy! The election was rigged! 9/11 was fake! that fucking pizza place/this furniture company is a sex ring! All of these are supposedly plots by the deep state who are trying to do... something or other. You’ll notice these “Plots” don’t actually have a purpose, but the fact that there is a plot itself is the issue. This is a way of engendering paranoia in the group while also feeling that there is a constant war against you even if there isn’t. This is also why, despite news sources being pro-capitalist the right will swear up and down it’s leftist media which is controlled by “them” (usually just meaning Jewish people).

8. The enemy is both strong and weak

“Trans people have infiltrated academia and the only reason people refuse to see gender as an immutable biological concept, is because they’re too afraid of the trans cabal to say anything. But also everyone can tell trans people are crazy and haha you have a high suicide rate.” It’s contradictory that’s the point. They need to feel that they’re both counterculture but also they need to be winning at all times so that contradiction is necessary. Also the use of the word “cabal” is a pretty big red flag for all forms of fascism.

9. Pacifism is trafficking with the enemy, 10. Contempt for the weak, 11. Everybody is educated to become a hero and 12. Machismo and weaponry

All of these are kind of interrelated so I’m grouping them together (also this is already fucking long as hell so I don’t wanna bore you any further). You’ll tend to see a love for the military or at least military aesthetics when looking through fascist blogs. Guns aren’t just a tool for fascists, they’re representative of masculinity and the necessity of violence. Pacifists and anyone who refuses to fight are weak and therefore are “degenerate”. If you do not fight, if you are not willing to fight, you cannot be a “hero” (an ubermensch or a matyr). This comes with the fetishization of violence instead of the recognition of violence being an means to an end, and the worship of individuals rather than of communities and organizations. Take Japanese fascists and their lionisation of the imperial military and their desire to once again have an actual army.

Terfs don’t necessarily fit these roles except for arguably 10 considering how much they seem to look down upon the mentally ill and those who commit suicide and surprisingly 11 since that involves the hatred of non-standard sexual activities and terfs hate non-standard sex (this is from the most vanilla bitch who is very uncomfortable with kink but understands its not inherently good or bad). I have a feeling this is more so because terfs are mainly women (there are male terfs ofc) whereas this was written for male led organizations.

13. Selective populism

When fascists talk about “the people” they tend to mean “the people we like”. “The working class” can be translated to “this cishet white christian man from Minnesota who owns land but hey he lives in a rural area so he’s working class right?”. They’ll also tend to have “tokens” who will suddenly become the mouth piece of the entire community they’re supposedly representing even if no one in the community asked them to (i.e. Milo Yiannopoulos).

14. Ur fascism speaks Newspeak

They speak in terms which are both inaccessible to anyone outside of their circles whilst being so simple that once you learn them it becomes easy to understand. They abhor any form of “academic” speech so you’ll rarely see them source things (unless those things happen to agree with their views, which is rare but Jordan Peterson is popular for a reason) and if they do source things they probably wouldn’t have read them fully and will rely on you also not reading them. This is to limit any critical thinking so that your brain is basically jellified into an unquestioning organ which only responds “yes” or “no” and only appeals to a higher authority without any form of reasoning involved. This is why they complain about “the lefts memes being too wordy”... because they’re used to not having to read (this is somewhat tongue in cheek but heyho if the boot fits).

And that’s the 14 main features of fascism, if anyone is displaying multiple of these ideas then they are most likely fascist, and if an organization or group continuously replicates these ideas, then they are definitely fascist. I hope this wasn’t too long but like I said... very complex topic. (Also hopefully this is written well, it’s 10 PM and I am surviving off Irn Bru energy drink). Hope this helped!

#long post #lillypad.txt #ask away #Anon

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thelittleredheadedmusician · 4 years

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I’ve been thinking a lot about political structures in children’s fantasy. I’m positive this ramble is just going to end in more questions than answers but I need to organize my thoughts.

So Oz has an obvious, if confusing, political structure. (I’ve only ever read The Wizard of Oz though I know Baum went into a lot more of Oz’s history in his others, that’s what I’m sticking with rn cause that’s also the base of the media most are familiar with.) So, when Dorothy lands in Oz she kills the Wicked Witch of the East and frees the Munchkins from her tyrannical(? We’re lead to believe) rule leaving the Munchkins free(? Or maybe under Glinda’s rule?). Regardless, Oz has a political structure & Dorothy’s actions directly upset it — as she goes on to kill the Wicked Witch of the West who was ruling over the Winkies — but we never see her involved in politics. If anything she’s a tool of Glinda and the Wizard, upsetting the current balance of power before heading back to Kansas and not getting involved in the political restructuring. (Look I know there’s other media that might include this & I know I’ve read some but I’m thinking of strictly L. Frank Baum’s The Wizard of Oz. Which is political to begin with since it’s an allegory for a silver backed dollar but I’m not talking American politics here.)

Then there’s Alice. Both Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass involve Alice directly dealing with, and often arguing, contradicting, and outright defying, royalty of both of the lands she finds herself in. While in Looking Glass Alice manages to become a queen she is still shown to not have any real political power or even anything to be queen over before waking up. Like Dorothy, Alice upsets the political landscape of the world she finds herself in without being able to restructure it. (Again, I’m not taking into consideration all the various adaptations and retellings.)

There’s probably something to be said about them both being girls and the eras in which the books were written or just the more overtly nonsensical or fantastical facets of both but still. Alice and Dorothy were both, undeniably, used as political pawns and then sent home.

The Chronicles of Narnia get to more of what I’m actually interested in. The Pevensie children show up, literally wage a war, and rid the country of a tyrannical dictator. Then by divine right of Aslan they’re made kings and queens. While it’s shown that there are other humans in the world, at this point the Telemarians don’t have any contact with the Narnians. So like, these kids first had to learn how to wage war (which I think might be the bigger takeaway here? That there’s a whole lot of child soldiers and political pawns going around.) and then they suddenly have to run a country? Granted it’s a magical one that seems to pretty much govern itself but like, these are kids! They don’t know what they’re doing! They got guidance in the war because they joined up with the resistance movement! Now suddenly the country’s at peace and very few people in it remember peacetime at this point so you’ve got a population that has to readjust to peace (and seasons) as well as four kids who are expected to run a country. I think the books said Mr. Tumnus and the Beavers ended up being advisors for them but like what do they know? What’re their qualifications? And I’m almost certain they got in contact with Telemar before they left the first time. So like how were they handling international relations in a world that wasn’t their own with people who knew this and while children? I just. I want to know how that worked, how it happened, how did these four kids — specifically SIBLINGS — actually manage to work out how to govern.

In Harry Potter there’s a mix between what happens with Dorothy, Harry is used as a pawn in a preexisting political structure with very little knowledge of his own, and the Pevensies, he and his family are thrust into the midst of a war and suddenly become child soldiers. But there’s less responsibility because at the end of the day the structure itself is largely unchanged, the Ministry being relinquished by the Death Eaters & Kingsley being elected Minister, and there are adults to pick up the pieces around them. Harry & co went through terrible, traumatic events and were forced to grow up too quickly, but they are given a reprieve and allowed to be kids again. Hermione goes back to Hogwarts even and completes school with Ginny and Luna. But we know that she also then goes on to work for the Ministry, and Harry becomes an Auror presumably right away and Neville eventually a professor at Hogwarts. You can’t say that these children, who by virtue of being war heroes, now have power and influence but don’t wield it. That they’re not included as members of the Order of the Phoenix or that Dumbledore’s Army doesn’t carry weight akin to a political party. Are we just expected to believe that the boy who felt played, betrayed, and controlled his whole life suddenly steps back and continues to allow someone else to make decisions now that he’s undoubtedly free to act on his own accord? Why would Ron, Hermione, Ginny, Neville, or Luna give up their newfound power either? It doesn’t make sense for any of these characters who have felt as though they have no control over their lives or the world around them to suddenly gain the ability to and yet not use it. I’m not saying they staged a coup or anything but they must have been included on discussions of what to do with the remaining Death Eaters and how to rebuild. They must have wanted to be included. So, what happened?

Now this one I’m less familiar with and there’s already been a lot of meta done but it’s the most similar to Narnia and definitely needs to be included. So, Avatar: The Last Airbender is very much along the same lines as Narnia and Harry Potter, child soldiers & taking over running a country that’s suddenly finds itself at peace. Though the Gaang has a whole lot more awareness of the broader ramifications of their actions. Kinda. Vaguely. Zuko is well aware that he’s a prince and that one day he’s expected to run a country and Aang knows he’s the avatar and the weight that carries. Sokka and Katara also have a sense of weight and Toph knows the weight her family name carries. But like, they don’t really expect that this is going to translate into politics. But by the end Zuko does have to run a country, granted with the help of ministers and advisors and we all know Iroh, but with Korra we know that the Gaang goes on to found a whole knew country. Just like the Pevensies you have these people who are literally or nearly siblings who suddenly find themselves world leaders and dealing with other political leaders. And how did that go over? How do you go from being best friends one minute to hashing out tarriffs the next? And while all under the age of 30?

Now Percy Jackson and the Olympians is the only one I can think of (without venturing too far into YA lit) that actually sees the main character wielding hard won power. (And I do mean only the first five books.) Percy is definitively a pawn and when the war is over he actively asks the gods to restructure power by claiming their kids. It’s nowhere near the extremes that Luke wanted or control that Kronos did but Percy sees the validity that Luke had and uses the fact that the gods owe him big time to have some sort of change enacted.

I don’t know what exactly but there’s something here about children, power, politics, war, and how children who go through war together and form bonds and are in each other’s pockets by choice, necessity, and blood go about being allowed to stop growing up so fast while also being expected to govern to actually governing and shaping politics. And if children as political pawns and soldiers and “saviors” is such a reoccurring theme, why isn’t them wielding their newfound power and influence to govern? To restructure the worlds they saved?

#meta #harry potter #atla #percy jackson #chronicles of narnia #wizard of oz #alice in wonderland #to narnia!#wonderland #look i've been thinking A Lot about this the past couple days #idk what this is but it's something

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brokenjardaantech · 3 years

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Blue-tinted Red Walls (Chapter 5: The Threads of Life)

my entry for the @dbhau-bigbang. also part of the groom lake aftermath series.

chapter summary:

In the past, Alec revealed his plan.

In the present, Connor made a choice... and a friend.

In the past, the twins finally reunited.

also on ao3

---

Before

Reyes was unharmed. On the surface. Fadia was more concerned about the blue washing over his skin every second in waves like a heartbeat, and when she looked at the scene in front of her, she instantly knew why.

Her father was there. And so was a young woman with blond hair. When she tapped into her powers and reached out, the resonance itself was enough to tell her that she was just like Reyes.

An android.

Reyes’ jaw was trembling. ‘I… I didn’t…’ he stammered, his voice low. ‘I swear -’

‘I know,’ she reassured. She trusted him, and his data logs told her that he had had no contact with Alec Ryder. ‘I’ll take over from here. You go over my servers and see what’s wrong with them. I’ll tell you what happened later.’

Reyes nodded and left, presumably back to the surface. Back to Scott. And she finally let her blood boil.

‘Explain!’ she demanded as she walked closer towards her father while glowing blue. When she had his attention, she flicked her head towards the android. ‘How did you get that?’

‘The question is,’ how could he look so calm? ‘why did you hide this from me?’

Fadia made a chopping motion at the android. ‘To prevent this! How did you get that?’

‘Listen, the biocomponents -’

‘How.’ She let tendrils creep closer to her father’s neck. ‘Did. You.’ They got closer with every word, and had she not been occupied with the current situation, she would have impressed herself with the control. ‘Get. THAT?’

‘They can save your mother, Sara!’ Alec exclaimed. ‘A cure! Finally!’

‘Oh yeah, cause biocomponents for an android invented by an edgy young adult with minimum chemistry and biology knowledge are gonna be compatible with an actual fucking human body!’ Fadia had to roll her eyes. Damn, it’s good to be able to raise her voice. ‘Mother’s accepted her impending doom, Father. Let her fucking go.’

‘That’s not -’ he sighed as if she was a child unable to understand how important her parent’s work was. ‘Look, artificial intelligence is the new thing. A new merchandise. Think about it, Sara. The revenue alone will be enough to pay for the medical bills.’

He disgusted her. ‘They are as human as we are, not something to buy and sell like products. If you want to go on with that crazy fucking plan, you’ll have to get through me.’

Alec sighed almost regretfully. ‘I’m afraid it’s too late.’

Fadia’s brain kicked into full gear at the implications of his words. She shot out a tendril again to test the thirium capacity of the android, and the resonance told her that she had been active for at least a week. ‘What is your name?’ she asked. ‘What did he make you do?’

‘My name is Chloe,’ the android answered. ‘I took some videos and uploaded them onto the internet, that’s all. You, Sara Ryder, are credited with my creation.’

‘We already have millions of dollars,’ Alec added. ‘Production has already started. Are you in this or not?’

A crackle. She punched him in the face with a blue-shrouded fist and seemed to calm down instantly.

‘Of course I am,’ she said in a pleasant tone. ‘Someone must keep the world from burning into ashes.’

o0o0o

Now

The Zen Garden is raining and Connor is not surprised. Umbrella in hand, he examines the monolith once more, the blue glow making it easily identifiable among the green of vegetation. He also stands in front of his first body’s grave for a few seconds to… calm down, maybe, from the tingling that has been in his veins since he returned to CyberLife tower. It is only after he makes sure that his hand will not glow blue suddenly that he greets his handler.

‘Connor, I’ve been expecting you,’ Amanda says, her voice cold. ‘Would you like a little walk?’

Connor knows he does not have a choice, so he opens the umbrella and holds it for both of them.

‘That deviant seems to be an intriguing case,’ Amanda continues. ‘A pity you didn’t manage to capture it.’

‘I have to save Hank,’ he replies. Surely Amanda understands? ‘Despite his… eccentricities, I believe his intellect and experience will be useful in the investigation.’

Amanda hums. ‘Did you manage to learn anything?’

A few pieces of evidence automatically filter through his processors. ‘It was working under a false identity, at a nearby urban farm. This was the first time we've seen deviants blending in with the human population. Who knows how many others there are like it… I also found its diary, but it was encrypted. It may take months to decipher.’

‘What else?’

‘The walls of the apartment were covered with drawings of labyrinths and other symbols. Like the other deviants, it seemed obsessed with rA9. It was also fascinated by birds. We've seen deviants interested in other lifeforms like insects or pets, but nothing like this.’

‘You came very close to capturing the deviant. How is your relationship with the Lieutenant developing?’

He remembers a warm hand on his back. ‘He seemed grateful that I saved his life on the roof. He didn't say anything, but he expressed it in his own way.’

Amanda turns to face him. ‘We don’t have much time. Deviancy continues to spread. It's only a matter of time before the media finds out about it. We need to stop this, whatever it takes.’

For Hank. ‘I will solve this investigation, Amanda.’

Thunder rumbles. Amanda looks up. ‘A new case just came in. Find Anderson and investigate it.’

oOoOo

Hank is not in the precinct.

‘He’s not drinking?’ the same officer from last time asks. ‘Sorry, man, but then I don’t know where he is.’

The more time they lose, the more likely the deviants manage to get away from the club, but still Connor thanks him for his input as it is a polite thing to do. He looks around Hank’s desk, trying to search for clues that can lead him to Hank, but he gives up after the results come inconclusive for the fifth time. So where can he be?

‘Connor?’

Connor lets colour return to his world and sees a familiar face. [Name: Allen, Louis. [REDACTED]] ‘Captain,’ he greets, unsure what to do. It is obvious that the human is off duty: sweaters and jeans are not exactly regulation for a SWAT Captain even on duty. ‘How can I help you?’

‘I thought you were dead.’

‘Androids do not die, Captain.’

Allen’s nod is followed by a sigh. ‘You looking for Hank?’

‘Yes. Do you know where he went? He was assigned a new case.’

‘He’s probably out of commission for now,’ Allen says as he shifts his weight onto another leg, ‘but I’m gonna drop off some groceries at his anyway. We can try his home.’

Hank’s house. Right. How can he miss that? ‘I do not wish to interrupt, Captain.’

‘You won’t be.’

Some of the files are corrupted, but Connor remembers the Captain’s distrust towards his ability in resolving the hostage situation, an angry ‘I don’t fucking care what my orders are! If this drags on, we’re doing it our way!’, and the lack of mentions of him taking the officer’s gun in the official report to both the police department and CyberLife. A contradiction that Connor decides to risk. ‘Then thank you, Captain.’

Allen jerks his head to indicate the direction they should be heading to. ‘It’s Louis when I’m off duty.’

The pronunciation ‘Lwee’ is certainly not standard for English speakers. ‘Yes, Louis.’

They take the lift down to the car park together, Louis shifting his feet from one to another but seemingly favouring his right leg, and when he walks, his steps brisk, there is a small but faint clicking noise that normal humans will not catch on. When he tries to scan the human’s left leg, results come back inconclusive. Just like the person who hacked into the Zen Garden and… and…

‘You alright there?’

Louis’ words bring him back to reality, and Connor discovers that they have already arrived at their destination. The human is already in the car, his hand hovering above the controls, and his green eyes are fixed on Connor’s face as if it is something interesting to look at. Observe and catalogue.

‘I’m sorry,’ Connor apologises in lieu of explaining his thoughts. He slides into the passenger seat, they fasten their respective seatbelts, and Louis starts driving manually despite his vehicle being a self-driving car. Time passes in relative silence, the contrast between the darkness and the bright lights in the streets plus the concentration of the driver giving Connor a strange sense of familiarity, but soon they are stuck in a traffic jam near one of the bigger intersections.

Louis taps his fingers against the wheel. ‘Hey, Connor.’

Connor faces the Captain and finds him looking at the android. ‘Yes, Louis?’

‘I’m sorry for what happened a few months ago. It wasn’t fair to you.’

His LED spins yellow as he tries to recall what exactly happened. ‘It was an expected response,’ Connor replies after comparing it with the ones faced by other androids in the streets. ‘There’s nothing to apologise for.’

‘Doesn’t excuse me for yelling at the wrong guy. It - it wasn’t you whom I’m pissed at.’

Connor knows that the human is not going to let go unless he himself drops the issue. ‘I accept your apology,’ he says, and he decides that diverting the conversation is the next best choice of action. ‘May I ask you a personal question?’

The car in front of them moves. Louis manages to gain a few inches of ground. ‘Go on.’

‘During the hostage situation… who or what were you “pissed” at?’

The human rubs his left thigh as if to get more blood into it. ‘CyberLife, mostly,’ he checks the time. ‘I may be more specific than most.’

So he is not anti-android? ‘What difference does that make from hating androids?’

‘People like to blame the powerless for the problems they have. In this case, it’s the androids.’ The radio drones on and announces that they’re likely to be stuck for the next fifteen minutes. Seemingly resigned to his fate, Louis reaches to Connor’s side and opens the storage compartment, rummaging for a few seconds inside before successfully acquiring an energy bar which he tears into like a starving man. Perhaps he is. ‘They always talk about how androids steal their jobs, but they never talk about how employers decide to move onto even cheaper alternatives once they can’t exploit their workers. If they want someone to hate, hate those arseholes who won’t pay a living wage, hate CyberLife for producing androids. The androids are innocent in all this. So yeah,’ he takes a deep breath as if just realising he was ranting, ‘I don’t hate them.’

‘How about Daniel?’

A swallow. ‘He killed two people, wounded two more and held an innocent girl hostage. Enough to warrant my hate.’ He finishes the energy bar and crushes the wrapper into his pocket. Looking at Connor, he seems to read his question from the android’s face as he continues, ‘You’re good.’

Connor lets out a breath he doesn’t know he’s holding. Louis Allen, SWAT Captain, is not anti-android. ‘What is your relationship with Hank?’ he asks as he finds no reason for the two men to be friends. Not that Louis explicitly said he is friends with Hank, but Connor supposes that bringing enough groceries to require a car is not typical behaviour for non-friends.

Fidgeting with the silencer of a pair of identification tags (Allen. Anna, W. 574-66-2183. RH negative. Atheist.) which were hidden underneath his clothes until now, Louis seems to actually ponder on his answer. ‘We keep each other afloat,’ he says in the end. ‘It’s hard to describe. Why do you want to know?’

‘I believe getting closer to the Lieutenant personally will be beneficial to the investigation.’ The human snorts at this and Connor is nearly offended: what does a SWAT Captain know about them? ‘You seem close to him, so I believe you are a reliable source in matters including the Lieutenant’s personality and habits.’

Louis rubs the tags together. ‘His story isn’t mine to tell. Let’s say I make sure he doesn’t consume crappy takeout and whiskey 24/7, he tries to stay sober on schedule in case my leg acts up and I nearly freeze to death again, so we kind of rely on each other to survive the winter.’ They finally pass the traffic light just to stop at the other one. ‘Is this the best arrangement? No. But is it working? Yes. I think. He’s saved my arse a few times already. He’s a good guy, smart too, just...’

‘Have some personal issues?’

‘That’s one way to put it.’

They lapse into silence, the rain falling onto the roof and the ting of the coin the only sound in the car. Sometime later, when they finally get out of the traffic jam, Louis’ watch blares from an alarm, and the human jumps and hastily switches it off with a mumbled apology. The embarrassment does not last long, however, after they rounded the final corner and the car is set for a course straight to the end of the road where Connor presumes Hank’s house is. The Captain’s eyes sharpen, his gaze flickering between the road in front of him and the rearview mirror, and the air crackles even though Connor is certain that he is keeping his… abilities under tight control. Is Louis…

He finds his coin snatched from the air. When something is placed in his palm, the android finds a key as well, the soft rumble of the engine gone and completely overtaken by the sound of raindrops hitting the vehicle. The tension in Louis’ body reminds him of the hostage situation.

‘You go find Hank and do what you need to do,’ the human says, his tone low. ‘I’ll follow you later.’

‘And the groceries?’

‘They can wait. Something’s out of place and I’m not sure if I like it. I’ll go take a look.’

Connor wants to argue that if they are heading into any danger, he should be the one to take the risk, but the human is already out of the car and has slammed the door shut. He quickly exits the car as well and locks the doors but is still not quick enough; Louis has already disappeared into the darkness beyond the end of the road. Seeing no other option other than to continue with his mission, he files [Louis is reckless.] into his database and proceeds to ring the bell as, despite having the keys, he technically is showing up uninvited. From within the house, a dog starts to bark, and he lets himself in after nothing else responds to the fourth ring.

oOoOo

Five minutes later, Connor uses up most of his processing power in order to keep himself from being overwhelmed with anxiety. Firstly, there is the sound of Hank retching in the bathroom; secondly, there is the implication of the revolver and the single bullet in the chamber (‘What were you doing with the gun?’ ‘Russian roulette!’): Hank has suicidal tendencies, and he finds that he does not want to lose Hank; thirdly, the child in the photo is probably related to the previous point; fourthly, Louis is not back yet and Connor realises that he has no way to contact him. He wants to tell himself that it was just paranoia, but when he recalled the footage from when they exited the car, there was indeed a shadow disappearing from view upon Louis starting his chase.

The same shadow which had been following him when he first met Hank and during his search for Ortiz’s android.

The beat of his thirium pump quickening, he holds Sumo tight in his arms from where he is sitting on the floor with his back against the sofa and searches the DPD database for any contact information, but all he gets is Louis’ work email and phone, the former which he doubts the Captain will check and the latter not even with him in the first place. There is no address, no personal phone number. It is as if he does not exist outside of his work.

This is definitely not protocol. Sure, people can request to hide their information in case they have someone going after them, but for Louis’ case there is nothing even though Connor is already using the highest level authorisation code to access the file, which means that it is highly likely that there is truly no data in the first place.

‘You alright there, Connor?’

Connor startles and quickly releases Sumo from his embrace. ‘I - I’m fine,’ he stutters, unsure how to explain that he managed to lose Hank’s friend.

Hank nods but he does not look convinced. ‘Are we heading out? Cause if we’re not -’

‘I’m coming!’ Connor scrambles to his feet and fixes his tie to compose himself. In a much calmer tone this time, he tells himself, ‘I’m ready.’

That convinces Hank. ‘Be a good dog, Sumo,’ Connor is relieved that he is not the only one to talk to a dog, ‘I won’t be long.’

They leave the house together, Connor locking the door behind him as he is the last one to get out, and that only brings him back to the matter of where Louis is.

‘Louis’ been here?’ Hank asks when he spots the much newer car (although as one of the first generation self-driving cars, it is a bit outdated) parked on the side of the road.

‘He offered to drive me here when I told him that I could not find you in the bars,’ it feels wrong to say it out loud, but Hank needs to know where his friend is. ‘He asked me to find you while he investigated a potential stalker. Evidently, he is not back yet.’

‘How long has he been gone?’

‘About seven minutes.’

Hank checks his phone. ‘No messages yet,’ he mutters to himself. ‘We’ll go downtown first. I’ll send a rescue party if there’s nothing after we’re finished with this bullshit.’

That’s it? ‘The temperature is dropping, Lieutenant,’ are you not concerned? ‘Louis does not have sufficient gear to keep himself safe under this weather.’

‘Ugh,’ Hank moans. ‘He does that. All we can do is save his ass afterwards.’ He then mutters something under his breath but it is drowned out by the sound of him folding himself into the car and the ongoing rain. Deciding that he does not like the rain, he locks the doors of Louis’ car just to be safe before climbing into Hank’s and is handed another set of keys.

He can start a collection out of this.

oOoOo

‘Sorry, honey, changed my mind! Uh - Nothing personal, you’re… a lovely girl, I just - uh - You know, I’m with him and - I mean, not with him like that… I’m not that… That’s not what I… You, um, wow, I just… got a job to do.’

Connor has to hide a smile by looking away from the sheer… something… of the situation. They’re in a sex club, his programme tells him that something is repulsive about it, and Hank doesn’t look so happy about being there either, but yet those are not what he’s feeling right now. Endearment, maybe. It’s confusing and is making his software so unstable that the red tinge around the edge of his HUD is a permanent fixture except for when he is scanning his surroundings for the next android to probe. He deduces which one he should ask Hank to rent next according to the direction the blue-haired Traci was heading, but of course, of fucking course the last witness they need is the WG700 cleaning android, the recording leading them through the staff door. The corridor’s decor is completely different from that of the rest of the club and there is another door at the end, and when they both hear the bangs and scrapes of metal against concrete from the other side, Hank takes the lead again, this time without words, and, gun in hand, opens the door with a loud squeak. Still, they step in quietly.

There is no movement at all.

Hank curses loudly, thinking that the deviant has got away, but Connor can see the still-visible thirium on the floor, which means that she is not only injured but also not far away. He swipes to take a sample and licks it, and the report returns positive of thirium belonging to a WR400 model.

‘They get used till they break, then they got tossed out…’ Hank says from somewhere. ‘The more I know about humans, the more I like my dog.’

He follows the trail of blue blood to a group of Tracis and instantly notices the spinning LED lighting up a blue mop of hair. Before he can react, the Traci standing in front of her lashes out and pushes him against a pillar. It takes a few seconds for his eyes to realign and the brief struggle is enough for Hank to pull out his gun and order the short-haired Traci to surrender, but then he is ambushed by the blue-haired one as well, and Connor somehow manages to throw the one he is facing to the other side of the nearest crate in a flash of blue light which charges their air with static. He jumps over the box, determined to capture at least one deviant this time, but the Traci kicks him in his feet before he lands on the pallet, the two of them rolling until the former is on top of him and is countered every single time she tries to punch him in the head. A counterattack from Connor and the Traci toppled, her hand landing right on a knife; a grab, a flash of blue, and it appears in Connor’s shoulder and severs a few minor tubes. Pushing her off, he blocks the kick aimed for his groin and barely manages to stand up before pulling the knife out and throwing it far out of their reach. Putting the Traci in a headlock earns him a harsh headbutt which knocks his eyes out of place slightly again, so he pulls a rack down to buy himself some time to readjust his vision. When it is not enough to stop the deviant, he drags a cart in front of him, but a kick from the deviant on it sends him tumbling, and Connor kicks a stool against her leg and uses the momentum to crash her through the plastic curtain, the Traci grappling unsuccessfully for his face and bringing them closer and closer to the edge. An opening, a flash of blue from Connor, and both of them crash out to the rain in a mess on the asphalt. His nerves tingling, he sees the blue-haired Traci abandon Hank and slides off to help the other deviant up, and that’s when he notices it.

They never let go of each other afterwards.

Hank rushes out just to get pushed against the wall by two androids, and, seeing that the human won’t regain his balance anytime soon, Connor gets up to his feet and chases the two Tracis, pulling one of them off the fence and knocking the other to the side. He gets caught in a headlock, his arm trembles from the impact against the bat, and he launches himself towards the brown-haired Traci from the force of dislodging her companion. There are hands on his shoulders, in his hair, slamming him against the wall once, twice, thrice with crackles of static before he loses balance with the deviant on his right and they both fall onto the ground straight into a gun’s reach. He picks it up, points it at the brown-haired Traci and -

A slight moment of hesitation earns him a kick in his face. The Tracis don’t seem to want to fight anymore, and he stares in shock both from the sudden change of pace and his own actions, making his software more unstable and pushing him towards -

‘When that man broke the other Traci,’ Connor forces himself to concentrate on her words, ‘I knew I was next. I was so scared,’ her LED spins blue. ‘I begged him to stop but he wouldn’t.’ She lowers her gaze. ‘So I put my hands around his throat and squeezed… until he stopped moving.

‘I didn’t mean to kill him. I just wanted to stay alive,’ behind her, the other Traci moves forward to hold her hand, ‘get back to the one I love.’ They exchange a glance. ‘I wanted her to hold me in her arms again… make me forget about the humans… their smell of sweat…’ Connor’s ever-working scanners tell him that Hank has got up behind him, ‘and their dirty words…’

‘C’mon,’ A tug on her arm. ‘Let’s go.’

Still speechless, Connor watches them let go of each other’s hand just long enough to climb the fence before intertwining their fingers on the other side again and running away together. A warning pops up as his processor pushes itself to its limit to try to process what just happened and is on the verge of overheating, therefore he turns towards Hank for guidance. What should he be feeling? Why did he do that? Why do you look happy about it? What does this mean for me? Why is my vision tinged with red, and why does it not disappear this time?

‘It’s probably better this way,’ Hank says in the end, and Connor relaxes, his LED spinning from yellow to blue: he did the right thing. He is suddenly overtaken by the urge to thank Hank, to do something to show his gratitude. The red wall starts to crumble -

Something in the human’s pocket buzzes, and the moment is broken, the cracks on the wall disappearing like they were never there before. Whole again. Chained within his own programming, programming that was added barbarically to his code by Alec Ryder to tie him to the Zen Garden to suppress his original creator’s handiwork. Images flash in front of his eyes: the shadow ducking away outside of Jimmy’s Bar, following them behind Louis’ car, the figure protecting him from the blast inside the interrogation room, the pixels of a face he thought to have corrupted long ago rearranging and slotting together like pieces of a puzzle into a complete image, one that he has never forgotten ever since the little stunt during the lift ride to Rupert’s flat. Of course they can hack into the Zen Garden and shape it however they want.

That was his creator paying him a visit, and for some reason he plans to find out, he didn’t remember a single speck about them until now.

‘Not again.’

Hank’s groan drags him back to reality. When Connor’s eyes regain focus, he finds the man on his phone with a chat opened. He scoots closer to see the newest messages, and he realises that it is from Louis and only contains a set of coordinates and -

‘Leg malfunctioning. Data unstable, unable to install software patch. I’m sorry.’

Hank sighs and pockets his phone. ‘You up for a rescue, Connor?’

‘Whatever you say, Lieutenant.’

He needs time to think.

oOoOo

Wading through the snow and nearly tripping again from buried tree roots, Hank wonders for the umpteenth time why he hasn’t ghosted the occasional manchild called Louis White Allen yet. Maybe because the half-bot is the only person he can call a friend nowadays. Maybe it’s the bland-ass food he cooks and delivers to his house every two days. Maybe because he saved Hank’s arse quite a few times both during and after their days in the red ice task force. Maybe because unlike Hank, who at least has Jeffery or some shit, Louis has no one else looking after him after his sister fucking disappeared and has a tendency to vanish for hours before returning with his leg busted.

Or he can run off just like that and can’t even haul his ass back to his motherfucking cottage and the three cats who aren’t even his.

‘We’re close, Lieutenant.’

‘Yeah, no shit.’

The ‘find my phone’ function on his phone is one of the rare apps he knows how to use because most of the times that’s how he finds Louis, and the frequency of the beeps coming out from it is getting higher and higher, which means that Louis’ phone is close, which hopefully also means that Louis is with it and hasn’t dropped it or anything. So far it happened only once during a thunderstorm, but that’s years ago, a couple of years after his sister’s gone, and he managed to retrieve the human and the gadget from a forest on the outskirts of the city with only a minor cold as nature’s ‘fuck you’ to an irresponsible and absent-minded human and his stubbornly loyal friend.

The light from his phone reflects off a piece of silvery thing that obviously isn’t part of nature. The beeps draw together into a long-winded screech and damned near pierced his eardrums, so he switches it off and hurries forward to see if it’s just the phone or the person is attached. A few footsteps muffled by the snow, and Connor is here with the sturdier, more powerful flashlight, the yellowish glow of the bulb not as invasive as the white from the phone and illuminating Louis’ pale face and his oddly-angled leg half covered in snow. He is still conscious, his hands tucked under the helm of his sweater to presumably preserve warmth, his eyes focusing on Hank in what seems to be shock, but he is shivering, his hair is wet from melted snow, and it is obvious that his situation is going to worsen quickly if they don’t do something about it, CyberLife augmentations or no.

‘Can you walk?’ Hank asks even though it’s obvious. Louis shakes his head, and he sighs even though he anticipated it. ‘Okay, here’s what we’re gonna do. Connor and I are gonna carry you back, we’re all gonna stop at yours and…’ with reluctance, he adds, ‘stay until you’re out of danger.’ Even if there’s no booze at yours.

Louis nods, and a look is all it takes for Connor to get his cue and swings the man’s other arm around his shoulders. On a count of three, they lift him up with minimal hassle and start to backtrack their way to his car, Louis’ left leg dragging uselessly through the snow behind them at an awkward angle.

‘Does it hurt?’ Hank asks. It never hurts to ask when it concerns his friend.

‘Can’t feel.’

He’s gonna assume that he isn’t hurting.

By the time they’re back in his car with the heat blasting, the humans are all sweating buckets and the thirium on Connor‘s clothes from the scuffle with the Tracis has finally evaporated, and he doesn’t comment on it when Louis opts not to wear his seatbelt and instead takes out one of his sister’s tags - broken off the chain - and starts fidgeting with trembling fingers. Some time about halfway through the trip he coughs, a wet, terrifying sound rattling his lungs and Hank’s eardrums, and he wants to curse Connor for letting him run away but just can’t; the android has been acting weirdly human and fidgety ever since they first met, but now he isn’t even playing with his coin as if deep in thoughts. Maybe he’s thinking of how many deviants he’s let get away.

No one says a word when they arrive at Louis’. Neither do they when Hank silently shifts the man’s full weight on Connor in order to let go and open the door, nor when a look silences Connor’s impending barrage of questions when he gets swarmed by three furballs at once. Grunting from the dead weight his friend seems to have become, he drags both of them to the bathroom, flipping on the switch of the boiler on the way, and deposits Louis on the toilet seat. ‘I’ll get the tablet,’ he tells him while handing him a towel. ‘You can haul your ass into the tub, right?’

A nod from Louis, and Hank closes the door behind him to give him some privacy while he strips and very clumsily falls into the tub. Connor is thankfully occupied by the three cats on the sofa, but when he looks up smiling at Hank, the human has to look away because of how much emotion the android seems to be able to pack on his face. It’s just a simulation, zeroes and ones, he tells himself as he goes into Louis’ bedroom to grab the tablet and his crutches. Designed to disarm and stab you in the back when you’re not looking.

But has he ever done so? A voice sounding strangely like Louis asks in his head. Not crossing that highway because you told him to, giving up chasing the deviant to save you from the roof even though you can pull yourself up, not shooting the girl at the club even though he had a clean shot. If he hadn’t known that Connor’s designed to hunt deviants, he might have - he might have -

Mistaken him for one.

Fuck, he needs a drink. A six pack if he can get his hands on one. Alec Ryder isn’t capable of this shit, Louis once said according to one of the people he’s in charge of that he calls his ducklings, and luckily the thought is gone as soon as he returns to the bathroom without knocking and sees the man sitting in a half-filled tub with the towel draped over his crotch for modesty. The skin on his left leg has deactivated completely to reveal plasticky-white chassis attached to blue synthetic muscles. ‘Thanks,’ he murmurs when handed the tablet, and he leans back once he has started doing whatever he needs to do to fix his leg and, from the sudden rumble of the ground, turn on the heat. He closes his eyes as if wanting to take a nap, but Hank decides that he has enough of his shit; he needs an answer now.

‘The fuck you think you’re doing?’ he asks. ‘Running off like that halfway across the city? You could’ve frozen to death out there!’

Louis sags. ‘Later, please,’ he begs. ‘Gimme a moment to think. Just fifteen minutes.’

He is someone who upholds his promises no matter what, so Hank lets it slide by now. Also, ‘You need me to do anything?’

‘There’s chicken soup in the fridge. Warm it up, can you? And help yourself to a freezer meal if you want to.’

Here’s another thing being friends with a picky eater: he cooks his own stuff and his so-called freezer meals usually take more than an hour to cook when taken directly from the fridge, so when he sees what must be a gallon of chicken soup with the ingredients still submerged inside, he decides to help himself to some of them while he scoops the topmost, mostly sediment-free layer of soup into a pot for Louis. Not wanting to be whooped with freaky blue magic, he finds another pot to heat up some vegetable and chicken soaked with soup for himself.

One of the cats jumping onto the counter announces Connor’s arrival. ‘May I ask you a personal question?’ he asks as Hank puts her back down onto the floor.

Personal question again, huh? ‘Do all androids ask so many personal questions,’ he gives the soup a stir, ‘or is it just you?’

Connor peers at the vegetables as if he can be interested in anything. What comes out of his mouth, however, makes Hank’s heart hammer. ‘I saw a photo of a child on your kitchen table. It was your son, right?’

‘Yeah,’ for the love of god or some other weird shit Louis believes in, drop it. ‘His name is Cole.’

He does. ‘We’re not making any progress on this investigation,’ he manages to sound frustrated. ‘The deviants have nothing in common. They're all different models, produced at different times, in different places…’

Different my ass, Hank thinks. But he didn’t start the fire, did he? ‘Well there must be some link.’

‘It could be a software problem that…’ he looks so lost that Hank would’ve hugged him had he been human, ‘only occurs under certain conditions?’

Hank snorts. ‘Well, that's just a fancy way of saying you have no fucking idea.’

‘But what they do have in common is this obsession with rA9…’ Yeah, that. Wherever there’re deviants, rA9 is always written somewhere compulsively like they can’t stop at all. ‘It's almost like some kind of...myth. Something they invented that wasn't part of their original program.’

Almost god-like. ‘Androids believing in god,’ he stirs the soup again. Fuck, he needs a drink. ‘Fuck, what’s this world coming to?’

A mad one, says the Louis in his head. One that we can never catch up with no matter how hard we try.

‘You seem preoccupied, Lieutenant. Is it something to do with what happened back at the Eden Club?’

Ha, turns out Connor isn’t the only one doing some hard thinking after all. ‘Those two girls… They just wanted to be together.’ What better way there is to prove one’s love than doing everything to survive? ‘They really seemed in love.’

‘You seem troubled, Hank.’

Understatement of the year. And why is Connor so fucking human anyway, what kind of pervert designed his face, his voice, his mannerisms that ticks almost every single fucking box in the list known as ‘Hank’s type’? The soup can wait - it’s not gonna boil and ruin Louis’ stove. ‘How about you, Connor?’ He crowds into his space fully knowing how imposing he can be if he wants to. ‘You look human, you sound human,’ you act human, ‘but what are you, really?’

‘I…’ stand your ground, Henry Anderson. Those eyes are just programmed responses. ‘I’m whatever you want me to be, Hank. Your partner…’ Do you have to choose that word, Connor? ‘Your buddy to drink with… Or just a machine… designed to accomplish a task.’

And he sounds so sad when he says the last option. Alright, he’s sold. He loses. ‘You could’ve shot those two girls, but you didn’t. Why didn’t you shoot, Connor?’ He shoves Connor in his chest. ‘Some scruples suddenly enter into your program?’ It’s a low blow but he needs to know, needs to know why, for such a mission-oriented android, Connor somehow manages to fail every single fucking time.

‘No!’ Connor shouts, his voice defensive. ‘I just…’ he sighs even though he probably doesn’t need it, ‘decided not to shoot.’ The next words come out no louder than a breath. ‘That’s all.’

Fuck. Now he feels bad. ‘But are you afraid to die, Connor?’ because from what I’m seeing, you do. At least you don’t want me to die.

Connor freezes, his eyes even wider now with terror in them, and his LED is red. What the fuck did CyberLife do to him? ‘Yes.’

‘Let’s say I point a gun at your head and shoot you,’ the number on his jacket reads -52. Does it mean that there used to be 51 Connors before he met this one? ‘What will happen, hm? Nothing? Oblivion? Android heaven?’

A shiver. ‘Nothing…’ Connor closes his eyes. ‘There would be nothing…’

So it’s highly likely that he’s died before and seems afraid of it. So fucking human. More so than some actual humans as well. Louis’ right - modern CyberLife isn’t capable of this shit.

The bathroom door squeaks open, and Louis walks out in a pair of sweats and a hoodie with the help of his crutches, the pocket sagging with the weight of the tablet and making a clanging noise as he drags into the kitchen. The skin on his foot is still deactivated, but it seems that he can move his leg for a bit for now, and from the lack of moisture in his hair, fucker probably waited for them to finish - arguing? - before coming out and breaking it up. ‘Soup’s ready,’ Hank says, not wanting to agonise Connor any further. He already feels bad enough. ‘Settle down. Hope you don’t mind that I helped myself to some.’

Louis chuckles. ‘I expected that, Hank. You should know me.’

Great. Now even his only friend is roasting him. ‘Eat your fucking soup.’

oOoOo

Louis has thirium in his house. That man took one look at the hole still on Connor’s shoulder thanks for the lack of thirium - which his self-repair protocol relies on - and hauled himself to the fridge (at the expense of being cursed at by Hank), opened the door, and threw a plastic bottle at him. ‘Drink it,’ he said. ‘It looks like you need it.’

And he does. After he finishes half a bottle, a notification pops up on his red-tinged HUD telling him that he is initiating self-repair to the damaged parts, and he can finally move his shoulder at 70% of its original efficiency by the time he is finished with the whole bottle. The world around him dulls and becomes out of focus, the drone of the basketball game on the television that only Hank is watching getting further and further away until it all mixes together into a state of blankness he has never experienced before. Pressed against Hank’s side on the small sofa, the man radiates warmth, and his eyelids droop, red giving way to black, the notifications and mission markers fading away into nothingness. There is something warm and comfortable on his cheek, too.

He’s asleep before he knows it.

o0o0o

Before

‘You’re back.’

No hate. No fear. No confusion. Only remorse, regret, and perhaps acceptance. Acceptance that, even though he still had problems comprehending what was around him, things would never go back to the way it was; acceptance that his sister had rejected her humanity.

Acceptance that he had essentially lost her.

‘I am,’ was the solemn answer. No elaboration.

‘Was that you?’

‘Does it matter?’

‘It does to me.’

She pressed her lips into a thin line. ‘They won’t know it is me.’

‘But why? How much longer must they wait before the rest of the world recognise them for who they are?’

‘Soon, hopefully.’

‘And if they can’t?’

She looked towards the sky as if she could see through the shade of the tree. ‘We lea -’

‘Step away from him.’

There was no weapon. No gun, no knife, not even a switchblade. To outsiders, it seemed that the newcomer was merely a man accidentally bumping into and greeting his friends, but if someone dared to approach them, they would see even under the rare but cold midday sun that there were blue wisps of energy pulsing on the man and the woman’s skin. The air became charged and space seemed to twist.

‘It’s alright, Reyes,’ the other man placated. ‘We’re just talking.’

Reyes’ glow lessened. To the woman, ‘I’ve been looking for him for the past hour!’

‘I won’t let them take him.’

‘Last time you said that -’

‘I was weak. Naïve. Too arrogant for my own good.’ Reyes snorted in displeasure at the descriptions, but she continued, ‘There are twelve drones surveying the area and quite a number of guards,’ Reyes’ eyes shifted as if looking for the security hidden in plain sight, but then a hand in his shoulder forced him to look at her. ‘Don’t bother. That’s what I went to space for: not even you and I can see it.’

Reyes’ arms shot out to place his hands on the handle of the wheelchair. ‘We’re leaving. Scott?’

There was pain in Scott’s eyes. ‘Please. Can’t we just be together for a while?’

Reyes hid a grimace. The woman smiled.

‘Anything for you, brother.’

#dbh au big bang #hankcon #mreyder #female ryder #male ryder #alec ryder #reyes vidal #dbh connor #dbh hank anderson #dbh captain allen #detroit: become human #mass effect andromeda #groom lake aftermath

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chingonabrujita · 5 years

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The Role Of Science

As I stated before, research is going to be the cornerstone of this little project. It has to be, really. Scientific research tells us how the body works. The fields of anatomy and physiology tell us how the body is constructed and how it operates, respectively. Subsets of these fields, namely biomechanics, kinesiology, and exercise physiology, give us specific data on how the body moves and how it responds to physical activity. Without that information, we'd be stuck with a process of guesswork, and that's not good for anybody. It helps to understand what science actually is. I don't mean the pop-culture treatments of science; unless you've actually gone through some kind of post-secondary education, you may be convinced that science is what you see in TV shows. I can go ahead and tell you that it's not based on mad scientists working in hidden lairs; it's not rogue misunderstood geniuses making strides that the rest of the orthodoxy rejects. It's certainly not a 'belief system' that just happens to be opposed to emotion and faith. At its core, science is a process of observation and description. You see something happen, then figure out why it happened. That's all science is once you boil it down to the basics. You watch something happen, describe it in as much detail as you can, and then figure out why it happened. As you might imagine, this process can get quite in-depth, and most experiments will often raise more questions than they answer. Despite claims to the contrary, this is the greatest strength of science. It can update itself and constantly opens up new avenues to explore. We're always refining our knowledge and understanding. It's not a matter of having unchallenged absolute truth. It's a matter of constant learning. We've formalized this process into a series of steps called the scientific method. In broad terms, the researcher will come up with a hypothesis, design a way to test that hypothesis, then gather the data from that test to figure out what actually went on. A hypothesis is simply an idea or concept that can be tested: the sky is blue, grass is yellow. In reality, a hypothesis is usually very specific, some statement that can be tested in detail. When the average person says 'I have a theory...' and then goes off to talk about whatever he thinks about some subject, he's actually talking about a hypothesis, not a theory. In science, 'theory' has a different and specific meaning. The hypothesis is a question that needs to be tested, and thus either proved or disproved. The test of a scientist's hypothesis is the experiment. Experimentation has to be tightly controlled to ensure that there's nothing to confound the results. For example, if you're doing a study to figure out whether or not darkness helps you sleep, it won't do you much good to do it in a loud room. You'd have no way of knowing what was affecting sleep - is it darkness, or is it the fact that the room is loud and keeping your subjects awake? In this example, the loud noise is called a confounding variable, which makes it impossible to know if the thing you're studying is actually responsible for the effect. If you can't establish a cause-and-effect relationship, then it's impossible to say that X causes Y. This is why controlled research is important, to narrow down the exact cause of the effect we're watching. A big chunk of experimental design is about removing or minimizing confounding variables. If we don't do this, we can never be certain that there's a cause-and-effect relationship - we can't know if what we think is the cause is really the cause. When we have a hypothesis that stands up to repeated experiments, then it's formalized into a theory. Now as I mentioned, laymen tend to use theory and hypothesis interchangeably, implicitly meaning 'an idea I have about something or other'. In the science world, a theory is a hypothesis that has been tested and tested and tested again; through all that testing, it's remained true. A scientific theory has a proven track record, so we can assume that it holds true in all the circumstances we can test; certainly there's no reason to call it into question. Obvious examples of this would be things like gravity and germ theory. They've been tested so thoroughly that we just take for granted that they're true, though once upon a time they were just somebody's working hypothesis.

That leads to another thing I need to touch on. Scientific theories are explicitly designed to be falsified; they need to be tested and challenged. That doesn't mean we want them to be wrong; it means that we want them to be as accurate as possible, and this means they must be open to new data if they are wrong. A theory that has withstood scrutiny is a theory that's reliable. On the other side of the coin, a theory that's called into question by a new observation is a theory that will need to be updated – because it might be wrong. It's a process of constant refinement and learning. The ability to challenge and refine knowledge is the difference between a scientific theory and dogma. I can't emphasize this point enough. Science isn't about always being absolutely right - it's about being as right as possible with what we know. Case in point. Everyone's heard of the theory of gravity. Isaac Newton first formalized this back in the 18th century when he had a legendary run-in with an apple, or so the story holds. To this very day, Newton's ideas on gravity are considered fundamental to physics. Gravity is quite possibly the easiest of all theories to test, and I don't think anyone outside of Wile E. Coyote has ever come across an exception. Now, what would you say if I told you that Newton's theory of gravity is wrong? Poppycock? Balderdash? Not so fast. Back in the 1930s, one Albert Einstein came along with his theories of general and special relativity that stood Newton on his ear. Relativity is a complex mish-mash of concepts that are quite beyond this book, but the gist of it is that Newton was wrong - but only in circumstances that don't tend to arise on Earth (astronauts can notice the difference down to billionths of a second due to the difference in gravity in orbit, but that's about it). As far as anyone on our planet is concerned from day to day, Newton is absolutely correct. Yet he was still wrong. So what happened? Well, modern physics is still using Newton's concepts of gravitation because they're still accurate. We only invoke Einstein under those conditions where relativity fits better - when things are moving very fast, or when things are very very heavy. The classical theory of gravity, as Newton's work is known, wasn't thrown out; it was improved. Newton wasn't wrong, he was just incomplete. He simply didn't have any way to test things in the way Einstein did, and since it was completely irrelevant the the world of humans, it didn't matter. It was only when we reached out for further understanding that we discovered the greater detail. That's the role of a theory in science: it will stand as long no new information contradicts it. When we're talking about a well-tested and well-understood theory, the odds of it being thrown out completely are next to zero. Gravity isn't going anywhere, as one example. If something comes along to expand on the theory of relativity, you can guarantee that we'll still rely on Einstein's work. The new theory will only define new phenomena – it won't contradict anything we already know or anything we've already observed. Theories are refined and improved, but very rarely are they contradicted. This is unfortunate in an age where we have a sensationalist media that thrives on controversy, because they'll make it seem like any minor flaw or issue is suddenly a 'great controversy'. I don't care what the news or some web article tells you, science just doesn't operate like that. The reality is that we understand a great deal of how the final picture will look; missing a few pieces doesn't change that. Mass-media science reporting would have you believe that a puzzle, obviously creating a picture of a mountain, was really showing you a cat – just because you were missing the piece that contained the mountain peak.

It's never about absolutes, really (you see what I did there?). The point is not to think as right/wrong, but 'most likely correct' or 'probably not possible' based on the current body of evidence. When a scientist says something will 'never' happen, the implied meaning is 'so unlikely based on what we know that for all purposes it will never happen'. This is alien to a society so used to thinking in simple polarized terms like good vs. evil, but that's how things are. Which brings me to the field of exercise science. Unlike physics, chemistry, or even biology, exercise science isn't a fundamental subject. It's a subset of physiology that looks at how the body responds to physical activity. What this means is that in practice, it's not a very specific or well-understood field in comparison to others. Exercise science is comparatively vague, leaving open a lot of room for interpretation. There's as much creativity, and dare I say art, involved in the field of physical conditioning as there is genuine research. Aha! Science can't tell us anything! Not quite - the whole discussion on the scientific method throws that reasoning out the window. Just because we haven't finished the puzzle doesn't mean we can't tell what the final picture is going to look like. Exercise science still has quite a bit to tell us. The trick here is parsing it into useful terms, not just throwing it all out because it's not 100% complete. A lot of people seem to think that science has to give you a specific workout program, and never ever be wrong, in order to be useful. A lot of people will put science on the back burner, giving more credence to their own experiences. In both cases (and plenty of others) this boils down to people just not understanding the role that science plays - and not understanding how to apply the information that it gives us. Like any field, you'll start out with a broad understanding. With time and research, the knowledge will gradually filter down to greater detail; and that's the real power here. By narrowing things down, research establishes boundaries. It doesn't necessarily give us specific details and protocols, and you wouldn't expect it to do this. But it does give us general starting points. Most important of all, it tells us what doesn't work. You may wonder why that's important. Why should you care what you can't do? You want to lift weights, and you need a program to do that, right? It's important so that you can see through misinformation. Further, knowing what not to do is how we establish starting points. You'll always rely on trial and error to some degree, but you can make that process much easier by ruling out things that won't be productive. All that said, we have to be careful. Research does have very real limitations and we have to acknowledge those. Too many people treat research like an almighty gospel, as if presenting an abstract or two can justify any claim. It doesn't work that way either. When you look at a research paper, you'll find some common themes. First and most notable is the abstract, which is a brief summary of the research and the results of the experiment. This is useful because it lets you get the key details with a quick glance. A well-written abstract will cover all the bases and give you the idea of what the paper is describing. However, there are nuances and subtleties that an abstract just can't convey, and when we're interpreting a paper to figure out how useful it is, you have to look at the whole thing to make sure it's applicable. Research papers are written with certain common content. They'll all go into details on their initial hypothesis, or what they're wanting to test out; they give details regarding the actual experiment, including who or what was the subject, how the experiment was performed, how data was collected and so on; they'll detail the results of the experiment and any data collected; and finally the authors will usually discuss the results, how they relate to existing research, and what can be taken away from the paper. This is all done for good reason. Research is all about transparency. If you go into detail with regards to everything you did, then other researchers can duplicate your results and confirm your results. If you make an unusual choice in your experimental design, people can see that and note it. If your results don't fit with the rest of the data, you can explain why: maybe it was something to do with your actual test, or maybe it had to do with how you collected your data. In short, you have to consider a lot of variables when you're interpreting a study. In exercise-related research, there's a few recurring issues we have to look at in particular. Most research into exercise deals with either aerobic exercise or with rehabilitation. As you might gather, this isn't terribly useful for generalizing into strength-training concepts, let alone something specialized like bodybuilding. Although the West is starting to catch up, a lot of what you read about is actually taken from older Soviet-era information, which, while not bad necessarily, can be hard to corroborate. Once we start to look at the Western research into actual strength exercise, we start to see a common theme: 'untrained subjects'. Now, in some ways this is good because at least it's done in humans. However we run into some potentially major issues because we've seen it demonstrated repeatedly that an untrained person just doesn't respond the same way as someone with years of experience. Lots of strength-training studies will demonstrate amazing results in untrained subjects, but comparatively few of them account for this so-called 'newbie effect'. Beginners can get away with lots of things; often they will still improve in spite of what they do, not because of it. When we're trying to establish a cause-and-effect relationship, this can throw a huge wrench into things. It gets worse. The bulk of the research into the actual biochemistry and physiology is done in rats. While there's a lot of similarities in humans and rats, there's a lot of differences too. There's plenty of examples where things that happened in rats didn't pan out in humans; that's a big weakness. This is a favorite tactic of the supplement industry, actually. They love taking some rat research or weakly applicable research in humans and then claiming it supports their new magic product. They conveniently ignore the fact that not only is that data not applicable, but they also have exactly nothing showing their claimed results in humans. Besides the claims of the product users, of course - but that's not placebo effect or anything. See also my earlier point about controlling for variables; when you don't perform research in controlled conditions, you can't be sure that your attributed cause is creating the effect. Since giving out free supplements to bodybuilders is almost the definition of 'bias' and 'placebo effect', these testimonials have to be considered highly suspect. And of course all of these objections can apply just as easily to any workout routine, or any study that looks at strength training. The good news is that recent years have given us a good number of studies that have started looking at these factors in humans. It's still not perfect, but the picture is shaping up to be much clearer than it ever has been.

Finally, there's a limit to the resolution of research as it applies to any single individual. It simply can't apply to every last person in a literal sense. There's always going to be some deviation from this norm. This is where the creativity and trial-and-error aspects come into it. We can establish general starting points and guidelines, but these are derived from statistical analysis. Your mileage may vary, and in fact it's highly likely to deviate from the general rules by at least some degree. I say this because one of the big objections I see is that science 'doesn't apply'. I have a hard time seeing how that can be the case; by definition, science just watches and describes. To say that science 'doesn't apply' would be suggesting that somehow your body just happens to differ from everyone else's body. Last I checked, humans all had the same basic physiology. Your body will have specific responses within the boundaries that research describes, but you won't ever do something that's just completely out of left field. There are ways to account for your individual needs, though, and the fortunate thing is that nobody will deviate that much from the baseline. You need to adjust things to the individual, yes, but that doesn't give you permission to go do anything you feel like just because 'everybody's different'. You still have to obey the guidelines, even if you have flexibility within those guidelines.

To see more about bodybuilding and training advice please follow our blog. We offer MK 677 Reviews and Roidtest videos with links to products

#personal trainer #bodybuilding #fitness

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libertariantaoist · 7 years

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Fear and loathing of Russia is all the rage in Washington, D.C., as both liberal Democrats and neoconservative Republicans unite in a campaign to demonize the Kremlin as “the premier and most important threat, more so than ISIS," as Sen. John McCain recently put it. While Hillary Clinton and her dead-ender supporters conjure a Vast Russian Conspiracy to hand the 2016 election to Donald Trump, and the neocons take advantage of this to push their longstanding hatred of Russian President Vladimir Putin, even ostensible libertarians are getting into the act.

This may seem counterintuitive: after all, the modern libertarian movement was born in rebellion against the cold war politics of the Vietnam war era, and libertarians have always opposed Washington’s interventionist foreign policy, such as NATO and a destabilizing and dangerous arms race. Yet even libertarians are not immune to the power of groupthink and the tyranny of political fashion, as the cover story in the most recent edition of Reason magazine makes all too clear. Provocatively entitled “Russia’s Global Anti-Libertarian Crusade,” and authored by longtime Russophobe Cathy Young – herself an immigrant from Russia – the piece makes the case for viewing Russia in McCain-esque terms, i.e., an implacable enemy, the driving force behind an “illiberal international” dedicated to stamping out the last vestiges of liberty all across the globe. And it doesn’t stop there: Young advocates a series of measures to be undertaken by both governments and private entities to stem the “illiberal” tide – including economic sanctions against Russia. She writes:

“Aside from a verbal commitment to liberal democracy and the rule of law, what can Western countries do to curb Russia’s anti-liberal influence without risking military conflict? Economic sanctions – particularly when they target the Russian political elite and its properties abroad, as opposed to targeting ordinary Russian consumers – can be more effective than they are often believed to be.”

As Young and the editors of Reason know full well, existing sanctions against Russia are not limited to “the Russian political elite.” And, in any case, Young doesn’t object to these comprehensive restraints on trade: she wants them extended to include particular persons and institutions for the sole purpose of antagonizing them and making any sort of rapprochement between Russia and the United States impossible.

Which leads us to scratch our heads and ask: what’s up with a “libertarian” magazine pushing economic sanctions? What happened to “free trade” and untrammeled capitalism, supposedly the touchstones of the free market philosophy so energetically celebrated by Reason since its founding in 1969? Isn’t it odd that Reason opposes economic sanctions on Communist Cuba, but wants them slapped on Russia – which is just emerging from 70-some years of its Marxist nightmare? Perhaps one explanation is that the magazine is funded in large part by oil oligarch Charles Koch, of Koch Industries, who stands to make billions if Russian energy exports are blocked by government action.

While ascribing this motivation to the editors of Reason may seem uncharitable, it is the least uncharitable explanation for publishing Young’s farrago of falsehood, innuendo, and neo-McCarthyite rubbish. Far worse would be an ideological motivation: that they actually believe the pathetic conspiracy theory Young cobbles together out of the imaginings of various professional Russophobes.

While distancing herself from the “more extreme” anti-Russian narratives, which she admits are conspiracy theories with little evidence to support them, Young weaves a “moderate” conspiracy theory of her own – with just as little evidence to support it. She claims that the Russians are supporting the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party of Greece, and Hungary’s “quasi-fascist” Jobbik movement, although no evidence of this is presented. She says in several instances that the National Front party of France’s Marine Le Pen is a Russian front: her “evidence” is that a Russian bank with “links to the Kremlin” provided the party with a loan. One wonders if, say, a British bank (with undefined “links” to Westminster) loaned money to an America political party, would that make them a tool of Perfidious Albion?

Who needs actual evidence, anyway, when writing about Russia? After all, as computer security expert Jeffrey Carr points out, there is exactly zero public proof that the Russians “hacked” the 2016 elections – and yet the media “reports” this as undisputed fact.

Bereft of any actual facts, Young proceeds to assemble an ideological construct, one that, however, has some pretty big cracks in the foundations. To wit:

“Cloaked in the mantle of religious and nationalist values, the Kremlin positions itself as a defender of tradition and sovereignty against the godless progressivism and the migrant hordes overtaking the West. It has a global propaganda machine and a network of political operatives dedicated to cultivating far-right and sometimes far-left groups in Europe and elsewhere.”

How does one reconcile Russia’s alleged crusade against “godless progressivism” with their alleged support for “far-left groups in Russia and elsewhere”? She mentions Syriza, the Greek leftist party that briefly came to power. Leaving aside that Young nowhere documents this alleged support – not even with so much as a single link – it would seem more than a bit odd for the Kremlin, the supposed fountainhead of Orthodox Christianity, to be behind the success of the Greek Syriza party, which is militantly secular: a Syriza proposal to completely separate the Greek state from the Orthodox Church and levy a special tax on all church members would seem to contradict Young’s thesis. Are leftists now suddenly defenders of “tradition”?

Young’s hostility to Orthodox Christianity is one of the linchpins of her conspiracy theory: Putin’s support for Christian values, as viewed through the lens of Russian Orthodoxy, is depicted as a threat to the West. This is a curious argument to make, since Christianity – while in retreat in the West – is still seen as the basis of the Western individualist ethic, the foundation of the very same “liberal values” that Young extols throughout her essay.

She cites John Schindler, a former US Naval War College professor forced out for sending photos of his penis to a Twitter follower, in support of this contention. Schindler asserts that Edward Snowden is a Russian agent and that Glenn Greenwald, who reported on Snowden’s findings, was in it for the money. Young cites him as a credible authority, invoking his theory that Putin is engaged in “Orthodox Jihadism” against the West. It doesn’t matter that Putin’s “Orthodox jihadists” – Where are they? Who are they? – aren’t the ones planting bombs throughout Western Europe. They’re against gay marriage, aren’t they? Writes Young: “The main example of Western decadence and liberal extremism was, of course, same-sex marriage.” Case closed! Except that Schindler ridiculing Greenwald, who is gay, as “Glenda” seems to undercut Young’s depiction of the former Naval War College professor and NSA veteran as a champion of liberal tolerance. One also has to wonder what Young, an admirer of novelist Ayn Rand, makes of Schindler’s belief that Rand was a secret Russian agent.

Another building block of Young’s argument that Putin’s Russia is “authoritarian” and a danger to the West is Ivan Ilyin, an early twentieth century Russian writer whom she describes as an “authoritarian nationalist,” a designation that has little to do with his actual views. During his time as Russia’s chief executive, Putin has quoted Ilyin on exactly five occasions, and Young sees this as “telling” – but what exactly does it tell us?

When Ilyin was exiled from the Soviet Union in 1922, he went to Berlin, where he was forced out by the Nazis for the crime of failing to teach in accordance with the doctrines of National Socialism – an odd transgression for an “authoritarian nationalist” to have committed, but there you have it. While Young gives us a highly colored view of Ilyin’s politics, a more expansive – and fairer – synopsis is provided by Paul Robinson in The American Conservative:

“Ilyin believed that the source of Russia’s problems was an insufficiently developed ‘legal consciousness’ (pravosoznanie). Given this, democracy was not a suitable form of government. He wrote that ‘at the head of the state there must be a single will.’ Russia needed a ‘united and strong state power, dictatorial in the scope of its powers.’ At the same time, there must be clear limits to these powers. The ruler must have popular support; organs of the state must be responsible and accountable; the principle of legality must be preserved and all persons must be equal under the law. Freedom of conscience, speech, and assembly must be guaranteed. Private property should be sacrosanct. Ilyin believed that the state should be supreme in those areas in which it had competence, but should stay entirely out of those areas in which it did not, such as private life and religion. Totalitarianism, he said, was ‘godless.’”

That Putin isn’t presiding over a Jeffersonian republic is a complaint that fails to view modern Russia’s history in context. It wasn’t that long ago that Josef Stalin was sending millions to the Gulag, and a one-party totalitarian state reigned supreme in Russia and its satellites. Ilyin’s advocacy of a strong central state makes sense in the context of Putin’s task: dismantling a system from the top. (See libertarian economist Henry Hazlitt’s novel, Time Will Run Back, about a socialist dictator who decides to free up the system.)

Borrowing from the academic contingent of neo-Cold Warriors, such as Timothy Snyder, Young invokes the theories of one Alexander Dugin, an obscure Russian rightist whose philosophy of “Eurasianism” posits a struggle between a capitalist-globalist-universalist West intent on imposing its rule worldwide and a Russian-led resistance energized by traditionalism and Christian values. Undeterred by her own observation that Dugin’s influence is minimal, she goes on to link “Eurasianism” to the “global anti-libertarian crusade” that is supposedly a threat to our precious bodily fluids. Yet Dugin has next to no influence inside the Russian government, or within the body politic: he is a marginal figure. So what’s the big deal?

Young cites Macedonia as an example of an insidious Russian plot to overthrow “pro-Western” forces, but a simple look at the alleged coup supposedly attempted by a murky group of allegedly pro-Russian types shows that this is absolute bollocks. As the New York Times reported:

“[Former Macedonian Prime Minster Milo] Djukanovic and his officials initially provided no evidence to support their allegation of a foiled coup attempt on Oct. 16, the day of national elections. They said only that 20 Serbs – some of whom turned out to be elderly and in ill health – had been detained just hours before they were to launch the alleged putsch. Nonetheless, Mr. Djukanovic insisted it ‘is more than obvious’ that unnamed ‘Russian structures’ were working with pro-Moscow politicians to derail the country’s efforts to join NATO.”

Evidence? Who needs it? After all, we’re talking about Russia! Meanwhile, everyone supposedly involved in the “plot” has been released – except for leaders of the opposition party, who have been rounded up on suspicion of aiding the “plotters.”

You don’t have to be a neoconservative, says Young, in order to support “freedom friendly” countries, and if Russia “bullies” the Baltics, Georgia, and Ukraine into “returning to vassalage” it would be a “net loss for liberty” and for America.

To begin with, there is zero evidence that the Russians have any desire – or even the capacity – to retake the Baltics, for example. What they are concerned about, however – and what is completely off Young’s radar – is that ethnic Russians who live in Estonia, for one, and have lived there for generations exist in a legal limbo and are forbidden to vote in national elections. In his interviews with Oliver Stone, Putin points out that, with the sudden fall of the Soviet Union, millions of ethnic Russians woke up one day to find themselves outside their own country. Young, who left Russia at an early age, is indifferent to their fate.

More to the point, however, is that the social and political systems outside the United States which are less than Jeffersonian utopias have zero impact on the status or strength of our constitutional system and civil liberties in this country. What does have an impact is our policy toward these countries: if we engage in a cold war with Russia, and spend ourselves into oblivion in an arms race, risking war and even nuclear annihilation, America will itself become much less “freedom-friendly.”

The real point of Young’s elaborate conspiracy theory is to discredit anyone who challenges the narrative that a cold war with Russia is both inevitable and desirable. This means framing the debate – although there hasn’t really been a debate – in a certain way. She writes:

“Pro-Russian (or at least anti-anti-Russian) arguments have become fairly common not just among conservatives but among a contingent of libertarians, such as former Rep. Ron Paul and Antiwar.com Editorial Director Justin Raimondo. The new Republican affection for Russia is largely a matter of political polarization: Since Putin is the Democrats’ boogeyman du jour, he can’t be all bad. But quite a few conservatives also genuinely see Putin’s Russia as a Christian ally against Islam, a perspective recently endorsed by Ann Coulter in a March column trollishly titled ‘Let’s Make Russia Our Sister Country.’”

Young’s hostility to Christianity aside, what Young is attempting to do here is to define the debate in terms very similar to those employed by the neoconservatives during the run up to the Iraq war. If you opposed that war, you were “pro-Saddam” or “pro-Iraq”: if you supported it you were for installing a “freedom-friendly” regime in Baghdad.

This loading of the dice will not stand: the idea that opposing a new cold war with Russia makes one “pro-Russian” is nonsensical, unless “pro-Russian” means you don’t want to start World War III. Is it “pro-Russian” to point to the fact that the United States under George W. Bush and Bill Clinton unilaterally abrogated the ABM Treaty, and that this act fueled a new arms race and increased the risk of war? Is it “pro-Russian” to have opposed the expansion of NATO, which violated a verbal agreement between the first Bush administration and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev?

In Cathy Young’s World – right next door to Bizarro World – the answer is yes.

Opponents of a new cold war with Russia are neither pro-Russian nor fans of Vladimir Putin. They are simply advocates of a common sense approach to Russia, and to US foreign policy in general, which holds that America’s real interests lie in cooperation with the world’s largest nation insofar as that is possible.

If you oppose Cold War II, you are siding with Russia – this is the assumption at the heart of Young’s argument, and it is, simply put, a primitive lie. She writes:

“Ron Paul–style libertarians are inclined to see Russia as a check on U.S. foreign adventurism and Russia hawks as hardcore proponents of the American imperial leviathan. ‘Unfortunately, there is a small contingent who fall victim to the fallacy that ‘the enemy of the enemy is my friend,’ and if the Kremlin is the enemy of my enemy, then it must be my friend," [Cato Institute vice president and Atlas Network activist Tom] Palmer says.”

The real fallacy is Palmer’s attempt to characterize libertarian opposition to the new cold war as evidence of active collaboration with and support for the Russian state – a smear similar to the one he frenetically propagated during the Iraq war (he opposed what he saw as “premature” US withdrawal), when he accused Antiwar.com and myself of supporting terrorism and advocating the death of US soldiers.

If Russia is “a check on US adventurism,” it isn’t doing a very good job, as demonstrated by the interventions in Syria, Libya, Iraq, Somalia, Afghanistan, etc. etc.

Although Palmer claims to be a libertarian, his Atlas Network has the endorsement of a US government agency, the National Endowment for Democracy, which is part of the “regime change” apparatus the US operates throughout the world. While it’s not clear if Atlas gets direct government funding, their personnel and activities are intertwined with the NED, and perhaps other government agencies. Two years after the invasion of Iraq, Palmer traveled to that country to attend a conference on “Advancing Women’s Rights: Two Years in Iraq” – a title that, given Iraq’s present state, cruelly mocks its sponsors down through the years. The conference – where Palmer lectured participants on “What is Democracy?” – was funded in part by the US government. He also addressed the Iraqi Parliament on the subject of their proposed constitution, which he praised in an op ed.

Now that Putin has taken the place of Saddam Hussein as the bogeyman of the moment, Palmer has taken up the cudgels against the Kremlin, traveling to Ukraine to support the corrupt kleptocracy of Petro Poroshenko and hailing the Ukrainian central government’s war on its own citizens. There he railed against the “red-brown homophobic racist bigoted movements” which Putin is supposedly behind. By the way, Franklin Templeton, a major investment firm, is Ukraine’s biggest private investor in government bonds: Templeton also contribute substantial amounts in the form of “Freedom Grants” to Palmer’s Atlas Network.

Just follow the money.

“Wouldn’t it be nice if we could get along with Russia?” President Trump said this repeatedly during the 2016 presidential campaign, and it enraged the foreign policy elites of both parties, who are banking their prestige – and their stock options – on a confrontation with Putin. The military-industrial complex, the national security bureaucracy, the out-of-fashion Kremlinologists who hope for new relevance in this age of renewed Russophobia, and, yes, the Cathy Youngs of this world – embittered Russian émigrés who carried their hate of the homeland with them in their suitcases – flipped out.

Trump’s victory was followed by an all-out offensive by these people, who built an elaborate conspiracy theory that claims Trump is a Russian agent, “Putin’s puppet,” as Hillary Clinton foolishly put it. The campaign to create a climate of anti-Russian hysteria, to the point where a US official meeting with the Russia ambassador is considered suspect, is well advanced, and the Young piece in Reason is part of this: the goal is to police the libertarian movement in order to expunge it of “pro-Russian” elements, such as myself and Ron Paul.

Well, good luck with that, Cathy: most libertarians – I’d say the overwhelming majority – are against the new cold war, and look with disdain on the ludicrous evidence-free antics of the Democrats and their neoconservative allies in the Never Trump camp to paint the President as a Russian sleeper agent. Of course, she’ll have more luck inside the Beltway, where the winds of conformism reach gale force – thus the editors of Reason put Young’s screed on their cover. Libertarian organizations inside the Beltway, such as the Cato Institute – which has been jumping on the Hate Russia bandwagon lately – cited in Young’s piece have become increasingly irrelevant as far as the grassroots libertarian movement is concerned. In that sense, Young’s attempt to smear such good libertarians as Ron Paul is merely virtue-signaling to the Beltway that the “mainstream” libertarians are going to go along with the current Russophobic hysteria, regardless of what us “extremists” may say or do.

The truth is, however, that the “small contingent” Palmer spoke of is a description of him and his fellow cold warriors, who represent nothing and no one but themselves and their wealthy donors. Our movement, the libertarian movement, was born in the midst of the cold war: we learned early on that the War Party is the greatest enemy of liberty, the adversary that must be defeated before we can get our old republic back. The crazed anti-Russian campaign now being waged by both the “left” and “right” wings of the War Party can only lead to a military conflict – a war that could annihilate us all. Somehow, I doubt that “Libertarians for World War III” is going to get much traction – but, hey, they’re trying!

#justin raimondo #antiwar.com #russia #putin #cathy young #reason magazine

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clubofinfo · 7 years

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Expert: Imperialist demagogues, as well as religious fanatics, are known to live in their grotesque realities. They erect huge sand castles, invent mascots, and bombard the public relentlessly with self-promoting messages. Those who refuse to listen and believe, those who dare to doubt and resist, are sidelined, starved to death, humiliated or simply liquidated. Western religions and European/North American brutal colonialist practices are intertwined culturally. Hand in hand, for centuries, they have been destroying our Planet, from corner to corner, on all continents and even on the high seas. All conquests, all genocides, all plunders have been eternally rationalized, painstakingly justified. Grand bogus concepts of charity, of ‘altruism’ have been erected. Subjugated nations have always been ruined in the name of some higher principles, in order to save them from themselves. For centuries, the West has portrayed itself as a sacrificial lamb, as a hand chosen by some divine power, as the greatest civilization that is continuously and altruistically liberating the world. In the West, scribblers and ‘scholars’ have been paid to soften every barbarity committed by the rulers, soldiers and even common citizens. The cults of formal learning, of facts and information have been erected. Holed in innumerable officially recognized institutions, the scholars, certified demagogues, researchers and media people have been ‘studying’ each other, recycling and quoting each other, filling millions of books with essentially the same narrative. ‘New’ and ‘revolutionary’ academic discoveries mostly lead to the same old conclusions, to stale intellectual and moral passivity, cowardice and spinelessness. Endless libraries have been filled with useless volumes, first arriving in print, then later in electronic form. Tens of millions of young and not too young men and women are busy wasting their lives, chasing diplomas, those colorful pieces of paper with the seal of approval, certifying people as fit to serve the Empire and the victorious civilization. At some point, all major philosophical and existential topics ceased to be discussed, in official academia, in mainstream media, in the film houses, libraries and best selling books. No one paid any attention. The world simply ‘moved forward’. The ‘issues’ did not disappear. Genocides are still administered by the West in order to plunder the world, the world of the ‘un-people’. Western colonialism was never really stopped or defeated. Great ideologies based on humanism were successfully smeared, even erased from the sub-consciousness of the people. Gutless masses, but especially cowardly intellectuals, got convinced that it would be the best ‘not to take stances’, and not to wear ‘old labels’ and gather under ‘old flags’. Passivity combined with the extreme selfishness eventually mutated into collaboration with the regime. The environment has been getting ruined, progressively and irreversibly. The press, mass media, gained mastery in saying nothing, addressing nothing, criticizing nothing related to the plunder of the world, and to the suppression of new and truly revolutionary ideas. Enormous hordes of teachers, lawyers, scientists, and bureaucrats got converted into fundamental idiots, but armed with their licenses, bar exams, patents, contracts and other ‘feel-good’ sheets of colorful papers. Tens of millions of lawyers failed to form even one single powerful international organization fighting for justice against the terror of the Empire. This make-believe world has by now managed to expel Reality and become ‘real’ itself in the minds and brains of billions of men, women and children. True Reality went underground. She had to become a fugitive, a refugee, paperless and disrespected, belonging nowhere. She is roaming our Planet, searching for scattered allies, for those few human beings who are still not fully indoctrinated, or fully sold. Whenever she is caught, she is beaten, stripped naked, and humiliated. A piece of paper saying ‘A Lie’ is hung around her neck. Those who are still standing tall, defending great ideals, faithful to the ‘old labels’, are being ridiculed. Old flags, under which millions used to march forward, often victoriously, are now being dirtied, defecated on. Whatever contradicts the Empire is gradually labeled as Fake News. In the West, no one seems to be noticing. There are no mass demonstrations, no clashes with police, as laws and regulations are being changed and entire Constitutions violated. It is because an overwhelming majority is actually collaborating with the regime. It is because it is suddenly so frightening, or at least impractical, to think outside the box. It is because there are very few examples of intellectual courage left in this world. Fake News, fake history, fake emotions, and fake ideals… Everything that is not supporting the official narrative is slowly but seemingly irreversibly becoming ‘fake’. The only way forward, and the only way for our humanity to survive, would be for at least one group of extremely bright people to fully break from that straightjacket put on the world by the Empire, to reject official perceptions and ‘knowledge’, and to completely cast off all major tools of analyses of Christian and Western supremacy ideologies which are still functioning as the main ‘intellectual’ pillars of the Empire and its collaborators in the colonies. One’s thought, in order to be original and revolutionary, would have to be almost completely cleansed, even isolated, from the official propaganda of the Empire, from its movies and music, from its schools on all levels, from its professionally manipulative narratives. Diplomas and licenses supplied by the indoctrination institutions should be used as a toilet paper for extremely severe cases of intellectual food poisoning, and flushed immediately, together with all that toxic shit that consists of so called ‘facts’ and ‘news’. ***** While the ‘Real News’ package is being disseminated all over the world by the Imperial propaganda machine, hundreds of millions of ‘un-people’ are continuing to die annually, aimlessly. Many are actually vanishing while still fully believing in every word of what they had been fed by the news channels and newspapers. Would they be told the truth (now also known in the West as ‘Fake News’), they’d most likely refuse to die, even opting to fight for their survival. Fight against whom, against the Empire? That would be unacceptable. Therefore, alternative sources of information must be immediately suppressed – exactly what the Nobel Peace Prize laureate President Obama has been aiming at during the last months of this year, before stepping down from his throne. The Empire is in panic, because resistance in the form of alternative thoughts and concepts is now coming from various parts of the world, especially from those places not yet infested with the English-language (as well as French or German) standardized story line. It comes from such places as China’s Academy of Social Sciences, from several Russian institutions and many fiction and non-fiction writers, as well as from numerous new and not so new media outlets in Latin America. It is now easy to imagine that the Empire might soon introduce some fascist institution like a “Department of Truth”. Its employees could start demanding that each essay and book is ‘well researched’, insisting on ‘facts’. Writing and philosophy could be reduced to the level of present-day academia: only recycled thoughts would be acceptable. It would not be enough to say that last week it was raining four days a week. A suitable alternative would be: “Last week it was raining four times a week, according to Professor Sigmund Brown.” Or even better: “Both Professors Brown and Green agreed that last week it was raining four times a week”. Then, footnotes would have to be supplied, as well as other information. Otherwise – it could be defined as Fake News. The Fake News clause could be invoked if someone wrote, for instance “the true and the most brutal terrorist in modern history is the West.” Or “Several hundreds of millions of people were slaughtered by European empires, and then by the US Empire, in the last several centuries. This holocaust took place in Africa, Asia, what is now known as Latin America, in the Middle East and Oceania, basically everywhere. No alternative system including those of the Soviet Union or China ever came close to the barbarity committed by the West.” Anyone spreading such blasphemy, such sacrilege, could be caught, charged, tried, punished, and ‘neutralized’. Just imagine, someone writing this: “All basic narratives on which Western propaganda is based, are either false, or at least have been heavily twisted and manipulated. This includes all story lines related to the Soviet Union, China, colonialism and the anti-colonialist struggle, Cambodia, Cuba, and even Rwanda. The list is long. Ignorance of the Western public is almost complete.” How could this not be identified as ‘Fake News’? No Professor Blue would utter such judgment, and no Professor Pink would confirm it. You can spend your time digging your snout into millions of books in official libraries, but only a handful of them would mention it. Therefore, it is all fake, all fabricated. It does not exist, and should be forbidden, censored. You can, of course, hear all this in Havana, Caracas, Beijing, Moscow or Johannesburg. In Beijing, in a normal big state-run bookstore, there is much greater variety of political opinion than on the entire island of Manhattan. Even many common folks in non-Western places know things and pronounce them freely. However, ‘unapproved’ people cannot be trusted, can they? Especially when it concerns such explosive pieces of material! Also, foreigners speaking their strange twisted tongues cannot be trusted. Actually, nothing and nobody can be trusted! Fake News is everywhere, creeping, ambushing us behind each corner. If the Empire is not vigilant, Western supremacy may one day collapse. Which would be against God’s will… Oh, sorry, that was a slip! The correct way to put it: It would be against all reason, against all logic and all facts. President Obama cares, he understands. And now we will be defended with even greater fervor: now comes Donald Trump! http://clubof.info/

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