#BUNKER BOI SUPREMACY

[superdupersketcher-booper]

“Favoritism”

I don’t have a-! *sigh*

Ok.

Here’s the other 1/2 favorite💙

[fostersffff]

The Big Gundam Watch, Part 10: Mobile Suit Gundam Wing: Endless Waltz

As mentioned at the end of my post about the second half of Gundam Wing, the word on the street was that the sequel movie was Actually Good For Real. Naturally, I was skeptical: even with the context provided in response to that post about the nightmarish production schedule and sponsor requirements the series had, it was still the least good experience I've had with a Gundam show to date. The theatrical format can also be a double-edged sword if you don't know how to budget your time wisely, and quite frankly, I didn't have much faith in the Gundam Wing production staff to make a cohesive 90 minute movie after they had so much trouble with a 49 episode TV series.

I'm happy to report that Endless Waltz was, in fact, pretty damn good. In fact, I'd actually go so far as to say that of the Gundam movies I've reviewed in this format- the others being Char's Counterattack, Narrative, and Hathaway- this was the best! Not only was it a solid action movie with some terrific animation setpieces, it also addressed most of the problems I have with Gundam Wing, making both the setting itself and the movie much stronger.

THE STUFF I LIKED:

FLASHBACKS. Number one with a fucking bullet: I now have literally any understanding of the motivations for these main characters! And they were all pretty well executed! Trowa's a child soldier! Duo was trying to prevent the original Operation Meteor! Heero is suicidal and traumatized because he botched an attack on a mobile suit production facility and got civilians killed! Wufei... had one too!

I was a little worried about how much money this was going to have, because it was originally a series of OVAs. But that got put to rest when Noin and Sally launched the ITANO CIRCUS PODS followed by reaction shots of Taurus dolls moving at 800 frames per second trying to escape.

After spending the whole series bitching about how much the Gundams clash with original suits designed for the After Colony timeline, I think the redesigns they got for Endless Waltz finally made me stop being a hater. Especially Wing Zero; who cares how impractical contoured angel wings are, it looks fucking cool, and lends itself to that gorgeous activation sequence.

On the subject of mobile suits; the Tallgeese III isn't as cool as the Tallgeese- they really fucking nailed that design on the first take- but I was thrilled that when Char Quattro Zechs Milliardo Wind showed up to the fight, it was in a Tallgeese and not the Epyon.

And speaking of redesigns; Trowa got fuckin' yolked. Fuckin' Final Fight Mike Haggar looking motherfucker. I assumed they just bulked up all of the boys, but then one scene later Heero is as scrawny as ever, so they made the conscious choice to have Trowa buff as shit.

Dorothy showing up for five seconds to insult a bunch of random civilians for being cowards in order to rile them up and haul them over to the site of the conflict to protest Mariemaia's regime in a convoy led by her solid gold truck was perfection.

A brief return of my favorite version of Heero- sociopath Heero- when Mariemaia tries to taunt him over how indestructible the bunker is and he just goes "okay." and fires the Libra-annihilating gun down at it three times.

I thought Mariemaia and Dekim made a really great and complementary pair of villains. It makes perfect sense that 10 year old would be like "why hasn't anyone just tried being a perfect dictator" before you even factor in the grooming, and Dekim neatly introduces and ties up the whole "Operation Meteor was originally just a space supremacy ploy" idea that was introduced in the last episode of Wing, enhancing it with the added wrinkle that the Barton family were the equivalent of the Zabis in the Universal Century.

If you read my last post, you may think I'd be down on Relena abandoning her position of Total Pacifism. Instead, it actually feels like a natural development: the formation of the Earth Sphere Unified Nation was a unilateral agreement by all mankind that peace was what they wanted, so her goal of Peace via Pacifism was effectively achieved! But in the face of a group that would threaten that accomplishment for the sole purpose of self-interested domination, there's literally nothing to do but resist. And it's still optimistic because it flies in the face of the conventional, cynical wisdom of "good times create weak men create hard time create strong men create good times...", which is what Dekim was counting on.

THE STUFF I LIKED LESS:

The role of “Big Boss from Metal Gear Solid, but fucking stupid” is now being played by Wufei, who I literally groaned at when he appeared to defend Dekim from Trowa. I get it; they needed to have a cool mobile suit for Heero to fight against since Mariemaia and Dekim weren't pilots, and Wufei fits the bill since it's totally believable he's not over his tsundere mancrush on Treize, but the fact that his Category 6 MUH JUSTICE moment is stopped by Heero reminding him that civilians exist was just too much.

The idea that the Gundams were at a disadvantage against the horde of regular grunt suits because they were going for non-lethal takedown was charming, but also, like... Duo says that and then it cuts to Heavyarms fucking unloading. But maybe they were rubber bullets so it's fine, it's fine, don't worry about it.

Lady Une once again uses her unaddressed space-time warping powers to gain access to Mariemaia's neigh-upon impregnable underground bunker just in time to save her and Relena from falling rubble. I actually scanned back through the video to make sure I didn't miss something: we see her outside meeting with Zechs as he lands the Tallgeese III, and then the next time we see her she somehow made it into the compound and disabled every guard in one of the rooms. How?

Listen, Endless Waltz is a very elegant title and should make sense to basically everyone if they think about it even just a little bit. It was not necessary to explain it out for the audience.

OTHER OBSERVATIONS:

There were a number of lines and scenes in this movie that gave me a hearty, sensible chuckle, so I'm just gonna run down the ones that really stuck with me:

The way the dub narrator says "at the end of an... intricate battle" is the funniest and most polite way to describe the conflict of Gundam Wing.

“He’s pretty smart for a person who was elected democratically”

"I wouldn't be surprised if one day he starts saying that his lack of effort is the reason there's no air in outer space"

Zech's little book he's reading while waiting for someone to pick him up:

Not meant to be funny, but I love that the emblem of Mariemaia's regime is just "what if instead of an eagle holding a swastika, it was an eagle holding an M stylized like the one on Super Mario's hat":

Choosing to show Zechs and Noin reuniting and riding off to Mars together to start a new life as unromantically as possible by just having them play chess:

Speaking of Zechs and Noin going to Mars: I enjoyed this so much I looked at a summary for the sequel to this, the light novel series Frozen Teardrop, and then determined I will not be looking at anything else related to Frozen Teardrop.

Amogus.

IN CONCLUSION:

This was an incredibly pleasant surprise. Taken as a complete package, Endless Waltz seriously elevates Gundam Wing. It does so much groundwork for that series that I think you could make a compelling argument to skip Wing altogether and just watch Endless Waltz. Personally, though, I would just amend whether or not I'd recommend Gundam Wing to "if you're going to watch it, you absolutely MUST watch Endless Waltz, too, no matter how you felt about it".

Next up: I'm taking another break, as in the time it took me to watch through all of Gundam Wing I added a ton of other anime (and video games (and model kits)) to my to-do list. But when I do come back to this, we're going backwards and then sticking to chronologically-by-release order, starting with Mobile Suit Gundam 0080: War in the Pocket.

[s0ym1lk]

I finished Disco Elysium last night and have come to the conclusion that it is, ironically, about learning how to honor history while also letting it go.

Disco Elysium is set in a world drowning in history. You spend the whole time walking through a bombed-out city, exploring walls where people were lined up and shot, bunkers filled with propaganda, and monuments that were put up and torn down and put up again. The layers upon layers of history that you dig through in every encounter just overwhelms you.

Harry Du Bois is likewise drowning in his own personal history. When you start the game, you literally wake up in the 'ruins' of Harry's own personal country - the room he'd wrecked on his multi-day bender prior to starting the game. He clings to an outdated music style and an outdated celebrity that he models himself after. He worships his ex so much that his brain turns her into a god.

It's no surprise that the most joyful parts of the game are ones in which history is erased or made irrelevant. Harry's relationship with Kim, for example, has no history to it at all. While Kim knows that Harry is a self-destructive asshole, based on the aftermath of Harry's bender that he's able to witness, Kim also begins his relationship with Harry from a point where he's fundamentally a different person, who can and does make different choices than old Harry would havea. Every time Harry's past comes up, Kim is able to relate to him in a different and more positive way, simply because the old Harry and the new Harry are different people. Contrast this with Harry's interactions with his old partner Jean. Those interactions are really depressing, because they're so one-sided - Jean is left to shoulder all of the pain Harry caused to him, but when he tries to lash out, Harry doesn't understand. For example, when Jean tries to pull a mean prank by dressing up as the reporter Harry drove away, the joke goes completely over Harry's head, because Harry doesn't remember his past OR his old partner. Jean is stuck in a cycle of trauma and abuse that he's trying to perpetuate with his actions. Harry literally can't remember enough about himself to be a part of that anymore. That's why his relationship with Kim works so well in comparison - he can leave his past behind and become a better person who has healthier relationships.

Another place you see this quite well is in the storyline for the dance club at the church. The church itself reeks of history, and not in a good way. It's abandoned, worn-out, broken, and it has a giant stained-glass window of a woman who blanketed Elysium in terrible history and destroyed it, then convinced everyone that she was a saint. The history in that stained glass literally towers over you and forces you to cower beneath it. When you help the teens turn the church into a dance club, you disrupt all that. The power and sanctity of the church's history doesn't totally disappear, because the church is still there, but it fades into the background as it's overtaken by a new history. That new history extends to everyone present. It covers the teens, all of whom are either running from a bad past or leaving the people they were behind(you'll notice Disco Elysium has a lot of characters who have become different people than they used to be). It covers Harry, who has struggled to let go of the cool person he was in the days of disco, but ends up not just writing the new anodic music but busting a move to it. It covers Soona the programmer, who's trying to essentially come to terms with her history at Fortress Accident and move on from it. It's a really powerful image, to find the seed of the world's destruction in the church and to be concerned about that, but to then turn it into a bass track and dance to it joyfully anyway. Sure, the end of the world is coming. That kind of sucks. But in this joyful moment, who cares?

Look at Harry's former relationship with Dora. You spend all this time being triggered by things related to her, like chewing gum, the Dolores Dei references, and near the very end of the game finally have a dream where she turns into a god and leaves you. Harry is obviously an obsessive person. He obsesses about Dora and turns her into something larger than life, even though she tells him frankly that she's just a regular woman. Harry tries to cling to that history by getting her back. He gives her figurines that he remembered she would like. He tells her he's a better person and that they can make it work. He can try to kiss her. He can beg her not to go. She leaves anyway. Despite Harry's desperation, you can tell as the player that this is an unhealthy relationship, and that it's good that Dora left him. You can also see how her leaving triggered Harry's descent into brokenness, and how he never truly recovered from it because he couldn't let go. I don't think it's a coincidence that Harry only manages to face this history after he loses his memory. Some of that past had to be scraped away before he could face the truth and overcome it.

Finally, the reveal of the killer absolutely drives this point home. The whole game follows the traditional detective novel arc, where every detail is a Chekhov's gun leading to one big conclusion. The footprints, the eighth Hardie boy, the drugs, the smoker on the balcony, all of it. And the kicker is that it does all come together - but not in the way you want it to. Because most of the clues are smoke and mirrors. The killer is a sad old man you've never met before hiding on an island, clinging to (you guessed it!) the past. He's drowning in history and can't let go of it. If he feels totally irrelevant to the rest of the game, that's because he is. He doesn't matter! The world let go and moved on without him. The game strongly implies that it was this moving on, and not the old man's politics, that cause him to commit the murder. When he pulled the trigger, he wasn't really thinking about moralintern supremacy or being loyal to the communist revolution. He simply couldn't watch two people steeped in history choose to let it go and find happiness together in moving on. So he killed the merc in a fit of jealousy. Everything else you track down in the game is just people trying to mitigate the consequences of that murder by protecting each other.

History is important, and paying attention to it is how we learn from our mistakes. But what Disco Elysium doesn't want people to do is to get so obsessed with the past that we get stuck in it. You can't live in a bombed-out city or a trashed hotel room forever. You have to let it go.

You may ask, what about the pale, and the end of the world? To me, the game is literally manifesting existential dread as a parallel to the player's own understanding of our world and our limited existence. We know the world will end at some point. Elysium knows it literally - it's being slowly swallowed up bit by bit. We as the players know it metaphorically. We know that we get 100 years, give or take, to live. We know that the planet is slowly being destroyed. In a way, that's our history too. And so the game says to you, it doesn't matter. You should care, but don't get so caught up in caring that you forget to live. Ultimately it doesn't really matter that the world is ending. What matters is something smaller and more personal - that you care about the people around you, that you try to help where you can, and that you dance to anodic dance music while you have the chance.

[travllingbunny]

Having spent a couple of years in The 100 fandom, one of the things that always strikes me is the gap between the canon characters and their fanon versions. Almost every character has at least one, sometimes two doppelgangers in fanon. These fanon versions often contradict each other, since the fandom has apparently been sharply divided for years. In other cases, there is one definite fanon creation that’s widely popular and mostly uncontested. 

Which of these fanon creations do you find most boring, and which ones may be actually kind of fun?

Fanon!Clarke 1: The show’s main villain. This character is completely selfish, spoiled, tyrannical, absolutely loves murdering people and committing genocide, and spends all her time scheming and manipulating people so she could achieve her evil goals (which are to keep her friends and family alive). Likes to risk her life and “sacrifice” herself just because she always wants to be the center of attention. Has always been abusive to Bellamy by.. telling him nice and supportive things about himself, but not nice and supportive enough, and cruelly allowing him to go on a mission that was his own idea and his plan (an example of how unequal their relationship is and that she always orders him around). Doesn’t care about anyone, except maybe her adoptive daughter Madi, which makes her annoying and a traitor for not prioritizing her friends’ safety over her daughter’s, except for the times when she’s prioritizing her friends’s safety over her daughter, which makes her a bad mother.

Fanon!Clarke 2: Minor character, notable for being Lexa’s love interest. (See below.) This young, occasionally confused lesbian was a damsel constantly in need of saving by the show’s hero, Lexa, and didn’t do anything important until  meeting Lexa, and learning from her how to be a leader. Still not too good at it, probably due to the bad influence of the show’s villain, Bellamy (see below), with whom she has an unhealthy, toxic platonic relationship but for whom she doesn’t really care, at the same time. Had a bunch of things happen to her, such as losing both her parents and a bunch of other important people in her life, having to mercy kill her first love minor crush (at the time when she still thought she was into men), constantly fighting for survival, being left almost alone on a deserted planet for 6 years, having her body stolen - but none of this ever traumatized her, the only thing she’s ever been affected was Lexa’s death, which she spends all her time talking about, 24/7, even 6.5 years later. 

Fanon!Bellamy 1: The show’s main villain. Evil, violent white man (as a consequence of having a younger, white sister, which makes him white because biracial people don’t exist), constantly angry, goes around killing people in bouts of rage. Racist and hates Grounders (who, naturally, are a race - as descendants of a group of people from a cult that used to live in a bunker). Super into killing civilians and committing genocide. Probably stupid and uneducated. Killed his sister’s boyfriend and somehow indirectly killed the show’s hero, Lexa. Is indirectly to blame for anything wrong that ever happened in the show. Also likes to abuse Clarke (see Fanon!Clarke 2). 

Fanon!Bellamy 2: A very unusual character that consists of two different people: in seasons 1-4: the sweetest, most sensitive and softest clean shaven boy in the world, who wore his heart on his sleeve and spent all his time telling Clarke how much he loves her (even without ever actually having told her anything like that, or asked her out on a date, and even while sleeping with other women, but that’s this character’s special power). Never killed people, except when he did, but that only happened because the writers hated him and he was OOC. As of the start of season 5, turned into a cold, unemotional bearded man who is totally in love with evil Echo (see below) and doesn’t care about Clarke at all (which makes his actions in a lot of season 5 and all of season 6 a complete mystery).

Fanon!Octavia 1: The most perfect human being in the history of the human race. Has never done anything wrong in her entire life. When she beat up her brother savagely, it’s because he deserved it, everyone she’s murdered deserved it, and she was never a tyrant - people just didn’t realize that, as the perfect leader, she needed to have absolute power. She was also a victim of manipulation by evil Abby (see below), who made her decide to force her people to become cannibals. But forcing people to become cannibals was also the right thing to do. Was betrayed by everyone, including her treacherous brother and all the other traitors who didn’t appreciate her leadership.

Fanon!Octavia 2: A monstrous epitome of white supremacy, this character enjoys going around beating up various people of color just for kicks, enjoys cultural appropriation, and even decided to be born because she knew this would be an act of aggression against her MOC half-brother, whom she emotionally abused by her very existence.

Fanon!Abby: One of the show’s main villains, this character is incompetent and clueless but at the same time a vicious schemer, manipulating and exploiting the younger women in the show. (See above.) Can’t take responsibility, as seen by the fact that she didn’t blame herself for everything Octavia ever did. Messes things up because she still wants to mother her 18-year old daughter, which makes her annoying. At other times, pays more attention to trying to save her dying boyfriend than to trying to mother her 24 year old daughter who seems fine and able to take care of herself, which makes her a terrible mother.

Fanon!Lexa: The show’s main character and hero. Even though she was in just 16 episodes, didn’t join the show until halfway through season 2 and died 4 seasons ago, the show is still all about her. A pure cinnamon roll who never did anything wrong, the greatest leader and strongest fighter, able to single-handedly defeat all the bad guys, but also a visionary peacemaker who did the unprecedented action of doing what Clarke advised her to do. Actions like betraying her allies, throwing people off the top of a tower, letting her own people die, were all wise leadership choices and therefore morally right. (Anyone who feels differently is probably homophobic.) Possibly a woman of color (because of a mismatched foundation and/or because you can’t be a part of a technologically underdeveloped society and be white). Will come back in the series finale to save the day, in spite of having been dead and cremated 131+ years ago.

Fanon!Echo 1: The show’s central character since the start of season 5. An epitome of pure, 100% unadulterated evil, this character has no appealing, redeeming or just human qualities, but nevertheless, possesses an incredible screen presence that makes the fandom obsess over any second of her screentime and talk about every single thing she does or says (or even about her hairstyle) more than about anything else in the show.

Fanon!Echo 2: The strongest  and most badass of strong female characters, as seen in the fact that she is good at fighting and killing people and at carrying out other people’s orders (including that of her boyfriend’s). Has never been portrayed as a villain or done anything wrong that could possibly make any of the viewers dislike her - the only possible reason for anyone to dislike her is jealousy over her great, epic romance with Bellamy.

Fanon!Pike: Worst person ever, this villain was just racist towards Grounders (who are a race, see above) with no reason whatsoever and never had a sympathetic or tragic backstory to explain his views and decisions. He imagined that his people were in danger when in fact, everyone else was peaceful and tolerant and it was just him ruining everything. Invented a story about Azgeda being genocidal against his people and murdering the majority of them, including 15 children, right after they fell on Earth - which never happened because we didn’t see it. Somehow he manipulated everyone else into remembering that, too. Probably a cannibal and definitely a Nazi and Donald Trump 2.0, comparisons which are perfect because Pike is the epitome of racism because he not only killed Grounders, he executed a black guy by shooting him in the head. Strangely, Pike also looks like a black guy, but he can’t be one or this is unimportant, because using guns makes you white and only Grounders can be POC because they use medieval weapons.

Fanon!Roan: Clarke and Bellamy’s best friend. Spends all his time hanging out with them just because he likes them and really wants to see them get together. May be an Azgeda king or something, but that’s not important, because it’s not like he has political motivations for his actions. Super loyal to Clarke and never did anything like break alliances or kill his allies or march on Arkadia to attack her people or do any political scheming. Probably has a secret “Bellarke Forever!” tattoo.

[sleepynegress]

WATCHMEN thoughts from a black woman fan...

Thought I’d do a quick rundown on all the eps so far, because this show has so much to chew on... 

And TBH, I am starved for a perspective that isn’t a smug white dude yelling “I CALLED IT!!” (yeah, fool that’s what good storytelling does *purposely* lay out crumbs on the path!) or “ugh, too lib.” The fact that we have this wonderful internet or a mass forum, means we lose the organic first watch experience that I remember from back in the day. So, too many try to outsmart shows by cheating and then smugly pat themselves on the back for “getting it”.   I’m saying, the point isn’t the twist or the gotcha. The point is good storytelling, which this show does ably.  So relax. You don’t get a cookie for “calling it” and you won’t get lambasted as stupid for not seeing it.   Just. Enjoy. The show.   ANYWAY...  You know I gotta put it beneath a cut and bullet it because my scatter-brain lays out things easier that way....

First LINDELOF?!  I mean LOST was okay and now I feel like I need to make a beeline to The Leftovers, because acting, writing, visuals, plot, food for the brain... All. here. in a genre (which you know is my favorite) package.

I picked up a copy of WATCHMEN on a whim waaay back in 2006 (?) in a dusty used book store I used to frequent to just chill in my corner and read a stack.  And I remember having the exact same feeling reading it then *galaxy brain food entertainment goodness* as I’m having with this show...but sadly didn’t have with the movie.  The fact that people came away stanning the “heroes”?  Was a symptom of how wrong Snyder got it.

So, setting up this series sequel as a different type of hero deconstruction, using blackness, especially given how fandom swerves to ignore all the story cues to stan a white villain...is a BRILLIANT way to make certain the show keeps the essence of what WATCHMEN is about. Basically, Lindelof used blackness and race as his own Trieu empathy bomb for what WATCHMEN is actually about. It’s harder to stan Rorschach as a symbol for white supremacy

....I’m saying... white men ain’t supposed to be good at this... Hey, IDK maybe being Jewish helps...wow. he actually is handling the all the layers of black experience allegory and ancestral memory/trauma *soooo* damn well.

*whew!* So Yahya, is this gorgeous, amazingly smart black actor who is picking some interesting projects!!  He’s like MBJ, w/o the anime hotep taint, in terms of projects he’s picking. LOVED this reveal. 

Someone posted that they wanted that whole centuries of longing love cliche with a black woman centered... *whelp*  How about one better, where time don’t even exist??

It must be re-iterated that the work and thought put into all the easter eggs of connections is just so much hand-rubbingly, awesome, world-building and minutiae food for fans... and most especially and uniquely... “empathy” in the black experience... such as...

the existence of an actual 70′s blaxploitation movie called, and I shit you not: Abar, the First Black Superman

Her husband being Cal (as in Kal -El)

Laurie always thinking Cal is fine, because her subconscious knew!

Her blue dildo being from a company called Excalibur, --Ex. Cal Abar

Cal’s very straight conversation about atheism with the kids

Cal’s eternal calm

the much more resonant imbued meaning in Hooded Justice’s costume now that he’s actually black

the fact that this show went there, when it comes to specifically, white gays and a twist on that Paul Mooney quote “Everybody wanna be [in with] a nigga but don’t nobody wanna be a nigga.”

the latest with... intra-racial dynamics with non-white people, whiteness and assimilation being touched on with that flash of nostalgia-hazed memory of Angela seeing Will being bagged at the same moment as the bomber who killed her parents... which I think foreshadows both the common cause and complicated morality of Trieu’s ultimate cooperative plan with Will Reeves.

REALLY all of the nostalgia flashes have meaning...they are all narrative underlines for character motives and hints of what is to come.

UM!!! That elephant is such spot-on symbolism because the real Lady Trieu  was said to have ridden a white one, and because all the things they say about elephants and memory are true... 10 pound brains, people (but I did not like seeing an elephant in that state)

Okay... so back to the show: Looking Glass remains the most trustworthy of the whites on the show IMO.  Remember, he joined AFTER the White Night. And he has infiltrated the Kalvary, because one of the masks was missing... And purely because “I would like to see it” (.gif) I really hope they provide a full recount of how he dispatched the Kalvary in his bunker.

Laurie is my girl, with all her elder cynicism and remaining longing for her cosmic fuckboy...(and she should NOT be underestimated I KNOW she has a plan) but I think her feelings for the Dr. may cause a stumble or two (maybe that’s why she was slow getting up off the couch)

Angela remains a Regina King whose character has subverted the whole SBW thing by actually have a fully realized character beyond it (love, children, a damn life!) . HELL, we didn’t even *see it* fully until this last ep but yeah...man... she is the dream and nightmare of her grandfather.

I still really want to know what the adopted kids backgrounds are... I feel like of all the theories online...Everyone has forgotten them and given the heavy theme around fertility, cloning, reproduction, memory as empathy AND her son saying to Angela in the first damn ep. (I hit him because you wanted to hit him) etc... I think there may be more *there*-there. Okay... I’ve written enough for now... So, I’m just gonna call his a placeholder for any thoughts I may have forgotten, because I could do this all day.  I’ll add/edit later as I need to. That said, it bugs me so much that this fandom isn’t thriving as much as other lesser shows featuring black women.  Pleease get onboard with this show!!

I both liked and had complicated feelings about the dynamic between child Angela and Officer Jen (can’t wait to learn more about her) because what she saw in the girl, was the pain redirected into resilience and indifference to the violent end of the perpetrator, w/o a trial(!) mind you... which adds up to potential to be a good cop...*mmhmm*

Adrian Veidt is the least interesting aspect of the show for me, albeit weird and funny (I missed our boy Scar, in Jeremy Irons) his prison is surreal and imaginative and Tom and Sarah are both doing great jobs playing the dim imprints of empty-until-filled clones

Most think HE is Trieu’s father and I have to say what her mother-daughter said to Angela gives credence to that. I could see her having the same kind of conversation with Veidt and coming to a conversational space with Veidt’s plan for humanity. Also “D” is the first letter in “daughter”

[buzzdixonwriter]

Were The Beats On The Spectrum?

We make no bones of our unabashed love of the Beats here (Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs) nor do we whitewash their many sins and shortcomings (alcoholism, drug addiction, and wife killing to name just three of many).

We can see this is part and parcel of the same matrix, an attempt to deal with the pain of life in literary / spiritual / philosophical / chemical terms.

Addiction is a form of self-medication, an attempt to kill the pain.

When the pain can be identified (a broken leg, f’r instance), then with healing th need to kill that pain is gone.

People with no spiritual / emotional / mental pain in their lives do not become addicted to drugs when the physical pain is gone.

Why then were the Beats so chemically dependent?

A big clue comes in their very name.

Before there were beatniks, before there was the Beat Generation, there were the Beats.  It’s been said -- and with no serious degree of inaccuracy -- that the Beats as a literary movement consisted of everybody in Allen Ginsberg’s address book.

Well, not literally, of course, but Ginsberg was the drum major of the movement and in no small sense was the guy who promoted the Beats to the world and (like Stan Lee) himself in the process (unlike Stan, he proved far more of a creator in his own right).

But if Ginsberg provided the mouthpiece, Kerouac gave the voice that flowed through it.

Jack Kerouac was a John Steinbeck-like character who never felt in step with the rest of the 20th Century.

A working class poet, Kerouac never connected with the country around him and restlessly set off to find what he was looking for…even if he couldn’t tell you what it was.

There are several different stories about what was meant when they said “Beat” that vary on who tells the tale and when.

The conflation with the Beatitudes is lovely and sweet, and certainly those surviving Beats turned more towards this philosophy in their later wistful wisdom, but that’s a late ret-con to the name.

Beats as in a musical sense -- i.e., those seeking the rhythm of life -- is another charming analogy and certainly fits well with the Beats’ inclination to jazz (especially the experimental kind), but again, a late addition to the mythos.

No, to understand the meaning of the term -- and the nature of the Beats themselves --  we need to look back at Kerouac’s original explanation:  They called themselves “Beats” because they felt beat down by life.

Here’s where the swaggering John Wayne types start ridiculing and finger-pointing, sneering at the Beats as “pansies and perverts.”

What the John Wayne types fail to see is that in many ways the Beats proved far more tougher and fearless as they.

It’s easy to wiggle into a predetermined mold and gain herd immunity by acting the way society expects you to act.

It’s quite a different thing to shun that easy path and to constantly question society, relentlessly examining yourself to find out what it is that’s missing from your soul, what it is you need to find or do to fill that hole.

That the Beats never found what they were looking for is a fair assessment, likewise the observation that they were far from the first to muse on this.

But what sets them apart as the cultural breakthrough is that they were the first to get mainstream society to begin seriously questioning itself.

Not all, and not nearly enough, but certainly a tipping point, a moment when the genie could not be returned to the bottle (or the hypodermic).

That dawning of awareness helped move along societal change in so many ways.

For example, it would not only be untrue but ridiculous to claim the Beat movement had any direct influence on the civil rights movement, but the fact the Beats even existed and penetrated the public consciousness even in the form of grossly inaccurate satire meant the underlying ideas of the Beats also gained some exposure.

(This is akin to what I posted earlier about how Archie Bunker, far from undermining white supremacy and bigotry, gave it a voice and validation by simply being on TV.)

But the question we’re focusing on today is this:  Were the original Beats “beat” because they fell somewhere along the autism / Asperger spectrum?

I think a positive answer can be given.  While it’s impossible to accurately diagnose someone at a distance (be it time or space), we can say whether or not they displayed traits we find today in people along the spectrum.

There’s a lot of minor evidence (their tendency to develop early idée fixes or well documented hallucinations / altered consciousness experiences before turning to drugs and alcohol, not to mention highly unconventional day-to-day lifestyles), but the big one towering over the rest is their weariness, their feeling of being “beat” down by a society they couldn’t fully grasp (and that remained hostile to the Beats’ efforts to grasp it; self-awareness is not an ally of the culturally complacent). 

I have an autistic grandson as well as friends and family members along the Asperger’s spectrum.  I see in them many of the frustrations expressed by the Beats to the confusing world they found themselves in.

The Beats were not beat through any personal failings; the Beats were beat because they were a new generation, a mutation in the human psyche (or at least the American branch of same) that moved us out of one mode of thinking and into another.

In this the Beats were like the first stage of a giant rocket: Aiming for the stars but falling back to earth, yet sending others on to complete their mission.

Does this excuse their bad behaviors, the havoc and wrecked lives they left in their wake?  

No, of course not…

…but it does explain them.

Trapped without context in a world they couldn’t fit in, unable to adequately articulate their own longings, the Beats did the best they could, creating a new language and vocabulary and syntax, one that those who came after them could use as a foundation to build on.

And let’s not be unfair: While there had been previous expressions of the Beats’ longings (everyone from Diogenes to Thoreau to the original California nature boys of the late 19th / early 20 centuries), and while there were certainly other movements in the political and cultural spheres that acted like force multipliers for them, the beats toppled the first domino that lead to the Beat generation (i.e., those who were seized by the writings and ideas and imaginations of the original beats) to the beatniks (a borderline imitative-near-satirical movement based on Beat Generation influence) to the hippies (basically the beatniks with better clothes and drugs but no irony, totally buying into the Beats’ vibe though three generations removed) to the yippies (those peace & love types who took actual steps to bring it about) to the progressives and hipsters of today.

(And, yes, we would be remiss to not point out many 1967 hippies were really “plastics” i.e., phonies & hypocrites who liked playing hippie and getting stoned and / or laid on weekends then working 9-5 M-thru-F, phonies & hypocrites who as soon as the Vietnam War ended and they no longer faced the draft immediately dropped every altruistic and egalitarian value genuine hippies embraced to become cocaine snorting disco yuppies, and how those rat bastards made Reagan not only possible but downright inevitable and how their selfish “me-me-me-gimme all!” attitude fucked over the entire planet, culminating in the worthless sac of human excrement currently squatting in the White House, but chill, there’s a happy ending, the old Beat movement never really died, never really went away, and there’s a lot more progressives now sharing those ideals and visions and it ain’t gonna be easy, lord knows, but it ain’t impossible, either.)

Jack and Allen and Bill are like Moses of old: Lost and wandering for ages, finally catching a glimpse of the far distant Promised land, watching from the mountaintop as the generations they inspired move forth the embrace it.

  © Buzz Dixon

[gooseghoul]

make me dream bud, for the ask meme: Snape, Lupin and Lucius !

put 3 characters in my inbox and I’ll tell you who I’d slow burn/fake date/enemies to lovers with

thank you bud

Snape, Lupin and Lucius

putting this under a cut bc i accidentally wrote 3 feature length films of self insert fanfic.

honestly, lads, skip to the end for lucius. it’s the highlight of this post.

slow burn: snape.

so, it’s not that we’re not friends at school. bc we’d talk in potions (or, I’d talk and he’d glare), we’d trade transfiguration notes (he hated that I wrote everything mcgonagall said down), and he’d best me in defence (the only time I’d ever seen him smile). we weren’t friends, but we weren’t not not friends.

he went off the deep end his last two years in school. i’d still speak to him but didn’t seek him out. slytherin pride and all that. gotta stick together. gotta not get murdered by the dark lord.

he wasn’t the type to keep in touch post hogwarts. but with where he was headed in life, the most i was hoping for was that he’d have a “meh” opinion of me. so, if he was ever tasked with murdering me, he’d at least be somewhat quick about it.

the war ends and I run into him. he’s a mess. full mourning dress, looking a little bit queen victoria, absolutely brooding. don’t get me wrong, I can appreciate brooding. but man, sometimes you just need to pull yourself together. we’re not friends exactly. but he sees that i still see him as the angsty kid i went to school with and not the death eater he became. most other people have tainted views of him. i knew too much of his anger, too much of his teenage fear and hate to despise him. i’d seen him laugh in the common room with mulciber, in the courtyard with the girl whose death ended the war. i’d seen him that one christmas i’d stayed at hogwarts. seen him with no presents under the tree. a stocking empty.

how could i hate a kid i’d seen come to school with at the start of term bruises on his arms? i hated what he’d become, the direction he turned to, but as a slytherin i knew he had little choice. he didn’t have the means to say no. not that i’m sure he’d have wanted to. the boy was a bastard at times, cold and malicious, but he wasn’t evil. he didn’t have the heart to be evil.

he owled me every month from hogwarts. then, after a year, every fortnight. then every week. then every other day.

the month harry potter came to hogwarts i received no owls. no frantic floo calls. nothing but radio silence.

then he showed up at my doorstep unannounced, fire whiskey in hand, ranting about how the boy was just like his father. it was awful to listen to, but listen i did. because snape had been through this before: the torment at potter’s hands (although this time unintentional, possibly imagined), the need to fight back, to be drawn into something bigger. the cycle has begun again.

snape was cruel. ugly. an awful, vindictive man.

but i couldn’t shake that christmas morning from my mind. i couldn’t shake the sound of his laugh.

i’d see him in person more often. whenever he had a free weekend he’d floo in. mostly he complained about potter, but i tried to drag him away from that topic after a few weeks of nothing but anger. potions was a good bet, but even that devolved into how incompetent potter war.

so i put a “potter” jar on my mantelpiece and made snape pay a knut every time he even thought about the kid. after two weeks, the jar was half full and snape started insisting we meet in hogsmeade instead. neutral territory. easier for him. as far away from that damn jar as possible. but the point had been made. potter was mentioned no more.

i didn’t see him when the mark burnt black on his skin. not for a good week. then snape was tumbling into my hallway numb from the torment. in all the time i’d known him, he’d never been so quiet.

i lead him to my bed and he fell asleep there. i took the sofa. it was the first time he’d stayed the night. it wasn’t the last.

it was weird how it progressed. how it went from cups of tea wordlessly granted, to stolen looks, fingers lingering too long, touches that weren’t there before. he didn’t like me like that. didn’t love me like how he’d loved that girl from before. i knew that in my heart. knew i’d always be second best. knew he didn’t truly have it in him.

but i was there and one touch led to another. one barking laugh at something i’d read in the paper. one christmas morning spent away from the castle. one fire whiskey too many.

a year and a half of normal. of the something between us being more than friendship and slightly less than love.

then the end of harry potter’s sixth year. the end of dumbledore’s tenure. i couldn’t look at him. couldn’t speak to him. couldn’t touch him.

that last year I wish I could live again. my family and I were safe. though we weren’t death eaters we were purebloods, slytherins, good people who’d never gone out of our way to say anything about muggles. snape wasn’t part of that year. was part of that awful regime.

I regret it. now that Potter’s story came out. now that the truth of Severus Snape had reverberated throughout the wizarding world. even i, one of the people closest to him, who had known and loved him the longest out of all, had believed him a monster. but snape was dead. gone. and he had died for love. so confusing a concept that at times i didn’t think him capable of it.

(but the way he’d talked of potter. how he ranted and raved – that was love, wasn’t it? love of the mother, hatred of the son.)

he was dead but not completely. i see him there, in the flash of a student’s cloak; black like the mourning robes he never shed. there, in the biting remark spun in the air over a pint at the bar. and there, in the ugly sun which rises now over the wizarding world. it is a world not free from hate nor vitriol, but one recovering from a war which would have been fateless without him.

fake date: lupin. sirius black cannot stand anything slytherin. to him, understandably, slytherin is the epitome of all that is wrong with the world. certainly all that is wrong with hogwarts. sirius black hates the fact that lupin is on civil terms with me and actually kind of friends. we sit together in potions. while we’re not the best students, slughorn thinks we work well together and refuses to separate us.

so, The Prank has just happened. I’ve no idea what went on, but that weird Snape kid in my year looks shaken up. Sirius Black looks actively guilty. And Remus Lupin is angry. I don’t think I’ve seen Lupin angry in my life. Lupin is so angry he misses our study group, and almost puts the flobberworm mucus in the potion too early. but he doesn’t care that the potions could have gone horrifically wrong.

a week later he finally comes to the library. i ask him what’s wrong but he doesn’t say anything. eventually he hisses, “Black did something stupid. so fucking stupid. he doesn’t even see what he did wrong.”

he’s calling Sirius ‘Black’. Sirius Black is never anything but Sirius.

“I hate him. I’m never speaking to him again. I wish I could just— I wish I could show him how awful— do something that would make him see—”

he looks at me, a gleam in his eyes. “M. you’re a slytherin.”“er”“You’re a pureblood.”“eeeerrr”his eyes are beginning to look a bit manic. “you’re friends with snape”“friends is a strong word for knowing the kid’s name.”

“M. I need you to know that I mean this completely platonically. But I trust you and I think this could work. Will you be my girlfriend?”

platonic? girlfriend? “remus, you know—“

“sirius hates everything about you.” (thanks bud). “not you specifically. but everything you embody. pureblood. blood supremacy. voldemort”

“okay, listen, mate. just because I’m slytherin doesn’t mean I’m up for maiming some muggles.”

“no. but sirius thinks you are. he thinks you’re all the same.”

I think of regulus in the years below, and how, yeah regulus is a blood supremacist like most of us. but he’s not that.

“right. i don’t see what this has to do with platonic dating.”

“It’ll show Sirius how much he’s hurt me. that I’ve turned to you out of all my friends. that he didn’t even know I’d been thinking of you.”

so, Lupin is great. but also sometimes, just sometimes, he’s a bit of a dick. but you know what, if remus lupin wants to date you you do not say no. even if it’s platonic, strictly revenge dating. even if you think that maybe lupin should just talk through his feelings (his weirdly passionate feelings) with Sirius.

“fine. let’s do it.”

Sirius Black is pissed off. we start off small. walking to classes together. stopping by the gryffindor table to say hi to Lupin. we even let ourselves be caught holding hands in the corridor. how scandalous.

the slytherins corner me and ask what the fuck i’m doing with a gryffindor. so i tell them: I’m doing this to bring the blood traitor Sirius Black down a peg. I want to destroy him. Snape doesn’t look at me anymore. but honestly, his impact on my life was so little that I’d barely notice had one of the Black girls not pointed it out.

we’re in the corridor one day before lupin’s prefect patrol. stood by the gryffindor common room just talking while lupin waits for his partner (lily?) to arrive. lupin’s holding my hand, thumb running over my knuckles absent mindedly. no-one’s around, but you have to put the effort in, right? you have to believe what you’re doing to act it well, right?

“bear with me” lupin says looking behind me. and kisses me.

it’s weird. but maybe…. M, maybe you’re not as gay as you thought you were.

there’s a horrified sound behind you. a hissed word and a door (portrait?) slamming shut. but all that exists in the world is remus lupin.

he pulls away after a moment. utters a single word fuck before kissing me again.

after hogwarts we marry and have 15000000000 cats and my family is super rich so that skinny boy never has to starve again and we build a werewolf bunker under our country estate and all is well. (until his two best friends are murdered and their child survives them but grows up abused and not know who he is but y’know we can gloss over that part.)

enemies to lovers: lucius.

i was a couple years above draco at school. the malfoys hated my family as we were both slytherins and blood traitors (lmao at me pretending i am in anyway a pureblood). post war the malfoys are trying to redeem themselves. draco and i go to the same university (st andrews school of magic), we run into each other in the classics dep and start talking. we become slow friends and i stay at his house over summer. his mum’s house, bc lucius and narcissa divorced post-war.

lucius is there one day, sees me, spits some vitriol and storms out. there’s a number of awful meetings with lucius, but draco isn’t willing to put his parent’s desires above his own anymore. bc he is not his parents. turns out, lucius resents me bc my family and i were good slytherins, so we didn’t get fucked over post-war. lucius and i have a number of mr darcy / elizabeth bennett style arguments with draco bashing his head against the table.

the next summer, i spend a couple weeks with draco at his dad’s place. there, lucius reveals he’s not a complete cock and is actually trying to repent but doesn’t know how. i’m kind of like, hey, so maybe this guy isn’t as bad as he seems. hey, draco, your dad’s kind of cool once you get past the whole being a death eater thing. slowly lucius starts spending more time around the house when draco, me and our friends are there. lucius starts talking to me like i’m a human being and not a rat.

hey, draco, you know your dad has great hair right? you know he’s actually kind of handsome if we ignore how stress has aged him. hey, draco —

cue a scene straight from clueless. one of lucius malfoy’s albino peacocks (because he smuggled some out from the manor during the divorce) walks behind me, a fountain suddenly starts spouting water.

“oh my god, draco. i’m in love with your dad.”

…

…

…

draco says, “no fucking shit you doorknob”

i don’t do anything bc lucius is a dick. he’s always been a dick. i’ve hated his family since before i could talk. he’s hated mine since before i was born. but he’s also….. kind of a dilf? draco thinks the whole thing is really weird, but also he’d rather me than some of the people who’ve been trying to court lucius. so like, he starts trying to hint at a possible relationship.

hint is a strong word.

“hey, dad, M would be a great step mum right?” “hey, dad, doesn’t M look like she could do with a sugar daddy to help her off her feet. if only we knew someone who had a lot of money.” “oh, hey, dad. don’t we have lots of money?” “hey, dad, i can’t be her sugar daddy bc I’m too young. the laws of sugar daddies disallow any relationship between us. if only there were another single man in this family with access to our fortune.”

meanwhile, the malfoy’s most recent house elf is trying to bash draco’s head against the table.

i get invited to the malfoy’s christmas party. i’m working on my postgrad and draco has just finished his first semester of honours.

there’s mistletoe. lucius is standing next to me. but there’s mistletoe. at the christmas party. at the christmas party where lucius is standing next to me. under the mistletoe.

we kiss. really awkwardly bc i’m about 5 gin and tonics into the night but also really eager. bc shit son. shit son. this universe’s M is str8 as heck for the absolute daddy that is Lucius Malfoy.(draco is head bridesmaid at our wedding. a single albino peacock is best man. it is a beautiful, if not visually confusing, affair.)

[xtruss]

Beware of Any War On Terror Fought by a Terrorist Nation

— Sunday, October 3, 2021 | Source: Exile in Happy Valley | By Nicky Reid

January 6 was a day that will live on in infamy, an unparalleled assault on the precious vital organs of our exceptional democracy that this great nation is still reeling to recover from, or at least so I'm told. According to the mainstream media and heavy hitters in both parties, this thing was worse than 9/11, Pearl Harbor, and Showgirls rolled together. I'm sorry dearest motherfuckers, believe it or not, I'm really not trying to be a contrarian bitch here, but I just don't see it. From where I was sitting, the whole shit-show looked more like a glorified soccer riot for pissed off diabetic boomers than any kind of coordinated assault on what passes for a democracy in this shithole country. A weird grab bag of QAnon imbeciles, Proud Boy informants, and Archie Bunker armchair racists got all hopped up on the insane rhetoric of their one term demagogue and stormed the Capitol without a game plan that amounted to much more than fuck-stuff-up-for-Donald!

Our heroes in the Capitol Hill Police, with a few over publicized exceptions, did everything but hold the door open for these out of breath hooligans and the majority of the fatalities were caused by the unruly horde's own stampede. The only clear cut homicide was an unarmed woman shot by a cop. Even the FBI, who never misses an opportunity to scare the public into approving more funding for another boondoggle, conceded that this clusterfuck was an unplanned fiasco, and considering that the Proud Boys are basically on loan to the Bureau, they oughta know.

All being said, the whole ordeal was more of a humiliating spectacle that showed the country how flimsy state power truly is than any kind of white power coup d'etat. But the imagery of weekend militiamen aimlessly stalking the halls of power played perfectly into a dream that the newly elected president, Joe Biden, coddled well before dementia rendered him a babbling nincompoop. A dream that formed the foundation for the Patriot Act. A dream to use the threat of the radical right in this country as a convenient excuse to bring the War On Terror home. The notion of domesticating America's horrific foreign policy should be terrifying enough even if the universally loathsome neo-Nazi's of this nation were the real target. But the published White House Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism, which Biden tasked his National Security Council with authoring a week after January 6, has made it startlingly clear that this is not the case.

The document, released in June, doesn't just single out the far right but casts a disturbingly wide net for its potential targets to include everything from animal rights activists to the dangerously broad scourge known simply as "anti-government extremists." Perhaps even more startling is the Department of Homeland Security's related Center for Countering Domestic Extremists, which has announced its ominously vague intention to "deradicalize" suspected thought criminals like you and me before we even become terrorists by using the Rhodes Scholars in local law enforcement along with mental health services to surveil those deemed to be socially isolated or mentally ill.

Lets call this what it is, a federal booster shot for America's already bloated police state, and judging by this white supremacist institution's track record, the real targets will never be the Blue Lives Matter Mafia that made up the mob on January 6. Like always, the true targets of government domestic warfare will be the groups that pose the greatest threat to its malignant power; pissed off people of color and their radical white allies. I know this because I've heard this story a few times before and it always has the same ending.

Communism was J. Edgar Hoover's excuse to the suits in Washington for his counter-insurgency program, Cointelpro, and he picked the perfect scapegoat for the height of the Cold War. But communism was always a secondary target at best for Hoover, a renowned white supremacist in his own right. Hoover's number one target was always the Civil Rights Movement and its more militant progeny in Black Power. Over two decades, that lumpy old sack of bastard launched a covert total war against everyone from the Freedom Riders to the Black Panther Party.

The FBI tapped phones, planted evidence, and locked up peace loving radicals for decades on phony charges. They attempted to black mail Martin Luther King into committing suicide with evidence of his infidelities and actively fomented violence within radical organizations leading to the deaths of promising voices for revolutionary change like Bunchy Carter and Malcolm X. By the end of the sixties they were terrorizing movements as diverse as the Youth International Party and the American Indian Movement and setting up gangland executions like that of Fred Hampton and Mark Clark.

Cointelpro was the original war on terror, and it rapidly devolved into a bloodthirsty jihad against any American who dared to challenge the status quo in a country at war with the third world. On September 11 that war was delivered back to our doorstep with the blowback at the Pentagon and the World Trade Center. This tragedy could have been a teachable lesson in the karma that comes with an imperial foreign policy. George W. Bush decided instead to use the trauma caused by these events to double down on the war machine and launch his own war on terror. The official target of this new forever war was radical Islam. But this boogeyman was largely just an excuse for America to level any third world regime that refused to bow to our quest for international hegemony.

Of coarse all of these regimes just happened to be lead by charismatic if less than heroic men of color like Muammar Gaddafi and Bashar al-Assad who attempted to offer their region alternatives to western dependence. In the most sickening of ironies, the US chose to destabilize these secular strongmen with the very jihadists we were supposed to be over there fighting. Our new scapegoat, radical Islam, ended up more powerful than it ever was before, giving us a perpetual excuse to fight these wars forever. J. Edgar would've been proud if he weren't already burning in hell.

And so it goes. Each generation's new war on terror relies on scapegoating whichever group happens to be most loathed by the public during its respective era. In the 1960's it was the commies. In the 2000's it was radical Islam. Today it's white supremacists. But the scapegoat is never the true target and the true target is usually the same, Black and Brown anti-colonialists, both at home and abroad. Biden's war on domestic terror didn't begin with the white riot of January 6. Hell, it didn't even begin with Biden. Biden's government wide strategy to reign in anti-government extremism is nearly identical to Bill Barr's Task Force under Donald Trump to do the very same. I don't believe this is a coincidence. Joe Biden made the unusual decision to keep Barr's point man on this operation, Christopher Wray, as director of the FBI. This is the same Christopher Wray who infamously testified before congress that "Antifa is a real thing." before railing against the scourge of "violent anarchist extremists."

25% of the FBI's current domestic terror investigations are related to the George Floyd Uprisings of America's 2020 summer of rage, and I believe that this was the cataclysmic event that truly provoked our new war on domestic terror, not some sad partisan riot at the Capitol, but the largest domestic uprising since the days of Cointelpro. An uprising that torched police stations and inaugurated anarchist autonomous zones in their place. An uprising that brought everyone together, from inner city Blacks to suburban anti-fascists to rural Boogaloo Bois. An uprising too popular for Joe Biden to declare war on, so he needed a scapegoat so loathsome that no sane human being could possibly defend it.

Don't believe the hype, dearest motherfuckers. The new war on domestic terrorism has nothing to do with combatting white supremacy. If it did, it wouldn't be fought by the American government, the greatest source of white supremacy the world has ever known. From this source, any war on terror should be considered just another terrorist attack.

Peace, Love, & Empathy- Nicky/CH

[talesmaniac89]

The Mexican Standoff

Summary: Reader & Winchesters (Friendship). The reader sets out to prove to the Winchesters that she’s the most badass hunter in the bunker.

Word Count: 2872

Triggers: None

Y/N = Your name

---

It was time. 

The “Annie get your gun”-esque verbal battle of anything you can do I can do better had gone on for far too long and it was time to find out which one of you were the actual undisputed champion of ass kickings. Which, of course, was you… The boys just didn’t know it yet.  

For the last few weeks Dean, Sam and you had taken turns basically bragging about your skills with a weapon and all three of you seemed to believe you were the true reincarnation of Billy the Kid, with the two others just being cheap souvenir shop imitations. Sure you knew that you were the ultimate fucking badass, but the Winchesters seemed to need a refresher course. So yeah, it was definitely time.

That morning, fueled by the almighty power of one-upping and a cup of coffee so strong it was a miracle it didn’t burn through the cup, you’d snuck out of the bunker to collect the three weapons you’d stashed outside two days earlier. Dropping by the all night diner to get your victory meal for later whilst you were out. ‘Cause there was no better way to rub your victory in the Winchester boys’ faces than to do so with powdered donuts.  

Before even Sammy had deigned it a reasonable time to get up, you’d placed a colourful Nerf gun and a handful of bullet darts outside of each Winchester’s bedroom door. Accompanied by a nice little note made from newspaper cutouts telling them, quite poetically if you’d say so yourself, to “Bring it bitches”. Ooooh yeah, it was definitely time to set the record straight.

You’d been planning your little wild west standoff for a few days by then. The two brothers you hunted with were just as ready to one-up each other as they were you. But being brothers they also stood up for each other. Meaning that usually it was your shooting skills that were pulled into question. Even though both of them kept dropping their damned guns during hunts and you had an iron grip on yours. And so, you’d developed this little plan to whoop their asses and once and for all show them that you were the ultimate gunfighter, up there with John Wayne and Clint Eastwood.

You’d even found the perfect place to put your trophy, ‘cause of course you’d bought a trophy. Bragging rights were good and all, but they weren’t as visually pleasing as a big ass trophy that pronounced you the ultimate ass kicker. Sure, the trophy was one of those cheap plastic ones, and the only one in the store that fit was a soccer one that said “best shot”, but hell.. You’d take it.

After ninjaing your way over to their doors and leaving your little love note/challenge letter, you’d snuck back into your room like you were a goddamn cat burglar to get ready for what promised to be a day of you kicking Winchester ass. 

Hell you’d even gotten the Rambo look down by adding a headband to your dark jeans and tank top combination and using your makeup to add just a touch of warpaint. Warpaint stripes were after all the new blush, Vogue just hadn’t caught up with the times yet.

Sneaking back into the library you found yourself a spot where you could easily spot any incoming enemy attacks, yet still safely retreat to another room when necessary. And then… Then you waited.

---

“Hey! No shooting before I’m ready Dean!” Sam’s grumpy voice echoed through the hallway and over to where you were still hiding. Ok, so at some point you’d gotten up and grabbed yourself a bite to eat and something to drink, cause the boys had slept in, but you’d mainly been lying in wait. Crouching down you smirked as you listened to the slightly muted back and forth as the two boys decided on a momentary truce until they could get out of the exposed hallway.

Oh, it was on.

Grabbing your gun you focused on the door. Watching and waiting until Sam came in the door. Dean was nowhere to be found however. Most likely the older hunter probably decided to head off to another part of the bunker. Staying patient you waited until Sam was more or less out in the open in the room and looking around with the Nerf gun in his hand resting by his hip instead of raised into firing position. Easy shot.

Straightening up a little you fired a quick shot at the hunter. Unfortunately just missing him as the big guy somehow was graced with the reflexes of a cat though at his size he shouldn’t have been able to move that quickly and smoothly. Diving behind the couch Sam groaned as your laughter filled the library.

“What’s this all about (Y/N)?” Sam called out behind the couch. Ah, cute little Sammy, always the negotiator. Wouldn’t work this time though, oh no… This was deadly serious.

“Proving a point Sammy,” You sing-songed as you kept low and silent, moving slightly for Sam to not have a clear feel of where you were hiding. With your eyes on the couch where the big guy was not fully hiding you kept the brown mop of hair that peeked out on top in your line of sight as you moved silently towards your next hiding place. “You’ve been makin’ fun of my skills with a gun for too long. Payback’s a bitch and I’m her right hand woman,”

“Alright, fair point, though we all know I’m the actual best shot in the bunker,” Sam’s voice lost the tired lilt it had held and you could hear the grin in his voice as he accepted the challenge head on now that he knew the stakes. “But why did you have to give me the pink gun? And why are you dressed like Rambo?”

“‘Cause I thought it’s match your pretty hair Sammy, and the Rambo look suits me,” You purred, laughing and rolling out of the way as the hunter tried to use your voice to take aim and shoot in your direction. Missing you by a mile. Rolling back onto the balls of your feet you ran around the corner and headed straight for the garage, that place was a damned labyrinth of old classic cars. And most likely where you’d find Dean.

As you rounded the corner you knew Sammy had the same idea and could hear him follow you on those unfairly long legs of his. Making a split second change in your plan you slipped into one of the more or less unused and dark rooms in the bunker and plastered yourself up against the wall until you heard the big guy hurry past. No need for you to be shot in the back that early on. The battle for supremacy had just begun.

Your little change in plan and strategy seemed to pay off almost immediately as you heard Sammy groan from down the hall. Followed by Dean’s childish laughter as it bubbled over and echoed against the concrete walls of the bunker.

“Traps are against the rules Dean” Sam’s voice made the big guy really sound like the whiny little brother as he raised his voice to be heard over big bro’s laughter. Choking back a laugh you snuck closer to the open garage door to have a look at what had happened. 

Keeping close to the wall to keep out of sight, yet get a clear enough view of where Sam was half hiding behind a car, you took in the scene in the garage. The space in front of the door was a mess of overturned cans and wrenches littering the floor right next to where Sammy was hiding.

So, Dean was playing dirty. Good to know.

“There’s no rules in war Sammy. Survival of the fittest,” Dean laughed back, making it easy for you to pinpoint the hunter’s location behind the classic Camaro further into the garage. Damn it, he was just out of your range. But maybe…

Taking advantage of the brother’s bickering you managed to sneak around the edge of the door and follow the line of cars parallel to where the guys were acting like, well, brothers… Damn, screw Cat Woman, you should get your own movie and action figure combo. You were killing it at this whole sneaking around like a ninja thing.

Reaching your desired location you allowed yourself a quick peek over the hood of the car you were hiding behind to ensure that the two hunters hadn’t moved. The back of Dean’s head was in clear view. Smirking you raised your gun and took aim, missing by just a few inches. Damn it.

“Hey! Sneaking up on me like that is unfair (Y/N)!” Dean called out as he realised he was surrounded on both sides by his brother and you. Crouching lower so that you could no longer see his head.

“No rules Dean, you said so yourself!” You called back with a happy laugh. Before relying on your speed to get you out of what could end up being a bad situation and sprinting towards the other door in the large garage, easily avoiding the dart bullets the boys tried to hit you with until you were finally out of their reach. “Three hits guys! First to get three hits in wins!” You called over your back before sliding in behind the car closest to the other garage door.

--- 

After close to two hours of playing acting war in the Men of Letters bunker you each had two hits under your belts. The boys and you getting more desperate by the minute to get that final shot in and win the battle. Which was what had brought you all into the library where you’d ended up in the current situation.

It was a real Mexican standoff, like something ripped straight out of a typical spaghetti western, as the three of you stared each other down doing your best Clint Squint impression with Nerf guns aimed in a triangle formation. Your gun pointed towards Sammy, whilst Sam had his gun aimed straight at Dean, and Dean, in turn, had you in his sights. Sure, you knew things could either stay in the damned standoff for ages, or, both boys could choose blood over friendship and aim in your direction. Unfortunately, with the latter being a very likely option you knew you had to act.

Though you knew you still had time to formulate a plan. After all, neither Winchester wanted to give up the chance to win the fight, and whichever dart hit you first would be declared the winner if they did turn on you. Yeah, it was a bad situation, but you’d been planning for days and had of course thought of a way out of situations like this. You just needed to get the boys talkin’ first.

“So, it’s come to this,” You held back the childish giggle that threatened to follow the movie cliche out of your mouth. With a raised eyebrow and a practised smirk you let your eyes travel from Sam to Dean without taking your gun off of Sam.

“It sure has, and it’s ending now,” Dean played easily into your hand with a grin as he kept his gun aimed at you without pulling the trigger.

“Shoot me (Y/N) and I’ll shoot Dean, it’s all down to who has the fastest reaction speed,” Sam shot in, not one to be outdone as his eyes flashed to you before refocusing on Dean.

“Why don’t you boys just put your guns down, I think we all know who’s going to win this little fight,” You teased, knowing your words would have the opposite effect on the two hunters. Pride and stubbornness were occupational hazards and often the best weapons in your arsenal as hunters. Kept you alive just about as often as if got you into trouble anyway.

“Oh no sweetheart, I could stay here all day,” Dean winked at you as he changed his grip on the gun, as if the little move was supposed to underline his ability to stay in the locked down fight the whole day.

“You forget darling, I was up before you. I’ve eaten, had a rest and and all the time in the world to grab a coffee or two. You could get tired, thirsty or hungry… All I know is, one of you will give up way before me,” You teased back as you put your hand down by your hip, careful to play it off as sassy self confidence to throw the guys off of the scent of what you really had planned. True, you’d had time to eat, and to plan. You’d even had time to prepare an extra little hidden surprise in your waistband. But they didn’t need to know that. 

“Food is for the weak, slows ya down,” Dean shot back to murmured agreement from his younger brother. Neither Winchester seemingly reacting to your hand on your hip as their eyes stayed locked on the colourful plastic weapons that were aimed their way.

“Oh honey, I wasn’t just talking about food and caffeine. I was talkin’ about time,” You grinned. Your words were designed to be vague enough to confuse the boys yet put them on the defensive as you stood your ground. To let you take your time to ensure you could easily get your little trump card out without fumbling with it as well as use your surroundings to your advantage without tripping . 

That would’ve been totally uncool.

“Time?” The question had barely left Sam when you saw your chance to turn the battle around of the guys. Bringing your foot out you hooked it into the closest library chair and pushed it towards Dean as you pulled the little water gun out of your waistband and soaked the two guys with a happy laugh before jumping out of the way as two Nerf darts came zooming past you.

“Hey! That’s cheating!” Sam called out as he wiped water from his face. Gun clearly aimed at where you were crouching behind the couch.

“And water guns don’t count. Y’ still have to shoot one of us one more time to win,” Dean shot in, clearly not ready to concede the battle to you.

“All is fair in love and war boys, oh and, Sammy, be a sweetheart and do me a favour... Look down,” You purred as you stayed hidden behind the couch with your two guns at the ready. Hell, it might be cheating, but you preferred to call it street smarts. No one went into battle empty handed after all.

“Shit,” Sam’s groaned curse was enough to let you know that the Nerf dart you’d shot towards the guy at the same time the water gun had gone off in his face had hit it’s target and was resting by Sam’s feet. Yeah. The battle was yours. “That was a cheap shot (Y/N),” Sam complained from behind the couch. 

“Doesn’t matter, I won and the trophy is mine,” You laughed as you went to stand up from behind the couch now that the battle was won and you’d come out victorious like you knew you would.

“Wait? There’s a trophy? If I knew there was a trophy I would’ve taken this much more seriously,” Dean whined as he looked at you, Nerf gun still raised even though the battle was clearly over. “I demand a redo! Best out of three!”

“Come on now Dean, no one likes a sore loser,” You laughed as you walked over to the guys again with a shit eating grin. “I won, fair and square… Well, maybe not fair, but who cares about semantics anyway,”

“I agree with Dean. There should be a rematch. And no extra guns this time (Y/N),” Sam backed up his big brother as they both stares at you with fake anger softened by the childish glee in their eyes. 

Neither man seemed ready to give up on your game of war, and hell, they might be sore losers, but they were your losers, and you loved them enough to give them a few more chances to get their asses kicked by you.

“Alright, alright boys. I can see you’re aching to be utterly humiliated by my awesome gun-toting skills,” You chuckled as you crouched down to pick up your discarded Nerf gun dart. “But! Let’s eat first. I picked up doughnuts when I was out this morning, and I need another cup of coffee. Whaddya say?” You interrupted the back and forth your words would’ve started with a laugh as the two Winchesters looked at each other with a shrug.

“Ok, a truce for powdered sugar and coffee, but then it’s deadly serious (Y/N),” Dean agreed as Sam nodded along, both boys probably starving after running around for two hours.

“Oh, bring it sweetheart,” You grinned as you jokingly pushed into the hunter on your way past him to the kitchen. A quick brunch break for sugar and caffeine, then it was time… Again.

That cheap plastic trophy would be yours.

Forever tagged: @auszimbo @upon-a-girl @gallifreyansass @mogaruke @skybinx-blog @delisp

[superdupersketcher-booper]

there, I colored something.

A sort-of completed drawing of my favorite little man💕 (ITS ACTUALLY GOOD, OMG-)

Oh yeah. Context:

NAH FAM, not yet. It’s not even finished~

You’re just gonna have to WAIT for me to finish it (or DIE TRYING) >:3

[stephtastrophe]

I watched The 100 season 4 episode 9 “DNR” on Wednesday and it was really awesome!

They tried to get Jasper and company to not let themselves rot and die in Arkadia whilst the others seek shelter in the well, fallout shelter or whatever it is. They were gonna blow the door until Jasper showed them he had written DNR on his hand for “do not resuscitate” (wow, I just spelled that so wrong until the dictionary changed it lol, if I’d thought harder I probably could’ve figured out how to spell it myself but meh) and Bellamy said they should basically just let them go out how they wanted to. Bellamy is such a good friend! :3

Octavia was living out in the sticks with Ilian, sleeping with him and working out on the farm, propagating or some such something lol. I just wanted to use that word and sound fancy lol. Then some of his crew or whatever came over and told her to speak, and reckoned she wouldn’t because then they’d hear her accent, pretty much correct on that. So, what did she do? decide to go 100% psycho bitch on them lot and kill them. Because ... psycho killer, qu'est-ce que c'est lol. I literally said that at the time lol. It was just so appropes lol. She really does enjoy killing far too much. She’s one crazy bitch, but she must fuck so good (so appropes) cause guys keep sleeping with her lol. Then I think she just like left. Seems about right for her, fuck a boy, kill some peeps then just leave and be like “fuck y’all” lol.

Clarke tried to become the next, night blood Queen, whatever they call it ... I’m drawing a blank, so many terms in this show I keep forgetting them lately and they keep changing them! Anyway ... she was trying to stop a war between Roan and Indra by doing so but Roan seemed to want the war and got her mom Abby to come and tell them all she became a night blood through the power of science, how else did they think that she suddenly became one? by magic? what a bunch of idiots lol. So they decided she couldn’t became Queen whatever.

Bellamy said goodbye to poor Jasper and Monty said goodbye to his girlfriend, I really have no clue what her name is and was gonna try and figure it out from IMDb but then decided I cba lol. But he was just joking, he went back and decided to die with her there, sly boy lol. She seemed happy about it.

Raven stroked out yet again and started seeing Becca, who told her she should go to space and duh, not come back, she should just space walk and die in the cold vast infinite space and die beautifully I guess. Freeze to death because it’s more fun I guess. Or something. 

Murphy and Emori thought they’d got left behind when told to gather sciencey things, but eventually the two came back for them and Murphy said goodbye to Raven forever. Because Raven’s in spaceeeeeeeeee~ not Bowie lol. I keep thinking of too many songs that relate to this episode lol. It’s fun though xD

Roan and Indra were gonna have a battle for supremacy of who could go in the bunker or whatever, a one on one battle to see who wins the war.

Then who comes strolling back in, presumably to be Indra’s fighter, but psycho killer qu'est-ce que c'est Octavia ... what a surprise. She’s too crazy and psycho for her own good, legit. I’m surprised they haven’t decided they have to Lenny her and take her to a field and shoot her tbh. They kinda really should, before she starts something of epic proportions between the factions which I am quite surprised she hasn’t already tbh.

Bellamy even look like “oh God, she’s back” - I think he’s starting to see how bad his own sister is. I bet he’ll shoot her in the back for her own good soon. He should. She’s just so outta control nowadays.

I can’t wait to watch the next episode and see what happens! who will win?! (not you decide lol)

Bellamy Blake // Bob Morley and Roan // Zach McGowan <3

[veryrealimagination]

Two Alphas Make an Omega Weapon

Sadly, this one isn’t the Following. It keeps wanting to make Sebastian Shaw and Bobby Drake father and son. The mother is Emma Frost. I have a complete logical argument based on the combination of their powers and how Sebastian would have found out and what he plans to do now that he knows about Bobby.

The full idea is, just after X2, Bobby gets kidnapped and wakes up with Sebastian Shaw talking about how he wants to get to know his son. Emma, who gave him up to protect him, reluctantly goes and finds Magneto, who then alerts Charles because there’s no way he wouldn’t tell him about Shaw. They then have to work together (again and in such a short amount of time) to find Bobby and stop Shaw’s true intention. Turning Bobby into a living weapon, one that he can control and use for mutant supremacy.

And the title on the post was what I was considering for the story title. In comic canon, Frost and Shaw are both Alpha level mutants, but Bobby Drake is a Marvel Confirmed Omega Level Mutant.

At the beginning of her powers, Emma, while being her parents' good little girl, would end up touching her Mother's friends. Hands on her shoulder or light hugs that were common with their position. First, she would hear their thoughts, about her perfect behavior and quiet temperament. Then, at certain times, she's heard something else. It wasn't a full thought, like someone putting together a picture and words. Sometimes it was sounds, low thumps or muffled voices. Repeats of conversations. It was later on that she would see the women with enlarged abdomens. She recently learned about pregnancy, how women carried children until it was able to live without instantly dying. Those echoes, shadows of thoughts, those must have been the child's first attempt at thinking.

When she kept practicing and expanding her telepathy, the baby's first attempts were still hard to pick up. Later ones were easier. Fuller. They still couldn't see or form pictures, but they were forming their own thoughts instead of repeating what they've heard. She listened to children learn that they were already with their Mother, start calling out to her. Sometimes, they got responses, the mothers subconsciously reacting.

The next time she heard echoes, she was hunched over a toilet in the latest place they were using. It was a month after Cuba and they had moved between three places before settling her. Even this was temporary, according to Lensherr. They couldn't stay and allow Charles to find them, or anyone else. She wanted to fall asleep and stay that way for a month. There had to be defensible places that they could bunker down for a month. Scout for new recruits and grow.

It took a few minutes to realize that she was hearing the conversation with Mystique from yesterday all over again. Muffled, partial words and several things muddled. She picked up the complaints well enough, and her side was much clearer than Mystique's.

For a brief second, she thought her powers had expanded. She thought about the young women that had joined in, wondered if they had gone and gotten knocked up while they were trying to fight for superiority. Then she had a brief thought about Magneto and Mystique before dismissing it. Another echo came up, repeating a thought that she had earlier, about Magneto and her thought that the man was queer for the other telepath. It was clear, repeated from her own head, and that made her realize something grave.

She was pregnant.

Her first, and pressing, reaction was to find someone that could perform the procedure. There was no way that she could carry, and then care for a child period. Her own family had provided a wonderful education on how not to raise children: being extremely strict, controlling, and hateful without coping mechanisms. She still didn't have a template on how to do the opposite. Few around her had a better idea on how. Raven was raised around Charles. Angel ran from her father. Azazel was condemned a demon from birth. Riptide when he first demonstrated his powers in his home. Erik, well, she didn't think about that one for long. The little time he did have with his family was painted in agony and sadness. There was no way that they could 'deal' with handling a baby while attacking government agents and moving quickly.

Emma had also never even contemplated pregnancy. When someone had told her about birth control, she immediately contacted a doctor to be in the first testing phase. She had seen her Mother's friends, complaining about kicking and swollen feet, eating strange things. Biology and anatomy explained, in detail, what happened to a woman's body when she went through pregnancy. The implantation, cell division, morning sickness, the womb growing to accommodate, the changes in diet to keep one from dying. Everything that could go wrong during the nine month gestation and then the labor to get the child out. No telling the complications that would come from her telepathy or her secondary mutation. How would one push out a child while in diamond form? What could happen if the child connected with her telepathy? What happened if the child showed telepathy while in the womb? No, the thought of going through that had firmly set in her mind that she would not allow herself to become pregnant.

And yet, here she was.

Was it even possible for her to get the procedure? Would her body try to protect her and stop it? Would it try to protect the child? With the bout of sickness passed, she forced herself up and rinsed out her mouth before exiting to the room that she had claimed. Azazel and Riptide had a room two doors down. The girls had the one right next to her. Their leader insisted on a room farther away.

Finding a doctor would be first priority. Finding a doctor that could work with her mutation limitation would be complicated. She could think about the complications after she took a nap.

-

Figuring out that she had roughly conceived about two months before their current situation, she started planning trips to a 'clinic'. Her first thought was to still try and go through with a procedure. Even the complications with her mutation didn't deter her. She could not come up with the ability to care for a child. There would be no sudden realizations that she would become a Mother. She would not back out of the newly born Brotherhood, nor leave the others helpless. No, not for her.

Unfortunately, there were not mutant doctors. <i>Yet,</i> she noted. There would be soon. Hopefully. The child started parroting 'yet' back to her. It had taken on a voice from the television, something that provided background noise while she was reading around the others. In fact, it had taken to repeating things. Sometimes with glee, others with sadness. It seemed to pick up on the speakers underlying emotions when spoken. Or thoughts, as hers was turning out to be. Either she was subconsciously transmitting thoughts or the child already had the ability to read thoughts. Both had negativity attached to them.

The midwife at the 'clinic' gave her a few pills, telling her the ingredients. Emma hoped that it would be the better choice, her body wouldn't fight as much. She took them with the full glass of water and waited for the process to be started. After a half hour, she was bored. Then, she felt the start of nausea. It wasn't enough to force her to the toilet. She hoped it was a normal part of the process. It gradually got worse that when she hit the ninety minute mark, she was puking her stomach out into the nearby restroom. Once done, she peered down, to see food and the partially digested pill she had just taken. Brilliant. An echo of a whimper came through the connection. Either her anger was getting through and scaring the child or the child was reacting to almost being destroyed.

The midwife came back and she told her the grim news. “I'll get a doctor,” she said. Good, the faster this was taken care of, the better. The man came in. He had already been told about the reaction to the pill. Explaining the process and signing paperwork, she was switched into a gown and settled on the table. The doctor, and one nurse joining in, scrubbed up. She declined their offer of medicines, just wanting this done.

Staring up at the ceiling, she felt the instruments enter and wondered when the next step would be. Instead, the doctor and nurse both stared in shock at something that was going on in her pelvic region. “What? What's going on?” she demanded.

The nurse mumbled, “Your, your skin.”

“What my colleague is trying to say is that your skin has transformed into a much harder state,” he explained, nervously, “And it's preventing us from performing the procedure.”

Damn. Her mutation was protecting the child. Her body was against her in getting rid of it. The doctor and nurse, obviously realizing that she wasn't a normal human, started gently pushing her out the door. At least they haven't run screaming. It was lucky that they were going to another area soon after this.

-

Three more months, just at the edge of the sixth month, and it starting to be noticeable. Emma had been switching her clothes, slightly and calmly to make a transition to a covering dress less abnormal. They hadn't really been blinking eyes at it. Gradual so no one noticed. Or, maybe they had. Angel tended to let her gaze linger on her abdomen, as if she knew something. Mystique was 'kind' enough not to notice. Azazel protected her during their last attack, and Riptide had dropped off crackers and ginger ale during one of her bad times. Of course, it was Erik that was going to bring it up.

“You're pregnant,” he stated bluntly. Second place in a month, Angel and Mystique out for food while the boys secured and fortified the new place. The man was planning on adding his own modifications once they were done. Now, he was going to discuss the current problem.

“Yes, that's what typically happens when two people of the opposite sex have intercourse, neither wear protection and there's nothing useable as birth control for the side that needs it,” she sniped. Her thoughts had constantly gone on the subjects of what she could have done. Not a lot, considering she couldn't just sign up for a birth control trial and Sebastian was adverse to using protection. He simply raised an eyebrow at her outburst. Emma wasn't thrilled at the current situation. Erik went to ask, and she anticipated his next thoughts. “I've already tried. My body prevented it. Puked up the pills and blocked the procedure.”

“Your body's protecting the child as an extension of yourself.”

“Yes,” she said.

Mama?

She turned down to her chest, confused. Was the child at the point where it was starting to form thoughts? Erik noted, “What is happening?”

Mama, wrong? She was also presented with an old memory, when Christian hugged her when she had a fight with her father. When was she thinking about that? Was her child trying to comfort her? I must be broadcasting some of my old memories to him. Pregnancy hormones are making me sentimental. She sat down on the edge of her bed, confused and worried by no small amount. “He's talking to me.”

“He? You already know the sex?”

“I think he does.” Now would be the time to start rubbing the area that was swollen. People that cared about the child, or were even fascinated with the new being growing within them, do that. She was still uncomfortable with this being growing inside her. This, this wasn't what she ever wanted.  Her child was showing signs that he was already trying to connect to her. She just couldn't.

“Will you give him up?” he inquired, moving to one of his more pressing concerns.

“Yes,” she answered, “There is no way I can care for a child. There is no way this group can care for one. Not when we're fighting off agents and hiding from the government and Xavier's little group.” There is little chance that I'll suddenly turn into a maternal figure able to care for him.

He nodded his agreement, coming to the same conclusion. “We'll be separating within the next two months. I have rumors that I want to substantiate. Mystique and Angel are going on their own recruitment campaign. Azazel and Riptide are going back underground, getting as much information as we can gather on what the governments are doing. Do what you must.”