#But Venom. The movie that everyone on the internet seemed to have hated on at the time. And I adored it.

[tinker-13]

LET'S FREAKING GO!!!!!

[thevindicativevordan]

Any thoughts on Manchester Black?

God I love the jackass so much.

He is without a doubt the most successful new Superman Rogue created in the 21st century so far. Part of Black's success can be attributed to Kelly giving him something many Superman Rogues do not have: motivation that isn't just killing Superman. Starting out as a Jenny Sparks expy, with the entire Elite being clear copies of the insanely popular (at the time) Authority team, Black's evolved from "anti-hero" to straight up villain. By far the most popular member of the team he endured and continued to be used even after the rest faded away.

Part of his appeal is obvious, at least to me: He has a really cool design. The purple hair, the Union Jack tatted on his stomach, the way his eyes glow when he's using his powers (in the animated movie anyway), the black leather trench coat, ninety percent of what makes a character take off is their look (see Venom for proof), and Black design wise stands out from the crowd of Superman Rogues.

His powerset is also an asset, they keep throwing new variations of villains who are strong enough to slug it out with Superman, but Black can kick the crap out of Clark in ways other than brute force thanks to his telekinesis as his debut story showed. Rarely outside of Doomsday do we see Clark get as fucked up as we did in that story.

His background also gives him a lot of intrigue. Being a British working class lad is another standout feature that distinguishes him from the rest of Superman's mainly American and alien Rogues,. He worked (unwillingly it seems) for the British black ops division and a lot of what he's done is shrouded in mystery that gives him an aura of "seen some shit mate" that makes him feel worldly. Claiming that he started out as a big fan of Superman and gradually was beaten down and turned into the spiteful creature he is by the cruelty of the world adds some poignancy and tragedy as well.

The ex-true believer in traditional heroism who turns into a deadly antagonist is a path that's made Jason Todd extremely popular after all. Some people have accused Black of just being a strawman, after all the Authority were a lot more nuanced than people gave them credit for. They were even inspired by their own version of Superman in the High! So how can Black possibly be anything more than a caricature? Well while he may have started as an expy, I see Black as representing more than that. Now he represents the endless swarm of people on the Internet who think Superman sucks, who think he needs to be darker, edgier, more violent, more "realistic". In that regard I'd say Black is a perfectly legitimate representation of those people and how they feel about Superman.

Ultimately the biggest appeal of him for me? He's fucking hilarious.

The sheer contempt he treats Superman with is amazing. Lex envies Superman, Mongul gives him a grudging respect, the rest of the Rogues still treat Superman as "Superman", this larger than life icon, although it inspires negative emotions in them as opposed to how Superman's fellow heroes and the population feel. But Manchester Black? Manchester is constantly trying to drag him down to the "real" world by insulting him, embarrassing him, provoking him, which is part of why Clark hates Black so much on a personal and visceral level. For Black, Superman is just a wanker who has pulled the wool over everyone's eyes by selling them that "a fucking dream world" can ever be real. Whenever he interacts with Black, Clark really has to try to avoid sinking to Black's level, which is really hard because Manchester knows how to push Clark's buttons and gets a petty glee out of doing exactly that. It's good to have a Rogue like that for Supes, someone who can remind us of Clark's humanity in a way that isn't positive. Wasn't just the good human traits we taught our alien adoptee after all.

Truthfully I think the best writing for Manchester Black is when you can find yourself agreeing (in part) with what he says, or trying not to laugh at how he goads Superman into dropping the "holier than thou" exterior, while also recognizing that this is a sad broken man who had ambitions and dreams at one point. All of which were kicked out of him to the point he reacts the only way he knows how, by killing people. Telling that neither he nor Superman really have any idea of how to solve the "real" issues, as seen when they argue about what to do with the slavers in Action 775:

Note that Superman doesn't disagree with Black's assessment of how corrupt the American judicial system is, but his solution is to bury his head in the sand. Black meanwhile isn't actually proposing to do anything about the corruption he's called out, he's just going to murder everyone who crosses his path, treating the symptoms and not the cause. Neither one really knows how to handle that type of problem, so they just fall back to what they do know how to do.

That exact overlap in methodology is why Black is such a great foil and why he's stuck around: he's got the power and the charisma to match Superman (he can make Clark bleed on his own, gathered a team to him, and won over most of the general population in a similar way to Superman after all), but what he lacks is the idealism. Manchester Black is what Superman could be if he gave up on compassion, and was motivated only by his wrath. Seems an obvious thing to state, but it's the root of Black's longevity.

Overall I've been pretty happy with how he's been used, he's one of the more versatile enemies Superman has. He can be the edgy anti-hero who competes with Superman as he was at the start. He can work as a straight up villain out to hurt Superman to the point Clark finally has to acknowledge how insufficient his methods are as he was in Ending Battle and Kelly's work on JL. The idea of Black trying to corrupt the next generation of heroes in Jon, to mold him into Black's ideal Superman, was one of the high points of Tomasi and Gleason's run on Superman for me.

And at last we come to Black's current status.

Right off the bat Morrison writing Manchester Black was like a dream come true for me. Who better to write the Superman Rogue who is a working class British lad, who grew up idolizing Superman and caped heroes before giving up on them, than the working class Scot who put in so much work to rebuild Superman and make him cool again? I knew right away that Morrison would be great because they've got an authentic background to draw on to characterize Black with, and so far they have not disappointed me. If anything I wish Morrison was spending longer with this incarnation of the Authority, it really feels brimming with energy in a way we haven't seen from them in a while (with work for hire storytelling anyway).

Reaching old age and realizing he's not content with his accomplishments it makes sense to me that Clark would reach out to Manchester. Chester after all is the guy who made his career in calling out Superman's inadequacies, and if Clark is willing to still try to bury the hatchet with Lex occasionally, I can see him making the same attempt with Black. Black was a "hero" in a way at the start and Superman is always going to believe that mankind's inner goodness will win out ultimately, that he would attempt to bring Black back to the side of the "angels" and maybe get him to brighten up a bit is the sort of "impossible" challenge Superman relishes.

So far I love that Morrison isn't writing Chester as reforming overnight, he's still an asshole to Clark on occasion, he still says crap that is offensive morally, he still has a ways to go before he can be a "hero". Love the interactions between the two of them, they're funny as hell which is what the interactions between the two should be like:

Whether Manchester does reform or slips back into his old ways remains to be seen, and PKJ will probably be the one to decide his ultimate fate (assuming Black being on the cover of Action isn't a fakeout and he survives Superman & the Authority). Either way I'm always happy to see him getting used, I think he's a great foil for Superman no matter which side of the hero/villain divide he's on. Don't know if this turn to heroism will stick, but as long as we get more stories with Manchester, I'll take him as Superman's shittalking partner.

Hopefully he'll start getting more usage in outside media as well, I'd love to see a new take on him for the rebooted post-Crisis continuity of S&L or see him pop up in the upcoming My Adventures of Superman cartoon series or in the new animated shared universe DC is building with their movies. If they redid Death of Superman again they can do another shot at utilizing Black, especially since the art style of Superman vs. the Elite was... weird. Also give me Ending Battle, especially since they're adapting Injustice, it's only fair that we get the story that gives the middle finger to the "if Lois dies Superman goes batshit insane" trope, and we'd get to see Superman fight the majority of his Rogues Gallery! I love when that happens!

[wonderfulworldofmichaelford]

Psycho Analysis: The Joker (The Dark Knight)

(WARNING! This analysis contains SPOILERS!)

The Joker is one of the most widely interpreted characters in all of media, with so many taking a stab at him that it should really not be a surprise that he’d end up in a Psycho Analysis. There are plenty of Jokers to talk about, so I feel it’s appropriate to start out with the best interpretation of the character thus far in live-action cinema: Heath Ledger’s Joker from The Dark Knight.

Really though, what can be said about this performance that hasn’t been said already a million times before? This performance is legendary, and truly makes the movie the modern classic that it is. This take on the Clown Prince of Crime, a more down to earth take, really helped shape and mold the decade of superhero films for the decade to come, for better or for worse.

Actor: Unless you have lived under a rock for the past decade, you are well aware that Brokeback Mountain’s Heath Ledger portrays Joker in the film, a casting choice that was widely derided when it was announced. Ledger would go on to prove all the naysayers wrong – dead wrong. His take on the Joker seems more in line with the character’s very first appearance in comics, where he was more about murder and black comedy than theatrics and cackling, and Heath sells you a version of the Joker that in the hands of anyone else would likely be unappealing to those who grew up with Hamill’s Joker. Add in a dash of characterization from the more nihilistic Joker from The Killing Joke, and Ledger managed to cook up a psychotic anarchist clown for audiences of every stripe to love to hate.

It’s worth noting that Ledger’s performance is practically unmatched in comic book cinema; despite Joker being ripped off in and out of comic book movies to oftentimes poor effect, very few villains managed to come close to the complexity and talent Ledger brought to the role. Only the MCU has managed to give villains of this level of quality – villains like Thanos, Killmonger, and Adrian Toomes – and even then it took them a decade to get to those. Incredible, isn’t it? The MCU, which has produced the best comic book movies since The Dark Knight came out, has only JUST managed to get villains with performances that match up to Ledger. Ledger’s performance is just that hard to match.

Motivation/Goals: The Joker’s goal is simple: he wants to kill the Batman. Okay, it isn’t that simple, but he’d sure love you to think that. The Joker very much seems to draw from his interpretation in The Killing Joke, especially in regards to Harvey, with him wanting to put the purest hearts of Gotham through the wringer to make them as warped and wicked as he is. He also wants to take Gotham from the organized crime and introduce his own brand of anarchic, disorganized crime, where criminal actions are done for the sake of it. Frankly, almost every action Joker does in this film can just be chalked up to him wanting to do it just because, but it’s hard to deny there’s an underlying genius to everything he does. Every move he makes is just so perfect and calculated, all in the sake of bringing ruin onto Gotham and destroying and crushing its hopes.

Personality: This Joker is much more subdued than, say, Hamill or Nicholson’s take on the character; the wacky props and the over-the-top showmanship are a lot more subdued, but it’s still easy to see that this Joker is a genuine Joker. He indulges in lots of black comedy, he’s constantly lying through his teeth, he’s underhanded and is constantly executing overcomplicated plans, he executes anyone when he feels they’ve outlived their usefulness, and most importantly of all, he really loves screwing with people. Much like the previous clown covered on Psycho Analysis, Joker truly seems to relish in the anarchy, misery, and suffering he causes others

Final Fate: The last we see of Joker, he’s dangling from a building and cackling like a madman. It’s easy to assume he was arrested, and the novelization of the sequel mentions he is the sole inmate of Arkham Asylum… maybe. He may have escaped, for all anyone knows. Sadly this lackluster ending is because Heath Ledger tragically died, and Christopher Nolan felt it would be disrespectful to have him appear in the sequel, even as a cameo using unused footage. It’s rather unsatisfying but it is understandable.

Best Scene: Every single scene could count. There is not one scene with Joker that is not iconic, awesome, and memorable. For my money though, the scene in which he walks out of the hospital dressed like a nurse and attempts to detonate the charges, only for them to not go off which leads with him fiddling with his detonator until things finally start to explode, is easily his best, funniest, and most wonderfully in-character moment in the film. It’s one of the most traditionally Joker-y things he does.

Best Quote: Pretty much everything out of his mouth is wonderful, but I think the gold medal has to be the first story he tells about how he got his scars. “Why. So. Serious?”

Final Thoughts & Score: Look, we all know Joker is getting a 10/10, it’s pretty obvious and we all know it’s what he deserves. And with that out of the way, I can just get right into the meat of why he’s so great.

Nolan’s Batman films are a more down-to-earth, darker, and realistic take on Batman, so they tended to sacrifice some of the more comic booky aspects of Batman in an attempt at realism, usually to good effect. For instance, there’s no Venom drug that Bane is hooked on, the Lazarus Pit is more metaphorical than literal, stuff like that. But Joker? Joker manages to straddle the line fairly well. It’s damn near impossible for a psychopath who dresses up like a clown to be taken 100% seriously, so while the Joker is toned down here, it’s not to the degree that someone like Ra’s al-Ghul was. Joker’s not wildly hammy, overly theatrical, and using guns that have little “BANG” flags in them, sure, but he’s still pretty funny, he still is a bit theatrical, and he’s still just as cunning as ever. As far as “realistic” takes on characters go, Joker is the absolute pinnacle. If you want to do a realistic take on a more unrealistic character while still staying true to them, this Joker is the character to look to.

There’s honestly not much to criticize here; like yes, I’m sure I could nitpick here and there, but for what it is this performance is utterly electrifying. However, it’s hard not to point out how, much like the movie he’s in, this Joker had quite an uneven impact, as a lot of movies tried ripping off the elements of the character that worked in the context of the film without understanding just why Ledger’s performance worked. One need look no further than the next cinematic interpretation of Joker courtesy of Jared Leto to see how toning down the Joker and trying to aim for gritty realism can backfire spectacularly. And then of course there are all the incredibly edgy people on the internet who take this Joker at face value and idolize him as some sort of philosophical wiseman espousing harsh truths about reality, when he is in fact a hypocritical liar who is constantly screwing with everyone around him; perhaps that only adds to his brilliance, though, as he managed to even pull one over on the audience.

Still, none of that is really Ledger’s fault; he had no way of knowing that his take on Joker would be ripped off or treated as some incredible intellectual instead of as a conniving madman who sought to crush hope and bring about chaos. Ledger may be gone, but he left us with a brilliant and unique take on a classic character, one that even years later still holds up as one of the greatest villain performances of all time in any media. To this day, people still talk about him, still try and theorize about his origins, still quote his lines; for better or for worse Joker is an icon, and while the worse in that equation is pretty bad, the better is what really matters and what we should really remember this incarnation of Joker for.

[chaoticbookbaker]

The future of Spider-man

It’s a great time to be a Spider-man fan. What with Venom, Into the Spiderverse, the MCU, the comics, the TV show, and the PS4 game, there’s more new Spider-man content than I know what to do with. 

I have a bunch of conflicting thoughts when it comes to Spider-man movies. I’m a huge fan, so I obviously want the best for the character, but I’m just not sure what that is exactly. 

Ok, so I loved both Into the Spiderverse and Venom. This is rather unfortunate since I wanted to hate them.

I really think the folks at Marvel Studios know what they’re doing. They’ve put out dozens of smash hits, and they’ve managed to do it while also staying true to the source material. I liked the Raimi trilogy well enough, but after the Webb movies I had given up all hope for a good cinematic adaptation of Spider-man. Then along came Civil War, and Spidey fans across the Internet lost their minds.

The great thing about the MCU is that it allows Spider-man to grow individually with his own franchise while also allowing him to interact with the larger universe. This a keystone of Marvel, and it’s one of the reasons they’ve succeeded in such diverse genres. We get to see Spider-man’s own story, but we also get to see him get involved in larger events like Infinity War. He might even make cameos in other movies, or maybe we’ll get a crossover or team-up. These things just can’t happen in Sony’s Spiderverse.

(I also really loved the Ultimate Comics, mainly because they depicted Peter as a teenager. So I may be a little biased in that this is the youngest Peter Parker so far.)

Besides that, Spider-man: Homecoming was GOOD. I know not everyone liked it, but it was a fun teenage drama with a superhero action thrown in. Maybe not top of the line, but it did well enough at the box office. I think Tom Holland is the best Spider-man hands down, and the diverse ensemble cast is really talented as well. The tech and Iron Man relationship is an interesting twist, and I think they’ve incorporated it really well. And the story is compelling. Plus the suit looks really good and classic.

All of this is to say that I really think that it would be best for Spider-man if Marvel were in complete control of him. Of course, Sony won’t give him up so quickly. And the success of Homecoming probably solidified their deal with Marvel. That’s okay, since Marvel still has creative control.

However, when Venom was announced, I desperately hoped for it to be an epic fail. I thought that if Sony realized they couldn’t profit off Spider-man characters without Spidey himself, they would just give up and eventually relinquish Spider-man to Marvel completely. At long last, Marvel would have control over all their properties again, and all their characters could interact on the big screen.

But then I liked Venom. It was totally offbeat, and so unlike most action and superhero movies. There’s no way in would fit into the MCU, but then again, that was the whole point. Still, it didn’t do AMAZING. I thought that the inevitable failure of the Silver Sable movie or the like would give Sony the push they needed.

But then along came Into the Spiderverse. Everyone loved it, and I knew all hope was lost when it won an Oscar. There was no way Sony would give him up now. He was a veritable goldmine. 

But when I actually watched the movie, my thought changed. I loved it, and I’m so glad it won the Oscar. It reminded why I love animation, it had a diverse ensemble with amazing voice talent, and it had an amazing message. I WANTED more movies like this. However, this meant I’d have to give on my dream of Spidey fully returning to Marvel

But I think it’s a worthy trade-off. In the era of formulaic, by-the-book box office hits. it’s so refreshing to see movies like Venom and Spiderverse do well. We NEED more movies like this. Their weirdness inspires creativity and risk-taking in Hollywood, and it means we get more movies that surprise us.

So I look forward to new Spider-man content from both Sony and Disney. I can’t wait for Far From Home, and I’d love to see the rise of the Sinister Six. Who knows, maybe Sony will surprise again and Morbius will blow us away.

Maybe I shouldn’t get my hopes up too much.

On a related note, Disney really needs to up their animated show game. Like, what even is Marvel’s Spider-man? And where can I watch Spectacular Spider-man?!?!? Plus the comics seem to be going in a really weird direction. The video game was phenomenal, though. And there’s a lot of really good memes and edits? A lot of bad stuff in the fandom too, unfortunately. starker, irondad, obsession with infantilized holland...

Looks like everything else Spider-related is a mixed bag too.

[silenthillmutual]

my endless list of issues with the MCU, part one of whatever

most of this is going to be bitching about Age of Ultron and Civil War because they were honestly the absolute worst and it floors me people don’t acknowledge it more

I have not seen Infinity War yet and I have no intention of seeing it anytime soon.

I’m not especially Tony Stark friendly and a lot of these complaints are Stark-centric because I see his writing as the weakest part of the series

so this being said, let’s start with The Accords:

Tony is initially approached with The Accords by a lawyer who appeals to his sympathy because a teenager got killed from the most recent Avengers battle in uhhh Sokovia, I think? I’ve seen this movie twice which tells you how good a movie it is that I can barely remember it.

Tony spends one (1) day reading about the proposed Accords and immediately comes in with this holier-than-thou attitude as if this is something he came up with on his own or ever spend .02 seconds thinking about. The same kind of insufferable antagonistic stuck-up attitude that makes people hate sociology majors. So understandably the team does not exactly jump up to immediately agree to his condescending demands that he has more or less agreed to already despite never having brought it up to anyone else.

By the way, when exactly did they decide that Tony Stark was team leader? it seems like the fandom and the movie’s writers and Tony himself have decided he’s de facto leader despite no one having discussed or agreed to it at any point in time and him being, honestly, the worst possible choice for it.

You know that “this entire group has one braincell and it belongs to x character” meme? This movie is that entire meme and right now the brain cell belongs to Rhodey.

I know that the Marvel Cinematic Universe is very diverse and that for whatever reason the Avengers and their films do not take place in the same universe as the X-Men and their films or Deadpool or Venom, but it still bothers me a lot that these Accords are set up to treat mutants (and mutates) exactly the way they are treated in the X-Men universe: with legalized discrimination and fear and systemic oppression and Scarlet Witch, as a mutant...really, no one in the writing department thought this through? People thought this was fine? That this wasn’t fucked up? Okay. 

The Accords are supposed to keep people from getting hurt by the Avengers by...what, making it an act of Congress to get them on the field? Do they realize how long that will take? Not only that but without proper combat practice in a city arena, there is absolutely no guarantee that Accords Avengers won’t cause the exact same kind of damage as non-Accords Avengers.

Or the fact that the Accords do not apply to the attackers. Obviously. 

Steve asks Tony later why he’s really agreeing to the Accords despite Tony in previous movies being very “fuck the law” or “fuck the government” and Tony almost has him in his corner, but of course he has to be a pain in the ass about it once again. 

And in this scene Tony says he’s agreeing to them because of....some fight with Pepper? That is promptly never mentioned again. But talk about petty, deciding the fate of the entire team over a tiff with his girlfriend. Yikes.

No one in this entire movie except for Vision gives a shit about how Wanda is feeling or dealing with this despite the fact that she is clearly the most effected party by both The Accords and by the fallout of what happened at the beginning of the movie. She’s already scared of her own powers and demonized for them but the only one who cares is the sentient internet.

I love T’Challa and I adored Black Panther but in this movie, T’Challa is all rage and no common sense. Which is perfectly fine, given what he’s been through in the short time he’s been on screen. He’s only the only reason this movie is worth watching and even then it’s best to just watch his scenes and skip the rest of this dumpster fire.

I love Chris Evans’ Captain America but I’m going to be honest here, he was every bit as petty in this movie as Tony Stark was. He happened to have good and valid reasons to track down Bucky but I don’t at all believe those were his main reasons. His main reason was definitely “this is my friend and so I want to save him”, but unlike Tony, he also had logic on his side, which is probably why T’Challa sides with him in the end and opts to help Bucky instead of killing him or turning him in.

Also Cap has every reason to be wary of the government given how easily SHIELD was infiltrated by HYDRA in the previous movie and like, was Tony just nonexistent for that entire movie? Did he just not exist? Is his memory of that event a void? Did everyone just agree to never tell Tony about it? Because it’s pretty clear that Cap and Sam and Nat were all working off of the events of Winter Soldier while Tony Stark was just...being Tony Stark, I guess? 

Despite initially being on the side of The Accords because a teenager was killed from the reckless rampage of the Avengers and their enemies, Tony then goes to recruit a teenager to join him in a fight against Captain America by showing up at his house (very creepy) and hitting on his aunt (extra creepy) and threatening to expose him as Spider-man to her (why did people defend that?). So he went and put another teenager in danger and no one calls him out on this. 

Tony blames Sam for Rhodey getting shot down like it isn’t partly (or entirely) his fault in the first place, as if people never get shot down in the line of duty as a superhero or a soldier, as if Sam did it on purpose (when he sure as hell didn’t and in fact admires Rhodey) and didn’t immediately stop and go to check on Rhodey, and then when he puts his hands up Tony still shoots him point-blank. Someone pointed out this cap earlier and I think it’s super uncomfortable that we got to have a screencap of a white dude shooting an unarmed black man who had his hands up. And we’re supposed to sympathise with that guy.

Tony throws a bunch of people in jail for...siding with Captain America? I still don’t get that.

The final fight between Tony, Cap and Bucky makes no sense. Despite knowing now that Bucky was brainwashed and framed he still immediately believes that Bucky knowingly and willingly and like, with glee or something...killed his parents? And I get being upset at finding out that this man killed his parents but this isn’t a recent crime and he knows for a fact that Bucky was brainwashed at the time. Get some fucking therapy, dude. 

No One But Tony Stark Is Allowed To Have Weapons.

T’Challa now has control of the brain cell. He is the only one who goes “Hm, now where’s the guy who actually caused all this chaos?” while Tony Stark is beating the shit out of a POW.

Cap trying to appeal to Tony’s sympathy by saying “he’s my friend” is not really a good idea, I mean from Tony’s POV your friend murdered his parents and him being your friend doesn’t take that back, HOWEVER,

see above.

“So was I” - literally, since when? When have Tony and Steve ever gotten along? Ever agreed on anything? Ever referred to each other as friends? The most you can ever say about their relationship is that at one point in time they were civil. and that’s it.

[lunaschild2016]

Four: A Dauntless MC Romance

Rating: M (Language, Sexual content)

He was scarred from his past and from his service to his country, but not one of those scars compared to what he held inside. She was the one to see beyond that, to soothe and heal him. She was the one he would never be good enough for but would spend his entire life trying to be. Even if it cost him everything in the process. Four/Tris AU Modern Day (M)

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A/N: I was challenged to give some love to Four and Tris. So this is my attempt to go to the ‘Fourside’. Apparently the Fourside has flan, not cookies. But since flan is the shit I am good with that. :P Don’t worry, I have plans for my favorite badboy with a follow up story with Eric and his ladylove.

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@kenzieam@ericdauntless@jojuarez26@jaihardy@iammarylastar@captstefanbrandt@captainviolets@badassbaker@readsalot73@fuckthatfeeling@dani5102@beltz2016@beautifulramblingbrains@affabletimelady@irasancti@meganbee15@pathybo@lauraaan182​@gylisaa@scorpio2009@gylisaa

Prologue: Four

There is a saying: If these walls could talk.

I wondered about my childhood home. If those walls could talk what would they say? Would they speak in low pained whispers or would they resemble the wails of some haunted house? Keening the loneliness, pain, anger and despair that had been the soundtrack to my young life.

I realize that given my start, I might be leading a life that is cliche. I know given everything that had happened before I was headed to an early grave; self inflicted or forced. Either that or time behind bars. Running had been the best decision I had ever made in my life. It hadn’t been the easiest by a long shot but it led me to where I am today.

From the outside we had looked like the perfect little family. Pops was the Deacon of the church and respected city councilman. Mom was the perfect little housewife. Always poised and ready

to show just how perfect she was. Never a hair out of place on her well manicured image.

And image was everything to them both. Image and Power, their drugs of choice.

What everyone didn’t see was the beatings, the drinking, the venom spewed by the pillar of the community. Mom was no help even though she suffered the worst of the beatings at first. She was checked out long before she split, leaving me to the abuse.

By the age of sixteen I knew it would never get better. No one would believe me either. He was too good at charming and conniving. When he started to spread rumors that I was troubled, disturbed, I had enough.

Man did that shit cause all kinds of issues for him when I took off. I didn’t just take off though. This was the century of information and technology overload. The old man had no idea about webcams or how the internet really worked. So I had started to record some of his finer moments. When I was set to take off I released them. Not directly to the authorities. No, I used the nosey gossiping mamas. Sending out emails to those in the PTA and booster clubs.

I lit the fire to the bridge but didn’t stick around to see it burn. I was aware that being a minor if anything came about from that little shit storm I started, it would mean going into the system. I said fuck that and decided to take a chance on my own.

There were hard times for sure but I got lucky. Met up with a guy who owned a computer repair store within the first year. He took a chance on me and let me stay in the small shed that was behind his house, turning it into the smallest home ever. I worked in his shop to earn my keep and he paid me under the table.

George knew people. Had connections that he used to get me sorted after he got me to open up about what had sent me running. He pointed out that if I wanted to make anything of myself then I needed to finish school. I didn’t relish the idea of going back to an institution so instead we worked to get me my GED. I don’t know how he did it but he also was able to get me emancipated. With Pops having been arrested and Mom MIA, it hadn’t been too hard.

When I hit eighteen I took the next step. One of George’s friends, Amar, became a close friend and mentor to me. With his guidance I realized that I didn’t want to go the college route, even though I wanted to delve more into technology. Programming, hacking, coding, web design. You name it I craved to learn it. Luckily there was a place I could get training and on the job experience.

I did six years service in the Marines. I found family there, brothers, that made me feel like for the first time I was wanted. That I was valued and needed. That lasted about as long as they could get anything out of me. The accident and explosion changed everything.

With a pat on the back, a ceremony and a medal; I was thanked for my service but told my time was over. Physically there was nothing wrong with me. I was stronger than ever and had been lucky to have minimum of wounds. Mentally and emotionally, the scars of my past along with the scars hard won during my service added up.

Honestly, in retrospect, I had it easy. My PTSD was nowhere near the levels some of the other guys from the VA have. I couldn’t see that though. I could only feel sorry for myself in losing the only place I had ever felt truly at home. I could only mire myself in the loss of my band of brothers.

I went back a jaded and pathetic shade of who I had built myself to be. Once again George and Amar were there to guide me through it. It started out with George taking me back in and getting me to accept the help the VA offered.

When he discovered that I was having issues with being in any kind of closed vehicle, he put me on my first bike. I hadn’t connected that my attacks as soon as I got into a car was connected with my PTSD. As soon as I got on a bike I knew though. In a car I felt confined and trapped. Just like I had felt when the bomb blew and I had to stay in the upturned transport listening to my buddies die, waiting to see if I was next.

On a bike I never felt so free. All of that disappeared and I felt in control again. I didn’t know that simple thing would lead me to my real home. Amar had long been a member of his own motorcycle club. I wanted to patch into his club but he had other ideas and a better place for me.

He knew I hated the city. That I craved the small town feel and simple life I grew up in. He also knew that I would never be down for some of the more illegal activities that his club took part in. That is when I was introduced to Dauntless MC and Max.

Max was a generation member and current President. His grandfather had established the club after he got back from serving in the navy. His father took over when he came back from serving in the army and Max himself took over after his father's death when he came back from his time in the Marines.

The club was filled with VA’s, other generation members or just the misfits we seem to collect. I knew I was home the minute I stepped foot into the clubhouse. Now three years later I have worked my way up from prospect, Intel/Technology to Sergeant in Arms. The third highest officer position there is available in the club. They call me Four after an incident in a job where the truck I was in rolled four times and completely demolished it. Jaws of life had been brought in but I walked away without a fucking scratch.

The guys couldn't believe it and my luck. So the name Four was given to me. It wasn't like I was ashamed of my real name but I preferred to go by the name my new family gave me.

We do good work. We take care of each other, our families and our county. There are several business we front and all of them legitimate. That isn’t to say that from time to time we don’t have to handle business in a way the government wouldn’t exactly approve. But it’s never for profit and only protection. Usually when we have been forced and have no other recourse.

Everything in my life before now led me here, to my family and brothers. I would do anything for them. Even laying down my own life.

But like something out of an old noir movie….it comes to down to one dame...one girl I shouldn’t want but can’t resist anymore….and it could all go up in flames.

[cassandraclare]

on the rights of women to own their own work. crummy crabapple speaks!

Yes, this stuff is still going on. I was hoping it would have ended after this, but it hasn’t, and being called a bitch whore murderer gets wearing fast when it’s based on nothing.

Look, frank talk about this stuff on Tumblr is often discouraged — when you have a small but pretty active group of “haters,” as happens nowadays to most successful creators, especially women, the general rule of thumb is not to talk to or about them. Blocking them on twitter excites them: it’s attention. Replying is pointless, explaining is deliberately misinterpreted, the truth is a lie, lies are truth, up is down, winning is losing. You can’t win in this situation, anyway: nobody can or does, everyone loses. The creators, the fandom, those caught in the middle (actors, etc.) Everyone.

This business about me killing Alec isn’t a rumor. It’s a lie. A purposeful lie told to make a point: that I am a bad person unworthy of my creations and that if I am a bad enough person, it’s okay to say they don’t belong to me, that I didn’t create them, that there is essentially no value in the act of creation, especially when it is done by a woman.

As we all know but mostly don’t talk about because If You Speak It They Will Come, there is a small group of anti-TMI-book fans who believe the books and the show are at war.  (They are not the show’s fans. They are something else entirely. I talk to perfectly nice show fans all the time: these are less people who love Shadowhunters than people dedicated to the idea that if they scream about it long enough, the show will cease being based on this particular book series: an ultimately doomed goal that nevertheless leaves them plenty of opportunities to annoy the rest of us.) Instead of being able to accept that art is partly subjective, they are in a constant battle for an imaginary moral high ground in which they are the keepers of a version of the Mortal Instruments that has been objectively purified of all problematic elements. 

The problem there being, of course, that there is no such thing as perfect, unproblematic media. Art comes from humans and humans are flawed. If you expect perfection you will be bitterly disappointed every single time: I’ve watched it happen over and over, as the this showrunner is a gift tag turns into the This showrunner is not a gift tag,  and many of those who last year spoke glowingly of wrapping Ed Decter, their unproblematic hero (who once said to me in wonder, “You really worked a miracle with Malec, you know, people care about them as if they were a normal couple”), in cotton wool and fuzzy socks, now refer to Todd Slavkin as “Toad.”* Plenty of articles about the problematic elements of Shadowhunters have now been written and plenty of posts posted. (If Ed hadn’t been fired, he might have stuck around long enough to get called Ediot; these things are, after all, just a matter of time. (i get called “Casserole”, seriously, I am not kidding you, you cannot make this shit up.) ) 

To clarify: I am definitely NOT saying that a (potentially problematic) work should remain uncriticized to spare the feelings of the creators because they are flawed humans like everyone else. Criticism is valid; criticism is useful; criticism is important. What I am talking about in this post is not criticism. Telling a creator that her creations should be taken away from her because she “doesn’t deserve them”: not criticism. Making up funny names and mean hashtags for creators you don’t like: obviously hilarious for some, but definitely not criticism. And to some extent everyone knows this – so if it’s important to you that a creator be denied the right to claim ownership of, and pride in, her own work, it has to be because she is not just problematic but corrupt, evil, and cruel. She has to be morally bankrupt such that removing her from the narrative of her own creation is a moral good.

And so the lie that I’m planning to kill Alec (framed within the true narrative that killing off LGBT+ characters is a serious fucking problem in media) is a natural development: because wouldn’t that be awful and mean the books were morally very bad and wrong and shouldn’t creators who create bad wrong things have their creations taken away from them? Which would be just another Misogyny Tuesday on the internet except for the fact that it’s exploiting the fears of a vulnerable group of people (LGBT+ fans for whom Alec means a lot, in whatever format -- fans who have seen over and over LGBT characters die for nothing, for shitty reasons, for straight people, on TV and in movies and in comics and in books and are therefore in a place to be incredibly hurt by it happening again), to score a point in what is basically a ship war. And that is really shitty.

And yes, it’s a ship war.

There was really a “salty casserole” joke in there begging to be made. Missed opportunity!

So, why am I salty, you might ask? There is this belief that I must be Upset With The Show because people care about Malec on it more than Clace: my friends, the field where I grow my fucks is barren on this topic. I made up both couples. I don’t care which one you ship more, especially in a format where their story is not being told by me and for all I know, the showrunners don’t even want you shipping Clace at the moment. They seem into Climon and oh God, I have bored myself with this tangent.

I invented Clace and Malec. I’m writing a trilogy about Malec because I love Malec and have a story in my head about them, despite being offered three times the money to write one about Clace, as they’re “more marketable.” I do not have a favorite. Maybe writing works that way for some people but I doubt it. I’ve always said I don’t ship in my own books, and that is precisely what I meant. 

Moving on: Are there things that have upset me about the show and the way it was developed? Yes — being told my mostly-female audience wasn’t a desirable one because they’re female; the fact that the female artist of color who created the runes has never been paid or credited for their use; being told Isabelle was “tits and ass”, being told Alec being gay was “a strike against his likeability”, contractual shit you will never know about because that stuff isn’t public — but for some reason I’m supposed to give a flying fuck about who ships what canon couple on the show? For viewers, as it should be, this is a TV show: for me this is part of my brand and has real-world consequences for my life. Unsurprisingly I care about those, not some imaginary ship war.

I was thrilled Shadowhunters won a GLAAD award for Magnus and Alec.  (I was thrilled when the movie of Mortal Instruments got a GLAAD award nomination for Magnus and Alec though there was so little of them in the movie, it served to really underline the paucity of LGBT+ storylines in major film and tv.) I congratulated Matt and Harry on twitter; the comments below mine are something of a primer in why female creators are fleeing the internet in greater and greater numbers.

https://twitter.com/cassieclare/status/848497330999369729

The message is overwhelmingly: “Shut up, bitch, how dare you open your mouth and remind us that this show exists because your books do, even though you didn’t actually say that but you see, we like to pretend you’re dead and it’s inconvenient when you speak.” I’d imagine every one of those commenters would tell you they were a feminist, too. The idea that nothing is gained by shutting up women or denying that their intellectual property has worth or value is apparently one that seems good in the abstract, but falls at the first hurdle of but I don’t like her.

The abstract often does fail when it comes into conflict with the concrete. Being a feminist ally means being an ally even to women you don’t like, because being an ally only to people you like requires no effort and less thought. That doesn’t mean never criticizing women or their work. But it does require interrogating what’s going on in your own head. One of the most unpleasant haters I see on twitter, who viciously loathes me though we have never met, has read all my books; she has Malec in her username, and a quote from the books in her bio. She has Cassandra Jean’s art on her twitter page, and Valerie Freire’s rune designs in her text and background. That’s a lot of mental and artistic real estate devoted to the work of three women she refers to as 
“garbage trash.” (Though I think Cassandra Jean and Val are mostly garbage trash because they associate with me and should instead have waited ten years for the TV show to come along so they could draw pictures of it or something. I don’t really understand it: the cognitive dissonance that allows to you dedicate your life to “Malec” while crapping on the person who created both characters and their relationship is so enormous that I can only follow it so far and no farther. I understand thinking that the show version is better, but not whatever warped fantasy tells you that if the books had never been written the show (now called “Evilchasers” perhaps) would have heroically found a way to invent the  story of a gay demon-fighting warrior and his biracial warlock boyfriend anyway because that very specific story was floating around the ethereal planes waiting to be discovered by the psychic powers of Disney and it is only by great misfortune that I got to it first.) Point being: if your username is “Bubbles loves Malec” yet your twitter is dedicated to spewing venom at the person without whom the thing you love would not exist, it might be time to ask yourself some questions about cause and effect, and also, what that hate of yours is doing for you, psychologically speaking.

Look, I am going to get a lot of shit for this post, but whatever — the upside of being constantly screamed at for things you have not done (slut-shamed Isabelle, planned to murder Alec, thus contributing to the fucking awful homophobic trope of killing off gay characters, "stabbed the actors in the back”, promoted incest, poisoned the earth’s water supply) is that you no longer bother worrying about being screamed at for things you did do. I won’t do set visits or conventions since coming back from NY Comicon to stuff like this:  

I’m not going to comment on the specifics, save to say they represent a massive and almost hilarious (though probably deliberate) misinterpretation of literally everything that happened on that panel. (If the network didn’t want book fans there, asking me questions, they wouldn’t have brought me there. I was there to do promotion for the show by talking about the show and the books — I am the author, and what the literal fuck else do you think they brought me there to talk about? The history of Belgian cabinet-making? They don’t think attention paid to the books takes away from the show: only a small group of asshats think that, and it’s weird that the OP never paused to think that if they didn’t want me there talking about the books, they could simply NOT HAVE INVITED ME. Also did it seriously never occur to them that panelists are asked to speak at certain junctures or in reference to certain questions, or gestured at to do so, we don’t just randomly interject? Lord.

I will admit it was extreme of Harry not to leave me lying there on the floor or maybe drop a chair on my head while no one was looking. He should reconsider his choices.)

But that’s the thing: posts like this one are the reason I haven’t gone back to set, or gone to another convention, or promoted the show. Would you go to a convention if you knew people like this were going to be feet away from you in the audience? I’m a grown-up, I can take being called Crummy Crabapple (did the whole kindergarten class vote on that one or was it a decision by fiat…?) but the sheer hate that underpins the silliness of the post makes the idea of being near people who think like that fairly shuddery. 

I gathered a few such posts together to show to FF, and the network’s never blamed me for not wanting to go out and physically promote again. The sad part of all this is that mostly I pretend the show doesn’t exist because the downside of mentioning it is being screamed at for days by asshats (Let me be very specific what I mean by “asshats” = people who send threats, who use insulting gendered language, make anti-Semitic slurs, and repeatedly tell me I should not be allowed to own my own work — if this is not stuff you do, I’m not talking about you. Criticism of the books is fine and irrelevant.) 

We all know these asshats exist — and we are all sad about it: me, the network, the actors, the showrunners, because the net result of them existing is that I don’t talk about or promote the show, and that’s a loss for a show that could really use that outreach. Losing me, my online audience, my worldwide publishers, as potential promotional partners is bad, not good, for a show that these people theoretically love. Losing the book fans the show depended on as viewers, but who can’t stand the toxic atmosphere, is bad, not good, for the actors and writers they claim to support. Screaming “INCEST FREAK!” at every twelve year old who comes online and timidly asks when they will see Chairman Meow is not going to raise the show’s ratings. If someone is more interested in driving away the show’s potential audience because they regard them as moral degenerates than they are in getting it renewed, that’s their bliss to follow, but the reason I’m mentioning these people at all is 1) I’m disturbed by the narrative women shouldn’t be allowed to own their own work and 2) many many posts have now been made about what an awful place the Shadowhunters/TMI fandom is, and that sucks for everyone. Sadly, it doesn’t take that many people to ruin an online space.

The idea that the books and the show are at war for kibbles is a fannish one (most people, including my publisher, regard TV shows based on books as advertising for those books because from a book perspective that’s what they are) seems to come out of the fact that fans argue about which they like better, something that has happened since the dawn of adaptations. I remember it from when I was in the Harry Potter fandom: Alan Rickman understood Snape better than JKR, the movies gave Draco more depth, etc and so on. Looking back now I can see the irony of people with usernames like Lupinfan talking about how Lupin was sidelined in the books but not the movies, but distance gives infinite perspective, I suppose. If you like Malec better on the show: awesome. They still exist on the show because they were invented in the books. That statement will be interpreted as the height of arrogance, but it’s just flat fact. They matter in both formats to a lot of people. There will never be a hand of God that reaches down from the sky and declares either one better. It will always be a matter of taste and opinion. The fact that art is subjective is something we all have to live with.

This is what I mean about the “killing Alec” lie: it has become part of the justification for my unworthiness to claim to have anything to do with my own characters. Killing Alec would be a bad thing to do to Alec (and Magnus); thus I would be terribly maltreating Alec (and Magnus); thus I don’t deserve to have anything to do with Alec (or Magnus). Thus it is okay to tell me to get the fuck out – how dare I even open my bitch mouth to congratulate the actors playing my characters if I would do something so terrible to them, after all? And who cares if it’s a lie and no one can source it? (Come on now, be real — no one tried.)

Whether I deserve Alec and Magnus is somewhat beside the point: I invented them regardless, and there was a large and profoundly intense Malec fandom before the show ever aired, whose existence is in fact directly responsible for the fact that Malec are a thing on the show at all. (Initially, neither of them appeared or were even referred to in the pilot.) Reality doesn’t really intrude into the fantasy that Magnus and Alec and Isabelle and Jace descended, pre-created, from a sky cloud, though: the fan/creator ownership dichotomy has existed since before Arthur Conan Doyle was bullied into bringing Sherlock back from the dead. Fans and creators don’t always agree and creators aren’t always right. What they are, however, always, is creators.

(In case I had forgotten that I am not, in fact, a hot dude actor. ASTONISHING INFORMATION.) It is mysterious to interpret congratulating actors as taking “credit for Matt and Harry’s hard work”;  I neither need or want that anyway because I am not an actor; I am already credited on the show as the author of the source material, which is what I am. (I’ve won plenty of book awards but would be very puzzled to win, say, a Nobel prize for chemistry.) I congratulated the actors knowing I’d get a raft of shit for either doing so or not doing so: I chose to do so despite the inevitable annoyance factor because I like Matt and Harry; I wanted them hired; I like how much they love the characters, and I’ve always found them to be kind people who would loathe and despise the kind of tweets these folks are sending on their behalf.

Ironic, that.

But yeah, I also sent it because I’m proud of Malec. Deal with that. Women need to be allowed to be proud of their work sometimes without that being considered a deep evil. I don’t think the Magnus and Alec I created are perfect (by which I mean my writing of them, not their endearing flaws ;) but they represent years of work and love, and like any author would be, I’m thrilled to see the screen version of them acknowledged twice as something special. That’s very normal: for the GLAAD win, I got flowers from my publisher, congrats from the network and from my agents at CAA, because why wouldn’t you congratulate an author on something good happening to an adaptation of their books? The idea that when discussing an adaptation of their work, an author should reel back in terror screaming “I AM UNWORTHY TO BE MENTIONED IN THE SAME SENTENCES AS THE CHARACTERS I CREATED!” is so bizarre to most people that if you tried to explain to them that some women, not all women hahaha of course, but SOME WOMEN JUST DONT DESERVE TO BE ALLOWED TO TALK OR CLAIM THEY CAN “OWN” THINGS AMIRITE, they would back quietly away muttering that they had an important appointment to get their hedgehog dyed blue because they would literally think you were probably a serial killer.

This situation is not unique to these books, to me, or to this show: however, there is a special angle to this particular situation. Many commenters on all this have noted that the books are a female creation, the show a male one. Ed, Todd, Michael, Matt, McG, and Darren are all men, and in many ways, people find it much more comfortable, much easier, and much simpler to give uncritical admiration to men. They’re men, and therefore they have authority I don’t, and my continued existence as the author of the source material of Shadowhunters is seen as even more horrible because it makes it a girl thing, and “girl things” are less serious and less worthy. One of the things I often see the haters say is that the show is “older”; in fact the audience of the show is statistically younger than the book’s audience (I’ve seen the numbers) but I think it’s hard not to want to dismiss something so imbued with lady germs as being inherently inferior (and what’s more inferior than young women? It’s trendy to bash YA, which is seen as the province the young and the female – surely preferring men’s work makes you, you know, a more serious person? And surely if I had the sense God gave a weasel, I’d stop writing, give the book rights to some guy, and retire in shame? GO FORTH HARLOT AND WRITE YA NO MORE.)

Feminism does not mean you cannot criticize works by women. I’ve said that before, but I’m saying it again because it’s so easy to dismiss essays like this by saying “She’s hiding behind feminism and claiming we can’t criticize her because she’s a woman!” Nope. (Though it does mean you look for patterns. It’s kind of interesting there’s this small group of people who believe these characters/storylines really came alive when control of them was handed over to a series of ever-changing white middle-aged men. I mean, coincidence perhaps, but…?) I haven’t addressed criticism here really because it’s not the point: there is a huge gap between writing a bad review of a woman’s book and crusading for the idea that she shouldn’t be allowed to own her own intellectual property. Men taking away, literally taking away the money made from and authorship of women’s work is an ugly part of history (“Colette and [her husband] separated in 1906, although it was not until 1910 that the divorce became final. She had no access to the sizable earnings of the Claudine books [she had written]—the copyright belonged to him”) and it’s disturbing to see a group of primarily women argue that it should be repeated.

If the idea that a woman created Magnus and Alec, or any characters or world, is so horribly, terribly bothersome that you have to make up lies that, in your mind, render her unworthy of her own creation so that it’s all right to “take it from her” by discounting her role as a writer, her ownership of her own intellectual property, her right to exist as a person and to stand on the same stage at a convention as the “gem-like saint” male actors playing her characters —  maybe think about why?* What does screaming that I’d better not think Alec and Magnus have anything to do with me get you, really? Except the knowledge that if, one day, you write or create or draw something people love, you’ve helped create an environment in which it’s a veritable certainty you’ll get treated like you’re a piece of shit for doing it?

*And “bitch” is “bitch”, friends. It doesn’t matter what letters you take out, it’s still misogynist and still shitty. You know what you’re saying, and so does everyone else. Try asshat, really. I recommend it.

[jjkfire]

Saltare

Reader x Taehyung // Jumper!AU // 5583 words

Summary: You’ve always hated your birthdays until you turned 15 and found yourself in the place you had always dreamed of.

Genre: Fluff, Angst

A/N: Based off the movie called Jumper! This is me trying to get out of my writer’s block sigh ): Reposting because guess which idiot accidentally deleted the post while trying to edit it?

Present

“Who sold me out?!” He screams. “Which fucking brother sold me out?!”

Yoongi laughs darkly, an evil smirk on his face as he stares down at Taehyung.

“Who ever said it was one of your brothers?”

“They’re the only ones who know what I can do,” He sneers, tongue darting out to lick at the dried blood at the corner of lips. “Was it Jimin? Jungkook? Who was it?!”

“Are you sure you want to know?” He laughs. “I have a feeling you won’t like the answer.”

“Just fucking tell me so I can cut off the bastard’s tongue when I get out of here.”

“If you insist,” He smiles and gestures for you to step out of the shadows.

You take small steps, cautious and afraid. The Taehyung you see all bloodied and tied up was not the same Taehyung you know, not the same Taehyung you love. The Taehyung you love is soft and jovial but this one, this one in front of you, scared you. From the moment you saw him in the chair, his expression was fierce and the words he spit out dripped with venom. Even though you hadn’t locked eyes with him, just standing here from afar and seeing the dark expression in his eyes sent shivers down your spine. Maybe you didn’t really know Taehyung at all and maybe he didn’t really know you at all either.

15 years ago

You sit there awkwardly staring at the 7 candles flickering in the wind as you hear the birthday song echo throughout the room. You’re not sure what to do so you fold your hands on your lap and smile as you look around the room. Although everyone here in this room was not related to you by blood, you still love them all the same. After all, they are the closest thing to family you have.

♪ ♪ Happy Birthday to you…. ♪ ♪

Make a wish!

As you blow out the candles on your very modest home-baked birthday cake, you are filled with warmth and love. You smile as you watch the people around you clap and congratulate you once again for making it through another year. Everything was perfect except… you only wish your parents were here clapping along with them.

If you shut your eyes and think hard enough, you’re able to see them, the only memory you have of them playing over and over again like a tape on repeat. The memory is warm, calming even and you imagine that’s what being loved must feel like. Though the memory is old, you have spent years trying to decipher it. It’s not much but really it’s all you have to remember your parents by.

You’re probably around 3 in the memory and you’re just staring out at the canals with your parents, laughing along with them and just as you turn to face them, everything fades to darkness and you’re filled with emptiness. It’s in Venice, that you’ve managed to figure out and you hear melodious laughter coming from two adults. The canals looked majestic and you’ve seen it in your head so many times now that you could probably draw it by hand. If you could draw that is... Your parents’ faces however were blurry at best and you’ve spent years scolding yourself for not turning quicker to look at them. All you could ask was why didn’t your 3-year-old self spend more time looking at your parents, remembering every single detail that made up their features?

Every year you made the same wish as you blew out the candles. You wished that your parents would come collect you. You would forgive them for the years that they had left you in this godforsaken house, if they would only come and collect you. They probably had a good reason for leaving you here, they wouldn’t just abandon you, would they?

The day after your birthday was always the worst. On your birthday night, you would always have dreams of them coming to the foster home so that they could take you back to your very opulent home. The three of you would sit at the dinner table and have a family meal like you always wanted. It would be reminiscent of something out of a commercial, the three of you all dressed fancily and laughing together like a perfect family. Ridiculous, it was and yet you always wished that you would never wake up from that dream but you always do. Your dreams were always so vivid, often times you wake up and you’re left with a sense of longing, wishing you could go back to where your heart seemed at peace. The day after your birthday is bitter and it always feels like you have a literal rain cloud over your head. The day after your birthday just feels like disappointment because whenever you wake up, you’re reminded once again of the fact that you’ve been abandoned by your parents for yet another year.

The resentment grows every year and you go from hating the day after your birthday to hating your birthday itself. You thought if you didn’t celebrate it, the immense pain you felt every year around that fateful day would fade but it doesn’t. So, you grow numb. You shut yourself off from the world, wishing to feel nothing rather than to feel all that pain. They tell you to smile, to be friendly so that it’ll make you look more adoptable but you can’t bring yourself to. Really, who would want you if your own parents didn’t want you?

You hated your birthday with every fibre of your being, you really did… until you turned 15.

Like any normal night, you had slipped under the covers at lights out and tried to go to sleep. It usually took you under an hour to go to bed but tonight your body was just buzzing with energy. You willed your mind and body to calm down but it was no use. It felt like every single nerve was crackling with an unknown electricity. In the dark, you looked at yourself to see if you were glowing, to see if anything was out of the ordinary but it nothing looked out of the ordinary.

“Hey,” You whisper as you reach over to prod the younger girl in the bunk bed next to you. “Is there anything on my body? Like do I look weird or anything?” You ask.

“Yeah, your face looks weird,” She says maliciously and laughs.

You let out an annoyed grunt as you roll your eyes at her and pull the blanket over yourself in frustration. God, you hated little kids.

An hour or two passes by and you still feel wide awake. You watch as the second hand ticks away, your precious hours of sleep drifting along with it. Now you’re just annoyed. You just really wanted to sleep so you think of the only thing that can calm you down. You think of your parents and Venice and—

A scream tears through your lungs as you feel your bed disappear underneath you, well you’re trying to scream but you can’t hear yourself. You must’ve rolled off your bed or something like that mid-dream. You feel yourself falling and you feel like your stomach is doing multiple acrobatic flips, much like when you’re on a roller coaster. You’re falling fast, too fast so you squeeze your eyes shut, bracing yourself for impact and the impending embarrassment that was to come.

The falling sensation stops and with a light thud you feel a surface beneath you, one that isn’t the smooth floor but rather a jagged surface. Slowly you peek out of your previously shut eyes and spot brick red roof tiles underneath you. You exhale, thinking this must be another one of your vivid dreams. But this time everything seems a little too real. You’re too aware…

You reach to pinch yourself and ouch that hurts, so this isn’t a dream? Maybe it was one of those lucid dreaming things that you’ve been reading about lately. They say in those dreams you’re able to float around or fly but looks like you’ve got the short end of the stick because gravity seems to be at play here, *sighs* damn it.

Curious, you glance downwards and you absolutely regret it because you’re aware of how dangerously high you are from the ground. You crawl along the top of the roof, inching forward slowly as you feel your palms begin to sweat. The sound of your heart beating is so loud that you can hear your pulse ringing in your ears. You do a quick glance around the roofs, making sure you do not dare to look anywhere other than at your eye-level. A few feet away from you, you spot a nicely decorated open top balcony and you begin to crawl faster towards it, wanting nothing other than to feel a stable surface beneath your feet.

As your feet touch the solid tiled floor of the balcony, you feel your heartbeat slow down and you breathe out a sigh of relief. You sure hope the owner of this home doesn’t come out any time soon to find you standing here because god knows how you’re going to explain how you got here in the first place.

Sinking down onto the plush couch, you finally let yourself look out to the horizon and you almost feel your jaw drop at the sight. You’ve seen something similar many times before, those domes in the distance, the numerous tiny bridges with striped-shirted men rowing gondolas underneath them and the glistening blue waters that surround the buildings that have stood the test of time. This is the very place you’ve been dreaming to see in person since you could remember. This is Venice.

You jump up from the couch immediately and venture forward. Clinging onto the balcony railing, you look out as far as you can. It’s exactly how the pictures on the internet and the books look like… okay maybe the water isn’t as clear but everything else looked perfect. The mind is such a beautiful thing, you thought… to be able to make a dreamscape look as real as this was really something else.

Standing there, you are simply in awe. You take the time to memorize every single building, to memorize how you feel in this moment because you’re unsure if your brain could recreate a dream like this ever again. You take a deep breath, gathering the courage to look down so you could see the streets and you look over the edge, stepping up on the bottom of the railing to get a clearer look.

You hear a loud crash, your head whipping around to the other side of the balcony where the noise had come from. You hear a young boy curse rubbing the spot on his head that had hit the railing of the balcony. Slowly, you walk yourself over, cautiously watching the young boy who was dressed in the oddest mismatched pajama set you’ve ever seen. You looked down and realized that you too were dressed in your pajamas and this whole dream is really beginning to confuse you.

“Where am I?”

“Uh, Venice, I think,” You answer.

He looks around, nodding to himself as if he could confirm that this is in fact Venice.

“Who are you?”

“Who are you?”

“I asked first,” He frowns.

You let out a deep sigh. You can tell you’re not going to like this guy already.

“Fine, I’m Y/N.”

“Okay Y/N, why are you in my dream?”

“This isn’t your dream, this is mine!”

He looks at you completely bewildered, as if you had just accused him of a crime.

“This is my dream thank you very much, no way you could’ve built Venice to look like this” He gestures wildly with his arms.

“Please, if there’s anyone that could do this, it’d be me.”

The boy scoffs, completely unamused.

“I’ve been playing Assassin’s Creed for months now, if there’s someone who knows what Venice would look like, it’ll be me.”

(Info: Assassin’s Creed II is a game wherein it takes place in 15th & 16th Century Italy)

Assassin’s Creed? You scoff mentally at the boy before you.

“I’ve read every article, book and magazine about Venice. If there’s anyone who knows what Venice would look like it’ll be me,” You boast. “Anyway, if it was based of Assassin’s Creed then why is everyone dressed in modern clothes?”

Taehyung looks over the edge of the balcony, watching the people below buzz around and you were right, they were all dressed in modern clothing but heck this is a dream and he was dressed in pajamas for god’s sake.

“Because, this is a dream and it doesn’t have to be accurate.”

“Look here—“ You pause, pointing at him, searching for a name.”

“Taehyung,” He answers.

“Alright, look here Taeh—“

A shrill scream jolts the both of you and you turn back to find a very shocked Italian woman screaming what you assume to be Italian profanities, some of which you recognize because aren’t those always the first words you pick up when trying to learn a language? Anyway, that’s beside the point because now she’s swinging her broom at you and you’re not sure what to do. You turn to your right, searching for Taehyung, hoping he would come to your rescue but the boy had disappeared. You rush backwards, ducking to avoid the broom as fear starts to course through you veins. Out of the corner of your eye, you watch Taehyung retreat to the other side of the balcony, hiding behind a giant potted plant. You scream his name, asking for help but you only see him watch you from his hiding spot. 

What a douchebag.

“Oh my god, Miss really I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean to trespass and—“ Another loud scream (that really, you feel is loud enough to shatter glass) leaves her throat and now the neighbours have all come to their windows to see what the commotion is all about. “—Please stop screaming, miss!” You beg. The broom gets closer and closer to your face and you move further and further towards the corner of the balcony.

She lifts her hand swinging backwards and you know the blow that’s about to come was going to hurt like crazy so you shut your eyes and hold your hands up to cover your head, hoping that it’s enough to soften the impact.

You wait and wait but you don’t feel anything. In fact, her shouting seems to have faded. Weird. Slowly, you peek out from behind your hands to find that you are no longer on the balcony, that you were now standing in the very alleyway you were looking at just before the woman had come at you with the broom. What the? How did I even?

You look up to see her still very furious as she screams in Italian at the passers-by, pointing at you and almost in unison they all stop to stare at you like they’re about to pounce. You back away slowly, shaking your head furiously while apologizing. You glance up once more and — oh god she’s going to throw the broom down.

Another loud scream sounds from above, one that sounded even higher in pitch, diverting everyone’s attention and you see the woman grabbing Taehyung by his ears, dragging him out of his hiding spot. Taehyung sinks to his knees, begging for forgiveness as the woman threatens him in Italian. He squeezes his eyes shut, wanting nothing more than for this nightmare to end. For a moment, he thinks he’s in the clear and that he’s back on his soft bed but when he feels his body crash into the ground he knows that truthfully this nightmare had only just begun.

The both of you have no time to think, to try and process what had just happened. How the both of you got from the fifth floor of the building all the way to the bottom was a mystery and was one not worth thinking about because this was just a dream, that’s what it was... a dream bordering on becoming a nightmare. The Italian women screams at the passers-by before running back into her house, presumably to chase after the both of you and you begin to feel panic rise within your chest. The crowd divides into two, one half looking at you and the other at Taehyung. The passers-by inch closer towards you, their eyes fixed on you, screaming profanities at you and without a second thought you take off running in the opposite direction that Taehyung had chosen to.

You run as far as your feet can take you and you don’t dare to glance back, afraid that they were only inches away from catching you. You turn at random corners and skid across the pathway as you try to avoid the oncoming foot traffic. Your tiny little feet slamming hard against the cobblestone as you propel yourself forward, putting more and more space between you and those pursuing you or at least you hope so.

After what seems like hours of running, you settle down on a bench at one of the small plazas littered throughout the city. You wipe the beads of sweat that have begun to drip down the side of your face with the back of your hand. You pant heavily, ducking your head down as you try to draw as little amount of attention to yourself as possible. Though that was a challenge since you were the only one dressed in a matching polka dot pajama set in broad daylight.

When you decide that the coast is clear, you get up from the bench and begin your long awaited chance at exploring the city. Everything seemed so different, so quaint and no matter how many times you had watched videos about the streets of Venice, nothing quite compared to being able to walk through them. Venice was everything you dreamed of and more. It was perfect in every single way, well except for the droves of tourists that seem to take up every inch of the walkway. Other than that, it was exactly how you pictured it to be.

You loved the way it smelled, the scent of the salt water canals wafting through the air. You loved watching people communicated in Italian animatedly, ah what a beautiful language. You loved the tiny stores that sold knick-knacks and the busy restaurants that sold food that made your mouth water. You loved how it was bustling city but you could escape the hustle and bustle easily by disappearing into some lesser known alleys. You wished you had a camera with you to capture all the sights and sounds, you wished you could live in this dream forever because you’d do anything to escape your sad reality.

A young family walks by the canals and you spot the young girl that seems to be right about 3, holding onto her parents’ hands. As they swing their arms in the air, you could only wish it was you in her place, that it was you holding onto the warm hands of your parents. Funny how reality had a way of affecting you even in your dreams, like it took pride in taking away every ounce joy you’re able to acquire.

Your feet begin to ache and your body begins to hurt as you feel your parched throat burn whenever you swallow your saliva. The world around you starts to spin and you find a bench to plop yourself down on before you pass out. Resting your elbows on your knees, you bring your hands up to shield your eyes from the sun that was blazing down on you. In your haze, you wonder where Taehyung was and if he had managed to get away like you did. This really was the most physically exhausting dream you’ve ever been in and maybe Taehyung was right and that this was his dream because none of your dreams had ever included this much goddamn running. You close your eyes, giving yourself a few moments to catch your breath but your head won’t stop spinning and you bend forward, thinking you might just throw up any minute now

Just as you stand up and take your first step, your feet wobbles and you feel like you’re suddenly being lifted into the air. You try to scream, pushing all the possible air out of your lungs but nothing leaves your throat, not even a squeak. You feel the same gust of wind, that falling sensation returning once again and your heart sinks because this probably means the dream is over. So you shut your eyes, letting a sense of disappointment wash over you.

With a light bounce, you find yourself back on your springy mattress again but it takes a moment for you to readjust and get your bearings right. You feel around, making sure that you really were in your room once again because as odd as it sounds, you felt like you just had an out of body experience. You lie there for a few seconds, trying to recap your dream and no matter how much you think about it, there really is no way to explain the chain of events that had happen. No way to explain how you had ended up in someone’s dream or how someone else had ended up in your dream. Glancing around, you see everyone still fast asleep, dawn fast approaching as the sky starts to fade to a lighter shade of blue. Quickly, you shut your eyes and settle down against your pillows, hoping to get a few more hours of sleep or perhaps hoping to return to the dream again.

“Up, up, up! Everybody up!” The matron shouts. “If I see any of you going back to bed, you’re not getting dinner tonight,” She adds.

There’s a collective groan that comes from the room and slowly but surely, you all exit the room one by one. You sit up, feeling like you’re slightly in a daze. That dream really took everything out of you. You were exhausted and oddly enough your legs ached and your throat felt like it was on fire.

You make your way down the rickety wooden stairs to the dining table where a simple breakfast had been laid out. You waddled across the room to your assigned seat, everyone waiting for you so that they could begin the meal. Just as you took your seat, your teeth almost sinking into the sandwich, the matron calls for you from the kitchen. Her voice had that tone to it, the one that made you shake with fear and everyone at the table sends you worrying looks.

Oooh, someone’s in trouble, you hear someone whisper.

You shuffle nervously towards the kitchen and when the matron sees you, she immediately pulls you into the pantry. Your eyes are wide with fear as you stare back at her in the dimly lit closet-sized room with cans upon cans of processed foods.

“Where were you last night?”

“What do you mean Miss? I was in bed,” You answer.

“Don’t play dumb with me kid,” She sneers. “When I did my rounds last night, you weren’t in bed so I’m asking you one more time. Where were you last night?”

“I was in bed, I swear miss!” You exclaim, your palm held up facing her as if you were saying an oath.

“Then why are you all sweaty?”

“I-I…” You swipe at your skin in confusion, wiping away the beads of sweat. “I just had a really crazy dream and I guess I—“

She looks at you, examining you features carefully to look for any sign of uncertainty in your face but your features only spelled out one thing, pure confusion.

“Your dreams… do they always feel very… real?” The matron asks after a long period of silence.

“Yes like—“

“Last night when you were dreaming, before you got to where you were, did it feel weird? Like you were on a—“

“—Rollercoaster,” You both say in unison.

You smile back at her, delighted that she understood what it felt like but she only looks back at you with eyes filled with worry.

“Go and finish you breakfast,” She sighs. “We’ll talk about this later.”

You chew on your sandwich slowly, mind somewhere else as you think about your dream and your short conversation with the matron. Something just didn’t feel right and it irked you so you just shift in your seat uncomfortably as you try to finish your breakfast.

As the bus approaches from the end of the street, the matron starts shouting, rushing all of you to put on your shoes. You being your usual nonchalant self, you take the time tying your own shoelaces and she shakes her head at you. As she pushes almost everyone out of the house, you stand there adjusting the straps of your backpack and she calls your name, beckoning you to come closer with the curl of her finger. She passes a small piece of paper to you carefully, telling you to stop by the library in town on the way back from school. Confused, you simply shove the paper into your pocket and run after the bus as the driver honks the horn for the umpteenth time.

As you settle down in your seat in the bus, you pull out the piece of paper from your pocket. Smoothing out the creases with your hands, you examine the words carefully. It said nothing more than a series of numbers which you assumed must be the book’s number code at the library. You slip the paper back into your pocket and decide to think about all of it later.

You were buzzing with curiosity the whole day, so much so that you simply couldn’t bring yourself to focus in any of your classes. You wondered what the book could be about and what it had to do with your dream, your teacher’s voice being reduced to a mere background soundtrack to your thoughts. Under the desk, you stretch your feet as best as you can to dissipate the aching feeling you felt. You wondered if somehow you had acted out your dream in your sleep because your body ached with every single move you made.

Before you knew it, the final school bell rang and everyone was rushing out of class. Still in a daze, you slowly get up to push everything on your desk into your bag. When you step out of class, you had a skip in your step as the prospect of finally being able to go to the library excited you.

The walk to the library seemed to take a lot longer than you remember and you’re not sure if it’s because you were itching with excitement or because you kept taking the wrong turns. When you finally reach the library, your school uniform clung to your body as the sweat dripped down your back. You shut your eyes in bliss as you felt the cool air coming from the air conditioner blow against your sweaty skin.

Standing on your tip toes, you pass the piece of paper to the librarian, asking her if she could point you to where the book was and she gladly points you to the shelf in far corner of the library. You nod gratefully and move towards the end if the library. The books in this section seemed like they had been untouched for years. The musty smell invaded your nostrils and you place your hand lightly above your nose to stop yourself from inhaling the thick layer of dust that has seemed to settle on all the books in this area.

You moved down the aisle slowly, your fingers grazing the spines of the books arranged neatly on the shelf, collecting dust as you moved along. You stop abruptly when you spot the same numbers on the now crumpled paper in your hand.  You remove the book from the shelf and it is a lot smaller than you had expected. You thought it was going to be one of those grand hard cover books with emboldened gold letters but the one you held in your hand was rather simple leather bound book with no title at all.

You take a seat on the bench at the end of aisle and flip through the book. As you scan through the book, the language gets increasingly complex so you rely on the hand drawn pictures to fill in the blanks. Being 15, you’re not very sure about what you’ve just read but here’s the gist of what you think you understand.

For a long time now, there had been a group of people who simply have the ability to jump from one place to another so, essentially teleport. This phenomenon only takes place on said person’s birthday but there have been reports of some people being able to do so whenever they want to. Having vivid dreams is a common factor that many jumpers have because apparently, it’s their subconscious jumping to certain locations. As a community, most jumpers have chosen to be silent about their abilities after well-known members started to disappear mysteriously.

You shut the book, feeling more confused than before and also slightly more afraid. This all felt something a little like the beginning of an introduction to a cult. The first thought that comes to your mind is why did the matron know about this book and was this why she was always a little kinder towards you? Second, if you were meant to only be able to jump on your birthday then was today your actual birthday? If so, why did you celebrate your birthday on a different day. A hundred and one questions were swirling around in your mind.

When you return home, you try asking the matron about it all but she feigns ignorance, choosing to ignore your desperate pleas for answers. You don’t dare to tell anyone about your abilities, afraid some burly men were going to come and take you away to a hidden secret facility which is probably unlikely but you’ve watched far too many movies for a kid your age. After a while, your curiosity dies down and all the questions you have are kept away in some far corner of your mind. It didn’t seem like anyone was going to or capable of giving you the answers you wanted any time soon so what was the point of dwelling on these questions?

One year later

Your body was buzzing with the same energy like the year before. It was a minute away from midnight and you were already too excited, barely able to contain yourself. Sneaking past row after row of bunk beds, you made sure to hold your breath and tiptoe all the way until you reached the door. Stepping out into the hallway, you take in a huge breath and stood in the hidden corner of the house, occasionally glancing around to see if anyone had followed you out of the room. A loud chime sounded from the grandfather clock downstairs and your eyes lit up, it was finally time. With clenched fists, you think hard about Venice, choosing a quiet alley this time because god knows you didn’t want a repeat of the whole balcony scene again.

A second or two ticks by and you felt electricity buzz beneath your skin. You felt your body shake with excitement, your skin tingling and before you had the time to process anything, you felt your body being flung into the air, like a big gust of wind had swept you off your feet.

With a soft thud, you feel your feet land on a tiled surface and you groan aloud. Christ, not again. It was the same balcony, the railings were much higher this time and you guess that was probably due to the mishap last year. You had just begun to shut your eyes, picturing a small alleyway within your sights when you hear a yelp, accompanied by a crashing sound as a wisp of green smoke clears to reveal Taehyung. You groan in distaste, clearly still unhappy to see him because he had abandoned you last year on this very balcony.

“Jesus, not you again,” Taehyung says as he locks eyes with you.

“Yeah, don’t worry I feel the same way,” You snort.

“Look, I believe you now, this is your dream or whatever because hell, my dreams are never as crazily vivid as the one I was in last year,” He heaves. “Please, get me out of this dream, I don’t want to go through this again,” He groans.

You laugh uncontrollably, barely able to catch your breath as you take in the worried look on Taehyung’s face.

“What’s so funny? Don’t tell me you enjoy mentally torturing people or something?” 

“Uhh...Taehyung was it?” You ask and he nods, slightly confused. “This isn’t a dream,” You laugh.

“What do you mean this isn’t a dream?” He asks when you simply continue laughing, not stopping to give him an explanation.

“It’s your birthday isn’t it?” You smirk.

“I-It is... How do you know that?” He gasps.

“Because Taehyung, you & I are Jumpers.”

6 years later

You stepped forward, into the light but your gaze remained fixed on the floor. You didn’t dare look in his eyes, too afraid of what he would do, what he would say.

“Y/N…” The tone of his voice filled with disbelief and the way he says your name comes out as a mere whisper. Taehyung stares at your guilt-ridden face, your hands folded in front of you as you nervously twiddled your thumbs together.

Taehyung feels the ropes around his arms loosen as Yoongi stalks over. His subordinates standing around the room aim their guns at Taehyung for good measure, a silent warning for him to behave.

“I hope you’re not thinking of doing anything stupid,” Yoongi says as he gestures around the room.

Taehyung doesn’t reply and remains still in the seat, his legs still tied to the chair. His mind is reeling as you shift nervously from one feet to another in front of him. Your eyes never once leaving the floor. How could you, why would you?

“Since you were so insistent—“ Yoongi places a small knife in his hand. “—go ahead and carve out her tongue then.”

You let out a yelp of pain as Yoongi’s men kick at the back of your knee and force you to kneel before Taehyung. Your eyes flicker up to look at Taehyung and you’re sure he can see the fear you’re trying so hard to hide. You bite down on your lower lip to stop it from quivering and try to control your breathing.

“Go on,” Yoongi laughs. “Or are you just all talk?”

Taehyung roughly grabs your face, fingers digging into your cheek and despite all your effort, a whimper escapes your lips.

The cold blade rests on your lips and you shut your eyes, struggling against his hold.

“Hold her down! Hold her mouth open!” You hear Yoongi shout and you feel tears threaten to start streaming down your face.

I’m so sorry, Taehyung, you wanted to say but you couldn’t get it out. At this point, Taehyung was probably confused, hurt and blinded with rage. Nothing you say or do could stop him from cutting out your pretty little tongue but you wanted him to know that you didn’t think Yoongi would have done all of this to him. He promised you he wouldn’t hurt you or Taehyung but you guess you’re a fool for believing the words of a man who tortured people for fun.

You feel your tongue being yanked out of your mouth and the tip of the knife being pressed to the side of it.

Forgive me, Taehyung, forgive me.

[machsabre]

My Top Ten Hottest Characters list

Since I’m still in a position where I can’t post new art yet... I thought we'd have a little fun here and talk about some stupid subjects. :)

In all fandoms, there's one subject that we've ALL had conversations about. Be it video games, movies, cartoons, comics, novels, or whatever... It's the thought we've all had.

“Which of these characters is hottest?”

Yup. Deep and intricate thoughts with me all the time, baby. Next generation of philosophy begins right here! Seriously though, while I am a pervert... I consider myself one of the last of the greatest kinds of gentlemanly perverts. With comic art, it's not just how the character is drawn, but their personality as well. It's a lot like real life: Sure, someone can look at Chris Evans abs and say “Oh yeah, I could rub oil on those all day.” But it's not until you see him standing up to the KKK and you're like “Damn dude, marry me.” It's all the same ways with comic characters too.

And it's a difficult discussion to have, when talking about comic book characters, because it requires that you've developed feelings for a fictional character... And for a lot of men suffering from toxic masculinity, that's a bit of a difficult discussion to have. Wait, that's not true. It's really NOT a hard discussion to have, but it requires explaining that it's not just seeing the characters in revealing clothing or less... That much requires no imagination and five minutes on Google with the safe search turned off. But this isn't about fanservice... Which is something I have no issues with, as long as it's respectful to the character in question... But it's getting to KNOW those characters and loving those characters. That's something that's different. That's almost intimate. And let's be honest... There's a LOT of people who have serious problems handling that idea in real life with real people, much less with fictional ones. And naturally, when they have trouble comprehending this, they resort to mockery.

So let's start this stupidity. :)

Doctor Harleen “Harley Quinn” Quinzel: If I wanna see naked Harley Quinn... Trust me, there's NO lack of those images in multiple forms of media. But it's not about just trying to see photoshopped naked pictures of Margot Robbie. Yes, she is attractive, but it's not about that. The Harley Quinn we know from the comics is one of the strongest and most compelling characters in comics. She's more than just eye candy for Joker fan. In many ways, she was one of the first true examinations of an abusive relationship in comics, as well as a wonderful example of overcoming that abusive relationship and becoming a much stronger person for it. Yeah, there was a bit of understandable controversy over her introduction to the Nu52 universe years ago, but let's be honest... We all were already thinking about her in that way ever since Mad Love and the red see-through slip. But as far as character development goes, say whatever you will about her now... She's gone through some immense development, and almost all for the better. From pretty much leaving the villain life behind (and seemingly for good), fully canonizing her LGBT status, as well her open relationship with Poison Ivy, the Gang of Harleys... Which should NOT work, but they do for some reason... And most of all, officially putting her relationship with the Joker squarely in the past. There was a great amount of pride I felt for her when she seriously beat the ever loving shit out of that clown. Hell, my biggest fear for her is that some dumbass writer will decide to shove her and Joker back together again into their abusive relationship... And guess what? That's apparently her biggest fear too.

That's a level of deep meta-writing that's kind of rare in any form of fiction, much less comics and as a result... I don't think it's possible not to love her.

Tank Girl: I've established before that I have this fascinating love for Tank Girl. This shaved head anarchist was one of my first exposures to independent comics and she's stuck with me ever since. I even liked her movie, and the following Vertigo series with her. (Though I'm well aware that we don't talk about such things anymore. What is my fascination with her? Was it because she's this over-the-top crazy sometimes half-naked chick with shaved hair driving a tank around, while chugging beer and and chomping a cigar and firing a machine gun? Is it because she reminds me of this girl from college who I had the hots for but not the courage to actually ask out? Or is it just a case of  just shut up and stop asking stupid questions, and enjoy the British insanity. Honestly, it's probably all three.

Jessica “Spider-Woman” Drew: A few years ago, she was involved with the cover controversy involving Milo Manara, and then later by proxy Frank Cho as well, and I won't lie, I'm a little disappointed in how the creators acted. I'm not upset that they drew what they drew... That's what they're known for. But it's how they reacted to it. And what bothers me the most, is that these people who lashed back at the complaints, including people like that internet personality Maddox and others just didn't seem to get what the whole controversy was about, using the amount of times we've seen Spidey's butt as defense. And it's not that hard to figure out. There was a similar repeat about it last year with the Overwatch character Tracer, where her victory pose has her ass on display in her ugly orange tights. (Sorry, I love her, but they ARE ugly pants!) They changed it, and her butt was still there, but the pose was changed to something more playful and “cheeky”. Some online critics laughed at the “SJWs” because they thought that Blizzard trolled them... They didn't and just like the Spider-Woman cover, they didn't seem to understand what the entire problem was to begin with. There's a ENORMOUS difference between seeing her ass and her showing us her ass. It's all about consent.

Seriously, this is Spider-Woman. She's not this seductive femme fatale, slinking around, luring men into a false sense of security, like Black Cat. She's a former Avenger and SHIELD agent that lives in a shitty apartment, eats cereal out of cups, raves about gelato, punches the shit out of bad guys without thinking, headstrong, sometimes very arrogant and has a C-Lister villain as a nanny. (And now boyfriend.) Yes, she's a total MILF... But as Roger the Porcupine recently said, she's hot for reasons other than her yoga pants and her eyes, though they don't hurt... It's who she is. She's passionate and caring to a level that is somewhat rare in comics today. She's this single mom who couldn't even go out with friends to relax, because she was worried about her new baby. She had a hell of a reason to hate Carol for a long as time because of Civil War II, and she couldn't even remain mad long enough to do that, because she needed her best friend more than she needed her anger. She's handled realistically. She's Jessica Drew. If she wants to show us her ass, she'll show us her ass... And it may be followed up by either a roundhouse kick or a venom blast.

Madelyne “The Goblin Queen” Pryor: When the Inferno storyarc hit in the 80s with these Marc Silvestri covers, featuring this hot red head wearing one of the most revealing skin tight black leather costumes ever, pulling around Magik on a chain... Well, what do you want? I was a teenage boy who just hit puberty. Between her and Circuit Breaker from Transformers, I'm pretty sure I had no hope from there on.

Major Motoko Kusanagi: I know it's hard these days to bring up this character without the topic of Scarlett Johansson coming up, but personally, there's been enough versions of Ghost in the Shell, between the original manga, Stand Alone Complex, the Mamoru Oshii animated movies, Arise and whatever else that I can pretty much just accept the upcoming movie as yet another iteration of the concept as a whole. Hell, the original manga isn't even in that tight of continuity with itself. (Man-Machine Interface is kind of a clusterfuck of a story to be bluntly honest.) And it doesn't help that her creator, Masamune Shirow has kinda gone off the deep end these days. (Don't google this, if you're unaware. ESPECIALLY if you're at work!)

But Major Kusanagi was always fascinating. Bear in mind, that the original manga series came out in 1991, 28 years ago. (As of this writing in 2017.) Here was this cyborg, who wasn't a victim or arm candy or whatever. She was a professional soldier, who never cracked under pressure and was a skilled team leader and never once broke down crying as a drop of the hat. (In early 90s, this was revolutionary in comics.) In fact, the only time I can remember her tearing up in the original comic, she was experiencing a neurotheological experience from deep inside Cyberspace, witnessing the evolution of life from data.

Now there's a whole bunch of other factors that come into play here. It brings up the question, if you are a male and your brain is placed into a body of female specifications, are you still a male? Obviously gender definitions become more fluid, but after your hormones and sexuality being altered, would you still considered yourself a male? For that matter, would this transcend the concept of gender? Now “Ship of Thesus” paradox theories aside, there are more explorations and examinations on this subject in recent days, but in the early 1990s, this was pretty damn revolutionary. And that's just sexuality and gender, and not even bringing up the ideas of implanted memories, spatial perspective, brain hacking and even about Transcendance of Humanity. And Major Kusanagi was pretty much at the center of all this. Philosophically speaking, she kind of got me thinking about the world in a way more than one. That's... Pretty significant.

Kate “Hawkeye” Bishop: Kate Bishop was one of those characters I didn't develop a fondness for until much later after everyone else has. And it came about with Mat Fraction's Hawkeye comic, where she served as partner to “Hawkguy”. But you know when the exact moment happened where I decided this dark haired archer was destined to become one of my favorites? This moment from the Deadpool crossover...

That's it. That's all there is. I love her. She's too damn awesome.

(And in case you're wondering why her BFF and occasional fanshipping America Chavez isn't included here... She's awesome, but I'm still getting to know her. Right now, I'd have placed her at #13, right behind Helena “Huntress” Bertinelli and Clint “Hawkguy” Barton.

Doreen “Squirrel Girl” Green: Seriously, if you had told me even five years ago that Squirrel Girl would be on this list, much less so high on this list... I would have called you insane. And yet, here are. 2017 is weird. Here's this college co-ed, with a squirrel tail and buck teeth, with a weird habit of hanging around squirrels... By all means, she's a internet meme that went too far. You can almost understand why it would be so difficult to bring her into the live action movies. I mean, you can explain away Rocket and Groot: They're aliens. But Squirrel Girl? How the hell do you even begin to try and explain away that there's this girl with powers of squirrel and girl, who has legitimately defeated not only Dr. Doom... TWICE... But Thanos AND Galactus. It's stupid and silly and there's just no realistic way this can possibly work at all...

...And yet it does. It does so brilliantly on a level I never thought possible in comics. The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl comic by Ryan North and Erica Henderson is one of the most brilliant comics I have ever read and it constantly blows my mind every time. This is a comic where Kraven the Hunter has become Kraven the Hunter of Hunters, as he drives around in the Kra-Van, after befriending Doreen. She's defeated villains using binary math counting. She's gone on lousy dates with sentinels and introduced us to 'superhero truthers”. There was an issue told like a “choose your own adventure” book and another told from the point of view of the pet cat. She has an antagonistic friendship with Iron Man, often bickering with him on Twitter. And that's just in her own book. Over in the U.S. Avengers, she's flying around with Cannonball, with her squirrel friends on jetpacks, while helping a time displaced Dani Cage, who's now the future Captain America fight the Golden Skull and his $kullocracy, who has a helicarrier with a volcano base on it... Jesus, this is all utter nonsense and it works. There's no reason it should work and it does. She's adorable, she's amazing... She's unbeatable.

Dick “Nightwing” Grayson: Hey, I may identify as mostly straight, but I have no probably acknowledging and appreciating the fine ass that belongs to Richard Grayson. I always liked him, to be honest. Even as a kid, I always thought Robin was awesome, so I always liked Nightwing too. To me, he's like the perfect superhero. He's has no superpowers, his hearts always in the right place, he tries hard all the time and is just generally an awesome guy. I actually loved the period of time when he was Batman. The dynamic between hims and Damian was utterly perfect, with a cheerful and upbeat Batman and a dour and pissy Robin. It's a dynamic duo I hope one day returns, because to be honest... This is going to sound insane, but I always think the Batman case is far, far more interesting when Batman is NOT around. I think Bruce's the least interesting of the entire Batfamily. Batman is this unstoppable force... He's this parody that people accuse Squirrel Girl of being, but without the sense of humor. But Grayson? He's flawed. He's not perfect. He screws up and makes mistakes, gets angry, is passionate and loving. He'll get into Bruce's face, and tell him when he's wrong. And Bruce will listen.

He's one of the greatest superheroes ever, and that's why he's up so high on my list.

Also, dat ass.

Barbara “Batgirl” Gordon and Dinah “Black Canary” Drake: I combined these two together for one entry. (Dinah has the top entry, if you're curious.)

Batgirl's always been a favorite of mine. In fact, I love many of her incarnations over the years, frok Barbara, to Stephanie, to Cass to even the unknown original, Bette. (And I even include Charlie in this list, even if it was short lived.) With Barbara, unlike Bruce or Dick. She didn't go through some horrible tragedy to want to fight crime... She just had a strong sense of right and wrong instilled upon her by her father, the Commissioner. To her, it was fun and exciting, though she was well aware of the dangers that came with the cape and cowl. She eventually did experience tragedy at the hands of the Joker with the Killing Joke... Which um... Well, let's just say, I'm not too big of a fan of. The controversies over that story has been brought up so many times, that there's no much else to say about it that others haven't said and said better. It's a good story, but it sucks that Barbara was basically a motivator to enhance the story for Bruce and the clown. But I think we all agree the character development that came out of her when she became Oracle was revolutionary. It was during this time that she teamed up with Black Canary and formed the Birds of Prey, leading to one of the most consistently famous and popular teams of all time. (Especially once Huntress joined in the fun.)

Eventually with the launch of the Nu52, we have her reclaim the mantle of Batgirl... And... Sigh... No offense to Gail Simone, I wasn't too fond of these stories. They seemed overly dark and depressing for the sake of being dark and depressing, at a time I really did NOT want dark and depressing comics. But I did really like that one “Future's End story where she became Bete Noire, and was leading a team of Batgirls. Probably because that was a similar idea I came up with long ago, with a team of Batgirls running around kicking ass.

Then came the Burnside Batgirl stories. I know they were a bit controversial to some people  sneering the words “hipster” around like a slur word and others loving the fun new take and direction with it, I felt firmly in the latter category. I thought the new costume was actually rather well thought out, looking less like a cartoon costume into something more practical. Much like Spider-Woman's new costume, I liked it a lot. I greatly enjoyed the entire run, and currently I'm following the creative team over at Image on their creator owned project Motor Crush. The new creative team on Batgirl I haven't bought yet, mainly due to budgetary reasons. ('m buying a lot more books these days!) But 'm currently waiting for the collection to follow along. However, I have been buying Batgirl and the Birds of Prey... And the reason for it? Well, it involves our #1 spot.

I'm not going to lie. I never hated Black Canary, but she was never a huge favorite of mine. She was just... There. She was to me what I always felt characters like Martian Manhunter or Gambit were: Characters good enough to be awesome on a team, but not awesome enough to support their own book. She showed up in the Burnside Batgirl relaunch as a supporting character who had her van burned and destroyed by Barbara's equipment malfunctioning. They established her as a musician, and I thought “Well, all right.” Like I said, I didn't hate her. I just didn't love her either.

Then her series came out.

Here's the thing about that. A couple years ago, I was in the stages of plotting a comic story for a musician friend of mine, where it was basically a comic story starring her. And I had this neat plot thought out... And then the Black Canary comic came out.

And suddenly I had to scrap that entire project because there's NO WAY I could a comic about a blonde rock musician touring across the states with a young girl in two, protecting her from monsters and evil scientists, as a former rival musician shows up as the antagonist... OH MY GOD, it's the same story!!

Understand, I'm not saying they stole it from me. I'm saying we came up with the same idea... They beat me to doing the story, and they were doing it better than I could have!

Though I was pissed, I kept reading it. I mean, it was a great comic! And they developed Dinah's  character far, FAR better than they ever did for poor Laurel Lance on Arrow. (I know there's a new Dinah now... But that's another issue all together.) This girl was amazing. And then I read a little more into it and found out that she was part of Team 7. Now, Team 7 was one of my favorite parts of the old Wildstorm Universe, and suddenly the idea that she got her powers from the same means that Grifter, Deathstroke, and the others got their powers... The old Gen13 fan in me fell in love this idea! And then I just started to read more and more into her, and found myself really loving Dinah Drake. Much like Jessica Drew, she ain't perfect, but the fighting skills are there. She can hold her own against other superpowered beings, with or without the sonic scream. Hell, in that horrible Injustice comic, her friendship with Harley Quinn was the only really good thing that came out of that.

And just to add to it all, her comic was awesome. It was a musical comic done right. I've heard from so many people saying that “music in comics just does not work, because it is an incompatible medium, and to that, I say “Fuck you, read Black Canary!” The art, while on the surface was sketchy and rough, there was a form of brilliance to it, such as an issue where she fought someone, with the battle overlaid over music bars. And then there was the final issue, where it was a tribute to David Bowie. I was really kinda bummed when it was on the chopping block for Rebirth. But Dinah is currently running around in Birds of Prey again, serving as the rational one between Barbara and the grumpy Helena. And as of recently, she was one of the first recruits by Batman to form a new Justice League comprised of basically the supporting characters of the CW Shows... And Lobo.

And all of that with both Barbara and Dinah isn't even getting into the close friendship the two of them have. You wanna say they're close like sisters or you wanna say they're a lot closer and are in denial about how they feel? Go with whatever you want, because I'm cool with either. I love 'em both, and that's why to me, Babs and D.D. are my top two hottest comic characters.

Next time, I’ll come up with a dumber topic. :P

[mceproductions]

October 2018 Blurbs

10/1/18 31 Nights of Halloween, Freeforms inheritence from its previous incarnations, other than the mandated 700 Club. The month between seasons, otherwise known as candy city. Stockholm Syndrome from Willies departure may be setting in as we had a large truck and only 4 of us to do it. I shouldnt be missing his prescence but somehow i am. Remedy is needed soon. 10/2/18 Im A Christmas Guy, love giving gifts out and decorating. Have done so annually for 16 years and it always starts within the first few days of October as i unblock my Holiday themed movie and TV Shows on digital. Looking forward to the next few weeks especially. Brewers NLDS starts Thursday! 10/3/18 The old tutalige of when it rains it pours, reared its ugly head. Flat by Old El Rancho. That really screws things up for me. Hoping for Miracle. 10/4/18 Well, day minus the Brewers coming back, was a bust. Tire was flat. Hoping I can get it either possibly fixed or a cheap replacement. Wondering how ill get to the store tomorrow. 10/5/18 Apparently massive flu spreading around as Mom picked up whatever Dad was sick with. Ended up replacing tire, but with brand new one. Hopeful not mistake. Also affected things at WallyWorld as Linda and Tyler were feeling cruddy. Hopeful I dont get it. Brewers win and truck got fixed. Still undecided on Venom or Gaga for movie on Saturday. 10/6/18 Ended up going with Gaga and was pleasently stunned by both her and Bradley Cooper. Movie was wonderful and that ending was rough, picked up soundtrack to boot. Sort of took longer than I anticipated coming back from EC thanks to BlueGolds Homecoming. Boy colleges take that far more seriously than High School. Panera for dinner was a great alternative as well. 13th Doctor tomorrow before work! FLCL on the other hand...I'll never say the C word to anyone, but Pets was definetly the C Word to Kana. 10/7/18 Man that was emberassing to watch. Green Bay actually played so lousy I watched Doctor Who, and loved the female 13th looking forward to more of her. Final Season of Walking dead also premired. Wonder how Ricks going out. Gunner and his partner are really intolerable. Reporting that asap, the store is not a place for thier private spats. 10/8/18 Columbus getting squeezed out of his own day is the most PC thing that I can get on board with. Nobody gives a crap about the whole Sailed the ocean blue in 1492 thing anymore. Stuff to do including assignments that I have to go to the library to finish. Hoping internet will be back sooner rather than later. 10/9/18 Woke up to flashing lights by house and realized power line got taken down by tree that Dad had pointed out. A bit more broke than I anticipated. Stuff here i have to do anyway and thankfully work will limit my having to go anywhere. Really could use $300 to pay Patti. Brewers will take on Dodgers in NLCS starting Friday. Mad that Conan for all intent and purpose has been cancelled, adpating is one thing but this is a glorified cancellation. 10/10/18 Rain city continues...Puddles in Bravada. On top of it its getting colder. Winter isnt here yet, but the white ravens are taking flight. 10/11/18 Now comes the cold, and first snow of the year. We had it all today cold, wind, sun and snow. 10/12/18 Store gave me a first look at my future. Gaurantee work on Sunday Monday and Friday every week unless i say so. Which other than one day may be saying much. Could use more variety than that. Also stinks NLCS is on when im working. Pulling for Dodgers in at least 1 game so I can see game 5 on wednesday at least. 10/13/18 They have been hyping the crap out of inventory for the past 3 weeks. Now i see why, Clint made a rare Saturday appearance at the store. Hopeful for the next few days. Got my prediction right about game 5 on Wednesday so thats good. Kanye is nuts as usual, and Kana gave me the best reason yet to finally move forward on the FLCL finale. Cold week ahead. 10/14/18 Andrew and his little notes are getting out of hand. Got called in to do truck early as Inventory closes in on Tuesday. Clint on the other hand, i know ive got to not walk off for a few seconds but he really needs to chill for a bit especially cause we both used to be pushing carts in the first months of the store he should know my rhtyms by now. Stinks about Pete Davidson though, really hope he can recover cause i liked him and Ariana as a couple. Rather unfortunate that they split cause she couldnt deal with her ex commiting suicide. 10/15/18 A missing person is a big deal, when you happen to know someone who is related to said missing person, then you know its huge. Jayme Closs, the cousin of Brody being abducted after her parents were gunned down, sad for all. My only issue is brody reatcing to everyones sympathies, overkill a bit. The other issue i have is the amber alert system that can be sent out to phones. With Trumps ability to text everyone in the country I witnessed a bunch of people who got the alert yesterday complain about it, the others who thought she killed them and fled are the bigger morons. Hopefully shes found safe. Other than that, good night for Wisconsin Sports, Brewers are 2 Out from pennant and Rodgers did his thing once again. 10/16/18 Boring first part of shift as we did basically nothing due to the inventory. But at least the night managed to salvage itself. Dodgers really play dirty. 10/17/18 Nose began to stuff itself again. Bunch of classwork for 2 weeks as i get the inservice day. Milwaukee gave another one away. Hoping Game 6 on Friday will be a turnaround. 10/18/18 Rare thursday day, nose still stuffed. 10/19/18 Library day as i caught up on work, and finally watched A Chrsitmas Story to its ending. A classic, yes just don't feel that strongly about it. Big game from the Crew forcing Game 7. 10/20/18 This day was nuts, a quick 25 minute snowcase that gave way to sunny conditions by noon. Saw Venom, didn't get why it was hated. Quite enjoyable dyanmic and She-Venom was the highlight of it all. Dodgers unfortuantley took the pennant. Great season overall for Milwaukee just bummed my streak of picking the world series winner at the All Star game ended at 4. Also tide pods finally used them, no wonder people ate them they're great for clothes. 10/21/18 First day ever that i skipped NFL Games. Neat concept. 10/22/18 Very long strech of store coming up, especially given that Today we only had 3 total. 10/23/18 Held off on grabbing Mamma Mia 2 Blu Ray. Mainly due to gas situation that had Bravada dying near tracks. I got to figure cash situation out to pay off people. 10/24/18 Lone day off before Halloween. No class today so that made things better. Master Mode on Zelda getting easier to figure out. Did reset on iPhone and Kindle, should fix lone bugs. Really want to play RDR2 and Spiderman PS4. World Series from what I can tell is shaping up as a sweep. Also, whole reason I began watching Sunny aired tonight. First of 2 Part Super Bowl Episode. Charlie in a Bear Trap drinking pee, eww! 10/25/18 First of 6 in a row backwise. The Halloween episodes on TV Usually do wonders for me, not this time. I know this is the final season of Big Bang Theory but Sheldon not realizing how irritating he sounds to others after 12 years and so much maturing seems not the right way to do it. Especially seeing his wife irrate Bernadette. 10/26/18 2nd night, the wheels i dont think feel off, but the were more loose than usual. Hour to set up, hour work, break, 30 minutes to unload hvdc and then didn't finish til after 6. When your down numbers wise you can certainly feel it. FYI The crap with the MAGA Bomber made me mad enough to likely stay off social media until after the election, that made it my breaking point. RWBY Season Premire Tomorrow! 10/27/18 Rooster Teeth First free trial, worth it for watching a great primire that perfectly sets up what comes. My point who is that woman with the Maz Kanata eyewear? Wisconsin stinks. 10/28/18 My issue with the whole core hours thing involves me working on days i know theres something i should be doing. Such as watching the packers. Almost beating LA, hopeful they can actually do that against Brady. 10/29/18 That blue wave better close in next week cause, another shooting and another predictable Trump response occurred. Hate crimes abound in his america. 10/30/18 Last in the back, October really came and went this year. Only thing bad about not working Halloween is the dressup im missing out on. Adam in drag would have been a hoot. 10/31/18 Darkness Falls Across the Land...You Know the rest. Halloween. This day is one back 20 Years ago i would openly love. At least the Candy is still around, albiet smaller and more sugary. Nowadays this day has me DVR'ing all the major shows to see what costumes get put on. Spoiler Alert only episodes of ATH And PTI that I happily record all year. When it comes to applying for scholarships however thats where it blurrs. WITC is really biased against those in the outreach sites hoping i can get help tomorrow when i visit. November came too quickly but, I get to see my nephew in 2 Weeks!

[wheelswithinreels]

‘The uncanny valley, at the end of the day, is the gap between seeing and believing.’ Bruce Carter, at the Animal Logic animation studio in Sydney.

We all hate politicians. But why? Isn't that weird? Throughout history, we haven't always hated our leaders. So why do our politicians, these days, seem so alien, so strange, so... uncanny?

...Maybe an obscure Japanese roboticist's theory holds the answer. A video essay. Part one of two!

*

Ah, politics. (Cue ~80% of my readers switching off in disgust.) Actually, since right now I don't have any readers, that's fine, you can't divide by zero. Unless you're Ted Chiang, in which case they'll probably seize your book with glee, hose you with money and make a movie about it.

...Anyway. Politics.

This one I wrestled with for a bit; not least because I'm not all that comfortable with writing a piece of genuinely venomous criticism. You'll notice as we go that I tend to review things I love, and that when I do criticise, it's with the intention of making something awesome even better. I just enjoy what I'm doing more that way.

And it's not just because I'm a spineless jellyfish (although I am, wibble) - it's because on the whole, there ain't no accounting for taste and one man's trash is another man's treasure, etcetera. (Incidentally, that last one - awful way to tell your kid he's adopted.) But, yes, to each his own, say I, and all the more for me - if I don't like something and you do, that's totally cool, you do your thing and I'll do mine. It's all just opinions in the end.

And to be honest, I reckon there's very little to be gained by hurling bags of shit at things/people/art you don't like, on the whole; yes, it might be funny, yes, it might feel cathartic, but if the target of your shit volley ever actually reads it, it's more likely to upset them quite badly than anything else. Which, well, probably outbalances those flickers of amusement and the momentary release you get from ripping seven shades of shit out of them.

I dunno. I don't mean to get on my high horse, and I look rubbish up there anyway, but... I'm with Michael Keaton in Birdman, on the whole, when he rails against hatchet jobs. 'You write a couple of paragraphs and you know what? None of this cost you fuckin' anything!' Art's hard. Compassion's easy. (Most of the time.) As someone's old Welsh grandmother is no doubt still muttering, 'if you can't say anything nice, SHUT THE FUCK UP, ARSEHOLE.'

...You'll see this come up a couple of times in upcoming videos, I reckon. Hey, it's an interesting subject. And I certainly haven't always practiced what I preach... I probably laughed harder and longer at das-sporking's savage Twilight recap than anything else in 2009. Still. (The infamous Charlie Brooker wrote an excellent and thought-provoking piece about exactly this in 2010, if you're interested...)

*

So, why break my own rule? Well, it comes down to this, I reckon.

Bad art doesn't hurt anybody. (Define 'bad', anyway.) From a formal literary perspective, my 13-year-old fanfiction might well have been an enormous steaming heap - but at the time, it helped me hone my craft immeasurably, put me in touch with a small but close-knit group of sweet, supportive readers who reviewed each other and built up each other's confidence, and helped me grow up.

Put it this way: if you'd left me a bad review at age 13, I can guarantee I wasn't mature enough to handle it. (Hey, people saying my shit stinks still hurts.) All you'd have accomplished would be to upset a kid, and probably drive them off the internet for a few months. It's hard to see how that's a net positive.

But while bad art, generally speaking, doesn't hurt anyone, bad politics does. More specifically, bad politicians do. In all sorts of ways - from dementia taxes, to food banks, to the more insidious problem of receding trust in our democracy - from Nick Clegg's continued insistence that he shouldn't have to apologise for betraying every student who voted for him (ahem), to Theresa May's cowardice concerning debates, to her apparent inability to answer any question, at all, like a human being.

And when we see shit like this going down, we should start getting annoyed. We should stand at the back and heckle. We should make our arguments heard. Otherwise more bad things will happen to more good people.

So the reason I've made an exception for Theresa May - and every other politician who's traded in their authenticity for a slicked-back PR guru - is that, well, she's a politician. More than that - she is, for now at least, the leader of my country. And yet she pulls stunts like these, in broad daylight...

Plymouth is feeling the effects of military cuts. Will she guarantee to protect the city from further pain? "I'm very clear that Plymouth has a proud record of connection with the armed forces."

How will your Brexit plan make Plymouth better off? "I think there is a better future ahead for Plymouth and for the whole of the UK."

Will you promise to sort out our transport links? "I'm very clear that connectivity is hugely important for Plymouth and the South West generally."

- Sam Blackledge, The Plymouth Herald

I go on about this kind of shit at quite some length in the video, so I won't repeat myself too much, but... seriously? Is this how stupid you think we are? Whichever parasitical sycophant convinced Theresa May that the electorate will swallow this kind of gubbins needs Domestos-ing, stat. The Great British public rather dislike being patronised. As they recently proved.

...So, even though I felt uncomfortable titling the video 'Why You Hate Theresa May,' and I still feel uncomfortable having a video on my channel with a title like that, I think it's justified. Hey, put it this way: if I was a politician who was honestly trying to do some good for my country, and a video popped up titled 'Why People Fucking Hate You', I'd be upset, sure - but I'd want to watch it. Just to see whether they actually had a point. Just in case I'd fucked something up badly. I'd want to see.

The video isn't really about hate. I don't want people to hate their prime minister, and if she ever changes, you bet I'll make a video expressing my delight and appreciation. I just wish she'd understand why, right now, they're justified in doing so.

*

Anyway, this video was 90% finished a month or so ago, in fact; then I sort of moved countries, and forgot about it, until the UK election campaign brought it squarely back into focus. (That's why poor old Ed Miliband comes in for the brunt of the bollocking in this first part; Theresa May hadn't really got going with 'strong-and-stable' yet.) But I was seized with a sudden urge to dig it out and finish it because, well, it seemed so relevant to why she'd lost.

...Also, I'm still a baby channel and, well, I'm as keen to capitalise on current events as the next guy. So, sheer good luck and timing that I had a video almost done.

*

And now for something completely different: I just wanted to address the fact that most/all of you probably saw this video pop up first as an ad. Yep, a paid one. Via Google AdWords. I'm officially a heartless, soulless business.

Or not, since I'm also broke as shit, and my AdWords campaign is presently set to run for TWO WHOLE DAYS at a cost of roundabout £15. Yeah. I do slightly sadden myself sometimes.

I did have some severe doubts about advertising on YouTube... for one thing, everyone hates adverts. How dare I waste people's time? Well, here's how I justified it to myself:

Like I said, baby channel. Tiny. Insignificant. When 300 hours are uploaded to YouTube every minute, frankly, I'm screwed if I can't get the word out somehow. At least at the start.

You can skip my ads, 'cos I'm way too poor for the mandatory 30-second ones, har har. (Also, I'd never make an ad unskippable. Fuck that shit.)

I can count the number of ads I've actually enjoyed and/or watched to the end on one hand, but... there have been a few of them. Some showing me videos I might never otherwise have seen. If my crappy little ad campaign nets me one person who genuinely enjoys my stuff, and watches it, and thinks it improved their day, well... it'll be money well spent.

<sanctimonious-soapboxery>When you think about it, it's actually my money that's helping out those poor creators who do rely on monetisation, so good for them, I say. Poor sods.</sanctimonious-soapboxery>

Having said all that... I'd rather you watched the AVPM video, frankly. It's way more representative of what this channel's going to be about. But hey, this is something I felt strongly enough about to pour hours of research (read: watching politicians lie on YouTube) into. If that's not enough to make you pity me, well... may God have mercy on your twisted little walnut of a soul.

And on that note...

x

[smokeybrandcompositions]

In Defense of Laci Green

I’m a giant black man who lives in America. I’m the most persecuted individual in this country, bar none. People cross the street when they see me. Cops rest their hands on their sidearm at traffic stops. My white neighbor called in a noise complaint and three K-9 units pulled up on my family as we stood outside of my apartment talking. At 6 in the afternoon. On a Friday. I live across the street from a bar. He lives in the same building as several drunk 20-somethings. But I’M a problem? Yeah, okay. I was once stopped by CHP at 7am as I walked to work, because I fit a description. Literally that’s what they said to me; “There’s been a report of robberies in this neighborhood and you fit a the description.” The CHP, man. What description? Black and in a hoodie? It’s 7 am in December and I have to walk 5 miles to work. I’m cold and this is the only jacket i own. But that doesn’t matter. They saw a black man, in a hoodie, walking in an affluent area, too early in the morning for their tastes. That’s my life. That’s my reality. I understand what it means to be a target. To be persecuted. To be marginalized. I know how frustrating it is to be considered less than because of your physical identity so I identify with the overall feminist message. Always have. I just don’t like how it’s being voiced as of late.

I am, by no means, a feminist. I find that whole modern ideology, toxic, divisive, and problematic. I believe a lot of the message these third-wave feminists preach is bullsh*t rhetoric more akin to the younger Millenials whining about inclusion and entitlement rather than addressing real social issues. It’s all very ridiculous to me. If you think there aren’t enough women being represented in movies and TV, then get out there and make more shows. Demanding that other people do what you, yourself, can get out and do, is nonsense. So what if there’s a glass ceiling? Go build your own house then your ceiling can be as high as you want it, no transparent boundaries need apply. If you feel like the boob physics in my Beach Volleyball game are offensive, then don’t buy it. Protest with your dollars, not your signs or your tweets. Show these companies there isn’t a future in chauvinism and maybe chauvinism will go away. Probably not but still, give it a shot.

Sh*t like having movies stars complain about the wage gap detracts from the very real issues women face today. So what J-Law only makes 12 million a picture and Bradley Cooper made 15 mil. That ain’t helping Sue-Anne in that brake factory out in Detroit get her equal pay. How ridiculous is to listen to a millionaire who plays pretend for a living, complain about not getting an extra few million because she thinks she plays pretend harder than her male counterpart pretends? All of that silly and superficial nonsense hurts the message and the fact that so many of these women aggressively vocalize their inept dogma, drowns out those who actually want to make a change. Laci Green was one of those shrieking heads until she decided not to be. Laci Green stepped back, took a look at how she was expressing her voice, and decided to change her narrative. Instead of trying to yell over people, she decided to listen. And in that pivotal decision, she learned more about herself, her community, and her message than she ever did just trying to shout-down those that didn’t agree with her beliefs.

I have seen more venom and vitriol for Laci Green coming out of these “feminists”, than I have seen for the patriarchy they all seem to hate so much. A few months ago, Laci was the poster child for Feminist victimization. She was all over the internet being portrayed as a martyr as she saw her channel and social media bombarded with people calling her out of her hypocrisies. Her “community” immediately came to her aid then, torches and pitchforks in hand. I think someone used Laci’s image in a thumbnail about toxic feminism and she didn’t care for that, so she made an attack video or some sh*t. As you can imagine, sh*t went sideways and everyone got involved. She posted a response calling out Philip DeFranco and others for their misogyny and then took a hiatus from Youtube. It was all very ugly and kind of stupid. In her time away, however, she was “red pilled” and decided to actively hear the arguments her detractors and opposition had to say. And to her surprise, they made sense. That tends to happen when you listen to people instead of villainize and decry their right to have a voice. There are a lot of people out there hating on feminism, not because they legitimately think feminism is a problem, but because of the what the message has become.

When the Suffragettes were doing their thing, they wanted to be seen as people in the eyes of the law. They wanted a voice in the government. They wanted representation in country wide legislature. They wanted to be counted just like their male counterparts. Second-Wave feminist fought for and secured a better lifestyle for women among the male dominated society of the mid 20th century. I’m not saying, by any stretch, that women were considered equal in the 70s, but they definitely were taken into consideration more than their  earlier counterparts, even 20 years before. Hell, even early third-wave feminists were moving the cause forward. They fought for equal wages and better representation of women in the arts. And that sh*t worked for the most part. Sure, that wage gap is still a very real thing but it’s gotten better. I am by no means telling women to stop marching. I am by no means saying everything is hunky-dory because it’s not. What I am saying is that these young feminist, these kids raised up In the age of prosperity during the Clinton years and then disillusioned by the W. years, these kids need to adjust their approach. They need to be more Laci Green and less Anita Sarkesian.

Laci made a very real stand and she’s been violently attacked for it. She said, “Hey, maybe these people over here, not the cowardly dick-heads who hide behind their anonymity and threatening rape or death, but the guys who have been trying to engage us in fair, civil, debate, actually have something to say. Maybe there’s a legitimate counter point to our message that we may need to take to heart.” See, that doesn’t fit their narrative though. It doesn’t fit that whole “ I am a victim so look at me but ignore my own transgressions” situation that so many of these modern day feminists want you to believe. It’s insane how fast these people, once her allies, began spewing as much barbarous rancor against her as the people they so vehemently oppose. The hypocrisy is insane and exposes their “feminism” for what it is; immature superficiality. Arm chair activism. These feminists don’t want change, they just want to be buzzkills. They have no intention of compromising for the betterment of everyone involved. They refuse to listen but, at the same time, refuse to shut up. They just want people to do what they say, not as they do. And THAT is MY problem with their whole f*cking movement.

I have a wife. I was raised by my mother. I have several sisters. I’ve been surrounded by women my entire life. I know, for a fact, they are stronger, in a lot of ways, than most men. They support, tolerate, and encourage us to be better. That saying, “Behind every man, is a strong woman” is the truest sh*t in the world. So why do we pretend like it’s not? Why do we treat these women like second class citizens? It doesn’t make a lick of sense! How can you say you love someone, then expect them to be less than you? How can you consider them an equal partner in your life, if you treat them like they’re not worth? Women should be treated equally to men, period. They do the same amount of work as we do, if not more. They certainly carry far more social expectation. It’s only right they are given equal footing in said society. To believe otherwise is disrespectful and childish. Again, I’m not a feminist. I consider myself an Equalist. I believe everyone should be treated the same way as everyone else, good or bad. Man, Woman, Black, White, Muslim, Christian, whatever; Everyone should be treated like everyone else. I believe if cats can walk a mile in someone another person’s shoes, that would go a long way toward mutual understanding and compassion for each other. That’s what Laci Green did. She took the time to consider an uncomfortable opinion and it made her a better person. It strengthened her convictions and gave her new tools to voice her very real, very poignant, message. It’s a goddamn shame so many of her peers and compatriots refuse to do the same. It’s a goddam shame these fools don’t see that the way they’re going about spreading their message, is actually poisoning the well.

Laci did and she’s being crucified for it.

[smokeybrand]

In Defense of Laci Green

I’m a giant black man who lives in America. I’m the most persecuted individual in this country, bar none. People cross the street when they see me. Cops rest their hands on their sidearm at traffic stops. My white neighbor called in a noise complaint and three K-9 units pulled up on my family as we stood outside of my apartment talking. At 6 in the afternoon. On a Friday. I live across the street from a bar. He lives in the same building as several drunk 20-somethings. But I’M a problem? Yeah, okay. I was once stopped by CHP at 7am as I walked to work, because I fit a description. Literally that’s what they said to me; “There’s been a report of robberies in this neighborhood and you fit a the description.” The CHP, man. What description? Black and in a hoodie? It’s 7 am in December and I have to walk 5 miles to work. I’m cold and this is the only jacket i own. But that doesn’t matter. They saw a black man, in a hoodie, walking in an affluent area, too early in the morning for their tastes. That’s my life. That’s my reality. I understand what it means to be a target. To be persecuted. To be marginalized. I know how frustrating it is to be considered less than because of your physical identity so I identify with the overall feminist message. Always have. I just don’t like how it’s being voiced as of late.

I am, by no means, a feminist. I find that whole modern ideology, toxic, divisive, and problematic. I believe a lot of the message these third-wave feminists preach is bullsh*t rhetoric more akin to the younger Millenials whining about inclusion and entitlement rather than addressing real social issues. It’s all very ridiculous to me. If you think there aren’t enough women being represented in movies and TV, then get out there and make more shows. Demanding that other people do what you, yourself, can get out and do, is nonsense. So what if there’s a glass ceiling? Go build your own house then your ceiling can be as high as you want it, no transparent boundaries need apply. If you feel like the boob physics in my Beach Volleyball game are offensive, then don’t buy it. Protest with your dollars, not your signs or your tweets. Show these companies there isn’t a future in chauvinism and maybe chauvinism will go away. Probably not but still, give it a shot.

Sh*t like having movies stars complain about the wage gap detracts from the very real issues women face today. So what J-Law only makes 12 million a picture and Bradley Cooper made 15 mil. That ain’t helping Sue-Anne in that brake factory out in Detroit get her equal pay. How ridiculous is to listen to a millionaire who plays pretend for a living, complain about not getting an extra few million because she thinks she plays pretend harder than her male counterpart pretends? All of that silly and superficial nonsense hurts the message and the fact that so many of these women aggressively vocalize their inept dogma, drowns out those who actually want to make a change. Laci Green was one of those shrieking heads until she decided not to be. Laci Green stepped back, took a look at how she was expressing her voice, and decided to change her narrative. Instead of trying to yell over people, she decided to listen. And in that pivotal decision, she learned more about herself, her community, and her message than she ever did just trying to shout-down those that didn’t agree with her beliefs.

I have seen more venom and vitriol for Laci Green coming out of these “feminists”, than I have seen for the patriarchy they all seem to hate so much. A few months ago, Laci was the poster child for Feminist victimization. She was all over the internet being portrayed as a martyr as she saw her channel and social media bombarded with people calling her out of her hypocrisies. Her “community” immediately came to her aid then, torches and pitchforks in hand. I think someone used Laci’s image in a thumbnail about toxic feminism and she didn’t care for that, so she made an attack video or some sh*t. As you can imagine, sh*t went sideways and everyone got involved. She posted a response calling out Philip DeFranco and others for their misogyny and then took a hiatus from Youtube. It was all very ugly and kind of stupid. In her time away, however, she was “red pilled” and decided to actively hear the arguments her detractors and opposition had to say. And to her surprise, they made sense. That tends to happen when you listen to people instead of villainize and decry their right to have a voice. There are a lot of people out there hating on feminism, not because they legitimately think feminism is a problem, but because of the what the message has become.

When the Suffragettes were doing their thing, they wanted to be seen as people in the eyes of the law. They wanted a voice in the government. They wanted representation in country wide legislature. They wanted to be counted just like their male counterparts. Second-Wave feminist fought for and secured a better lifestyle for women among the male dominated society of the mid 20th century. I’m not saying, by any stretch, that women were considered equal in the 70s, but they definitely were taken into consideration more than their  earlier counterparts, even 20 years before. Hell, even early third-wave feminists were moving the cause forward. They fought for equal wages and better representation of women in the arts. And that sh*t worked for the most part. Sure, that wage gap is still a very real thing but it’s gotten better. I am by no means telling women to stop marching. I am by no means saying everything is hunky-dory because it’s not. What I am saying is that these young feminist, these kids raised up In the age of prosperity during the Clinton years and then disillusioned by the W. years, these kids need to adjust their approach. They need to be more Laci Green and less Anita Sarkesian.

Laci made a very real stand and she’s been violently attacked for it. She said, “Hey, maybe these people over here, not the cowardly dick-heads who hide behind their anonymity and threatening rape or death, but the guys who have been trying to engage us in fair, civil, debate, actually have something to say. Maybe there’s a legitimate counter point to our message that we may need to take to heart.” See, that doesn’t fit their narrative though. It doesn’t fit that whole “ I am a victim so look at me but ignore my own transgressions” situation that so many of these modern day feminists want you to believe. It’s insane how fast these people, once her allies, began spewing as much barbarous rancor against her as the people they so vehemently oppose. The hypocrisy is insane and exposes their “feminism” for what it is; immature superficiality. Arm chair activism. These feminists don’t want change, they just want to be buzzkills. They have no intention of compromising for the betterment of everyone involved. They refuse to listen but, at the same time, refuse to shut up. They just want people to do what they say, not as they do. And THAT is MY problem with their whole f*cking movement.

I have a wife. I was raised by my mother. I have several sisters. I’ve been surrounded by women my entire life. I know, for a fact, they are stronger, in a lot of ways, than most men. They support, tolerate, and encourage us to be better. That saying, “Behind every man, is a strong woman” is the truest sh*t in the world. So why do we pretend like it’s not? Why do we treat these women like second class citizens? It doesn’t make a lick of sense! How can you say you love someone, then expect them to be less than you? How can you consider them an equal partner in your life, if you treat them like they’re not worth? Women should be treated equally to men, period. They do the same amount of work as we do, if not more. They certainly carry far more social expectation. It’s only right they are given equal footing in said society. To believe otherwise is disrespectful and childish. Again, I’m not a feminist. I consider myself an Equalist. I believe everyone should be treated the same way as everyone else, good or bad. Man, Woman, Black, White, Muslim, Christian, whatever; Everyone should be treated like everyone else. I believe if cats can walk a mile in someone another person’s shoes, that would go a long way toward mutual understanding and compassion for each other. That’s what Laci Green did. She took the time to consider an uncomfortable opinion and it made her a better person. It strengthened her convictions and gave her new tools to voice her very real, very poignant, message. It’s a goddamn shame so many of her peers and compatriots refuse to do the same. It’s a goddam shame these fools don’t see that the way they’re going about spreading their message, is actually poisoning the well.

Laci did and she’s being crucified for it.