#Fuck Brian Foster though

[punkrockgenasiashton]

Looks like CR pulled all the episodes of Talks Machina off their podcast feeds and youtube, as well as Undeadwood. While I agree with the decision to do this (I even opined they should do as such back when the news about BWF broke), it still sucks to lose so much good because of the inclusion of somebody who turned out to be a terrible person.

[youcouldmakealife]

Dave, Bryce/Jared; attitude

For the prompt: Dave getting a glimpse of Nucks Bryce, that is, happy-go-lucky, cheerful, literal baby kisser Bryce

There is no baby kissing here, alas, and Dave’s seeing Bryce at high alert considering the circumstances, but here continues the slow thaw of two people who have been on each other’s bad side for a long ass time at this point.

Also: Dave POV of the ~revelations!

Dave is not in the best of moods, leaving Vancouver Airport. For one, apparently Brian Foster just decided to make this an even bigger story than it was, and frankly that was already a much bigger  story than Dave would like.

At least they haven’t been blindsided. That was always Dave’s biggest fear, dealing with this sort of thing without having the first idea of what to say or do, or worst of all, not even knowing it was a possibility. He’s got people going off script, but at least that means he had one. Has plans blowing up on him, but at least they had plans, had thought of this eventuality. 

If Marcus hadn’t been as clear eyed and sure as he was that being out was a price he was willing to pay to come to Vancouver, they wouldn’t even be in this position. They might have been in a similar one, though — in hindsight they were only buying time and pushing a problem down the line with that article, and it spectacularly blew up in their faces.

Well, Dave’s face. Marcus and Matheson’s faces. Andreas had argued against it from the get-go, and Dave needs to remember that the reason he pays Andreas the big bucks is that he’s really fucking good at his job. 

Not to mention he understands the whims and ways of the internet better than Dave ever could. Than Dave would ever want to, either. He’ll continue to be baffled, thanks. But next time he’ll also defer to Andreas’ superior knowledge on the matter, because all the reading between the lines he said was going to happen, well. It’s happened. And what was between the lines was a fucking essay, apparently.

Dave goes through all five stages of grief watching Brian Foster’s speech on repeat in a town car into the city. Dave’s with him on every damn point, but he’s also just poured gasoline on the flames Dave has been trying to put out. He’s never wanted to hit someone he agrees with wholeheartedly before, but Foster deserves a whack upside the head and a drink, honestly. Thankfully the conference with Bryce and Jared is tame, and not just in comparison, and Dave can breathe a sigh of relief that they know how to follow marching orders, even if their GM doesn’t.

Dave gets himself a cup of coffee that isn’t airport shit and gives Andreas a call, mostly to vent about what the fuck Brian Foster thought he was accomplishing — that is a man who wanted to be Superman or some shit growing up, Dave can tell. He’s finished the rant and mostly finished the coffee when he gets the proverbial thumbs up from Bryce, and heads over to Chez Marcus Matheson. Usually he meets with clients at a restaurant, but that’s out for obvious reasons, and with neutral ground out — and he doesn’t consider Rogers Arena that — the best place is somewhere away from prying eyes that Bryce feels safe, even if Dave has to intrude a little.

Their place looks different than he thought it would. It’s a condo for one, instead of a big place out in the burbs, but Vancouver’s expensive and they’re close to the arena, so Dave gets that. With apartments and condos Dave’s used to a particular type of young dude decorating, or lack thereof, but it’s not the typical hockey player pad, outside of the framed pucks and the absolutely massive TV, game console and cords tangled around it. Give a guy an NHL contract, the first thing he’s buying a TV as tall as he is. Which — fair enough, honestly. Makes your highlights pop. Dave’s sure it’s more for the killing dudes in PVP, but — also fair enough.

“Nice place,” Dave says, as Bryce watches him look around.

“It’s usually cleaner,” Bryce  says, a little warily, like he’s not sure if Dave’s being sarcastic. He’s not — he has very low standards for ‘nice’ when it comes to the places of his younger guys. Single guys too, and while obviously Marcus isn’t that, it’s a place where two dudes in their twenties are living. As someone who was once that — single, married, and divorced — well. He’s not being sarcastic. “We’ve, been, y’know. Hiding out, like you told us.”

“Good,” Dave says. “Jared’s at the arena?”

“Pregame, yeah,” Bryce says.

Dave would ask if Jared wants to be pulled out, get a few more days to put together his armor, but guys don’t like it if you skip out on games for any reason that isn’t injury or illness, maybe childbirth, a death in the immediate family. If he did ask Jared would say no, even if he did need it, and the coaching staff would get pissed about Dave stepping on their toes if they haven’t already asked him themselves.

“You don’t have to be there tonight,” Dave says instead. It’s one thing for Jared to miss a game, but Bryce can watch the game from home just as well as he can watch it from the press box, and nobody’s going to fault him for ducking out right now. Well, anyone who does probably would make a stink about anything, practically looking for something to hold against him, and Dave doesn’t have any interest in playing to those particular cheap seats.

Bryce is shaking his head before Dave even finishes. “Jared,” he says simply, like that’s self-explanatory, and maybe it is.

“You’re not going to do Jared any good sitting in the press box,” Dave says, then internally winces. It’s not like it isn’t true, but it sounds a little harsher than he’d like, considering the situation. No guy likes sitting there, looking on, and Dave tries to avoid piling on.

“I don’t want people thinking this is something I’m ashamed of,” Bryce says. His tone’s getting sharper, and there’s that stubborn jaw again, the one Dave’s learned at this point there’s no point arguing with.

“It was just an option,” Dave says. “Nobody’s saying you’re ashamed.”

Bryce raises a shoulder, lowers it, something Dave would call a shrug only at a stretch. “I was, though. Like, not of Jared, obviously I’d never be ashamed of him, but like…“

“I get it,” Dave says, taking pity on him when he trails off. “Got to say, Jared’s good for you. Keeps you—“

Dave doesn’t know quite how to finish that, but regardless, he’s good for him.

“Out of trouble?” Bryce supplies after a moment, and Dave has to laugh.

“You think this isn’t trouble?” he asks.

He can see Bryce bristling, the way he always used to, whatever Dave told him always the exact worst thing. Dave swears he used to look for reasons to be pissed off, but then, he was a pretty miserable kid, and with hindsight, it’s not hard to see why. Not hard to see why he’s bristling now either, and Dave can’t blame him for being defensive either.

“Nothing to be ashamed of, though,” Dave says.

“No,” Bryce says, a little slow to agree.

“Let’s go see your boy, yeah?” Dave says, and this time Bryce’s agreement is wholehearted.

[dearsisterpooh]

Dear Sister

TW death mention

It's been 24+ hours since you left us. I've been told to start writing to you to help me with your passing. I am still in denial, thinking you are just busy or asleep. But you aren't. You're....gone. We were just talking the night before....you weren't feeling well, and we even too you to the hospital, and they admitted you. You didn't want to be there, so you signed yourself out. I was there when the nurse went over the paperwork, you had to sign a form stating you were aware of the risks by leaving against the doctor's orders....they even said, you could die. And 48 hours later, you were gone.

I'm all that's left of our original family...we lost daddy, then mom a couple of years later, and now you, my only sister. I am alone now and I don't know how to keep going. I really don't. Of course I still have family. Your husband, my BIL as well as your 3 girls and their kids...I love them all so much and I know they will be there for me, but it's not the same. Nothing will ever be the same now.

I messaged you yesterday at 5:48 am to check on you, and I didn't get a reply so I assumed you were sleeping. I wish I would have called...maybe this could have been prevented, or you would have been found sooner. We begged you to stay in the hospital, but you said you had people that were counting on you. You guys were in the middle of trying to move and you didn't want to be in the hospital alone while everyone else was busy with the move. I know how much you hated being alone. Brian is so lost without out. Your girls are so distraught. Ann was so upset she made herself sick and had to go to the hospital. Harlie...well you know. She's the middle child, but with her autism and adhd, she is not doing well.... Liz, as the oldest child, is telling me how much she is broken, but is putting on "armor" and a brave face so she can be there for her dad.

Why? Why now? We don't even know exactly what happened, except Harlie woke up to use the bathroom and check on you, and found you on the ground unresponsive. This is eerily just like mom's passing. Almost the same spot on the floor. 4 days before mom's birthday and 5 years since she passed. I don't know if this means anything or not. Was mamma calling you home? All I know is that it was too soon! I was not ready to say goodbye. We talked literally every single day and night, and now my phone is silent. So many things are going to change now. I am so lost without out. I hope we can get some answers. The whole family is broken up now, the trailer is being sold, and from what I was told yesterday, your girls are going to go in and just take the most important things and leaving the rest, since it was listed for sale as is.

I am going to try and foster your cat Nabisco until Brian and the girls can find a new place to live. You were talking about getting a house big enough for everyone and I think that would be for the best. Family stays together. I know Nabisco loved you and you loved that little cat so much, so I do not want him to get lost or surrendered due to all this.

It's Sunday morning, and I've been in touch with everyone to check in on them...they are doing their best. I am too but I think I am taking your loss so much worse than mom and dad's. You were all I had left and now I feel alone. Even though I know I am not, I just don't think anyone understands the bond we had. Wes is doing his best to try and comfort me, but you know that was never his strong suit.

I love you so fucking much sissy and I miss you. I keep looking at my phone expecting to get a message from you. Please give me a sign, anything, to let me know you can read this. I don't have any more words.... Please say hi to mom and dad for me.

[greatwyrmgold]

The Dallons are the perfect white nuclear family, in the sense that their dysfunction is rooted in the institution of the American nuclear family. Amy isn't an invader to the nuclear family, she's a participant in and victim of it.

Anyone who thinks that Wildbow's writing supports the institution of family as an ideal has simply not read anything he wrote. There are positive family relationships in his stories, but the institution is consistently a source of harm.

There's the Dallons, of course. Also every OG Undersider. Brian's parents are mediocre at best, and Brian contorts his life to mimic the Family Man Ideal so that he can get his little sister into a stable household. After taking Rachel from her bio-mom, she was shuffled between foster homes, looking for a perfect family that could force her into the Good Daughter mold. Lisa's parents tried to financially exploit her new superpowers while she was still grieving their other child's death. And then there's Nikos "fucking" Vasil; enough said.

It shows up with minor characters; very few young parahumans have happy home lives, and the institutions that govern their world almost never cares. And it shows up outside of Worm. Most of Breakthrough has their own parallels to the fucked-up Dallons. Avery's family mean well, but they don't have any time or energy to support her after greasing all the squeaky wheels in the house. Verona's dad abuses his position of influence and authority over her. The Thorburns in Blake's parents' generation try to turn their family ties into bargaining chips, and some of the kids that caught that corruption. Basically every Practitioner family is shitty in at least one way.

Even Twig, which barely has any conventional familial relationships, manages to squeeze in Candida Gage, better known as Emily. Those parents gave their precious Candy a ton of mad science operations that were supposed to make her immortal, even though she explicitly said no. Emily ran away from home, and her parents send the Lambs out to kidnap find her. This whole conflict—everything done to Emily, everything she does, her part in the Primordials and the greater plot—all of it boils down to the Gage parents assuming they had and deserved total control over their child.

Wildbow's stories have consistently framed the family as a dangerous institution. If you have good parents, you're fine; if you have shitty parents, or average parents in a bad situation, you are screwed.

I've been meaning to write a post about this for a while. It's probably the most consistent, theme across everything Wildbow's ever written. It fits neatly into the loosely anti-authoritarian (or at least anti-institution) bent of his bibliography. It's usually not the central conflict or theme, but it's there, consistently. It's blindingly obvious, if you take the time to look.

I'm not someone who usually attacks people's head canons cause a lot of the time, who cares? I have a bunch of my own after all. But I've started seeing people going around touting this as absolute fact, acting like you should obviously realize it is true, and attacking others for not believing in it. So I'm kinda like, fuck it, lemme give my thoughts on it.

Any time I see people talk about Amy's relationship to the Dallons as "an invader to the perfect white nuclear family," it's immediately obvious they don't know what the fuck they're talking about. Not even Carol thought about her own family like that. What book did you read where the Dallons are EVER portrayed as the perfect nuclear family. It feels like the biggest cope to stick Amy into this role she blatantly isn't to fit some weird standard that exists only in the posters head.

Like, who is the one pushing against Amy in this hypothetical? Mark? Vicky? Well, no that doesn't track. Mark's issues are with his depression and Vicky just treats her like a sister. So, then is it supposed to be Carol holding her at arms length due to her inherent otherness? I mean, I guess kind of? A far cry from the nuclear family, but I guess saying "her mom doesn't like her" won't live up to those high-minded ideals you're trying to hit

But even that isn't really true, is it? Carol doesn't treat Amy as some Other invading her family. She treats Amy poorly because of her own underlying traumas about Marquis and the men who made her trigger. Plus, the second she figures Amy out after she wretches Victoria, she welcomes her in with open arms. So like, what's the family Amy is disrupting here?

I think the issue is obvious; it was subtext someone thought sounded fun so they twisted canon to make it fit. It all reminds me so much of the wooby Amy stuff people on SB love to do, just with a different take to it. Amy is a pretty vile person and so to make what she does more acceptable her backstory has to be more tragic. It's this entire rewriting of her adoption and relationship with the Dallons drenched in the language of social justice to make it more appealing to readers, all with this vague aloofness to canon to try and hide the fact it's pretty much bullshit.

[therealbrigeedarocks]

shrek the musical

i gave it a second chance the other week when i was bingeing the shrek films because the first time around i didn't particularly like it

and then a third chance

and i still don't like it

but here i am, a week later, and i've watched it at least once every night since. and will continue to do so until it finally burns itself out of my system

i'm trying to pinpoint what it is exactly that i dislike about it.

some of the jokes/lyrics certainly haven't aged too well, particularly the bi-polar and tranny lines. yikes on a bike.

watching the recorded version makes me cringe imagining everyone had to have lost like 5 pounds through sweating every night thanks to all those heavy costumes and makeup

especially with the fur suit daniel breaker had to wear for donkey and the prosthetics/makeup for shrek and fiona, though in the latter cases for different reasons. brian d'arcy james had to have felt claustrophobic in that head piece with -i assume- embedded mics/headset. i also assume the ogre-fiona makeup involved telling sutton foster to close her eyes as they did a quick airbrush to her face for the changes between scenes

the short-lord farquaad work around had to be an absolute pain in the knees for christopher sieber though they had great comedic moments with the fake legs

i know this probably couldn't work with a more abstract interpretation of the characters ala the spongebob musical since the whole conceit of the show/movie/etc is how different shrek/ogres look but there had to be something easier that could've been done for the actors at least

out of the whole soundtrack, i find myself only really liking and relistening to 4 of the songs. so much so that all 4 of them have animatic ideas in my head already

brian d'arcy james blowing out the mic during the first lines of "i'm a believer" probs had more to do with the embedded mics in his costume than anything

THAT SAID

the faux-wood texture on pinocchio's costume was great. john tartaglia did a great job with the voice

honestly a lot of the costume design is great. the 3 bears outfits are probably my favorite of the chorus

daniel breaker taking every chance he could to prat fall was great

sutton foster dancing with the pied piper's rats was a simple but well executed idea

brian d'arcy james' faux scottish accent is infinitely more preferable to mike myers and no i'm not afraid to say it

the dragon puppet is amazing and i'm actually kind of mad it didn't get more stage time

hiding the orchestra pit within the stage is cool but also at the same time i can't help imagining how close some people came to tripping and beefing it right into the string section either during rehearsals or actual shows

i think this was well cast despite everything

overall, its watchable but like...it could've been better

absolute best part of the show: the way they just fucking hurl a large cow plushie as the cow that jumped over the moon is still my favorite gag of the show absolute worst part of the show: admittedly this could be due to editing for the recorded version, but how quickly farquaad yells BOO after shrek sings the "big beautiful world reprise" is fucking horrific timing. barely a beat passes before the last word is sung and the mocking began and honestly it ruins a sincere performance absolute worst part of the soundtrack: i don't know what moron decided to chop up "the travel song" for the official release that didn't include the part where shrek and donkey start singing the other's lyrics (reverse counterpoint? i don't know the technical name for it) but if i ever meet them they will be catching these hands

[nott-emotionally-stable]

these two? exuding chaotic energies? within thirty seconds of on an episode of Talks Machina that’s about some serious emotional shit? 

what  a fucking shocker.

[treluna4]

I was tagged by @lizzie-bennetdarcy @chelle-68 and @cheesecurdsgravyandfries

Y’all are terrific and im grateful for you.

Favorite time of year: late spring or early fall. Basically whenever it’s 70 degrees and sunny with a cool breeze.

Comfort foods: fried chicken and mashed potatoes, Panang curry.

Do you collect something: regrets.

FR though I don’t think so. I regularly Marie Kondo my life.

Favorite drink(s): chai. Also sweet iced tea.

Current favorite songs:

Who I’d Be- Shrek the Musical (Sutton Foster AND Brian D’Arcy James? Yeah. Sign me the fuck up).

Apex Predator from Mean Girls on Broadway (this song is a banger, and Barrett Wilber Weed is a fucking force.)

Johnny Leave Her- The High Kings

Amen- Amber Run

Waiting for my real life to begin- Colin Hay

Control- Zoe Wees

Favorite song:

The Countess Cathleen- Bill Whelan (if happiness was a song, this would be it. The first part anyway. The slower part.)

I tag @rosedavid @leofdaeg-sand @legalgal421 @rmd-writes @apothecarose and everyone who wants to do this

[doomerpatrol]

Journey into Mystery by Kieron Gillen [3/5]: a really strong first half and a second half compromised by crossovers; good character arc for Loki but I don't feel like reading mid Thor and New Mutants stories to get it

Moon Knight by Warren Ellis [4/5], Brian Wood [1/5], and Cullen Bunn [2/5]: Ellis's run is really cool and beautifully illustrated urban psychedelia, and then the two subsequent runs completely fail to capitalize on its strongest concepts or aspects. whatever, I'll always have "Sleep."

Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow by Tom King [4/5]: gorgeous neon artwork and a very enjoyable, occasionally moving science-fantasy take on "True Grit", though the ending and some of King's scripting tics definitely bugged me.

Black Cat (and others) by Jed MacKay [3/5]: kind of superficial fun brought down by some awkward crossovers, but I enjoyed the characterization (even if there's no real arc) and some of the heists

She-Hulk (Vol. 2) by Dan Slott [3/5]: DEFINITELY superficial fun, and I think this second volume (I read the first a while ago) is not as strong as its predecessor - its legal-drama/sex-romp sitcom tenor (mostly amusing, occasionally grating) kind of hides how hastily the various subplots are developed and resolved. I think the first volume ends in a thematically stronger and more satisfying way despite having fewer installments. still, it has most of the same elements as that first volume, so it still mostly works!

Magneto by Cullen Bunn [4/5]: the ending is awkwardly abrupt thanks to the Secret Wars crossover, which is unfortunate, because the first seventeen issues (and a brief, slightly messy digression into "Uncanny Avengers") are a great, dark character portrait of a man burdened by survivor's guilt, masochistic self-loathing turned towards teleological martyrdom, justified rage, and messianism

52 by Geoff Johns, Mark Waid, Grant Morrison, and Greg Rucka [4/5]: very fun and engaging year-long series with an assortment of interconnected stories

Immortal Hulk by Al Ewing [5/5]: a fascinating, fucked-up, cosmological body-horror exploration of different manifestations of anger - towards ourselves, towards those that have hurt us, towards the systems that we live in that try to crush us - and what it might mean to channel that

Wonder Woman by Greg Rucka [4/5]: a very enjoyable political drama that really makes Diana as a character sing; gets a little wobbly thanks to Infinite Crisis, but recovers notably better than other books disrupted by events

Uncanny X-Men by Ed Brubaker [2/5]: Claremont karaoke; shows potential but ultimately doesn't have much to say with its stories or characters

X-Men: Messiah Complex by Ed Brubaker, Chris Yost/Craig Kyle, Mike Carey, and Peter David [3/5]: better than the above, though with a number of largely extraneous parts; while the central concept is good the plotting is a little wonky, which makes sense since it's used as the finale for two separate series and is disrupting the narrative of another. if nothing else it makes me want to read its sequels, spin-offs, and precedents

Currently Reading

Jason Aaron's Thor Epic (includes Thor: God of Thunder, Thor (2014), Thors (Secret Wars tie-in series), The Mighty Thor, Thor (2018) / War of the Realms, King Thor): heavy metal excellence, features various artists like Esad Ribic and Russell Dauterman at the top of their game, really sold me on Thor (defender of Midgard) as a character and also making me fall completely in love with Jane Foster as Thor

Starman by James Robinson

Batman: The Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller

Dandadan by Yukinobu Tatsu (ongoing)

Fantastic Four by Ryan North (ongoing)

(bold = have read those parts of an "epic" run)

2024 Comic Log with Overall Ratings

Dungeon Meshi by Ryoko Kui [5/5]: incredibly funny, charming, full of interesting worldbuilding and compelling characters, some strong themes of entropy and consumption/desire and connection/ecology

Doom Patrol by Grant Morrison [5/5]: a darkly creative challenge to the Ubermensch masculinism that dominates comics

The Flash by Mark Waid [4/5]: breezily readable exploration of a character that I think has ebbs and flows, but generally features atypically fun time-travel plots and a great cast

The Flash by Grant Morrison & Mark Millar [4/5]: a solid continuation of Waid's themes and priorities that pushes Flash to his absolute limits

Astonishing X-Men by Joss Whedon [2/5]: tries to be mutant assimilationist, but can't even do that fucking correctly

X-23 by Craig Kyle & Chris Yost [3/5]: perfectly fine, a little hacky in its treatment of motherhood, but a nice and heartfelt contemporary take on the Wolverine: Weapon X story

JLA by Grant Morrison [5/5]: incredible, maybe Morrison's best ongoing achievement

Seven Soldiers by Grant Morrison [3/5]: very cool idea that doesn't really stick the landing but has a lot of bright spots and fabulous art

Batman: No Man's Land by Greg Rucka (and others) [3/5]: a crossover that features some of the best Batman stories and characterization, and also some of the worst; very much carried by the strength of its premise, best realized by Greg Rucka's stories

Animal Man by Grant Morrison [4/5]: features some of the best single issues I've ever read

All-Star Superman by Grant Morrison [5/5]: needs to be read. beautiful.

Grant Morrison's Batman Epic (includes: Batman, Final Crisis, Batman and Robin, Batman: The Return of Bruce Wayne, Batman Incorporated) [5/5]: despite having some questionable character decisions and being dense in a way that can be tiring, I love how it redeems Bruce from one of his worst periods and pulls together his values and history cohesively while injecting some great new ideas and consistent motifs - the idea of a hole at the center of everything, the constant imagery of spirals and recurrence, really stuck with me over time.

Action Comics by Grant Morrison [2/5]: frenetic, but very obviously shows Morrison straining against The New 52 reboot, and doesn't live up to its initial promise of a young Superman of the people, and ends on a sour note that seems to reflect Morrison's justified disillusionment with the industry

Detective Comics by Greg Rucka [3/5]: carried by the lovely monochromatic artwork, sets up some interesting ideas like Bruce's bodyguard but ultimately gets cannibalized by crossovers (coincidentally when the best art disappears)

Wolverine by Greg Rucka [4/5]: features Logan in lone wanderer mode, with some awkward threads that don't really go anywhere but also don't trip up the rest of the story too badly

Catwoman by Ed Brubaker [4/5]: peters out in the last third, but the first two are holistically great noir fiction, and have amazing illustrations

Hawkeye by Matt Fraction [5/5]: beautiful artwork by David Aja and Matt Hollingsworth paired with a compelling, clinically criss-cross structure both in paneling and serialization. astonishing that this book works as well as it does considering its protagonist is 1) typically boring and 2) a huge fuck-up

Punisher / Franken-Castle by Rick Remender [2/5]: fails to live up to its premise because Brian Michael Bendis had dibs on all the important characters, so it just throws everything out the window and does some random shit for a bit

Batman: Hush by Jeph Loeb [3/5]: perfectly fine blockbuster action-mystery with an eyeroll main antagonist

Detective Comics by Scott Snyder [3/5]: starts out strong, finishes super weak. I am pretty uninterested in hackneyed evil-since-childhood villains (see also: Hush), and I find the cynicism which runs through all its plots really poorly executed

Venom by Rick Remender [2/5]: fails to live up to its premise by trying to be a Peter Parker book (and also, briefly and inexplicably, a Ghost Rider book)

Black Widow by Marjorie Liu [4/5]: really gorgeous artwork from Daniel Acuna. I think the plot is a little convoluted and underbaked, but its spy-thriller antics were still quite enjoyable to read, and it has some surprisingly strong emotional beats for a character I'm not super-invested in

Birds of Prey by Gail Simone [4/5]: good cheesy fun with great character writing, though a rushed (and largely unnecessary) final act

Batman: Face the Face by James Robinson [3/5]: a "One Year Later" storyline that has some nice Bruce/Tim moments, but its main Two-Face plot is empty calories

Jonathan Hickman's Fantastic Four Epic (includes Dark Reign: Fantastic Four, Fantastic Four, FF [Future Foundation]) [5/5]: another series where, even though I can find it overwhelmingly dense or breakneck in pacing, its thematic payoff is so triumphant that I admire it a lot anyway; probably my second favorite FF run, full of fun sci-fi concepts, moving character beats, and creative changes to the team's structure like the Future Foundation

Superman: Up, Up, and Away by Kurt Busiek and Geoff Johns [5/5]: compared to Face to Face - the other big "One Year Later" return - it's literally no contest; incredibly charming, great art, thematic cohesion

[youcouldmakealife]

SOTW: Brian Foster, Jared/Bryce; winging it

For the prompt: Now I totally want to see “Foster’s apparently panicking“ POV of his talk with Jared!! Please!! 

You know, Brian was really expecting it to be a routine meeting. Trades are never easy — he knows that better than fucking anyone, it’s like the NHL collectively decided he’d be the fun bonus toss-in during every multi-piece trade his teams were involved in — but once it’s done it’s done. You’re there now. 

He’s going to tell Jared what he expects from him, how him and his line fit in in the jigsaw puzzle of the Canucks roster. He’s going to let Jared know that whatever he needs to make arrangements for — house hunting, a car lease, bringing his family here — well, he’s too young for that bit to be relevant — that they’ve got people who can help him with that. He’s going to tell him again how happy they are to have him.

And they’re ecstatic to have him. Brian swears it’s like they’ve been cursed by the hockey gods up and down the right side, and he was frankly incredulous that Jared was even available at the deadline considering the powerhouse that was his line with Julius Halla. And not just offensively: Jared was the rock that kept that line defensively responsible, and he’s a perfect fit for their shutdown line, will give Marksy a chance to push more instead of falling back to cover Dima.

And it does start out routine. Brian tells him what he expects, Jared responds in a way that satisfies Brian that he knows what’s expected of him. Brian tells him that if he needs any help, they’ve got him, Jared lets him know he’s got family in town, which is a relief. Not that they wouldn’t be happy to help him out, obviously, but it’s always easier when you get to a town where you already know people. Another thing Brian knows from plenty of experience.

And then, after the ‘you need any help let us know’ and before the ‘we are so happy to have you’, the meeting is no longer routine, because Jared clarifies the ‘family’ to say, specifically, he’s staying with his mother-in-law.

Brian likes his in-laws, but that is still not something he would ever, ever consider doing. “Brave man,” he says.

“I’m married,” Jared adds, like Brian didn’t get that. And he is pretty young for it, but a lot of hockey players marry young. Brian wasn’t one of them, which often made him feel like the exception.

“Congratulations?” Brian says.

“To a guy,” Jared says, twisting the ring on his finger, like a lucky charm, or maybe more like a stress ball.

Brian’s starting to get why this was relevant information to tell him.

“Ah,” Brian says. Jared looks stressed as fuck, so Brian adds, “If you’re worried about the team, you should know it’s a really good bunch of guys. Inclusive. They’re not going to have a problem with it. Gabe’s our YCP rep if you wanted to talk to him.”

Gabe, Brian’s sure, would be a fuck of a lot better to talk to than Brian. Not that Brian’s not supportive — he is! — but Marksy’s got a little more experience with this. He’s much better at not just stream-of-consciousnessing whatever comes to his head. Sometimes Brian thinks Marksy would be better at this than he would. Brian is fully prepared to make an impassioned job offer when he retires.

“That’s—” Jared says. “He’s a hockey player.”

“NHLer?” Brian asks, hoping like hell he isn’t.

“Yeah,” Jared says.

Fuck. Okay. This is very relevant.

“Okay,” Brian says, leaning back in his chair. “Okay. Well. That’s a little different.”

Brian hastily adds “Not a problem!”, because Jared’s so pale he’s practically grey, probably feels sick to his stomach right now. “You’ve of course — it’s not a problem, okay Jared? You’ve got the right to be married to who you want to be married to.”

Way to state the obvious, Brian. Except maybe it isn’t. He wonders if this is why Deslauriers flipped him so easy. Fuck, he hopes not. What a nightmare for the kid.

“Right,” Jared says, still more grey than not. “Thank you.”

“Please tell me you’re not like doing a Riley-Lapointe, married to a rival thing though,” Brian says before he can stop himself.

“Um?” Jared says. Brian doesn’t like that ‘um’. ‘Um’ is not no.

Fuck.

“Okay,” Brian says. Fuck. “Okay! I. That’s fine!”

“Sorry?” Jared says meekly.

Brian thinks. Former Oiler, and the kid’s from Alberta, so chances are it’s a player there rather than in Cali. He tries to remember where Jared’s from. Played for the Hitmen, he knows, so even split on Calgary or Edmonton.

Or Brian could just stop speculating and ask.

“You’re an Alberta boy, right Jared?” Brian asks.

“Yes sir,” Jared says.

“Your husband’s back in Alberta?” Brian asks.

“Yes sir,” Jared repeats, and Brian takes a moment to be impressed by his detective skills before he realises that’s inappropriate. He wonders if it’s Halla? Also inappropriate. None of his business unless Jared tells him.

“I’m not going to ask who it is,” Brian says. “Because it’s not any of my business. If you want to tell me, you’re of course welcome to tell me, but you don’t have to.”

“Okay, sir,” Jared says.

“Stop calling me sir,” Foster says. “I’m maybe ten years older than you.”

You are not ten years older than a kid on his ELC, Brian.

“Sorry,” Jared says instead of calling him on that blatant lie.

“You play as hard against him as you do anyone else, right?” Brian asks. He already knows the answer, but it has the effect he wants, Jared relaxing in his seat a little, back on more comfortable footing.

“Yeah,” Jared says. “Of course.”

“Good,” Brian says. “Maybe have a chat with Gabe? If there’s anything you’re concerned about, or — he’s good people, he’ll listen.”

And he’ll probably do a much better job than Brian’s doing right now. God Brian hopes he talks to Gabe.

“Sure, maybe,” Jared says, which isn’t a yes, but Brian can’t make him.

“Have I told you how happy we are to have you on the roster?” Brian says, fully aware of the answer of that one too, but it has the response he’s looking for: Jared smiles for the first time since he walked in the door.

[lonelier-version-of-you]

I just read next weeks spoilers for casualty okay I only read faith/Dylan/ levs part but 1. Dylan looming for a house for faith and her kids now this is crazy like she said she was gonna sort her marriage out. 2. Lev confronting Dylan well that won’t go down well it’s just not fair that Dylan has to be treated that way and faith should see that lev can’t even handle his emotions. 3. Faith and Marty scene.. I feel bad for faith she should have to put up with this like her job is being out at risk

1. I know!! The whole thing with Dylan looking for a house for them is just... fucked up. It actually reminds me of Henrik’s behaviour towards Sahira on Holby, except even Henrik never went this far.

They had better treat this as the terrible behaviour it is. If they tie it back to Dylan’s mental health/his trauma (remember how his dad cheated, then left his mum, leading to her killing herself and Dylan going into foster care? maybe Dylan’s trying to protect Faith from ending up like his mum, even though to anyone thinking rationally Lev and Brian obviously aren’t the same) somehow and acknowledge this stuff isn’t healthy, I think they can just about pull it off, but otherwise he’s just being really creepy.

2. Eh... I love Dylan, but he’s kind of brought Lev’s confrontation on himself in this case. Neither of them are handling their emotions right. :/

3. Yeah, I just feel fucking sorry for Faith at this point. Both of the men around her are behaving horribly and being total dicks, to the point they’re jeopardising her work. It’s unreasonable. If I were her, I’d just up and leave the both of them. (Though not leave the hospital. I don’t want her to be written out.)

[this-geek]

Thanks for the tag. Welcome to the mayhem that is my taste in music.

1. Dance the Night - Dua Lipa (from the Barbie Film)

2. If I Believed - Dylan Saunders (Original StarKid Cast of Twisted. Honestly for a parody musical this sure has a lot of bops)

3. I am - Emhahee (thanks tiktok for the introduction to this artist)

4. The Goodbye Song - George Salazar, Joe Iconis (I'm something of a sad bitch)

5. No One is Alone - Phillipa Soo, Julia Lester, Brian D'Arcy and Cole Thompson (2022 Into the Woods cast, again I am sad)

6. Something's Missing - Come From Away Company (What can I say I like musical theatre, this song is particularly good at calming me down after a long day)

7. Make Them Hear You - Brian Stokes Mitchell, David Loud, Duane Martin Foster. (The Original Broadway Cast of Ragtime. That final note gets me every damn time 🥹)

8. D.O.A - Carrie Compere, Rob Rokicki and The Lightning Thief Company (this song is fucking elite! Yes, it is from the Percy Jackson musical)

9. Protect My Peace - Ashh Blackwood (once again tiktok got me into this artist, so many delightful chill songs)

10. Say it like you mean it - Slater Kinney (tumblr actually got me into this song because J. Smith Cameron is in the music video, and I could stare at her all day)

Lots of these have carried over from 2023 but a few new ones I've simply flooded my queue with in 2024.

I shall tag @charliedooku @room-on-broom @caitylove @forlorn-wrathboy @miserable-cripple @queenofquestions @haras7nna Absolutely no pressure to participate though ☺️

a music thing xD rules: shuffle your on repeat playlist and post the first 10 songs, then tag 10 people. thank you @baronessblixen for tagging me!! hey look! it only took me an entire day to remember to do it lmao 😂

Beyond - Leon Bridges

(What A) Wonderful World - Sam Cooke

Always, Joni - Trousdale

Landslide - Fleetwood Mac

Silk Chiffon - MUNA, Phoebe Bridgers

What's Going On - Marvin Gaye

marjorie - Taylor Swift

Days Like This - Van Morrison

What If I Love You - Gatlin

Pretty Places - Aly & AJ

tagging: @virginiachance @skelavender @writtenndust @this-geek @smolfroglesbian @bethanyactually @sarahsoph @seismologically-silly @smackalicious @everythingismusical (obvs no pressure and only if you wanna do it lol)

[izzy-b-hands]

Father To Son

So, the topic of Freddie and Jim and how they might handle raising a teen came up in the DL server today, and after a bit of prompting from the folks there, I came up with this! It’s just a little snapshot, though it does give I think a good view of the parental relationship. And who knows, if folks like this maybe I’ll keep this AU going and write a follow up!

Set in about 1988, in an AU where everyone is healthy and fine (because that’s what makes me happy and what I’m going with here, dang it. Everyone is going to live and thrive and that’s just how it is. I can’t bring anyone back or change what happened irl, but the land of fic gives me some other options while letting me respect what actually happened.) 

A note that this does operate with the idea that the government would have made a special (and because bullshit homophobic politics) secret allowance for Freddie and Jim to foster/eventually adopt a kid (I don’t talk about it in the fic here, but the HC that goes w/that is that as much as Freddie hates it, his being famous is a big part of what gets them to say yes to them re: fostering.) 

“Tell me why we decided to do this again?” Freddie asked, wincing at the slam of the door upstairs. 

“Because we wanted to have a slightly bigger family than us, and the cats, and everyone that lives here with us,” Jim replied. “And we wanted to provide a safe, happy home for a child in need.” 

There was a crash from upstairs, and they both winced. 

“That was probably something expensive,” Phoebe sighed as he walked through the sitting room. “Let me go up and see if he’ll let me in to clean up.” 

“No, let him be, if he wants to be that way,” Freddie said. “He can clean it up himself later.” 

“But will he, or will he pout and refuse to do it?” Phoebe asked with a raised brow. 

“I’ll talk to him later; he’ll be the one to clean up,” Jim said definitively. “He needs some time to cool down.” 

A loud, voice-cracking-right-in-the-middle-of-it shriek came next. 

“Dare I ask what set this off?” Phoebe mused. 

“We told him he can’t have that little girlfriend of his over with his door shut, that’s all,” Freddie scoffed. “As if my parents would have let me have anyone over and let me even go near my room alone with them. Would yours have let you do that?” 

Phoebe shrugged. “Might have depended on the person.” 

“Mine might have,” Jim said. “But they’d also put the fear of God into me that I wasn’t to get anyone pregnant.” 

“Not really something they needed to worry about,” Freddie smirked. 

“No, not really,” Jim admitted. “But he doesn’t know all that, and doesn’t see it that way. Put yourself in his shoes, when you were fifteen, would you be thinking of it like we are?” 

They paused. 

“No,” Freddie mumbled. “Would have tried and failed to throw a fit about it, probably, then sat there fuming after I got shut down.” 

“I’d like to think I’d react decently,” Phoebe said. “But I know that’s not true. It’s just how that age is, it’s a difficult time for anyone.” 

The sound of footsteps thundering back downstairs caught them all, and their heads whipped to the entryway. 

Oliver stood there, a suitcase in hand, tears streaming down his face. “I’m going to live with her. You can’t stop us hanging out together then.” 

“Oh my god,” Freddie tsked. “You aren’t going to live with her.” 

“You can’t stop me!” 

“Fine, we can’t stop you,” Freddie said. “Which cat shall we give your room to, then?” 

Oliver, who had been reaching for his trainers, stopped moving, and turned back to him. “What?” 

“You’re insistent, you’re leaving,” Freddie continued. “Fine. But we can’t just leave your room empty. It’s still yours while you’re here though, so which cat do you want to have it?” 

Oliver let out a nervous giggle. “You’re joking.” 

“I’m as serious as you are about leaving,” Freddie said. 

“Y-you’ll miss me though.” 

“We would,” Jim interjected. “You’re our son, and we’d very much like you to not leave, I feel you should know. But then again, your father did throw me out the last time we argued-” 

“Yeah, but you came back though, and you both said it was silly, and he shouldn’t have done that and you shouldn’t have gone,” Oliver interrupted. He’d dropped his suitcase to the floor. 

Jim nodded. “And we certainly aren’t throwing you out now, because we wouldn’t ever do that to you.” 

“Might think about it, on the days you act like a little shit,” Freddie admitted. “But we never actually would, you’re supposed to be here! However, if you really mean to leave, and if this girl’s parents want you...” 

“Well,” Oliver mumbled. “They grounded her for coming here without telling them.” 

Phoebe motioned to them that he was leaving to check for any broken things in Oliver’s room, but raised a brow at Oliver’s statement. 

“And did her parents want to talk to us at all about that?” Jim asked. 

Oliver nodded. “They said they didn’t care if it was only one of you, cause they know it’s all a big secret thing that who my foster parents are doesn’t get out and what not, and I don’t even think they have any idea that it’s...you two. But they wanted to talk to you and I...” 

“This is why you were home late from school,” Freddie sighed. “Come, sit down. Talk.” 

“No, I’m going!” Oliver said, and picked his bag back up. “I said I was done here, and I meant it!” 

They shared a glance and bit back smiles. It wasn’t that they didn’t understand how serious it was to Oliver, but from the vantage point of an adult, it was almost adorable. 

“Okay,” Freddie said. “Tell us the rest before you go to her parents, who I’m guessing do not want you anywhere near their daughter.” 

“They didn’t say that exactly,” Oliver said. “Just...I told them that I’m almost an adult, so they could just talk to me, and they said no, they wanted one of my parents, and I said fuck that, and-” 

“Oliver!” Jim was aghast. “I know we didn’t raise you from a baby, but you can’t tell me you were taught to talk to someone’s parents like that; I don’t believe it.” 

“Well, no,” Oliver whined. “But you should have heard them! Talking about how I wasn’t a ‘good influence’ on her, and must want her to end up out of school raising my kids or something, on welfare programs-” 

He dropped his suitcase again and threw his hands up. “I don’t even like her like that; we’re friends! Why would I ever want to...do that with a girl? She’s my friend, that’s disgusting!” 

Another shared glance, this time holding a full discussion of ‘Is he...’ and ‘Does he not know that he’s...’ 

“Oliver,” Jim said slowly. “Just a question, and you don’t have to answer it if you don’t want to, or aren’t comfortable-” 

“But who do you see yourself...doing that with, as you put it?” Freddie interjected. “I think I have an idea, but I don’t want to presume anything.” 

“I..I don’t know, I guess,” Oliver said, blushing. “I mean, I do know, and there is Sam at school, but he’s...he’s got a girlfriend, and he’s really lovely and I’m not and so it wouldn’t happen anyway and-” 

“This wasn’t ever about us asking you to close your door, was it?” Jim interrupted. “Or it was, only in the sense that you can’t understand why we would have asked you to at all, when Claire is only your friend.” 

Oliver nodded. “All we were doing was listening to music, and I’m not interested in her like that, and I never would be! I don’t...get that.” 

“I do ponder,” Freddie said. “How much of this comes from you growing up the last few years here.” 

“He’s been around straight people,” Jim said. “We’ve had Mary and her family over before, and John, Roger, and Brian and all of their families.” 

“I know, but-” Freddie started.

“Are you two trying to figure out if you made me gay?” Oliver interrupted. “I’ve known since I was like...I don’t know, even. I just never thought about girls like that. Boys, yeah. But not girls. It’s never been a thought in my mind.” 

“You can’t ‘make’ someone gay,” Freddie said. “And I think you know that already, but I only worried that you haven’t seen the full spectrum of relationships, and what they can be, that’s all I meant.” 

“I have,” Oliver said. “Seen that, I mean. I know how you and Dad love each other. I’ve seen your bandmates, and their families. Mary with her husband and Mack, when they’ve been over. You haven’t like...deprived me of anything. I just don’t know why you’d think I was like them. I mean, they told you why they placed me with you, right?” 

They shook their heads. 

“It wasn’t discussed much aside from that it was a lot of money, a lot of arguing with the government, and a lot of promising to keep it secret until you were grown that they’d let a gay couple foster a child,” Freddie said. “What did they tell you about it?” 

“I asked for parents who would accept me,” Oliver said. “And they always told me ‘we can’t promise anything, just be happy a family wants you’, you know. But then they said there was a family that would be perfect for me because they were...like me. I figured you already knew all of that, and knew I was gay.” 

“It was not mentioned to us, or we would never have bothered you about having Claire over,” Jim said. “Now, we might have said something about the days Sam was over, had we known-” 

“I did think it was weird that you never made me leave the door open with him,” Oliver interrupted. “Even though it would never happen; he’s got stupid Laura-” 

“Don’t,” Freddie said sharply. “You won’t get anywhere holding onto hatred like that. There’s someone out there for you, just maybe not Sam.” 

Oliver opened his mouth to protest. 

“No, hear me out. I have spent literally my entire life thinking I wouldn’t be loved properly. Wouldn’t find anyone. Tried again, and again, and had no luck in finding someone that made me happy,” Freddie continued, and looked to Jim. “That I could make happy.” 

“But then your father and I found each other, and he fought me, so he won me,” Freddie said. “But I spent years upset and angry and horribly sad and bitter about it, in turns with the good moments where I thought, with each boyfriend, that maybe I’d found the right person. But those moments could have been even better, had I not been hanging on to all of the rest of that.” 

Oliver nodded. “I don’t really hate Laura. Just jealous.” 

“And that’s okay,” Jim said. “It’s normal to feel something like that. But you can’t take it out on either of them; you’re responsible for your feelings. You know that.” 

He nodded again. “Claire’s parents really are still mad at me. I don’t think I can go over there until you guys talk to them. Can I stay here?” 

Freddie stood and walked over to wrap him in a hug. “What a stupid question. Of course you’re staying here; we weren’t going to let you leave!” 

“I thought you said there were no stupid questions?” Oliver asked, his voice muffled with his face pressed against Freddie. 

“There are when it comes to something like that,” Freddie said, letting him go. “This is your home! You’re always welcome here, even after you get old and go away from us and only visit at the holidays.” 

“I’ll visit more often than that,” Oliver said with a small smile. 

“And that’s lovely, but if you’re too busy living your life and being happy, then we’ll be chuffed just to see you at Christmas,” Freddie said. “The most important thing is that you’re happy, and that you know you can always come back home. The cats may unofficially take over your room while you’re away, but we won’t actually give it to them.” 

“I can share with them,” Oliver laughed. 

“Isn’t that basically what we all do already?” Jim asked as he joined them, and quickly grabbed Oliver’s suitcase from the floor. “We live here, but really only because they allow us...” 

Oliver nodded, then winced. “I sort of broke a vase. In my room. I’m sorry about that, but I should go help Phoebe clean it. I know that’s what he went to go do, but it’s my mess.” 

He took his suitcase from Jim, and trotted back upstairs to his room, calling for Phoebe as he went. 

They both let out a sigh once he was out of earshot. 

“Can you believe I asked them if we could have more than one, at one point?” Freddie asked. “What was I thinking, the stress from just one is enough, oh my word-” 

“I know,” Jim interrupted, a hand at Freddie’s hip, pulling him close. “But I think we’re doing okay. We didn’t even have to prompt him to go help clean up, you know? And he wasn’t like that when he first got here.” 

Freddie nodded. “That’s true. A wonder what three years can do for a kid, apparently. Just never thought I’d be someone who would be the parent to do that!” 

“Well, you are,” Jim said, and kissed him on the cheek. “I should probably find the number for Claire’s parents, and call and apologize for what happened.” 

“You know I’d do it if they wouldn’t recognize my voice,” Freddie sighed. 

“I know,” Jim said. “Don’t worry about it; I don’t mind. Because you’re going to go give him...the talk, aren’t you?” 

“I mean it isn’t like they noted on the forms if he’d already had that talk,” Freddie said. “And now that we know he’s gay, that’s a talk we’re actually equipped and responsible to give him; can you imagine if he’d had straight parents trying to go over safe sex and relationships with him? He might try packing his things again, but may as well do it now, since the topic more or less came up...” 

“I don’t think he’ll do that,” Jim said. “All the same, good luck, and I’ll be up to help you as soon as I’m off the phone.” 

Freddie winced. “Good luck to you on that. Please let them know my apologies as well, and that we’re not going to let him talk to his friend’s parents like that again. Hopefully they won’t hold a grudge about it; I’d hate to think he couldn’t see Claire at all again over this.” 

They exchanged resolute nods, and headed in opposite directions: Freddie, upstairs to Oliver’s room, and Jim to the phone in the hall. 

And for the rest of the night, Garden Lodge fell happily, wonderfully, silent. 

[route22ny]

I grew up in the Bay Area at the height of AIDS panic, and all of that era’s sex paranoia remains burned into my brain, repurposed for Covid-19 and the act of commingling wet breath. A few weeks into this crisis, I found myself having a ten-foot-distant conversation with my neighbor Patty, both of us incredulous at people who still tried to talk to us in-tight face-to-face, like we weren't all suddenly barebacking reality with everyone they'd chit-chatted with that day and everyone in their lives, etc. Patty allowed that she should be able to strike people she considered a threat. I mentioned Florida's attitude toward this legal principle and firearms. I suggested she become militant. I tell that to a lot of people, but I attenuate the humor of it for the audience. I tell every teacher I know to strike.

There are more sirens now. It's hard to tell, because unlike New York, everything isn't quiet. Cars are out on the road—fewer, but enough that hearing a siren can still be vehicular idiocy and not a more sinister house call. But I still hear more of them.

I don’t know why Luke asked me to write about Coronavirus in Florida. I mostly stopped writing last year when a good friend dropped dead in front of his family. (Subscribe to my Substack—we don't update regularly!) Before that, I felt increasingly overborne by events. Things ground to a halt in 2019, but the machine began to break down long before. I ended the 2016 campaign periodically sitting under my desk, high, feeling secure because I wasn't writing anything stupid and feeling good because I was appropriately afraid of everything, but people thought I was exaggerating when I mentioned it.  

I wish I could say my seriousness about the novel coronavirus stems solely from believing in science and peer review and that I would take it seriously regardless, but my spouse is immunocompromised, and my father, who lives out in the Bay Area, had Covid-19, back in March or early April. He didn't tell us kids until he was out of the woods, but for days he had fevers over 103º. My stepmom, a former emergency room nurse, couldn't get him admitted anywhere, because he wasn't having respiratory problems. He woke up the same every day: It felt like someone had parked a Volkswagen on him.

We're supposed to say he's out of the woods. I'll believe that when he dies of old age, or something more reasonable that kills men in my family, like colon cancer or car accidents. Sometimes I think about him dropping dead like my friend, only from whatever post-Covid-19 effect triggers the brain’s forgetting to tell the lungs to breathe—or from the one that leads to storms of strokes, like a brain's blood vessels recreating the burning energies depicted on a CRISS ANGEL MINDFREAK poster. Then I wonder how I would die, or my wife, or my friend in Atlanta, or my brother. I think about drowning in open air, alone in a hissing world, and being incapable of saying the overdue apologies I ran out of time for.

After a while I realized that basically all Luke wanted was to hear from a coward living in the mismanaged kleptocracy of Florida, and the thing is, I can do that! I’m frightened right now!

I considered opening with, Every day I wake up frightened, to throw a fucking jolt into a piece about facing down a pandemic in a place where they have a paradise just for the cheeseburgers. But the joke is, I'm not wastin' away here in Coronaville. Sometimes I wake up and just have to pee, on the rare days when I don't wake up from the sensation of my son elbow-dropping my head because—how rude of me—it's 6:45 already.

In this respect, I am serene: My son and I exercise outside to burn off his energy, so I'm out in the sun for hours a day. I'm tanner, I've lost weight, and my phlegm feels looser. I grew a lushly indifferent goatee. My haircut looks like something that belongs on the gatefold cover of a concept album about a form of locomotion by a band named after geography. While the term "Lebowski Phase" has been applied to my appearance and to the fact that my leg injury and medical-marijuana prescription have collided with the reality of never having to drive anywhere again, I must insist that in many respects I have come to look like Jesus Christ. I am pro life and take no pleasure in reporting this.

As I have said, I am frequently awakened by my son, whose full name is My Beautiful Five-Year-Old Son Maitland. He is a treasure who spends quarantine within earshot of 24-hour news, regurgitating West Wing Democrat observations of mine with five-year-old precocity to harvest follows for Instagram. Maitland is an influencer already on record as supporting L’Oréal, opposing Medicare For All, and, when I first read him the shaggy start to this piece, he said, "Not a good look." He's a natural.

Waking up is violent but easy. The problem is everything after that. By the time I close my eyes, I'm not sure what I felt most on any given day—anger, sadness, impotence, a resentful churning need for vengeance, despair. Any one can seem like a day's dominant emotional dysfunction and then suddenly be overwhelmed by the dread that suffuses prolonged thought about the world outside.

I am one of the people who is Taking It Seriously. Seriously Taking It Seriously, though—not the people who say they're taking it seriously and then tell you about:

• Going to a recent indoor birthday party.

• Having a multi-course dinner at a fancy restaurant, "But it was okay because it was [extremely not-worth-a-life celebration]!"

• A full-contact playdate their kid had recently with two other children.

I abhor these people. I have an existential loathing of these people, and a granular scientific indictment. I enjoy reading new articles to learn new ways in which they are a danger to me. My apprehension is rich and exquisite. May their friends shun them, and may they be abandoned by their gods.

Sooner or later, every day, I think of the threats arrayed against me and my family. Each day, I see the most recent thing said by my governor, Ronald Fuckface DeSantis, in which he explicitly endorses and declares his intent to pursue actions that all available data say will kill Floridians by the thousands. Each day, I think about how, if I do so much as suggest fostering a free exchange of ideas about the proportional value of using every means to stop him, I will be arrested.

Every day, I bounce the "Evil or Moronic?" debate around my brain. I check in with an alumna buddy in Atlanta to see whose governor has shown more recent determination to murder his citizens. I gotta give Brian Kemp credit, because he's really holding his own. Naturally, this leads to wondering if either of them have a natural or acculturated advantage in terms of idiocy and malevolence. DeSantis' enrollment at Yale and Harvard and service in the military problematizes the idiocy narrative only for as long as it takes to remember all the people you've met who've gone to any of them and were dumber than dogshit. It would seem like fate to be murdered by an oaf, but I don't know that it's not merciful to at least be murdered purposefully rather than contemptuously and indolently.

Eventually, this leads to spending some time thinking about DeSantis as a kind of lethal bro angel. It's hard not to see his shitchyeah, brah, people are dyin', it's classic! expression and recognize that the state's chief executive resembles a lout you don't want to run into walking alone at FSU after a home loss. I prefer my jokes about the governor, but my friend David Roth nailed it when he said that DeSantis seemed like a person who would describe himself as “kind of a DUI guy.”

I know there's supposedly a culture war out there. There's a truck in my neighborhood with a Q sticker, and another with a Three-Percenter sticker, and there are more than a few neighbors of the "easily victimized white dude who owns a $50,000 truck he rarely takes off the pavement and who becomes physically belligerent when you correct him" variety, but there's a reason why you really only see “war” shit on YouTube. Few Americans are hostile to general safety protocols, and even fewer act out against them. I live where hate groups and old fashioned unaffiliated redneck trash drive in from the county to make a show of rebel flags, rolling coal and honking to intimidate protests, but people line up six feet apart at Home Depot, wear masks at Publix and get takeout at the pizza place outside without insisting on barging in. Most wars don’t need one side of them to be this manufactured.

Most of my friends and colleagues from this gig live in New York, so I've already sat through weeks of descriptions of streets silent except for ambulances, and I’ve already woken for weeks to the half-twilight of nightmares where friends died in a spare white hallway. There aren't a lot of surprises in store for Florida, and no images I can describe that would make you want to turn back now. It's like we're waiting for the rolling premiere of a franchise blockbuster. The dead won't really start packing them in for a few more weeks, but all the scariest shit hit YouTube when it opened in New York a thousand years ago. The coronavirus as an image, what it functionally is, as a horror, feels as familiar as the Scream mask, and the context that makes that scary as hell already feels dangerously been-and-gone, like an apprehension that Florida had for too long before the actual scare came.

There's a hope that all this will come to little again. Despite Governor DeSantis' refusal to take the initiative on shutting down the state until the last dollar was wrung from the last snowbird, the original shellacking never came. The Tampa Bay Times sampled smartphone data and concluded that Floridians overwhelmingly took the initiative to stay home, and they were aided in their quarantine process by the fact that Florida is car-dependent and atomized.

The heartbreaking realization, as you gradually run across more people who are Not Taking It Seriously or are Expressing Moronic Skepticism, is that for a month there about 80 percent of America was on board with doing the right thing. We, a people who suck at doing the right thing even for the wrong reasons, stood on the side of doing the harder thing if it helped people who weren't even us.

I really can't tell if I feel more anger than sadness at the fact that those who were meant to encourage us in safety, to serve us by offering difficult guidance, wasted our sacrifice and our trust. They squandered the patience given by a beggared and exhausted people. All they had to do was the right thing, and if they weren't sure what that was, they could have erred on the side of saving people’s lives and hoping it counted, and they failed.  

Instead, more people will die, and we'll be shut down again, and we will realize we are fundamentally unequipped for life with Covid-19. Florida is built on enclosed air-conditioned spaces: It's dependent on divorcing yourself from Florida as a climate and place. Asking Floridians to generate a public life under the unshielded rage of God’s angriest sun and baked from beneath by a sprawling pave-ocalypse requires asking them to rebel against everything their infrastructure has taught them for as long as they can remember. It is a car culture to the flesh and bone, and a restaurant relocating indoor tables to a road patio would park its diners inches away from eternity.

A picnic day like that is months off, again. It's time to go back inside and resume Inside Time. Inside Time melts away. I saw a headline around the Fourth of July, from the New York Times, that read, "In the Covid-19 Economy, You Can Have a Kid or a Job. You Can’t Have Both," and I remember seeing colleagues tweet, mmmm, so true, and, gets at something crucial we aren't talking about, and shit like that, and I was like, "Buddy, let's get in the DeLorean and visit March." I have nowhere to go, anyway, and all life is timeless.

We have no family in the area and have had no break. It's the three of us, like No Exit, but if most of the dialogue was the word "no" and a lot of stuff about poop and butts and farts, good guys and bad guys, and what Lego Star Wars would do, but with a lot of excruciated pleading for silence because Mom and Dad Are Working Right Now and We Love You Very Much but Jesus Christ Please Stop for the Love of God I Will Give You a Dollar If You Go in Your Room and Be Quiet and Play That Kindle App That Teaches You to Read That You Pay Attention to More Than Us Even Though I Would Read You a Fucking Novel If You'd Just Shut Up and Sit Still.

I'm resigned to staying in here until 2022. I’m screaming, but I will do it. I'm lucky in that I have access to a community pool and a neighborhood where my son and I can roam around on bikes and romp and look at water and birds and turtles. When we're lazy, we have a porch where we can feel nature without feeling exposed. We have a dependable (ok!!! haha!!!) income, and I can do irregularly scheduled work that allows me to be Parent rather than Employee. Exercise, meals and stories take up enough hours that I might as well lean into it.

But we’re lucky. We have a house and prescription mood-altering drugs and one thousand years of undersleep, but we are in less immediate danger than most. The state, almost reflexively, reaches out to open more doors even as Covid-19 blows past reopening benchmark after reopening benchmark.

The inexorable march for commerce doesn’t even come from malice in many cases; people in charge just don’t know how to do anything else but extort and scold people into working under any conditions, so long as it devours most of their time. All the exploitive principles are expected to work the same even if the world they built is fraudulent. We feed meat and the virus into the machines, irrespective of what the data says, and pray for rain. Watching Florida government on the state and local level is like watching two parents bring an alcoholic home after he got kicked out of rehab and deciding that the best course of action is leaving him with $5,000 in an apartment up the street from a dive bar and then going to Cancun for the week. It was on the calendar already, there wasn’t any choice, he looked very healthy at the time!

We have friends who are teachers, and we are scared for their spouses and kids. I don't know what Florida's plan for its teachers is other than to murder them. Again, I don't know if DeSantis is an idiot for flirting with giving enormous bipartisan sympathy to arguably the most effective labor group in the state, or a genius for flirting with finally eliminating a lobbying obstacle to conservative governance by simply liquidating its members as a class.

I worry if I start listing all the things I'm scared of, they'll never stop, but every day I see my son reach for something he should be able to reach for, and I either have a low-grade panic response and stifle it, or I have the panic response and yelp at him to get his attention and tell him to stop, startle him, and add another layer of gun-shy haunting to his day. I'm afraid he'll eventually become an animal in a Skinner Box in which all the buttons and levers are electrocuted, and there are no prizes.

I'm afraid that my son will always be emotionally arrested at two years behind the development of people the same age who had siblings in their house, or who, like many kids in my neighborhood, had parents who thought kids were invincible to Covid-19 and let them play with whomever they wanted. I worry that he may pay a price year after year even into adulthood because other kids got to practice socializing as we rode past. They got to hang out with people their own age and run around and do vitally stupid shit and say "butts" a lot, and he got look at me heartbroken and knowing empirically and epidemiologically that he couldn't play with his friends anymore but still needing to know why, and knowing that I couldn't tell him anything more sophisticated and anything less terrifying than, "So we don't get sick."

The other day he started crying and then screaming, "I hate the sickness! I hate the sickness!" repeating it in a higher and higher register, until he was up even past that piercing birdlike screech that prepubescent boys make whenever trying to sound like lasers or dinosaurs or squealing brakes. Every day I worry that I see another little bit of his capacity for happiness is dying—that the same awkward process of terror that took me from happy little kid to profoundly unhappy teen to scarred adult is even more rapidly at work, and each day another sparkling and joyous little light of childhood winks out in him, replaced by fear as a necessity of life.

I know that there is no plan for us. Conservatives don't want to be taxed or have their businesses lose money, so people are being kicked off unemployment and sent back to work with no test and trace protocols, irregular access to PPE, overwhelmed hospitals and often limited access to any care. We're doing all this as Florida blooms scarlet like paint being spilled into a mold shaped like the state. We're sending the men in the gasoline suits right at the heart of the fire.

It's a cruelly lazy little culling genocide of the working class, a Wall Street gamble that the blow to the labor force won't be more than a blip on the Dow and, a little recession aside, the One Percent will come out ten years later owning an even greater percentage of the United States. To the extent that there is a plan, that's the plan, and whether you land on the dead or the living part of any of those exchanges is more of a Your Problem than a Their Problem.

For now, it's enough to be hermits and hope the rest of Florida goes on strike by going inside and staying there and writing letters to representatives threatening to never come out. Cooking the same things, getting the same exercise in the same places, having the same awkward conversations on VOIP delay, and living every moment outside like we're three drinks in so we’re ready to get belligerent with anyone who is getting too close. Living every moment with some low-level neurasthenia that grows spine-deep and for the rest of our lives sends shuddering disequilibrium at the thought of air that never seems to move, hallways that lengthen without exits, and objects that seem both unavoidable and unclean. It’s fine. We’re all fine, here, now. How are you?

I feel a sudden Git Offa Mah Land thing about my son, a resolute commitment to homeschooling for the foreseeable future and to keeping the gummymint away. It sucks so much. I was so happy to send him to the public school just a few blocks away, instead of the shitty little charter schools nearby, but now that it’s Plague or Parents, he’s got his parents. Between us, he'll have access to 1.5 first-class educations. I still have my grandpa's service weapons from WWII, the last time America was in a war with fascism, when we took the opposing side. I'll empty a couple magazines into anyone who comes onto my property and tries to stop me from teaching my son critical race theory, Howard Zinn, and Leonard Levy's Jefferson and Civil Liberties: The Darker Side. I refuse to turn my back on the heritage of my youth, of watching thousands of hours of MASH, by refusing to wear a mask outside or in fact any time I am doing anything other than drinking gin that I made in a tent.

Outside, records fall and progress rolls on. A governor whose go-to pejorative for opponents of all ages and sexes is very likely still “queef” watches as even the president concedes that a Republican National Convention here would be too lethal, as the state repeatedly sets records for daily deaths, beats out all of Europe in terms of new daily cases, leads the nation in cases per day, then tries to set them again. And then, every day, our governor makes his ahegao-but-for-ethnic-cleansing face and psychotically clangs a bell indicating that Florida just became the 15,000 customer at Leadshoe Larry’s Kicked-in-the-Dick, and it’s time for all us lucky winners to line up and drop our pants.

Florida’s lethality is so tacky that it’s almost camp, but there is no satisfaction in being right about how wrong everything is. Nobody gets a prize for correctly guessing the surplus death toll. All you have to do is look someone else in the eye working in life under Covid.

I’m old now, so I have Humiliating Injury Syndrome (HIS), and somehow in the month between the Super Bowl and the pandemic, I tore a rotator cuff, a labrum, or both, by throwing a (mini!!!) football with friends. After four months, I broke down and went to get an MRI. I skulked down corridors and lurked in a corner of a waiting room, like playing spies with an opponent who was the air. Even the clean and modern fixtures felt miasmic and corrupted, like they were a parking garage in an Alan Pakula film.

Eventually a nurse emerged from an office, crinkled her brown eyes, waved and surprised me by asking after my family by name. She lives three blocks away from me and had hosted me at a party once. Later that day, as my car coasted down the approach to my house, I saw a garage door open and my neighbor’s son walk out on his way to his shift at the same grocery store that I treat emotionally like a Superfund site.

I thought about how much I unconsciously held my breath where they work, and how I unconsciously associate those places with poor choices. The danger of the world outside is so massive that I reflexively need to cordon off the threat into areas of blame and blamelessness. In a moment of crisis, years of conservative rhetorical conditioning in the discourse have taught me to reflexively pathologize those in harm’s way. There is less chaos if someone is at least responsible for something. There is less risk to me, if it turns out someone else’s epidemic is someone else’s fault.

But it is someone else’s fault. And it’s not some poor fucker doomed to sit in a box somewhere and accept paper money and hand metal money back and point at where toilets are, because that’s how he keeps the lights on. It’s not the person consigned to some life-sucking task that, on the best of days, is too humiliating and cruelly impoverished of purpose to ever be a reason why someone should die. It’s not the person around whom you hold your breath because you don’t know where they’ve been. It’s the person and people who put us all in position to suddenly feel like we’re suffocating together.

I hate that I sometimes unconsciously hold my breath around strangers, and I hate that they have heard it. I think of my neighbors, and of the workers on whom we’re dependent, and the permanent uncertain shortness of breath I feel, and I want every moment of their anxiety and mine gathered up and then rained on those who shepherded it into being, those who nurtured it and feasted on it, those who profited from it and were indifferent toward it. Those who consider themselves DUI guys and those who pay to elect them and give them sinecures and who are simply too rich to be arrested for boating under the influence anymore.

I think of how I hold my breath near good people and near vulnerable people in places I am wary of and that we all need to share, and I wonder if we will simply hold our breath for the rest of the year, and if we’ve bargained for standing near each other and holding it for all of the next. And I wish so eagerly that all our suspended futures and the air between us might catch at the throats of those who put us here. That justice for a man like Ron DeSantis might be a permanent and sucking terror: stuck always in an involuntary startled gasp at the sight of responsibility, afraid at the approach of every stranger, incapable of drawing a full and restful breath, and never knowing peace again.

Jeb Lund used to write about politics for Rolling Stone, The Guardian and Gawker, and a bunch of other places, and was the Spectacle of Trump Editor at 50 States of Blue. He and David Roth have a podcast about Hallmark original movies that is mostly funny and exasperated and not unkind, and it's not ultimately about the movies anyway. It's fine and people enjoy it. Don't make it weird. He also has a podcast where he watches every Dennis Quaid movie in a row. That is also completely normal.

Ok here’s me again with a couple more things.

You’ll want to read this in the New York Times today about a forthcoming documentary on ICE. After it was completed the filmmakers were apparently threatened with legal action by the agency over the inclusion of parts that made ICE look even worse than they already look doing literally everything else they do.

Some of the contentious scenes include ICE officers lying to immigrants to gain access to their homes and mocking them after taking them into custody. One shows an officer illegally picking the lock to an apartment building during a raid.

At town hall meetings captured on camera, agency spokesmen reassured the public that the organization’s focus was on arresting and deporting immigrants who had committed serious crimes. But the filmmakers observed numerous occasions in which officers expressed satisfaction after being told by supervisors to arrest as many people as possible, even those without criminal records.

“Start taking collaterals, man,” a supervisor in New York said over a speakerphone to an officer who was making street arrests as the filmmakers listened in. “I don’t care what you do, but bring at least two people,” he said.

Here’s one disgusting detail among many.

They followed Border Patrol tactical agents who took pride in rescuing migrants from deadly dehydration even as the agents acknowledged that their tactics were pushing the migrants further into harm’s way. They showed how the government had at times evaluated the success of its border policies based not only on the number of migrants apprehended, but on the number who died while crossing.

***

source:

https://luke.substack.com/p/all-they-had-to-do-was-the-right?utm_source=Brooklyn+Today&utm_campaign=dd6f63665c-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2020_07_28_01_15&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1ba554d7d5-dd6f63665c-125128182

[mushroomofficial]

so like i have serious trouble dealing with everything going on in the world on a daily basis and it's a real problem for me that i tend to wear myself out trying to keep up with everything and debate political shit with everyone and i've had way too many counselors tell me that i should give up social media for my mental health but tbh i enjoy so many parts of the online experience that it feels really shitty that i'd have to give up something i like doing simply because of the shitty people that i share the service with

so i 100% understand why Brian wanted to step away from everything because i have to do it too sometimes or it just all gets to be a bit much

but to reiterate what many people have been saying: nobody is entitled to anyone else's time or attention or opinion and for that matter nobody has the right to harass someone over anything, especially something as trivial as a difference in opinion so all y'all who thought they were justified in bullying Brian better start fucking learning how to be better people because otherwise imma start throwing hands and i'm pretty fucking certain i won't be the only one

This blog appreciates Brian W Foster and all that he has given to the community.

Hyper vigilance in regards to the news and the state of the world is seriously an act of self-harm, but just because a person isn't gorging on soul crushing news, or speaking their opinions, it does not mean they don't care.

"Don't forget to love each other" extends to Brian.

[remnantsrp]

Name: Brian Slomowitz Age: 28 years old Pronouns: He/him Hometown: Austin, Nevada Occupation before the Infection: Subsistence criminal, cleaner, one-time janitor Role within the Caravan: Scout FC: Paul Dano

Biography:

tw. parental abandonment, mentions of drug dealing, drugs

Before the infection. 

Let’s be honest - no one grows up and wants to be a deadbeat. Yeah, not even someone like Brian Slomowitz. Growing up in foster care, the kids used to call him “Slim Jim”. This wasn’t just because he was skinny, or that they thought his name was James, but because between the ages of ten and thirteen, Brian was the kingpin of a cigarette empire, running the racket beneath the bleachers of whatever state school he’d washed up in. Once he’d got caught kids stopped calling him Slim Jim and started calling him Slip, because the run around he gave the authorities that one afternoon in Reno was fucking legendary. Brian thinks back on that sun-bleached day every now and then. Yeah, you watch enough movies and think that sliding over a car bonnet after you’ve been running full-pelt is going to be easy. Spoiler alert: it isn’t, and Brian’s got the scars to prove it.

The whole sad affair of his childhood can be summarised thus: Brian was born to two teenage dropouts who gave him up. He was raised in foster care and bounced around like a tennis ball. His surname isn’t even his, not really - the story goes he was named after the nurse who filled out the paperwork. Who cares if it’s true? It sounds sad, and when you’re looking to get laid, guys and girls love a good sob story; it makes them feel better about their own lives. Brian’s life started bad and continued on its way. He only learned three things before his eighteenth birthday. Number one: when in doubt, lie. Number two: running is always an option. And number three: don’t think about the past; the only thing that counts is now.

Once he was eighteen, Brian was, for the first time, out on his own. He’d always had someone hovering over his shoulder, even if it was one of his cronies, so the isolation was a novelty. He bumped around a few minimum wage jobs before he settled in Austin. He settled there because one Christmas he was sitting in a diner reading the newspaper, and there was a job advert for a janitor at a school. And so, with the taste of bad coffee in his mouth and craving a cigarette, he circled it, and come January, he had a job. That didn’t last long – turns out you’re not really allowed to have a record, even when you’re a lowly janitor. Brian didn’t have anything bad against him (petty theft, underage drinking). Like, it wasn’t as if he was dealing drugs or sticking people up. Right? Regardless, it was enough to get him fired before he’d even been hired, and so he bummed around a bit more. When he was twenty four and scraping the bottom of the barrel, he joined a cleaning service. All day, every day, he drove his truck around to stranger’s houses, squirted some Jiff around, and eyed off their shiny valuables. He never took much – he didn’t want to get fired, ironically – just enough to tide him over. Come lunch, he’d eat in a Wendy’s parking lot, smoke a joint, then start the afternoon jobs. More of the same: vacuum, dust, wipe. Contrary to what the internet will have you believe, there aren’t nearly enough MILFs or DILFs to go around. Mostly, it was bored housewives, harassed nannies, or the elderly. The oldies were the best. They always told him interesting stories and, sometimes, insisted he take an ornament, this jewellery box, a radio… Yeah, Brian liked hanging out with them, especially the lonely ones. They didn’t judge him; they didn’t look at him with pity. They were just as lonely as he was.

But, if your name is Brian Slomowitz, it turns out that you can never have much of a good thing for long. All those bad choices have a habit of catching up with you. He’d worked the cleaning job for about a year when he fell in with a bad crowd he met through his weed dealer. They weren’t a gang – that makes it seem like they were organised. Mainly, it was a group of guys who did bad shit. Stealing, mainly, though some of them dealt drugs on the side. Brian picked up a few gigs through them. His reputation growing up preceded him, so he ended up running drugs or guns or whatever they needed. It was kind of fun. There was a peculiar incongruency about spraying Windex in someone’s house when the van outside had a few cool kilos of coke sitting outside.

The Outbreak.

In late 2019, Brian got busted. It was totally bullshit. Someone squeaked. Their big mouth got Brian and everyone else raided and thrown in front of a judge. Brian’s track record worked against him and he was sentenced to twelve months for possession, six with good behaviour. Prison wasn’t too bad. Brian had only ever done stints in community service or in juvie. It always reminded him of the foster homes of his childhood, and in that sense, he fit right in. There were plenty of things he learned in prison, like how to fashion a shiv out of a plastic knife, or how to get on the good side of whoever’s top dog (blowjobs; the answer’s always blowjobs). Come mid-2020, his appeal was successful and he was let out on parole. But turns out that even a cleaning company has standards, so he once more found himself out on his ass, bumming around his old haunts, and sleeping rough (he’d lost his shabby, shitty bungalow while he was inside - what luck). By the time the apocalypse rolled around, Brian was bored out of his mind. If anything, living hand-to-mouth - this time with extra adrenaline - had a certain thrill. Who would have guessed that a lifetime of running from the cops, hiding in dodgy places, and thinking quickly, could come so in handy at the end of the world?

Finding the Caravan.

Brian didn’t so much find the caravan as go running right into them. He’d boosted a car in Austin and gone tearing out of the desert. When he found the caravan, all he had were the clothes on his back, an old backpack, and a switchblade he’d had since he was a kid. In other words: he had jack shit, and it was entirely down to the goodwill of the others that he was let into the fold in the first place. It was a miracle, really, considering he hadn’t showered for about a fortnight and was near rabid for want of nicotine.

These days, Brian doesn’t look a gift horse in the mouth. Rather, he’s the one with the big mouth. He talks a lot of smack and takes pleasure in pointing out the stupid elements in someone’s plan… but he’s also among the most easygoing of the caravan, and he doesn’t mind volunteering for the jobs that no one else wants to do. He spends a fair amount of time bumming cigarettes from people and napping (rolled up in his leather jacket, unwashed hair flung over his face, mouth wide open, snoring). He’s become something of a punching bag for people’s frustrations; Brian doesn’t really care. He’s had a far harder life than most of these white tennis-shoed, cozy middle-class idiots. They had dental plans and life insurance; Brian spent the past two months of the world trying to get into sheltered housing. Yeah, he’ll be fine. If anything, the apocalypse kind of suits him.

positive personality traits: easygoing, charismatic, quick-thinking, assertive

negative personality traits: duplicitous, self-serving, cynical, jaded

played by Millie, She/Her

[sokkas-first-fangirl]

Freddie stiffened as he rounded the corner and walked right into Sheffield. The CEO’s hands instantly went to Freddie’s waist.

“In a rush, my dear?” Sheffield laughed.

“Yes, sir.” Freddie pulled back, relieved when Sheffield released him without a fight. The Alpha looked him up and down, his gaze lingering on Freddie’s hips. 

“I didn’t get to see you last week,” he said. “To wish you a happy birthday.” His gaze caught on the thin bracelet Freddie was wearing; a small, silver thing decorated with little bits of coloured glass that could almost- almost- pass for real jewels.

“A gift from Roger?” Sheffield asked, gesturing to it. Freddie stepped back, protectively holding both hands to his chest, his right hand covering the bracelet.

“Yes,” he said coldly and dodged around Sheffield. “If you’ll excuse me, sir, I’m sure Foster is getting impatient.”

Sheffield’s smile stiffened. “Of course, pet.” His hand brushed Freddie’s hip. “On your way then.”

*

Only two days later, the Queen boys arrived at EMI to find one of Sheffield’s assistants lingering in the reception area.

“Oh, there you are!” she said brightly. She was holding a small box, wrapped with pink paper and a silver satin bow. Beaming, she held it out. “This is for you, Freddie; a birthday gift from Mr Sheffield.”

Roger instantly snarled, Brian took a protective step closer and Deacy stiffened. But with Sheffield’s assistant smiling, and the receptionists watching curiously, Freddie had no choice but to take it.

“Thank you,” he said stiffly, but she was still watching expectantly, so Freddie grit his teeth and untied the ribbon, reluctantly opening the box.

Inside, among sheets of soft purple paper, was a pair of diamond tennis bracelets. 

“Oh,” was all Freddie could think to say. Roger growled, wrapping an arm around Freddie’s waist.

“What shall I tell Mr Sheffield?” his assistant asked, still smiling. It wasn’t her fault, but Freddie wanted to slap her all the same. As if she didn’t know there was only one thing he could say.

“Tell him thank you,” Freddie said, forcing a smile onto his face. He wondered if it looked as insincere as it felt. “They’re beautiful.”

She nodded, looking at the bracelets almost wistfully before leaving.

“The fucking nerve-” Roger began hotly, but Deacy shushed him, jerking his head at the still staring receptionists. With another growl, Roger quietened down, though his grip tightened on Freddie, who shut the small box with a frown.

“What’ll you do with them?” Brian asked once they were in the lift.

“Throw them away,” Freddie said. “Sell them. Give them away. Melt them down. All I know is, I’m not ever wearing them.”

“He has balls of brass that one,” Roger snarled. 

“Only because he knows we can’t do anything,” Deacy said, scowling at the box. “Bet he wouldn’t be so brave if it was an even playing field.”

Freddie huffed, holding the box gingerly, practically at arm’s length.

“We’ve barely been here a year and I already can’t wait to leave, darlings,” he sighed. “It can’t come soon enough.”