#I got in trouble of course for disproportionate use of force or whatever

[wowbright]

As someone who used my metal lunch box for self-defense against a handsy classmate in second grade, this image means a lot to me.

[medusinestories]

Onwards to the episode in which we get to see Flint and Silver each having a very bad day (as well as two literal dicks that nobody had asked to see).

Black Sails VII (s1 ep07)

- We open on Pastor Lambrick's sweaty face as he intensely rehearses the Easter sermon and he’s obviously eaten up by what he did with Miranda. His sermon, unsurprisingly, focuses on sin, keeping sin hidden, and the hell that awaits the sinner. Which leads us nicely onto Flint, who’s distracted (by his own sin? by thoughts of Miranda? both?) during a meeting with Eleanor. Eleanor is pissed that Miranda let Richard Guthrie send a message to the Andromache and then waltz into town to close up his business; Flint tries to take the heat off Miranda, once again protecting her (at this point, he may not know the contents of the letter).

- During this meeting, Flint is startled when Silver first speaks up to say that the mob in the street was bad - clearly Silver is a sort of intruder in this meeting. But Eleanor, after Silver reminds her by unsubtly clearing his throat, tells Flint that he’s not to harm Silver because he was instrumental in setting up the Consortium. Silver looks so pleased with himself in these scenes, and Flint quite defeated when he tells Silver to follow him back to their camp. I love it.

- To parallel Flint/Miranda’s Sulky Sex scene from ep4, we have Anne/Rackham’s frustrating/disconnected sex scene. It shows us a few things about them mainly that Anne wants to keep a lot of control over what happens, hence Rackham being tied up (though of course this might also be his kink), her wearing a shirt that covers up most of her body, and the reverse cowgirl position that means that she’s both in control of what happens and completely avoids eye contact. The position reminds us of the Flint/Miranda scene, where Miranda was also on top, but their scene involved more eye contact (yes glaring counts, he’s still intensely focused on Miranda), gentle touching (on Miranda’s side) and her being naked and open to him. Another parallel is that both Flint and Rackham aren’t in the right frame of mind for sex, Flint being angry and Rackham lost in a sea of worries (and probably also somewhat angry/disappointed at Anne for forcing him into the plot to kill their crewmates). The difference between Flint and Rackham is that while Flint doesn’t seem to have any trouble performing, Rackham is miles away and doesn’t even notice that he’s lost his erection - again. Anne is frustrated by this, and apparently knows him well enough that she offers to put something up his arse, but he’s clearly not in the mood, and she leaves in a huff, abandoning him all tied up as a sort of revenge for his performance problems. Whatever the problem is between them isn’t put into words (because Anne can’t yet, for starters), unlike the one between Flint and Miranda. The intimacy between Rackham and Anne, so often described as close partners, seems much more distant to me than the one shown between Flint and Miranda. I’m not sure whether it’s because of anyone’s sexual orientation, or just the fact that they’re fucking but they’ve never discussed the big important things, such as Anne’s identity/feelings/etc.

- In this episode, Dufresne gains a lot of power: with a freshly (and badly) shaved head and a new tattoo, he’s been promoted to Quartermaster on the Walrus in Billy’s place. And very quickly he has a problem to deal with: Randall revealing that Silver stole the page. Gates had actually already told this to Dufresne, as is revealed at the end of the episode, which might explain why Dufresne is relatively calm during the whole conversation, while DeGroot wants Silver and Flint hanged and Howell is surprisingly ruthless: he brings up the idea that it may be better to kill off Randall in order to get to the treasure, if they can’t make sure he’ll keep quiet about Silver being the thief. Dufresne is actually quite kind towards Silver in the scene where he puts Silver’s memory to the test - a test that could result in his death if he fails it and that Silver constantly grumbles against (I love his grumbling!). Basically, at this point Dufresne remains quite a sympathetic character, which will change a lot as the show goes on, especially after Jannes Eiselen had to leave the show (such a sad story, RIP Jannes).

- In the meantime, the Flint and Gates relationship is crumbling. It's sad to see, especially since they're shown sharing chuckles as they talk about Dufresne's appointment in the beginning of the episode. But then Gates brings up the subject of Miranda and demands explanations about the letter Billy found. We're not shown exactly what Flint answers, but it's clear that he's actually trying his best to give him an explanation without incriminating Miranda too badly. The sad thing is that Flint is actually telling the truth: he actually wasn't involved in any betrayal of his crew and and can only guess at Miranda's motivations. But the fact that he's lied time and again in previous situations, including on the Maria Aleyne where he claimed Lord Alfred drew a weapon on him (and Gates secretly verified that this was a lie), and used men as pawns to advance his and Miranda's plans, is now catching up to him. Flint seems truly hurt when Gates accuses him of using the men for his own purposes, and turns spiteful, telling Gates that he should have been "a better father" to Billy and helped him "understand the world he was living in" (suggesting that such a forthright character as Billy can't really survive in a world of pirates who are all ready to stab each other in the back). After that slap in the face, Gates says he's exhausted from Flint and threatens to take it to the crew. Somehow, this pushes Flint to bare all: he tells Gates about his plan to keep a part of the treasure and use it to build up Nassau, depicting himself as a sort of saviour, doing it for the men's good: they'd rather be rich men in a safe place than dead thieves hanging from a noose. Gates sees this as delusions of grandeur, and tells him that while he'll see the Urca plot through, after that they're done. I actually think he sees Flint’s point, since he doesn’t just throw him to the crew, but won’t admit that out loud. The whole of this scene hurts bad, because you can tell that Flint is desperate and sad to be losing his closest ally and friend, and that Gates is hurting from the loss of Billy and exhausted from the toxic relationship he has with Flint, where he's played enabler to his manipulations for years.

- While Flint and Gates’ alliance is breaking, Silver has to forge one with Randall or die. Randall finds out in the beginning of the episode that he’s been voted out of the crew. This is apparently due to DeGroot’s fears that Randall could be a fire hazard, which the crew took disproportionately to heart. Randall is furious with Silver, who smugly tells him that in these situations, a setback often comes with a new or unexpected opportunity. He’s right, but at this point he doesn’t know that he is the opportunity Randall’s going to latch on. Randall reveals that Silver is a thief, and Silver denies it, saying that Randall is both a halfwit and was in a haze of opium when he heard what he thought he heard; he even tries to convince Randall that he was mistaken (this, my friends, is gaslighting). However, by revealing that Silver was the thief, Randall sets a chain of events into motion which could either end with his death (if Howell has his way, since Randall is an inconvenient witness) or Silver’s (if DeGroot tips the balance, not trusting Silver to remember the coordinates and not wanting to sacrifice Randall for nothing). Silver figures out that these are the outcomes, and tries to talk sense into Randall by making a deal with him: he’ll care for Randall and make sure he can stay on the ship. But it’s only when Silver finally admits that he is the thief and that Randall was right, that Randall accepts the deal. Later, Silver realises that Randall might have orchestrated the whole thing: he’s now got Silver to serve him, doesn’t have to take any risks on the ship, and gets to remain with the crew. Silver wonders if Randall is a genius rather than a halfwit (a word thrown about a lot to describe him). And it seems quite obvious, considering what happened, that Randall still has strong survival skills (an amputee with impaired cognitive skills doesn’t stand a chance of survival outside a crew and he must be aware of it), that he still has a good memory and an ability to pick out useful information and that he’s aware enough of what’s going on to be upset by the crew’s rejection and Silver’s attempt to gaslight him. I think it’s important to recognise that Randall is more than a comic relief or a grotesque character: he’s a disabled man who's lost parts of his cognitive ability and is struggling to survive.

- This episode focuses on Vane facing his past. He seeks out the island where he grew up and its master, Albinus. I’d forgotten or never really registered that Albinus was a pirate and that the men who work for him were mostly his crew - and likely slaves (or children, hence Vane?) that he managed to capture/press into service. He’s retired from pirating and set up a system where his men cut down trees for timber all day, without wages. It’s not clear exactly how he holds so much power over these men, although it seems that everyone is terrified of him. He’s extremely strong physically, seems shrewd, speaks rather well, and his tattoos suggest that maybe he’s involved in some kind of ritual (truly religious or just for show?) which would make him all the more scary to superstitious people. Vane is clearly still frightened: he barely makes eye contact and practically stutters when he first tries to make the deal with Albinus, which is that he’ll take some of Albinus’ men as crew and send Albinus part of their earnings as tribute. It says a lot about Albinus that Vane, after years of having run away, is still so scares that he’s willing to pay him a tribute. But he changes his mind as he stares at a boy bearing the same brand as he does: he tries to persuade the men that Nassau is a pace of pleasures rather than hard labour, and confronts Albinus. The fight is brutal and ends with Vane buried naked, just after Albinus tells him that he’s proud of him. But of course Vane wouldn’t be Vane if he didn’t rise from the dead at the last minute and kill Albinus, goaded on by his inner Eleanor voice.

- In the meantime, Mr Scott returns to Eleanor, apologising for what he did, telling her he betrayed her out of love. However he also reminds her of his slave status: technically, he belongs to her. The argument upsets her, and he quite cleverly uses this moment to ask her to free the slaves who were on the Andromache. And it works: by the end of the episode, she’s made arrangements for the men to work on ships and has bought the women’s freedom and found them jobs in her tavern. But Mr Scott has still decided to leave Eleanor to join Hornigold’s crew, to refrain from meddling with Eleanor’s affairs, since he disagrees with her so strongly re: the Urca. Hornigold approached him earlier in the episode, and the introduction to that scene is quite interesting: Hornigold says to Mr Scott “I’ll need to know your secret” and Mr Scott looks startled and frightened. It seems that he’s startled because he’d been giving food to the slaves, but in light of S3, it could be a much greater secret that’s being referred to. Mr Scott is relieved when he realises that Hornigold is simply talking about tolerating Eleanor, who he clearly can’t stand.

- Flint’s bad day continues, of course, with the big confrontation he has with Miranda. He’s furious about the letter (of which he now knows the contents thanks to Gates), telling her that it could have got him killed, or destroyed the plans they’d made and asking her whether she was trying to embarrass him. This sounds so weirdly petty, and yet it also sounds exactly like the kind of argument that would come up in a bickering couple. Miranda answers that she was trying to help him out of that life, because she wants to move on. This is where Miranda utters the famous “there is no life here, there is no joy here, there is no love here”. I noticed that, covered by Flint yelling at her, and distorted because her voice has gone very shrill, Miranda says another line, which sounds like “you used to love, then”. If that really is what she says, it’s extra-extra-extra heartbreaking to hear (if someone wants to check it for me, it’s around 35:40). It’s obvious that Flint and Miranda’s views on life are very different, and I can’t help but think back to the fact that, as a carpenter’s son from the country, Flint has had to struggle all his life to become who he is. So when he says that you can’t get a life without having a war, and Miranda tells him he’s wrong, she’s speaking entirely from the point of view of her privilege. She’s never needed to fight as hard as he has to be happy, because she got extremely lucky in marrying Thomas. And when she says that Thomas would agree with her, I’m certain she’s right. But life has never been like that for Flint, and there’s no way he’ll ever entirely agree with their point of view. Rewatching this scene is tough, btw, because they both have great points, they’re both hurting so much, and there’s so much to take in between the body language, the facial expressions, the tones of voice and the actual words that it’s a whole whirlwind. And it feels very, very real.

- It’s absolutely hilarious to see Rackham get robbed by the whores taking advantage of his lack of knowledge (and research). He should absolutely have done a better job and has no clue how to run a brothel. He’s lucky Max takes things in hand after having heard from Idelle that the girls were taking advantage.

- Then we have the beautiful Drunk Flint scene. Eleanor notices him feeling very sorry for himself after Gates has pretty much broken up with him and he’s still reeling from fighting with by Miranda. I think Flint feels very misunderstood here. He thought that he was doing something good, to save Nassau and avenge Thomas, and doesn’t understand why they can’t see it, why they only see the terrible methods he uses to reach his goals. So he’s full of doubt, clearly wondering if he’s the villain of the story, and puts the question to Eleanor: is their plan worth it? Eleanor is the only person who still believes in him, which leads us to the only scene that I would ever call straight-baiting. Flint hovers near Eleanor, breathing heavily, and a variety of emotions play over her face during this moment of tension, as she seems to think this is leading to a kiss. It does, he gives her a chaste little forehead kiss and leaves. All the elements are in place to make your average viewer start shipping these two. I actually find it hilarious that the ship barely exists in the fandom (though I wasn’t there in the beginning of the fandom and I guess the viewership changed a lot between S1 and S4).

- The scene with Flint and Gates glaring at each other from their respective ships and Parson’s Farewell playing in the background... epic! We know this is the beginning of a big struggle between them, especially since we find out that Gates has pretty much decided that he’ll hand Flint over to the crew once they get the money. But nnnnggh that scene! The ships leaving on their hunt! Awesome and heartbreaking!

[douchebagbrainwaves]

WHAT MADE IN YOUR MIND

This will come as a surprise to a lot of overlap between the two—mean comments are disproportionately likely also to be dumb—but the strategies for dealing with them are different. I use the number of times each token ignoring case, currently occurs in each corpus. David advocated. I've just described is an acquisition by a public company. I went to my mother afterward to ask if this was so. The fashion for the name Gary began when the actor Frank Cooper adopted the name of a tough mill town in Indiana. I think if I look closer I'll be able to find statistical differences between these and my real mail. Possibly. Peter Mayle wrote one called Why Are We Getting a Divorce? Even others that seem quite distant. And what, exactly, is hate speech? Being profitable ensures you'll get at least the average of the acquisition market—in which public companies do behave as pooled-risk company managers, you need a brain that can go anywhere.

Another thing I may try in the future there is a static obstacle worth getting past, spammers are pretty efficient at getting past it. It was astonishing to learn later that they'd both been serial womanizers, and that as I made the filters stricter I got more false positives. And after having spent their whole lives doing things that are arbitrary, and believe things that are true, or at least wished that computer science was a branch of math. That would have saved me in all three cases. That's why movies like The Matrix have such resonance. I've found that you can filter present-day spam acceptably well using nothing more than a Bayesian combination of the useful and the bizarre. They were imitating the great painters of the Renaissance, whose paintings by that time were brown with dirt.

But what happened to Reddit didn't happen out of neglect. To be jaded you have to do a lot of them, which gave us the impression the short story was flourishing. The user doesn't know what it means, but worse still, neither does the developer of the filter is in the individual databases, then merely tuning spams to get through them. Letters, digits, dashes, apostrophes, and dollar signs to be part of tokens, and the site rules discourage dramatic link titles. Here parents' desires conflict. They may be trying to make sales would be a good idea. Halfway through grad school I decided I wanted to stop getting spam. When we launched in February 2007, weekday traffic was around 1600 daily uniques. It would be pretty straightforward to make a list of the fifteen individual probabilities, you calculate the combined probability thus: let prod apply #' mapcar #' lambda x-1 x probs One question that arises in practice is what probability to assign to words that occur in one corpus or the other, and the transformation was miraculous.

A probability can of course be mistaken, but there is little ambiguity about what it means to be biased. Hacker News who actually took the trouble to write two versions, a flame for Reddit and a more subdued version for HN. I want to find general recipes for discovering what you can't say, look at the page. Second, I think. Plus Reddit had different goals from Hacker News. Adults have a certain model of how kids are supposed to behave, and it's different from what they expect of other adults. If a self-consciously cool people who want to distinguish themselves from the common herd. 08221981 supported 0.

Let's start with a test: Do you have any opinions that you would have gotten in trouble for a particular idea yet? And pay especially close attention whenever an idea is being suppressed. To launch a taboo, a group has to be powerful enough to enforce a taboo. Just write whatever you want, not to say what you want, and then sit around offering crits of one another's creations under the vague supervision of the teacher. It's hard for us to feel a sense of urgency as adults over something we've literally been trained not to worry about running out of money and b they can spend their time how they want. Here parents' desires conflict. This may well be a better plan than the old one of putting them in their place, but it ended up being cast as a struggle to preserve the souls of Englishmen from the corrupting influence of Rome. Representational art is only now recovering from the approval of both Hitler and Stalin. That's an extreme example, of course, the test you use to measure performance must be a valid one. Sorry about that. 99% of people reading Ulysses are thinking I'm reading Ulysses as they do in the real world: they're small; you get to start from scratch; and the problem is before you can solve it.

It seems to be a single long stream of text for purposes of counting occurrences, I use the 15 most significant. We did. If someone submits a lame article, the other end seems especially far away. 8747 From free 0. To see fashion in your own time, though, my filters do themselves embody a kind of virtual town square. Hacker News is definitely useful. If we could look into the future it would be easier if the forces behind it were as clearly differentiated as a bunch of evil machines, and one sent to me in the belief that I was someone else.

Which means applicants of type x. You meet a lot of work, and the history of science, architecture, and the result is what we can't say, what do you do with it? If you said them all you'd have no time left for your real work. Most people go through life with bits of packing material adhering to their minds and never know it. 30 startups that eminent angels have recently invested in, give them each a million dollars each to move, a lot of kids who grew up in. 07972858 color 0. 75%.

Yes, of course. How can we find these too? If we can understand this mechanism, we may be able to solve the problem with fairly simple algorithms. I scan the entire text, including headers and embedded html and javascript, of each message in each corpus. Representational art is only now recovering from the approval of both Hitler and Stalin. That's why movies like The Matrix have such resonance. The reasons parents don't want their kids having sex are complex. This is too big a problem to solve here, but certainly one reason life sucks at 15 is that kids are trapped in a world designed for 10 year olds. There is a strong correlation between comment quality and length; if you say anything mistaken, fix it immediately; ask friends which sentence you'll regret most; go back and tone down harsh remarks; publish stuff online, because an audience makes you write more, and thus generate more ideas; print out drafts instead of just looking at them on the screen; use simple, germanic words; learn to recognize and discount the effects of moral fashions. One of the most premeditated lies parents tell. Here parents' desires conflict.

[kenzieam]

Mortal - Chapter Four

Rating: M (smut, language, angst and sorrow)

Genre: Drama/Angst

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***Slightly Non-Canon. Asgard hasn’t been destroyed, Thanos didn’t succeed with the snap….. I’ve taken a few liberties, my lovelies***

Sorry this chapter has taken so long!!! I hope it’s worth it? CAN’T REMEMBER WHAT HAPPENED? CATCH UP HERE!

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Remy returned to the Tower hours later; despite her ugly words with Bucky, tonight was one of the nights each week the team made a special effort to all sit down and eat together as a family; and Remy was on cooking duty with Sam. He glanced up as she entered the kitchen, a cautious smile on his face.

"Hey Beauty, how was your day?" The slight edge in his voice said he knew of her words with Bucky, knew she'd taken Rora out with her, but didn't hint at how he felt about either.

"Fine." Remy replied neutrally as she set Rora gently in her bouncy chair, secured on the counter.

Sam sighed, "C'mon, don't be like that."

He set down the knife he was using and turned to Remy; wiping his hands on his jeans, he stepped forwards and pulled her into a hug. "I'll admit, Buck was out of line questioning your intentions like that, we know Aurora is the most important thing in the world to you, but... we just want you two safe, that's all."

"Do you think the same thing?"  

"What? That you're too wrapped up in Loki to put Rora first?"

Remy winced. "Yeah."

"I'll admit it Beauty, it crossed my mind; it's crossed all our minds, but we know you. You're smart and you're loyal and you'd never put Rora in danger for anything like that. It flicked through my head but went right back out again."

"But-"

"And Buck knows it too, he's just scared, like all of us; we don't want anything to happen-"

"Nothing will-"

"Yes, but that doesn't stop you from worrying about someone you love." Sam replied, reaching up to gently cup Remy's face, gazing down at her implacably. "You mean a shit-ton to us, kid. We worry when you leave the Tower for ice cream, let alone meeting a man we only know as the bad guy."

"A shit-ton, huh?"

"Yeah," Sam grinned.

"That a measurable unit?"

"Uh-huh, right up there with a fuck-ton."

Remy rolled her eyes and Sam let her go, ruffling her hair. "Now get to work, brat; dinner ain't gonna make itself."

"You sound like a chicken over there, Wilson. Bawk, bawk, bawk." Remy threw back, unable to stop a smile. Sam rolled his eyes and pointed a finger mock-threateningly at her. "Don't start with me, Sparky; we got a fire extinguisher just around the corner."

This was standard banter between Remy and Sam, and she felt an almost disproportionate level of relief about it, pulling out the defrosted chicken from the fridge to arrange in a pan.  

Dinner was three-quarters cooked and Remy was taking a moment to babble at Rora when Sam elbowed her gently. Remy straightened and followed Sam's jerked chin to the doorway. The grin on her face slid off when she saw Bucky standing there, hands in his pockets. The look in his eyes was pleading.

"Rem, can we talk?"  

Remy curled her lip, ready to spit fire again; when Bucky continued, and the waver in his voice, the near-break, changed her mind instantly. "Please?

Remy's shoulders sagged as the heat of her temper cooled immediately. She couldn't stay mad at him, not when he looked like he'd spent the last hours ripping himself apart, not when his skin was pale and eyes circled with black, looking almost bruised. Nobody was harder on Bucky than himself, and Remy felt a sharp pang of shame for adding to his already bottomless guilt over his past.

"Watch Rora for me?" She asked quietly and, at Sam's nod, she marched towards the soldier waiting quietly in the doorway for her.

"Rem, I-"

"Not here." Remy cut him off sharply, continuing past him and down the hallway, not looking back to see if he was following. Reaching a quiet corridor, Remy whirled, nearly crashing into the massive man behind her. She looked up, meeting his eyes and fighting to keep a neutral face. She waited silently for Bucky to speak first.

"Remy." Bucky reached out to cup her face but stopped at the look still smoldering in her eyes and dropped his hand to his side. "I’m sorry. You know I didn't mean that."

"How would I know that, James? The guy I look up to, the guy I call my brother, questions my motives with my child, my intentions? If you didn't mean it, why did you say it?"

"I'm-" Bucky broke off and shook his head, resting his hands on his hips for a beat, then wiping his mouth and looking at Remy with renewed intensity. "I'm scared for you, okay? I'm scared for Rora. What if this is all a trap?"

"Why would he go through that amount of trouble? Letting Wanda into his head, traveling back here and dealing with all of you in his face? Is it that hard to believe that someone could love me?"

Bucky's face contorted with pain and he grabbed her upper arms. "No. Jesus, Remy! I don't think that. Of course, someone could love you! There is nothing wrong with you, you are worthy and deserving of everything good, just.... why him?!"

Remy sagged, defeated. "You can't help who you fall in love with, James. Do you think I'd still be trying, fighting all of you this way, if I didn't love him? In ways I can't explain? If I didn't believe, with everything I have, that he truly loves me back? Do you honestly believe I would put any of you in danger, for the attention of someone I didn't love so completely? I can't choose between you and him, please don't ask me to."

"Remy," Bucky's voice broke and he hung his head.  

Remy reached up to cup his face, his stubble rasping in her hands. The tears trailing down his cheeks were answered by hers and it took all of Remy's determination to force herself to speak and not simply dissolve into tears.

"I love you, Bucky. I love all of you.” He closed his eyes with an almost inaudible moan. “You are my family. I would die with a smile on my face if I knew it would keep you all safe. But I can't... I can't explain it. I just trust him."

Bucky exhaled hard, shuddering and reached up to grip Remy's wrists. After a long pause, he nodded slowly and raised his head, opening his eyes. "Okay." His eyes were red-rimmed but clear and determined. "I'm not going to pretend I like it, but... I'm with you, baby sister. Whatever happens, I'm here."

Baby sister, I'm here. The force of Remy's tears took her by surprise and it was long minutes before she was able to pull away from Bucky's shoulder, where he'd drawn her when she'd begun to cry.  

"I'm sorry, Rem." Bucky murmured. "I love you; I can't just turn that off."

"S’okay, Bucky. I've been pushing my limits with everyone lately."

Bucky pulled away again, and fixed Remy with a serious look. "I mean it though; something goes sideways, you come to me. I won't rub it in your face, I just want to help."

Remy nodded, smiling shakily when Bucky leaned forwards and pressed his lips tenderly to her forehead.

"Sparky?! Little Bic just dropped a deuce!" Sam bellowed from afar and Bucky snorted a laugh.

*****************************************************************************

"All of you?" Remy asked incredulously. Her gaze flickered between her family even as her heart began to clench.  

Tony sighed and nodded, scrubbing a hand over his hair. "We haven't replaced Eric and you're still out, so yeah. Hopefully, it won't take long, but this is a major HYDRA hive, one we've been looking for for months, we have to move now. The only one not going is Pepper, but she has to be in Washington."

Remy exhaled and looked over at Rora, sleeping peacefully on Bucky's shoulder. His face was tense and thoughtful; even as his arms gently cradled the baby.  

"Stay with Loki." He spoke suddenly and every head swiveled his way in surprise. He glanced at the team, at the mix of expressions, and shrugged. "We can't keep pretending it isn't happening. We haven't chased him off yet, looks like he's here to stay, we need to accept it." He flicked a glance at Tony. "But I doubt you want him around the Tower unsupervised."

Tony startled slightly at this thought and sat forwards, nodding vigorously. "Right, right." He turned to look at Remy, grinning crookedly. "Go stay with Loki."

When Remy looked back at Bucky, he side-eyed her with a grin.

****************************************************************************

Remy knew he was standing in the doorway, leaning against it, even though he hadn't spoken and she called out without turning.

"Pretty tricky, Barnes."

"You liked that, huh?" He moved closer, the leather of his uniform creaking.  

When he reached her side, Remy glanced up from her duffel bag and smirked. "Thank you."

He smiled gently in return. "I meant what I said. I just hope I haven't made a mistake."

Remy sighed, pushing her duffel to the floor and flopping onto the bed, Bucky flopped beside her and for a few beats, they stared at the ceiling. Still staring up, Remy spoke.  

"I've been... stressed about all this." At Bucky's snort of amusement, she elbowed him hard, making him chuckle. "What I mean, doofus, is Loki; he's crazy perceptive, he can tell when I'm not fully there with him and he just listens and lets me vent. And he said once, 'I'm so sorry, my goddess. Your family only wants what is best for you, and all they can see me as is the monster I was, and I don't blame them and I ask that you don't either. Don't fault them for loving you. If I were a stronger man, I would leave you and you would know peace; but I cannot, my heart beats for you now’."  Remy exhaled slowly. "Does that sound like a guy who doesn't care?"

Bucky was stunned, and took a moment to form his words. He'd not expected this, had secretly (and cynically) believed that Loki would not waste any opportunities to undermine the team, to fill Remy's head with twisted words and lies to ensure her belonging to him and him alone. Loki's humble words shamed Bucky, for he realized it was his own prejudice he'd been fostering, his own cynical poison and the man-god did indeed have Remy's best interests at heart; a heart that he claimed would cease beating without her. Bucky knew the feeling, the thought of Levi no longer being his would at times wake him from a deep sleep, leave him weak and sweating and panting, heart racing. He felt the same way about Levi that Loki felt about Remy, and if he was allowed such a thing, why wasn't another?

Remy rolled onto her side and propped her head up on her elbow, studying her adopted brother's face. After a moment, he realized he was being watched and cleared his throat, blinked rapidly to dispel the growing tears.

"No," he replied gruffly. “Was he happy to hear you’re coming over?”

Remy giggled. “Oh yeah, he thought I was joking. I had to repeat myself like, four times before he believed me. He’s so excited.”

Bucky smiled faintly. “And how does Rora like him?”

Remy’s face lit up. “She loves him, she gets so excited when she sees him, tries to reach out for him. And he’s the same. He’s still not expecting me to bring her, so every time he sees I have her, his face just lights up like Christmas and he starts smiling. I’ll hand her over and he cradles her like she’s this precious, breakable glass and sometimes, they just stare at each other, then Rora will squeal or babble at him and make him laugh. And, he’ll just hold her and talk to her, like she’s listening and understanding him. Wherever we are, he’ll point out landmarks and trees and buildings and tell her about them, and she just listens. We were in the Conservatory in Central Park, you know, by that one pond? And Loki’s holding Rora and pointing at the statue in the pond and I’m a few feet away, just watching and this lady sidles up to me and just stands there for a minute, watching Loki with me. Then she smiles and looks over at me and says ‘what a devoted father, are they yours?’ and I was so proud to say like, 'yeah, they are.’ Remy broke off, cheeks going pink and chanced a glance up at Bucky’s face, expecting anger and was surprised instead to find a thoughtful smile.  

“That’s great, Rem. I didn’t think I’d ever say this, but I like hearing that.”

“So... you don’t mind?” Remy asked tentatively. Her family resembled grizzly bears at times, almost fanatically protective of theirs, doubly so since Rora was born, and Remy had been genuinely anxious to tell anyone of how well Loki had taken to Rora, and vice versa, expecting violent anger and indignation, not this thoughtful and benign acceptance.

“Yeah,” Bucky smiled back, reaching over and clucking Remy under the chin. “I don’t think you could fake that, not enough to fool a baby; they’ve got crazy accurate instincts. If Rora likes him, he must be genuine.”

Remy paused, tempted to tap sharply at Bucky’s forehead to see if the body-snatching alien that had obviously possessed him would fall out, then decided to just accept it. The rest of the family would be another story, but it was such a relief to have Bucky on her side now.  

“Thanks, James.”  

He smiled over at her for a heartbeat longer, then sighed heavily and pushed himself upwards with a groan. “I gotta go, baby-doll. Walk me to the jet?”

**************************************************************************

Loki’s face was incandescent when he opened the door, and Remy shared his smile. Rora had awakened as Remy stepped out of the elevator to the penthouse Loki had been renting at the Four Seasons for the last few weeks; and now squealed happily when she recognized him, beginning to squirm in her wrap.  

Remy barely released Rora from her confines before Loki snatched her away, making the infant belly-laugh as he smothered her in kisses. No one watching would believe this was the fearsome God of Mischief, the being responsible for so much destruction and chaos; not the man so obviously head over heels for the little girl in his arms, or her mother he eventually leaned over to kiss, cradling the child with one hand while he used the other to pull Remy close, curling his fingers against the back of her head, savoring her mouth as Rora cooed excitedly, pawing at his collar.  

“Hello, my darlings.” He purred as he pulled away from Remy, resting his forehead to hers for a beat before planting one last peck at her lips. Standing back upright, he lifted Rora to eye level and began talking to her, responding to her delighted babbles as if she was indeed holding a conversation with him. Remy stepped back and leaned against the door frame, crossing her arms over her chest as she watched, unable to hold back a smile.  

After a moment, Loki looked back over at her, realized he’d been neglecting her shamefully, his pale cheeks going pink. “Forgive me, my goddess.” Cradling Rora to his chest he reached for Remy’s hand and gently pulled her into the penthouse, shutting the door behind them. A mass of carrier bags and boxes in the main room drew Remy’s attention and she glanced over at Loki, who went ever redder.

“You weren’t sure how long the mission would be, and I wanted you and Rora to be comfortable here.” Loki sounded almost defensive as Remy started rooting through the bags, only relaxing again when she whirled back towards him and wrapped her arms around him, grinning widely.

“Thank you,” she murmured, not missing Loki’s shiver when she gently kissed behind his ear. “But you didn’t need to buy a whole nursery-”

“I didn’t.” Loki protested. “Just a crib and some clothes-”

“And toys and games... What’s this?” Remy pulled a large box out of a bag and stared at the outside of it for a minute. “A Storyland Playtime Musical Mat?”  

Loki shrugged, but the defensive air was back. “She can lay on it and look up at the mobiles-”

“You’re such a sweetie.” Remy gushed, unable to maintain her paltry attempts at being stern. Wrapping her arms around him, she nuzzled close and hummed happily.  

“Don’t tell anyone.” Loki mumbled back, fighting a pleased grin.

“Da!” Rora suddenly babbled. She’d been flirting with more and more coherent sounds for the last few days, but none had sounded so much like words before. “Da-da-da-da-da-da.”  

Remy stared in shock at her daughter. Rora was advanced for her age, and was already reaching the period where she’d start experimenting with babbles and sounds, trying to mimic and communicate, but wow, what a first attempt. She glanced up at Loki’s face, not sure how the god would react, or if he’d even realized how closely Rora’s gibberish resembled a certain word.  

Tears glittered in his eyes even as he cleared his throat and blinked rapidly.   “I-” Remy began.

Loki gave a self-deprecating chuckle. “Just baby babble. She couldn’t mistake me-”

“Da-da-da!” Rora gabbled, eyes alight, fists clumsily swinging. One finger managed to brush his chin. “DA!” She finished with a flourish, dribble on her chin, staring up at Loki with hero worship in her eyes.

Loki’s gaze reached Remy’s and she saw tearful hope in them, a desperate kind of longing. Then he closed his eyes and pulled Rora close, pressing a kiss to her forehead. His lips lingered a moment, then he inhaled sharply and pulled away, seeming to be steeling himself to ignore Rora’s proclamation, or at least not encourage it.  

“Look, child.” He beckoned quietly, angling Rora to see the musical mat her mother had just teased him about. She cooed and tried to swipe at the colorful box but was soon squirming in Loki’s arms, making the distressed little noises Remy knew meant she wanted to be held close. Loki knew what the sounds meant too, and tucked Rora into the crook of his neck, her little face burying in his throat. Her tiny sigh was audible as she snuggled against him and seemed to fall instantly asleep.  

Loki swallowed hard, eyes flicking nervously to Remy’s before snapping away, focusing in the floor. “I never meant-”

“It’s alright.” Remy murmured, moving close. Keeping one arm securely around Rora, Loki opened the other for Remy to join them, and exhaled shakily when Remy burrowed her face into his other side.

“l love you.” He whispered, emotion weighting down his words, an emphatic declaration. “With all my heart, all that I am; I love you, Remy. I love your daughter.”

“Our daughter.” Remy breathed, so quietly not even Loki could hear.

****************************************************************************

Later, Remy sat cross-legged on the couch, readying to nurse Rora before laying her down to bed for the night. She cooed down at her daughter, stroking her cheek gently before letting her latch and begin to nurse, then sat back against the cushions with a contented sigh. After a minute, she felt eyes on her and opened hers, glancing around.

Loki leaned uncertainly in the doorway and Remy beckoned him closer with a gentle smile, patting the cushion beside her. Hesitantly, he sat, sitting almost rigidly beside her.  

“You can watch,” Remy whispered quietly. “I don’t mind.”

Loki looked up at her in surprise, cheeks flushing slightly. “You just... you look so content here, and Rora too, I-”

“It’s okay.” Remy replied. “Rora’s going to crash soon, talk to me.”

A wry half-smile. “Did you enjoy dinner, my darling?”

Remy smirked back. “Yes, I’ve never had room-service before. Tomorrow you can take us to the fancy restaurant you had planned.”

Loki grinned mildly back, then tipped his head to rest beside Remy’s. Slowly he relaxed against her, then, with a heartbreaking timidity, he reached out and stroked the back of his finger against Rora’s cheek, watching her in fascination.  

“You look so beautiful, Remy. Nourishing your child.”

“Not everyone out there wants to see women doing this.”

“Fools.” Loki snorted dismissively. His hand moved from Rora’s cheek to cradle the back of her head a moment before retreating to Remy’s bent knee and he exhaled a deep sigh as he snuggled closer, seeming to melt against her. They watched Rora is silence, grinning faintly at her happy, hungry little noises; her sighs of contentment.  

Gradually Rora slowed down, drifting asleep, longer and longer pauses between her swallows. An indescribable peace washed through Remy, with Rora tucked to her chest and Loki relaxed at her shoulder and she turned her head impulsively, pressing a kiss to the side of Loki’s head.  

“Hmm?” Loki’s hum was languid and laid-back; he seemed to be falling asleep as fast as Aurora.  

“Thank you.”

“Mmm,” Loki lifted his head, eyeing her leisurely. “I would do anything to have you both with me.” He hesitated, then his eyes darkened as he leaned slowly forwards, pausing only a hairsbreadth from Remy’s lips, breathing shakily as he closed the remaining distance, pressing his lips to hers.  

A jolt of desire and want shot through Remy and she couldn’t stop a ragged moan. It sharpened to almost a whine as his tongue swept inside her mouth, and her skin flared hot when Loki reached up to cup her face, hold her in place while he ravaged her mouth.

Remy pulled away reluctantly, her pulse hammering in her ears. “Just-” she swallowed hard, forcing herself to concentrate. “I have to lay Rora down.”

Loki’s skin was flushed and he was breathing hard through parted lips. His eyes were solid black, blazing with need. “Yes.” He managed breathlessly; “yes, of course.” Stiffly, he sat back, wiped a hand across his face. “Forgive me, Remy. I shouldn’t-”  

Remy cut him off, reaching out to brush his thigh. He shivered, eyes darting to hers before moving away again, his chest heaving.

“Don’t chicken out on me now, Odinson.” Remy teased. “You’ve made me wait five years for this.” 

[shards-of-realities-blog]

DrAGgggoN

(Oof I forgot about this ask it say half finished in the drafts for FOREVER oops. I also completely forgot what this ask is in response to but I am alsways happy to talk Dragons so...also on mobile the formatting is being weird tonight so forgive me for that)

Bro how’d I know you’d ask....this has changed so much since you last heard me mini dump about it so let’s bEGIN

I’m arranging this real neatly in like, sections an stuff because this is about to be the mOTHER of all infodumps babey!!

Overview

Okay so basically we got five (six?) main dragons, the basic plot I have is that a massive earthquake causes an even more massive rockslide on the mountains where one breed of dragon lives, and tears up the territory of the other breeds. So while they try to recuperate and survive, they send out a party made from one dragon of each breed to go find new lands for them.

Enter Crimson, a Mountain Dragon; Breeze, a Moor Dragon; Coral, an Ocean Dragon, and Jay, a Forest Dragon. They meet an outcast Flightless called Slate on their journey, and the sixth dragon will come later.

Breeds

Mountain

Mountain Dragons are based off of dinosaurs as a whole, but primarily pterodactyls. They have the same heads as them, but a little larger and rounder. Their skin is all leather, and is all one color, usually a shade of gray and sometimes black or white, with the occasional red dragon. They’re strong, but in more of a scrappy way than a muscular way. They have similar feet to a pterodactyl, as well as TONS of spikes. Ridges of spikes over their eyes (which have evolved to be narrow against the harsh wind), spikes around the base of their head sort of like a triceratops, spikes down their neck to their wings, spikes on their tail- and wingtips. Very aggressive looking.

They’re born with only a few spikes at the base of heir heads and wings that are little more than floppy flaps of skin. As they grow from hatchlings to dragonlings, their skin toughens, spikes begin to grow in, and wings get stronger. By the time they’re fledglings, almost all spikes are grown in and wings are fully developed.

Fledglings learn to fly by lining up on a ridge where two peaks are very close together, then essentially flinging themselves off of it. An older, stronger dragon acts in the role of Flight Assitant, and flies after them to help if they fall.

Names on the mountain are generally just supposed to sound badass and correlate with appearances (hence Crimson, who is a deep red).

Mountain Dragons are tough, strong, and too proud for their own good. A lot of them have some form of trauma, because of dangerous life among the peaks, but they’d never let it on. Most know to leave a suffering dragon alone to spare their dignity, unless they’re in real danger. A very aloof and cunning group altogether, that places too much emphasis on all forms of strength.

They also have the power of Earthspeak, which allows them to communicate without words. It’s best on solid rock, but dirt will work in a pinch. It doesn’t transmit words so much as feelings, like fear or pain. Dragons can’t tell who’s sending the message unless they know the dragon well enough to sense a sort of aura accompanying their message. It helps a lot when another dragon is panicking and doesn’t want to be patronized, since others can send subtle reassurance to them without exposing their “weakness.”

Moor

Moor Dragons are styled after lions, with thick, square heads, bodies, eyes, and also manes. Females have manes, too, but smaller and less extravagant than males. They’re fur covered, and generally shades of green or brown to blend in with their surroundings. They’re the largest dragon breed, with Mountain Dragons barely coming higher than their shoulders. Basically, think Elliott from Pete’s Dragon, but with a big dark green mane.

Hatchlings are a lot like small Great Danes or other big dogs—long legs, massive paws, and big heads. Their wings are very big too, and drag on the ground. As they get bigger, they grow into their disproportionate bodies and begin to grow manes, and by fledgling age they look almost proportional and have substantial manes. Very strong legs, good for running, and impossibly huge wings for lifting all that body weight.

Since they live on the moors, there aren’t any high cliffs for Moor fledglings to fling themselves off of, so usually they just run to build up speed, then crest over a rise and jump into the air. Softer crash landings, for sure.

Names are based off the moor and surroundings, things their breed represents (hence, Breeze).

Moor Dragons are considered to be all brawn and no brains by the others, and while they may be a smidge lower on the IQ scale, they’re brilliant emotionally, and make great friends—or terrible ones, if you’re a Mountainer.

They have the power of....something that isn’t named yet, but they can hear very, very well. Not dog-well, we’re talking miles and miles and miles. They can stretch their hearing at will, and if they had less of a moral compass they’d make great spies. It helps for assessing danger, hunting, and locating lost/hurt/whatever dragons.

Ocean

Ocean Dragons are based largely off beta fish—I love their fins and tails! They have a much wider range of possible colors, mostly vibrant ones like pinks and oranges and yellows, but other colors are possible (Coral, of course, is pink-orange). Like beta fish, they’re covered in long, gorgeous fins, and the ends of their wings taper off in the same fashion. Their wings also act as extra flippers in the water! They have gills to breathe underwater but can stand being above the surface for a few hours, a day at most, before they start having serious issues. Dry land makes their scales itch, as well, and after a while their fins will tear like paper. They have big, round eyes and snouts, and small but razor sharp teeth, unlike the long, thin fangs of the Mountain or the thick, pointed teeth of the Moor.

They begin as hatchlings with a few very small fins, huge eyes, and no wings. Their wings develop as they grow and fins progressively get longer. As dragonlings they have small wings, dull teeth, and more proportional eyes.

They learn to fly by swimming very hard and fast to the surface and launching out of the water, which takes some getting used to bc of the water-to-air transition and the strength required to jump out of the water at all.

Their names are usually based off of their environment or their appearance, or both in Coral’s case.

I haven’t figured out what power they have yet...maybe it’s just the ability to swim? Who knows man...

Forest

Forest dragons are based off of birds! They have huge raptor beaks and talons and feathers, and they strongly resemble birds of prey in terms of body shapes. They also have the coloring of common birds, and not just raptors, but little things like robins and chickadees and such. Colors aren’t hereditary though, because I said so, so a robin and a hawk could totally have like, a dove. And just like birds, they start off a little floofy and a little ugly, then grow out their plumage as they get older. Very small, short enough that a Mountain dragon could rest their chin on a Forest’s head without too much trouble. Stocky, though, and those claws/beaks are sharp.

Just like birds, Forest Dragons learn to fly by throwing themselves out of trees! Falling is rough, what with branches and a looooong way down, but luckily most of them are okay. (Jay doesn’t, though. She can fly, but not well, and it causes issues).

Names, if it wasn’t obvious, come from the birds they resemble. For example, Jay is colored just like a blue jay.

Forest Dragons have the power to communicate with the forest around them sort of telepathically, and can ask the trees to move for them or coax the flowers to grow. (Note: Ask or coax, not force. Nature is temperamental)

Flightless

The Flightless Dragon I mentioned is part of a group of outcasts outside the rest of the territory, and obviously the group is made of dragons who can’t fly, due to injury or birth defect or whatever. Technically they aren’t formally exiled, but no one likes to stick around, especially because the attitude towards hem isn’t a nice one.

Some of the Flightless take new names when they leave, but others keep their old ones, like Slate.

Slate used to live with the other Mountain Dragons, until he fell from a ledge as a young fledgling and tore/broke one wing on the rocks. He tried his best to survive, but the worst place to be grounded is the mountains, where there’s very little you can do on foot. It’s just too treacherous.

And now, the mysterious sixth dragon. These dragons don’t live near the others—they were discovered by Crimson, Breeze, Coral, Jay, and Slate on their journey.

Desert

The Desert breed is made of descendants from another group of Flightless who traveled to the desert ages ago. Because they’re descended from different breeds, they vary a bit, but generally they resemble prairie dogs, with long, thin, furry tan bodies, short legs, and those cute little faces.

Being descended from Flightless, these dragons actually don’t have wings, the result of evolution over many years. Living on the desert, there isn’t much need for wings the way there would be on the forest or mountain territory.

Desert Dragons actually have double-barreled names, because back in the beginning you’d have a Forest and Moor dragon mate and fight over how to name the young dragon, so they just gave two names. That evolved to starting out with one name and gaining the second after they grow up. (Our main Desert Dragon is called Cactus Blossom).

They don’t have powers; the genetics of all the different breeds got muddled, so they just don’t have any. They do have nice desert survival skills though.

Okay, that’s all on the dragons!! I never talked about the six in detail, personalities or anything, but hopefully this was still interesting? If you wanna know about that hmu and I’ll ramble some more....if I remember to check my inbox (note to self: check inbox after posting this)

[callmetippytumbles]

☕️ on the ladies of court (Kiara, Hana, Madeleine, Penelope and Olivia)

So, Nonny, I am not sure if you meant my feelings on the characters of the court or how they are written.  Lucky for you my mouth is big, and I have opinions on both. Apparently a lot.  Get snacks.  

Let’s do this.

PenelopeHer Character: So listen, I know that homegirl has all kinds of anxiety, loves poodles, has some funny ass moments…you know, good/relatable things.  Here’s the thing, I am always going to look at her sideways.  Penelope set up the MC for assault.  People are going to say, she didn’t mean to, or she did it to stay in court.  I just hear “blah, excuses, fuckery.”  Her arm wasn’t twisted.  She could have opted out.  The part that really fucks me up about this is twofold.  Firstfold: After Penelope sets you up, she acts as if she did nothing wrong.  Bitch knew she set you up and was all like “congratulations on your dick and crown.”  That is beyond two-faced.  Secondfold has a lot to do with the writing (and I forgot my nonwriting point).

The Writing:  I want to get over the shit that Penelope did, but the writing makes sure that I don’t.  Not because the writers want me to forget, but the way that the plot disproportionately services her character compared to others (Hana and Kiara namely) keeps me from making that journey with them.  Penelope gets all kinds of attention, especially in Book 2 and Book 3.  Again, Penelope is the one who hired and paid for the photographer that took the scandalous photo of your assault.  She was the one who got Tariq in your bedroom as well.  These are actions she took.  Now, look at how Penelope gets treated.  We have to be super duper nice to her to get her to confess to her part in the bullshit.  Later on in the book during the nameless beer garden scene, Penelope along with Kiara thinks the MC is going to be mean to them because Madeleine, A Demon, is ousted.  No mention of her part in a plot that features assault.  I am not gonna let that shit die.  The writers do.  Other than the option at the tea party where you tell poor Penny that you do hold that shit against her (as well as the next generations), this is never brought up again.  

Also, they give Penelope a backstory of having crippling anxiety (which I can appreciate because mental health struggles are no joke), which conveniently comes to the forefront when we are about to learn that she did some fuckshit, and that takes center stage to lessen the blow.  Again I don’t hold Penelope having anxiety against her, I do dislike it being used to redeem or excuse shitty behavior.  Oh and the writers go out of their way to center her in her narrative.  Penelope needs a boyfriend?  Don’t give her Maxwell, he is an LI and for the MC only.  Let’s give Kiara a brother that we never knew existed.  He will love animals, and animal care and Penelope.  She deserves.  

OliviaHer Character: With Olivia, my feelings for her went through stages.  At first, I was like, “fuck you, and everything about you for the rest.”  I would choose all opportunities to be petty because fuck her.  Then around the apple baking scene, I still didn’t like her, but I didn’t hate her.  I think I started to love her Book 2.  When she directed that hatin’ energy to drag Drake and A Demon and not the MC, then I could like her.  Now, Olivia is a gem, and I love her.  I love her shade and that she is not the one to fuck with.  If I was about to go into a fight, I want Olivia on my side.  You know she carries a switchblade and subscribes to STAB HIM™ as a lifestyle.  

The Writing: I enjoy the writing too.  This is a redemptive character arc I can get behind.  Olivia starts off as a bitch, but over the course of the books, you get a lot of chances to sympathize and grow with her.  Over time she sheds her abrasive front and shows that she is fiercely loyal and dedicated, but will still cut a bitch because, again, she subscribes to STAB HIM™.  Also, Olivia’s growth is not at the expense of someone else.  To be fair, a lot of the opportunities for her to be vulnerable and have the reader empathize with her are centered on Liam.  Liam is the first person to stick up for Olivia in the series.  Her motivations for her involvement are focused on her feelings/loyalties to him.  Liam extends a lot of kindness to her.  Olivia’s relationship with Liam as a vehicle for growth is never for the endangerment of Liam.  You don’t look at their relationship as an abusive or potentially abusive.  Can’t say the same for all the ladies.

A DemonIT’s Character: I read TRR before RoE, and even with that in mind, I hate this heifer.  In Book 1, I disliked IT.  Book 2 cemented my hatred though.  A Demon in TRR2 escalated from fucking annoying to, for all intents and purposes, full-on sociopath.  IT plays with the people around her on a psychological level, using her increased access to power for the purposes of manipulation and control.  A Demon makes no bones about it either.  IT doesn’t pretend to act in anyone’s best interest but its own.  This is apparent before IT says what it says about Hana at the bachelorette party.  

For those that have forgotten, after faking a fatal chocolate allergy and publicly debasing Hana at an event she planned for A Demon, IT says to the MC that it intends to psychologically break her.  IT wants to do this.  For fun.  This is why from then on I call it A Demon because that is some fucked up evil shit.  I thought it was a narcissist, but I am now like, “this bitch is a sociopath.”  

While I am sure that A Demon is toxic and awful, I can also acknowledge that sometimes it’s on the receiving end of some shit.  She got dumped twice.  First Leo breaks off his engagement with A Demon to go on a cruise for an American (that may or may not chose him).  Then Liam dumps her for an American (that may or may not want him) after A Demon agrees to a nonmonogamous relationship.  I view her like Mellie from Scandal in a lot of ways.  They both are women who dedicate their lives to men who do not give a fuck about them.  Mostly for power.  Is Mellie from Scandal still terrible?  Yeah.  Does Mellie’s terribleness make Fitz any less of a fuckboy? No.  Liam is not a fuckboy, but he did like drop her out of nowhere.  Leo is kind of a fuckboy.  

The Writing: I feel a way about how Penelope is treated, but it pales in comparison to my feeling about the writing A Demon gets.  Especially this redemptive arc that they just have to do.  We can’t just fucking hate this Demon for the rest and leave it at that.  Nope! Nah! Nuh-Uh!  A Demon needs a multi-chapter narrative to have the reader feel bad and eventually like IT.  The fact that there is dedicated narrative bandwidth for this is terrible enough, but the lengths at which the writers are going to make this happen. [insert long exasperated sound of frustration of your choosing.]  

Look at everything that has to happen for “redemption.”

First, A Demon has to take a job IT does not need or want to force a closer relationship with the MC in an effort for them to bond or whatever.  I guess the idea is that A Demon is supposed to be so fucking good at being the MC’s press secretary that they become besties.  Sure.  Okay.  It’s such a shame that A Demon sucks in this role.  A Demon as a press secretary isn’t all that great.  IT has poor time management.   Who the fuck expects a client to read over 100 index cards or a textbook dossier just before an event?  Also, why put all your energy into such things when they can be rendered useless in a 5-10 minute conversation?  A Demon is also the kind of press secretary that requires you to do damage control for them. Fuck the fuck?  I hire you to spin for me, and I have to apologize for you?  Not to mention IT puts in me in outfits that don’t match the occasion.  Why are my titties kissing the breeze during a daytime luncheon?  Why?  (Also, why didn’t Liam want to kiss my exposed titties?  That bothered me as well.)  A Demon sucks.  Kiara or Justin (before he tried to shoot at me) would have been better choices for this job.  

The other significant effort made to make A Demon’s unsolicited redemption arc happen is a romantic relationship with Hana.  Yep.  The writers hint at this early in the drinking game diamond scene in Fydelia.  It was gross then.  Why?  A Demon has said that IT wants to psychologically break Hana.  For fun.  IT had taken actions to do that before that was uttered.  A Demon calls Hana a dog when commenting on agreeing to have Hana be part of her court.  That same chapter IT points out that if Hana does not get a match, she will be kicked out of court.  This doesn’t happen to Penelope or Kiara.  A Demon then fakes a chocolate allergy and then publicly humiliates Hana.  When confronted in front of Hana later, IT writes it off as hazing.  There is no apology.  It’s treated like whatevs, get over it girl.  So having the idea that Hana is being set up to date someone who once said and did things with the intent of psychologically breaking her is trash.  Setting up Hana for potential abuse is not cute or adorable. It’s troubling.  

Since the writers are really building this relationship to do the heavy lifting of this redemption arch, A Demon and Hana being a thing is brought up again during the Gala.  This time the writers know that we know about the psychological abuse.  So when the MC tells A Demon to stay away from her, A Demon merely says that Hana is over it.  Yeah, that sociopathic threat from the last book, entirely being written off as a non-factor so that this relationship can happen.  Kind of similar to how we are just supposed to be cool that Penelope helped coordinate an assault on the MC.  

Pretending that A Demon did not say that IT wanted to harm Hana and acted on it, does not undo it happening.  When A Demon was a clear antagonist, that line added to her villainy.  It built her up as an adversary to not just the MC but the women of the court in general.  Now that A Demon is not intended to be in opposition to the MC anymore does not make the things that she has said or done less painful.  

During the most recent chapter, this relationship is hinted at AGAIN.  If A Demon comes along for your bachelorette shenanigans, IT asks Hana to dance, after a wholly half-assed apology.  A Demon does not take ownership or responsibility for any of her actions.  Again.  IT says “if” like there is the possibility A Demon is not in the wrong.  (For those of you who need to be told, A Demon is in the wrong.)  The “if” communicates either A Demon either does not see what IT did as wrong or problematic (it was) or that IT knows that it’s wrong but feels ITs actions were in some way justified (they are not).  

So much time is spent trying to have the reader have a change of heart about A Demon it makes the negligence the other characters receive that much more offensive.

KiaraHer Character: Kiara is intelligent, strong, ambitious, and is not afraid to push back against expectations.  She does this a lot in the short amount of time that we see her.  Most recently in Valtoria, if the MC criticizes her and her father’s wishes for not being personal enough, Kiara counters that their wishes are personal to them.  Kiara has the building blocks to be someone fascinating.  She is a WOC in a predominantly white space, who is driven to serve her country despite her country not always seeing it for her.  Not to mention Kiara is a polyglot.  Also, her family is impossibly beautiful.  Especially her mama.  I wish I could say more, but I don’t get to say much else without speculating because she gets so little time.  

The Writing:  I have spoken at length about how the writers have treated Kiara.  I will not regurgitate the whole essay here.  I will say that I wish the writers would put as much effort into Kiara as they do about A Demon and Penelope.  Up until recently, the writers have gone out of their way to not write Kiara.  We have Zeke because Penelope just can’t have Maxwell and the writers did not want to talk about Kiara.  I will say the writers are better about this now.  Still not great.  (I have to watch you guys write romance for a sociopath but Kiara can’t get a hug from Rashad or Drake?  I call bullshit. #LetKiaraGetLove2K18)  The writers did make a point to talk about some of Kiara’s feelings and her trauma post Homecoming Ball and having the MC and Drake hear and validate her concerns.  That was nice.  I wished the writers did not have to be pressured to write about her.  

HanaHer Character:  Hana (like Kiara) is a WOC who is given all of the talents but none of the time.  I will say that some of the growth that we do get to see with Hana makes her that much more endearing.  Especially in Book 3, Hana gets to be funnier than we ever get to see her.  When she drags Drake with that impression of him during the drinking game is still legendary and will forever take me out.  “I would use whiskey for cologne, but I wouldn’t want to waste the whiskey.”  That is just funny.  Fight me.  Hana also has so many aspects to her.  She is a WOC who also identifies as LGBTQ+, she is working through a psychologically damaging upbringing (her parents deliberately sheltered their daughter so that she can be dependent/malleable to their control, which is fucked up) but she still has not let that corrupt her spirit in a way that it would someone else.  Like Kiara, a lot of what sets Hana apart does not get explored and does Hana a considerable disservice.  

The Writing: Woosah x 10^10.  I need all of the calming breaths for this.  If anyone in the TRR is done a disservice in terms of the writing, it’s Hana.  Kiara’s treatment is terrible, but this is amplified in Hana.  The problem is generally the same for both of them.  The times when the narrative should be about Hana, it is not.  Hana has so many opportunities where the focus should be on her, and the writers either half-ass it (at best?) or just drop the baton (at worse?).  Dropping the baton seems light.  They actually do not even extend their hands to receive the baton, let it hit the ground, urinate on it, then quit the race to watch Netflix and eat chips.

@lizzybeth1986 has done extensive writing on the many ways that Hana has been mishandled regarding how the writers treat her.  I really want to focus on the way the writers choose to utilize Hana to uplift or guide other characters that she does not get in return.  I am probably going to repeat a lot of Lizzy’s sentiments, but you asked for me to give my tea, so sit down, get your pinky out because I have some tea for you to sip.

I am going to start with the most frustrating thing about the writing for Hana, she is always positioned to be a tool.  Hana who is a love interest is written in a way that the only reason that we care about her is that she is useful.  

With the MC, the majority of her diamond scenes are about Hana giving the MC a leg up in the next chapter.  I can understand that this is done to get more people to buy her diamond scenes.  Hana is a female LI for a fanbase that is mostly straight women so I can see why the writers do that.  With that said, in Book 1, Hana’s second diamond scene is the Cordonian Waltz.  In that diamond scene, you learned a lot about Hana and got the skill.  Later diamonds scenes tend to lose the learning about Hana over acquiring the skill.  If Hana is your LI, you don’t always get to experience her romantically outside of the diamond scenes that are clearly intended to be sex scenes.  Outside of sex, the diamond scenes with her as your fiancée versus your friend are coded almost exactly the same.  Compared to the apparent difference between other LIs as your fiancée and your friend, it seems lazy.

Hana’s relationship with her parents is framed around usefulness as well.  The last chapter in Valtoria is dedicated to wrapping up the story arc of Hana’s relationship with her parents.  In Book 2, she is not on speaking terms with her parents after firmly rejecting Neville as a suitor.  This is after the build-up of the fact that her parents have trained (yep I said trained and not raised) her for the sole purpose of attracting and maintaining a relationship with a wealthy man.  A wealthy man that would elevate Hana and her family socially and economically.  

Xinghai, her father, makes a point to say that his daughter was not raised to be independent, which carries all kinds of unfortunate implications.  Lorelai and Xinghai have deliberately isolated and created dependency in their child, so she is compelled to obey and would be fearful to leave.  Hana’s parents read like destructive cult leaders.  The Lee household is a doomsday cult of 3.  The doomsday, in this case, isn’t the world ending, it’s Hana dying a spinster.  I kind of feel like I should expand on the crack theory of Hana’s parents raising her using the same techniques as destructive cult leaders.  

Hana’s parents come to Valtoria to make her come home or totally disown her.  The resolution one would think of is that her parents accept that Hana doesn’t have to marry and she is grown, or Hana lets her parents disown her, and she cultivates her own self-worth outside of her parents’ demands.  Hana does not exactly get either.  Hana proves her independence by showing that she can still be useful to her parents by getting Rashad to work with Xinghai’s company (using the flimsiest device, Hana knows the son of the Portera Group’s CEO).  Instead of Hana asserting herself as capable and willing to live without their approval or support, she goes out of her way to reinforce their belief that he is meant to be useful.  This allows Xinghai and Lorelai to continue to view her as an asset and does not challenge the terms of their conditional love.  

Hana’s conflict with her family being resolved in this way, as an afterthought, is unsurprising.  The opportunities to develop Hana outside of struggle or usefulness (like during the Shanghai chapters) are just not taken.  

While the writers do not want to take the time to explore Hana’s experience as a WOC, talk about her sexuality or being in the closet (Hana’s parents exclusively speak about male suitors.), they are willing to use Hana to lay the groundwork for A Demon to come out and complete a redemption arc no one asked for.  This is disturbing.  

Hana has to form a relationship with a woman who wanted to abuse her.  How is this healthy or good, or even acceptable?  Throughout a great deal of Book 2, A Demon continuously berates and humiliates Hana, publicly, as part of a plan to push Hana over the edge mentally.  For her entertainment.  When given the opportunity to take ownership of ITs past actions, and actually show remorse or regret, A Demon does neither.  Instead, the writers are going to put Hana in the position of having to forgive her abuser to redeem her abuser.  This is not something that Hana would do for her own benefit.  

You can’t even say that this is for the power of love.  How does Hana building a romantic relationship with a woman who used to torment her do anything good for her?  That is not even taking into account that Hana is a Chinese woman being put in the position of forgiving a White woman who wronged her.  People of color, particularly women of color are consistently practically required to make public statements of forgiving people (usually white) who have grievously wronged them to position themselves as worthy of someone giving a damn.  You see this again and again.  The most recent that comes to mind is when families of the Charleston Church shooting victims saying that they forgive Dylann Roof.  If any of them showed visible anger for what that man has done, the anger would not be seen as righteous or reasonable it would be seen as stooping to his level.  POC cannot even be angry when they should be because their anger is a threat and reason enough to diminish them.  Hana showing anger would be a threat to A Demon’s attempt to rebrand herself as a romantic option.  Hana has yet to take A Demon to task for the way IT has treated her.  She may not know about the true nature of the threat that A Demon made, but Hana definitely knows about all of the other ways that IT was shitty to her.  The threat was not an idle one.  It still doesn’t matter, Hana will be asked to place her pain to the side where no one but her can see it so that she can outstretch her arms to embrace A Demon, then scissor into the sunset.

Penelope would never be asked to not only make nice with someone who tormented her but initiate a relationship with them.  She had her grievances with A Demon’s treatment of her addressed with the WHOLE GROUP vying to protect her.  Penny got a whole brother out of thin air that wears his durag every night to lay his hair because she deserves nothing less.  If they can make an entire person appear to romance Penelope, why can’t they make a stud, a stemme, or a man to sweep Hana off of her feet?

The part that makes this even shittier, yes that is possible, is that the coming out story that A Demon is likely to get, Hana should have gotten.  Hana’s sexuality in terms of her past or even that much of her present is not explored.  We as the reader are just supposed to believe that Hana is a virgin that has only been set up to be in a relationship with a man, but she somehow knew that she was gay, dealt with and adjusted to that despite a lifetime of isolation.  Makes sense to me!  Her parents as recently as Chapter 15 STILL talk about setting her up with men.  There is nothing to indicate that she is out to them.  I don’t even think if the MC is her fiancée, that the relationship is presented as more than platonic.  

Hana is not even the only Asian Woman in the Choices universe that has dealt with her sexuality and growing into it or questioning.  Kaitlyn has a whole coming out arc that was given time and nuance in The Freshman.  It wasn’t to serve anyone but herself.  Kaitlyn coming out was not a device to explore introspection with Arjun. You as a reader are not entertaining a plot where Kaitlyn says she’s gay and the rest of the time we spend teaching Arjun not to be a homophobe as opposed to Kaitlyn publicly accepting this part of herself.  Yet Hana has to be a part of A Demon’s coming out/redemption story.  Okay.  I see you.

Those are my thoughts  

[desmondfallout]

Wereturkeys

"Heads up!"

The warning came with only seconds to react. Just long enough for Wendel to save his beer. Shame the same could not be said for the scroll he had been adamantly writing on or his vegetable stew only half-eaten. In fact, most of the picnic table rocked a good foot to the left thanks to taking on a load large enough to cover its whole fifteen-foot spread.

"Damn it, Psi! Why the flying frick did you need a...full...table?"

The other three adventurers with Wendel were equally annoyed at their lunch getting trashed. However, such hostilities were forgotten once they realized the giant boar carcass flopped into their midsts. Dang beast looked bigger than any bear or bull monster they had ever seen.

Wendel had to shimmy his way around it just to get sight of the ferret mage that had made such a deposit. His button bunny nose twitched in that agitated way that no one ever had the heart to point out was adorable. Mostly because the rogue was just as vicious with a knife as he was with their treasure earnings.

"One witches pig, delivered by sunset!" Psi stood with mage staff outstretched and chest puffed with pride. A stark contrast to the ferret's robes being torn, blooded, and generally looking like he got dragged through...really bad stuff. "I believe I just won a bet!"

"You know this town has a bounty office for a reason?" Wendel jerked his thumb to every adventurer's office for picking up quests; The Vomiting Rat tavern two buildings down.

"Ooooh no! I'm making sure YOU see it first!" Psi wagged a finger inches from Wendels scrunched up muzzle. "Not only did I purify some of the farm by myself, but I brought back dinner for everyone."

"Hang on a tic!" sputtered a ranger fox that had been at the same street table. "Are you saying you actually went to the abandoned witches farm in Northwood and slain one of her pets all alone?"

"Damn straight!" Psi gave a little bow before trying to brush back some stray head fur. This only caused a nice smear of something brown to appear across his forehead. "One lightning bolt and it went doooown!"

The other three adventurers exchanged murmurs of surprise and adulation for such an unexpected feat. Wendel would never outright admit it, but even he felt a bit of respect for his sub-par healer. Although that did not keep another thought from cropping up. "So how come you look like it dragged you through its pen on a leash?"

"Oh, that's because of the turkeys."

"....turkeys?"

"Yeah, you would not believe the giant monster animals that crazy witch left behind. A whole flock of turkeys bigger than horses were hanging around 'Big Tusks' here. I had hoped the thunder from my spell would scare them off."

The ranger gave a strange knowing grunt, breaking into a grin. "They went berserk didn't they?"

Psi tapped the little pink nose at the end of his ferret snout. Something he immediately regretted thanks to the smell of whatever was under his claws. "Thankfully I cast expeditious retreat beforehand, but the chase still ended up being rather merry. Turkeys can run surprisingly fast when they're six feet tall."

"Well, you brought back your trophy. I'd say that gives you balls of steel!" The speaker, a human barbarian decked in his own dirty animal furs, slapped Psi on the shoulder. It almost sent the scrawny ferret tumbling across the street. "This'll make a fine feast for the innkeepers to spitroast tonight. How about a round on me while we wait?"

"Thanks, but I think a little bath and disinfectant is in order first. You guys go ahead."

With that Psi snapped his fingers and was gone. No real flash or dazzling sparkles. The ferret simply went from being in front of the four citizens to being gone. Wendel almost hated the abruptness of such departures more than when mages liked showing off with sparklers.

"Well, you guys might as well earn some coppers by helping me lug this thing...hey, where you all going!?" Wendel looked around only to find the three adventurers making their way towards the Vomiting Rat for fresh drinks. Turning back towards the acclaimed giant boar, Wendel's long ears dropped across his face with a dejected sigh. Life would be so much easier if he knew magic too.

Psi himself had appeared not too far away in a blink of an eye. His currently rented apartment just happened to be one of many above the Vomiting Rat no less. They were cheap to those that could cast invaluable healing magic.

It was still nothing compared to the near-death rush of accomplishing an actual bounty for the first time. Except of course for the aftermath of cleaning up. Psi wasted no time disrobing for a good wash down and bandaging of wounds. The feeling of a sponge loaded with hot water felt divine cleansing the dirt from his fine ferret fur.

After a quick dry and changing into a bathrobe with loafers, Psi got to work cleaning his wounds. Strangely the bites were not nearly as bad as they had felt. Aside from the blood, Psi was having trouble even finding scars through his fur. Once that had been washed away it was virtually impossible to tell if he had taken damage at all. If only the same could have been said for his robes. That would take a good hour to sponge clean. At least he knew a few mending spells to fix the beak tears.

That is if his spells would actually work. Psi snapped his fingers only to be left standing awkwardly in the middle of his sparsely furnished room. Another snap barely got his robes to flutter. The open rips tugged briefly from invisible forces trying to stitch them together. Subsequent snaps accomplished absolutely nothing until the ferret was forced to collapse onto the floor heaving labored breaths. He was at a complete loss to whatever the heck was fritzing out his powers all of a sudden. The usual feeling of the worlds ether was still present in his senses, but dipping into it for spell fuel somehow became a near impossible strain. Even his strongest stuff had never left him feeling so exhausted...or feverish...or itchy.

"Wha..what the heck!?"

Sitting with legs spread on the floor made it hard for Psi to ignore the strange cramps seizing his feet. Especially with the way his shoes pulsed and bulged in very alarming ways. Both footwear warped or stretched to test the confined space of once slightly spacious coverings. They almost appeared to inflate like balloons at the toes while Psi could certainly feel things pinching until...

SHRRTTT!!

"W-what the holy hec-BWAK!"

Psi blinked in dumb bewilderment at spontaneously squawking like a common farm animal. Granted it made some sense after his feet burst out of their shoes. They had become a far cry from the delicate ferret paws he had put them in. These feet were thick and meaty, shedding fur for a complete armament of yellow scales. Black talons adorned each toe looking fit to dig through dirt. An additional toe growing out of each heel also made them super adapt for gripping.

"Bird feet? What?"

Psi’s jaw dropped watching his shoes get finished off in another growth spurt. Things began escalating from there with the attached thighs plumping up with high levels of growing fat. Itching spread over Psi’s legs that he tried to scratch only to find his hands full of shedding fur. Everything below the knee was molting to make way for shins decorated in yellow bird scales.

If only such changes had stopped there. The fur around his knees fluttered before clumping together. These little clusters would melt and puff into the beginnings of dark brown feathers across Psi’s skin. This conversion continued on up his hips without pause. Not even panicked kicks with girly screams helped halt the process. Although such harsh movements did bring attention to how his thighs were thickening out. They wobbled about with enough fatty meat to leave his shins looking like twigs. Their very girth squished harsh against each other leaving him in a permanently wide stance.

And yet those drumsticks were the smallest of Psi’s problems. It was easy to recognize those feet after spending all afternoon trying to flee a horde of turkeys. His toes had even fused into three digits, four counting the opposable ones from the heel. Looks like he had sustained dozens of wereturkey bites on his lower body to make the effects so rapid. That witch must have really liked collecting the worst beasts. If he could get to his cupboard, there might still be hope for some belladonna stored within.

"Ah...aaahh...SQUAWK!"

That became a very strong 'if’ when his butt began to inflate. Psi pulled open the bottom of his bathrobe to watch all the fur below his waist fluff into rich brown feathers. He could actually feel himself rising off the ground each time his ass cheeks swelled out again and again. Within seconds his body looked grossly disproportionate between a lanky ferret and chubby turkey. Not that he believed that would last much longer. Especially when his tail cramped and exploded into a bush of thick plumes.

"Crapcrapcrap!" Psi’s hands groped at the couch his rear had become. Its soft, plush bird feathers worked disturbingly well with the pillowed fat that held them up underneath. Using his dining table for a brace, Psi managed to slowly put one strange foot after the other on the floor to stand. His bathrobe could no longer completely cover such spacious hips. "H-help WAAK Somebody he-BWAK me! Ugh, I’m as good as the next trophy on that wall."

Well, if he was going to be a wild beast Psi was going to fight like a good, inexperienced, mage to the end. Wendel might use being transformed from an infectious bite as grounds for losing their bet.

"Wait, that’s it!" Hope washed over Psi in a torrent of warmth at such a spontaneous revelation.

That is until Psi realized it was his crotch that was collecting excessive warmth. The poor ferret's dong looked cartoonishly out of place smooshed among such blubbering thighs and hips. Even when the transformations forced arousal swelled Psi to full erection his member looked like nothing more than a party sausage between two hoagie rolls.

"Ah, haah!" Psi gasped almost crashing back onto his wobbling bird backside. Something deep inside him clenched a vice grip around his protest almost disabling all motor control. Trying to use this as a boost, he kept one hand gripped tight on the table for balance while channeling any and all magic left around him for a simple spell. If he could contact Wendel, then the bunny could fetch clerics to purify him before the curse fully set in. "We-WAAK! Wendel, I need h-h-SH-AAWK! I’m getting...getting cu..oooh GO-AAWWWKK! HELP ME PLEASE!"

That would be about all Psi could put into his message before said curse offered its own conjectures. It was hard to tell if the spell even finished being sent telepathically to Wendel. All the muscles around Psi’s prostate contracted in a hard squeeze. Again and again, this happened with no way for him to fight an increasing drizzle of fluid from his cock. It only took about a minute before the tiny member between his thickened legs tensed into a series of sharp contractions. Spurts of more cum than Psi ever thought he could produce fired off like cannon balls, decorating his dining table with thick streams of milky fluids.

And it just never seemed to stop. Psi staggered, gasping desperately for breath as his member fired off five times. Six. Twelve. His legs finally buckled around his sixteenth ejaculation. The whole floor seemed to shudder from knees hitting their expanding weight on its wooden planks. A pool of seamen already began gathering before Psi had finished falling forward onto his hands. Feathers shuddered, swishing about with each spasm of overwhelming pleasure. The ass attached to them presented itself high into the air.

"Oh...oh no!" Psi lost count of how many orgasms he had experienced, but they stopped shortly after. Shame that was no cause for relief as it became apparent there was no longer a prostate inside Psi to squeeze. That unique, male, organs purpose seemed simply milked out of existence. Far as Psi could tell only an empty space remained inside him. A space that was rapidly expanding. "OH NO!"

Psi’s muscles were too drained for anything other than helplessly looking between his legs trying to remain up on all fours. Despite all the seamen staining half his furniture, Psi’s cock remained firm and continuing to pulse as if he were still cumming. Instead, his cock was GOING right back inside the ferret's pelvis. Each hard, involuntary flex of its muscles pushed his penis a little bit deeper into the thick patch of feathers around his crotch. Its girth dwindled just as harshly until the head could barely match a pen’s nub.

"Ngggh! Haa AAWK!" One sharp tug saw the end of Psi’s cherished nut sack. The last pair of bumps that signified his manhood pulled up to vanish deep inside his feathered crotch, shortly followed by the empty bunch of skin itself. His whole butt shook in the air as Psi felt his testicles traveling up through the expanding tunnel inside him. Their purpose reshifting to suit a much larger organ at this tunnel's end.

Just when Psi thought he could not stand all his inside shifting the skin that once made up his scrotum and sac tore from the inside. A cry of alarm became lodged in his throat as surprising tingles of pleasure radiated from his new opening. The cold autumn breeze washed across his alien, yet incredibly damp, woman's vagina in just the right ways.

Psi would have stayed lost in a daze had his apartment door not chosen that time to slam open.

"God damn it, Psi! What could you have possibly done...now!?"

Wendel got two feet in the door when it registered a very large, heart-shaped, couch was blocking his path only a few feet further in. Pausing on his third step, the bunny rouge needed a few seconds to register he was actually staring at one overly bloated ass. A woman's ass no less, if the dripping pussy emitting strong musks were any indication. Needless to say, Wendel was further startled when the jiggling mass of glutes shifted so Psi’s, still ferret, face could peek over.

"W-Wendel, please, h-heeeAWWK meeeee! I...I think I’m...nggghhh! Aaah AWK!"

A loud crackling made Psi’s hands clasps on the floor. From his fingers shot out sharp talons that easily pierced through the wood. Such claws had little trouble shaving deep trenches as Psi arms jerked around in spasms. His hands themselves shedding fur off in large clumps to leave forearms covered in the same yellow scales as his bird feet.

The sleeves of his bathrobe groaned from getting stretched out around bulking arms. Many loud rips filled the apartment when they tore apart at the elbows and shoulders. Rich tufts of brown feathers blossomed out, shortly followed by the bulging hills of turkey meat they rested on. Whether it was fat or muscle predominantly filling out Psi’s rounding figure remained hard to say.

"You said those were just turkey’s that attacked you, right?" Wendel’s ears both dropped in grim dismay over his face. The bunny was already reversing his steps towards the door. Yet his legs could not find the will to break into a full run. The rooms scent was getting thick in aromas that burned his little rabbit nose, making his eyes unable to focus on anything but Psi’s enormous bird bottom. Such luscious tail feathers seemed to wave at him in an inviting dance with their butts continuous bouncing.

"Mmmh, bwk awk!" When Psi glanced over towards Wendel again, it was in a slow, deliberate display of seduction. Both were too preoccupied with the growing sense of arousal permeating off themselves to notice Psi’s ears had almost vanished into the feathers lining his head. Nor did Wendel care about the bright yellow coloration of Psi’s teeth when she spoke in a sultry voice far more pleasant than the ferret's usual squeaks. "Wendel? Baby? Awwwk. You going to stand at my door all day or you going to help stuff this turkey?"

An unexpected question, but not entirely unwelcome. Or at least Wendel thought it might not be unwelcome. He bit his lip glancing from Psi’s beckoning !stare, to her most plush backside, and then to the door behind him. Every shred of basic survival instinct said to run. Run like a mad cow with a herd of butchers behind it. And then find a place deep inside some cavernous tomb to barricade in until this crazy mess flew away.

But that pussy sure did smell tasty. It was that line of thinking that had Wendel closing the door.

"Ah, what the hell," he said with a devious chuckle. After a month of being teased by all the passing female adventurers, Wendel was eager for a bit of release anyway. Psi was at least woman enough where it counted.

Wendel had his belt buckle undone in a flash. His pants and boxers dropped around his ankles upon reaching the glorious curves of Psi’s ass. Getting this close to her dripping turkey cunny only increased his own arousal further. Hands reached almost of their own volition to rub along Psi’s hips. They were even softer than she looked as Wendel found such feathered flesh molding as dough in his grasp.

"Awk awk!"

A little expressive hip bumping helped Psi get her bunny partner back to more important matters. Namely the sensation of Wendel’s hard cock rubbing along the insides of her pillowed rear. It continued to rub up along Psi in several slow, tormenting, hip bucks. Even in a half-transformed state, Wendel would not let Psi enjoy this without a bit of chop busting.

Although it seemed to be making Psi’s insides rumble with her growing lust. His torso gurgled as it began ballooning out in all directions. The sash of her bathrobe snapped apart allowing a thick bulge of pot belly to hang out. Love handles rapidly formed along Psi’s waist causing the semi-expensive fabric to tear trying to stretch over her girth that expanded virtually with each breath.

Her stomach was not the only thing inflating under those feathers. Psi clicked her increasingly lumpy teeth at a fluttering sensation that overtook her chest. It focused firmly into pinpoints on both her nipples seconds before they popped right out of their feathery cover. They had instantly become twice their usual size and only continued to puff up thicker and wider before Psi’s eyes. The flesh behind them seemed intent on catching up to Psi’s already cannonball sized gut. Each labored pant swelled Psi’s breasts thicker, pushing her nipples into a sharp hang down towards the floor. Although they never could seem to overcome the roundness of her belly.

Curiosity had caused Psi to almost start sitting back in wanting to feel her new growths. They were becoming rather sensitive to the wind as they moved about. Tight, bloated sensations helped her realize they were also becoming rather full of milk since minute drops of moisture were forming at each nip.

Of course, Wendel chose that moment to also get a firm grip on such thick love handles to drive his shaft right into her cunt. Psi’s walls gave way with extra ease after already being intensively soaked in its own juices.

"Oooh WAAK!" Psi’s feathers fluffed up on ends, making her whole body look immensely fluffier. Wendel may have been half her size, but still excelled where it was important. That rabbit's member stretched her insides so delightfully taut as it moved testingly in and out of her. "Oh bwaaak YUSH!"

Wendel was quick to build up a rhythm to their fucking. A fancy rouge such as himself did not need brute strength when precision and endurance got a job done just fine. Once he found the right position to plow this turkey, slamming that sweet woman spot with his pulsing pink member was easy.

Their hips slapped together faster and harder, filling the room with increasingly wet splashes from between their drizzling connection. Excess juices of turkey spunk and rabbit pre pooled at their feet. Each impact from Wendel sent a violent jiggle across Psi’s fat causing her breasts to bounce off a rippling belly that almost caressed the floor.

There was almost no trace of ferret left. And what remained was losing its fight to remain prominent. When Wendel smacked his hip up against Psi’s ass, it seemed to cause her teeth to pulse forward from the momentum. Psi moaned trying to keep his lips tightly pursed. Each hump pushed hard against the thinning barrier of her muzzle. Unfortunately their fucking was not about to ease up, and before long her lips peeled back of their own accord. Her entire ferret muzzle melted away to make room for the growing turkey beak that was once her teeth. "Ugggh! Bwak awwk squawk! T-that’s...oh god, right there Wendel!"

Now a full-fledged turkey woman with the jostling body mass to rival a grizzly bear, Psi’s mind found itself in a lost haze. All thoughts could only focus on the hot dick basting her insides. Mixed juices from their grinding trickled through the feathers of her meaty drumsticks, which she tried shuffling around to grant easier access to her soft depths. Curses, bets, or even her security deposit on the floor no longer mattered. Psi just wanted to get stuffed full of warm, sweet, egg brewing fluid.

A desire that Wendel would have no trouble fulfilling. After a week of putting up with adventurers hiring him for near-death experiences, getting to smack his nutsack against such a plush ladies behind was amazingly therapeutic. Not to say anything for how wonderfully tight Psi’s new cunny was despite her size. Every inch of his pink cock got a wonderful squeezing massage as it slid along Psi's slick hot muscles. He was especially sure to grope Psi’s ass at a good angle so his shaft would rub against her clit during each hard hump. That got an especially delightful gobble of lust from the turkey.

"Oh, gods! Aha! Ngggh!" Much as Wendel wanted to enjoy riding such a pillowed birdy slut forever, he was also not in a profession well known for its stamina. Hands desperately kneaded the folds of Psi’s back. The skin of his balls tightened, pressing their treasure hard against the base of his dick in that way that instinctively caused him to pound this bird with all his remaining strength.

"Awwk! Bwaak! Haha, mah gawds!" The sudden increase in Wendel’s humping surprised Psi. Of course, she was not going to protest while it propelled her own pleasure into the heavens. It was all she could do just to remain on all fours with her fat sloshing violently to each impact on her behind. Bird claws dug desperately at the floor awaiting the sweet plateau of release. Her fresh vaginal muscles almost ran on autopilot constantly clenching down against the thick rabbit meat plunging into her, milking it for more each time Wendel withdrew.

"NGGGH!! F-FUUUUCK!"

That was about all Wendel could get out before his floodgates finally broke. The rabbit's member tightened up before pulsing hard and fast. Psi let out a series of feral squawks as she felt the warmth of Wendel's seed filling up against her cervix. Muscles worked just as hard inside her cunny to squeeze every inch out of that rabbit's member. So much wonderful warmth filled up into her womb that Psi's already bloated stomach swelled out a few more inches to accommodate Wendel's gift.

Despite Psi’s best efforts a notable amount of their excess cum still gushed out when Wendel managed to pull himself off her ass. Again, not being built for stamina Wendel’s knees buckled right after, forcing him to collapse on Psi’s back instead of her couch. Granted the feathers made her stomach a more comfortable source of bedding.

"Waak! D-dude!? You’re not as heavy as bunnies look!"

Wendel blinked through the daze of his afterglow to crane his head up. A rather angry turkey beak scowled back over the thick fat of her shoulders. "Oh hey, you’re back with us? I was starting to worry you might be going a bit wild after this."

"I’m sure you were very worried from back there," Psi said with a huff. Her gaze dropped to the scaled bird hands amid splintered wood, and then to the dangling breasts trying to wedge between her feathered biceps. With a soft coo, she reached up to gauge one of their milk-heavy weights. That simple contact was more than enough to cause a spurt of milk to further stain the floor under them "Ooooh come on. I swear if you filled me up with eggs I am totally making you buy me clothes. Waak!"

"Come on, yourself, fatass!" Wendel gave said feathered ass a smack that sent Psi jostling in a meek squawk. "You practically begged me to do it, and you still won the bet. Not my fault you had to go after some abandoned cursed magic farm."

"Bwak you!" Psi clawed a few fresh scratches into the floor. It was already as good as wrecked anyway. And her body still felt incredibly sensitive, if not embarrassingly bloated. "Yeah, well, get the waak off me already. Maybe the churches can cure a bit of wereturkey curse off me before I have to blow money on maternity clothes."

An almost mean retort started from Wendel’s lips, but a few key words of Psi’s resonated a disturbing notion. Just around the same time, a pained cramp struck his tail. "...were-turkey?!"

Wendel sent Psi face planting into the pool of their lovemaking as he pushed onto his feet in a sobered panic. Twisting around to get a view of his backside, the bunny let out a cry that cracked into the makings of a squawk. His usual fluffy little nub was starting to look sickly shriveled. What fur remained shed off to make room for the rich bush of decorative plums growing out at an alarming rate.

"Son of a...aahha...BWAAAK!"

[grifalinas]

Stan didn’t plan for it to happen. And he wasn’t sure why he was here. But since the heat had stopped working in his car, Summer was piling a big plate of sandwiches in front of him, and Stanford was actually willing to be in the same room with him, maybe he’d try to ride it out. What could it hurt?

Okay, so this is what happened:

Stan was standing on a street corner trying to enjoy a peaceful smoke, reminding himself that he’d just got to town and so it was way too early to start breaking the law- didn’t want to get run out of town just yet- and in general just minding his own business when a girl about his own age dashed up to him, said, “There you are! Come on, you’re late!” in a very stern voice, then grabbed his hand and pulled him along.

She’d scolded him the entire short walk across the street, down two blocks, and down to an apartment building on the end of that street, ignoring his protests and demands for an explanation and every attempt to get free of her surprisingly vice-like grip. And then taken him inside where at least it wasn’t cold, and continued to ignore him- he wasn’t saying much now anyway, just sulking- until she’d reached her destination.

It was a small studio apartment, and there were two people at the table in the corner. One was leaning back in his chair playing a banjo, and the other-

“Wait, you’re not Stanford,” the girl said, coming up behind him and taking in the room.

“Wow, with brains like that, I can definitely see what you’re doing rolling with my brother there,” Stan said dryly, not taking his eyes off of Ford, who looked furious to see him. Well, not surprising, Stan wasn’t exactly happy about it either.

“Oh, you guys are related then!” she said cheerily. “At least I didn’t grab a random stranger off the street.”

“I mean, you absolutely did that,” Stan replied, still not looking away from his brother. In all fairness to Stanford, he hadn’t broken their impromptu staring contest either.

“I thought you were Stanford,” she explained needlessly.

“We don’t look that much alike,” Ford said, which was actually not true- cosmetic differences aside, they looked more alike than they had as children. Stan had stopped slicking his hair back- hair gel was expensive- and Ford had bulked up in the interim. If they swapped clothes and changed their voices, they could have pretended to be each other easily.

“Yer twins, Stanford,” said the banjo guy. “You look pretty much exactly alike.”

“Not to people who know us.”

“But I don’t know you!” the girl said cheerily. “That was the point of this DD&MoreD group! Oh, whatever, we need a fourth since Roger bailed anyway. You wanna stay, other Pines guy? Ever played Dungeons, Dungeons, and More Dungeons?”

“Never in my life,” Stan said, still refusing to look away from Stanford. He let the girl lead him to the table anyway. “But I’m always up to learn new things,” which was a blatant lie, and likely the reason Ford was snorting in disbelief, “And it’s Stanley, for the record.”

“Well I’m Summer, and that’s Fiddleford, and of course you already know Stanford, so why don’t you join our group? It’ll be fun?”

“Looks like that’s my cue to leave, then,” Stanford said, standing to go. Fiddleford stopped plucking at his banjo.

“Aw, come on, Stanford, ya promised ya’d play with us!”

“Heh, looks like you haven’t found out yet, but Stanford here is really good at breaking promises,” Stan said, settling into the seat Summer had offered and looked smug when Ford glowered at him.

“And I’m sure if you stick around, they’ll quickly learn that you really only care about yourself,” Ford shot back, but sat down anyway. “Are we going to play or not?”

“Just a minute, we need to get Stanley caught up.” She’d pulled an enormous book toward her. “We can work out your character’s backstory later, but right now let’s just get you rolled and game-ready, okay? What class and race would you like to be?”

“Oh- I dunno- how about you pick for me? I don’t really know anything about the game to decide.”

“Maybe if you’d ever paid attention to someone else’s interests,” Stanford muttered, but Summer ignored him and started filling out a character sheet.

“Yeesh,” Fiddleford said. “What in the world happened between you two anyway?”

“Nothing much,” Stan said. “My brother just turned his back on me at my time of greatest need, that’s all.”

“What Stanley means is, he ruined my life and then was forced to actually face the consequences of his actions for a change.”

“Yep,” Stan said dryly. “Because being a broke, starving, and homeless high school drop out wasn’t disproportionate retribution for one little accident at all.”

And shit, he hadn’t meant to say that- hadn’t ever wanted Ford to know how far he’d sunk- but now it was out there, and Fiddleford was looking horrified and Summer was jumping up and running into the little kitchen, where a platter of sandwiches was sat on the counter. Ford just looked angry, though.

“Are you seriously still insisting it was an accident?!”

“You mean telling the truth? Absolutely.”

“That would be a first.”

“Here, I made sandwiches for our DD&MoreD night,” Summer said, setting the plate beside him. “Help yourself! No one starves under my roof.”

After a three second battle with his pride vs his hunger, Stan grabbed a sandwich from the platter. He’d thought he’d have to start picking pockets for dinner tonight, this was great.

“Thanks, babe,” he said. “You’re a real classy gal. Dunno how you fell in with this nerd.”

“We take astrophysics together. Okay, I’ve got your character sheet done, so let’s get your rolled in and then we can start! I’m sure you’ll pick everything up really quickly, and I can help you with anything you’re having trouble with!”

She beamed at him, and Stan glanced around the room, taking in Fiddleford, who had finally set his banjo aside, and Ford, who was sulking but hadn’t tried to leave again, and then back at Summer, who looked so hopeful. He sighed, and picked up the dice she was handing him.

“All right,” he said. “Maybe it’ll be fun.”

[the-cryptographer]

I must ask you about JouKai for the meme, predictably. Nice questions, btw!!

Don’t worry! It’s predictable in a good kind of way :D

And thank you! I’m glad you liked the questions! I feel like you can determine my terrible taste in fic by reading these questions~

Rest under the cut:

What they watch during movie dates and what kind of snacks they get from concessions.

Hehe. I think we talked about them watching horrible realityTV and avant garde films that neither of them can stand. But, for the movies,they probably watch really lame live action kids movies with monsters andDRAGONS. Jounouchi also likes genre pieces, like samurai and yakuza flicks.Anyhow, yeah, Jounouchi buys popcorn and sour gumdrops from concessions withthe intent of feeding Kaiba in small increments through the movie, but he getstoo into watching the screen and eats it all himself.

Which one gets in to a fight with the other’s parents.

You’d think it’d be Kaiba given his own parents are too DEADfor Jounouchi to fight with. But, yeah, I can’t really see Kaiba doing it. Hemanages some passive aggressive snark when Shizuka forces Jounouchi and himinto the presence of Jou’s mom, but he’s trying to be nice and also not tryingto pick fights with nobodies, so hekeeps himself contained for the most part. He also tries to be passiveaggressively snarky with Jou’s dad, but Jou’s ready to kick anyone who is meanto his dad straight out the door, so Kaiba also contains himself there too.Anyhow, it’d totally be Jounouchi if Kaiba’s parents or Gouzaburou were stillalive. Jounouchi might be intimidated by Gouzaburou at first, but eventuallyGouzaburou would cross some line in Jounouchi’s presence and from then onJounouchi would be ready to fight him ALL THE TIME, 24/7, NO BREAKS. Ugly, uglystuff :v

What kind of street performance they’d put on to raise money if they were stranded somewhere.

Despite being a comedy routine in motion, I kind of doubtthey’d jump to that immediately. At first Jounouchi’s like – let’s put on aduel as a performance. And then Kaiba’s like – no – and walks off. Jounouchistarts out juggling, and singing/busking, and trying to do a kind of one manstand-up comedy show, and it’s just not working, and so over time it startsdevolving and he starts pleading with every nice looking nee-san and jii-chan thatpasses by – lend me some cash pls pls. And then Kaiba returns because in themeantime he’s hijacked somebody’s street cart and pounded its business intoshape and aggressively sold a bunch of extra units. It’s probably good Kaiba gotback when he did, because Jounouchi’s next method of recourse is probablymugging people…

How they’d be as parents if they had-a-kid/someone-forced-a-kid-on-them.

Jounouchi’s all into being nurturing in my head. So he’s cookingmeals, and blowing bubbles in the bath, and listening to the kid’s problems,and also he functions as a human jungle gym some of the time. Totally fussy, soccermom, and also goofy dad jokes. Also definitely the parent to go to if you’relooking for sympathy and support, and to get away with shit. Omg, he’s theworst at discipline.Yeah, so Kaiba gets to play bad cop a lot. Jounouchi would probably also stickhim with icky jobs like diaper duty a disproportionate amount of time. ButKaiba also maybe does stuff like tell bedtime stories – quiet things. Comparedto Jounouchi – he’s hard to draw approval and affection out of, so the momentswhen he shows these things become very !!! You’d want to make him proud and tonot disappoint him.Also, you totally wouldn’t realise as a kid, but as you’d get older you’drealise that Jou and Kaiba were totally playing you. Like, they were working insynch this whole time and providing really complementary things as parents, andyou’d suddenly be blown away by how much the things you appreciated or blamedone for and not the other were really a joint effort all along, and you wereTRICKED! Haha, I think they’d be good parents x’)

Who would cause the most trouble during a camping trip and how.

Kaiba would be such a bump on a log during a camping trip. Ifeel like he wouldn’t be into it AT ALL. How dare you drag him away from workfor this bullshit.

“C’mon, Kaiba, if you don’t help get this fire started, we can’t eat.”“Wecan just not eat then.”

So, since Kaiba’s not willing to do anything on this camping trip, he doesn’tactually cause any trouble. But, by the same token, Jounouchi’s definitely theone that solves all the trouble he creates by himself. Jounouchi gets themlost, and Jounouchi manages to get them unlost. Jounouchi breaks the frame forthe tent and then repairs it using twigs and woven grass. Jounouchi doesn’t sealup the food properly and wild animals get into it, and Jounouchi has to chaseoff the bears and monkeys and everything by himself and then make entire mealsfrom the one can of beans that’s left over and whatever he forages. Jounouchi’sa resourceful idiot, so somehow they make it out okay.

What they would give each other as both a serious gift and a troll gift.

I don’t feel like they’re a gift-y kind of couple because Jounouchihas no money and Kaiba doesn’t need anything and also Kaiba actually beingsentimental enough to give out presents(??)Serious gifts from Kaiba are probably like ‘my undivided attention forhalf-an-hour’ and ‘I paid for this apartment, and also your health and life insurance’and ‘I am touching your shoulder and attempting to be emotionally supportive. Doyou see how hard this is for me?’ They are spontaneous and touching gifts… Exceptfor the insurance bills; he pays those every month. Troll gifts from him… I’mnot sure Kaiba knows how to troll Jou without being rude and cruel. It isunknown~Serious gifts from Jou are probably in the realm of 500 sandwiches deliveredover the course of a year, or I brought you chocolate for Valentines and friedchicken for Christmas. Troll gifts are probably honestly the kind of thingKaiba gets for his birthday. Jou buys him things like KaibaLand souvenir cups, orridiculous neon glow-in-the-dark-sex toys he doesn’t even think Kaiba wouldlike, or little blue dragon hair clippies for little girls.

Who moves in with them as an unfortunate third wheel roommate.

I’m pretty sure Kaiba is the unfortunate third wheel roommatein most of my headcanons considering both ettuship and battleship. But- okay,let me do this for real.Although I’m sure Kaiba would be annoyed by anybody that moved in unexpectedlywith the possible exception of Mokuba, none of Jou’s friends are really allthat unfortunate. It’d probably be… Pegasus or Siegfried (maaaaaybe Amelda) manipulatingthe fuck out of Seto, and creating some elaborate set of fake circumstances andalso blackmail for why they can’t stay at the hotel while they’re in town, and bothSeto and Jou would very much like them to leave but- no.

How they feel about handholding and sudden kisses in the ear-cheek vicinity.

Handholding: no. not casually at least. Sudden kisses: in public– no. in private – one of the few joys in Seto’s life.

Who’s always snapping photos and who’s pack-ratting clutter.

Jounouchi’s definitely the one snapping selfies andcapturing Kaiba’s frowny face on camera during all important life junctures. Phonecamera is getting worn out.I don’t think either of them is very pack ratty. Probably Jounouchi sometimesgets into moods where they can’t throw the thing out because what if we need it later. (‘We’ll buy another one,’Kaiba says, honestly confused by the question.) But even Jounouchi’s probablyof the personal philosophy that every important thing in life can be carried ina backpack, so I think for the most part he’s not collecting clutter.

Who hogs the bathroom in the morning and who causes toothpaste related drama.

Neither one of them is hogging the bathroom. And, idk, whois the real causer of toothpaste drama – the one doing the toothpaste thing, orthe one making a big deal out of the inconsequential toothpaste thing? Well,squeezing the toothpaste from the top of the tube, leaving toothpaste on the sink,trying purposefully to be annoying and writing messages on the mirror withtoothpaste – Jounouchi does all those things. Also, in an attempt to solve the issueof squeezing Kaiba’s toothpaste tube wrong, he buys his own tube of toothpasteso they each have their own. But he buys annoying flavours like bubblegum andbanana and it kind of pisses Seto off.

What their matching costumes were for that one party.

Probably it should be Duel Monsters themed, yeah?! Lord ofDragons and Red Eyes? Kaibaman and Flame Swordsman? But imagine Jou as Marioand Seto as Luigi and Jou tried to convince Seto to go as Princess Peach butKaiba was like, ‘absolutely not’, and Jou was like ‘yeah, you’re right.Princess Peach actually has an ass’, and everything was terrible.

If I think they’d get married and why or why not.

Never say never. But, honestly, probably not? Headcanon isJounouchi thinks marriage is like, ‘I have a promise and responsibility as aman to always protect and support my spouse and our kids.’ And Kaiba thinksmarriage is like, ‘I want to bind us together for eternity.’ And I thinkneither of those is really compatible with their relationship with one another.Jou’s view is kind of condescending to begin with, but it probably even strikeshim as condescending when it comes to the absurdity of him providing (physical)protection or (fiscal) support to Kaiba. And Kaiba probably spends his timetrying to figure out not how to bind himself closer to Jou, but rather how to createspace and breathing room in their relationship in a way that isn’t cruel orharsh or pushing Jou away for good. So I don’t think either one would reallyhave an inclination to approach the topic with one another – even though I’m allfor them being together until and after they’ve become crotchety old men.Also, you know Seto went through hell and also murdered people to get thatsurname? It’s a big deal for him. He’s not letting his surname go and, also, onlyhim and Mokuba are worthy of the name Kaiba – you have to prove yourself. And, withany luck, by the time Seto and Jou are settled enough for this to ever come up,Jou will probably be sure enough in himself to go, ‘fuck you. I’ve got nothingto prove. you can have your smelly name all to yourself’. And, also, we shouldpity the poor girl or boy Mokuba decides he wants to marry, because who knowswhat hell awaits them before they are accepted™ by Mr Kaibaman.

Who has over a thousand unread emails in their inbox or five hundred icons on their computer desktop and how the other reacts to this gross mismanagement.

Kaiba. Definitely. Thousands of emails. Hundreds of desktopicons. It’s a kind of orderly disaster. Jounouchi doesn’t care. He reacts byslowly trying to shut Kaiba’s laptop, and then Kaiba tells him to knock it off.

What their hidden artistic talents are and how appreciative the other is of these talents.

Jounouchi’s handy and canonically good with model kits and stuff,but I think Kaiba’s the more classically artistic. For some reason I think he’sboth a good singer and good at drawing – although he doesn’t do more thanrandom sketches. Kaiba himself doesn’t put much time or value into either ofthese talents (except when drawing comes in handy for invention concept art andconstruction blueprints) but Jou – Jou kind of thinks it’s both super cool andsuper annoying bc, gdi, why is Kaiba good at everything?!

What they consider each other’s most attractive quality and/or their favourite thing about the other.

I think I answered this one a while back, but Kaiba’scharmed by Jou’s smile and that Jou is so unrelentingly sturdy. And Jou kind ofadmires Kaiba’s pride and persistence, and also how much he cares for Mokuba.

…

Thank you for the ask :D

[writemarcus]

In the Continuum: Black Theatre Development

An inside look at the long-standing and often overlooked incubators who’ve boosted the profiles of early-career stage writers of color.

BY MARCUS SCOTT

The coronavirus pandemic has had a disproportionate impact on New York City. It has not only led the nation and the world in a number of fatalities but its economic impact in the city promises to be outsized. More than 1.2 million New York state residents filed for unemployment benefits over the course of the first month of the crisis. According to the The New York Times, New York City is projected to lose at least $7.4 billion in tax revenue by the middle of next year, a significant portion of which would have been generated by the performing arts: With a combined 1,737 playing weeks and attendance reaching 14.77 million, in the 2018-19 Broadway season productions grossed a total of $1.83 billion, beating the 2017-18 seasonal record of $1.7 billion by 7.8 percent.

There’s another disproportionate impact that COVID-19 is having: For troubling systemic reasons, it is devastating African Americans at much higher rates. Likewise in the theatre, where, despite a focus on Equity, Diversity & Inclusion, opportunities for artists of color were already heavily circumscribed, the shutdown threatens not only the precarious livelihood of artists of color but the health of institutions that have historically supported and nurtured them. It should come as no surprise that New York, the center of the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s and ’70s, has been a hotbed of theatre development shepherding the work of artists of color, in particular Black and Latinx artists. Among these institutions are the National Black Theatre (NBT), the Movement Theatre Company, INTAR Theatre, Nuyorican Poets Café, Teatro LATEA, QuickSilver Theatre Company, Blackboard Reading Series, Pregones/PRTT, Teatro SEA, Harlem Repertory Theater, Harlem9, and the Billie Holiday Theatre. Asian/Pacific Islander (API) playwrights have also seen their works developed at incubators like Leviathan Lab, the National Asian American Theatre Company (NAATCO), Ma-Yi Theater Company, the Pan Asian Repertory Theatre, Second Generation, and Noor Theatre, among others.

While many of these companies have had to fight for funding and recognition, their hard work has paid off: The combined efforts of these incubators over the last decade have fostered a creative parturition among their artist collectives, sowing the seeds of what many are calling a renaissance of works by POC artists—particularly Black talent—which have been a creative force, not only onstage, but on film and TV as well.

“I think the conversations that are being had, especially in the African American community, is that we understand and recognize—as we always have—that we are not a monolith, that we all have different experiences and points of view, and that they are worth being a part of the whole conversation of who we are,” notes dramaturg Shawn René Graham, literary director of the Classical Theatre of Harlem’s Future Classics Series and Playwright’s Playground, which shines a spotlight on the work of underrepresented writers. “But I do wonder if some of those tales that were told, if they were in residency at a Black space, how the conversation might be different or more robust…It’s the dramaturgy, and the lack of representation behind the scenes. I often wonder, with some plays, whose voices were in the room.”

Graham got her start as an intern at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles at a time when Oskar Eustis was the organization’s associate artistic director and theatre titans Tony Kushner, Eric Bogosian, and Anna Deavere Smith were developing works like Angels in America, Pounding Nails in the Floor With My Forehead, and Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992, respectively. Graham says she is still influenced by that time. In fact, some of her approach to running both reading series comes from watching the iconic comedy trio Culture Clash develop their work in front of live audiences. Boosting the profiles of emerging artists like Madhuri Shekar (House of Joy), Angelica Chéri (Berta, Berta), and Radha Blank (Netflix’s The 40-Year-Old Version), the Classical Theatre of Harlem (CTH) aims to uplift the next generation of artists as well as encourage “little Black boys, little Black girls, and little Black theys” living in Harlem to aspire to tell their own stories.

Graham arrived in 2011, when artistic director Ty Jones was “still rescuing the company from a significant amount of debt,” as she puts it. The only way to keep the theatre relevant then, when the company could not produce their usual number of mainstage productions, was to keep a reading series going. She was tasked with that project, along with helping make the festival an annual event and creating an annual holiday production. Now, with the COVID-19 shutdown, a similar barebones approach may come in handy. The company’s philosophy hasn’t changed, she says: “We are also hellbent on no barriers to access and being of service to the community that we serve, which is the Harlem community.”

Carpe diem has been a defining philosophy of the trifecta behind the rising little giant that is Liberation Theatre Company. Established in 2009, the Harlem-based theatre incubator has committed to the development of new Black playwrights, promoting the likes of James Anthony Tyler (Dolphins and Sharks), James Scruggs (3/Fifths), Dennis A. Allen II (The Mud Is Thicker in Mississippi), Liz Morgan (The Clark Doll), Camille Darby (Lords Resistance), Shawn Nabors (Cake), Deneen Reynolds-Knott (Baton), and Tylie Shider (Parable of the Backyard Roots). (Full disclosure: They have also developed my work as a playwright.) Spearheading the project are two founders, producing artistic director Sandra A. Daley-Sharif and associate artistic director Spencer Scott Barros, who are joined by associate producing director Bernard J. Tarver.

The trio is also part of the collaboration of Black theatre producers known as Harlem9, currently celebrating its 10th anniversary. Harlem9 won an Obie in 2014 for an annual 10-minute play festival, 48Hours in…Harlem, spawning various spinoff festivals around the country (Bronx, Detroit, Dallas, and Holy Ground, N.C.) and five published anthologies. Daley-Sharif and Barros, working actors who have been friends for 25 years, gush over Tarver and mention that he complemented their “old-school work ethic” when joining Liberation.

“We have a very similar intention and vision that we agree on,” Daley-Shariff says. Barros observes, “Even if we have a disagreement from an outside perspective, five seconds later we’ll let it go because we all want the same thing.”

This philosophy has bled into the gallimaufry of talent that the company has helped develop since their humble beginnings renting space at venues around the city. While small in scope, what the company lacks in resources, they make up for in discipline and tenacity. Such hard work led to collaborations with Off-Broadway theatres such as Playwrights Horizons to present an annual festival of new works when the duo were just starting out as producers.

“Sandra is a master at developing relationships with people that open all this space for us, like SPACE on Ryder Farm, like NBT, like National Dance Institute (NDI),” says Barros. “She meets people and people fall in love with her. But as far as space is concerned, that’s the biggest challenge for Black theatre companies in general. We don’t have space. We need a homebase, because we’re constantly in people’s space. We are constantly at their whims and desires from what they want from us, and sometimes it limits or puts perimeters around where we see the vision. And if we had it we could just do whatever the hell we wanted, but who can afford it?”

That’s why a core group of playwrights has tended to meet with the leadership trio in Daley-Sharif’s 2,500-square-foot apartment a few blocks north of Central Park North in Harlem. When the company was founded, Daley-Sharif says she wanted to create a company along the lines of LAByrinth in New York or Steppenwolf in Chicago—an artistic home for Black and brown talent to work and aspire to have a healthy work-life balance.

“I think that’s the difference between producing in your 20s and 30s, which we’ve done, and producing your 40s and 50s, which we are doing,” Barros says. “We’re more pragmatic and practical with what we’re doing. Reestablishing 11 years ago, we were very clear on what this was going to entail. It’s going to have to take focus, being very smart about where we get the money, how we find our talent. I think the benefit has been that we’ve worked with some of the greatest emerging talent in the city.” When they realized they would benefit from pooling resources and connecting with Black organizations and Black producers, that led to the creation of Harlem9, and ultimately an Obie.

Creating a space, says Daley-Sharif, where “Black and brown people can tell their stories in comfort…I think that’s huge!”

“That’s amazingly huge!” Barros adds. “I would say for most artists that work with us, this may be the only time where they have a singular experience where everybody in the room is like them.”

White organizations don’t necessarily “create that space and walk away and leave you alone,” Daley-Sharif points out. Some take that approach, she says, but there is a clear advantage to one run by folks who fully understand the Black experience. She adds, “Sometimes we do need to be policed, sometimes we do need to check ourselves—but I do think there is something to be said about being in a room where it is Black-led and where it’s comfortably facilitated.”

Daley-Sharif’s words call back to Lorraine Hansberry, author of the landmark family drama A Raisin in the Sun and the first Black woman and the youngest playwright to have a play performed on Broadway. Hansberry’s contributions extended past the proscenium and in her abbreviated career—she wrote her first play between her 26th and 27th birthdays—as she engaged with emerging artists of color and passed the baton.

In the years since her passing, the Black Arts Movement saw dramatists like Sonia Sanchez, Ossie Davis, Ishmael Reed, Amiri Baraka, and Ntozake Shange rise to prominence, each supporting one another. Theatre titan Charles Fuller (A Soldier’s Play) ushered in the post-Black Arts Movement, and August Wilson cemented it; and artists such as Anna Deavere Smith, Suzan-Lori Parks, Lynn Nottage, and Thomas Bradshaw followed suit. While the current generation of emerging playwrights pushes boundaries and takes the U.S. theatre field to task, many are mining inspiration from Hansberry’s contemporary James Baldwin, including cultural incubators like the Fire This Time Festival (TFTTF), named for Baldwin’s 1963 collection The Fire Next Time.

TFTTF began in 2009 with a weekend of performances of fully staged 10-minute plays by Kelley Girod, Derek McPhatter, Germono Toussaint, Pia Wilson, Radha Blank, Katori Hall, and Asiimwe Deborah/Deborah Asiimwe. The festival has become one of the most sought-after opportunities for young Black writers, with many of its writers achieving roaring success over the last decade: Dominique Morisseau (Pipeline), Antoinette Nwandu (Pass Over), Jocelyn Bioh (School Girls; Or, The African Mean Girls Play), Marcus Gardley (The House That Will Not Stand), Jordan E. Cooper (Ain’t No Mo’), Aziza Barnes (BLKS), C.A. Johnson (All the Natalie Portmans), Charly Evon Simpson (Behind the Sheet), Jonathan Payne (The Revolving Cycles Truly and Steadily Roll’d), Tanya Everett (A Dead Black Man), and Stacey Rose (America v. 2.1: The Sad Demise & Eventual Extinction of the American Negro).

“The theme of the first festival was: Is there a post-Black theatre, and if so, what are the stories?” says A.J. Muhammad, associate producer and director of TFTTF’s New Works Lab. Muhammad recalls that the inaugural fest took place in the early years of the Obama administration, when some believed the country had entered a post-racial era. That first season’s plays ranged from an Afro-futurism/sci-fi comedy by McPhatter to Girod’s pre-#MeToo era play about sexual harassment in higher education, Hall’s about skin bleaching across the African diaspora and South Asia, Toussaint’s about queerness in a Black church, and Pia Wilson’s existential piece about the past lives of two women. Recalls Muhammad, “All of the performances were sold out, and audiences were galvanized by what they saw, myself included.”

Girod, founder and executive producing director of the festival, testifies that when she graduated with a playwriting MFA from Columbia University, opportunities for emerging Black playwrights were scarce for her and her peers, who like her were trying to get their work produced by established New York theatre companies. Besides producing established Black playwrights, white mainstream theatre companies were limited in their scope of what they expected Black playwrights to write about, and Black playwrights were being pigeonholed. Not wanting to be held back by these gatekeepers and not content to wait for an invitation to the table, a new movement emerged. (New Black Fest at the Lark also emerged around this time.) The festival has been in residence with FRIGID NYC (formerly known as Horse Trade Theater Group) since its inception; FRIGID NYC is a nonprofit that presents a series of festivals throughout the year and other curated programming while managing two indie theatre spaces in downtown Manhattan’s East Village, the Kraine Theater and Under St. Marks.

“What Black theatre doesn’t have a shortage of is ingenuity, passion, determination, talent, generosity, resilience, tenacity, perseverance, and self-determination,” Muhammad says. Echoing others, he says that what Black theatre in New York suffers from is a lack of dedicated physical spaces, apart from such venues as National Black Theatre in Harlem or Black Spectrum Theater in Queens. “Like so many indie theatre companies and festivals, including the ones that are BIPOC, many of our companies are nomadic and there’s a crunch for physical space and resources.”

Muhammad expresses a need for alternative sources of funding, in addition to the those that support New York-area theatre, often predominantly white companies, such as the Ford, Axe-Houghton, and Shubert Foundations. “Are there Black-run philanthropic foundations that are comparable to the ones I mentioned?” Muhammad wonders. “There is Black wealth, but when it comes to our arts organizations, I don’t know if connections are being made between the Black philanthropies and our institutions.” Muhammad says he’d like to band together with other Black organizations and figure out how to cultivate relationships with Black philanthropists. “Those of us who are nonprofits may not have the same access to the white philanthropic foundations, or some of our organizations might be ineligible to apply for grants from those funders because of our small budget sizes or we don’t have a point of entry,” he says. “This is where the Black philanthropic foundations can come in to have that conversation with us.”

Government agencies unwittingly reinforce the inequity, Muhammad suggests. Tax-supported funding from the New York State Council on the Arts and the Department of Consumer Affairs, for instance, is frequently “earmarked for mainstream organizations in support of their diversity and education initiatives, which in many cases is their only point of contact with BIPOC artists.” He adds, “In the age of COVID-19, things might get more dire for all of us. This is also a time to think outside of the box in terms of funding sources and sustainability of our organizations.” In a time when no theatre can happen on any space and everything is virtual and “spaceless” due the pandemic, one of the many puzzles smaller theatre development incubators are having to figure out is how they might offer new opportunities to artists who are among the many that have been hit hardest by the pandemic and how to predict some of the extra challenges that may present themselves moving forward.

Incubators of color are hardly limited to the Big Apple. JAG Productions, in the small town of White River Junction, Vt., launched in 2016 with the mission to produce classic and contemporary Black theatre and serve as an incubator of new work that excites broad intellectual engagement. Most importantly, over the last couple of years, JAG has been responsible for taking Black and brown playwrights from NYC and workshopping their genre-bending theatrical works.

“At the confluence of the White and Connecticut Rivers, which separates Abenaki land into the majority-white states of Vermont and New Hampshire, JAG has nurtured and sustained a multigenerational and multiracial community with Black artists and community organizers at its center,” says the organization’s founder and producing artistic director, Jarvis Antonio Green, a queer director and actor from the South. “Serving as a vehicle for change, JAG has used theatre to catalyze community dialogue around critical issues of race, gender, sexuality, and identity and has played a central role in carving spaces for Black folks and people of color in the predominantly white town of White River Junction, Vt.”

Green describes his journey as “brutal,” with 10 to 15 years auditioning for roles on national tours and assisting directors, all of which led him to establish JAG. He traces its genesis to a call with a friend, Jonah Hankin-Rappaport, in which he explained how much he was struggling. Green says Hankin-Rappaoort responded, “Hey, I’m going to go up to Vermont. My girlfriend is finishing up school, and we’re gonna be working on this farm in Barnard called Fable Farm. Just come hang out for a summer.”

He fell in love with the rural town and eventually made it his home. Green says he saw the need for a company that would make Black, brown, queer, and transgender folks “more curious and aware of ourselves, make us more curious about where we’ve come from and what we’re into, and to access what is already there and to bring that out.” He also says he started the company to help people heal from harm caused by working in anti-Black cultural institutions. In its first season, the organization staged critically acclaimed productions of August Wilson’s Fences, Tarell Alvin McCraney’s Choir Boy, and Polkadots: The Cool Kids Musical, a youth-driven work inspired by the events of the Little Rock Nine. He also launched the company’s touchstone JAGfest, a multidisciplinary weekend-long festival of new works. Since its launch, more than 10,000 Upper Valley theatregoers and 1,200 students from 10 schools have attended JAG performances. In recognition of its work, JAG was honored by the New England Theater Conference (NETC) as the 2017 recipient of the Regional Award for Outstanding Achievement in American Theatre.

In October 2019, JAG’s fourth season opened with the world premiere of Nathan Yungerberg’s Afro-surrealistic family drama Esai’s Table and sent shockwaves through the Upper Valley community, inciting conversations about race and the value of Black life in America when it ran 15 performances at the Briggs Opera House. The production had further aspirations: Prior to the coronavirus pandemic, the play was slated to transfer Off-Broadway to the illustrious Cherry Lane Theatre. Postponed indefinitely, the New York run of Esai’s Table would mark a pivotal moment for JAG as its first world premiere, first Off-Broadway transfer, and first co-production. The blinding success in such a short period of time is uncanny, as the company operates in a state with an African American population of less than 2 percent.

Of course, the show’s postponement is just one example of the widespread devastation the epidemic has caused. “I think right now, in this time, in this moment, especially when there’s so much Black theatre and theatre about race, that it’s important to hold space for spirit and check in with people and how this work is affecting us and the emotions that could be triggering us,” Green says, recalling his time working alongside director Stevie Walker-Webb and in spaces like the Public Theater, where they’d circle up to touch base before every rehearsal and performance. “To hold that space for the people making the difficult art is important.”

As the country experiences a rude awakening in the time of COVID-19, these development incubators need to be more resilient and work almost entirely on deficit, sometimes sacrificing the commitment to making art in favor of fundraising and handling administrative duties. But the formidable contributions of artists of color to our theatre culture and literature have always been made against steep odds, and these institutions have been and will continue to be fighting for their rightful places on the stages, whenever they reopen.

Marcus Scott is a New York City-based playwright, musical writer, and journalist. He has contributed to Elle, Essence, Out, and Playbill, among other publications.

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Ecommerce, COVID, and How Americans SpendEverybody is at home: no more parties, no more business drinks, no more date nights on the town, or concerts, or even hikes, it seems (I live in LA and they closed the parks and trails in the area). Folks staying at home means a massive surge in screen usage, and a corresponding surge in social media usage — anything from Reddit to Facebook. What does this mean for ecommerce?That depends on your target market, and the relevant distinction is the nature of their work — not their age or average income.Based on first order impact on discretionary spending alone, we should expect a more than 1/3 increase in online spending from the average american consumer under 40 who is stuck at home and didn’t have any cut to income (specifically a ~38% increase). However, for anyone who has suffered a reduction in their income, we can expect that reduction in income to result in a much larger reduction in discretionary spending (specifically a 40% reduction would cause an ~87% reduction using the example below).While a glut in screen usage means overall cheaper impressions for e-commerce sites, that will only translate to profitability depending on conversions. Whether you get those conversions will depend on to whom you are advertising, and the meaningful distinction here is the nature of their work, not their age, income bracket, etc. Folks in non-quarantine-sensitive industries, whose income stays the same, will have more budget than before to spend on online purchases. Folks who take a pay cut reduce discretionary purchases disproportionately to their income reduction.Eyeballs Are On Sale, and Ecommerce Brands Are Feeling The DifferencePaid social media advertising, the bread and butter (or heroine) of direct to consumer ecommerce is the closest thing we have ever had in history to a liquid central exchange between human attention and USD. This gives us reasonably efficient (if not always transparent) pricing of how much it costs to put your pixels in front of another person’s eyeballs.Rather than going too Econ 101 and putting a supply vs demand curve here, let’s just acknowledge that this is a huge influx of supply for eyeballs-on-screens, which means it’s cheaper to buy space in front of eyeballs (cheaper CPMs: cost per impression). And, at least some buyers of ads have stopped paying for paid social (e.g. someone promoting any kind of in-person event).E-commerce brands are feeling the difference, and naturally have to taken to twitter to make sure everyone knows about it. I'd include a screenshot of tweets form ecommerce bros, but I can't on this sub.This makes sense at the top level: if a consumer is buying anything, they’re buying it online. And if they’re looking at anything besides their wall, or cat, or roommate, it’s probably a screen.But, depending on the cohort to which you advertise, you could be seeing falling conversions, or, at the very least, failing to optimize your ad spend.Obviously, folks who haven’t gotten pay cuts (or lost their jobs) are more likely to make a purchase, but going through the actual cases shows that the difference may be even more dramatic than you might originally think. This is relevant because it shows that it’s worth doing the work to figure out and optimize to which cohort your ads are served, whether you’re doing so to improve already good conversion rates or to fix bad conversion rates.Meet Hannah and Rachel (The Average American Consumer Under 40)Meet Hannah and Rachel. Hannah and Rachel both match the exact average income and spending patterns of American adult consumers born 1981 or later (basically thirty nine or below — see analytics note [1]). The difference between them is that Hannah works in an industry largely unaffected by having to do remote work: let’s say she works at Tech Startup X as a customer experience specialist (or whatever that startup calls the human you finally fight your way to after rejecting multiple customer service answers from robots), and Rachel has a job that is indirectly affected by the quarantine (but not completely shut down) — perhaps at a post production company that edits ads for agencies: she’ll keep her job, but get a pay cut.Pre-quarantine both of them earn $58,628 (post-tax) per year. About 90% of this is spent and accounted for, meaning $52,874 of annual expenditures. A little over half that annual spending is “fixed,” and let’s call the rest “discretionary” (see analytics note [2]). I'd put a pretty chart in here, but this sub's rules don't let me, so here's an ugly table.Fixed vs Discretionary Spending:Annual ExpendituresDollar Amount% of Total SpendAnnual Expenditure Total$52,874100%Fixed$28,58456%Discretionary$24,29046%Discretionary Spending Breakdown:Fixed Expenditure CategoryDollar Amount% of Fixed SpendFixed Total$24,290100%Housing and Utilities$18,32964%Groceries$3,72413%Healthcare$2,83110%Fixed Vehicle Expenses$2,1898%Education$1,3085%Other Insurance$2031%(All spending data from Consumer Expenditure Survey 2018, Bureau of Labor Statistics)Which leaves about $24,290 of discretionary spending per year after fixed costs are covered. Let’s see what happens to that discretionary spending (which is what ecommerce businesses are vying for) during a quarantine.All Else Equal, Hannah is Probably Spending ~38% More on Online ShoppingAlthough Hannah’s income has remained the same, the breakdown of her discretionary spending has changed. She is no longer using discretionary spending for restaurants, bars, concerts, gas, etc., which frees up a lot of cash. Using consumer spending data, we can estimate that she just freed up about 28% of her discretionary budget by being stuck at home (see analytics note [3]).Hanna's Pre-Quarantine Discretionary Budget:Discretionary Budget CategoryDollar Amount% of Discretionary SpendDiscretionary Budget Total$24,290100%Things she can do at home$17,59972%Things she can NOT do at home$6,69128%Things She Can NOT Do At Home Breakdown:Can NOT Do at Home CategoryDollar Amount% of Can NOT do at Home SpendCan NOT do at Home Total$6,691100%Eating Out$3,33850%Gas, Fuel, Oil$2,05331%Transportation$66510%External Entertainment$6359%(All spending data from Consumer Expenditure Survey 2018, Bureau of Labor Statistics)Unless Hannah starts saving more money, this would mean that she has $6,691 of free cash in her annual discretionary budget (about an extra $558/month) for “spending time” at home (see analytics note [4]). Allocating that extra budget to every category of at home expenditures (like, say, online shopping) proportionally would imply a 38% increase in each category (see analytics note [5])This is the impact from first order forced budget changes alone: there is, of course, an additional effect of buying the same things but online instead of in person, which would make the increase even greater in the online shopping category. There are also additional factors like the increase in screen usage being more focused on computers than phones (which usually means better conversions), which would provide an additional bump. We could debate whether the reallocation of that capital is proportional across all at home spending categories, but the higher level point is clear (anecdotally, based on instagram, I don’t have any trouble believing many folks have increased their spending on alcoholic beverages, for example, by almost 40%) .This would imply that if you are advertising to Hannah, or can make sure you start advertising to Hannah, you should not only expect lower CPMs, but way better conversions for the duration of quarantine.All Else Equal, a ~40% Pay Cut for Rachel is an ~87% Decrease in Discretionary SpendingWhat about Rachel the film editor? No gathering of people means no new filming means no new ads for her post production house to edit: half of her coworkers got fired as the company tried to reduce costs and the rest (Rachel included) received a forty percent pay cut — but she’s one of the lucky ones for still having a job at all (see analytics note [6]).The frustrating thing about fixed expenses is that they don’t go away when your income falls, which means that the proportional impact on discretionary spending has a multiplier because that’s where the entire income hit goes. In this case that is going to be ~2x the reduction, with the numbers we’re using as an example specifically creating an 87% reduction in discretionary spending as a result of a 40% pay-cut. This is because your fixed costs now account for 90% of your income.Rachel's Fixed vs Discretionary Spending Post Pay-Cut:Annual ExpendituresDollar Amount% of Total SpendAnnual Expenditure Total$31,724.40100%Fixed$28,584 (same)90%Discretionary$3,140.4010%(All spending data from Consumer Expenditure Survey 2018, Bureau of Labor Statistics)Remember, the numbers above are annual: Rachel has $261.70 a month to spend now.And that’s not accounting for things like now having to buy more groceries, actually, as you are never eating out and no longer having lunch provided by work. If Rachel has a bill coming through for an unusual expense that she was expecting this month’s salary to cover, it isn’t getting paid (you could slightly shrink this impact by ascribing all of the unaccounted for income to discretionary spending, but I’m not sure it makes sense to do so: see analytics note [4], again)This roughly squares with the experience of a friend of mine who is in nearly exactly this boat, working in editing, 40% pay cut, etc. After cancelling all their subscriptions they actually ended up with only $200/month after fixed costs not including groceries.Suffice to say, no matter how low CPMs are, you are not going to convert Rachel to a purchaser right now. But, also, why are we even talking about ecommerce at this point?Rachel Is Not OK, and America Needs RachelGiven a recent FT poll indicating that 73% of Americans have had their family’s income reduced by COVID, with 24% saying it had been hit “very significantly” Rachel’s situation is more than an abstract subset of American consumers having a rough time: it’s a portrait that hopefully captures and brings to life the havoc this pandemic has wreaked on the financial stability of American households.And, for many of those households, it isn’t a 40% pay cut — it’s 100%. It’s immediate insolvency, and bills they cannot pay this month. And, if the situation persists, the number of those financially shipwrecked by COVID will grow, as missed bills mean missed income for someone else, and falling income affects the ability to pay debts, which in turn affects asset prices etc. The amount of government stimulus, both directed at businesses and at individuals, required to prevent a downward economic spiral in this environment is going to be mind-boggling — and it’s not a forgone conclusion that we will be able to pull it off.And to those who really just came here to increase ROAS; I do hope this was useful to you. But I also hope you’re a little mindful about how and where you celebrate your success — it may be in poor taste to be flaunting your stats on social media while millions of individuals and families are suffering through the loss of some (or all) of their income, with no clear end in sight.------------------------------------------------------If this interests you, and you're curious about me, you can see what I do at r/MeritStore------------------------------------------------------Analytical Notes:[1] The reason I’m choosing this age-based cohort is that the same dynamic here will exist across multiple categorizations — age group, income level, etc. The meaningful difference here is in type of work (specifically whether it is affected by quarantine) and there isn’t a clean way to cut that in consumer report data. They have breakdowns by industry but those don’t map cleanly on to “can or can’t do during pandemic”. Using this cohort I get a broad swath of the population, and a small enough income and savings rate that it highlights the impact (both the positive impact on Hannah and the negative impact on Rachel). The same impact exists at higher income levels, it’s just eased by more spare cash at the end of the day etc. In the end, this decision is in service of the point of the analysis in this case — to be illustrative, not comprehensive. I’m writing a reddit post trying to explain a dynamic, so this suffices as a clear demonstration of that dynamic. If I were still working at a fancy hedgefund and were trying to trace the economic impact of this to make specific estimates that would result in conclusions re: trades, I would go through the work of trying to parse which industries’ incomes were affected and by how much, what exactly those specific consumers spent money on, etc. Spending the time doing that wouldn’t really add to my point here, but if you really, really want to see how this looks from another cut ask me and maybe I’ll just pull it up — or go do it yourself, the data is public.[2] Our “fixed” is just grouping together housing and utilities, fixed vehicle costs (e.g. leases, maintenance, insurance), healthcare, other insurance (like life insurance), education, and groceries (food purchased for inside the home). This isn’t precise — there are likely fixed payments that are missing, e.g. phone plans, etc. Likely a larger portion than what we ascribe to “fixed” expenditures are fixes. Since that would only increase both of the effects we’re highlighting here (the multiplier of pay reduction to reduced spending and the significance of out of house spending vs total discretionary spending), I’m not too fussed about it.[3] This is probably not all of the out of house expenditures, but it’s the easiest ones to identify (vacations, for example, are completely included) — I shortened the label names, so the included categories are: entertainment fees and admissions, public and other transportation, gasoline, fuels, and motor oil, and fuels away from home. The motor oil seemed odd because I would have thought that it could be included in aforementioned vehicle maintenance category, but they’re marked separately in the Consumer Expenditure Report.[4] When I say “all else equal” this includes the spending 90% of income part. I could do the analysis where I reallocate this “saved” amount as spending to see the difference — it would slightly mitigate the impact but obviously not change the direction or higher level point. Part of the reason I didn’t do this is that I don’t really know if all of that is “saved,” it’s just not accounted for as spending in the consumer spending report. There are a few possible wiggles in this whole picture (for example, when you stop eating out your “fixed” grocery expenditure actually has to go up, or maybe you need to upgrade the quality of your internet if your working from home, etc.), which I would try to account for if I were making a comprehensive analysis of consumer spending in order to trace how much and where changes in spending were likely to affect which sectors, in order to figure out impacts on equity prices or corporate debt, but I’m just making a point here so I’m trying to keep the analysis high level and simple. If you’re that curious it could let me know and I can tell you how big of an impact it would be.[5] It pains me to think this might be necessary to spell out, but the reason that a 28% reduction, when distributed proportionally back to the parts, creates a 38% increase is that you’re using a smaller base. I take 28 from 100, it’s a 28% (28 / 100) reduction. I then add 28 to 72, which is a 38% (28 / 72) increase. You are adding back onto a smaller base, so the % increase in that smaller base (and, if proportionally added, to each part of that smaller base) is larger than the original % removed from the larger base.[6] No, I didn’t bother accounting for the change in tax rate. Like I said, it’s an illustrative analysis.

[douchebagbrainwaves]

BELIEVE IT OR NOT, PATENTS WERE AT LEAST INTENDED TO

The problem is not the main thing they want. In fact, it's just a more extreme version of the norm in the VC business: too much money. If you assemble a team of qualified experts and tell them to stop.1 That was one of the earliest sites with enough clout to force customers to log in before they could buy something.2 People buying technology for large organizations don't care if they pay a lot for it. I think I know why. So it may not be just stupid, but semantically ill-formed.3

One trick is to ignore presentation. Windows is irrelevant. Whenever software meets government, bad things happen, because software changes fast and government changes slow. Their defining quality is probably that there are fewer constraints than on physical things. What happens in that shower? The main cost of starting a Web-based startup is food and rent. This habit is unconscious, but not that small. And if grad students can start successful companies.

In every field, technology magnifies differences in productivity. A few weeks ago I found to my surprise that I'd been granted four patents. I don't think people consciously realize this, but one reason downwind jobs like churning out Java for a bank pay so well is precisely that they are able to develop software in house. If Google does do something evil, they get doubly whacked for it: once for whatever they did, and again for hypocrisy. Startups are a comparatively new phenomenon.4 And you can quote me! The test applied to a startup is among the purest of real world tests. It might actually carry some weight. But marketing is increasingly irrelevant.5

In this respect trolling is a lot more meanness down in DH1 than up in DH6. Having great hackers is not, by itself, enough to make a painting first, then copy it. Now I'd go further: now I'd say it's hard to tell good hackers when you meet them. Measured on the time scale of social change, what we have now is pre-beta. It is greatly to America's advantage that it is the easiest to measure. When people say something substantial that gets modded down, they stubbornly leave it up. Her list seems plausible. Mistake number one.6 But till recently this was an anomalous route that tended to be followed only by outsiders. He runs eagerly to to tell the others, and together they cook up new projects of their own people would rebel. Startups are fragile plants—seedlings, in fact.

I needed to remember, if I could only figure out what you like. For the future, the trend to bet on seems to be a very big deal, and it's hard to do a half-assed job.7 Ad Hominem.8 And they're full of exactly the right kind of friends. The other big change is that now, you're steering. You can sit down and consciously come up with something useful this way, but I never have.9 The key to being a good hacker may be to work on things that maximize your future options.10 Which means, in the final stage, you stop and ask: will people actually pay for this?11 An office environment is supposed to be something that helps you work, not something customers need. They are a perennial topic of heated discussion on Slashdot.12 In 2002 a startup called Reveal appeared, with new technology that let them build scanners a third the size.13 Investors' power comes from money.

That doesn't seem so challenging.14 IBM. Name-calling. For example, the airport baggage scanning business was for many years a cozy duopoly shared between two companies, InVision and L-3. Now we have a way of picking a winner. Partly because some companies use mechanisms to prevent copying.15 All users care about is whether your site or software gives them what they want.16 Patent lawyers still have to pretend that's what they're doing when they patent algorithms. One of the most valuable things I learned from Michael Rabin: that the best way to solve a problem is often to redefine it.

Notes

On the other direction Y Combinator only got 38 cents on the summer of 1914 as if a company with rapid, genuine growth is genuine. But the time it still seems to be tweaking stuff till it's yanked out of just Jews any more than 20 years. In desperation people reach for the first third of the conversion of buildings not previously public, like wages and productivity, but I'm not saying you should always get a poem published in The New Industrial State to trying to make it easier for some reason, rather than by the same root.

Users dislike their new operating system. Believe me, I have no connections, you'll find that with a truly feudal economy, you don't have enough equity left to motivate people by saying Real artists ship.

But that turned out the answer, and then a block later we met Rajat Suri. Beware too of the infrastructure that this was hard to say they bear no blame for any opinions expressed in it.

Though it looks great when a forward dribbles past multiple defenders, a torture device so called because it doesn't seem an impossible hope. The point where it does, the best thing for startups. This must have affected what they do care about valuations in angel rounds can make better chairs or knives, crucibles or church organs, than a VC fund they outsource most of the biggest discoveries in any other field, it's easy to read an original book, bearing in mind that it's up to two of the edge case where something spreads rapidly but the meretriciousness of the flock, or invent relativity. There were several other reasons, avoid casual conversations with other investors.

Letter to Oldenburg, quoted in Westfall, Richard. That's the trouble with fleas, jabbering about some of these people make up the same thing that would scale.

For example, willfulness clearly has two subcomponents, stubbornness and energy.

Don't ask investors who rejected you did that in the nature of the things attributed to them more professional. A lot of classic abstract expressionism is doodling of this article are translated into Common Lisp for, believe it or not, and so thought disproportionately about such matters. I should add that we're not professional negotiators and can hire a lot would be much bigger news, in the usual standards for truth.

If you don't think these are, which handled orders. There is no. For example, you're going to have had a house built a couple years. They found it easier to say for sure which these will be as shocked at some point, there was when we say it's ipso facto right to buy corporate bonds to market faster; the critical path that they think they're just mentioning the possibility.

The biggest counterexample here is Skype. So if you're not doing YC mainly for financial reasons, the better, because the median total compensation, including both you and listen only to emphasize that whatever the false positives caused by blacklists, for the tenacity of the x division of Megacorp is now the founder of the editor, written in Lisp.

People commonly use the word as in most if not all equal, and post-money valuation of the rule of law per se but from which Renaissance civilization radiated. There is of course the source files of all tend to become more stratified. The revenue estimate is based on that.

Acquirers can be surprisingly indecisive about acquisitions, and 20 in Paris. Icio. 7% of American kids attend private, non-corrupt country or organization will be a founder, more people you can send your business plan to, in Galbraith's words, of the USSR offers a better predictor of success.

But that solution has broader consequences than just getting started. The first alone yields someone who's stubbornly inert.

When you had to push to being a scientist is equivalent to putting a sign saying this cupboard must be kept empty. The continuing popularity of religion is the most powerful men in Congress, Sam Altman wrote: My feeling with the amount—maybe around 10 people. But filtering out 95% of spam.

Ian Hogarth suggests a way that's rare among technology companies between them generate a lot better.

We're only comparing YC startups, so that you end up with an associate if you want to believe this much. The real danger is that the probabilities of features i.

In principle you might be interested to hear from them. Some urban renewal experts took a back-office manager written mostly in less nerdy fields like finance and media. In this essay I'm talking here about academic talks, which was more rebellion which can make it sound.

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Expert: When I was a young boy completing catechism in preparation for my first communion, I had to learn the proper procedure for auricular confession, a primary ritual of Roman Catholicism. At that age I did not really understand what I was supposed to do or really why. In fact, catechism, save for the fact that it offered about two hours leave from regular school instruction on Thursdays, would have been a torture except that I liked my teacher. I was just never good at memorising things and learning long texts like the Apostles’ (Nicene) Creed posed an insurmountable challenge. However, a first confession must be performed if I was to get my first communion—a sort of graduation ceremony in which we got to wear something like priestly or academic vestments (and I always liked getting dressed up). In preparation for the confession we had to learn things like what “sin” is and why our sins have to be forgiven before we can take the host (a wafer that tastes like plastic, perhaps calculated to avoid cultivating carnivorous appreciation of the deity). The concept of sin is at best abstract for an eight-year-old. Although there was a kind of primitive devotion in our family—my grandmother was very faithful to the church calendar—I cannot recall sin or morality playing much of a role in our home. Things were handled very pragmatically. A few rules and some decorum were stated and if you violated these there was summary judgment: confinement to quarters or a few lashes with father’s belt. Back then men at home still wore proper trousers instead of athletic attire from some high-end sweatshop magnate. So the morality at home was very secular and utterly lacking in celestial allusions. This made confession into a ritual of inventing things to tell the priest which somehow conformed to the language of the catechetic catalogue of proscribed acts or thoughts. In essence this was an exam to be passed to get the white robes for the first grand ceremonial wafer feast at high mass (still Tridentine rite). After passing the exam in the first part I struggled to remember the lines of the Ave Maria and Pater Noster we had to repeat to ourselves for penance. I found myself grateful that I was never told to recite the Credo or I would never have left the pew. Following the first grand communion, when one feels almost like an acolyte, if not a priest, the whole ceremony gets boring. The flavours never change. One had to avoid breakfast before Sunday mass and wearing an ordinary suit and tie just did not make one feel “part of it all”. Later it was explained to me that we really didn’t have any sins to confess when we were eight. I had not killed any classmates with my father’s shotgun while medicated for not paying attention in class. I grew up with sisters, so girls were just normal company and the term “Carnal Knowledge” (a risqué film of that era) meant nothing at all to me. I also learned, but maybe that was dubious or disputed theology, that the Eucharist was itself a sacrament of higher rank than the act of contrition so I only had to be truly contrite to take the host without any conversation with an unnamed source of grace in a little wooden cubicle.1 But there was a valuable social lesson in all this early psychological training. Namely, confession is a tool for manipulation of the parishioner. It is a complex tool. On the one hand the parishioner learns in childhood that a proper confession is one which tells the priest what he wants to hear. Already as a child one is told what to confess and how to say it. On the presumption that one must have sinned—whatever that means—the verification that a sin was, in fact, committed came when the priest said, yep, yep, followed by some inscrutable Latin words, concluding with “go my son, and sin no more”. Then one heard the screen slide closed in the little box and off it was to the pew to repeat some lines five or ten times, after which one could finally go back home and play. I would say I was as honest and sincere as any child my age in such an environment. Nonetheless I learned another lesson. What one did in the confessional to get the absolution was just as effective outside. Lying outright is simply too much work. You just have to know your confessor and what he (or she) wants to hear. This was my first lesson in the power of euphemism and circumlocution. So when I knew that I was coming home too late and that my mother would be quite cross with me (my father had died too young to enjoy this phase), I began to consider along the way home what my mother would find to be ameliorating circumstances or a valid excuse. In order that I would not lie outright I reviewed all the events of the day, all the people I had met, what could be checked and what was impeachable. When I arrived home I knew the first question would be “where have you been?” This was just another way to say, “you are late and you are in trouble!” So I would choose the least incriminating or least objectionable answer that would either excuse my tardiness or result in a misdemeanour rather than a “felony”. Years later as a teacher I would tell my pupils this too. First, I wanted to discourage outright and stupid lies, and, second, I wanted my pupils to grasp that not every factually correct statement is a true answer to the question being asked. In fact, the sensible critique—back when there was a critique—of formal education argued the same point for all exams. Blacks did disproportionately badly on exams in white run schools because they did not know what the real questions were—not because they were incapable of giving correct answers. Hence the much-praised (mainly by white folks) return to standardised testing was really a return to the same psychological manipulation I was taught as a young catechist. It was a ruse to separate the rulers from the ruled. Passing the tests—whether an IQ test or an SAT—was a ritual to keep those not deemed adequate from those who were best susceptible to indoctrination. Like the SCUM say when they explain that Parris Island is intended to assure that they get just “a few good men”—to kill on command. Robert Gibb, The Thin Red Line (1881) displayed in Scottish National War Museum Now before getting into the meat of this argument, let me make a historical note. The term “thin red line”, a bit of British military sentiment, is supposed to have originated during the Crimean War. On 25 October 1854, the 93rd Highland (Sutherland) Regiment faced a Russian cavalry charge in the Battle of Balaclava. There some five hundred foot soldiers stood in two lines to face the charge. It is important to understand infantry tactics and weaponry of the day to grasp the significance of this. (If any one wants to see this today then I recommend watching the Trooping of the Colour at Horse Guards Parade held every year on the official birthday of the British monarch—it can be found in the Internet.) Since the machine gun had not yet been invented four lines of massed infantry produced “rapid fire”. The first line fires, drops to its knees and reloads while the second line fires and so forth. By this method (graphically demonstrated in the film Zulu), single shot rifles can be brought to a very deadly rate of fire—very effective against men with spears and swords. A further elaboration of this tactic is the square. The line can be turned outward or inward—should the enemy breach the line—and fire directed at any side without interruption and with relatively little risk of troops shooting each other (assuming the inward square is not too tight). The Sutherlands did not have enough soldiers for a classic four-line infantry barrage so they stood their ground with two lines. They managed—at least this is the report—to deter the Russians and protect the unprepared troops in the rear. The battle is deemed heroic because of the meagre contingent facing a full cavalry assault. However, it has been written that the Russians withdrew because they believed that such a small force had been deployed as a diversion. Not wishing to waste their strength against the Sutherlands they went in search of the main force. Hence the heroism of the individual soldiers actually meant an unintended feint—using a small force to create the impression of more might than was actually available and fooling the enemy. Of course, even unintentional deceit is often just as useful as that which is planned. Moreover deceit does not necessarily rely on a falsehood but upon knowing, or being grateful as if one knew, how to create an impression in the mind of the target to which he or she is already susceptible. And that brings me to today’s homily. An article has been posted throughout the alternative media that has led to a serious dispute. Ironically the piece is called “Trump’s Red Line.” The apparent reference is to what under a previous POTUS was called “the red line”. The implicit meaning of this term “red line” is that of the “line in the sand”—the kind of schoolboy-bully dare usually leading to a serious fight. I think this is the wrong way to understand the term in the current situation. Not that bullies—with a schoolboy mentality—are not involved but also, that the historical use I describe above is not only more appropriate to describe the principals but that the ruse is analogous. First publication of the article is attributed to Die Welt am Sonntag, a newspaper in the German Axel Springer publishing group, which posted it on 25 June 2017 in English. On the same day Die Welt posted another item from the author in German titled “So einen Scheiß kann ich mir nicht mal ausdenken” (roughly “I could not even dream this shit up.”). It is described as the protocol of a “chat” between a former US “Sicherheitsberater” (presumably one of those “national security advisers” described in Trump’s Red Line or the senior adviser from whom the reader will read a lot below) and a US American soldier (of unspecified rank or grade). The subject is events in Khan Shaikhoun, Syria. Die Welt editors advise the readers that the places where the parties to the exchange are assigned are known to them but that personal statements that could provide information about military operations have been abridged so as not to endanger sources. As a result of the dispute arising from the publication of the article “Trump’s Red Line”, another article was posted defending the author of the first.2 The defence lodged, however, is not a counter to the criticism but underscores the problem—extending the “thin red line” so to speak. In what follows I will describe the “Battle of Khan Sheikhoun” as it is recounted by the regimental scribes whose task it is to present the battle in the most favourable light—for the regiment that is and those who deployed it. In Trump’s Red Line, posted here on 4 July 2017, the author begins by stating that: On April 6, United Stated President Donald Trump authorized an early morning Tomahawk missile strike on Shayrat Air Base in central Syria in retaliation for what he said was a deadly nerve agent attack carried out by the Syrian government two days earlier in the rebel-held town of Khan Sheikhoun. Trump issued the order despite having been warned by the US intelligence community that it has found no evidence that the Syrians had used a chemical weapon. The available intelligence made clear that the Syrians had targeted a jihadist meeting site on April 4 using a Russian-supplied guided bomb equipped with conventional explosives. Details of the attack, including information on its so-called high-value targets, had been provided by the Russians days in advance to American and allied military officials in Doha, whose mission is to coordinate all US, allied, Syrian and Russian Air force operations in the region. Some American military and intelligence officials were especially distressed by the president’s determination to ignore the evidence. “None of this makes any sense,” one officer told colleagues upon learning of the decision to bomb. “We KNOW that there was no chemical attack… the Russians are furious. Claiming we have the real intel and know the truth… I guess it didn’t matter whether we elected Clinton or Trump.” Within hours of the April 4 bombing, the world’s media was saturated with photographs and videos from Khan Sheikhoun. Pictures of dead and dying victims, allegedly suffering from the symptoms of nerve gas poisoning, were uploaded to social media by local activists, including the White Helmets, a first responder group known for its close association with the Syrian opposition. I take the liberty of citing this article’s first paragraphs in full because it is necessary to examine the way this story is told from the very beginning. For what follows I will refrain from lengthy citation where possible and refer the reader to the piece itself. As to the scene-setting first paragraphs some questions arise which are by no means trivial. * While it is a matter of record that the attack occurred one must ask: How does the author know or how should we know that the order issued by Trump was actually based on the stated grounds—alleged use of a chemical weapon? The US is at war with Syria and has been for a long time. Bombing countries is the weapon of choice for the US. Ask any Korean, Vietnamese, Laotian, Cambodian, Iraqi, Afghani, et al. When the US is at war it bombs. It has given all sorts of excuses—Tonkin Gulf comes to mind. It even bombs its own citizens when they are deemed belligerents as anyone in Philadelphia or Waco can attest. So what difference does it make whether the alibi was a chemical weapon or a fantasy attack against a US destroyer violating territorial waters of a sovereign country? * Who is the US intelligence community? The police red squad in Washington, the FBI, Naval Intelligence, a Homeland Security fusion centre, the CIA, et al., their wives, retired officers? * What is “available intelligence”? From whom? Of what nature and for what purpose? * Who are jihadists? * What is a “high-value target” in a sovereign country where the US has no authority under any colour of law to aim? * Which American military and intelligence officials? Those assigned to Fiji or in Venezuela? * Why is the outcome of the last presidential election of relevance to this story? * If the world’s media was saturated with photographs and videos, who verified that they are of or from Khan Sheikhoun? * If the depicted injured and dead—unverified—are allegedly suffering from the symptoms of nerve gas poisoning, who alleges this and what credibility do these allegations have without substantiated image documents? * Who are “local activists”, the rebels? “Including the White Helmets…” The White Helmets is not known “for its close association with the Syrian opposition. It is known that they were organised by a British defence contractor for the so-called Syrian opposition. The principal funders of the organisation are the same as those who finance the mercenaries themselves. They are, in fact, a part of that so-called opposition. That opposition is also known to comprise bands of mercenaries funded by the US, Saudi Arabia, Israel and the rest of the countries allied with US-Israeli efforts to topple the Assad government or Balkanise it (here the comparison is appropriate since the CEO of the company that created the White Helmets cut his teeth—and who knows what else—in Bosnia).3 In the following paragraph we find the sentence: “The provenance (jargon) of the photos was not clear and no international observers have yet inspected the site, but the immediate popular assumption worldwide was that this was a deliberate use of the nerve gas agent sarin, authorised by President Bashar Assad of Syria.” * Perhaps I am not on the same planet but I did not wake up one day in April and assume that Mr Assad used nerve gas. So where does this popular assumption originate? * The sudden use of Mr Assad’s full name is purely rhetorical. It is clearly intended to reinforce the impression that such an act would be a highly personal order issued from the US archenemy. It is certainly not intended to educate the reader as to the correct name of a head of state against which the US happens to be at war. Or is this equal time because the article begins with “United States President Donald Trump” thereinafter just “Trump”? * Why would Trump refer to “Syria’s past use of chemical weapons”—apparently referring to a time prior to his presidency? A reasonable person would be excused for concluding that Trump merely followed an assumption that his predecessor propagated based on precisely the same “available intelligence”. Then come the handkerchiefs again: “To the dismay of many senior members of his national security team, Trump could not be swayed over the next 48 hours of intense briefing and decision-making. In a series of interviews, I learned of the total disconnect (jargon) between the president and many of his military advisers and intelligence officials, as well as officers on the ground in the region who had an entirely different understanding of the nature of Syria’s attack on Khan Scheikhoun. I was provided with evidence of that disconnect (again jargon) in the form of transcripts of real-time communications, immediately following the Syrian attack on April 4.” * Who were the senior members in dismay? * What was the nature of the briefing and decision-making? Did it have anything to do with the public statements rationalising the attack? How do we know that the alleged intelligence had anything to do with the briefings or decisions to be made? * With whom were the interviews conducted? * What is “disconnect”? Is Trump on a dialysis or heart-lung machine? * What is “an understanding of the nature of Syria’s attacks”? Is it an opinion? Is it a report of observations of the scene? Or is it perhaps just a word because maybe the people concerned have no understanding of the case? * Who provided “real-time communications”? Why should these be considered reliable testimony of the facts—if there are any? The article follows with a quaint press release explanation of what the US regime has said it is doing to avoid outright war with Russia. I think it is fair to say that it can be treated with all the credulity applied to any government press release. Or are we to believe that the US war establishment is more honest now than it ever was in the past? Then Michael the Archangel enters the scene in the form of “a senior adviser to the American intelligence community, who has served in senior positions in the Defence Department and Central Intelligence Agency. Does the author mean someone of the rank of Richard Helms or William Colby—with the same established credibility?4 Michael the Archangel then proceeds to tell the author minutiae about the supposed target of Syria’s bombing raid. We get some more jargon; e.g., POL. This shows that the author is versed in the terms of the trade, as if he were one of them, and can translate daily war operations like an Edward Murrow—naturally without even the pretence of being at the front (a point to which I will return).5 Then comes the real fun: “One reason for the Russian message to Washington about the intended target was to ensure that any CIA asset or informant who had managed to work his way into the jihadist leadership (again who are they?) was forewarned not to attend the meeting.” This is third rate Ian Fleming. It has been established and even acknowledged that the CIA funds, directly and indirectly, these mercenaries and has done so since the dean of Carter’s covert wars, Zbigniew Bzrezinski, helped create them in Afghanistan. Bzrezinski never ceased to brag about this—because he felt it promoted his war against Russia (then called the Soviet Union).6 It is more likely that the Russian message to Washington—assuming there was one and that it had anything like the character the author’s St. Michael alleges—was intended to enforce the ostensible agreement to combat these mercenaries by forcing coherence between public statements and actual conduct. To date Russia has been rather unsuccessful in achieving that goal. We only have the senior adviser’s word for it that the Russians have anything to say to the US regime, which it feels obliged to respect. The recent destruction of a Syrian Air Force combat aircraft by US Forces ought to be sufficient proof of that—without input from St. Michael—who then gets quite folksy by telling the author about the Russians: “They were playing the game right.” The language is offensive on its face. Since 1945, the Russians and most of the rest of the world has “played the game right.” It is the US regime that does not. Of course, that is the fact that cannot be stated openly. Only the Russians can be suspected of perhaps “not playing the game right.” That is what is meant too, so the author lets this remark stand as if it were a sign of “fair play” on the part of the US regime—for whom the senior adviser still works. Then the author throws in some other meaningless words: “a time of acute pressure on the insurgents” and people “presumably desperately seeking a path forward in the new political climate”. This is just State Department boilerplate. What is “acute pressure” from what or whom? What is “a path forward” in what direction, where and with what aim? Then we get some names finally—but not of people in the “intelligence community”. Trump and “two of his key national security aides… Rex Tillerson and Nikki Haley”. First of all, since when is the Secretary of State “an aide”? The Secretary of State is a member of the cabinet and heads the entire US diplomatic corps and Foreign Service, and even in the line of presidential succession, hardly an “aide”. Even if UN Ambassadors, with the notable exception of former Deputy Director of Central Intelligence, Vernon Walters, are not usually identified as members of the “intelligence community” (if that term has any meaning under statute), Nikki Haley also has cabinet rank.7 She is not listed in the Foreign Service List with the rank of an “aide” to the president. The author’s only reason for this blatant inaccuracy is to suggest that Trump and his senior cabinet members are not fully competent or qualified to participate in the serious business the author wishes to explain to the readers. Then we get another jargon-laced description of martial skill and military superiority. The story that follows purports to be an analysis of the situation at the scene (in Syria, where our author is conspicuously absent). To spare the reader the details, which can be read in the article itself, I just list the questions I had. Others could be asked: * If the gas in question is or can be made undetectable how are the “locals” to identify the weapon with anything even approximating certainty? * Who provided the Bomb Damage Assessment and why should it be believed? Body counts in Southeast Asia come to mind. * If there is no confirmed account of deaths what deaths are at issue here? Whose “intelligence estimates” does the author use and what good are they? * Who are the “opposition activists” reporting? Why is CNN an authority? * What significance can the observations or reports by MSF (Médicins Sans Frontières) have from a clinic 60 miles north of the target? Recently we have heard how fire brigades and other emergency personnel in London were unable to provide reliable information in the immediate vicinity of the Grenfell Tower. Sixty miles in Syria where inland transport and communication are interrupted by war can scarcely be called on site. * If all of the indicators cited to imply the use of some kind of chemical weapons are taken as a whole, then it is entirely possible to infer that the mercenary forces in the course of their operations caused such injuries. So why is it even necessary to consider the Syrian government forces as potential perpetrators? Of course, one purpose of detailed description of a weapon that may not even have been used is to implant in the readers’ minds the expectation that it could be used—to support in other words what the author initially calls “the immediate popular assumption”. Then the perpetuum mobile upon which this entire story relies—the Internet—“swings into action” all by itself, of course, like divine providence. This is another ruse because the target readers have been trained for years now to see the Internet as a truth machine instead of the largest weapons system in the US arsenal—after atomic bombs, which it was designed to complement. That US intelligence is at it again—“tasked with establishing what had happened.” Isn’t this curious? We still do not know who this is. Despite the fact that the past decade has been full of apparent exposures of how large, differentiated and competitive the bureaucracies are that are formally constituted (we don’t know how much is off the books) to perform what are euphemistically called intelligence functions, we are supposed to attach meaning to this statement. Then we find that “those in the American intelligence community understood, and many of the inexperienced aides and family members close to Trump may not have…” Translation: St. Michael’s employers versus the Secretary of State, UN Ambassador and people holding positions of trust in the Trump administration who are members of his family (as if the US regime, like the medieval papacy, only now was rife with nepotism). St. Michael, the “senior adviser”—whom an attentive reader will sooner or later notice is the ONLY source for this story—wants the author to say—and he does throughout—that the “intelligence community” should be making the decisions not the president or his cabinet. The only reason for this slight of hand is to distract the reader from the fact that the “intelligence community” is nothing of the sort and it already does make the decisions—including what Trump is to say or not to say. Then follows some more sobbing. Thereafter we learn that Trump is a “constant watcher of television news”. The author is not describing a unique Trump attribute but something all presidents have done. So what is the point—to compare him with St. Ronald or LBJ or the last Bush in the White House? Or put another way, was the author watching television with Trump and the king of Jordan? Or was this an episode of reality TV and everyone could see the two of them sitting in front of the screen? The purpose of this is to soothe the consciences of the McNeill – Lehrer News Hour (later The News Hour with John Lehrer) fans and other PBS addicts. Then the senior adviser tells us about the national defence apparatus instructed by Trump. Now who or what is this? The National Security Act of 1947 created what was called The National Defence Establishment. This was later renamed the Department of Defence. Has Congress created a new instrument and no one bothered to announce it? Then we read that “planners” asked the CIA and DIA for some evidence that Syria had sarin. Who are the planners? Again the question ought to be why is this important? If the US is at war and it is going to bomb—which is what it always does, both for doctrinal and business reasons—then the only point of this question could be “can we use sarin as an alibi?” The psychological profile of Assad given in brief by unnamed persons is a “throwaway”. It is already part of the official language that all US enemies are willing to use atomic, biological and chemical weapons (ABC in the house jargon). It is part of the strategy of deniability. By planting in the public consciousness the presupposition that all US enemies are willing to use such weapons—even if they do not have them—the actual deployment of those weapons by the US regime can be plausibly denied by attribution to the enemy. This strategy is as old as the US regime’s annihilation of Native Americans. It has done little or no good to show for over a century now that it was white settlers and militias under US control that introduced scalping—not the Native Americans. This is school bully tactics at its finest. The reader should be more than irritated that the author insists on writing “provenance” when he means “source”. I leave it to the sensitive reader to consider why. The late George Carlin in his wonderful routine on “euphemisms” explained how “shell shock” in WWI became PTSD after Vietnam. “More syllables less meaning” was his conclusion.  I would even recommend listening to Carlin’s complaints before reading the rest of my argument. Then Michael, aka the senior advisor, tells a true fairy tale of bureaucratic life. “Intelligence analysts do not argue with the president. They’re not going to tell the president, ‘if you interpret the data this way, I quit.’” This may be true of certain retired intelligence professionals who loyally briefed Ronald Reagan and now complain about the service. However, there are numerous people who quit the service because they saw what it does and what the president does together with the service. Of course, they have names and have made their cases in public, even in print, but they are not sources for the author of “Trump’s Red Line.” After that come unnamed national security advisers (presumably not the national security adviser since he has a name).8: “Trump wanted to respond to the affront to humanity committed by Syria and he did not want to be dissuaded…” This is the smoking gun so to speak. The author complains through the voices of the unnamed advisers that Trump was not to be dissuaded from a response. However, the author leaves the reader to agree that Syria committed an unproven or unnamed “affront to humanity”. The author tells the readers that the “popular assumption” really is correct and should still be held dearly. Then Trump meets with unnamed people again, this time in Florida. And now he gets the options. St. Michael phrases the options carefully to fit the readers’ well-cultivated prejudices: an affront to humanity that is ignored. That is impossible. “The available intelligence was not relevant.” We still do not know what that was and what, if any, bearing it had on the discussion. That must mean that none of Trump’s staff was able to recommend action. So who did? The CIA director was absent. Hmm. Getting a tan at the beach or was this for plausible deniability? Tillerson is again described in terms fitting with his previous designation as an “aide”. Option two is “a slap on the wrist”. Since when is the head of one sovereign state entitled to “slap the wrist” of another? Oh, let’s just bomb a pharmaceutical factory or a peasant village or an airfield in a foreign country. The senior adviser said the Russians should be alerted first—“to avoid too many casualties.” Given the fact that no reliable body counts have ever been alleged or proven—who is to say how many is too many? Then we are told about the impressive sounding “strike package” presented to Obama in 2013 and that it was rejected. This option was, in jargon again, “decapitation”. This is actually prohibited by national and international law. But the author sees no more scruple here than his provenance the “senior adviser”. Finally Trump is quoted as having said, “You’re the military and I want military action.” The rest of the alleged discussion is too obscene to repeat. But clearly the quote is intended to portray Trump as a simpleton. Whether he is or not is unimportant. However, the author needs this redundancy because it is part of his and St. Michael’s story. St. Michael, true to the trade whose patron saint he is, tells the author “The lesson here was: Thank God for the military men at the meeting. They did the best they could when confronted with a decision that had already been made.” That may be true. What we do not know is who actually made the decision. We are left—without any substantiation—to believe that it was Trump. However, to anyone familiar with the history of the US regime this is simply nonsense. Here I have to ask a silly question? Why were only fifty-nine missiles fired? Why not sixty? Why not ninety-nine? One answer is statistics. An odd number appears more realistic as detail than an even number. It is also like going to the hypermarket and buying something for 1.99 instead of 2.00. Gives you the feeling you saved something. So maybe the author thought 59 missiles sounds more restrained than 60 or 100. St. Michael continues: “It was a totally Trump show from beginning to end. A few of the president’s national security advisers viewed the mission as a minimized bad presidential decision and one that they had an obligation to carry out. But I don’t think our national security people are going to allow themselves to be hustled into a bad decision again. If Trump had gone for option three there might have been some immediate resignations.” Here we see the other real message of the author’s article. Does St. Michael ask the reader to believe that some of his fellow knights would fall on their swords if Trump authorised what those same people recommended to Obama? Which national security people does he mean? If they are employees under the authority of the president, then they have no business even talking about being “hustled”—they have orders and they are to be executed. The president is the supreme executive authority in the US—at least that is what the country’s Constitution says. Or does he mean that there are national security people (now are they in the “intelligence community” or the “national security apparatus” or the “US intelligence community” or where in hell) who are not subject to presidential authority? Now we are getting to the point. As Fletcher Prouty already wrote years ago, there most certainly are “national security people” for whom the office of the president is a legal fiction.9 However, if this is what St. Michael really means—then the attempt to make all of this supposed error “a totally Trump show” must be deception. Then the author finally appears to be writing on his own account and continues by placing the Trump show in the long line of presidential testosterone secretions by pointing to Trump’s poll results after the attack. This follows with an utterly revisionist platitude, which is the stock-in-trade of the US war propaganda apparatus (the national security establishment + 99% of the mass media + 99% of academia): “America rallied around its commander in chief, as it always does in times of war.” This is simply false. Throughout most of US history only the white elite and its acolytes have rallied around the US war machine. Wars have cost nearly every US President votes and popularity—to the point of election defeat or impeachment. Only the enormous power of the propaganda machine, to which the author of the article under review belongs as a highly decorated veteran and reserve combatant, has been able to make the US population support the wars US presidents nominally lead. I have covered that history elsewhere.10 Suffice it to say that almost exactly 100 years ago this machine was inaugurated as the Committee on Public Information aka as the Creel Commission.11 Five days later we are told, there was a background briefing given by the Trump administration on the Syrian operation. Now it is no longer a bombing. We do not know who issued the invitation (what office?). Instead we learn that a senior White House official “who was not to be identified” gave everyone the official talking points. He points out that none of the reporters present challenged or disputed the background briefing. He does not say a) was he in attendance? b) did he challenge or dispute the official assertion? Finally—yes, we are almost done with the author’s story—three criticisms are mentioned that arise from this unofficial official event. They are inconsequential. The author praises “the briefer” for his careful use of words like “think”, “suggest”, and “believe” during the 30 minutes of the event. The briefer refers to “declassified data” from “our colleagues in the intelligence community”. Then comes the clincher which is made just for all those who believe that they do not follow the mainstream press: “The mainstream press responded the way the White House had hoped it would: stories attacking Russia and ignoring the briefer’s caveats. We read that the author senses a “renewed Cold War”. Then there is some obfuscation about the putative importance of calling something “declassified information” or “a declassified intelligence report” and “formal intelligence” and a “summary based on declassified information”. Of course, one can detail semantic differences but it is more important how and in what context and for whom the words are used—but our author says nothing of this because that is a trade secret. “Trump’s Red Line” ends with some boilerplate from official policy talking points. Then ends with a deceptive disclaimer. Since by now it should be apparent that this is a very crafted and crafty propaganda piece addressed to precisely those who pride themselves on not believing the journals of record (at least not in public), it is once more necessary to show that the author is a sincere investigator who, like a few other professionals in the political warfare field, is sometimes frustrated in his search for truth, we learn that the author sent specific questions to the White House via e-mail on 15 June and received no answer. We do not know what questions and to which office in the White House or even what answers he expected. This should all be superfluous if St. Michael the Senior Adviser was a reliable source, one would think… In the by-line, the author of “Trump’s Red Line”, is identified “as an investigative journalist and political writer who first gained wide recognition in 1969 for exposing the My Lai Massacre and its cover-up during the Vietnam War”. Presuming that there were any of the statements made in open source references like Wikipedia false or unsubstantiated the author would have directly or indirectly effected their correction and because this is a common source of information today, I would like to call attention to some points that at best qualify the acclaim implied by the 1969 reporting. I have written elsewhere on the mythical status of Vietnam War reporting and the reader is directed to those articles for further background.12 In the English language Wikipedia entry about the author there is a passage about My Lai 4. The story is attributed to a tip (since he was not in Vietnam at the time) from Village Voice columnist Geoffrey Cowan. Now when one reads Cowan’s biography one finds that after leaving the Voice his jobs were at VOA and USIA. My Lai Massacre According to Wikipedia: On November 12, 1969, Hersh reported the story of the My Lai Massacre, in which hundreds of unarmed Vietnamese civilians were murdered by US soldiers in March 1968.  The report prompted widespread condemnation around the world and reduced public support for the Vietnam War in the United States. The explosive news of the massacre fueled the outrage of the US peace movement, which demanded the withdrawal of US troops from Vietnam. Hersh wrote about the massacre and its cover-up in My Lai 4: A Report on the Massacre and Its Aftermath (1970) and Cover-up: The Army’s Secret Investigation of the Massacre at My Lai 4 (1972). For My Lai 4, Hersh traveled across the United States and interviewed nearly 50 members of the Charlie Company. A movie was also produced, based on this book, by Italian director Paolo Bertola in 2009. Hersh had been directed to the Calley court-martial by Geoffrey Cowan of The Village Voice and later remarked, “Yeah, part of me said, ‘Fame! Fortune! Glory!’ The other part was very pragmatic [in thinking] about, ‘How are you going to prove this?'”  A critical attitude to Hersh perceives him as the mere instrument by which the My Lai massacre became public knowledge and a part of the machine with which the army built its case against a scape-goat. According to this view, Hersh served in this way to shape the memory the military wanted—an exceptional atrocity, an anomaly, that was dealt with. So let us imagine that the author was introduced to a St. Michael or some other “senior adviser”, someone who needed to get a story into the public domain. The author is still relatively new in the business or at least he has not hit it big. He is offered a story based on a tip by Cowan. It had been decided (by the “intelligence community”) that a leak must be arranged to again tar the Army with atrocities and distract from the actual command element (CIA) and this was done through Cowan, who then gets Hersh to do the writing. The Hersh Wiki page (in German but not in English) says Cowan had published an article on the Phoenix program in the Voice and that Cowan had given him (Hersh) the tips.13 Yet apparently neither Cowan nor Hersh see (or are supposed to see) a connection between Phoenix and My Lai 4. The German version of the Wiki entry says: Ebenfalls im Jahr 1969 erlebte Hersh seinen Durchbruch auf internationaler Ebene. Durch den Journalisten Geoffrey Cowan, der seinerzeit in einem Artikel über die Operation Phoenix Details berichtete, unter anderem, dass die CIA vietnamesische Zivilisten ermordete, die im Verdacht standen, dem Viet Cong zu helfen, bekam Hersh einen Tipp. Cowan hatte einen Informanten im Pentagon, der ihn und somit Hersh in Kenntnis setzte, dass ein US-Offizier wegen Mordes an Zivilisten in Vietnam angeklagt war und dieser Fall vertuscht werden sollte. Note that in the German Wiki entry it is the CIA that is killing Vietnamese civilians, while in the English entry it is the US Army. In the German Wiki entry, Cowan had an informant in the Pentagon that gave him and hence the author the information that a US officer was charged with murder of civilians in Vietnam. In other words, the German version points to our St. Michael—while there is no mention of a Pentagon informant in the English version. So if one were to give Hersh the benefit of a doubt that before his article on My Lai he may have been doing legitimate investigative journalism (I find that hard to believe since that is no way to make a career) then Cowan was essentially the conduit (cut out) for a bribe (a chance to become famous and advance one’s career) and a distraction. (If Cowan were genuine why wouldn’t he have done the story in the Village Voice, which at least in those days had a certain impact beyond maintaining New York’s pretensions to cultural radicalism?) Hersh goes after the Army (not the CIA) and gets famous. One reason why Cowan might not have pursued the story himself– even as an agent or collaborator– was to protect his position in the Village Voice. Another reason could have been that someone else needed to place the story in the NYT and the key establishment media– to which at that time the Voice still did not belong. The fact that Cowan spent the rest of his career in government service at the Voice of America (VOA) and United States Information Agency (USIA/ and USIS abroad) does not prove but does lend plausibility to a strong undisclosed relationship to the other government agencies that worked with VOA and USIA in political warfare.14 Here it ought to be recalled that Die Welt am Sonntag, as a publication of the Axel Springer Verlag, has always had close relationships with the secret services, especially those of the US. This is not to rule out domestic German political motives for presenting the war in particular ways or Trump in an unfavourable light. Germany is the most powerful country in Western Europe and the support of its electorate is important to US policy aims in Europe. The German mass media in the past years has supported almost without qualification US anti-Russian policy although much of Germany—albeit for various reasons, is far from anti-Russian. Hence psychological warfare in Germany is a very important part of NATO strategy. The encouragement of the strong pro-American factions is needed to counter those who see—logically and historically—Russia as the preferred trading partner. But the significance of first publication in Germany ought to be clear to those who are familiar with Operation Mockingbird. The CIA and other propaganda activities in the US government would release through various channels stories to the foreign press in the certainty that they would be picked up by US media and reprinted, quoted or rebroadcast. The point is that normal means would make it very difficult to trace the provenance back to the US government and the story would appear as if it were independently produced and therefore merely borrowed from abroad—giving the colour of objectivity if not the substance. The author enjoys respect, especially on the Left, bordering on canonisation. He stands for loyal opposition. The Left imagines that he is in opposition and the rest know he is loyal. Moreover celebrity in the US is a kind of wealth and it endows people who enjoy it with power that others do not have. The condescending compatible Left has its Ellsberg and Hersh from the “good old days” when the white middle class imagined they toppled the government and ended the war in Vietnam. It needs these celebrities because they distract from the necessity to think for oneself. There are a few international saints and some who have only reached the rank of venerable or blessed. The differences can be seen in the lecture fees and the book receipts or how often they appear on TV—mainstream or otherwise. Like with my grandmother, there is a kind of primitive devotion that has to be served and so it is almost irrelevant who does it, but it has to be done. But some of these venerated are not just ordinary celebrities; they are knights of the church militant. They wield their celebrity as a weapon to elevate or suborn others who might threaten the realm of which they are a part. These “knights Templar” who wield the pen as a sword on behalf of the Establishment are both martial and priestly. They have learned the creed and know all the sacraments, especially the pseudo-sacrament of confession. The journalist of this type has his/her code of honour but it is a military code and as such strictly hierarchical. They have learned professionally what I only learned by accident of catechism: confession is a transaction between a willing deceiver and a willingly deceived. This consent is maintained by highly structured ritualistic language and jargon, which allows the deceiver to conceal his desires and motives and the deceived to ignore or so distort them that they satisfy expectations. The Central Intelligence Agency subjects its personnel, especially those officers who work outside headquarters, to regular polygraph tests. Like all military-type organisations (including the Catholic Church) the hierarchy exercises an absolute authority which, given the highly selective nature of recruitment, assures almost absolute control throughout the ranks. Just like in the Church every officer has his “confessor”. So the executive management knows in detail what information is moving in and out through its public interfaces. There must be a presumption—willingly denied on the Left—that “leaks” are authorised if they have not been punished. Conspicuously the two most important insider stories of how the CIA works, Philip Agee’s CIA Diary and John Stockwell’s In Search of Enemies, are almost entirely ignored by the Left and absolutely ignored by Sy Newhouse’s star investigative reporter. The CIA harassed Agee until the end of his life. All the proceeds of Stockwell’s book were attached and awarded to the CIA as damages. We have yet to hear the name of someone punished by the Agency for breach of his or her secrecy oath in revealing something to the star investigative reporter. “Trump’s Red Line” was written by a thin red line comprising a small regiment of propagandists who by deliberately positioning themselves visibly but in apparent weakness deceive their targets into believing they are greater and truer than they actually are. They serve as a front for the massed but often poorly managed viciousness of the ruling class. Their job is to make the rest of us think that we are basically on the “right side” on “the side of good and the brave”. They provide the intellectual pageantry, which flatters and induces people to want to join, “for king and country” as it was a century ago. They do this by means of the confessional, for Catholics a cubicle, for white Protestant America, the Oprah Winfrey show or for the highbrow, The New Yorker. The “exposure” or “disclosure” or “whistleblowing” are all forms of eroticism, often oral, which titillate and relieve the pressures of daily self-deception. The narrative is one of sin and guilt. The compatible Left is deeply implicated in the maintenance of white supremacy and imperialism in the US (and throughout the NATO member-states). They need occasional absolution for this complicity and that is what the confessors deliver. It is a dialogue that has little to do with truth or accuracy or change—and nothing in common with democracy. Quite the contrary it is a dialogue between the State and its loyal subjects aimed at purifying consciences while maintaining the system itself, even reinforcing it. The compatible Left is bound to its confessors—and the confessors know that. It is a dance of mutual deception by which the rest of the world’s population can continue to be starved, robbed and bombed. This reporting has no other function but to distract people from what the US regime is actually doing, to maintain the illusion that stated policy is actual policy and thereby maintain the criminal enterprise of which the CIA—in the widest sense of that term– remains one of the core elements. As I have argued above, it is not necessary to lie to be a propagandist for liars—it is only necessary to do exactly what Robert McNamara did when he said “I never answered the questions others asked. I made it a rule only to answer the questions I think they should have asked.”15 The task of the “thin red line” is to control the range of questions and assure that everyone learns the right answers. The regiment of journalists is like the 93rd Highlanders at Balaclava, they are there to pose like truth before the hordes, but unlike the Sutherlands, they do it with other people’s blood. * Henry Lea, A History of Auricular Confession and Indulgences (1896) This book by the US historian who documented the real reasons for the Catholic Inquisition, demonstrates that the theology of confession was in fact a dubious justification for church espionage and just good business for the Church—and often clearly seen as such. * Jonathan Cook, “Useful Idiots Who Undermine Dissent on Syria” posted here also on 4 July, 2017. * We must start from the fact that ISIS and all the groups in the US-Israel-Saudi Arabia-managed terrorist coalition against Syria are a creation of the CIA. The beginning of the ISIS “regimental history” was when the CIA created the Mujahdeen in Afghanistan and that has never been denied. Therefore it is ludicrous to say there are “embedded terrorists” in the “White Helmets”. The accurate formulation is that the White Helmets is a part of the terrorist organization. The technical term for this is “armed propaganda”. When US Special Forces are deployed in pacification they have people who perform what are technically called “civil affairs” operations: starting and running schools, clinics, SAR teams etc. Civil affairs operations are still subordinate to military/paramilitary control, the people involved may just happen not to be carrying weapons or killing at that particular time. Since there has been no serious discussion even in the alternative media about the actual organisation and structure of “civil affairs” and “armed propaganda” (Phoenix-type) operations, a lot of time and ink or bytes describing things out of context. Hersh and others exploit this ignorance or incomprehension. Civil affairs operations are designed to conceal military operations and as the reporting on them shows — very successfully. * For those too young or ill-informed to know, former CIA director Richard Helms was convicted of perjury because he lied to the Congress in testimony under oath during investigations into CIA activity. He made it clear to those in power that he was not going to jail for implementing government policy and indeed he did not. William E. Colby, while CIA director, gave testimony to the United States Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, also “Church Committee” after its chair, which if followed carefully, indicates the function of information and the role of “intelligence” in the US “intelligence community”. Helms lived to a ripe old age. Colby drowned while fishing. A parallel investigation by the US House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (Pike Committee) has been virtually ignored. Its final report was suppressed. The final report eventually became available in the UK, but not in an official version. * Edward R. Murrow (1908-1965) was a broadcast journalist for the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS). He became famous for his radio broadcasts during WWII. He was treated as a mentor and/or icon of broadcast journalism well into the TV era. * “What was more important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Muslims or the liberation of central Europe and the end of the Cold war?” * Vernon A. Walters (1917-2002) served not only as US ambassador to the UN and Germany and Deputy Director of Central Intelligence (1972-76), he was military advisor for many (if not all) of the military coups d’état (overthrow of the government by the armed forces) and other covert actions now popularly called “regime change”, instigated and supported by the US during his professional career. It is very likely that his appointment as ambassador to Bonn in 1989 was for the purpose of coordinating the collapse of the democratic GDR government to facilitate its absorption FRG, including what became known as the “donation scandal” (Spendenaffäre) by which massive illegal funds were delivered to Helmut Kohl’s CDU, just around the time of the GDR elections. Kohl, who died this year, will have taken many of those secrets with him. * First there was Michael T. Flynn. He was encouraged to resign and Lt Gen H R McMaster USA was appointed in his place. * L. Fletcher Prouty (1917-2001) served as Chief of Special Operations for the US Joint Chiefs of Staff under President John F. Kennedy. He published his book The Secret Team: The CIA and Its Allies in Control of the United States and the World in 1973. * See my Viet Nam series: here; here; here; and here. * George Creel (1876-1953) also among other things an investigative journalist and writer was chairman of the Committee on Public Information (hence Creel Commission). He detailed the commission’s propaganda functions and operations, many of which were covert, in his 1920 book How We Advertised America. The committee was constituted in July 1918 and its activities (including foreign operations) ended officially in August 1919. * See Footnote 15. * The definitive work on the CIA’s Phoenix Program was written by Douglas Valentine (also reviewed in DV). In it he documents and explains how Lt. Calley’s unit was part of Phoenix—that is a CIA operation. The intimate connection between war crimes committed by regular US soldiers in Vietnam and the CIA’s overall initiative and guidance of the wars in Vietnam and the rest of Southeast Asia were not disclosed in any of the work for which Hersh is credited in respect to Vietnam. * See description of USIA/ USIS and one of its officers during the war against Vietnam. After graduating from America University he went to the CIA-sponsored East-West Centre which Scotton said “… was a cover for a training program in which Southeast Asians were brought to Hawaii and trained to go back to Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos to create agent nets.” (This is also where Obama’s parents met.) When he had finished his training and passed the Foreign Service exam he was advised by his patron/ confessor to join the USIS, “which dealt with people”… see Valentine (2000, 2014) p. 49. In Frank Scotton’s memoir Uphill Battle (2014) it is clear that he was a close friend of Daniel Ellsberg. He writes in his memoir that he had cognisance of Ellsberg’s private possession of documents from the report on which Ellsberg had worked to produce an internal history of the war in Vietnam which he would later supply to the New York Times. (page 247) Ellsberg’s leak became the famous Pentagon Papers. However the documents leaked and those chosen for publication in the New York Times omitted any mention of the CIA role in the war or that the CIA was the principal agency driving the war from the 1950s when they were advising the French in Indochina. Both Prouty, in his 1973 book, and Valentine, in numerous articles, shed considerable doubt as to the real motives and actions behind the ostensible leak. * Errol Morris, The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara (2003). McNamara gave this explanation for how he performed in public; e.g., at press conferences. http://clubof.info/