#I suppose it could be AMP? for A Million People

[forgetme-eternally-blissfully]

I love "A Million People Hate Him For Wanting To Leave" so so so soooo much. I can't describe it. The characters are fleshed out, the story is inviting but crushing at the same time, it makes you think about moral values. You have to ask- at what point can you truly separate yourself from the external influences around you? And, ultimately, is everyone a victim of their circumstances?

After everything that this one person has had to suffer, so that everyone else could be happy and thoughtless... if the price that has to be paid for that one person to finally get their happy ending has to be at the cost of those people who once benefited from that persons suffering, then it should naturally be paid.

No but really!! Read it!!! It's so good!!!

Novel description under the cut

Song Yunhui is the young master of the Song family. When he was young, his mother died of illness and his father married another woman, bringing him a younger brother.

Since then, he has never experienced the feeling of being held in the palm of someone’s hand.

He studied hard and practiced calligraphy and piano with little success, failing to gain anyone’s love and appreciation.

As soon as he entered the entertainment industry, he was accused of being jealous of his younger brother’s fame. He was accused of stealing scenes while acting, of lip-syncing while singing, and people even accused him of having bad intentions while saving a fellow actor who fell in the river.

Finally, he was successfully blacklisted all over the Internet, and everyone condemned him.

After rescuing the actor who fell into the river, he fainted. When he woke up again, Song Yunhui discovered that this world is a book, and his brother is the protagonist. Song Yunhui is simply the cannon fodder obstacle on the protagonist’s path that everyone hates.

His father likes his younger brother. The person he likes likes his younger brother. Even the internet only likes his younger brother.

No matter what he does, no matter how well he does it, no one will care.

Song Yunhui thought about it.

If you don’t like someone, leave. If people don’t like you, don’t force yourself.

After he packed up and announced his retirement, he found a small villa in a small town. There, he would write songs by himself and occasionally stream while singing and playing games to support himself.

From time to time, he’d go to the neighbors house and poach a meal. It’s a very comfortable life.

[read-marx-and-lenin]

Not that one poster but I think the revolution will kill thousands of people because that's historically what has happened in every revolution. Even in Palestine you can see civilians and children being killed for daring to revolt, and the disabled also get left behind to die with no accessible medications or hospitals as they've all been bombed. I don't see a way it could work without this happening though so it ends up being a "Some of you may die but that's a price I'm willing to pay", which... Isn't that different from the other side who's also willing to let others die for their ideology.

Source: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.aljazeera.com/amp/news/2023/10/27/people-with-disabilities-not-spared-from-israels-war-machine-on-gaza-strip

I wasn't trying to argue that in a revolution, nobody would possibly die. I was trying to figure out why, in that person's mind, the two options seem to be "vote for Kamala" or "tens of millions of people die in a four year long revolutionary bloodbath".

Besides, as was already pointed out, people are already dying under capitalism and imperialism and colonialism. The people of Palestine did not fight back for no good reason, they fought back because they were dying at the hands of the Israeli occupation.

I don't think in the United States specifically we're going to suddenly have mass support for revolutionary socialism in the next four years, but for the same reasons, I don't think Trump is going to be able to magically install a fascist dictatorship by virtue of winning another term.

The conditions that provide opportunities for fascists also provide opportunities for socialists. We are in a minor economic downturn at the moment for sure. Prices are going up, wages are still stagnating, lots of people are having to stretch their budgets. But that's ordinary. We have people dying because they can't afford healthcare, and that's horrific, but it's also mundane. It will take an extraordinary economic crisis to push this country onto the brink, and yet such a crisis is inevitable due to the internal contradictions of capitalism.

The relative comfort and stability that the average US citizen experiences is by virtue of the massive poverty and instability that is inflicted on the average person elsewhere in the world. Capitalism and imperialism siphon wealth and labor from the third world and concentrate it in the first world, and any attempts by the masses in the third world to achieve prosperity and security will necessarily disrupt this process. These tensions will inevitably lead to economic collapse within the US and other first world imperialist nations, and this will happen sooner rather than later. Not four years soon, but I would not be surprised if it happened within the next fifty years.

We are not living in a time of peace that a bunch of insane radical leftists are threatening to upend for the sake of ideological purity. We are living in a time where the contradictions of capitalism are once again coming to a head. We are on the brink of another world war. The victory of capitalist counter-revolutionaries in the last century came at the cost of "tens of millions" of lives. Tolerating the imperialist warmongering of US politicians is inexcusable if we are supposed to care about people's lives.

When Kamala Harris brags about the United States having "the most lethal army in the world", she means it. She is more than willing to sacrifice millions of lives on the altar of US hegemony and US control over other nations. The bourgeoisie know full well what is coming and they are already preparing for it. The best time for us to organize was yesterday, and the second best time is today. The Democrats are the enemies of peace and freedom just as much as the Republicans are, and we should not waste our time acting like the former aren't just as eager and willing to throw the rest of us under the bus as the latter are.

[persephoneflouwers]

First off i just want to say im not trying to play blame game, I just want to talk about a few things that is not really mainstream in larry fandom, I remember your thoughts about babygate and how it might be related to Harry’s level of visibility, what im thinking about situation surrounding Louis, his solo career, babygate and Harry is not that unsimilar to that line of thinking.

I think that Harry’s solo career is an extension of 1D project, he was the one that was chosen by big executives to appeal to the group of fans, which was huge in numbers so it would be waste for sony not to tap into that potential, the band managed to garner throughout the years. Sony created a new brand for those fans in a way that they wouldn’t be embarrassed to carry that brand into their new adult life which should be free from their teenage obsession so they heavily leaned into harry being inspired by rock legends at first (with a sprinkle of sex god harry) but it felt flat because the connection between harry and those legends didn’t go beyond critics calling harry fake (lol), and then they realized they needed to put in more work to this rock persona so they brought in the rockstar gf and amped up rumors about his sexuality bc the mystery around his ‘not so secret’ love life was a hook for many of those fans, i also wanna mention that imho harry is not contradicting himself and what his life is supposed to sell just to pat larries on the back in interviews, him saying i want privacy around my love life but we knowing every detail about all his relationships is playing right into that persona of rockstar that is caught in his love or him saying that these things wouldn’t happen for people like him is selling this fantasy of underdog coming from nothing and being everything to thousands of fans, people relate to that but the money they are spending on Harry is unparalleled and beyond that the power they have with media is nothing similar to any underdog quality having small artist could have. By the way im not saying that harry is undeserving of his highly publicized (and sometimes made of) achievements, im saying the work and money that go into it already guarantees this kind of ‘success’

Anyway i think this all kind of ties in how Louis has been struggling with industry-wide blackout all his solo career. Im just guessing but my life experience tells me that Sony wouldn’t let anything or anyone get in the way of millions of dollars they are getting through harry the brand and them, we all know that Louis is the biggest thread to that brand they have been supporting and creating, first they burdened him (and ancient/old/new larries or larrie narrative with babygate) and then they literally made it so that Louis could never the shadows (by the way the mystique around larry proved to big executives that people are intrigued by big stars having secrets or compassionate side that is willing to fight for their love and partners, so they were aware of the void harry’s solo career would have once louis was removed from the situation and they tried to create new larry in their own terms with xander and brad which is so laughable at best because you cant fake the genuine fight or love or yearning, not even proximity would warrant that as we can see with brad and breads lol)

So what is frustrating (to me) about this whole tattoo convo that some people are so hell-bent on minimizing what it really is -a dumb decision- because babygate is still going on as it involves a kid, it is morally fucked up situation on another level (while i agree with that i also question where was that energy when harry was letting olivia bring her kids to his show and his family was getting actively involved with those kids, he was publicly and very visibly inserted into their family situation as well.) Im just dumbfounded that some people bending backwards to give Harry a free pass for every questionable thing he does are somehow missing the fact that Louis’ involvement with babygate only doubled when Harry as a brand finally got the level of fame he or they wanted, im not saying some sony bighead are putting a weapon to louis’ head to say that you should be more hands-on father but they are playing a game of putting all the responsibilities -be it legally or verbally- on his shoulder.

Im sorry for talking your ear off in your asks but i wanted to get that out there even if only one person reads it and i realized i wrote in absolutes in terms of my writing but it is not because im trying to present my thoughts as the facts it is because i didn’t wanna put i think, i guess, i suppose at the beginning of every sentence i wrote to signal that these are my thoughts based on being involved with this fandom more than ten years and real life experiences.

I’ve been looking for someone to share this sort of opinions with all my life. I could have written this honestly, because it stands more or less where I stand with my takes on everything (especially the frontman push, the threatening larry rumours, the mega comeback of babygate coincidentally when Harry’s career has taken a turn for the sky). And I find very silly, very naive, very biased - three words that can easily describe this fandom - the opinion of those who say ‘babygate has nothing to do with larry’ or ‘babygate has nothing to do with Harry’.

I say the tattoo fiasco has been a wake up call for me, because it is a statement, a very dumb, very greedy, very mean - three words that can easily describe the people in the big picture- from Harry himself. It means he went full in for this stunt and from this there’s no coming back. And people will say it’s convenient and ambitious and they will also say they do what they can with their career, but you know… I don’t like these takes because there is a very fine line (pun intended) between ambition and ambiguity, because everybody and their mothers know that if you decided to get involved with the worst people in Hollywood you are not going to end up be a saint. OW being so close to H. W had always creeped me out, because look at how much organic success and organic achievements has brought to our beloved.

Anyway thank you for this very well articulated opinion. I’m sorry I’m only replying to this now. If you want to talk more, we can in private too :)

[gatekeeper-watchman]

Daily Devotionals for August 21, 2024

Proverbs: God's Wisdom for Daily Living

Devotional Scripture:

Proverbs 23:9-11 (KJV): 9 Speak not in the ears of a fool: for he will despise the wisdom of thy words. 10 Remove not the old landmark; and enter not into the fields of the fatherless: 11 For their redeemer is mighty; he shall plead their cause with thee. Proverbs 23:9-11 (AMP): 9 Speak not in the ears of a (self-confident) fool, for he will despise the [godly] Wisdom of your words. 10 Remove not the ancient landmarks, and enter not into the fields of the fatherless, 11 For their Redeemer is mighty; He will plead their cause against you.

Thought for the Day

Verse 9 - The Hebrew word for fool infers that it is someone who obstinately clings to foolishness and whatever he sets his mind to and is unmoved by reason or advice. Since he is a fool, he will not listen to wisdom, but rather despises it. One would waste his time and energy if he tried to speak to him about a situation.

It is wise to listen to others and weigh what they say against God's Word. After I have heard someone's input, either positive or negative, I make a practice of what I call "running it through the Holy Ghost filter." I always try to allow the Holy Spirit to filter things before acting on them. By doing that, my husband and I have been saved from many problems in our ministry and personal lives. The Lord will grant wisdom when we ask for it in faith and "filter out," or make us aware of anything that is not of Him or not His will for us. We can trust that whatever "gets through the filter" is of God and proceed with it. When we have failed to do this, and just acted on men's well-intentioned advice it has caused us to suffer greatly.

Verses 10-11 - As we saw in Day 228, landmarks in Biblical times were boundary markers. They were extremely important in ancient cultures because the vast majority of people survived on the produce of their land. Wicked people coveted their neighbors' lands and sometimes demolished a boundary marker in order to claim the land for themselves. A strong man could defend his land, but not a poor widow. A widow with no relative to act on her behalf and redeem her land would have been helpless indeed. The Bible tells us that God will be a husband to the widow and will also be the orphan's mighty Redeemer. Corrupt earthly judges might deny a widow's rights; but God, who sees all, promises to defend and maintain her cause.

When we accept Christ as Savior, we receive help that is not visible to the natural eye. Our heavenly Father sends angels to watch over us (Matthew 18:10). God especially watches over the fatherless, the weak, and the helpless belonging to Him. Millions today are fascinated by the subject of angels, but a lot of unscriptural notions have been circulated. There are three kinds of holy angels: messenger, warrior, and worshiper angels. They are ministering spirits whom God sends to help us. "Are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation?" (Hebrews 1:13-14). They also maintain the cause of the fatherless. Angels can position people to help the fatherless and influence their hearts to do so. Help may come through people, but it is activated by angels. It is God's nature to continually reach out to the poor and helpless. He is the mighty God who defends their cause. May we, also, be used to help the weak and the fatherless.

Prayer Devotional for the Day

Dear heavenly Father, thank you for Your wisdom and discernment in the daily affairs of my life. Lord, teach me to use wisdom when I must deal with foolish and obstinate people. Help me keep my mouth closed and not speak when You know that the person I am trying to reason with cannot receive what I may have to say. Also, give me grace and boldness to speak when I am supposed to share with others about the wisdom that is in Your Word. Lord, use me to help the weak and fatherless and plead their causes. May I be used as one of Your messengers in the natural, like one of Your angels, to bring a blessing to someone who needs to hear from You, or needs help from You. I ask this in the name of our Lord, Jesus Christ. Amen. From: Steven P. Miller, @ParkermillerQ, gatekeeperwatchman.org Founder and Administrator of Gatekeeper-Watchman International Group Tuesday, August 20, 2024, Jacksonville, Florida., Duval County, USA.  X … @ParkermillerQ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/Sparkermiller.JAX.FL.USA, Instagram: steven_parker_miller_1956 #GWIG, #GWIN, #GWINGO.

[thesmokingguns]

Window

Warning: mention of parental abuse and control, and male masturbation

Minors DNI 18+

“My parents are home.” You informed your boyfriend. He was supposed to come over sooner but band practice had kept him away from you. You heard him swear annoyed.

He had told the idiots in his band he had plans but when Izzy and Axl got to writing songs they demanded all hands on decks until it was figured out. Duff had been furious as he stormed out almost two hours after the agreed time, rushing to a payphone to call you and see if he could still sneak over before your parents got home from their weekly bowling night.

It wasn’t just about getting to be intimate with you, Duff liked to hold you after and feel the way you would quietly fall asleep against his heart beat. You were lulled to sleep by the strong beating sound as he stroked your hair and sang all your favorite songs to you softly. He needed the quiet moments with you as much as he needed the hot loud moments.

“Listen, I’m so fucking hard. I know you can’t go out but I’m going to park outside your house, could you undress in front of the window? I want to see you when I cum.” You blushed at what he was asking. Your fingers touching the warmth of your cheeks as you heard him start to talk about masturabting to just seeing you.

You lived on a dead end street and you knew Duff always parked at the very end right by the woods your window faced. No one would be able to see you but it still felt dangerous. Knowing your parents were sleeping two rooms down and how much your father hated the long haired blonde man made it that much worse.

It didn’t matter that you were 19, you lived under their roof and had to follow their rules. So you met Duff in private, making out in his car on highway pull offs and had him come inside your home while your parents were out. You had saved up some money and were planning on moving into an apartment in LA with him soon. But not soon enough.

“Okay. I’ll wait for you.” He hung up and you stood by the window, looking to see when he would be there. Heart beating wildly at the thought of performing for him.

You were already in your pajamas and moved quickly away from the window when you heard a car to lock your bedroom door. All you needed was your parents walking in and seeing you undressing in front of the window. They didn’t care that you were 19. Their house, their rules.

Duff's car was in place, the light of his cigarette the only thing you could really see. He could see you in the window and wondered if he would fall if he tried to climb up the porch and onto the roof to get to your room. He was desperate enough that the thought of a broken arm didn’t scare him. It was the idea of your father with a shotgun that was more terrifying.

The way you stood in front of the window in that soft yellow robe, looking like a spring daffodil as you slid it off your petite shoulders. The moonlight on your skin, soft as flower petals, he groaned watching you trace your hands over your hips, eyes looking out, knowing that you were searching for him as you slowly rolled your hands over the hips.

His hand in his lap as he worked himself, as he watched you lean out the window, tits swaying as you did a whole show for him. He wanted to be with you, feeling you.

But he was watching you from his car, jerking off with the bottle of lube he had in the glove box and a few McDonald’s napkins waiting on standby. The way you looked so close yet so far away killing him as his fist tightened, hips bucking up as he imagined being buried inside of you.

Up and down he worked his cock, tugging himself as he looked at you, panting like a dog in heat and making his own windows fog up from the heat that was pouring off of him. His cock ached for you as you held  your tits in your hand shaking your hips from side to side.

He could picture you, standing on his amp and performing the same dance. He would be in front of a million people, a bass slung low as you seemed to be dancing just for him, rolling your hips as you performed only from him.

Duff’s eyes raised to you, watching you blow him a kiss and wishing he could hold you, kiss you as he came. But his semen was spurting out, his body heaving up and into the rough fabric of the brown napkin as his cum wet the napkin. He sighed out, cleaning himself off and thinking about how he wanted to hold you now.

He was looking at where you had been standing, wondering if you were wrapping that yellow robe around you and shifting as you got ready to go to sleep. Not seeing you standing there made him feel lonely and he missed you more, feeling like a failure for your parents hating him. Feeling like he wasn’t able to provide for you because he didn’t  make enough money as he chased his dreams.

Though visiting you at work meant unlimited time with you he hated visiting the bowling alley that smelled like spilled light beer and sweaty shoes. Her parents had gotten her the job and Duff spent too much time watching you work too hard. It was awful on Friday and Saturday nights when he had to leave, knowing that people were going to hit on you as he played shows, his whole mind on you.

The knock on his window made him jump, seeing you standing there in one of his t-shirts tucked into the jeans. You were smiling at him as he opened teh door, pulling you inside and against him as you pressed your body close and kissed him, holding onto his shirt.

He didn’t think of anything other than how good it felt to have your lips against him, you pressed into his arms. He didn’t notice the backpack you had dropped outside the car or how you shivered from slight fear at the backlash you would face from what your plans were. He was too involved with just kissing you to think of anything else.

“You shouldn’t have gone out, your parents-”

“I can’t be away from you anymore, Duffy. I saved some money and I want to move in with you.” he didn’t want to tell you he lived in a dilapidated shack with three other guys, teh same place he had band practice. He didn't want you to know that the reason that he never took you home was because he was ashamed of where he lived.

He knew you wouldn’t be safe there and knew that he had to figure out how to tell you no.

But as he was about to break your heart he saw behind you the lights to your house flickering on, one by one. Your parents were awake and they realized that you weren’t tucked in your bed like a good girl they wanted you to be.

Shit.

Duff pushed you into the passenger seat, seeing your backpack he pulled it into the car and putting it in the backseat. He watched your father open the front door and you saw it too. Mouth falling open as you reach for Duff, grabbing his hand as you slowly panicked

“I guess we should go apartment hunting in the morning.” Duff said as he squeezed your hand. Your father looked at you, headed towards the car as Duff turned the sputtering machine back on and tore out of your street.

All this because  he was late with band practice.

Taglist: @ayablackwood @rocknrollsoul76​ @greeneyezblackheart @lady-jane3​ @rocketgrrrl27 @slutforstradlin​ @theoutsiders25​ @fispapercrafter @bbyamberx​ @brezeblog @samanthasgone​ @aggressive-slytherin​ @clover270 @grayxiu​ @another-obsessed-with-duff @badfvith​ @bia003​ @queenbae18 @axl-roses-rose​ @d-ahliaa @beebemarie​ @guns-n-roses-gal​ @themoonbelongstome​ @pinksweetgirl18 @cemmia @bieberhoodforever​

[my-coven-is-claudia]

I never liked the forced marriage part of the mcd story because a: gross but also b: I could never figure out how to explain my thoughts on what happened after because Fenrir going from “prince who can’t do anything because he’s also being forced into this” to “guy who blames the woman who was almost forced to be his bride for the death of the people at his wedding even though it was 100% her companion and she SAVED HIM FROM HIM but of course gotta make another antagonist” enraged me

Literally just let Laurence admit that what he did was not the right thing but he thought it was his only option. Have fenrir admit that yes, he blames aphmau and laurence for the deaths but understands that Aphmau was at no actual fault and that Laurence was only trying to protect himself and his friends.

Instead, from what I remember: Fenrir wanted aphmau mauled before she was brought to him and if it would make her suffer worse, he’d make her marry him. He went from victim to even worse than his dad. Like why?? That was such a good opportunity to show that actions that can be even somewhat justified are still going to leave harm. Laurence was trying to protect the people he loved and himself. Yes, there was a genuine threat of death, and yes, Laurence was one of the people at risk, but those werewolves still had families and Fenrir had to watch the death of his father and a massacre.

i could talk about this storyline forever and that is exactly what i am going to do. i was genuinely obsessed with it i drew a million scene redraws and came up with a detailed idea of what i think would’ve happened before diaries was cancelled.

i personally really liked the storyline in season 2,, it’s insanely fucked up but it’s so enticing as it felt like a genuinely terrifying and stressful situation because,, there’s like,, no way to get out of it without shit hitting the fan. aphmau is locked in a bedroom until the wedding,, laurence is stuck in a jail cell,, only being let out to be humiliated by the king and to see the wedding and katelyn. katelyn literally has no idea what’s going on and was probably kept in a cell far away from laurence so he couldn’t fill her in on anything. the wedding scene altered my brain chemistry in so many ways,, it’s ingrained in my mind. literally iconic. i think it’s because it’s the first sign that laurence is beginning to go down a dark path. it’s the first time he transforms into his shadows knight form and his possessiveness towards aphmau amps up from this episode onwards.

about his actions specifically i don’t really blame him for what he did because what else was he supposed to do?? if he simply transformed,, grabbed aphmau and bolted then they would’ve had guards chasing after them and with the king still alive they would’ve most definitely been hunted - assuming they would’ve even escaped. obviously him massacring half of the wedding attendees was awful but him shoving the king off the cliff was kind of understandable. the guy deserved it.

NOW FENRIR,, he’s complicated. looking solely at what we’re shown his want for vengeance against APHMAU OF ALL people is baffling. it makes no sense how he solely wants to kill her. it completely ignores how the two of them bonded over their horrible situation and the fact he disliked his father. i understand that no matter what you’re parent has done seeing them die,, especially in such a gruesome way,, is devastating and i think fenrir wanting revenge makes sense. but like you said it would’ve made most sense for him to be partially angry at aphmau for “betraying” him (in his mind) but mostly at laurence as he was the one who slaughtered his people and his father. my personal interpretation of fenrir’s actions in season 3 is the cycle continuing. his desire to have aphmau mauled and to invade the phoenix capital makes him arguably worse than his father. he’s continuing the obsession and lack of rationality that his dad had. he even wants to still go through with the wedding. i think his misconstruing of the facts to fit his motives and feelings about what happened further prove this. he’s spiralling,, literally dedicating the past three years of his life to hunt down aphmau. you’re supposed to see how messed up this is and how far from truth his point of view is. obviously it’s unlikely jess intended this but i like my interpretation better.

i also wonder how his mother fits into this. she too was horrified and upset at her husband’s death but in the moment,, she still chose to help laurence,, aphmau and katelyn escape. i feel like maybe she would’ve been able to stop fenrir in season 3 if laurence apologising to him didn’t work. would’ve liked to see how she felt about how much her son had become like her husband and maybe that could’ve been what brought him to his senses. once he realised that he had become like the man he despised the most he would’ve given up on his rampage for revenge.

i’ll probably make a post about my scenario about what i think would’ve happened in season 3 but i’d rather not add it here because this is already a monster of a post lol

[hoodedwing]

Babybird, please?

Summary: Jason returns to Gotham after a year-long sabbatical at his Arkansas safehouse. Nothing has changed in Gotham, but he probably did.  Dick realizes and puts the pieces together to make a horrible discovery.

Characters: Red Hood, Nightwing. Roy Harper (brief mentions). Cheshire (brief mentions), Lian Harper(brief mentions)

Warnings: Drinking. Injury flashbacks (we’re looking at an event gone too far). Anger issues. Also, swearing but from the last dude you’d expect.

Additional Notes: Jason deserves a happy Christmas and yep, I wrote this after Christmas so sue me. Also this seemed a little choppy to me

Word Count: 1,306 words

***

Christmas had long gone by and left trees still adorned with tinsel and other décor. It was supposed to keep people in a cheery mood, keep away the post-Christmas blues and amp Gothamites for New Year in an otherwise gloomy town.

It didn’t do the trick for Jason. With his hands shoved in his leather jacket, he kept his head low and speed fast, nimbly dodging excited throngs exchanging the occasional cheers and here’s to a happy new year, folks. Snow crunched under his boots as he rounded the corner to a bar.

Quietly, he sat down and warmed down a bit. A bartender amicably approached Jason who mumbled.

“Whisky, make it extra strong.”

Nodding, the bartender left. Jason drew himself closer, making his presence as small in possible. His eyes kept shifting to not spot a certain Dark Knight or at least (for small mercies) Bruce Wayne as another civilian. A rich and seemingly happy civilian who was often seen ruffling his sons’ hair and chatting away. 

The last time Jason saw Bruce, there wasn’t a happy civilian, no stroking of hair.

There was a batarang at his neck.

Jason absentmindedly rubs the faint scar as the bartender placed the alcohol in front of him. He pushes spare change with his other gloved palm and nods imperceptibly. He takes a small sip, lets the whisky warm him up internally and space out awhile.

He wasn’t supposed to be in Gotham but Jason was a rebel. A rebel since childhood. It’s probably the rebellion that kept him alive in Crime Alley’s dark and unlit paths. Paths even Batman would be scared shitless to enter himself, even when armed with his fancy toys up to the teeth.

He suppresses what he believed was probably anger or a by-product because man, today the whisky was definitely strong. He felt a little light-headed at the kick of it but it was good, it distracted him from the fact he returned to Gotham from Arkansas for Christmas.

He never celebrated Christmas outside Gotham. It seemed strange to suddenly break the tradition. Some things shouldn’t change, it probably does alter a person entirely. With the whole shitshow of a showdown on the rooftop with Batman, he probably didn’t want to go even remotely close to them. 

Nope, not even touching five streets near them

He finished the rest of his drink before his thought loop threatened to swallow him whole with old memories. Trudging outside the snow, he thought about calling Roy.

Maybe check in with him?  

See how Cheshire and Lian were? 

He hoped Lian didn’t mind too much about his absence on her fourth birthday that year. She was a sweet girl in such a cruel world, Jason could only hope she would still retain that sweetness under such a caring dad.

Dad

God, Jason really hated that word. Reminded him of Willis but Bruce wasn’t that much of a dad to him either. The word tasted acrid on his tongue, almost unnatural, like it didn’t belong there.

Is it bad he sometimes longed for dad?

Somebody suddenly knocks into him, pretty hard by the shoulder and distracts Jason from his second thought loop of the day. Bags spill everywhere and Jason isn’t sure where the pavement is anymore from under all the obnoxiously wrapped gifts and overly expensive-looking bags.

‘“Sorry! I’m in such a hurry. I missed Christmas with my family. Kinda sucks actually”

“No bother.”

Jason rasped a little, voice unrecognizable as he bent down to help pick up the scattered mess. He quickly shoves the gifts into each bag till some names caught his eye.

For Damian. 

For Tim

For Bruce

Jason’s heart stops.

He doesn’t have to look at the rest of the gifts to know who it was for.

“Hey, is everything alright?”

A hand outstretches towards Jason who takes it and held with more force than necessary. He heard the man let out a small ouch.

“Thanks man. Hey, if its too much, can I drop you anywhere? It’s really cold out here today. My car is a street down, we can stop by for donuts and hot coffee?”

Jason momentarily looks up and the man lets out a gasp.

“J.Jason?”

He looks the other direction, angry that he’s betrayed himself to look up to the voice because he knows its Dick and older brothers would keep younger ones safe.

Why does he have to gravitate again? Fall for the same trick? Didn’t Bruce, dad, Batman make it clear?

“What?”

“Offer for donuts and coffee still stands. Come.”

-

Jason finds himself at Dunkin’ Donuts with Dick.

He wouldn’t be here, surrounded by warm coffee and sugar-glazed creations as Dick smiled at him. Jason knows that smile is stretched thin, probably filled with questions 

Where were you on Christmas?

I couldn’t look for you, did you hide somewhere?

We miss you, aren’t we brothers?

He is prepared for all of them till Dick asks the one thing that strikes an arrow.

“Your neck, babybird. Who did that?”

Jason cannot answer, He contemplates lying for a while, testing the silence till he realizes that right now Dick could kick him back out into the lung-freezing cold.

He wouldn’t do that.

Bruce almost killed you. He did that.

“Jay?”

He registers someone’s hand on his shoulder. Jason licks his lips, tests the words. He knew the implications of telling Golden Boy right here and now that Bruce could’ve murdered him though somehow he ended up voiceless for some months instead.

“Bruce.”

Dick’s smile drops from a million kilowatts to one of anger.

“Asshole.”

Jason’s ears pricked up, when did he even pick up swearing?

“Wa-”

Dick held up a finger, commanding Jason into silence and thought through it. His eyebrows further knit in realization when he thought more about it. It seemed to add up.

Bruce returning home, untouched. A brief intercepted transmission of Roy that he’s taking Jason to Arkansas because he frankly looked like he went head-to-toe with Deathstroke. Jason not returning for awhile.

“You didn’t fight back.”

Tears form in Dick’s eyes. The words didn’t sound right to him. The Red Hood not laying even a bruise on Batman?

“You let him hit you!”

Dick cried out, slamming his fists against the table. A few patrons turn briefly to the scene before refocusing back on their own conversations.

Jason turned his head down, of all the people that would come in defense for him, it was Dickie Bird. 

“Jay, he could’ve killed you.”

Again.

“Dick-”

“Don’t Dick me! Where are you staying right now?”

Jason doesn’t bother coming up with a lie anymore.

“Arkansas still.”

Dick considers awhile.

“I can get you a place in Bludhaven. Shift in with me for now while I deal with the bastard.”

“But Bruce-”

Dick angrily turns to Jason.

“You of last people should be giving fucks about what Bruce says or does.”

He almost laughs at the sheer fucking irony of it right now till Dick squeezes Jason’s hand gently and he knows Dick actually means it.

He has a chance at actually living instead of hiding and being on the run for the rest of his life.

“Sure. If that’s okay with-”

“It’s always okay, Jay. Please tell me if things like these happen again. Bruce cannot get away like that. Beating the shit out of you and then prancing away. Jay, I’m so sorry.”

Dick buries his face into his palms and Jason sits there, twisting his hands together.

Till he gathers enough courage to calmly place a hand on Dick’s shoulder.

“Hey? We still have to finish these donuts and I can’t do it alone.”

Dick turns up, eyes red but cheekily smiling back as they devour the donuts on a cold, snowy day.

Except this time, Jason feels warmer than ever.

[koinoyokvn]

*  /  𝐈 𝐍 𝐓 𝐑 𝐎 𝐃 𝐔 𝐂 𝐓 𝐈 𝐎 𝐍

* JOSHUA HONG, CISMALE + HE/HIM  | you know CHANHEE ‘SOUR PATCH’ BAN, right? they’re TWENTY-TWO, and they’ve lived in irving for, like, THIRTEEN YEARS? well, their spotify wrapped says they listened to OCEAN DRIVE BY DUKE DUMONT like, a million times this year, which makes sense ‘cause they’ve got that whole glitter stippled onto his cheeks, swinging at the playground at midnight & neon lights at a nightclub thing going on. i just checked and their birthday is july 1st, so they’re a cancer, which is unsurprising, all things considered.

hewwo everyone !! i’m kacchan n i, personally, am a bit of an idiot but !! do not let that distract u from the fact that i hav a few fun muses to write w !! i’ve been out of the rp scene for about a year but i’ve been spurred by rekindled inspiration !! i’m rlly excited to meet everyone n i hope we can get some delicious plots n connections that r chef’s kiss <3 

trigger warnings: death tw, fire tw, alcohol tw

*  /  𝐁 𝐀 𝐒 𝐈 𝐂 𝐒

hair: blackest brown

eyes: chestunut brown

build: slim & active

height: 5′9″ or 177 cm

weight: 127 lbs or 58 kg

distinguishing features: two lobe piercings on each ear, three helix piercings on each ear, an industrial piercing on his right ear, and a small tattoo with the roman numerals ���XXIX - MMIX” written on his left wrist

distinguishing style: pastel colours & sparkling pieces make up most of his fashion, very bright jackets and very blushed makeup, designer outfits when he’s told to be on his best behaviour

*  /  𝐇 𝐈 𝐒 𝐓 𝐎𝐑 𝐘

chanhee was born along the coast of north carolina, though not quite irving. he was born to a head butler and head nanny of a wealthy estate on irving. very old money, invested in the surrounding agriculture and lumber of the area. his parents were live-in employees, constantly tending to the estate. chanhee lived on the estate as an infant but, as soon as he was old enough to go to school, he lived with his aunt in the city he was born in and only spent summers on the estate.

his mother was kind and charming, graceful with the way she tended to the children of the wealthy family. she always had stories and was filled with compassion. his father was surly and deadpan, a cynical man that always saw the worst in things. but it’s his cynicism that allowed him to thrive as the butler, as he feared the worst, he prepared for it, and all his father’s plans would turn out seamless. chanhee loved the summers. he loved spending every day with his parents. when he was at school, he told everyone that he would become the head butler of the estate just like his father. the family career, so to speak.

chanhee quickly befriended the children of the estate. when they would go to tutors, he would go to the laundry rooms and the gardens. but whenever it was free time, he was stuck to their side. he would join them on their fishing adventures and beach escapades, but he didn’t know much about irving beyond the estate. he was just a visitor, a tourist, every time he would go downtown. 

he though life would always be like this. going to school and being with his aunt during the winter, and enjoying every moment of the day during the summer. and when he would finish school, he would move to irving and work under his father’s eyes. that was his destiny... only, it wasn’t.

his father loved stage plays. it was the only thing that could make him smile, other than his family. when chanhee was 10, he was having a “sleepover” with the children of the estate while his parents took the night off. they drove to chanhee’s hometown, met with his father’s sister, and they all went to a stage play. but they didn’t come home. the theatre caught on fire and the building was brought down. eight casualties, three of them being chanhee’s mother, father, and aunt. chanhee wasn’t the wiser until the next morning.

chanhee had no grandparents. his aunt was his only immediate family. he had an uncle from his grandmother’s brother in korea. the only extended family he had. chanhee... to go all the way to korea? and if his uncle was contacted and said no, he would be placed into the foster system. this wasn’t supposed to be the way his life panned out. he was supposed to be the head butler of the estate, wasn’t he?

the wealthy wife hadn’t stopped crying since the funeral. and the wealthy husband, holed up in his study and only coming out to get more drinks, muttering how he only trusted chanhee’s father to hand him things. the wealthy family was mourning, too. while chanhee’s custody was in limbo, he was staying with the wealthy family. an act of compassion brought him to hold the wealthy wife and weep with her, telling her that everything would be okay because his parents are still in every inch of the house. they made their life here and that can’t be taken away. very profound words and chanhee was speaking each from the memory of his mother and what she would always say. that was it!

the next weeks were getting the paperwork settled. the uncle from korea was never contacted. instead, the wealthy family adopted chanhee as their own. that way, chanhee would never be far from what he knows and the wealthy family would have always have his parents’ spirit with them. chanhee was now a permanent residence of irving. he was allowed to keep his surname, a request from chanhee himself. 

the transition was a little rocky. chanhee would always drift away from his lessons to help around the estate and get caught by his tutors, disciplined for being tardy or absent. he was critical of food being cooked for him as he learned how to cook quite young and would always help his parents. this transition created a sort of dependency on chanhee’s favourite treats: sour patch kids. he would always have a bag near or around him. when he was upset, some would be brought to him. it got to the point where his newly adopted siblings would call him “sour patch”. eventually, the nickname stuck and never left. he was now sour patch ban, newfound heir. 

he never meant to be unruly. but when his troublemaker sister asked him to join her on a party, he couldn’t let her go alone. he wouldn’t be a very good brother if that were the case. it quickly escalated, however, once he let alcohol into his system. soon, it was him and his sister, sneaking out every weekend to find trouble. high school was spent falling asleep in classes but doing stellar on tests and assignments, many thanks to private tutors. it was spent dreading his extracurriculars, though it helped him learn how to play piano, guitar, and the drums. he was also a talented singer, though he does get a bad case of stage fright if he’s asked to sing in front of a crowd.

now that he’s graduated high school, he’s kind of drifting. not sure where he wants to go or what to do. his parents always assured him that he would be loved and taken care of no matter what he decided to do. so for now, he takes a lax business course at the university, just to say he’s trying. otherwise, he’s out on the town, drinking and smoking and laughing and playing away. sometimes he thinks about making his music career, even joining a band with his friends, and maybe making that his life. but something always gripes about him, how that estate is supposed to be his life. anything beyond it almost seems... inauthentic. is that why he spends so much time drinking? never committing to anything? hm, who knows.

*  /  𝐏 𝐄 𝐑 𝐒 𝐎 𝐍 𝐀 𝐋 𝐈 𝐓 𝐘

sour patch is definitely someone who tries to make everyone around him smile. he’s kind, affable, super sweet, and thoughtful. he makes an effort to remember the small things people tell him. he’s a bit of an over-analyzer this way, trying to figure out what people want. his motif is to always help people.

but that’s not to say he doesn’t have problems of his own. he’s scared of commitment in any regard and he hides his true feelings quite a lot. he doesn’t want to seem a burden or something to invoke pity, so he never lets on how much something hurts him. he’s quite emotional and can cry at the drop of a pin. he just invests a lot of himself into other people and, of course, that never bodes well.

he’s also a huge romantic. now, mix that with his commitment issues and his mask-wearing, it’s not a pretty trait of his. he has a tendency to fall in love with anyone who shows him a remote kindness. he scoops up opportunities to be intimate while he’s partying because they simulate true affection just enough for him to get addicted to it. but, he’s sensitive and noncommittal, so he can fall out of love just as easily.

*  /  𝐂 𝐎 𝐍 𝐍 𝐄 𝐂 𝐓 𝐈 𝐎 𝐍 𝐒

save your tears — sour patch went all in with his chips with this relationship. he really thought that he could unlearn his life of flimsy whimsical habits. but, that’s not the only thing that’s stopping him from being a good partner. maybe it was the nonstop drinking, the hesitancy to show vulnerability, or his inability to get out of his daydreams. but it fell apart. sour patch never stopped caring about this person, however, and he wants to try and be better for them. but will they let him? ( 0/1 )

banana brain — sour patch isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. although he’s always kind to everyone, he can come off ingenuine. however, he’s determined to be this person’s friend. he feels like he can help them, even though he knows that his presence is unwanted. extravagant gifts, surprise visits, the whole shebang. sour patch is persistent even though it’s a futile mission. ( 0/3 )

i wonder — the current pinnacle of sour patch’s affections. maybe this person is a classmate, or a regular at one of his regular spots too, or just happened to perform a random act of kindness. sour patch is quite the romantic individual and overthinks any minute interaction. this is amped up with this person. be prepared. i would prefer if this is unrequited but we can see how it goes, too! ( 0/1 )

eyes closed — sour patch is using this person to distract himself from something he can’t attain. does this person know that? well, only time can tell. it’s hard to see beyond sour patch’s masks sometimes. maybe it’s mutual and this person is also distracting themself from something else. however, it almost feels real. every touch and whisper. it’s just missing some sort of spark. that inescapable romantic ideal that it’s meant to be. ( 0/1 )

SPECIAL MENTIONS: sour patch adores having friends and is a very social creature, he wants to be close with everyone. sour patch also has his share of one night stands and drunken encounters, and not all of them are good. these connections won’t have limits because i’m a fiend for friends/fwb/rivals. 

[tfw-no-tennis]

mtmte liveblog issue 36

time travel arccccccccccccc yessssssssss

I have been waiting SO LONG to reread this arc hhhhh yessss

starting off strong with the sexy roller cover. nice

I love the disconnect of ‘orion pax: outlaw’ compared to the last time we saw him in shadowplay where he was orion pax: supercop

he’s still punching people for JUSTICE or whatever so I guess not much has changed

oh my god this is the issue with the many many two-page spreads...the first time I read this issue I didn't realize that was a thing and GOD I was SO fucking confused. there's already a lot going on in this issue/arc but this made things so much worse hvbhjkdfbsk. I powered thru and still managed to understand most of the arc despite reading half this issue out of order (essentially) bc the website I read it on split the pages up and I couldn't tell they were supposed to be doubled (and also I'm dumb so I didn't figure it out)

anyways, the actual issue...windcharger is out here using his powers to rip a dudes arms clean off. wow!

and there's skids getting punched in the face. Ls

and glitch! a totally minor character of course...

MANNNNN I SO adore the panel of all the lost lighters appearing in a cloud of purple smoke, all posing epically....SO fucking good, peak sci-fi coolness vibes, A++

as usual jro killing it w/the titles, ‘elegant chaos’ is such a great name for a time travel arc

also reading the tfwiki has shown me that many of jros titles are song or album titles, to which I say - that's epic and I love it. with jro doing it, I feel like it straddles the line between referencing music and the very fanfic-esque ‘title things after music’ vibe. I love it

oh god I forgot they use bs cybertronian time units in this sometimes lmao...I mean of course they do but still like, what the fuck is a cycle. is that a day. I feel like these words all have no meaning/the meanings change drastically depending on continuity. I cant keep up and also I'm lazy and don't care enough to try

I love rodimus did u know

poor riptide looks so confused lmao

IS....IS REWIND PIGGYBACKING TAILGATE...THATS SO FUCKING CUTE....I cant fully tell bc of the page layout but ooomg so precious. minibot buddies

whirl saying ‘chuff’ just reminded me how british jro is hvbhakjhdsfbs sometimes it just Jumps Out in mtmte and I'm like Oh God Britain Is Real

I really like the mtmte approach to time travel and paradoxes and whatnot. its just complex enough to be interesting but not too convoluted that it bogs down the story. perfect sci-fi fun!

mannnn chromedome talking abt brainstorm :( I'm sad abt those two hhhhh

and I love how at this point, nobody in the cast ACTUALLY knows brainstorm well enough to know what he’s really doing - including chromedome, who’s ostensibly his closest friend, somebody he’s known for a while - and even the readers don't really know what he’s up to...I like the mystery tbh

cant believe rewind wrote orion pax’s biography, omg. completely forgot abt that detail

cd saying ‘I love it when he talks history’ about rewind....hhhh I love cdrw so muuuuch

godddd the line rodimus says abt whirl - how they need people like whirl around who are ‘happy to get in the way’ of danger and death - that shit haunts me man like...rodimus is basically saying that he’s bringing whirl along to potentially die in place of someone like orion pax (nevermind the fact that whirl dying would ALSO fuck up the timeline)...like, how deep does it go?? is he saying that bc he knows whirl has been trying to get himself killed for a while now, or just bc whirl likes violence? mannn I cant...the character intricacies...man

anyways...I love rodimus he’s such an interesting character. you have that fucked up moment and then in the next panel he’s saying ‘if you want to call it a time phone, I wont stop you’ about the quantum walkie-talkie. he has the RANGE

oh and then rodimus casually volunteering chromedome to do mnemosurgery on anyone who might accidentally find out about them time traveling, which is again fucked up on multiple levels. the raaaaange

vjaksbhdhfusajbfdjk that panel of the lost light squad just standing there like idiots reminds me of that post where someone said abt that panel ‘these characters have a collective 3 brain cells’ or something hvbjadkfnksfdl

rodimus IMMEDIATELY breaking his own rules by trying to reassure pax that they're good guys by pointing at his autobot badge, even tho the autobots DONT EVEN EXIST YET at this point...my boy PLEASE go purchase some brain cells from the store 

and the fact that rodimus introduced himself to pax w/his real name...shouldn't he go by an alias or st??? that seems like a good time travel rule since optimus and rodimus definitely know each other later 

and like, did they not anticipate that some of the people in the past would recognize some of the lost lighters hgbajkhdjfnjksf like cd and whirl get Instantly recognized...great job guys

they are all SO bad at this hvbahskjdhfbasjkf I cantttt luckily for them the orion crew is handing them easy alibis 

‘the dugout’ is that a baseball reference????

also I love the scenery here, the bg looks like rock but there's metal piping and stuff running thru it, its so cool...really adds to the whole ‘cybertron biomes are made of metal’ thing

‘ancient history’ rodimus are you KIDDING ME-

cyclonus time travels to the past and IMMEDIATELY finds a window to stare broodingly out of. icon

tailgate thinking orion pax is SUPER COOL continues here from shadowplay and I love it...tailgate is so cute

and the tg saying ‘don't you think that's awesome, cyclonus?’ hhhhh so cute

one reason I love this arc so much is that this is the arc where the gay Really amps up 

TRAILBREAKER.... oh man ;_;

are you telling me that this outlaw base they're in has ONE bed for all of these people. what the hell vhbaksjhfnsal

cant believe rung sampled roller’s steroid juice box

also cant believe robot steroids exist. except yes I can and I love it

oooh roller’s a 0/1%er? I forgot abt that 

cant believe orion pax just grabs some random phone that belongs to these weird new people and answers it. WHO does that

goddddd megatron and orion’s conversation....destroy me

HHHHHH like...the HISTORY....the regret...the missed opportunities...its all so palpable....goddddddd

and of COURSE, the whole thing is steeped in tragedy...the ideological differences that will become the foundation for a 4 million year long war...megatron, who believes that you need to burn things down and start again to really make change stick, and then orion, who says ‘reform is the answer, not revolution’....AUGHHH the intricacies. mannnn

‘you sound lost’ 😭😭😭

‘its tragic.’ yeah, that about sums up their relationship, especially at this stage and in this continuity 

anyways. [cries about old man megatron talking to young naïve orion pax] goodbye

AUGHHH and then we jump to rodimus ONCE AGAIN breaking his own rules and trying to save trailbreaker...IT HURTS MAN...god I love rodimus, I feel like him being broken up about crewmembers like trailbreaker dying is one part regular sadness over people he knows dying for tragic reasons, and one part personal guilt at someone under his command dying, even if he’s not involved/at fault. I love the dichotomy of this emotional reaction that comes only partially from empathy/emotion, but also comes from a kinda self-centered need for success as measured by people under your command staying alive. and taking into account rodimus’s life it totally makes sense that he’d act like that...GAH I love it. the complexity of it all!

orion pax saying ‘you should read [megatron]. it’s powerful stuff’ I'm screaming, so many LAYERSSSSS

I fucking love time travel AHHHHHHHHH like the opportunity for interactions like these....chefs kiss

‘hey, best friend! miss you!’ rodimus is such a shit hvbdajkfksjhfd 

‘very sus’ rodimus ahead of his time w/the among us lingo

oooh and then they realize that the senate is trying to kill the sparks...gotta save the babies!

tailgate scolding cyclonus for bluntly stating that you'd wanna be subtle when killing newborns...hhhvbhsdfhhhhhh I love them sm

ooooh and rewind has an interesting suggestion - that the senate is actually trying to irradiate the sparks into being outliers...rewind is so smart I love him

and the fact that he’s using history from his database...love it

rodimus sending cyclonus and whirl out like pokemon

ROLLER NOOOO DONT GO OUT THERE

also wow this is literally the 5th (I think) double page spread in this issue...the confusion I felt the first time I read this...lmao 

and now this is literally one of my favorite issues so I'm glad I know what's going on lmao

oh man rodimus telling cd not to erase trailbreakers memory even tho that could jeopardize the entire timeline... :( 

oh man I didn't even notice but roller getting debris blasted into his face like that makes the whole ‘roller is tarn’ theory even more legit considering tarn’s face scars....

‘tighter the better’ hhh don't say that orion. but also, that’s the companion phrase to megatron saying ‘the deeper the better’ hvbhasjkhdfbaksjlf

I do love the semi-campy action hero antics that orion pax gets up to. its just so fun, even when the stakes are high and things are serious

‘this is the greatest thing I have ever seen’ tg ily

THE REVEAL THAT THE SPARKS WENT TO NYON...so rodimus just saved himself, basically...time travel is so trippy

GODDDD ND THEN TRAILBREAKER...HVHHHHHh 😭😭😭 THATS SO CRUEL MAN

oh man that last panel of trailbreaker holding up roller’s juice box...iirc the first time I read this I thought that was roller (cause of the juice box I guess? idk I'm an idiot) so I was like oh ok he must've come back or something. very much related but I didn't really think about tarn being a particular pre-established character and totally didn't read the whole ‘roller is tarn’ thing that was going on 

which in my defense ruth also didn't pick up on any of that while reading this and eventually like 2 issues before the reveal I had to prompt her like ‘you should maybe be wondering WHO tarn is’ vhbahjksdfbaksjdf

so! issue 37! this issue is a solid favorite of mine, id say definitely top 5 or even 3. I'm super biased bc I fucking LOVE time travel, it’s seriously one of my favorite tropes ever, and this issue hits all the time travel beats I love. characters traveling to the past and interacting with people they know! conversations that have multiple meanings bc of TIME TRAVEL! trying to save someone who meets a terrible fate in your future! fun time travel action! the time traveling characters being generally terrible at hiding the fact that they're time travelers! ITS SO GOOD. 

and I love the clever way everything is tied together here - where we get a nice continuation of shadowplay, with this taking place shortly after that with a lot of the same cast, and time travel classics like the good ole ‘if we hadn't travelled back in time and done what we did, the future we came from wouldn't have existed at all,’ in the flavor of ‘rodimus saving his baby self’ and ‘rodimus NOT saving trailbreaker’ and ‘everyone forgot about roller :(’ 

ok but like, did the lost lighters just go ‘oh well, guess rollers gone now.’ like they DID realize that the outlaw crew would have no idea what happened to him if they got their memories erased, right?? did the lost lighters figure that since roller never reappeared after this time period, that was how history was ‘supposed’ to go and they shouldn't mess with it? am I overthinking it? as usual: yes, probably. I love overthinking about comics, in case that wasn't obvious

basically...I love this issue soooo much. so so good and a bunch of fun tropes that I love. I mean the whole arc is like that for me since I love time travel so much. so I cant wait to (re)read more!!

[news-update-covid-19-usa]

NEWS UPDATE USA !!! A Missouri couple says they dragged their feet on getting the Covid-19 vaccine. Then they got sick

Louie Michael and his wife, Pattie Bunch, were both hospitalized last month with Covid-19 in Springfield, Missouri.

An ambulance first had rushed her, with respiratory failure, to an emergency room one day; he was admitted the next night. "You may not make it through the night," she recalls a physician telling her. Michael remembers the doctor asking him about possible intubation: "Do you want us to fight for you? Do you want us to do anything we can to save your life?" Bunch, now recovery at home, says she felt helpless. "You have no control." Coronavirus cases, hospitalizations and deaths are rising again in Missouri, with the federal government deploying a Covid-19 surge team to provide public health support. The state's health department estimates that more than 70% of the virus in the state is the more infectious -- possibly more dangerous -- Delta variant. That variant, first identified in India, accounted for 51.7% of all new Covid-19 infections in the country over the two weeks that ended Saturday, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has estimated. State health officials push vaccination efforts Robert Knodell, acting director of the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services, on Friday acknowledged significant outbreaks of the Delta variant in north-central Missouri and a similar surge in southwest Missouri. Vaccination, Knodell told reporters, "is now, and remains the number one most effective mitigation step that every Missourian age 12 and over can take to protect themselves, to protect their families, and their neighbors." Dr. George Turabelidze, a state epidemiologist, said Missouri had "vulnerable hot spots" where not enough people were vaccinated and warned the state is "heading towards widespread infection with Delta."

Over the past week, Missouri's Covid-19 caseload was second highest in the country, with 15.5 new cases per 100,000 people daily, or 108 cases per 100,000 people over seven days, according to Johns Hopkins University data. Arkansas had the highest rate at 15.7 new cases per 100,000 people each day, the data showed. At Springfield's Mercy Hospital, the rapid spike in hospitalizations left administrators scrambling to borrow ventilators from other hospitals. At the city's CoxHealth hospital system, 90% of coronavirus patients had the Delta variant. "We are seeing a tremendous increase in the number of Covid patients in our emergency department over the past several weeks," said Dr. Howard Jarvis, medical director of the emergency department at CoxHealth. He added, "We are going to get worse over the next couple weeks. Certainly people are out doing a lot more things. I think there's a lot of people that have less concern about the virus. Now we don't have a very high percentage in this area of people who are vaccinated." Breeding grounds for more deadly Covid-19 variants Missouri is not alone. More than 9 million people live in 173 US counties with Covid-19 case rates at or more than 100 cases per 100,000 people in the last seven days and with vaccination rates lower than 40%, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the CDC, said at a White House briefing on Thursday. More than 90% of those counties also have a vaccination coverage of less than 40%, according to Walensky.

"Many of these counties are also the same locations where the Delta variant represents the large majority of circulating virus," Walensky said. "Low vaccination rates in these counties, coupled with high case rates -- and lax mitigation policies that do not protect those who are unvaccinated from disease -- will certainly, and sadly, lead to more unnecessary suffering, hospitalizations and potentially deaths." In fact, a new data analysis has identified clusters of unvaccinated people, most of them in the southern United States, who are vulnerable to surges in Covid-19 cases and could become breeding grounds for even more deadly variants. The analysis by Georgetown University researchers identified 30 clusters of counties with low vaccination rates and significant population sizes. The five most significant clusters cover large swaths of the southeastern US and a smaller portion in the Midwest. The clusters are largely in parts of eight states -- from Georgia to Texas and southern Missouri. About one-third of Americans have not received a Covid-19 shot. About 39% of Greene County residents fully vaccinated Katie Towns, acting director of the Springfield-Greene County Health Department, said the county -- population about 300,000 -- had 240 Covid-19 cases just on Wednesday and 17 deaths in the last two weeks. About 39% of its residents are fully vaccinated, according to health department website. "We're not a huge community," she said of the 240 cases. "That's a really large number and we haven't seen these numbers since we had a surge back in December and January." About 56% of adults in Missouri have received at least one Covid-19 vaccine dose and 39.4% of residents are fully vaccinated, according to CDC data. In Taney County, where the southwestern Ozark city of Branson is a huge tourist draw, about 25% of its roughly 56,000 residents are vaccinated. "It runs the gamut," Lisa Marshall, director of the Taney County Health Department, said of the hesitancy to the vaccine. "Maybe they just want to wait and see or ... it's not quite ready yet. Maybe they're just not someone that vaccinates. We've also heard a little bit of concern over how quickly the vaccine was developed." Overall, data shows that Covid-19 is expected to swell in less vaccinated communities, especially as the Delta variant continue to spread in those areas. In Missouri, a federal surge team deployed there is to include an epidemiologist, research assistants, a health communication specialist, contact tracers and others who will help with vaccination and outreach, according to the health department. The teams include members of CDC, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency "We have a CDC representative helping us with ... investigating the (Delta) variant and its presence here in our community," Towns said. "But we just have ... one representative right now. We'll gladly accept the additional resources."

At the 500-bed CoxHealth hospital system, Jarvis said nearly all of the new Covid-19 admissions have been unvaccinated younger patients. "This is going to keep happening," he said of the latest surge in cases. "It may peak here and then it's going to spread to other places. If we don't get enough vaccinated there's going to be another variant that's probably worse. It's just that's the way viruses work." Couple, sick with Covid-19, holds hands in the ICU In Rogersville, Louie Michael said he and wife Pattie Bunch, a nurse, had been "dragging our feet" since the spring about getting a Covid-19 vaccine. In mid-June, Bunch got sick. "It felt like a bomb dropped on me," said Bunch, who is still recovering less than a month later. "I just wasn't feeling good at all. And I thought, 'Oh, no.'" An ambulance rushed her to the hospital with respiratory failure on June 17. The next night, Michael, an entertainer, had to be rushed to the same emergency room in Springfield. A nurse eventually put them in the same ICU room, where Michael took a snapshot of them holding hands. "We didn't know how it was going to turn out," said Michael, who along with Bunch urges people to get vaccinated. "We didn't know if we'd get to go back home." "Or see our kids again, or our family or grandson," she said. "It could have just ended that night," said Michael, who has been with Bunch for 30 years. "It made me mad. I didn't want it to end that way. It's not supposed to end that way ... and unfortunately, it's ending for a lot of people that way."

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[dailyaudiobible]

02/01/2021 DAB Transcript

Exodus 13:17-15:18, Matt 21:23-46, Ps 26:1-12, Pr 6:16-19

Today is the 1st day of February, welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I am Brian and it's great to be here with you today. Obviously it’s a special day because we’re transitioning into the second month of the year, but it’s a special day because we've completed a whole month together, which means we are settling into a rhythm and we are settling into community for the year. It's…it’s interesting. If we…we make it to Valentine's Day, then the chances are really good that we are going to make it through the year together. And, so, well done for making it all the way here to the second month of the year. Let’s just take a second to think back. It's only been a month, but look at all that has happened. We…we found our origin story. We discussed that. We found out in the third chapter of Genesis what happened to us. We know this is the fall of man. We…we saw the repercussions of that immediately, both in the world and in the human heart. Mankind was naked and unashamed. That was the natural state of things. That’s how it was supposed to be both inward and outward week. We weren’t supposed to have to hide. We weren’t supposed to have hide from each other or from God. But that's what happened, naked and ashamed and hiding. And that's what we see everywhere we look, including in the mirror. And, so, we got some context. And we went through famous stories that we've probably heard our whole lives, like Noah and the flood. And we then met this man Abram and God calling this man Abram to a land he didn't know and giving a promise for this land and changing his name to Abraham and entering into a covenant with him. And then we watched the miraculous story begin to unfold as generations passed to new generations and more and more children were born. And, so, Abraham has Isaac. Isaac as Jacob. And we hear this often in the Bible, “the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.” And then Jacob's name was changed to Israel. And all the sudden we have a context for what we hear about the children of Israel. The children of Jacob and his offspring, the children of Israel. And we watched the story of Joseph at length, one of the children of Israel, who was trafficked by his brothers into slavery in Egypt. We watched God save Egypt from plague, saving Joseph's family in the process. And then we watched them prosper in…in Egypt, four centuries. Like, four centuries, but they were enslaved and then we met another powerful pivotal figure in the Scriptures named Moses, who was sent back to Egypt to be the…the prophet of God and to demand the freedom of God's people. And that brought on all these plagues that we’ve been reading about the last few days. And that's where we find ourselves. The final plague has descended upon Egypt. The…the children of Israel have been forcibly forced out of Egypt. And that's where we pick up the story as we begin this second month of the year. And we’re reading from the Voice Translation this week. Exodus chapter 13 verse 17 through 15 verse 18.

Commentary:

Okay. A few things we should probably take note of from our reading today because they will help us with our day and our week and this brand-new shiny sparkly month that we find ourselves in. Let's go to the book of Exodus first. The children of Israel have been set free from the bondage of slavery in Egypt. And we watched all of that unfold plague after plague after plague sort of systematically dismantling Egypt. And Pharaoh's arrogance in believing that he is a deity, that he is divine, that he is a God himself, and who is this Hebrew God that would come. And you can kinda get in his head and understand why he would think this. If he has been raised to believe that he is a child, a son of God, that he is the Pharaoh, like a divine being upon the earth, the king of Egypt, and he has a population of people who are his slaves and this population of people who are his slaves come and say, “our God says that you should let us go.” I mean if you think you are divine yourself then you would be thinking, “well, at bare minimum you are my slaves. Whoever your God is is no way near as powerful as the gods of Egypt or me.” So, we can see him resisting and we can see God just demonstrating His power before them at first but then things definitely begin to take a more serious turn and things amp up all the way until Pharaoh and the Egyptians demand the children of Israel leave, which they did. And then we…we read something really interesting that could really help us in our lives. So, the children of Israel were freed from slavery. They entered the desert because that's…that's the way to go to the promised land, across the Sinai Peninsula, but God did not lead them by the shortest, easiest coastal route. He led them deeper into the desert. So, in other words, He set them free and did not give them any easy path, did not give them the most straightforward path. There was work to be done in that desert. And we’re in that desert now, right? They’ve crossed the Red Sea and they are on the other side of the Red Sea, but they are in the desert and they are going to be there, and we are going to be there with them for what feels like an awful long time, 40 years to be specific. Actually, even more than that. And, so, we’ll be spending some time in the desert. And this is our desert portion of the year and we need to embrace it because there are so many lessons in the wilderness. And I mean that metaphorically in our lives, but I also mean that literally in the stories that we’ll find in the Bible that come from the wilderness. So, the children of Israel are in the wilderness backed up to the Red Sea when they notice that an army is coming against them. And the closer that tis army gets the more they realize these are the Egyptians. This is the Egyptian Army coming to destroy us and re-enslave. Of course, the Egyptians and Pharaoh after they…after they let the people go, they start imagining the repercussions. This is going to be devastating to their economy because now you have…you have about a million people that are your slaves that have been propping things up that you've set free. And, so, they’re reconsidering and hardening their hearts again. And they’re gonna go back and get going back and get the Hebrew people. Meanwhile the Hebrew people are kind of boxed in. It’s the wilderness in front of them, the Red Sea, the ocean behind them and the enemy army is bearing down upon them. We could pause here and just think about seasons in our lives where we have felt trapped and boxed in, like where there is literally no good way to go. The enemy is coming down against us. It’s the sea behind us and the mountains and the wilderness before us. There is no way to escape. And, so, the Hebrew people do basically what we would normally do. They start to complain and gripe about the predicament they’re in because now God has come to set them free and things have only gotten worse again. Do you see a theme emerging, though? Is this not the story of Joseph where when he did everything right things only got worse? So, they're ready to abandon Moses, see if they can maybe go back to Egypt and become slaves again because that might be better. While here's this army that’s gonna destroy them. They are trapped. And God speaks to Moses and Moses speaks to the people. The only thing you need to do is shut your mouth and watch this. This enemy that you see today you will never see them again. And that is indeed what happened. And that is indeed something that we should put in our pocket or purse and carry around with us for the next year.

Then we move into the book of Matthew. The religious leadership, we are talking about the clergy, right? We are talking about men of God who are leading the people are getting pretty fed up with Jesus. God in flesh. Like, they do not believe. And, so, they confront Jesus about how…who gave Him permission to do what He's doing. And, of course, as we have come to notice in the first month of the year Jesus is always going to speak to the truth of the situation. He’s always good to talk to the plot behind the story. He knows that what's being presented is a mask, that everyone is naked and ashamed and hiding. And, so, He's like, “well, let me ask you a question.” And He talks about John because they didn't believe in John either. And, so, Jesus ends up telling the story about a man who had a vineyard and he fixed it all up and got it ready for business, and then he leased it and went away and when a  harvest time came he wanted his share of the harvest, but the tenants refused became rebellious, beat up the people who came to collect the harvest on a number of occasions until the master sent is heir, his son to come and collect because he's the heir, he that…he's the owner. And, so, they should respect the owner of the vineyard but they don't. They conspire to kill him, which is what they do. And then Jesus asks the religious leadership what the Masters gonna do. And they immediately answer, “the master is gonna destroy those people.” They were speaking out their own future essentially, because in the story the vineyard is the Kingdom, and the master is the Father, and the Son is Jesus. And this story is an interesting warning about religious dominance. When religion is used to ensnare or entrap or control people then there is no value in it. That might sound bigger than it should. But it's simply the story that's coming out of all of the Gospels. The people that were against Jesus were the people of God, God's leaders who did not recognize that God was doing a new thing in the world and did everything to destroy that new thing including...including killing God, including killing Jesus. God made flesh. So, we should get some clues that this journey we are on as we walk alongside Jesus and listen to what He has to say and watch the away that He operates and observe His character that we may find a bunch of challenges, that we may need to listen to Jesus instead of what we've been told about Him, that we might need to press in closer and deeper as we watch the amazing and that's an understatement…the amazing thing that God had chose to do when He chose to come and rescue people again from slavery. Slavery to the oppressiveness of what was going on around them in their culture and slavery to sin. And we also may need to understand that when we become free we may not be taking the easy road. We may need to go into the wilderness because there is work to do there.

Prayer:

Jesus, we invite You into that because it doesn't sound like it would be fun. We don’t want to go wander in the wilderness. We felt like we did that all year last year. And yet the thing You are after is our freedom. And we confess that even as we see it in the Scriptures, we see it in our own lives. We fight You on that because it might be hard, it might be difficult. We might have to endure. It may get more difficult, before it gets easier and we don't like that. We don't like that. And yet You've been very clear all along that there is a narrow path that leads to life and that that is the path that leads to life and few ever find it, but wide is the road to destruction, the easy path. And, so, as we move into this second month, we are inviting Your Holy Spirit to begin to align us with where You're going, to begin aiming us in the direction we need to head in no matter what it looks like because we as the children of Israel are going to have to learn that there is no other hope outside of You. You are the only hope there is and we must trust You utterly. Come Holy Spirit we pray. In the name of Jesus, we ask. Amen.

Announcements:

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And that's it for today. I’m Brian I love you and I'll be waiting for you here tomorrow.

Community Prayer and Praise:

Hi, my DAB family this is Truly Thankful Taylor just wanted to say hi tonight. I have three of my little ones with me…2 littles and one teenager. Girls do you wanna say hi? Hi. We've been talking about our reading for today in DAB Kids and Chronological and all the different stuff 'cause all of our family are doing different ones. Some of us are doing all five in English. Some of us are just doing Chronological or kids and we're just loving God's word even more but we were talking about having faith as small as a mustard seed that it can move mountains. So, each…two of the girls wanted to pray tonight. So, sister do you want to start? What did you want to share? That people would have faith in God and that people would love God even more and let Him be in their heart. Jesus thank you for the day. Thank you for everything you have done. Thank you for being our God. And I want to…I want people to let you into their heart. In Jesus’ name. Amen. OK sister. Jesus thank you for the day that we have faith in us and faith in Jesus and that everyone starts praying and those who don't pray now pray. And have Jesus where? In our faith, in their heart. That's right. We pray all this in Jesus name. Amen. Love and blessings everybody. Bye. Bye. Bye.  

Hi, my name is Luanne from Texas. I just want to say thanks. This journey so far has been so good and so revealing. It's been so wonderful to watch the creation and then the de-creation and with the New Testament seeing what the recreation could be. I'm just so grateful. I'm grateful for Brian for this. I'm grateful to the community who’s reading it along with me and it's just been so healing after 2020. I'm just so grateful. So, Lord I just ask that for those who are weary, come. Come to the Bible. Sit with us and learn and you will find much joy. I ask this in our most holy savior's name, Jesus. Amen.

Good morning fellow DABbers this is Sally in Massachusetts Amazed by Grace it's January 27th and I am so thankful this morning that I listened as I do most every day to the DAB and so blessed by the word of God and so encouraged today as we read of Moses and Aaron and pharaoh and the people, how God works through everyone to carry out His plans and purposes. He worked through pharaoh. He worked through Moses. He worked through Moses mother and father. He accomplishes purposes through people and He's accomplishing His purposes in and through each of us day by day as we yield to Him. And I'm just so thankful that we worship a God of power, a God of a plan, a God with purposes. And I am so thankful that we have this family to worship God together, to encourage and strengthen each other. Thank you, Daughter of the King from Tennessee. I so appreciated your prayers and your thoughts today. And Pamela from Pennsylvania how easy it is. I have also often been guided by fear instead of faith in making decisions. And dear brother McQueen from Utah. Lord we pray Your comfort to this family. Thank You for Betsy Lopez and the wonderful grandma she was to him. We pray Your comfort to this family at this time. And Lord we thank You that although world at times feels like it's out of control You are God alone from before time began and You are on Your throne because You are God alone. Increase our faith in You Lord we pray and thank You in Jesus’ powerful name.

Hello Daily Audio Bible my name is Gail and I'm calling from Las Vegas. I'm calling in response to a boy that just called in about his grandma, Grandma Lopez who was in a car accident and he wanted to get the word out to us about his grandma. I am so proud of you for the courage that you showed to call in and let us know what happened to your grandma. I felt that you two had an amazing relationship and you were so close. And I bet you miss her. I really know that you miss her because you wanted to make a lasting memory and let us know that she died, and it was important to you to get the word out. So, I applaud your courage sweet boy and I just wanted to say that we hear you and we are praying for you. Keep calling in. Keep calling in. We love to hear from you. Bye for now.

Good morning Daily Audio Bible I'm calling in to speak to Golda McQueen. Young man your courage to send in the message to speak to the people about your grandmother and her legacy of love in your life touched my heart in so many ways to remember my own grandmother. I want to know not only Betsy Lopez will be remembered today for her own life but for the life that she poured into you. And I just want to encourage you with two verses that I thought of when I heard you speaking. Exodus 4:12. So, go Golda. I will be with you. When you speak and I will give you the words to say. And in Acts Jesus himself came to Paul and encouraged him to keep speaking. He said in acts 18 9 and 10 during the night Paul had a vision and the Lord said to him don't be afraid and don't stop talking to people I am with you and no one will be able to hurt you. Many of my people are in the city. Heavenly Father I pray You pour out a triple blessing upon Golda McQueen as he goes to the funeral of his grandmother whom he loved so much and wants her to be remembered and it made such an impact to remember my own grandmother I know prayed for me, but I never got to grow up with her. So, I…I thank you Golda. You have touched my heart in ways you'll never know until we see each other in heaven. God bless you son.

Hello, my name is Richard today is my first day listening in several years. I just listened to February 27th recording that I was blessed by. Some of you may remember I was Richard from Mississippi back in 2018 I went through a divorce. I moved back home to Arkansas. That’s where I stay at now. I work for my dad part time. I just wanted to introduce myself. I'm trying to get back into reading the word and listening to DAB every morning. So, I covet your prayers that you would pray for me as I establish a new habit and to know the Lord. Bless each and every one of you in Jesus’ name.

Good morning this is Radiant Faith in Georgia. I'm listening on January the 27th and I just heard a young man from Nevada I believe his name was Golda McQueen. He's nine years old and he was on his way…I hope I can get this out. He was on his way to his grandma's funeral. I'm a grandma and this just really touched my heart, the love that he had for her. He said that it's hard to get messages out from where he lives and he's only nine years old but let me tell you something, we heard you loud and clear. We heard the love that you had for your grandma and I just pray, and I believe that Jesus let her hear you. Oh, Lord I know she was proud of you.

[stereostevie]

LaKeith Stanfield Settles Into His Toughest Role Yet: Himself

As he heads towards his thirties, the electrifying actor is laying himself bare — and finding a new sense of balance

by Tirhakah Love Feb 12

For nearly a decade, LaKeith Stanfield has used his screen time reveling in the bizarreness of America’s racial consciousness. Whether Atlanta’s quippy street mystic Darius, or the code-switching sardonics of Cassius in Sorry to Bother You, his characters have always seemed to be in on the joke — and in his latest, Judas and the Black Messiah, Stanfield is closer to the secret than ever before.

Shaka King’s film, which chronicles the final days of Black Panther Party Chairman Fred Hampton (Daniel Kaluuya) through the sullen eyes of FBI informant William O’Neal (Stanfield), finds the actor in his darkest, most nuanced rendition of the Black saboteur to date. “It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do,” the 29-year-old said over a Zoom call last week, “I just really wanted to make sure I was getting it right. But then also not getting it too right, if that makes sense.”

Stanfield has built a name on playing conflicted characters, but a figure with as much baggage as O’Neal — who was forced into his own role while still a teenager — demanded what he calls a “necessary nuance,” one that became, at times, overwhelming. The film set became not just a vision of radical Black politics, but a space for Stanfield to process his own upbringing in order to be a more “realized, holistic” person. LEVEL spoke with the actor about how playing O’Neal helped illuminate his path toward a healthier decade that included both therapy and meditation, heading into his thirties.

LEVEL: Judas and the Black Messiah was supposed to drop in August, but 2020 had other plans. How does it feel to know it’s coming out?

LaKeith Stanfield: I’m excited. I want people to learn about Chairman Fred Hampton’s story. It’s something that’s not spoken about enough. Everything has been such a question mark with this pandemic — not knowing how it was going to come out, or whether it would come out, period. So here we are with Black History Month, this story of Chairman Fred Hampton, and everybody gets to experience this in the most honest way we could put it in. I’m really happy. I’m going to host a screening at my house and just invite everybody… who’s been tested. [Laughs]

By my count, this is the second role that Daniel swiped from under your nose. Didn’t he get you for Get Out, too?

That’s right. You know what, for Get Out I auditioned for like every role. I came in and I read with Jordan Peele. And then I read for another — I think it was Rel’s role — and ended up eventually reading for my role. Damn, I forgot all about that.

How can we keep being friends with a dude who just steals roles from you, bro?

Nah, it’s all good. [Laughs] Ultimately, those decisions are made by people who have a better understanding about casting and their relation to the story than I do. If they’d asked me to play a hat in this movie, I would’ve done it.

It doesn’t seem like a Hollywood thing to do at all.

Hollywood is not always behind things like this. It took years to get it to the point where we could actually make it. These are stories people are yearning for. We have to always prove that time and time again, unfortunately, but it is what it is. We show and prove these kinds of stories are human stories. They’re specific to the Black experience, but it’s global. We hope that we can get these studios to understand that more and more.

How did you relate to [William O’Neal’s] isolation and paranoia he lived with? How did you tap into that?

I didn’t see him as someone I could connect to, so we started to design the character from the inside out. The thing is, we don’t have any information about O’Neal outside of his Eyes on the Prize interview, a couple of court transcripts, and other eyewitness accounts. We could create him from scratch and give him different dimensions. I wanted to introduce how he might be a thrill-seeker. He might get fun out of creating imbalance. He steals cars — he wasn’t very afraid to put himself in a line of fire — but he was also a person who eventually felt guilty about what he did. In the full-length version of his Eyes on the Prize interview, he says at one point, “I felt bad about the things I did, but I had to continue to play the role.” He contradicts that later by saying, “I’ll let history speak for me.” Clearly this guy has an internal struggle that we missed.

Wearing all these different masks.

In the scene where I had to poison him, a lot of it didn’t end up making it to the final cut, but we shot [me mixing it in] Kool-Aid, and I had to go through all those motions. With somebody like Daniel, who I just respect as a human and an artist, as Fred Hampton, it felt like I was actually poisoning Chairman Fred Hampton. One thing [co-star] Dominique Fishback mentioned to me is that your body doesn’t always differentiate the experience from your imagination. So sometimes your body thinks that’s real, everything you’re putting it through. It’s no wonder I’ve been feeling so stressed out and having panic attacks. I realized going forward before I step into something like that again, maybe have a therapist. [Laughs]

“There’s a dynamic between celebrity and the common man that Covid-19 has really lifted the veil on. We all gotta wear our masks or we suffer the same fate. You’re not special.”

For Black people playing an op it’s different. There’s real pressure. Especially for a character who’s never been portrayed.

That’s how I felt when I first figured out I found out who he was. But you don’t go into something like this not knowing that’s going to be the case. I hope I was able to portray him in a way that made people see themselves in the character. What decisions would you have made? Were you trying to go to jail for five to 10 years? Would you try to stay out? What does that mean? Those are the more important questions. Let’s say there’s a million people in the world: two of them are Fred Hamptons; the rest are William O’Neal. I want to challenge people to think about the ways they might be O’Neal-esque. And maybe through seeing this, you might distance yourself from some of those things.

If the pandemic has revealed anything, it’s the disconnect between the celebrity class and everyone else. People like Hampton and [Bobby] Seale are trying to do cultural work. We’re seeing that there’s disconnects here. How does a film like this impact your view of celebrity?

These roles are metaphors for so many things. Chairman Fred Hampton as a metaphor for socialism, selflessness, and O’Neal could be argued to be a metaphor for capitalism and selfishness, or perceived celebrity ego. There’s a dynamic between celebrity and the common man that exists, which Covid-19 has really lifted the veil on to a significant degree because we all sit in here on Zoom, right? [Laughs] We all gotta wear our masks or we suffer the same fate. You’re not special. This made everybody have to sit down and confront that idea.

[Laughs] Right.

One could argue that the fact that Fred Hampton died at a young age is justification as to why you shouldn’t try and put things outside yourself for the greater good, because it ends up being helpless and hopeless. I don’t agree with that. I think that Chairman Fred Hampton’s legacy lives on, like he said, “you can kill a revolutionary, but you can’t kill a revolution.” I remember being in that scene where Daniel was giving a speech, and I’m thinking, the things that Chairman Fred did all those years ago, today we are here experiencing this moment collectively because of him. While I’m doing this, I’m looking into the audience, seeing Afros, seeing Black people, seeing the beauty and the confidence and love, I don’t really even see that these days. So he zapped me back into a time where this is what people were on. We gotta find that in ourselves again and unlock it

You have a great way of playing chaos agents. Whether it’s a muted performance in Atlanta or muted in a different way in Uncut Gems, where your character was always on the fucking edge. Why do those roles as subversive figures speak to you?

I haven’t really thought about it but I know one thing’s for sure: I tend to lean toward characters who have internal dialogue or struggle. I like trying to find some groundedness and truth in the in-between of two extremes. These characters appeal to me on a subconscious level because that’s how I am. I like taking things to crazy extremes and then trying to find some kind of balance in that. I’m also attracted to characters being able to show the mirror to you and have you see something that activates something in you. Those characters that have you see yourself through absurdity.

You mentioned earlier how young these dudes were. Fred Hampton was 21 years old when he was killed. If he made 24, 25, I’m wondering how much more he could have gotten done. Being Black, we make it to 25, it’s a thing. You’re now about to make it to 30. How’s it hitting you? Do you think about age at all like that?

Not really. Not really, but to some extent, this is a landmark moment for me. I feel like I’m just starting to really get my shit together, like personally. And be the better version of myself for myself. I just started therapy just this year.

Yo, congrats.

Thanks man. Going into my thirties, I plan to continue to do it. It’s been helpful for me to unpack a lot of stuff. I’ve been through a lot of stuff, there’s a lot of things I just didn’t confront. Those things mount; you act out in different ways and they can become harmful to you. So I just said this year, I’m going to make the choice to try and be better. Like I was always throwing off therapy. I never wanted to try it. I was like, whatever. It was just something that’s bad in my family. Growing up, everyone’s like, “therapy, what the fuck are talking about?”

So I wanna continue working on that — working on myself and finding a better sense of balance, and by virtue of doing that, unlock more potential in my heart. And I’ll be able to express in a more realized, whole holistic way. Those are my ambitions moving forward.

There’s always a moment where you just know that you need it. That, there are strategies you just don’t have that you need to build to be a person. Was there a moment for you where it’s like, fuck I really gotta go to therapy. I really gotta get some help?

I wake up every day and I have the same thought: Fuck, I gotta go to therapy.

[Laughter]

I was kind of raised like a wolf. I didn’t have parents or people who were guiding me or told me anything. So I had to figure out everything on my own — try on masks and faces and hats and wigs — and try to figure out what my place is in the world. For a long time, I didn’t realize I was stunted because of that. Not having that at home, and at an early age being traumatized by things I was seeing. Just now, I’m starting to really find the tools to help me pull that young self out of that abyss. It took me a while to even realize there was a problem because I was like, “Oh, you guys are crazy. I’m not crazy.”

Were you shopping for therapists during the pandemic?

It’s all on Zoom now. I’ve found this really cool therapist. It’s great and perfect for me right now. Hopefully it continues to be the case. It’s helped me a lot. After doing press yesterday, I had another session and it was amazing. It helps you unlock things about yourself. It’s not even necessarily about the person that you’re doing therapy with, but like you said, perspectives and strategies and tools that you didn’t have access to before.

Especially in the work you do, it’s important to extricate yourself — that period of like, okay, I gotta get out of this. How have you come back to yourself in this period of time?

It’s been meditation. The one good thing about this pandemic is being able to sit at home by yourself and deal with yourself and just your inner voice. And even though that’s annoying as hell, beautiful clarity comes out of it. People would be surprised how many answers they can give themselves just by listening to themselves and not distracting yourself with so many things like social media or movies and stuff. Now, it isn’t easy, especially once you become hooked into a pattern, but it’s really worth it.

That’s been beautiful for me just to take those moments. It’s important and it’s taught me a lot about myself. And that’s kinda what pushes you. Now that you understand and recognize some of the issues that you want to make better about yourself, you can plan on ways to do that. Whether it means therapy or yoga, which I also started doing.

There’s a scene in the film that feels like the Last Supper, and it’s just gut-wrenching. That sense of dread is so hard to tap into, but it also feels of a piece with what so many of us have been going through — knowing that people are losing their lives, either from our government or from a virus, and living with that same dread.

It’s a real thing. I went to the hospital recently on some health stuff. When I was in there, there were a bunch of Covid-19 patients being moved about. Being in a hospital is pretty scary right now. People screaming and literally dying around you. There’s an overall energy. Like this feeling of loss permeating in the world today.

Before we started this movie, my best friend who I grew up with got killed by his brother. So I was carrying that with me the whole time. One thing that made those moments real for me is that I know what it feels like to lose somebody abruptly, violently. When we filmed me having to poison Fred Hampton, it was a really tough day — I was thinking about my own brother, just in a whole different place all day. On set crying. That sense of loss, knowing the violence of all of that, really informed everything for me. There was no distinction between reality and what I was experiencing in the moment. Most of the takes in that scene, I was actually bawling. I had to tone it back.

The worlds are just overlapping with one another. That’s fucking wild.

I hope having gone through all that, somebody watching it can be moved or touched. Maybe it helps put emphasis on Fred Hampton and why it’s so valuable to protect people like him.

As someone who lost someone close recently, some days it feels like your worlds are collapsing on one another. I just lost my dad this past summer. It’s weird to even talk about, but the fact that you have to just carry on, with your friend’s death sitting in the back of your head is…wild.

With movies, you never know if we’re doing the right take, or even if it’s ever going to be seen by anyone. Especially with something like this, you never really know. I’m so grateful for everybody putting their best foot forward. I want everybody to see it. I really want Black people to see it, especially Black kids in Chicago. I want them to see someone who really put things outside of themselves and put something first and gave in love. I just hope that somebody sees it and it touches them. It makes them think about something a little differently. That’d be dope.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

[sassyduckqueen]

30 Days of Lukanette- First Concert

Luka hummed to himself as he walked to the bakery. His mom had asked him to pick up the cake for Juleka’s birthday party and been that he could do with the walk, he agreed. Since his mom had gotten akuamtized, he took extra precaution to keep his emotions under control but today had been very hard. Not because of anything too bad. Just because his school work was stressing him out. He was suppose to be writing a song for his exam and he had a gig for Saturday that he was nervous about. However, he couldn’t find any inspiration for the song so a break was good and he figured he might find inspiration somewhere outside of the boathouse. He hummed to himself as he came to the bakery and pushed open the door. The baker looked up and smiled. He was a huge man but seemed to have a friendly vibe.

“Hello, can I help you?” He asked.

“Hey. I’m here to pick up a birthday cake. Um I have the order reciept here,” He smiled, handing it over to the baker.

“Aah, yes,” He smiled. “It’s almost ready. My daughter is just adding some finishing touches to it. I’ll go let her know to wrap it up,”

With that, he turned away, leaving Luka alone in the bakery. He looked around and checked out the different foods on display. They all looked so good.

“Here we go,” The bakery stated as he carried the cake out before placing it on the counter. He opened the box, revealing a two tier black and purple cat with little bats and spiders on it. Luka smiled. “Are you happy with it?”

“Yes, it’s perfect,” Luka smiled as the bakery’s daughter came out. Her eyes went wide when she saw him but he smiled coolly. “Hi, Marinette. I didn’t realize you lived here,”

“L-luka...” She gasped, blushing a little before getting her cool back. “It’s nice to see you. Are you collecting Juleka’s cake?”

“I am,” He smiled, closing the lid as her dad rose an eyebrow. “Are you coming to her party?”

“Of course. Actually, that’s where I was just heading. I can walk with you to the boathouse if you want since we’re both going to the same place,”

“That would be great. I’d like the company,” He smiled, picking it up and walking to the door with her. She opened it and he stepped out before she waved to her father. They began to walk to the boathouse in silence but Luka bit his lip as he thought what he should say. He wanted to talk to her. See how she’s doing since she last came round the boathouse. She had been round several times since they first meet but it was mostly to hang around Juleka and the other girls. They seemed to use the living room as a sort of Head Quarters of discussing her interest in Adrien. However, she never failed not to acknowlege Luka when he would come into the living room. She would always smile and wave or say hi to him before his sister chased him away. “So… your Dad said you decorated the cake?”

“Oh, I only made the spiders and bats. They actually weren’t going to be on there but I figured Juleka would love them so I wanted to add them on,” She mumbled as they walked.

“Well, I think she’s going to love it,” He smiled, making her smile but he didn’t know what to say to keep the conversation going but then an idea popped into his head. “So um… I’m playing at the local bar on Saturday and I could really do with a friendly face in the audience… I was wondering if you wouldn’t mind coming along… you know so I have someone I know in the crowd. I know it’s a bit of an odd request but it really would be great if you were there…”

“I’d love to come and watch you. You’re an amazing guitarist, Luka,” She grinned. “I don’t know why you’re nervous though. You’ll totally kill it,”

“Thanks but it actually the first time I’ll be playing in front of people that aren’t my family,”

“Well, that makes sense,” She grinned, making him smile. “Hey, I can bring Alya and Nino as well! Three people is better then one so you’ll be more confident if you see more then one person you know and you’ve played in front of them before”

“The more the merrier,” He smiled, admiring her idea to make sure he felt confident.

“Oh I can try and get Adrien to come too!” She gasped and it took all his willpower not to let his face fall. He liked Adrien but as long as he was there, Marinette wouldn’t see him. He realized that quickly after they went ice skating together. He had a wonderful time with her but in the end, he decided it was best to let her go so he told her to go after Adrien. It hurt him to say those words but her happiness was important to him.

“That would be awesome to see him there too,” He smiled, ignoring the hurt in his heart. However, Marinette frowned still. “Marinette?”

“Well… it’s a maybe for him cause his dad is really strict and doesn’t like for him to go anywhere,” She explained, frowning deeply.

“That’s awful,” He frowned as well as they came to the boat. “Is that why he can’t make it to Juleka’s party? She mentioned she had invited him but he said he couldn’t come,”

“Yeah. Mr Agreste is overly protective and strict,” She replied before leaning towards him. “Can I tell you a secret?”

“Sure,” He smiled.

“He really scares me. He’s so uptight and strict,” She stated, making him smile softly at her.

“Don’t worry. I’ll protect you from him and his fashion choices,” He laughed, making her smile.

“My hero,” She grinned as he put down the cake before she joined the other girls. Luka smiled to himself as he watched her before Juleka came up. Instantly, everyone rushed over to wish her a happy birthday. Luka couldn’t help but smile as he watched the scene unfold. The smile on his sister’s face was worth a million words.

~Saturday Night~

Luka hummed to himself as he set up his guitar and mic in the pub. It wasn’t big or spacious and it definitely wasn’t a huge arena but it was a step closer to where he wanted to be. He didn’t mind playing in small venues as his hard work would add up and one day, he would be as big as Jagged Stone. He smiled to himself at the thought before he lowered his mic and made sure he could sing into it. Once he was satitified, he walked over to the bar and ordered a coke and a bottle of water. The bartender gave them to him and wondered back to his set as he heard the door open. He looked over and smiled as he saw Marinette walk in with her friend Ayla and a girl he hadn’t met yet. He put his coke down and walked over to them but as soon as he did, he shivered. There was something about the way Marinette was stood, as if she was on guard and the way the new girl was acting that he didn’t like. And her heart song made him feel sick. He studied her for a moment as he walked over. She had long, hip-length chestnut colored hair with bangs similar to a horse mane. They were loosely tied at the tips with orange bands. Her eyes were oliver green and she had slight smirk on her lips. The word that instantly came to mind was Trickster. There was just something not right with her.

“Hi, I’m Lila,” She grinned, moving over to Luka. “Alya said you invited us to your gig here tonight. That’s super kind of you by the way,”

“Right.” He stated, coldly before turning to Marinette and smiling. “I’m so glad you made it, Mari,”

“Wouldn’t mind it for the world, Luka,” Marinette smiled shyly. He noticed in the corner of his eye Lila narrowing her eyes. “I can’t wait to hear your music,”

“Thanks,” He grinned. “I wrote some songs especlally for this,”

“Oh, I write music too!” Lila suddenly butted in as she moved into his line of sight and smiled sweetly. “I composed the whole set list for the orchestra italiana. They were so blown away and touched by my pieces that they begged me to come back and write for them again,”

Luka ignored and when to speak to Marinette as Lila looked around.

“Oh, do you sing as well?” She asked, noticing the mic. He mentally rolled his eyes. “My grandmother was a famous opera singer in Italy before she passed away,”

“Hey. Marinette. Can I have a minute?” He suddenly stated, nodding to the entrance to the beer garden.

“S-Sure,” She nodded. He took her hand and led her outside before closing the door and let out a breathe of relief. “Are you ok?”

“That girl… Lila was it? God, I don’t like her!” He gasped before looking at Marinette with slightly concern. “You didn’t invite her, did you?”

“No,” She gasped. “Alya kind of did. I tried to tell Alya that it should just be us but Lila had overheard and insisted on coming,”

“Ok,” He nodded before taking her hand and looking at her. “Please be careful around her though. She lies through her teeth like it’s second nature,”

“I know,” Marinette stated, blushing as he looked at her. “Wait you didn’t believe her?”

“No. She clearly just wants attention and is willing to do anyting to get it,” He confirmed. “Beware the trickster for even they don’t know when they are lying,”

“Said the wise old snake,” Marinette added, smiling. “Don’t worry, Luka. I don’t trust her at all,”

“That’s my girl,” He smiled, causing her to blush before they went back inside. He walked over to his set and began to play. He was still kind of nervous but knowing Marinette was there made it all worth it. Especially when he came to the song he had written for her. He hoped that maybe she would see his feelings once she heard his music but he didn’t hold his hopes too high. After all, Adrien still had her heart right now and he understood that but he hoped that just maybe she might give him a chance. He would sweep her off her feet if she did. Unfortunately, his little gig didn’t last long for him to play it as Cat Noir was literally thrown through the doors and landed in the amp. He quickly got up and grinned.

“Best to get to safety everyone. Got an akuma on the loose and my lady is yet to be seen but don’t worry, Cat Noir has got this and she’s on her way. I know it!” He grinned before charging back outside. As soon as he did, people began to panic, rushing around to get to a safe spot. Luka grabbed his guitar and ran to the bar area to find Marinette but found she was gone. He looked around and spotted her slipping out the doors unnoticed. He went to follow but panicked people got in his way and a hand grabbed his arm.

“W-wait… stay with me… I’m scared...” Lila gasped as crodile tears rolled down her face.

“Stay there. You’ll be fine,” He stated, coldly before freeing his hand. “I have to find Marniette...”

He noticed Alya was gone too.

“And Alya by the looks of it,” He mumbled before rushing off. He found Alya rather easily but Marinette was a different matter. She was no where to be seen and wasn’t answering her phone but Ladybug was here now so everything would be fine. Soon, the akuma was defeated and everything was back to normal. Luka returned to the bar but found his stuff had been packed up and his place take by the next singer. He sighed and slid the guitar into his case before he walked out of the pub. Marinette had long gone by the looks of it and so had the others. He began to walk home but instead, his feet led him to the bakery. The lights were on but it had it’s close sign up. For a second, he wasn’t going to do anything but once again, his body took control and before you could say music, he knocked on the door. A woman answered the door and smiled at him. “sorry to disturb you. I just wanted to know if Marinette got home ok? There was an akuma attack near the venue we were in and she got seperated from me. I’ve tried to call her but she didn’t answer,”

“She just got in,” She smiled, causing him to look relieved. “Would you like to come in and see her? I’m sure she’d be happy to know you’re ok too,”

“Um I should-” He looked at his phone and saw she had tried to call him back. “Actually, yeah, I would if you don’t mind,”

“Not at all,” She smiled, letting him inside and showing him where to go. He climbed the ladder and knocked on the door.

“come in,” Marinette’s voice ordered as he fell his phone vibrate. “Come on. Answer,”

He pushed it open and climbed in, causing her to sqeak in surprise.

“Luka! Ypure ok!” She gasped, rushing over to him and hugging him. “I was so worried so I tried to call you and you didn’t answer,”

“I’m ok,” He smiled, patting her hair.”I’m sorry you didn’t get to hear much of my music,”

“Me too,” She frowned softly but an idea popped into his head.

“Why don’t I play for you?” He asked. “Your own private concert,”

“Really?!” She gasped as he took out his guitar and began to play the song he wrote for her. He began to sing as she looked at him in abolute awe as he sang about her soft blue eyes and silky, blue hair. He moved over to her and sat next to her as he played and sang. She smiled softly and closed her eyes, feeling the music. A small tear slid down her face as the song came to an end and Luka went to wipe it away but she beat him to it. “T-that was beautiful,”

“I wrote it about a girl I like,”

“She’s one lucky girl,” She smiled. “Thank you for sharing that with me,”

“Well, I wanted you to hear it,” He smiled. “I think me and you should hang out again. I like spending time with you,”

She blushed as he looked at him with a loving look.

“Well, it just happens I’m at Gabriel Agreste’s fashion show this week as my hat will be modeled and you did say you’d protect me from him and I have a plus one so would you like to be my plus one?”

“I would love too,”

[trashforhockeyguys]

Need The Sun-2- Tyler Seguin

ONE

A/N: Potentially an emotional rollercoster? So I’m sorry. 

Break My Heart Right- Jame Bay

“Mrs. Seguin? Are you alright?”

 “I- I can’t be pregnant. No.”

 “Ma’am, I’m sorry if this is hard for you. But we did run a full panel, and I assure you the test wasn’t wrong. You do, of course, have options.”

 “I um-”

 “I advise you to go home and talk with your husband, and then give this office a call.”

 You seemed to stumble out of the office, but you somehow found your way to your car.  But all you could do was sit there. Kids were something you wanted, sure, but not something that had been talked about.

 You and Tyler both decided before you’d gotten married, that you wanted to wait a while. He still had so much left to do in the league before he’d feel comfortable taking on the role of a father, and you felt like your life was just starting. A baby was never part of this plan. Not to mention the fact that a baby would further complicate your illness. You weren’t ready.

 You tried to figure out your next move. You had to tell him, that part was obvious because there was no way you’d be able to get through any of this alone. Part of you was relieved that you finally knew what was wrong with you, but you were terrified for what the answer would mean.

 You sat in the driveway for nearly twenty minutes before you were able to gather the energy and the courage to go inside. You kept going over ways to tell him, ways to explain everything. But even you didn’t know how to explain it. You were on the pill, and even though it wasn’t 100% full proof, you hadn’t had any scares before. Not to mention, you had no reason to assume that you’d been pregnant. You’d gotten your period this month, hadn’t you?

 One thing was certain, you were having a baby, a baby that you and your husband hadn’t planned for. A baby that you weren’t ready for. But a baby none the less. You’d been told a few years ago, that because you’d never really been able to get your levels right, that getting pregnant might prove to be difficult. Yet, here you were, with a baby you didn’t even know you wanted, and a future more uncertain that it had ever been.

 But you still held onto the promise he’d made you this morning, you’d get through it together. Somehow, you’d figure it out. You’d make it work. You’d promised each other that the day you got married and continued to promise it almost every single day.

                                            FIVE YEARS LATER

  “Daddy!”

 You watched as your daughter took off towards her dad. She saw him once a week, sometimes more if his schedule allowed for it. But you couldn’t help but smile every time they were together. She adored her father, and he would do anything for her and you knew that.

 You’d never try and say he was a bad father, you’d never try and take custody from him, in fact, you would be okay if he wanted more. But you knew that hockey season was tough, and somehow your four-year-old daughter understood that too.

 “Oh my baby!” He scooped her up in his arms and attacked her with kisses, which seemed to be their thing now.

 It warmed your heart to see their big smiles, but a big part of you missed the days when it was like this every day. When she didn’t have to wait to see her dad or didn’t have to facetime him every other night of the week. It was moments like this that made you wish the two of you had never gotten the divorce.

 The divorce didn’t come because of the sweet baby the two of you brought into the world. You made sure she knew that time and time again, the divorce wasn’t because of her. The divorce happened when she was two and was the result of two people who didn’t love each other in the same way anymore. You’d never fallen out of love per say, but there was no doubt you didn’t love each other like you should’ve.

 “Hey Ty,” You didn’t realize how tired you sounded until the worry clouded his face.

 “Hey, you feeling okay?”

 “Yeah, I’m okay, it’s just been a long week.”

 “Mommy had to go see a friend again! So, I got to play with Kitty!”

 “You had to-”

 “We can talk later Ty,” You cut in, “Do you have your bag, baby?”

 “I got Bear Bear!” She cheered, waving around the teddy bear that the team gave her on her first birthday.

 “Well, so long as you have Bear Bear,” Tyler grinned, “Y/N, do you want to come to dinner? We’re supposed to meet some of the guys, I’m sure they’d love to see you? And maybe we can talk after?”

 You wanted to say no, you knew you shouldn’t go. You hadn’t been to a proper team function since you and Tyler were still together. You weren’t sure if you really had the energy to go either, but you missed the team. They’d been your second family for years, and even though you saw a good majority of them at anything little Ella did, you didn’t see them nearly as much as you once did.

 “I don’t know Ty.”

 “It’s just dinner,” he leaned a little closer to you, “Besides, you and I both know she sleeps better when we both tuck her in.”

 You sighed, he was right. Ella would be out like a light if you both tucked her in. However, if just one of you did it, she’d be awake for hours, even if one of you called the other. She wanted both of you there, which wasn’t unexpected. She wanted both parents, not just one.

 Your heart broke for her. She was still too young to understand that sometimes it just didn’t work out. There weren’t any hard feelings between you and Tyler, in fact, you were pretty sure you both still loved each other in some way. He’d always be a part of your family, even if you weren’t married to him anymore. You’d never let Ella grow up with parents that hated each other. Not that you could ever hate him anyway.

 “Dinner, and that’s it.”

 “Yay! Mommy you get to come too!” Ella yelled, grabbing both of your hands.

 Ella was twice as hyper when she was around the team. She was full speed ahead, unable to settle down for anything. She’d taken off towards Jamie the second she saw him, essentially ditching you and Tyler. Every now and again, she’d run over and drag one of you back to where she was, stating that she needed you.

 When it came time for dinner, she made sure she was sat in between both of you. She had the biggest smile on her face, which made you think that maybe you should do this more. Although you and Tyler had gotten good at the co-parenting part, you didn’t do much together as a family. You took her to every home game and watched as she screamed at everyone. You’d sent a video to Tyler a few weeks ago just so he’d see what she was really like during a game. He came back and told you she was just like you.

 You hoped she wasn’t like you. You hoped she wouldn’t have to deal with everything that you have, and that she’d always be like the energizer bunny. She was 0 to 100 the second her feet touched the floor and she kept going until she crashed at night.

 It was worse on game nights because she would get amped up on adrenalin and then there was nothing to be done. If it was an away game, she’d sit in the living room and scream and scream the entire time. If it was a home game, she’d scream and bang on the boards. Sometimes she’d cry if someone got hit a little too hard for her liking. But there was no doubt that she loved the game. And she loved watching her dad play it.

 “So, Y/N, what have you been up to?” Jamie asked you half way through the night.

 “Work, parenting, and my bed,” You half-joked, “Effectively single moming a four-year-old is…exhausting.”

 Ella squealed from across the room as Tyler picked her up. They both had big smiles, she had his smile. They had the same mischievous look in their eyes too, some days it almost felt like they were the same person, and that scared you, to say the least.

 But you never had to question Tyler’s love for his daughter. He’d do anything for her, he’d probably walk through a brick wall for her if he had to. He’d talked about giving up hockey for her at first, it’d taken months to convince him that it was the last thing he needed to do.

 There was no doubt that she loved him too. When he was around nothing else seemed to matter to her. She’d cling to him all night. Normally she’d beg him to hold her and let go. There were some nights when she was a baby that she wouldn’t be able to sleep unless she was in his arms. She, apparently, didn’t fully grow out of that. But you couldn’t blame her, he was gone so much, it was natural for her to cling to him.

 “He’s really good with her,” Jamie stated, “Never would’ve thought I’d see that.”

 You couldn’t tear your eyes away from Tyler and Ella, “Yeah. He’s an amazing dad.”

 Ella looked over at you and waved before Tyler started to tickle her. Her laugh carried throughout the whole room, even above the sound of everyone else. You couldn’t help but smile at your baby, and the man who’d once been the love of your life.

 “For what it’s worth, Y/N, he still-”

 “Jamie, I love you, but don’t finish that, okay? The only way this whole thing works is if none of us go there,” You warned, “My daughter comes first, she’ll always come first. Tyler and I both agreed that when it comes to us, Ella is all that matters.”

 He raised his hands in defeat, “Funny, he tried to give me the same line. But I’ll drop it. Honestly, so long as the two of you are happy. So, are you happy?”

You sighed and looked back at the two across the room and then back at Jamie, “Jamie, I’m the ex-wife of the Tyler Seguin, and I had his daughter, I’ve gotten blamed for a lot of things. I can hardly find a date, let alone one who won’t ask me a million questions about you guys. But yeah, I guess I’m happy. I have Ella, that’s all that matters.”

 “See, even when you aren’t together, the two of you still agree. He told me the same thing last night,” He smiled softly, “I’m gonna head out. Take care of yourself okay? And actually call me sometime.”

 “Yeah, whatever Jame,” You sighed, “Try not to do anything stupid anytime soon.”

 “No promises,” he joked.

 You shook your head and scanned the room for your daughter. You started to panic a little when she and Tyler weren’t where they’d been a few seconds before. Your eyes kept scanning, sorting through the team and their families. You were about to panic when you felt little arms wrap around your shoulder, and the little body jumping on your back.

 “I got you!” She cheered, “Daddy! Look! I got mommy!”

 You relaxed, realizing that she was fine. A second later Tyler pulled her off your back, allowing you to turn around. Her big eyes, which were starting to look a little sleepy, stared up at you. Her smile was enough to make your heart melt every time you saw it.

 “She’s like ten minutes from crashing,” Tyler told you while she was distracted, “I think we should probably head out?”

 You nodded and reached for your bag on the table. Five minutes later you were following Tyler back out to his car and helping him buckle Ella into her car seat. Sure enough, she was asleep not even five minutes after you left. You and Tyler didn’t say much during the drive. You weren’t sure what could be said.

 “What was she talking about earlier? About you having to see a friend?” He suddenly asked, his knuckles white from holding the stirring wheel so tightly.

 You glanced behind you, to make sure she was still sleeping and pushed down the feeling in your stomach. You didn’t want to talk about this with him, not here with her asleep in the backseat. You weren’t ready for this conversation.

 You weren’t ready to explain that your meds were so far off this time, and they didn’t know what dosage would work to even you back out. Or how long it would take. You weren’t ready to tell him how you’d go to bed every night after Ella did, normally between 7:30 and 8. You weren’t ready for him to know how badly you were struggling again.

 You didn’t want him to doubt your ability to do this on your own, or pity you. You were struggling, yes, but you were managing it. You were working to fix it, and you were a damn good mother despite it.

 “It’s not what you think, in the slightest,” You told him firmly, “But we also aren’t going to talk about this now.”

 “Y/N, I didn’t think it was. God, it’s none of my business if it was,” He groaned, “I just- I wanted to- fuck. What I’m trying to ask is if you’re okay or not.”

 You didn’t reply until he pulled into his driveway and shut off the car, “When have I ever been okay Tyler?”

 “Can you come inside for a while? We can have a drink and talk,” He almost pleaded, “Just because we aren’t married anymore doesn’t mean that I don’t care.”

 “Tyler, I’m really tired, I should just go home. Besides, this is your time with Ella, I don’t want to take up any more than I already have.”

 He sighed and opened his door. You swore you heard him say that it should always be your time to have Ella, as in both of you together. For a second you thought your heart cracked. The first two years had been incredible. The last two…well you tried your best for her, you both did.

 He gently picked her up and shut the passenger door, “Then just let me know when you’re home.”

 His voice was strained like he was doing his best not to let any emotion show. Suddenly you were looking at the stone-cold man that he’d been throughout the whole divorce. It’d taken two years for the two of you to really warm back up to each other, but now he felt cold and closed off again.

 You almost got whiplash because of it. The two of you had set rules that you’d made, boundaries that you’d set, and going in for a drink at 11 wasn’t a part of any of them. You couldn’t do that. Because you knew what that would lead to in the end. It didn’t matter that you’d been apart for years, you’d fall right back into him given the chance. And you couldn’t risk it, especially with Ella to think about.

 “Tyler.”

“We’ll see you Tuesday,” he told you.

 “Bye bye mommy,” Ella’s sleepy voice called, “I love you.”

 “I love you too baby,” You kissed the top of her head, “Have fun with dad this weekend. Make sure he eats his vegetables.”

 A smile joke that you’d been making since she was old enough to refuse to eat mashed veggies, and would only eat them if Tyler ate some too. You made eye contact with him for a second and you though the both of you might be on the verge of tears. Never had a drop off felt this hard before, and it wasn’t because you had to leave her behind, it was because you were leaving him.

 For a brief time tonight, you’d almost forgotten you weren’t a family anymore. If you’d closed your eyes you could’ve imagined that the divorce never went through, that the three of you were still happy. But you weren’t and it was all your fault.

 “Please take care of yourself,” He was begging you now, “And let me know what the doctors say when you find out. I know things are different now, but I’m still here for you. I’ll always be here.”

 You could do nothing but nod as you watched him disappear into the house with Ella. It seemed that the second the door shut, the pure force of your exhaustion hit you. It was funny, when Ella was around you were okay, she was the little ray of sunshine that you needed to push back everything else. But that’s only because Tyler was the sun. He was the one who’d always made you feel more alive than you ever could on your own.

 When the three of you were all together, nothing else mattered. Their light shined so brightly you didn’t feel the effects of your body betraying itself. They made you forget, their smiles and their laughs were enough. They always had been. But you were the one that gave it up. You were the one who called it quits.

 The only person to blame for your family’s brokenness was yourself. It was never a matter of not loving him enough, or him not loving you. Because you could still look into his eyes and know that he loved you. In truth, you did it to save him. Or at least, that’s what you thought you were doing. That’s what you told yourself.

 You forced yourself into your car. Maybe one day you’d find a way to fix everything. Maybe one day you’d both be ready to try and find the common ground you needed. Maybe Ella could have both of her parents back. But until then, you’d just have to continue to keep the peace and hope that neither of you would break in the process. 

[feelingbluepolitics]

(* Many thanks, always, to @catbirdseat4u )

This article is, in essence, a political biography of Elizabeth Warren. It gets a Highest recommendation, and it should be made clear that this recommendation carries no disclaimer. To the contrary, here's a proclamation in support of Warren Democrats.

"Ms. Warren’s political awakening didn’t simply happen all at once. Her road to Damascus was a long one. But over several decades, she transformed from a largely pro-business and politically disengaged academic — a sort of default Republican — to a fierce consumer advocate and bankruptcy expert whose advice was sought on Capitol Hill, and then, finally, to a Democratic force on the Hill herself.

..."The revelations from her bankruptcy research, by her account, became the seeds of her worldview, laid out in her campaign plans for everything from a new tax on the wealthiest Americans to a breakup of the big technology companies."

One discussion featured in this article is that, because Warren is a "fierce advocate," perhaps she will make people uncomfortable. Perhaps she will have trouble building a favorable Electoral College vote -- for, hopefully, one of the last times that will matter.

Not to dismiss those concerns, but to put them in a fundamental context: every presidential candidate, "fierce" or not, faces those same concerns.

The emphasis there is completely mistaken, in any event. The emphasis more properly belongs on advocate. Yet any politician is, by definition, an advocate, and so are, ideally, parents, teachers, coaches, certainly lawyers, as that's their job, and technically even bosses, who are supposed to bring out the best their people can offer and aim it toward a goal to be accomplished. We all know, one way or another, how iffy the realities of advocacy are.

What's really at issue, is that advocates need people to listen to their advocacy, so what we are talking about -- of course -- is actually leadership.

It's true that there are leaders who don't listen to anyone. Perhaps they think this shows strength, or decisiveness, but what it really shows is the weakness of their leadership, and also, usually, that they are assholes whom most people do not like.

Good leaders, strong leaders, bring people along with them, and the only way to do that is to listen, and listen wisely.

So here are some thoughts on leadership, listening, and listening wisely, and why these are pivotal, and how it has gone for the US and Americans to have too little of these features in our politics.

There's not a Republicon politician in the country who does not listen, with the closest possible attention, to their biggest money donors who can help them get re-elected, by funding the means to advertise to more people with more targeted frequency.

There's been too much of that on both sides. This is how corporate depravity -- with its interest in working for and listening only to extremely wealthy corporate shareholders -- has come to be in charge of running the country. It's in every branch of our government, even seeping into the judiciary to make justice, and even access to the civil courts, a perk, a game, a threat, a strategy, for the very rich.

The backlash to Americans not being listened to in our politics is what opened that inexpensive door for Russia to root around in our politics by way of social media. We were and are vulnerable to cyber-warfare through friendly sounding personal messaging, because we want to both hear and be heard. That's how on-line radicalization works too.

When we can't see the money or the bigger picture, the data-mined "personal" approach, valid or not, feels like authentic outreach. It's only going to become more confusing, in the absence of adequate social media safeguards, as we further adapt our actual political outreach to social media as well.

But the political problems related to listening have long been pervasive. Some think Dubya's looking better by comparison to trump, but the truth is that the Bush presidency was disastrous because when he listened, it was to the wrong people. Katrina and the Iraq war are deep and permanent disfigurations both on Dubya and the country. We keep saying we can do better. But then we don't.

Dubya's terrible failings actually ran in the family, in terms of talking to and listening to the wrong people.

https://static.theintercept.com/amp/the-ignored-legacy-of-george-h-w-bush-war-crimes-racism-and-obstruction-of-justice.html

Obama stands out as an American leader most of the world -- other than Putin and Republicons -- talked with and listened to willingly, bringing a sense of stability and progress to many.

He also was, as we knew all along and as we can see now, a messenger -- simply by way of being elected president -- who terrified those most deserving of being judged harshly. They couldn't and wouldn't, ever, listen to him or accept anything he said.

Aside from all that is happening in this country, trump is a complete disaster on the world stage. The one example to truly chalk up to trump's world "leadership" is the utter atrocity of Brazil's Bolsonaro, connected inseparably with the raging destruction of the Amazon rain forest.

trump is in the Oval Office as a consequence of failed listening, otherwise described as the pervasive political disconnect too many Americans feel. Nearly all of us want safety from gun violence, economic security, equal rights, reproductive choice, and access to health care that we can afford to use. And yet we are a country hugely polarized into political tribes, with most of us not participating at all.

Many people villified Hillary, because that's the kind of thing people often will listen to. Many people didn't pay attention to the fact that she was the first candidate, ever, to run on a family, women, and children political platform, or that she had spent her entire public service career, both politically and charitably, committed to that exact platform, while she could also bring intensively knowledgeable global leadership.

Many people didn't acknowledge that of Bernie's ideas which were more progressive and hugely popular, Hillary listened, and adopted.

But the biggest failure leading to trump is the many people who aren't listening politically at all anymore, and those who are too angry to listen and willing instead to destroy the system rather than try to fix it.

Listening must go both ways. That's why we need big changes, in order to get there. Warren came into politics as an advocate who had listened, as this article shows.

She is the candidate for people like this:

- "Sometimes I get really worried about the climate. We have to start doing something, but I don't know what I can do."

- "If I get hit with one more extra bill to pay, I don't know if we can make it. I don't know what might happen to us."

- "I worry that we aren't strong enough if one of us gets sick! The money, the time, our jobs! It will ruin us."

- "That job won't cover my rent."

- "My mom's not feeling well. What am I supposed to do with my kids while I'm at work?"

- "This stupid thing is trash, but they won't fix it! I don't have the money for another one!"

On the other hand, Elizabeth Warren won't be the choice for people who get mad about having to contribute their two cents...on every dollar over their first $50 million.

Try listening to Elizabeth Warren. See if she's been listening to people who sound like you.

[blazehedgehog]

Someone made a new srb2 camera mod on the forums. It's trying to make a better analog camera option that has things like a boss targeting camera and a "put behind the player" button, among a host of other changes.

I sat on this ask for a while because it was telling me something I already knew and I didn’t have anything interesting to say to that other than “Yeah, Fickle’s camera mod is cool”

Though I guess more accurately that would be “Fickle’s camera mod is cool, but the last time I used it, it felt a little loose and weird.” But nothing I wasn’t willing to get used to, I guess.

I’m answering this now because I glanced through the SRB2 forums recently and it sounds like Fickle’s camera mod is getting rolled in to SRB2 proper at some point in the future. Though given how many years there was between 2.1 and 2.2, I wonder how long that’ll actually take. :p

I’ll also use this post to say something else, since I doubt many people who read this blog also read what I said on the SRB2 forums about the camera issue:

I was super out of line with the posts I made about SRB2′s camera. The complaints I had with it were still valid, but the way I expressed those complaints was not. I did the one thing you’re never supposed to do: I jumped to conclusions and I argued against strawmen that didn’t exist. I acted like a total moron.

I was very, very amped up for SRB2 2.2. When faced with the reality of what 2.2 actually played like, I had all this excited energy that had nowhere to go, and it all exploded on to my blog. I said things that weren’t true, and all it took was a single second to stop and think about the developers like the people they actually are. Being a former SRB2 team member, I let my attachment to that game cloud my judgement in a way that’s frankly weird when I look back on it.

In a world where so many ignorant people get so angry at game developers for being “lazy” or “idiotic” I have always tried to see the other side. To see the developer’s perspective. A million more thoughts go in to the creation of something than you could possibly ever realize. As a game developer myself, I forgot that. I was nothing more than part of the angry, stupid mob.

Like I said, the core of what I thought still rings true – SRB2 focusing on aiming a platformer with the mouse is annoying at best. But the way I expressed those thoughts, and the conclusions I came to, was possibly the worst way I could have handled that.

Do not follow in my footsteps. Show more respect, and be smarter about your criticisms.