#I’m a cos woman I don’t even have the added pain of questions/transition but it’s still excruciating when that hornets nest is kicked

[n--n]

I had a really great time going out to dinner with my mom and nana tonight at a nice restaurant but nana believes in conspiracy theories and my mom and I have to keep debunking the bs sources she pulls out in a joking way to keep her from getting too defensive about how we don’t agree and I’m so tired. God fucking help me.

And then they’re like. Both loudly and condescendingly agreed about the whole “men and women can’t be friends” thing and that men and women have completely different brains/ in general most men are waiting to fuck you instead of genuinely caring about you as a person (and they did that FUCKING CONDESCENDING exaggerated laugh w/ eachother over it. I know most men have misogyny and treat women badly. And that they talk about us differently behind our backs. No fucking shit. But it’s not everyone, and believing so stringently that it’s impossible to have a true genuine friendship without either wanting to fuck eachother annoys and hurts me. How can we ever move forward to a less misogynistic world if we ourselves refuse to build real friendships with the opposite sex regardless of gender.) and frankly that kicked the Gender Issues bruise in my heart and I just Was Not Having It at the end of the night

[theres-no-protocol-for-this]

Humans Adopt a Combat SecUnit

A random one-shot about a horrible moment during a hypothetical hostile takeover. A one-shot with no real ending. Angst. You’ve been warned.

Now on AO3 for the same reason I put anything there, because finding it here is rocket surgery. 

(Cass)

The attack came out of nowhere.

One minute, Kris and I had been sitting at a cafe and discussing the logistics of our next cargo run and the next, several dozen armed men stormed the office building across the street.

Mayhem erupted around us. Cafe patrols tried to flee only to meet the business end of large guns. Several constructs in heavy armor stomped past us and up the building steps. A grenade destroyed the front entrance entire, flinging dust and smoke into the air. The air circulation systems struggled to keep up. It was getting harder to breathe with each passing moment.

Suddenly, a group of soldiers rushed out of the building, through smoke and frames and began indiscriminately shooting at attackers and civilians alike. Kris yanked me by the arm to hide under our table, but it proved to be minimal cover against the hail of bullets flying overhead.

What ended up saving both our lives was a SecUnit, one of the combat-ready models. It took a defensive position between us and the battle, and remained there until the shooting had largely ceased. At the time, I didn’t know why it had chosen that course of action because it was so damn unexpected.

Security Units sometimes protect people — when they’re contracted to do so — but the Combat Units are intended for only one thing: taking down enemies. This one stood in front of us and took more damage than was reasonable. By the time the worst had passed, the bot-human hybrid looked worse for the wear. Its armor was dented in a dozen places, and it was bleeding from several projectile wounds. It had also gotten burned in several areas with short-range energy blasts.

“We have to go,” Kris practically yelled in my ear over all the noise. “This is insane. Hostile takeovers shouldn’t target civilian places.”

I nodded and tried not to think about the wanton death and destruction happening fifteen feet away. “What about the Unit?”

My companion gave me a searching look. “I don’t know that we can do anything. It probably has orders.”

“SecUnit,” I called out to the tall construct. It wore armor from head to toe, but enough of it was destroyed that I could see metal and light-brown skin underneath.

It turned in our direction. Its helmet was still functional but the opaque faceplate had shattered at some point. Blue-green eyes regarded us from a blank, neutral face that betrayed none of the pain the construct had be feeling.

“Come with us,” I said as I crawled out from under the table and looked around.

“What?” Kris looked horrified.

I ignored my co-pilot for a moment. “SecUnit, your armor is destroyed. You should remove it before it causes you damage.”

The horror of the situation was seeping in by then, panic replacing the initial numbness. Kris had been in war zones before, had even participated in several takeovers, before making hauling his current profession. I imagined he knew what he was doing.

All I knew is that we needed to leave and it was imperative we take the person who just saved our lives with us. The SecUnit pulled off its armor — some of which had all kinds of razor sharp edges curtesy of all the shooting — and underneath it looked a lot more like a human being than I’d anticipated.

Not that I had much experience in this area; I’d never seen a construct up close before.

Kris tugged at my arm and started moving along the edge of the coffee shop toward an alley. I resisted until the SecUnit followed a moment later.

Somehow, all three of us managed to make it to the mouth of the alleyway without further injuries. I was coughing up a lung because of all the smoke — the air scrubbers could handle a lot, but this was ridiculous. Kris knew what to do, though, I trusted him with my life.

--

(Combat SecUnit)

I had failed at achieving my mission objectives, and I could no longer connect to my handler.

The two events had not been simultaneous, but the quick succession was enough to feel concerning. My organic neural tissue was sending up error codes I couldn't interpret.

I chose my position primarily to get a better vantage point on the small-scale skirmish occurring in front of the ShoreCross office building. Infiltrating the facility was my primary objective, but it no longer appeared to be feasible, much less applicable.

When the shooting began, I considered moving. Even without a handler to direct me, I have enough self-preservation instincts to not stand in direct line of fire. But there were two unaffiliated humans behind me, and if I moved, they would die.

My handler should've made the judgment call about staying or leaving. Those kinds of choices were outside my permissible range of decisions, but she was not responding. My communication device was otherwise functional, and the feed remained stable in the area despite the commotion. Her presence was completely absent in its normal places inside my head, and it did not appear to be a malfunction on my part.

When the shooting briefly paused, the two humans made a smart but risky decision to evacuate. My own assessment supported this course of action. I had taken more damage than advisable, and while none of it was catastrophic, I would need access to a repair cubicle for most of the injuries.

So, the human's instruction to remove my destroyed armor came as a complete surprise. Her further request that I come with them, even more so. My governor didn't much care who gave the orders so long as it was a direct request. It was completely up to my handler to override irrelevant commands and choose who to ignore.

When the humans moved, I followed them after discarding what little remained of my armor. I had a large projectile weapon, which I also left behind because I had no way of storing it and moving with it was cumbersome. My in-built weapons would suffice should I find myself in a firefight, and if that happened, I was unlikely to survive the experience.

The male human (feed name: Kristos) led the way. He paused when we reached a small alleyway and peeked inside. It  was empty. I knew as much because I had hacked the local feed before arrival, a necessary measure to ensure I wouldn't be caught or surprised.

"Are you all right?" the female human (feed name: Cass) asked me.

I nodded. As best as I understood the question, I was not experiencing any significant malfunctions and my pain sensors were down in the 50% range, so I was not in any significant pain, either.

"Good," she said, and then reached out and took my hand. "Stay close. We'll cut through here and then head straight to the transit ring. The safest place we can be right now is on a ship. Ours, specifically."

I obeyed the command and followed them closely, but my threat assessment did not like this course of action. The humans would indeed be safer on their ship. Weapons could not be discharged anywhere on the transit ring. However, without my handler, my own mental state would deteriorate rapidly. I should be nowhere near any humans when this occurred.

Unfortunately, communicating this to the humans was complicated. There are very few things I'm permitted to say. I was willing to risk governor punishment but couldn't come up with a short enough explanation that I could provide it before being zapped.

This unit is not constructed to function independently of a human handler, I told them. That was a response in my buffer, usually reserved for when someone attempted to a request that required too many decision points.

Cass turned to look at me, her expression grim. "Is your handler somewhere close? Are you able to return to them?"

Unknown, I answered. It was not the most polite response, and my governor quickly reminded me of the error, but it was almost more than I could manage.

Kris spoke several curses in three distinct languages under his breath in quick succession. "That's why you were standing there, wasn't it? Fucking hell. This complicates things. Just keep following us for now, and we'll figure something out."

Turning to his companion, he added, "It's a Combat model. Its mental state is dependent on the constant tweaking and monitoring of its human handler. Without a handler, it's going to go crazy."

"What?" Cass glanced at me but her focus was on Kris. "Why the fuck would someone do that?"

"Because when you make a dangerous tool, you put in a lot of safeguards to keep it from slipping its leash." The human stopped just long enough to make sure our path was clear, then continued moving. "There's a reason most polities don't permit the use or creation of constructs."

The horrified expression on Cass' face surprised me. Most humans I had met feared constructs, and her behavior didn't line up with my expectations.

"Almost there," the woman told me as we exited the station mall and headed down to the embarkation zone. "Just a little longer."

---

(Combat SecUnit)

The humans walked with me through the embarkation zone as though it was a perfectly normal course of action. I knew from experience that SecUnits were not permitted in the human-occupied areas of most stations, but I suspected neither Cass nor Kris knew this. A weapons scanner drone stopped us near their ship's loading dock, but Kris explained that I was their cargo, and a human supervisor overrode the panicky drone.

Once inside the ship, both humans visibly relaxed.

Cass led the way to the control room of the ship and guided me toward an empty seat. I stood next to it until she gave me a direct order to sit down. Meanwhile, Kris directed one of the local news channels from the feed to a large display surface mounted to one of the walls of the bridge. Coverage of the 'unprovoked' attack on ShoreCross played in the background while the humans coordinated their next step in preparation for departure.

I continued to sit while my internal world slowly crumbled. When it became hard to name the humans or distinguish my current position, I said, It may be prudent to secure this unit before it malfunctions further. I had never used this buffer message before, but it was the closest to what I wanted to communicate. Emotional and mental cohesion, both of which were necessary to successfully complete mission, frayed around the edges.

Kris glanced up at me from where he was leaning over a control panel and reading information off to the local traffic controller. "Best to do what it says for now."

"I've almost got this figured out," Cass complained. "Shit, I think I'm the only one with enough augments of the right type to even attempt this. I know it's not your fault, SecUnit, but your humans really did a number on you."

She got up from where she'd been seated on the floor, connected directly into the mechanical brain of the hauler, and came over to me. "Let's get you comfortable, all right?"

"It might fight you if it thinks its cornered and it can't think straight," the co-pilot warned.

I looked up at the human. She wore a deep frown on her soft, dark face as she inputted commands into the controls of the smart chair where I was currently sitting. It readjusted to fit my longer frame, suggesting that normally Kris sat here. Cass maneuvered me into position, so I leaning back with my feet slightly off the floor and situated comfortably in the seat's foot rests.

Once she had me where she wanted me, the chair did the rest automatically. Thick, durable straps wrapped around my arms, torso, and legs effectively restraining me. According to the specifications available in the feed, the system was intended to keep a human from falling out of the piloting chair during high-impact maneuvers. It was more than strong enough to keep me from hurting myself or the humans.

Despite knowing better, I fought against the restraints. I understood that doing so would cause me further injury and that they existed to keep my humans — I thought of these humans as mine — safe. But there was a disconnect between reality and my fractured mind that I couldn't seem to bridge.

Cass put her hand on my chest and started talking in a soft, quiet voice. By this point, I had trouble understanding what she was saying, but the hand helped. As did the warm blanket she draped over me and the pillow under my head. Consciousness came and went.

[ohholyfanfics]

Daycare 0.2|T.Holland

Last Part: x 

Request here: x

Author’s Note: I went along and tagged everyone that commented on the last part not knowing if you guys wanted to be tagged or not. Also part 3 maybe? But please stay safe and wash your hand's guys, Love Ari xox

Liam’s first day resulted in numerous phone calls and text messages from Tom, followed by a string of apologies from Harrison. Evelyn, however, was used to this type of behavior from first-time parents, but it was safe to say she had a soft stop for Tom. His situation wasn’t easy, he was caring for a child that not only wasn’t biologically his but a child he had no prep for. Liam, however, proved to be a rather laid back child, not giving his classroom teachers a problem.

Each morning after dropping Liam off in his respected classroom, Tom always made sure to stop by Evelyn’s office to see how she was doing, and for of course thanking her for being so patient and kind. She had been so helpful during this transition, and he wasn’t sure what he’d do without her. Evelyn was always more than willing to answer any doubting questions Tom had about parenting, and just about life in general. He hated to admit it but he looked forward to those few minutes the two shared each morning.

He wasn’t sure how it had happened, but somewhere between Liam’s second and third week there, he noticed a change. Tom found himself texting her less about Liam and his day, but more about how she was. Sure, he stilled asked the usual questions about his son, but he couldn’t help but wonder about her. He wondered if the kids in toddler room six were giving you a hard time again, he worried if you got enough rest the night before. He wasn’t sure what it was but he felt himself slowly falling for her and it scared him.

It was a Wednesday morning, also one of your favorite days of the week. Upon walking into the daycare center he couldn’t help but notice that something was off, the Christmas decorations where no longer hanging around but it was in the transition to spring. Flowers built from children's faces were being hung up on the walls of the young interns from the local school. The usual receptionist was replaced but who he knew to be the co-director of the daycare, being Evelyn’s friend and co-worker Sophia.

She smiled brightly at Tom helping him sign Liam in before directing him to the room saying the teachers were waiting for him. Thanking her softly, he tugged along the hallway talking softly with his son as he entered the room. He couldn't help but smile as he watched him so quickly adapt to his surroundings before waving the teachers goodbye after giving them a quick rundown of Liam’s morning. He started making his way towards Evelyn office before Sophia called out to him.

“Oh, sorry Tom, she’s not in today,” Sophia mumbled softly as she nervously played with her wedding ring. It wasn’t that Tom scared or anything, he was definitely one of the more intimidating parents. Tom was the definition of success and power, not like Sophia didn’t know. She and Evelyn had exchanged a few words about Tom. It was clear that the single father cared for her boss.

“Oh.”

He couldn’t help the frown on his face as he fiddled with the sleeves of his suit. Evelyn was never absent, at least not that he knew of. He knew how much pride she had in her business much like of his own. He wasn’t sure what to do, he’s not seen her when he drops Liam off. It was strange to him to go on with his day without seeing her, without giving Evelyn a tight hug and having her assure him that whatever deal he was working on would play out alright.

He was missing that small little moment with her, a moment that meant more to him than he would like to admit. Since leaving the center this morning it was clear to everyone around him that he wasn’t himself this morning, yet he couldn’t bring himself to text her. What if she were busy, or what if she were with someone. He knew it was silly to even think that way but it was hard not too when he had blooming feelings for Evelyn.

It’s now Friday and he still hasn’t heard anything from Evelyn, she hasn't been into work since Tuesday and even then she apparently left early. It wasn’t that he was stalking her, no not at all. He had the pleasure of finally being able to pick Liam up from daycare that noon and ran into her at the parking lot. Evelyn assured him all was well and that you would be back to work bright and early on Wednesday morning. Clearly, that wasn’t the case.

Tom curled his lips as he tapped his pen on the stack of papers he should be overlooked but it was safe to say his concern was eating away at him. Sighing he reaches for his phone before a slight knock broke him. Cleaning his throat he gave permission fo the person to enter.

“Hey mate.” Harrison smiled as he walked in fixing the tie around his neck. Taken on look at his friend he frowned lightly taken a seat before him. “alright?”

He nodded his head knowing that Harrison would probably know what's going on with her. Yet, Tom wasn't sure he wanted to ask, he knew Harrison speculated that Tom had growing feels for the young woman and the last thing Tom wanted was to confirm to Harrison.

“Yeah, just a bit tired..”

“Oh sounds good, I just wanted to give you these progress reports,” he stated as he handed over the folder he had been holding. Tom thanked him before Harrison left not before promising to stop by later tonight for their beer night over at Tom’s flat.

That’s how Harrison and Tom had gotten to where they were now, Liam was safety tucked in his crib out like a light. The baby monitor was sitting near the table in view of both men as a random movie played not that either was paying attention. Harrison was going on about some random date he had been on two days ago, it wasn't fair for Tom to be laughing at his friends failed dates when he hadn't been on one since Liam’s adoption.

“Oi, you have no room to judge you twat.” he huffed throw a handful of nuts at his friend causing Tom to shake his head. “Plus, don’t you think you should maybe play the field?” he added testing the waters.

Tom couldn’t help but frown at the thought, it was hard enough not knowing people's intentions now he had a son to consider and the thought of dating scared him. He wasn't in the same situation as Harrison was, he didn't have a child to consider.

“I just don’t think I’m ready, plus I haven't found anyone.” he shrugged as he took a swing of his beer, what he said wasn’t a total lie. He truly didn't think he was ready for dating again, in fact, the mere thought had him itching.

“Not trying to pressure you to mate, just think it’ll be good for you to have some adult time with someone.” he smiled softly as Tom knew he was right.

“I’ll work on it.” was all he mumbled not wanting to have Harrison think of some crazy idea. That seemed to be enough as Harrison brought his attention back to the screen. Tom leaned back closing his eyes softly, that was when he felt the buzzing of his phone from beside him.

He pecked from one eye, his body going numb at the contact. The one person he had been secretly missing, not that he’d admit to anyone was calling. Quickly excuse himself he walked towards the kitchen answering the phone.

“Hey, darling.”

Evelyn eyes widen from the other side of the phone, that was most definitely not Sophia. She signed softly chewing on her bottom lip knowing she was gonna have to answer. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to call you..” she breathed out holding in the cough that was trying to escape.

He couldn’t help but frown at her voice, she sounded exhausted almost as if she hadn't been getting enough sleep. His chest tightened as he breathed out.

“No it’s fine, everything okay?”

“I’m fine, it’s nothing really.”

“But is it?” he questioned as he played with the beer caps laying on the. counter before him. “You haven't been to work these past few days, is everything alright?” he asked as her heart softened at his words.

“Sorry about that, I should’ve warned you,” she mumbled feeling guilty. She knew how hard it was for Tom, he’d express it to her every once in a while. With everything happening and how she was feeling and she completely has forgotten to inform the teachers to give him small updates throughout the day.

“I’ve just been ill is all.” she finally breathed out as a rather bad cough escaped her lips. Her body aching as her eyes closed a few tears escaping them from the pain she was feeling in her throat. Tom couldn’t help but feel a wave of worry spread through him. In a matter of seconds, he was searching his cabinets for coughing medicine his mum sworn on and the one lemon ginger tea he liked to sip on while ill.

“Do you need anything?” he breathed out as he reached for a small paper bag dropping everything inside. He knew it was crazy but he needed to be there for her. She was willing to handle him with his anxiety about Liam and he wanted to be there for her.

“It’s fine, I’ll call Sophia.” she insisted as he shook his head demanding that he go over and help her. He even promised that Liam would be in good hands. Signing she caved and asked him for some cough drops and maybe a few tissues and a bottle of ginger ale. Writing everything down, Tom ended the call quickly before rushing over to Harrison.

“Mate you think you can stay with Liam for a few?” he asked running a hand through his hair. Harrison studied his friend with a raised eyebrow. “I just have to run something to a friend real quick?”

Tom found the spare quickly as he quickly let himself in, toeing his shoes off, he smiled softly at the sweet smell of vanilla taken over as he studied the pictures on the walls. Sighing softly, he rubbed the back of his neck with his spare arm calling out her name. 

“Darling?” 

Evelyn held in a cough as she peeked down the hallway seeing a rather flustered Tom Holland standing there. He wore a simple pair of sweat pants and a light gray sweater, she couldn't help the soft smile that worked its way onto her lips as he walked inside the kitchen. Unlike her hallway, it was brightly lit, and extremely white. Her white. cabinets and white marble countertops gave off a homey feeling as he rested the bags down taken her in. 

Her cheeks and nose were red, her eyes looked tired as he took her in. Her legs were covered in black leggings while a snuggly looking hoodie was keeping her room. He couldn’t help the frown that worked its way onto his face, as he quickly walked over tugging her into his arms. A feeling of comfort washed through her body, his touch was familiar. As much as she hated to admit it, she missed it. 

“You didn’t have to come to Tom..” she mumbled softly surpassing a cough as he shook his head holding her closer. 

“I wanted to..” he breathed out as he pulled away just as she let out a nasty cough. He watched as one of her hands gripped the counter as she coughed into her hoodie, eyes watering making his heartache. “Oh honey..” he cooed softly as he rubbed her back gently. 

“I’m fine, I promise.” 

He couldn’t help but frown shaking his head, digging into the bag he pulled out the box of tea as he reached for her kettle. It wasn’t long before he had her snuggled into the guest bedroom downstairs, with a cup of tea. Her eyes took him in as a sense of appreciation flooded her. This man went out of his way, most likely leaving his son with his parents to come to the rescue. 

“Tom it’s fine really.” she breathed sitting up as he waltzed back in the room with two cups in hand. He waved her off, as he rested the two cups beside the medicine that he had brought over. 

“It’s no worries Evelyn..” he breathed as he placed a soft kiss onto her forehead, his next words making both their heads spin.

“Let me take care of you yeah?” he breathed out as their eyes locked, he missed her. God had Tom missed seeing her bright smile every morning. “We have to get you well again, Liam really misses you..” he breathed wondering if she was willing to read what he had been trying to say. 

It wasn’t Liam who had missed her, hell Tom didn’t know what he would’ve done if she hadn't called. He had slowly been losing his mind at the lack of communication between you both, not that you owed him anything.

“I miss him too..” she breathed out as their eyes met. “I miss them all..” she added hoping if he had gotten what she was saying and he had. He was a part of the all, she had missed him as well. 

It wasn’t long before Tom had her stomach full and a glass of water and ginger ale on her bedside table. She watched as he rushed off before coming back with the medicine he had brought along with a trash can, which she could only assume came from the hall bathroom. She watched with soft eyes as he set everything cup for her. 

“I want you to get a good’s night rest yeah?” he breathed out as he tucked her in and brushed the few strings of hair that had managed to escape from the bun her hair was placed in. “I’ll stop by tomorrow to check-in.” 

“Tom you-” 

“I know, I don’t have too but I want to.” he breathed out with a soft smile and a blush on his cheeks. “I promised I’d take care of you darling, and that’s just what I intend to do.” 

Taglist: @averyfosterthoughts​ @parkeret​ @obsessed-librarian​ @yourbiggestspiderfan​ @jackiehollanderr​ @starkerismysexuality​ @billysroses​ @cutiepiemimi13​ @fav-fan-fic​ @abschaffer2​ @rescue3000​ @xinsonyax​ @greenarrowhead​

[nolongeriwholive]

Three years on (and on)

One week ago, the day before Easter, I spoke before our monthly men’s breakfast and told them that there is a difference between facts and truth. “The facts were,” I said, “that Jesus was dead. They took his body down off the cross, wrapped it, and put it in a tomb, rolled the stone across the entrance – and left him for dead. That's all they knew. The Truth was something much greater and even unimaginable.”

Then I said, “Two years and 51 weeks ago, the doctors at the Mayo Clinic told me that the facts were that I had ALS and I had 3 years to live, and the last year was not going to be a very pleasant one. They said the facts were that my body was going to deteriorate, I was going to be in a wheelchair, and need an oxygen tube and feeding tube until I ultimately wasted away.”

I stepped out from behind the lectern - on my own two feet (no cane, no braces)  - so the men could see me in full, and far from being wasted away. I smiled, inviting them to laugh, and they did, softly at first and then louder as I looked down and regarded myself as well. 

“The Truth,” I said, “is something more. God healed me of ALS,” and then they were clapping, cheering and stomping their feet. 

Three years ago today, April 22, 2014, my wife and I received that diagnoses, and the apparent death sentence. To say that the rest of that week was the most surreal in my life would not be an exaggeration. Faith and family, as you know, were the key pillars then and going forward, as you can see if you back through this blog. To some extent, a blunt diagnoses such as that can be extremely clarifying. “If the doctors say there is nothing man can do,” I reasoned to myself, “then that only leaves God.” Galatians 2:20 came to me: “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.” If I was as good as dead, then it truly was “no longer I who lived” and that became both my focus and the name of this blog that I started a few days after the diagnosis. 

If you’ve been following along here, you’ll know that 13 months after I was diagnosed I was undiagnosed, also at the Mayo. I still had some symptoms, but I was too healthy. Since then I’ve continued the story here sporadically. There were additional miracles to report (as you can scroll down to read), but also a life to live. My youngest daughter moved to Prague in late 2015 and we flew over there for 9 weeks as she transitioned, and we returned there last fall with our oldest daughter and newest grandchild. These and many other things were blessings we could barely have foreseen while sitting in that doctor’s office 3 years ago. 

There has been great joy in our lives since that sentence was lifted, but I have also known some pain and some sadness. The sadness stems from the fact that ALS still has a spectral hold on me. Several people that I came to know during my time with the disease have since succumbed, and new people have been added. A friend and former co-worker has been diagnosed and is fading rapidly. Another man I had met and known when he was the radio voice of the Minnesota Vikings in the 90s died of ALS last month, and I was greatly moved (and saddened) to read recently of the University of Minnesota scheduling a special one-person graduation ceremony in March so a PALS father could watch his son graduate because he was not likely to live long enough for the May ceremony.  

These things touch me on a deep and personal level that is hard to explain. It frustrates me to know that others suffer, and more than once in the last year I have asked the question that I never asked  in that first year: “Why me?” I take no pride and put no stock in my own piety as having anything to do with it. There are likely people with more faith than me, and as many (and more) good reasons to live as I have, who have died, or are dying of this brutal disease.It is hard not to dwell on this at times, but I resist trying to “figure it out”. Man trying to “figure out” the ways of God is responsible for a lot of bad doctrine and pop theology out there because we insist that God’s ways make sense to us. I came to the realization that my healing was really not much different from my salvation. In both instances i had done nothing to deserve such boons, yet God had moved on my behalf, even before I knew what I needed or could ask for it. I can only trust and assume that there is a reason for it, and that reason (or reasons) will be evident in time. And, perhaps, it already is. 

I mentioned the pain I’ve experienced. I wasn’t referring to emotional pain or spiritual unrest, but severe, even crippling pain like I had never known in my experience of knee surgeries, abdominal surgery and back surgery. Late last year I ended up with a case of severe carpal tunnel in both my right and left hands and wrists. Nobody has ever died of this, but I never felt so much like I wanted to. I couldn’t move my hands or arms without pain, and I couldn’t sleep for more than 20 minutes or so before I had to move my hands again, causing me to wake up. I prayed, I struggled, I ultimately ended up getting a cortisone short in my left wrist and surgery on my right one; the recovery, too, was more painful and longer-lasting than anything I’d previously experienced. I even dipped into the prescription opiods that I’d been able to do without after previous surgeries. I was pretty miserable, and even asked God a couple of times why this was such a challenge after what I’d already received and experienced. No answer was forthcoming, until I went back to the Mayo for a post-op follow-up with my orthopedic surgeon. 

The Mayo Clinic is a huge campus; the main exam buildings are 15 stories, and when my wife and I came out of my appointment in the orthopedic section we saw a couple from Iowa in the waiting room that we had met at my son-in-law’s first church out of seminary. They had been real sweethearts to Faith and Ben and the kids, which is how we got to know them. They also knew my testimony, and as we talked to them that day in the waiting room they described the tests the wife had been undergoing for numbness in her feet. The tests and symptoms sounded all-to-familiar to us. My wife said we should pray for them, and they were all in favor of it. Without any self-consciousness, we held hands right there and I prayed. I don’t remember what words I used, but I know I asked God to bring them peace and to do what He had done in my life. As we were praying my wife noticed that a woman sitting in the row in front of us was leaning back toward us to listen, and was crying. When we finished my wife asked that woman if she would like prayer for anything as well. 

“Oh, yes,” she said, still in tears. “I was diagnosed this morning with ALS.”

“God healed my husband of ALS,” my wife said. Along with our friends from Iowa, we poured out even more for her right then and there. There was peace in her face when we finished and as we talked more about what she was going through and what I had experienced. Her mother was with her; they had driven up from Arkansas to see the doctors at the Mayo - and just so happened to be sitting in that row, in that waiting room, at that time. We exchanged phone numbers and later that evening she called me to talk some more. She told me that she had just been saved a few weeks prior to coming to the Mayo. I told her that when I was diagnosed I didn’t know  just what God was going to do, but I believed He would do something. “I don’t know exactly what God will do for you, or how,” I said, “but the fact that He could so orchestrate things so that we could meet today, right when you needed to hear this, gives me a lot of hope and confidence.” Since then we have been checking in with each other every 4 to 6 weeks. (Oh, and the first person we prayed for that day ended up getting very good news from her tests: no ALS, just a  neuropathy in her foot that could be treated with therapy.)

I addressed this in similar fashion with the men at the breakfast last week; mist of whom are going through life-altering trials and challenges of their own. “I don’t know why I am still here today, but I’m pretty sure that speaking to you is a big part of it.”

- April 22, 2017

One of my favorite songs is “The Sea” by the 80s group, The Waterboys.. I listened to this song often in the year after I was diagnosed, and in the time since then. Land-locked all of my life, I have always been mesmerized by the sea whenever I had a chance to look upon it. Similarly, this song always helped calm my mind whenever I tried to get too much into “figure it out” mode during this adventure, and brought me peace. The music critics often describe the song-writer, Mike Scott as a “mystic”, but the meaning of these verses has always been clear to me. This life is the river, and it leads to the sea. All the things I know, or think I know, as I navigate this river pale when I have glimpsed the sea and what awaits. 

I am not afraid of the shore. 

[aion-rsa]

Wynonna Earp Season 4, Episode 6 Review: Holy War Part Two

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This Wynonna Earp review contains spoilers.

Wynonna Earp Season 4, Episode 6

You can love a narrative choice that a show makes without loving what it means for a specific character. If I knew Wynonna Earp in real life, I, like Doc Holliday, would be seriously afraid for her following her choice to shoot Sheriff Holt in the back, after he agreed to try to work towards ending the long-running feud between the Earps and the Clantons. But, as a fan and reviewer of this show, I love this choice that the Wynonna Earp writing team made. It implies a kind of ambition in this series’ Season 4 storytelling that is all-too-rare in genre TV, and I hope this show finds the narrative time to devote to it. Let’s talk about this bittersweet, amazing, accidental midseason finale…

Doc’s storyline last season was one of the weakest part of an otherwise pretty great Season 3. It wasn’t always clear what his motivations were and the TV show never really justified the decision to turn him vamp. While I’m still worry that turning Doc into a creature of the night was one twist too many for a character who already has a history of delicious knots to untie, his arc in Season 4 has been a good one, especially in the last few episodes as he begins to seriously question if his loyalty to Wyatt Earp, most often proven through killing at Wyatt’s side and in his stead, was worth the pain that it has caused himself and others. Actually, he’s not really wondering at this point. He’s coming to the realization that it was not, just as Wynonna is coming to the assumption that shooting first and asking questions later is the only way to ensure the safety of her family.

These are two characters who obviously love one another, but who can never quite get the timing right. To see them head in different directions again, ones that will presumably keep them from being together in any honest, healthy way for the near future, is both heartbreaking and excellent storytelling. This division works because it is led by their characterization, not by an arbitrary plot mechanic. Do I believe that having the Clantons back in town, a family whom Doc chose to kill for Wyatt all those years ago, adding fire to a war that would continue on for more than a century-long war, has Doc rethinking his past choices? Absolutely. Do I also believe that Wynonna, in the wake of finding out that the Clanton family tried to buy her baby, and after years of fighting to keep her family safe, would shoot Sheriff Holt in the back rather than trust that anything would change, after a lifetime of learning the lesson that bloodshed and betrayal is the norm? Of course.

I understand both of their choices, even as a grieve for Wynonna as she takes a step down a path that will surely lead to more pain, for herself and for others (because the two are always inextricably intertwined, even if our culture of toxic individualism would have us believe otherwise). As we see in the final scene, it already has. Wynonna is crying for the rift in her relationship with Doc, sure. She’s crying because Waverly is so happy, and that’s all she wants for her baby sister. She’s crying because she’s tired, because how could she not be? But you better believe that she is also crying for herself. Because she just shot a (human) man in the back, as he was walking away from her. Because she just chose fear over hope. And that’s a very lonely place to be.

This agonizing middle for Wynonna hits extra hard because it is juxtaposed with a #happymiddle for Waverly and Nicole. After months of being separated and weeks (how much time has passed since the time jump?) of Nicole being terrified that Waverly would reject her after finding out what she had done, these two finally got the timing right in a way that Doc and Wynonna are nowhere close to doing. Waverly kills Margo “Mam” Clanton and it will no doubt stay with her in some traumatizing ways, but it was a very different situation. To save Nicole, a good person and the love of Waverly’s life, Waverly has to kill Margo, a woman who more or less murdered her own, teenage son, has no qualms with letting Nicole die, and has made it her life’s purpose to make the Earps and anyone who loves them suffer. To say that killing someone would ever be an easy choice for Waverly Earp would be oversimplifying the situation, but I don’t think for a minute that Waverly regrets her decision. Not in the way Wynonna seems to.

Earlier in this episode, Wynonna tells Rosita that sometimes the hero has to kill, and, in the context of supernatural TV, I don’t think she’s wrong. Too many shows that have violence as part of their narrative formula, from superhero television to other kinds of high-stakes genre storytelling, pretend that death isn’t often a natural consequence of violence. They pretend that a character presented as a hero, someone like Oliver Queen or Bruce Wayne, could have the kind of god-like control that would allow them to enact violence against those who “deserve it,” but always be able to stop short of death, and that this distinction absolves them of all accountability. This is often done as a way to draw a simplistic line between the “good guys” and the “bad guys,” so that stories that use violence don’t have to dive into a more earnest exploration of the hero’s violent methods and the harm they cause to both themself and others in their doling out of “justice.”

Violence is such an accepted, uninterrogated part of so much of American culture, we often accept its unexamined inclusion in so much of our mainstream storytelling as our status quo. (And, while I know this is a different situation, seeing a character shoot another character in the back as they are walking away has a particularly loaded meaning in American culture right now.) I’m eager to see Wynonna Earp walk a different, more difficult yet more rewarding path when it returns, and to dive into a more complex exploration of what it means for a character like Wynonna, ostensibly our hero, to kill someone outside of the justification of self defense. What a bold storytelling choice. What a way to head into our midseason hiatus.

Additional thoughts.

Peacemaker’s back, baby! (Now I feel conflicted about this, though. I missed Peacemaker and I want Wynonna to have a sense of purpose, but I don’t want her to think that killing is all that she’s good for, you know? Maybe Peacemaker could transfigure into something else besides a weapon and reveal Wynonna’s new purpose as a… something.)

Real talk? I don’t think what Nicole did was so bad, especially as she didn’t ever seem actually willing to hand Doc over to the Clantons.

Last episode, Nicole’s situation was all Ron Weasley in Chamber of Secrets. This week, it’s all Olivia in Fringe.

The Ghost!Nicole/frog shenanigans first part of this episode was fun, but didn’t totally work tonally for me. The episode started out by taking Waverly’s distress over Nicole’s (temporary) death seriously, and then tried to transition into a “goofy shenanigans” vibe. It stressed me out that Jeremy and co. didn’t seem to go through the plan in a little more detail before they, you know, drowned Nicole, and felt out of character for this crew. (Nedley was perfect, though. Never change, Randy.)

That being said, Nicole was a straight-up ethereal ghost. And I loved getting to see Waverly be the hero in this episode, though I hope we see some processing of the fact that she killed Margo in coming episodes.

At first, I was worried that Wynonna Earp was going down the “mean girls” path with Rosita. (I never should have doubted you, show.) While the episode plays with the idea that society wants to pit Rosita and Wynonna against each other in a petty “catfight,” the story eventually subverts that trope, having these two complex women band together to take on Mother Medea, a very scary demon nun. I don’t believe that these two would be friends after what Rosita did, but I also don’t think that Rosita is without complexity or that Wynonna’s soft spot for “scorned women” wouldn’t work in Rosita’s favor in this case. I’m glad the show landed somewhere in the complicated middle, as if so often the case in real life and so rarely the case in mainstream storytelling (written by men).

I hope we get to check back in with Rosita and the nuns in future episodes. As much as their current situation is better than their previous deals, I wouldn’t exactly call it a happy ending to be stuck in this nunnery for all time.

I’m not sure if this show knows what to do with Jeremy as a character. He really did ghost Nicole, and I hope the show delves into that a bit more.

“2 Becomes 1” is a highly underrated Spice Girls song. Yes, I am listening to it right now. Yes, I still know all the words. Yes, I am always here for this show’s subtle agenda to celebrate pop music that is loved by teen girls and therefore derided by “mainstream” culture. Yes, Nedley is the best and canonically loves Pretty Little Liars and Spice Girls. Yes, that demonstrates how at home he feels in his various identities. Yes, this kind of representation is important too.

As painful as it is to see Wynonna make her choice, it is so heartwarming to see Doc choose himself and the healthy path in a way we haven’t seen him do before. Especially because it puts him in a better position to support Wynonna moving forward, should she ask for his help. It has been Doc’s instinct to put his relationship with the Earps before his own sense of morality, and that hasn’t helped anyone really.

It seems redundant at this point to talk about how talented this cast is, but special kudos to Melanie Scrofano and Tim Rozon in that final scene, having to balance the sorrow they were feeling for themselves and one another and the joy they were feeling at seeing Nicole and Waverly so happy and at being part of this family.

See you all on the other side of the hiatus, Earpers. It’s sunnier there.

The post Wynonna Earp Season 4, Episode 6 Review: Holy War Part Two appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[its-just-like-the-movies]

Walk the Line (05, C)

Allow me to start my ambivalent reaction to Walk the Line by going after some low-hanging fruit and saying that the film itself walks its own line between a solid level of craftsmanship and an undeniable roteness in how it enacts and presents its own narrative. It’s never bad or even embarrassing in displaying the lives of Johnny Cash and June Carter, though its utter conventionality is marred by how little inventiveness it employs to pull their lives over, and the energy of the piece is astoundingly stodgy. It’s not just that you’ve seen this story before, but you could probably watch some of them in the time it takes to sit through this 136 minute endeavor. In no case, from performance to trajectory to direction, whether you knew anything about the real musicians going into it, do you learn any new ideas about these people from the moment you meet them. By the end, I actually had more questions about why Johnny and June were even together in the first place, and plenty of other odd structural questions as the film’s seemingly endless conclusions kept happening and happening. Walk the Line doesn’t want to be a slog, but the base quality of filmmaking would suggest a slightly more ambitious project than the one we end up getting. It’s barely inspired, requiring more than any one contributor wants to give.

I didn’t know that Johnny Cash recorded a live album in a prison, which may have been the only moment of the film where my confusion came from not knowing anything about Cash walking into this. But from there on in, I’d be hard pressed to call anything the film does anything but predictable. Even if I wasn’t immediately sure which brother was Johnny, the sheer happiness of their scenes in contrast with the monstrous father and serene but unintrusive mother already suggesting a killing of the spare. We know he will die not just because of their against-all-odds happiness in the face of the life they’re living, but the transition to this boyhood sequence sees Johnny staring at a buzz saw, much like the one his brother has trouble using before being carved up. After a scene of domestic terror following the funeral a grown Johnny is sent off to Germany, where the casual inclusion of all his never-to-be-seen-again brothers and sisters loping around outside the house may be the most visually interesting shot in the film. A scene on the phone between Johnny and his fianceé is literally the only moment we see this woman happy about the idea or fact of being married to Johnny Cash. She is specifically against being married to Johnny Cash The Musician, and we are forced to watch the couple trot through escalations of the same basic scene of Vivian seemingly resisting the idea of interacting with his musical career in the slightest. I actively starting wondering by her second scene, as the sight and sound of Johnny and his burgeoning band practicing on their front porch sends her crying into the bathroom out of shame at his inability to make it big, what she ever wanted to do with him. From there on her righteous fury will come out of feeling isolated from Johnny because of his success and suspicious of June, not wanting to discuss either to keep them at bay.

It is hard to single out Ginnifer Goodwin for not adding more to her scenes, though Vivian Cash is perhaps the most immediately obvious example of the film’s total conventionality. And to be fair, it’s not as though we have any real idea of what Johnny sees in her either, though a lot of what people see in each other and think of themselves seem alarmingly opaque at the moments they most need support. At a certain point, I just couldn’t see why June put up with such an unrepentant mess as Johnny Cash, even if he was so beneficial to her career. I couldn’t see why Johnny would keep following a woman doing her damndest at times to stay out of his life, even taking in all of the moments she so happily wanted to be in his life. Why should we care when Johnny’s father shows up late in the film and begins criticizing his son’s life when all we’ve seen of this man is his alcohol-induced terrorizing of his whole family? What is there to make of the late-in-the-film pathologizing of being so reliant on his father for approval about his life, and why does the film so uncomplicatedly hand over this sermonizing to a man who we’ve only ever seen as a terror to Johnny’s wellbeing? “I’ve been off the drink for years.” he says, or something like it, and the film grants Robert Patrick a generous zoom-in close-up as he upbraids Johnny’s high-horse for defending a lifestyle his father rightly sees through as empty, but why the fuck should we care what he has to say? It’s not an uninteresting prospect had it been expanded upon, the father fixing himself up while his son collapses, but jamming it in near the end, especially when June ultimately gives herself unto the role of Official Johnny Cash Ressurrector, feels completely unearned and unneeded. 

Pardon the divergence towards an amazingly minor character, but when it comes to Johnny and June as realized by Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon, and how Walk the Line was directed by James Mangold, my reaction across the board is a noncommittal shrug. I’ll at least say that the first sequence where Johnny meets June, June accidentally getting caught in strapping Johnny Cash’s guitar strap, their musical performances, a talk later that night at a bar. Even the terrible family dinner where Cash’s father makes the speech I just criticized and the subsequent scene of June attempting to swear off Cash being met with reproach by her mother had some energy to it. The film certainly has its lines, its moments. Mangold is able to give the concert scenes a real energy, and both actors are musically talented enough to make them compelling to sit through. It’s not as though later performing scenes lack the energy on display here, though this does seem like the only musical number that lacks any blatant narrative triage. It’s one thing to see June compose “Ring of Fire” after a particularly bad encounter with Johnny, but it’s another to see Johnny and June happily duet “It Ain’t Me Babe” as Vivian Cash sits stone-faced in the front row, holding onto her children like a vice. Too often songs are used in a theatrical sense, not so much forwarding plot but highlighting an emotional tension that’s already pretty noticeable in a film with not a lot of plates spinning. This isn’t necessarily bad, though it would work better if the film was a straight-up musical instead of a biopic that frequently uses the artist’s songs as though that was the case. The indefatigable stage personas of Johnny and June especially are never cracked by their interpreters unless it’s in a monumentally obvious, scripted way, like June running offstage after being trapped in singing a song painful to her past, or Johnny collapsing onstage after an overdose. As note-perfect as their stage personas are rendered by Phoenix and Witherspoon, Mangold and co-screenwriter Gill Dennis only ask us to understand their relationship developments onstage in the songs they sing, not how they interact with each other while they sing these songs.

Which brings me, I guess, to the central issue I have with Walk the Line. As I said, Mangold’s basic level of filmmaking here is too high to call the film actively bad, his leads too solid to embarrass the film. But fine craftsmanship and note-perfect imitation doesn’t make up for how dry and slow this picture is. Oscar-nominated editor Michael McCusker (the most horrendous recognition Walk the Line achieved) is surely partially to blame for how slow the film feels, but that doesn’t take away how impassionately and conventionally realized the film is by Mangold, Phoenix, and Witherspoon. The remarkably limited color palette, only ever broken out of by certain numbers in Ariana Phillips’ Oscar-nominated costumes (my favorite recognition Walk the Line achieved), keeps the film as visually dull as it is energetically low. June’s outfits and some random women in the crowds at least have vivid reds, blues, whites, even the brown of June’s hair is in contrast to the dull colors of the production design and the cinematography. Johnny all-black ensemble never stood out much, and Vivian’s outfits seem to dress her up as some kind of proud, protective wife/mother. It’s more information about her than the script or Goodwin ever gives us, and certainly more than Mangold does. For all the physical and vocal recreations that Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon ably pull off, you can feel how limited the performances frequently are, not just on the script level but in how the principle actors don’t even try to dig deeper than the superficial levels of their characters on the page. Even if the script doesn’t seem to give much reason for June and Johnny to want to be together, a capable pair of performers could certainly have sparked off enough charisma to make me run with it. It’s not just that they’re hemmed in by a weak script, they make no legitimate effort to color in their characters or make their own decisions about them.

What we’re left with here is basically the milquetoast, uninspired blueprint of the tortured artist biopic. It’s the definition of meh across the board, and as much as I wish for a better version of this film, I’m almost equally interested in a worse version that at least has its horribleness going for it. I’ve said that it’s a boring film almost a million times in this paper, and I just don’t have the energy to say it one more time. To anyone watching this for its Oscarness (as I did, and thus hope to never have to deal with it again), knock it off when you’re not really in the mood to watch anything. Maybe being as low-energy as Walk the Line will put you in sync enough to get how Reese Witherspoon’s admittedly buoyant but slim turn steamrolled the Best Actress race, or why this film got any acclaim at all. I’d be happy to listen to Cash and Carter’s albums if anyone asked. But this is a limp thing, and I’m happy to leave it behind.

[tumblunni]

MAN I tried messing around starting newgame plus on Digimon Cyber Sleuth, even though I’ve played more than enough already so I’m not really gonna play again so soon after finishing. And... WHAT THE HELL?? Seriously this is like a one game microcosm of how you don’t realise how much you’re being mistreated until you see how the other side lives. Specifically on the subject of weird minority stereotypes... The difference between the designs/animations/general presentation of the two gender options is REALLY BIZARRE?? I had no clue! Playing as the girl you just kinda think ‘yeah thats weird maybe’ but you dont realise the dude doesnt have the same problems. Like... she VERY MUCH suffers from the ‘miss male character’ trope. She’s the weird sort of ‘lol sexy genderswap deviantart fanfiction’ version of a female option. I thought I was just reading too much into it with how the girl is posed like a supporting character on the boxart and literally never appeared in any of the promotional material until the game came out... Its just so... ODD! Everything EVERYTHING about her is defined to be this overthetop stereotypical idea of ‘we have to let them know she’s the girl version’. She’s far more sexualized, she always does these ‘girly’ or ‘hot’ poses for LITERALLY EVERYTHING! Like, the dude’s animation is just running but she has to run with her arms wide out to the sides, skipping like a five year old and swaying her hips. And her standing pose also has the hands out, her toes inturned, her chest thrust forwards and this general sort of ‘tee hee hee’ thing?? It really REALLY started to bug me how her chest is ALWAYS thrust forwards, I started to get super anxious about ‘holy shit am I ever doing that when I walk and i dont know it? is this really how female bodies are supposed to work??’. Its like her resting pose is this thing and its extremely painful for her to fold her joints back into a normal mode. And she’s always always posing when the dude isnt posing AT ALL, even her selection screen image is her doing the ‘one leg bounces back while you kiss someone’ type pose, contorted into a wild accordion while he’s just looking at the camera. I jsut... didnt even realise what was bothering me so much about playing as this character, til i saw the total absence of it on the dude... SERIOUSLY! He doesnt have some overstereotypical super huge macho animation set, his design isnt made to yell ‘I’M MALE’, he isnt sexualized, he isnt the ‘one body type everyone in this gender has to have’. He’s a scrawny androgenous waif that could have worked equally well if you slapped the label female on that design, somehow to make him female they decided they had to scoop out holes in his waist and hips and shove them on his chest. While also adding a bazillion extra animations that make her walk around everywhere like that one damn gif of terrible ragdoll physics as some guy walks down a road. I did not understand that whole assassins creed controversy about ‘but women need more animations, it’d be too much work to add them’. NOW I UNDERSTAND. Why on EARTH do they think they need these animations?? Women dont have to do everything differently to men to prove theyre women, in real life literally nobody worries about accentuating stereotypical gender roles while doing COMPLETELY NORMAL THINGS. Women dont put huge effort into looking cute or sexy while they’re just frickin walking down the street or standing alone in the privacy of their own home. Its like these people know so little about women outside of hollywood femme fatale movies that they legit think that sort of walk cycle is biologically ingrained into one gender???? The fact nobody ever acts like macho bodybuilder walk cycles should be given to normal tiny teenagers in every situation makes it pretty clear the difference here... And seriously, what is even this universal THING that ‘male are default, you need to mark a character as different to show she’s female’? Which usually means making her more feminine than the real female actor playing her, like that even makes a damn lick of sense :P I mean seriously if we’re gonna talk actual biology, men are the ‘different’. A species cannot exist with only men, the only one sex species are all female. Or lack a sex, or contain both sets of genitals. Also there is at least one bird species that has two male genders as well as female. And male seahorses get pregnant, and male clownfish can physically transition into females as part of their natural life cycle. And all sorts of far more diverse things we humans can barely understand! And like... you can say ‘women are the different and men are the blank, because women have boobs and men don’t’. But you can also say that women are the default because men are the same thing with penises added. And seriously, boobs are just nipples that actually serve their intended purpose. Women have this extra function compared to men because MALE BREASTS ARE VESTIGAL! The organ still exists, it just sits there doing nothing and never changes at puberty. (Though even that is more fluid that you’d expect, there are ways to induce lactation even if you’re a cis man. i dont really know why anyone would want to do that, it wouldnt exactly work as well, but whatever.) Aaaaand OF COURSE this entire thing is a stupid argument anyway because it only talks about biology, which is not the same thing as gender. Not to mention that biological sex isn’t all cut and dry either, the human species has A LOT of different intersex conditions. You can even have people who don’t have significant enough outward symptoms to be recognised as intersex at birth, who go their whole life thinking they’re a cis male only to suddenly find out they had an undiagnosed hormone condition and are technically a trans man. There is most definately no magical biological guideline for how men and women act. Especially frickin stupid nonsense like overspecific cultural guidelines on what’s cute for a woman to do while running, geez. You really can;t just ‘tell’ that someone is ‘really a woman’ or ‘really a man’ cos of how they act, and thats why this stuff pisses me off even when the story isnt saying anything about trans people. I’m so used to seeing this overexaggerated japanese concept of feminine/masculine mannerisms being used on trans stereotypes, it bugs me even seeing it being done to cis women... gahh this has gone wildly offtopic and I’m just venting Everything Bad About Stereotypes rather than the specific thing about this specific game I need to logoff and go cheer myself up. OH BUT yeah this game also literally has a friggin ‘we can tell this man is really a woman because mannerisms’ scene :P which also dissappointed the hell out of me cos it seemed like a trans character and instead it was the cliche I Had Some Reason To Pretend To Be A Man thing... Also apparantly instead of acting like that male persona, the male persona was magical brainwashing virtual reality stuff. What a wasted opportunity! You could have told us a lot of stuff about her personality from comparing how she acted while under this other fake personality, and what it implies she hides from other people. Like ‘hey, maybe she actually can be confident as long as she’s wearing a mask!’ Nah, everything badass or tough or sassy she did was just mind control. And she’s not trans. And blehh being outed by ‘acting like a girl’... Its so weird cos the game actually does have one trans npc in a sidequest, and has trans themes with a few major digimon. In the sense that they were male in previous seasons and have designs considered ‘masculine’ but take female forms when disguising themselves as humans. (and the player-controlled versions of these digivolutions even have different masculine voices matching earlier seasons!) Gahhhh at least I can sit here hugging my ambiguously genderqueer alphamon headcanons and nobody can tell me those arent canon cos the question was never answered either way! I hate the cliche answer that ‘yes all alphamons are male cos they ‘look male’, this one was just a man disguised as a woman’, but still even if that was the intent, it means the character is trans coded! EITHER OPTION IS TRANS TIME protect me, alphamon protect me from super gender essentialist game how do you even EXIST in this game?? seriously even your human disguise was super fanservicey weird female stereotypes mannnnnn i guess I had a few problems with this game aside from the one stupid rape scene :P aaaaand the problem of the game clearly being written assuming nobody would play the female option, so characters still constantly call you ‘he’ and such the only good consolation being that the game accidentally becomes Hella Gay, though I would have preferred canon lesbians instead of this weirdness WHY CANT FEI AND YUUKO BE CANON IT GOT SO CLOSE TO BEING CANON THEN FEI DISSAPPEARED FROM THE PLOT FOREVER only reappearing as a postgame newgame plus bonus boss that makes it impossible to complete the damn Masters Cup damn you fei damn you awesome amazing hella gay fei whom i love you deserved to be in a better game you deserved to be the matt-esque rival, i will never forget that you started off teasing that role and then just vanished... HELL, CAN SHE BE THE PROTAGONIST OF A SEQUEL OR SOMETHING game entirely about her and yuuko’s amazing story of love! also alphamon wandering in just to yell ‘I AM CANONICALLY TRANSGENDER’, make everyone a cup of coffee, and leave aaaaa why did i spend so long rambling every single complaint about this game, games in general, gender stereotypes in gender, life in general... its weird how just realizing ONE THING about a stupid walk cycle animation made me realise my general nebulous feeling of uncomfortableness that I could never explain about this game :P I am really excited for digimon world next order being better than this!