#Not that I’d intentionally screw up surgery

[maleexecutioner]

I think I’d do plastic surgery. It seems like it’s so easy to drop difficult patients. Can’t tell you how many stories I’ve heard about botched surgeries and the patient can’t get in contact with the surgeon. Just give me the money, I’ll give you the surgery, and gtfo. ❤️

[rantsofamadam]

Vent Post- Second Spinal Surgery.

For background context before I get into the main topics I want to talk about-

I recently had Spinal Fusion surgery for scoliosis in October. (Where they insert metal rods, screws and graft bones into my spine)

Up until yesterday everything was going smoothly. X-rays looked great, I have been recovering phenomenally, everything was smooth and looking perfect. Until yesterday, my second post-op appointment after surgery.

It’s been weeks since my surgery, and I got updated X-rays. Only to find out- the fusion failed in two places. Two of the screws came loose from the rod. Which is such an anomaly, and the first time my surgeon has ever had this happen to one of his patients.

And it will require another surgery. Another fucking surgery.

Where they will have to open my entire- now healed- wound/scar again, take out the entire bar, take out and replace the two screws that came loose, re-insert it, and stitch me up again. I will spend at least a day in the hospital and it will be a 3 hour surgery.

I just got out of, finished and was healing so well from this one. I was finally letting my wound heal and not ripping it apart. I was just getting used to moving on from surgery, getting used to my new life and body-

And now I have to start over.

And it’s- very disheartening. I feel like I am being overdramatic in my reaction about this, but it is hard, if I’m being honest. Really hard.

I had months to prep for this original surgery, I was doing physical therapy and mentally preparing myself. I know this surgery won’t be nearly as invasive or painful- but- the entire ordeal of anesthesia, pain, medication, nurses and doctors seeing and touching my body, more hospital and doctor visits,

My heart sunk, I felt like I couldn’t breathe when he told me I would have to go through this again. It’s just surgery, I got through it incredibly well- and I have to muster all of that again. With much less preparation time.

At face value it is traumatic. Physically, mentally and emotionally. It is. Right? I don’t know.

I keep brushing it off like it’s not a big deal, but it is. It is a big deal and I feel sick to my stomach with nerves this time.

I braced for death so hard the first time, going through every possible scenario in my head, and the fact my situation is already an anomaly? I- what if this time I become paralyzed? Or don’t wake up?

I could disassociate through the majority of it, not think about it, and now I barely even remember anything at the hospital or the few days at home (also because of the meds but I genuinely intentionally tried to zone out and not think about it- its easier to not be present in moments like that)

Now I just- have to do it again.

I was so excited I survived spinal surgery, I got it, I was healing so well, I was so determined at the time, so glad I got it over with. And here we go again. A second spinal surgery. A second. God damn. Spinal surgery.

I don’t feel as if I have any right to complain. Some people have it so much worse, incredibly worse, spending all the time in the hospital. I don’t have a right to say ‘I’m sick of hospitals’ (although- my dad does have cancer currently and that’s a whole other story with hospitals and the medical system) when so many others have it worse. But then again that’s- how all of life is. Elon Musk is probably complaining he didn’t get the right million dollar statue by the pool that he wanted like-

I think- it’s ok to say, especially in my situation right now- yknow- this sucks. This fucking sucks.

I did such a good job of stifling all my emotions the first time around and would talk logistically about it more than I ever said how I was feeling.

But this?

I teared up when my surgeon said I’d need a correction. And I cried in the car on the way home. Maybe that’s stupid.

It’s just surgery, I’m being overdramatic, this won’t even be as drastic of a change as it was the first time. Just god I thought we were done.

This entire year has been a FUCK ton. I was PRAYING 2024 would go out on a boring note for once and let me actually start my life again. But no. 2024 has been the year of change for me.

A sum up for me of what 2024 has been- My surgery was spontaneously moved from June to October because the hospital got hacked, I became stage manager at my high school and developed a passion, (as in this is what I want to make my major and career) I decided to take a gap year with the moved date of my surgery (so no college for me yet), I turned 18, I graduated high school, I entered poetry and art competitions and placed in both, I broke up with my partner of over a year, every social dynamic changed and flipped on its head completely with the people I knew over the summer, said goodbye to my closest and longest friends as they went to college and goodbye to the group and people I have come accustomed and so close to, went through SEVERAL pre-ops and physical therapy appointments, met, fell in love with, and started dating my current boyfriend, SO much family drama and dynamics, saw a lot of family we don’t usually, found out my dad was diagnosed with cancer, and I had fucking spinal fusion surgery. (one of the most painful and invasive surgeries, period.)

So, yknow. Not a big deal. At all. (This year has been one of the biggest and most eventful years of my life so far, and I haven’t processed nearly any of it to the extent I need to in order to feel present, here and healthy)

I thought with it being December, I was in the clear. Cause cmon, very end of the year what else could possibly happen?

Bam. Another surgery. Sudden/emergency surgery because I’m an anomaly and so fucking lucky to have had this happen to me- after everything, after moving on, letting myself actually heal, walking, beginning on getting my license, an official job, college- nope. All on hold again. Again. Again. Fucking again.

The worst part is- I feel like it’s my fault. I was SO determined to stand and walk as much and as fast as I could after surgery, I was doing all I could on my own, walking, standing, rolling over, trying when I could to pick things off the ground- pushing myself to sit through events or go places even if it hurt. My therapist told me to take better care of myself for myself’s sake. But all I cared about was proving I was strong and could do this- and getting back to ‘normal’ as fast as possible. Not having to think about the surgery, essentially ignoring it, and moving on so fast. Everyone was extremely impressed. My therapist wanted me to slow down, listen to my body and actually take resting time to heal. I didn’t really listen.

And now there are two screws loose, my surgeon has no idea how this could have happened, I’m the first patient of his who’s ever had this happen to me. But typically these surgeries are on kids younger than 18, and/or athletes and restless kids who are much more active than I am. I blame myself for ruining it, definitely. My friends tell me it wasn’t my fault, the first thing my surgeon said when he broke this news to me was- it isn’t my fault. But it’s so hard to believe that when it’s my body, this surgeons a professional, clearly I fucked up.

And now my fucking up doesn’t just affect me- it affects my story, the surgeons and doctors work, my parents, costs- ugh. My recklessness and carelessness for myself and my recovery led to this- fuck.

My therapist said ‘this is your SPINE. If you rush this, it could be really harmful in the long term. YOUR spine.’ I have an appointment with her tomorrow. I am dreading telling her this news. I feel like I failed her.

But the entire point is- I failed myself. yes other people are and will be affected but IM the one who has to go through it again. I fucked up- and it’s hurting myself. And I would say ‘I can handle it, it’s really not a big deal, I just feel worse for everyone around me.’ And yes I can handle it- I hate it. I really hate it.

I also have a skin picking condition where I compulsively pick at my surgery scar. It’s gotten better in the last few weeks, it’s generally healed, but

I don’t know I feel like I’m being overdramatic but God- I rarely talk about or show emotions like this, genuinely letting myself cry or be fucking angry about something pertaining to me like this. But man I’m just tired and can’t- handle this right now.

I know I will. I know I’ll be able to and I’ll handle this as well as I ever possibly could.

I already did this, how hard could a second surgery be, right? Yeah. Fuck. I called my boyfriend crying when I got home, he’s- the biggest cheerleader.

He’s going to try to be there again but his work is pretty serious and might not let him take the time off. Augh. Fuck.

I’ll be ok. Just the main thing on my mind recently. I have an official date for this second surgery now- December 27th. After Christmas. And I have a Pre-Op tomorrow already.

Another surgery. Next. Week. Fuck.

[lowlife4lifesposts]

You will be missed😥❓🗝⚓️🔥👻👀💋👣🎩👙🐶🦄🐺🐴🦋🦇🕷️🦀🦈🐩🌵🌹🌚✨🔥☔️🥨🎂🎱🏹🥊🧘‍♀️🏇🎬🎪🎼🎭♟️🏍️🪝🌅🎆💻📞🎥📺⏱️💸💵💰⚒️💣🪬🩸💊🚿🗝️📗📘📙📚📕📒📔🖊️✂️🔐💔❤️‍🔥❤️‍🩹🖤💝☪️☯️♑️♋️☣️❌⭕️❌⭕️🚫❗️⁉️⚜️🏧💤🚺🚮🚻0️⃣🆓#️⃣0️⃣↔️🎶♾️💲🔚🟢🔕♥️♠️🃏🏴‍☠️🏁🇺🇸🇬🇧🇳🇿🇯🇵🏴🏳️🕛🔀9️⃣9️⃣9️⃣🆙🆘🛑📴✏️🗑️

I guess you never really were my North Star? In my excitement of being in love with you I overlooked so many things like “who’s Matt”, our honeymoon, you never sharing your phone and always saying you’d give me the password but never doing it. The couch, the zero effort, the day you showed me the Washington property, you never buying me a gift or fulfilling any promises, the secret texting, never meeting any of your friends, the way you lit up talking about your exes, how they all abused you, not wanting me to go to Park City, your lack of effort and excitement about getting married, the narrative that you couldn’t veer from in the divorce, rehab, getting all the advice and doing the opposite, the zero participation, ignoring me constantly, not caring what I was up to, not caring what was wrong with me, not ever coming to be see me at work, never getting horny for me, gaining all that weight until your ex pops up, the conversation about “how fun it would be for you to screw your ex and how he wanted you to screw a bunch of other men and wouldn’t that be fun”, the secret past and your old email addresses, the odd non understandable work promotions, the segregating of your money, your purchases were cash and mine were financed, the whole surgery thing and staying in the hospital even though the doctor said to go home, the all of a sudden start calling twice a day to fight when you never called before, how you looked up the value of my panel truck out of the blue months before the divorce, the acting hysterical all those times, the false violent rape threat, selling my new shotgun the day after I left your moms, the marriage counseling sessions only about rehab, treating me like a stranger when we were together at the end, never wanting to do anything for me or with me, making me stay home from club activities and ignoring me. It’s just sad that I loved you and all you wanted was my money and some other guy saying sex was painful yet you could run to him immediately and I waited years without even a blow job. Why did I love you? Why did I trust you? Why did I defend and protect you, why did I believe you cared about me or wanted to be with me? I’m am a fool and you are ruthless and that is a really bad combination for the fool!

You got everything and you ruined me and my life. You made me pay for everything everyone else ever did to you and you ran back to them as soon as you made me pay their debit. I was ready to buy horses to spend more time with you and you couldn’t wait to get rid of me. You said you hated hearing me talk and what I had to say, you acted like I was out of bounds if I wanted a massage and you treated my money like it was your money and your body like you were married to someone else and I was a stranger hitting on you in a bar. You hated me being close to your parents and you hated me but wanted everything that I had. You caused me more pain and grief than everyone in my life before you you all together and called me a monster. I wished you never pretended to love or care about me but I did enjoy loving you and believing that you loved me made me happier than I’d ever been. But I was just fooling myself and you had me fooled completely. I’ll never try to love anyone again and I haven’t since we split, I’m just too stupid and gullible for relationships in this world and before I met you I could feel like I knew a little about love and being there for someone you loved but I don’t. I don’t know anything at all. You won, you beat me, I’m just pathetic like you said I believed in you, I believed in our love and I believed I had someone in this shitty world that I could trust and that would never intentionally cause me harm. I was wrong on all counts. Thanks for the education and thanks for destroying everything about me and stealing everything that I worked for, I didn’t need it, any of it and I didn’t need you or your fake love. You can have this piece of shit world with all of your deceitful friends and life and just use each other and lie about how enlightened and empathetic and self made you all are. I’ve got me and my dogs and a I’ve got my integrity and a love for nature and kind people that you can never take, you can’t take anymore from me and you have everything to lose and nobody that you can trust like you could trust me. So you enjoy the world that you couldn’t live without and enjoy my hard earned life that you took lock, stock and barrel but most of all enjoy knowing that there was one person who loved you completely warts and all and would have done anything for you and to protect you and would never cheat on you or knowingly harm you and you went at home with both barrels and a mountain of lies and fucked him out of his life and everything he held dear in the most ruthless and thorough way possible and he won’t ever be able to forget it even though he was so easily discarded and forgotten by you! Good fucking job you really showed that guy that loved you what a fool he was and made sure he couldn’t ever have the life that he had earned., thanks “Sweet Pea” I am in awe of your abilities!

[wu-sisyphus-gang]

Motion Sickness: 5.2 Sector 7

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“Alright kid, just follow my lead and stay quiet unless someone asks you something.”

“Got it.”

“Don’t screw this up for us.”

“Are you done?”

Dust crystals, weapons, and all other kinds of malicious paraphernalia were sold in the lower levels of Mistral. Beneath wired poles and under shady market stalls you could evidently buy pretty much whatever you wanted. In broad daylight. Probably pretty hard to enforce law when everyone was breaking it. The entire place was pretty openly criminal with people who were wearing masks purchasing put together bombs in full view of the sun. Or what counted for sunlight down here.

We followed a spider’s web marking on a wall into a dimly lit bar in which the only barrier between the inside and the elements was a flap with a Mistrali Flag on it. As though that was fooling anybody. It didn’t fool me and I colored myself as someone who was pretty easily fooled.

I took a look around the inside and noted several dozen people in similar purple drab. As if that weren’t enough, many people inside had that same spider web symbol tattooed to their forearms, bicep, or even their neck. I knew enough about gangs to know one when I saw one being so open.

I wheeled Qrow in.

“That's far enough now sweetheart.”

A woman sat alone at a table with two of what were clearly bodyguards on either side of her. I stopped pushing Qrow’s chair and held up my hands in surrender. I wasn’t about to start anything, even if some of the people we had passed were clearly on something and had glints in their eyes that made me want to draw my weapon.

Ether, I hoped, but perhaps even Hyper was on the table. Literally on the table as a dude did a line of white powder nearby.

I made no move towards my weapon anyways because it wasn’t like I could defend Qrow or myself in a tight space like this. We were very outnumbered and probably outgunned and entirely at the mercy of our hosts. I like to believe that I was alright in a fight, which was to say maybe I could take the lady’s two body guards if it was just the three of us and I managed something clever. This was something different. We were surrounded and they were in front of us, behind us, to either side, and, just to make things worse, above us. The place had two floors that I could see.

“Well if it isn’t Qrow Branwen. It's been a long time and you have gotten much shorter.”

“You know, you loose one fucking fight.”

“And who’s this? Some new protege or apprentice?”

The bodyguards came up to search me and I cooperatively handed over my sword and shield to the girl who staggered under its weight for a second before reclaiming her balance. “Jaune Arc.” I introduced myself as the dude patted me down. He came away with some fire crystals and an Atlas army knife. Nothing crazy for a place like this; I mean probably. I didn’t frequently search people who went to bars like this one.

“Didn’t answer my question, hun.” She probed. Jabbing at me with the spoon she held in a pudgy hand.

“He’s teaching me, yes ma’am,” I erred on polite caution.

“Good boy. You can put those arms down.” I did as she directed. “Now I’m sure you’re not here just to catch up with me, now are you?”

“I’m not no.” Qrow wiggled his stumps. I almost laughed. “I need a set of prosthetics, Atlesian or Valean or good enough for hunters.”

Would his prosthetics transform with him or-

“It’ll cost you.”

I’m sure it’ll be fine. Its magic so why not? I couldn’t think of a good reason why his new legs wouldn’t transform with him and Ozpin hadn’t said anything. Not that that meant anything.

“We don’t have much Lien.”

“Oh Mr. Branwen. Lien is how I run my business,” the spider said from her seat. She managed to glare down at Qrow still with a soft smile.

“You also run it with favors and errands.”

“A favor from the great Qrow Branwen.” She took a long drag of either tobacco or perhaps even some greens. It smelled most like tobacco, I think, though. “It would mean a lot more if he was capable of walking,” she jabbed easily. Which I think was perfectly fair.

“You provide the legs and I’ll do the walking. And if you don’t like that then the kid isn’t half bad in a fight either.”

“Hmm.” She pondered. “Okay.” She said with a sly smile. The dude handed me back my switchblade and crystals and the girl handed back my harness with my bigger blades sheathed as though that was some well rehearsed signal.

"I'll need real surgery." Qrow admitted begrudgingly. "Not those ones you just attach and pull off. I'll need them grafted on."

"Well that'll just cost you extra. Two favors.”

“Lets talk it over. Hey kid?”

“Hm?” I wondered.

“Why don’t you wait at the bar while we talk. You’re making me nervous just standing behind me.”

“Alright. Sure.” Why not?

I mosied up to the bar. The bartender in purple had a kukuri and some light armor. He didn’t card me or anything, just looked across the rosy counter towards me. “Whisky on the rocks.” Keep it familiar, keep it simple, keep it dumb, or else you’ll end up under some ganglord’s thumb.

My drink was slid towards me in a crystal patterned glass that I examined. It seemed clean enough. I had a sip. It was smooth. I had another sip.

“Who’s this Melanie?” A voice purred from behind me. A girl’s voice. I ignored it because ignoring women was my MO.

“I don’t know Miltiades, some new huntsman.”

“He’s decent looking.”

“Tall, too.”

I looked around. There were two girls looking at me. They had dark hair and pale green eyes. I looked them up and down. “Are you talking to me?” I wondered. It went against my MO. Explicitly, even. One had a pair of silver blades attached to white boots to match the overall assemble of a white dress. The other had red claws strapped to her back. The red claws matched a tighter red dress than the girl in white who could only be a sister. Maybe a cousin if I was stretching.

They looked damn near identical, though, so I was really stretching.

“Who else would we even be talking to?” I looked around, the girl in white made a fair point. There was nobody even close to me. They were to either side of me out in the open.

“So what brings a huntsman like you down here?” The girl in red asked.

“I’m with him.” I pointed to Qrow, not seeing any point to lying. I pushed him into this place afterall. Out in the open. “Need to get him back on his feet but we’re a little short on cash.”

“And what is he to you?” The girl in red asked.

“He’s not much to be completely and totally honest. Family of a friend,” I answered vaguely. “I didn’t catch your names.”

“I’m Melanie Malachite.” The girl in white introduced herself. “And this is-”

“Miltia.” The other finished. Malachite, like the woman in charge. Well I'd better be polite and not fuck things up. That was all the advice I’d been given.

“Well, can I buy the two of you a drink? Or drinks, rather?” I doubted they would be sharing.

Instead they just giggled a little at me. Cute girls laughing at me was nothing new though and after a few years it meant surprisingly little. Girls like this tended to laugh like that. It would be better for my sanity if I didn’t take it personally.

“I thought you were short on cash.” Miltia returned, hiding her smile behind a hand and failing. Probably intentionally.

“Short on cash for a pair of legs. Not for three drinks.” I lifted my glass to my lips. It was already empty and the glass clinked around in no liquid. “Make that four drinks. What’ll you two have?”

“A white russian,” Miltia said.

“A hurricane.”

I ordered for them and another whiskey for me. Then I slid the red drink to the girl in white and the white drink to the girl in red. I was sixty percent sure they were fucking with me. Somehow. And it was totally working. They were messing with my head completely and totally and probably for kicks.

But they took drinks from their cocktails with a familiarity that threw me off. Maybe they did drink these exact drinks a bit. I nursed my own, making sure to take it slower on my second glass of something straight.

The last thing Qrow and I needed was for me to be wasted.

"So where are you from?" Melanie pulled back from her red drink and bounced out the words. I hope she wasn't clumsy because that drink would stain like a nightmare on her white clothes.

"Vale. I, uh, I used to go to Beacon." I took my weapons off my back and set them on the stool to my left. The stool on my right was occupied by Miltia.

"We're from Vale too." Miltia said.

"Not really the biggest fans of Beacon students but we can make an exception."

"Lucky me." I slipped. "Well the 'ex-Beacon student' is kinda important anyways. I left that place behind after the attack."

"We left with the collapse as well." Melanie added.

"Decided it just wasn't safe enough." Miltia clarified.

"Makes sense. I was out of there in a hurry myself. How did you two get here then?"

"Airship." Miltia informed me.

"Our parents own several so we just flew." They were sisters, then.

"Must have been nice," I let myself grumble. The thought of my feet aching from walking ached.

"Sounds like there's a story to how you got here." Miltia pressed.

"I walked, rode horses, and took a train. Just extra steps comparatively. More monsters, you know?"

Melanie blinked. “You ride horses?”

“Well aren’t you a regular old fashioned knight.” She eyed me in my thick armor. She may be reading into my look and figuring some other things. They were all wrong but she was figuring some things.

"I had to learn on the way. It's not like that."

"Did Qrow Branwen teach you?"

"You two know Qrow?"

"We know about Qrow." Miltia corrected.

"Some hunters are famous like that."

"Him and his sister are both well known but there are others too."

"Winter Schnee, Glynda Goodwitch, General Ironwood." Melanie counted.

"Well Qrow didn't teach me that but I suppose he is mentoring me in other things."

"Like what?" Miltia asked.

"Like being a better fighter, I guess. He knows a lot about how to kill things, and not much else to be on the level with you." I reached the bottom of my drink and debated with myself before ordering another one. I was on the heavy side anyways, so it should be fine? "I really try not to take his advice on other things."

“You’re a heavy drinker.” Melanie watched me order more whiskey.

"Yeah. That's one of those things I really don't want to pick up from Qrow but it might be too late. I might have the sort of addictive personality that leans that way."

"You're not sure?"

"I'm really not the kind of guy that goes to bars much."

"You seem like a regular to bar or club life."

"Yeah. With the right haircut you could be a plain old ladykiller."

I blushed. "I don't think so..."

"Come on."

“I know, let us give you a makeover.”

"Nobody likes a good-looking guy with no confidence."

"Nobody likes a guy with the wrong kind of confidence either. Trust me on that one." I thought of Weiss. She really hadn’t been all that into me. Like at all. But hot girls not liking me was nothing new to my life. It was the rule and there were two redheaded exceptions. Weiss was… probably a friend? Now? I wasn’t really sure. I learned to dislike her a little as a self defense mechanism. And to be fair, while that was probably an unhealthy coping mechanism, it kept me slitting my wrists the short ways rather than the long ways. I sucked on my third drink. My vision was getting a little shaky and my lips and face a little looser. "Where did you girls train?"

"Train?"

"Get your huntswomen training, I mean."

"Huntswomen," Miltia giggled.

"I know he's so careful." Melanie laughed back.

"Listen, I have gotten my ass beat by so many women that it pays to jump through that kind of hoop. It just does."

"We don't have any formal training." Miltia returned to the previous question.

"We're from the mean streets of Vale."

"We're with the gang so…" Miltia finished.

"I see." I nodded along.

"You think it doesn't count?" Melanie prompted.

"It's probably more real than any training someone gets at like, Signal." I disagreed with her implication. "My real training came from after Beacon fell, in the wild. Hunting criminals and real Grimm instead of practice dummies or training partners."

"Plus whatever Branwen is teaching you."

"Eh." I managed. "The chair happened around the same time that I met him. Most of the training he has given me has been verbal rather than hands on. All-l, really-y." I slurred slightly.

"You seem perfectly capable anyways."

"Maybe gang life would suit you."

I watched Miltia trade drinks with Melanie. They took a pull from the others' drink in perfect synchronization. At my look she leaned over. "We don't mind sharing things." She winked.

"Uh huh." I managed stupidly. “So what kind of haircut should I get? Asking for a friend.”

“I don’t know.... What do you think Melanie?”

“Well he looks alright now but he could tame it even more. Slick it back and nice and short. Nothing to grab onto but it would be smooth.”

“Yeah, he’s sort of in between right now. Like go scruffy or comb it over. Pick one and commit.”

“Pick one and commit…?” I trailed.

‘Yeah. You’re scruffy-”

“But not full on scruffy. And you have the comb over-”

“But you didn’t commit to it. If you’d pick one and go with that one who knows what could follow.”

“No one likes a guy who’s indecisive.”

“Seems to me like you girls don’t like a lot of guys,” I cut in. “Indecisive, no confidence, wrong confidence. Boy, is there anything about me girls actually like. I’m honestly asking.”

“What should your angle be? You mean?” Miltia asked.

“Yeah? What cards do I play? I’m too nice for edgy and too honest for mysterious.”

“Well you’re tall and broad so you’ve got that going for you,” Melannie pointed out. “Everyone likes a huntsman. Who doesn’t like a huntsman?”

“Nobody.”

“Okay, I hear that. Let me ask you something. I met the most beautiful girl in the world when I was at Beacon. A smart, gorgeous huntress. Let’s say I was really trying to impress this girl and I tried everything I could think of. I tried singing. I tried asking her to the dance. I tried asking her alone and in groups and in and out of classes. I tried it all. Okay? I tried literally everything and the kitchen sink.”

“And nothing worked?” Melannie asked.

“Nothin’,” I said. “Nothin’ worked. Not a damn thing. I think she hated me.”

“Well it sounds like you were trying too hard. Nobody likes that.”

“And if you’re going to go honest you have to commit.”

“C-o-m-m-i-t,” Melanie hit the back of her hand into her palm with each letter. She spelled it out for me which was good because I’m fuckin’ stupid. “Honest is fine.”

“Honest is good, even. But if you’re dishonest in any way a smart girl will smell that from a mile away. You said she was smart right?”

“The smartest.”

“So what did you really do?”

“We can’t tell you unless you’re completely honest with us,” Melannie ordered.

“Real talk?” I asked. “I… I tried to fake my confidence… and most of my personality...”

“Yeah that’s not gonna work.”

“That’s not gonna work at all,” Miltia agreed. “You can't play the nice guy card and then try and fake it like that. A girl just knows.”

“A girl totally just knows. We would notice if you were faking it right now. It’s like a guy faking their orgasm. It’s not a thing.”

“It’s not like girls can really fake it either…” I pointed out. “It’s pretty obvious and world shaking when a girl finishes for real. And when you do it right she isn’t sure if she wants more or less. Can’t fake that. Come on.”

“He knows…” Melannie trailed.

“He’s onto our entire gender.”

“Who would have thought?”

“Scraggly, tall, and blonde has moves in the bedroom.”

“Please,” I waved off. “It’s so stupid easy to make girls come. It’s literally brain dead. If I can do it anybody can. The clitoris and G-spot are not hard to find. You can make a girl finish even when she is begging you not to.”

“Can you not with guys?” Miltia asked.

“Not a chance. It’s easy to get a guy into it but if he’s not completely into it you cannot get him off. Bet.”

“Is that a challenge?” Melannie wondered. “Are you challenging us?”

“Bet,” I repeated. I finished my drink.

"Are you done flirting." Qrow had rolled up on me without me noticing. No mean feat from the chair.

"I really wouldn't know flirting if it walked up and stabbed me in the front," I leveled against him.

"Well stop it. Come on. I worked out our favors from Lil' Miss Malachite." I said my valedictions, grabbed my tools, and wheeled him back over to the woman in charge.

"So what's the first favor?" I wondered.

"I need someone killed." She splayed her hands across the table. "Is that going to be a problem?"

"Well it depends on who it is, doesn't it."

"Does it?" She pressed me.

"Of course. It matters who it is to you too."

"Smart boy. It's a dust witch in a rival gang named Eminence Kramer. She’s been a thorn in my side for far too long and she has made it clear that she has to go."

"And the second favor?" I continued.

"I need information out of one Don Corneo." She took a long drag. "You decide the order. I don't particularly care. After that we'll get Qrow here a new set of legs and the surgery to boot."

pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq

-WG

[bladekindeyewear]

Bloggin’ bout HS^2 Commentary from start to Mid-Jan-2020

Sigh.  Time to pay the piper.  Someone’s gotta extract whatever plot-important and plothole mentions get mentioned in this commentary, even though reading behind-the-scenes stuff about Homestuck makes me even more nervous than reading frontend stuff ever could so I don’t really want to.  FYI, that’s what you’re going to get out of my posts on these -- anything regarding plot stuff and plotholes, things we would’ve misinterpreted or missed otherwise, not any of the other paid content such as sketches or full quotes from them about things.

TWENTY FUCKING DOLLARS A MONTH!???!??  Is Andrew even seeing any of this cash?  --no, not much of it I guess, he would want to make sure the WP folks get paid enough after the--

Yeah I’m not gonna even think about that.

Fuck it.  I’m ponying up.

Alright, first commentary post on the Patreon, commentary and bonus sketches for Ghostflusters... whoa, this is long and extensive.  Is it going panel by panel??

I guess I’ll give you a small quote just for a taste of how this starts...

Page 33:  Not sure what any of this shit means. It’s pretty deep though. We were going for an echo of the beginning of the epilogue when John is dreaming in anime. Except here it’s Jake, and nobody is dreaming, at least not yet. Also an anime dream wouldn’t be a nightmare for Jake, since Jake likes anime. Or he used to. Now anime probably just reminds him of Dirk.

Good thing we’re never gonna hear from that guy ever again.

...because this commentary is sort of stylized.  They’re kind of riffing on what they’re doing, and I get that -- when you have to write commentary you’re asking people to PAY for you can easily feel like you have to be entertaining.  But they are describing the rationale for the shot choices they made and such.  They’re also going for a sort of Andrew-recap sort of attitude, and I don’t blame them for that choice, either.

[Candy] Jade is...well, you’ll see.

GOD DAMNIT.  Don’t remind me that Dave vanished on her forever while they were doing pro-revolutionary work and she’s probably going to be in a bit of a state!  Stupid knowing author future allusions...

Then again, that’s exactly why I’m here blogging about the commentary for you guys -- for me to relay Authorial Intent on Stuff That Happened That Seemed Plotholey and Hints About What’s Going To Be Relevant.

I just, uh... didn’t expect there to be that MUCH of it.  And that casual phrasing for that Candy Jade Is Going To Be Seen And Or Relevant hint is... kinda indicating to me that there’s gonna be a LOT more of that here than I wanted.  :|

Continuing... there’s talk of why they started with Jake here, being unused to writing for middle-aged characters in Homestuck terms, et cetera, but again, I’m only here to relay anything with plot impact or SERIOUS perspective on how we should / the authors are viewing this.  The rest stays behind the paywall for whichever of you all think it’s worth $20, I don’t really have a choice.  At least now I know why there was no one to tell me what details were actually BEHIND the paywall.  Seriously, that’s steep.

Speaking of how stylized the commentary is here, I can get why some might read it and view the authors as slightly callous -- I’m giving them PLENTY of benefit of the doubt, though.  Andrew was FAR from callous and he hurt us worse out of love of artistic intent with the Epilogues than the HS^2 folks could EVER hurt us.  Real Dirk-like, actually.  Dirk is practically half of a self-insert, as we well know.  No wonder Andrew thought the right thing to do was to take his hands off the story, what with Dirk’s villainous action being putting his own hands ON the story.

We like to make fun of Jake English as much as the next guy, but he probably is actually pretty good at “doing things” if the need arises. 

Mhmm; there are some jibes at how screwed up Jake has made his life, but I don’t believe these authors actually disrespect Jake at all.  He was dealt a bad hand by the story leading up to this point (quite INTENTIONALLY by Dirk’s narrative control in the Epilogues, too) and HS^2 and its bonuses so far have been exploring the heap of merits and potential he’s still got in him.

It’s kind of sweet how he wants to clean out his ecto-son’s house, even if most of that is to prevent the slow creep of mounting existential dread and narrative relevance. 

Huh.  So they think Jake can sort of feel that narrative relevance is seeping in around him, to him?  That’s not out of the question at all.

Continuing... they’re going on a bit about the same sort of things I mentioned about their choices in detail or detail-less-ness when depicting people in this new format, considering ages and the paired text descriptions and such.  That’s the sort of thing you’d traditionally want to pony up for commentary for, so rest assured that all that IS in their commentary posts if you want to do that.  I’m kind of extracting the plot stuff out of the paywall just on principle.

A lot of making this comic--and every other comic ever--is trying to convey as much information with as little space as possible.

Quite so.

From this conversation we find out a couple things. 1) that Brain Ghost Dirk knows about Ultimate Dirk, and he thinks he’s a dickhead. 2) Brain Ghost Dirk knows who Jeff Bezos is, and Jake doesn’t. This could be a sign of a couple things, all of which are probably stupid. 

This is ALSO what I came here for:  Legitimate “don’t worry about it” handwaves about stuff that shouldn’t matter to us.  I never ascribed the slightest bit of relevance or inference to BGDirk making a Jeff Bezos reference, and I’m glad I was completely justified in ignoring it.  So far I agree with this probably-plural-but-acting-like-a-singular author’s train of thought.

Come to think of it, it’s maybe strange that in this Cool Future Earth where all of our characters are rich as hell, none of them have bothered to have any sort of corrective eye surgery. Jane, Jake, John, and Jade all still wear glasses. I guess they do have “signature looks” to maintain in regards to their brand. 

I had to include this, I was legitimately curious.  Understood it was probably an artistic decision to stay on-brand a fair bit -- and losing glasses even temporarily has a lot of thematic significance whenever it happens in Homestuck Proper -- but it’s nice to have some confirmation that this was the understandable rationale behind the choice.

Here we find out what Dirk thinks about Jake’s behavior of the last few years. In other words, we find out what Jake thinks about Jake’s behavior over the last few years. [...]

[Brain Ghost] Dirk is manipulating Jake here, but he isn’t actually saying anything demonstrably untrue. 

Again, most of this was obvious at the time, but it’s nice to have authorial confirmation on what was being brought across as per the strange divide between Brain Ghost Dirk’s independent will and his mostly-part-of-Jake status.

Seriously though, shoutout to the conceit that god tiers can just fly endlessly, with no visible effort. It’s a really excellent form of narrative shortcut that fits perfectly into the bonkers vibe of earth c as a whole. Oh there goes one of the Creators, just flying over the Wal-Mart like an asshole. 

You know... who IS doing the commentary here?  One of the authors, all of them?  One of the artists??  This really is a COLLABORATIVE effort between the authors and artists involved here, I think, and it shows in their clear surprise and appreciation for each others’ work that only settles into a full understanding instead of just knowing what one intended off the bat.

It calls into question exactly how much of the Condesce’s mind control was actually mind control at all, and how much was just a lowering of inhibitions. 

Right, right.

We see Jane greeting Jake here with open arms, which makes you wonder exactly what is going on here. If you’ll remember from Candy, Jane has already served Jake divorce papers. A mystery in need of solving, for sure. 

HERE we go!  This is the potential plothole we were concerned about that got me alerted that the commentary had something to add in the first place.  John mentioned toward the trail-end of the Candy epilogues that divorce papers had shown up for Jake.  (And we also saw an HS^2 update ago or so that Jane hadn’t actually KNOWN Tavros was “awol” at all until he was literally a part of this whole clowncorpse logistics business.)  So in light of what this post continues to say:

It could be that Jane has put aside the nasty business of their divorce in order to have a strong chest to cry on. Can’t really say I blame her. Jake English has many flaws but he does seem like a good person to drape yourself across and really let loose on. And without Gamzee there, Jane needs another punching bag. 

...it all finally fits as pretty logically consistent, although the author is being deliberately coy in a way that leaves it open for more to be revealed later about exactly how this is happening.  Good!  No obvious plotholes in HS^2 (yet).  That’s an honest relief.  The more often they have something in mind where I’d previously worried they’d screwed up, the more often I can give them credit and speculate properly on those gaps in story-logic expecting something there, like we so often got to with Andrew before the retconsplit made even THAT kinda fucky.

If you’ve ever had a friend or family member go evil, you’ll know that one of the hardest parts is there’s always still elements of them that you like.

I can definitely say that from nearly personal experience.

Also, at this point in the story there is no lingering doubt that Jake and Dirk have had a sexual relationship. There’s a familiarity there that wasn’t around when they were teens. 

I assumed so, but I guess I never thought ABOUT how I assumed so.  Huh.

Do any of the creators have a moral leg to stand on if all they’re doing is curling up into a ball and hoping the world gets better without them? Actually, does anyone have a moral leg to stand on if they do that? 

Almost Riddley, there.

These posts are certainly interesting!  Steeply priced for what they are, but interesting.  Moving on to the second of four so far... this one’s about Catnapped Part 1.

Taking over Earth C's business world certainly would have required rubbing shoulders with the already-powerful on the planet.

--yep, which I never doubted even when brought up in the Epilogues is a large part of her supply-side government views.

Ah, looks like the bonus commentary is a good deal shorter!  But that bonus section was a good deal shorter than the story section covered earlier too, so.

On to the next one, for Clown Logistics.

Page 58: If you love Vriskas, i hope you enjoy more Vriska content. If you hate Vriskas, well. Here is another one that is kind of different. Feel free to contemplate nature vs nurture and how best to apply this dichotomy toward emoting about the vriskas of your choice how you see fit.

I’m starting to really enjoy this author commentary.

Tavros being named Tavros sure was a decision. Go back and reread the commentary for panel 58 but stop before the nature/nurture thing, since they are not clones, or even the same species. They just have the same name, which, in this universe, means you at least type kind of the same.

Hmhmm.

Page 65:  Sometimes you try and come up with something to say about a page, and you cannot, and so you wait 8 hours, and go see Knives Out, and then you have 2 white russians, and then you still can’t come up with anything to say, but oh well! Commentary needs writing. Tavros is experiencing an emotion here.

Now THAT’s a mood.  I gotta go see Knives Out sometime soon.

...Alright, I can see why some people think MAAAAYBE this author might be being a little disrespectful to the audience, but if they’re going based on THIS, I don’t have a clue what they’re talking about.  This comment could have come from Andrew’s fingertips any day of the week!!!  I honestly wouldn’t WANT replacement authors who couldn’ comment like this in there for a page in paid commentary, especially in a lighter section of the story that doesn't need too much said about it.

And I paid $20 for this shit.

...Continuing, I’m loving all this commentary on Harry Anderson.  Representative excerpt:

Again, direct your eyes toward the boy. What a fucking asshole. 

...these commentaries are honestly improving my mood!  I didn’t expect that, really.

Ah, I didn’t even notice that the flying cars appear to be self-driving.  I think maybe the back of my mind MIGHT have noticed but only a bit.

Referring to the corpse-carry crew:

Page 82: Pokedex entry for Magneton in Pokemon Sun: When three Magnemite link together, their brains also become one. They do not become three times more intelligent.

Ain’t THAT a mood.

(...I just had an internal “Wait, am I using that right, it being a “mood”?  Isn’t that the hip new term, how do I have any right to latch onto that however much I feel it?  Ohhh gosh I’m so fucking old” moment.)

It’s clear from the commentator’s complaints that the crew never viewed this commentary ALONE as worth upping the pledge to $20, but that’s... not quite a bad thing?  I think it’d have been more disrespectful to think that they COULD make the commentary worth that.  I doubt there’s a single person on their team who feels quite right about the business model (besides the artists they have plenty of context to know how deserving they are of a living goddamn wage), but it’s what they have to live with and go with, here.  I feel weird for honestly understanding ‘em, and more than slightly pitying for how many people will look at all this and read “these assholes don’t care about us”.  I really can’t think that’s anywhere CLOSE to true from this without more context.  (And I really DON’T want more context, don’t send me any.  I’ve got to read HS^2 and I’m enjoying reading it so far so let me keep enjoying it please.  Background drama details make me nauseous, DON’T give me any if there is any (which I wouldn’t know about in the first place beyond an opinionated friend or two dropping hints in a bad mood).)

Did you know there are people who I’ve seen honestly believing “Undertale is pretty good but the creator is an arrogant asshole”?????

Because they saw his tweet about the game score passing Kojima’s MGSV on metacritic briefly and misinterpreted his wide-eyed disbelief, disbelief honed to nervous laughter to maintain sanity by Toby’s insecurity about his unprofessional work and work product???  They thought he was SERIOUS without any of the context of the usual insincere little dog persona they should’ve read into the game of his they played??

Awh man.  That just ticks me off.

Anyway where were we.

Page 91: This is a flashback so I didn’t write this one, which means I thankfully don’t have to say anything about it. 

Wait.  What?

Are they trading off writers between chapters, or...?  Hm.

Whatever they’re doing, it fits together pretty darn well SO far.

Alright, that finishes that off, time for the last commentary post on the second bonus update.

I don't know if you noticed, but everything is terrible right now. And I don't mean just in Homestuck's dumb fake earth. I mean in our dumb real earth.

Now that’s a mood.

I've been playing a lot of Death Stranding recently. Basically any media that you're making in 2019 has to either address what's going on around us or come off sanitized, sterilized, with its head in the sand. Kojima offers a simple power fantasy: Through Norman Reedus's sweaty, urine-filled labor, the things that divide us can be banished. America can be unified again.

Now THAT is a god damned MOOD.

The author(?) goes in about why this is happening, why Jane is being confronted this way, why she IS this way, et cetera.

Privilege, safety, and inherited wealth do funny things to the brain. People justify to themselves why they have what they have. If you have enough for long enough, you start to convince yourself you deserve it.

That’s one of the biggest goddamn reasons for the inequality and political landscape we have today IRL, yeah.

She saw a new world and chose, simply, to replicate the power structures of the 21st-century America she was raised in. Boardrooms, power pantsuits, formality and professionalism.

Jane's favorite comic, a noir-detective drama steeped in the pop-cultural trappings of pulp Americana, reflects this mindset.

So, our catgirl Seer of Light takes us through the looking glass, and we get to see an old friend.

Hm!

Nothing really to say, I just had to share this fitting context the author is giving.  How things fit together even better than they seemed to, and this was all far from random.

I feel warmly ensconced in the womb of nostalgia, gently cradled on Norman Reedus's chest.

Pffffffff

Yep, more of what we already surmised and appreciated, how Swifer and Cliper were giving us some much needed perspective... the commentary post even has little traditional-Homestuck sprites for ‘em.

And... that’s it for the commentary so far!  Again, I enjoyed all that more than I expected.  $20 doesn’t sting for me as much as it does for others in general, but it stung a lot less after I was through reading all that honestly somewhat-entertaining stuff confirming a lot of the insights I’d thought the plot was having.

I’ll probably wait to check for further commentary posts until like... after bonus updates come out, in the future, and then just blog about whatever I’m not caught up on.  Sound fair?  I’m going to blog as often as a real or bonus upd8 comes out, but I’m not going to pop in more often than that for my own sanity’s sake.  Have a good MLK weekend, y’all.  :)

[anubislover]

Examination (Chapter 4 of Heartstealers Get Jealous, Too)

“Ummm, Tora-o-kun, you know you don’t have to be here, right?”

Glowering, Law crossed his arms as he sat on Chopper’s desk. Everything in the infirmary was built to accommodate the smaller doctor’s size, making the Surgeon of Death appear even more lanky and intimidating. “I’m just making sure Tony-ya does his job right.”

The small reindeer looked offended while Nami frowned. “Ok, first of all, I just rolled my ankle, so I’m pretty sure a doctor isn’t even necessary, but secondly, Chopper’s been treating me literally since I met him. I think he can be trusted with my health.”

“You don’t know it’s just a rolled ankle because you’re not a doctor, Nami-ya. There could be hairline fractures neither of you can feel through the swelling. It’s better to let me cut the leg open so I can get a direct look at the bone. It’s much easier to see if anything’s broken when there’s no skin or muscle in the way.” He scoffed at their twin looks of horror. It was a simple, efficient procedure he did on his own crew all the time. Honestly, they were acting like he suggested amputation.

“That is completely unnecessary!” Chopper cried. “I don’t care if your powers make it easier; I can check Nami’s leg without cutting it open!”

“See? Chopper knows what he’s talking about! Now shoo!”

“And what if I’m right and there is a break? You could be walking across the deck, every step putting more and more pressure on those minuscule cracks in your bone, when suddenly your femur shatters underneath you. Tony-ya’s talented in pharmacology and internal medicine, but I doubt he has the surgical skills to repair something like that. Plus, I’ve been studying medicine for far longer. I should be the one examining you.”

Brown eyes narrowed at his flippant remarks. “Yeah, well, your bedside manner sucks compared to his.”

“You’ve never complained about it before,” he replied with a sultry smile. “Last time I even wore the lab coat with no shirt like you asked; isn’t that putting my patient’s needs first?”

Despite the blush staining her cheeks, she stood her ground. She was not going to let him seduce her to his side. Not this time, at least. “Chopper is more than capable of taking care of me without you hovering like some ominous specter of doom. Right, Chopper?”

Looking nervously between the two, the blue-nosed doctor squeaked, “Yes?”

“Checking for breaks and sprains require skilled hands, not hooves. He could easily cause more harm than good.”

This time, the smaller doctor glared, though it wouldn’t have much effect on a skittish mouse, much less the jaded pirate captain. “I’m perfectly proficient in this form, but if you’re that worried…” He shifted into his more human-like form, holding up his furry hands and wiggling his fingers.

Law just scoffed distastefully at his larger, burlier physique. “Color me unimpressed. Now you’re more likely to crush her ankle than examine it. Slender, more fragile bones like Nami-ya’s require a delicate touch.”

“You sound a lot like Sanji right now. Did the two of you switch bodies?”

“And give him the opportunity to feel up my woman? I’d kill him at the mere suggestion. Clearly, your logic and reasoning skills need work, too. Unless you’re delirious from the heat? If that’s the case, go lay down while I check on Nami-ya’s ankle. I can’t in good conscience allow her to be treated by someone not at peak mental capacity.”

“Says the insomniac,” Chopper grumbled under his breath, cowering as the full force of Law’s piercing glare fell on him.

“Says the doctor who’s been practicing medicine longer than you’ve been alive.”

“Ok, seriously, quit being an ass to Chopper,” Nami snapped. She really should have stepped in sooner, but she was hoping Law would come to his senses, especially since Chopper had actually managed to stand up for himself. “He’s an excellent doctor and my friend, and I won’t have you belittling him like this.”

“Shut up! I don’t need your help!” the reindeer replied even as he beamed at her praise.

Gold eyes rolled up to the ceiling in exasperation. “Fine, he’s not a bad doctor, but I’m still better.”

Stubbornly crossing her arms, she said, “Well, Chopper’s more cuddly than you are.”

“The hell does that have to do with anything?”

“Being more cuddly and approachable means that people actually want to be under his care. Compare a cute, fuzzy reindeer to a creepy insomniac with ‘DEATH’ tattooed on his fingers who insists on cutting people open at the drop of a hat, and which one do you think I’d rather have treating my injuries?” she huffed.

Though he should be pissed, Law couldn’t help but smirk seductively. She was damn cute when she back-talked him, tempting him to pin her down and tease her until she submitted. Getting up from the desk, he crossed the room in a few easy strides, tilting her chin up so she had no choice but to meet his hungry gaze. “Bet he can’t kiss them better like I can.”

“I’ve never understood that,” Chopper cut in, scratching his chin as he shifted back down into his default form. “It’s a placebo effect at best, and mainly just risks exposing the wound to the bacteria in your mouth.”

Annoyed, Law glowered at him. He really did respect his fellow doctor, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t ticking him off. Had it been Zoro or Sanji that had been hurt, he’d be giving Chopper his full support, perhaps even tossing in a few threats to better convince them to comply to the reindeer’s commands. But this was Nami; when it came to the welfare of the few people he cared about, Law was a total control-freak. Unless he was the one taking care of them, his thoughts would spiral with all the worst-case scenarios, making him an anxious, irritable pain in the ass. The Surgeon of Death knew it was completely irrational, but his woman was injured, and the cotton candy lover was preventing him from checking her over and assuring his restless mind that she was fine. “Well, if you don’t know that, I’m not sure you’re qualified to examine Nami-ya,” he sneered petulantly. “You do realize that if your prognosis is wrong and she isn’t given proper treatment, she could end up crippled? And if that happens, she’ll be easy pickings for the Marines or Kaidou’s men if she’s attacked. Are you willing to risk that, Tony-ya?”

The blue-nosed doctor stared at the floor, unable to come up with a good response to the blunt, cutting remarks. Of course he knew the risks of a misdiagnosis; it was a fear that haunted him every time he had to patch up or examine someone. The wrong dosage of medicine administered, a missed crack in the bone, mistaking a poisonous mushroom for one that could cure all diseases; it could all spell doom for his precious nakama.

Cold, earnest fury pumped through Nami’s veins at Chopper’s defeated expression. She knew Law was a massive worrywart and wasn’t intentionally trying to hurt her friend, but one more word out of him and she’d throw him straight into the sea. How could anyone possibly pick on such a cute little creature, especially when he was just trying to help?

Resisting the urge to cuddle the dejected reindeer and punch her lover, she instead forced a gentle smile towards the smaller doctor. “Chopper, would you be a dear and bring me my slippers from my cabin? I probably shouldn’t walk around in my high heels for a bit, no matter the prognosis.”

Despite knowing this was just an excuse to get him out of the room so Nami could have a private word with her overbearing lover, Chopper agreed, more than happy to put some distance between him and Law so he could regroup. The last thing he needed was to show weakness in front of the skilled surgeon; that would only cast further doubt on his skills.

The moment the reindeer was out of the room, Nami turned and grabbed her lover’s shirt, yanking him down so he was inches from her face. “Law,” she whispered harshly, “you will be nice to Chopper! Even if he hadn’t saved the life of every member of this crew at least once, that is no way to talk to someone who’s been screwing up the courage to ask you for some mentorship.”

Guilt mixed with surprise in the surgeon’s expression. “He has?”

“Yes! He’s a great doctor, but he’s young and hasn’t had a proper mentor since he left Drum Island. If he plans on accomplishing his dream, he has to learn as much as possible about every type of medicine, and why not learn from the best? Hell, if he plans on keeping the idiots on this crew alive, he needs to improve his surgical skills! I even told him you’d be willing to do it, or at least let him sit in on some of your surgeries, but you being such an ass is completely killing his confidence!”

“I’m sorry.”

Her eyes narrowed further, though her anger seemed to diminish. “Don’t apologize to me; apologize to Chopper, or else I’m going to tell Zoro and Luffy you’ve been bullying him. Or worse; Robin.”

Law shuddered. Normally, he wouldn’t consider her sicing her crew on him much of a threat, though he knew for a fact that Luffy was scarily protective of his friends, and the swordsman seemed to have a soft spot for the reindeer. He could probably handle the pair if they decided to attack him. Robin however…

Shoulders slumping, he rested his forehead against her bright orange hair, inhaling the mikan scent that never failed to calm him. Loathe as he was to admit it, Nami was right; he was being an ass, and Chopper deserved his respect as a fellow doctor. “Alright, I will, and he’s more than welcome to shadow me on some examinations and surgeries.”

The gentle peck she rewarded him with made his lips turn up in a slight smile. “You’re such a softie, Tora-o-kun. I didn’t even have to dress up as a nurse to convince you.”

Eyes snapping open, he stared at her, mouth agape. “Wait, I could have gotten that out of the deal? I take it back; no mentorship unless I get my naughty nurse.”

Smiling like the cat that ate the canary, she giggled, “Too late; you already gave your word.” She was glad she didn’t have to give up that particular bargaining chip; Law was a lot easier to manipulate once she found out he was really into the sexy nurse fantasy. He’d even bought her the uniform, but she was saving it for a special occasion; most likely as a reward for saving her life, or possibly getting her an entire shipload of treasure.

Growling, his tattooed hand teasingly ran up and down her thigh. “That’s hardly fair; I wear the lab coat for you all the time.”

“That’s because if someone walks in on you in the coat, no one bats an eye. I get caught in that uniform and everyone knows what kind of kinky shit you’re into.”

“Then I guess we’ll just have to do it somewhere we won’t get caught.”

Mirroring his devilish grin, she slowly nibbled along the sharp line of his jaw. “Or you’re going to have to do something to earn it.”

“Mentoring Tony-ya isn’t enough?”

“Not by a long shot.”

Before Law could be tempted to “convince” her, there was a timid knock at the door, coaxing the couple to break away. The last thing they needed was for Chopper to see anything inappropriate in his own infirmary. The door opened, the young doctor looking through to check it was safe, though notably he was peeking the wrong way.

Assured he wasn’t walking in on one of the couple’s make-out sessions, the small doctor walked in, not making eye contact with the tattooed surgeon as he handed Nami her fuzzy bedroom slippers.

Guilt gnawed at Law’s stomach. Nami was right; he shouldn’t be so hard on Chopper. Not just so Robin wouldn’t tear him to pieces; the blue nosed reindeer had the potential to revolutionize medicine, and it would be a shame if all that was wasted because he didn’t have the right training.

And damn it, he looked like a miserable stuffed animal when he was sad. Even Law wasn’t that heartless.

“Tony-ya?”

“Yeah?”

Awkwardly, he rubbed the back of his neck. “Go ahead and check Nami-ya’s ankle. You’re right; surgery is completely superfluous unless you actually feel a break. Even then, it’s your call if she needs it. This is your infirmary, so I should respect your authority. Mugiwara-ya wouldn’t have asked you to join his crew if your skills weren’t up to scratch.”

Though the cloud of misery that hovered over his head started to dissipate, Chopper’s smile was more self-deprecating than anything else. “Luffy only asked me to join because I’m a monster, and Sanji thought I was emergency food.”

Ok, Law was going to have a serious talk with the cook later. For starters, if you’re going to eat your crew, doctors and navigators were, on principle, off-limits, even if they weren’t human. Better to start with less essential positions. “If Black Leg-ya even thinks about cooking you, I’ll transplant his mind into the ugliest person I can find. I trust you with Nami’s care. You’re a great doctor; the fact that Zoro-ya is still alive is a testament to that.”

“Shut up! An idiot like you doesn’t know what he’s talking about!” Chopper gushed, dancing about as stars twinkled in his eyes.

“Then I suppose you wouldn’t want to assist me in surgery sometime?” he asked with a smirk, chuckling when Nami smacked his leg.

“What? No! I mean, yes! I’d love to assist you! I mean, if that’s ok…” he replied anxiously.

“Excellent. Of course, we’ll need a patient. Perhaps we’ll get lucky and Zoro-ya and Black Leg-ya will injure themselves in their next argument.”

“That’s not lucky!”

“Then we’ll just break into a hospital on the next island we land on and practice on the patients there.”

“That’s insane!”

He shrugged. “I do it all the time. Honestly, it works out for everyone; the hospital gets free surgeries, the patients get excellent treatment, I get extra practice while restocking my supplies, and my crew isn’t constantly acting as my guinea pigs. Marine bases are the best, though; they’ve got the most advanced medical equipment to play with, plus plenty of wounded men in need of fixing up whose deaths you won’t feel guilty over if something goes wrong.”

Chopper looked at Nami in horror. “He’s serious, isn’t he?”

Rubbing her temples and wondering if she should have encouraged her friend to find a less sadistic mentor, she sighed, “As the plague.”

[your-dietician]

Richard Marx has many great 'Stories to Tell' — and one big Twitter controversy he'd like to clear up

New Post has been published on https://tattlepress.com/entertainment/richard-marx-has-many-great-stories-to-tell-and-one-big-twitter-controversy-hed-like-to-clear-up/

Richard Marx has many great 'Stories to Tell' — and one big Twitter controversy he'd like to clear up

When superstar singer-songwriter Richard Marx began work on his new autobiography, Stories to Tell, he knew it wouldn’t be a racy, sex/drugs/rock ‘n’ roll tell-all like Motley Crüe’s The Dirt or Pamela Des Barres’s I’m With the Band. “I’ve always been a very private person. I’ve never been in the tabloids. I’ve never been that kind of celebrity, if you will,” he explains to Yahoo Entertainment. In fact, Marx never expected to write his memoirs at all, but after playing VH1 Storytellers-style acoustic shows about a decade ago, he realized, “I have great stories. I’ve had some really crazy, funny s*** happen to me.”

Those tales, which cover Marx’s early days apprenticing for Lionel Richie to his work with Kenny Rogers, Madonna, Barbra Streisand, NSYNC, Olivia Newton-John, Keith Urban, Luther Vandross, and many others, comprise Stories to Tell: A Memoir, which comes out July 6 and hit No. 1 on Amazon’s bestsellers list the day it went up for preorder. “I chose [stories] that were either compelling or funny or self-deprecating or whatever,” says Marx. “There’ll be stories I’ll tell you about my life that I wouldn’t necessarily, you know, write on Twitter or whatever.”

The cover for Richard Marx’s autobiography ‘Stories to Tell: A Memoir.’ (Photo: Simon & Schuster)

Marx is big into the self-deprecation thing. The funniest line in Stories to Tell is when he says the upside to undergoing double hip-replacement surgery was that “Richard Marx” and “hip” could finally be used in the same sentence, for instance. And his Twitter page is a delight, a compelling read in its own right — his famous tweet about going to the dentist because he felt like hearing some of his own music is but one RT-worthy example of his snark. Marx owns his squareness, but ironically, his posts have, intentionally or not, made the public realize that he’s a pretty cool dude.

The perpetually unbothered Marx also gets very political on social media. And one since-deleted tweet in particular, when he wrote — “If I ever meet Rand Paul’s neighbor I’m going to hug him and buy him as many drinks as he can consume” (a reference to a 2017 incident when Paul was assaulted by his neighbor, Rene Boucher) — made headlines in May 2021, after the Kentucky senator outrageously cited Marx’s tweet as the reason he’d received a suspicious package at his home. It was a rare moment when Marx actually was in the tabloids, and he uses his Yahoo interview to clarify that situation.

Story continues

“I mean, it seems pretty obvious. I made a quip. Let’s start with this: Do I, would I, ever really endorse and support physical violence against someone? I can’t think of a circumstance,” Marx stresses. “I made a quip, which I likened to you hear about some raging assh*** who’s just constantly an assh*** getting his ass handed to him — and you might go, ‘He kind of asked for it,’ or, you know, ‘He kind of had that coming.’ Show me a person who’s never, ever thought of that in regards to anyone, and I’ll show you a liar, right? To me, what I quipped was nothing more than that. Stupid me — Rand Paul used that to his advantage. He went on Fox News and pathologically, as he always does, lied about what I tweeted, what I said. He actually claimed that I incited violence against him, that I was the reason he got a suspicious package of powder the next day in the mail. I thought, if I did that, [U.S. Postmaster General] Louis DeJoy should get a raise. If you can get a piece of mail to somebody overnight now, then I’ve been misinformed.

“I made a joke. And you know, the people who rallied to [Paul’s] defense are the same people who defended, or had nothing to say, when Trump retweeted someone saying, ‘The only good Democrat as a dead Democrat,’ or never had a problem with Donald Trump at a rally saying, ‘Knock the hell out of ‘em, I’ll pay the legal fees; go beat up protestors exercising their First Amendment rights.’ So, these people who were supporting Rand Paul and attacking me are just the typical ultimate hypocrites, and they’re full of s***. So, that’s my comment about that.”

Marx actually prefers not to use the adjective “political” when describing his non-partisan social media stance. “I am definitely opinionated, and I definitely find it next to impossible not to respond to what I consider to be blatant ignorance or bigotry or certainly racism. I guess the word ‘political’ is the easiest one to use, but I don’t know that it’s the most accurate, because I’m not on Twitter or in any other part of my life espousing policy or opinions about much other than proper treatment of everyone — and especially when it comes to elected officials,” he clarifies. 

“For instance, I’m 57. I started voting as soon as I could. So I guess my first presidential vote was in ’84, and it was for Ronald Reagan. I have voted for Republican politicians in my life. I’ve definitely voted more for Democrats, but I’m a registered Independent. I’m not a Democrat. Also, as much as I find the current GOP to be the most distorted, vile, awful group of people I’ve ever seen in my lifetime in terms of politics, I’m also no fan of anyone in the Democratic party. None. Joe Biden would not have been my… maybe 20 years ago, I would have been like, ‘Yeah, Joe Biden might be a really good president.’ And don’t get me wrong, I’m thrilled that he won this election. But he would not have been my choice to be the president of United States. The screwed-up thing is I can’t necessarily point to anyone I would say should be, on either side of the aisle. I think they’re all, to a degree, different forms of reprehensible and mercenary.”

Marx says, “In a span of an hour, if I were to look through my mentions, I’ll find 50 people calling me every name,” but he balks at the argument that pop stars shouldn’t express their opinions. “It’s interesting, because when I get into a thing on Twitter, especially when you have people on the far right who say things like ‘shut up and sing’ and ‘nobody cares about the opinions of celebrities,’ these are the same people who voted for Donald Trump and follow Scott Baio, you know what I mean?” he chuckles. “So, that kind of tells you right there with the kind of mental decision-making we’re dealing with. … I feel like I can’t be on the [Twitter] platform and see something that is so outrageous and awful and not respond to it.”

Watch Yahoo Entertainment’s full, extended Richard Marx interview below, in which he tells stories about Luther Vandross, Vixen, Barbra Streisand, and more:

There are plenty of people who follow Marx online who are now well aware of his frankness and hipness — but unless they read Stories to Tell, they still may not be familiar with the simply stunning breadth of his discography. Sure, he has scored 14 of his own Billboard top 20 hits, including nine that made the top 10 and three that went to No. 1, and was the first male solo artist to have four singles from a debut album make the top three on the Billboard Hot 100. But has always been an in-demand songwriter for other artists as well. However, as Marx himself notes, many people don’t even know that he co-penned Luther Vandross’s signature song “Dance With My Father” — despite the fact that he accepted the Song of the Year honor for that single, and performed it with Celine Dion, at the 2004 Grammy Awards when the ailing Vandross was unable to attend. Hits written or co-written by Marx have topped the charts in four different decades and in almost every genre (“Not polka, though,” he quips), but there’s one more thing he’d still like to accomplish.

“I’ve gotten to work with amazing people, and hope to continue to. But the one thing that has eluded me in my career… Vixen, for example, I wrote and produced their breakthrough song [“Edge of a Broken Heart”]. I wrote co-wrote and produced Josh Groban’s first single, ‘To Where You Are.’ So, I’ve worked with brand-new artists who broke out — but I didn’t discover them,” says Marx. “That’s probably something that I would like before I really call it quits: to discover a talent, bring them to light and launch them, and then just wish them well, whether I work with them or not. … I’d like to be able to have some artists say, ‘Yeah, it was Richard Marx who started my career.’ That would be nice.”

Early in his autobiography, Marx details how Lionel Richie played that role in his own life — when Richie randomly heard the then-teenage Marx’s demo tape and was so impressed that he reached out and encouraged Marx to move to Los Angeles to pursue music professionally. But one sweet Richie story, which Marx shares with Yahoo Entertainment during our interview, actually didn’t make the book.

“A year and a half or two years ago, two summers ago, I went with Barbara Streisand to London and she asked if I wanted to be part of the opening act slot for her concert in Hyde Park. Lionel Richie was one of the support acts, and I’d hoped to run into him. I think I had texted him on the way to London and we were going to try to get together, but it was chaotic. I closed my show. And by the time I got back to my hotel, there was a text from Lionel,” Marx recalls fondly, putting his hand on his heart. “He was staying somewhere else. He texted me and he said, ‘I’m sitting on my balcony of my hotel room, listening to you sing “Right Here Waiting” and hearing thousands and thousands of people singing it even louder than you are. And I can’t tell you how proud I am.’ And I remember texting him back and saying, ‘It’s because of you, man.’”

Read more from Yahoo Entertainment:

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— Video produced by Jen Kucsak, edited by Jimmie Rhee

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[merigreenleaf]

OC Tag! (#1 - Adair)

Even though I'm months behind with tag games, I'm going to do this most recent one first just because it looks super easy lol. For this I was tagged by @jesse-is-inarguably-purple and I'm going to answer this for Adair partly because he is technically my main character, but mostly because he's super easy to answer questions about.

GENERAL

Name: Adair Cerulean (although by the end of book 2 his last name becomes Travellarri and Cerulean moves to his middle name)

Alias(es): His main nickname that almost everyone calls him is Addy. Etri affectionately calls him Toadstool and Blythe calls him Ducky for a while. The triad is a little weird with affection lol. (”Toadstool” comes from Etri’s culture/language and is a term of endearment and “Ducky” is because the first time Blythe meets Addy he’s wearing pajamas complete with ducky slippers.)

Gender: male (he's trans)

Age: 18

Place of birth: Sagewood, Concordia. Basically a small town in the middle of freaking nowhere.

Spoken languages: Concordian. He's picked up a small amount of other languages just because he traveled a lot as an apprentice cartographer, but doesn't know any other ones fluently. He picks up a little Montglacian because it's Etri's native language.

Sexual orientation: so very very pan

Occupation: Colorweaver (illustration/illusion mage) and novice cartographer. In Concordia art=magic.

APPEARANCE

Eye colour: pale brown, almost amber

Hair colour: black

Height: 5'5"

Scars: the black tattoo-like skin discoloration that covers much of his skin (he channeled Etri's magic for a bit and it stained him). He has a few scars from surgeries and being a klutz, but nothing major.

Burns: nope. He's far too good at cooking to burn himself and he avoids fire otherwise, unlike the other dorks who perform with it.

Overweight: not really. He's just not in shape.

Underweight: With all the food this boy eats? No way.

FAVOURITE

Color: bright sky blue (his second favorite is purple because it's the color of his magic)

Hair colour: I don't think he has a preference

Eye colour: Doesn't have a preference here either

Music genre: He loves the music the carnies play because it's fun and loud, unlike the traditional boring music the Artisans play/enjoy.

Movie genre: n/a for the setting

TV Show: n/a

Food: piepiepiepiepie (Okay, he'll eat anything except parsnips but pie is his absolutely favorite)

Drink: tea. His culture is big on tea.

Book: Honestly, Addy's not a big fan of reading. He'd rather be drawing or painting or hanging out with his friends or something.

HAVE THEY

Passed university: He's just about to do his culture's equivalent, hence the change in last name.

Had sex: yes

Had sex in public: definitely no

Gotten pregnant: no

Kissed a boy: yes

Kissed a girl: yes

Gotten tattoos: no although most people assume this is what the skin discoloration is

Gotten piercings: no

Had a broken heart: it was complicated, but I'd say yes. Mostly he was just relieved when it was over though

Been in love: heck yeah

Stayed up for more than 24 hours: yup, trying to get a project done on time as an apprentice. He ended up using too much of his magic and knocked himself out for most of a day. The worst part was that he knocked paint over when he passed out, it landed on the cat, and the cat got it all over the house. As soon as he woke up, his master handed him a mop. He learned not to do that again.

ARE THEY

A virgin: no

A cuddler: oh heck yeah. Just ask any of his friends lol

A kisser: he loves this, too. Look, he's just a huge fan of affection

Scared easily: Yup. He's not very brave.

Jealous easily: nope. He's too cheerful and forgiving to be jealous.

Trustworthy: Absolutely.

Dominant: hahahaha no way. He generally relies on the other characters to push him into acting. He gets better at decision making, though.

Submissive: Despite the previous answer, not really. He doesn't like obeying what other people want him to do, but he also doesn't like having to have a say in someone else's life. He mostly just wants to be left alone.

In love: Considering how mushy he is about Blythe and Etri this is a definite yes lol

Single: nope

RANDOM QUESTIONS

Have they harmed themselves: not intentionally. He's made some bad or dumb choices because he's a teenager and wisdom isn't exactly his strong point, but he doesn't generally take risks compared to the other dorks.

Wanted to kill someone: He's too forgiving for that even with the antagonists. I can't say that he hasn't wanted to hit his ex boyfriend with a chair, though.

Ride a horse: no. Concordia doesn't use horses for transportation and I'd imagine he'd be terrible at it and fall off if he ever had to.

Have/had a job: Not quite. He's still in the college equivalent of his career so he doesn't technically work until book 3.

Have any fears: Addy is the least brave of my MCs- he's terrified of heights, doesn't like deep water much, he's kind of iffy about being alone, he's afraid the other Artisans going to figure out that he somehow screwed up his magic and linked himself accidentally to Etri and Blythe...

FAMILY

Sibling(s): just a younger sister. Firedrake becomes like an older sibling, though.

Parents: Adair's the only MC whose parents are all still a) alive and b) he knows where they are. He doesn't get along great with them so he doesn't see them much, though. (Fun fact, Addy has a dad and two moms because of Artisan tradition being triads. His master and her family are another three parents in his life, so while the other dorks don't have any parental figures he has too freaking many!)

Children: not yet but in a few years he does. (Another fun fact: his daughter is an MC in a later book. Probably. I still have to write the dang thing lol

Pets: currently just one cat, but he has a habit of picking up strays so he's going to end up with more pets. @ageekyreader wrote me a fanfic where he brings home a hellpuppy by accident and I consider that pretty much canon lol

This was a lot of fun to answer! I’m not sure who’s done this yet, so feel free to skip it if you have. I’ll tag @lynnafred @writersblockeveryday @the-gay-hufflepuff @franzelwrites and @rainbow-pages but if you want to do this consider yourself tagged!

[news-mashable-yahoopartner-blog]

It turns out purposely messing with your targeted ads isn't a good idea

Facebook is convinced that I am a young mother with a love of kraken-themed decor. 

Unless you count my cat, who is 11-years-old and the animal equivalent of the grumpy old man from Up, I absolutely do not have a child. But for the last six months, my feed has been inundated with ads for baby products, from nasal suction devices to teething toys that look like plush versions of a bad acid trip. 

Over the summer, my cat underwent a veterinary procedure that, to spare the nasty details for the faint of heart, required me to dab antibiotic ointment on his butt twice a day. Because he had a knack for getting out of his cone of shame and getting ointment everywhere, I put him in diapers for the day after the surgery. But diapers made specifically for pets are absurdly expensive, so I bought a pack of (human) infant diapers online and went on my cat owner way. I started seeing ads for baby products that night. 

I know big tech companies have too much on me already. I've been on social media since I was 10-years-old, entering my email and date of birth on Neopets and Club Penguin, so my data has likely been tracked for more than half of my life. I'm online for a majority of my day, and I've accepted the fact that my digital footprint runs too deep for me to ever truly go off the grid. 

Which is exactly why I've started fucking with my ads. 

It's not just weird baby products. I've been curating my ads to show me extremely specific cephalopod-shaped home decor. After months of carefully engaging with ads, I've finally cultivated what I want to see on my Facebook feed. 

Image: screenshot/morgan sung

Image: screenshot/morgan sung

SEE ALSO: All the social media opt-outs you need to activate right now

I'm not the only one. Caroline, a Twitter user who tweets under the handle @defundpoppunk, also curates their ads. After clicking on specific Facebook ads, they managed to prune their feed like an artisanal algorithm — a concept first floated by Twitter user @JanelleCShane — into a masterpiece: Unreasonably baggy pants.

It's like a cursed personal data-laden bonsai tree. 

I click every ad I see on Facebook for weird pants in an effort to train Facebook to show me the weirdest pants. I think it's finally starting to pay off: pic.twitter.com/nS1oMl1Mv7

— olivia colman's oscar (@defundpoppunk) March 12, 2019

Caroline says they searched for jogger-style pants before, and has been getting ads for them ever since. For weeks, they've been clicking on any ad featuring "vaguely interesting-looking" pants. 

Like me, Caroline is fed up with the unending lack of privacy we have, and started engaging with their ads just to mess with them. 

"So at first it was a little bit of private trolling just because I know e-comm [e-commerce] people take their click through rates really seriously," they told Mashable through Twitter DM. "But then once I started my targeted ads actually changing, I got a little more deliberate about it out of curiosity." 

Aside from being an "amusing reminder that everyone is being tracked online constantly," as Caroline said, playing with targeted ads is like playing a game. 

There's something deeply satisfying about knowing that even though I as an individual can't really stop power hungry tech giants, I'm giving them a digital middle finger by engaging with the "wrong" ads. It's the online version of the Florida man who runs into hurricanes with heavy metal and American flags. Realistically, messing with my ads won't shroud me from the inevitable tracking that comes from being online, but it feels like I'm making it slightly more inconvenient for large corporations to know everything about the real me. 

Shoshana Wodinsky, a tech reporter at Adweek, gets why deliberately polluting your targeted ads is entertaining. 

"These kinds of big tech platforms are really powerful," she said during a Skype call. "They're like multibillion dollar companies and the fact that they screw up sometimes is kind of funny. Part of it's definitely punching up, but part of it's like, even these behemoths are somewhat fucked up."

Wodinsky has also experimented with purposely muddling her digital presence; she once changed her Bitmoji to be pregnant to see if it would affect her targeted ads. (She told Mashable that she is very much not pregnant, and during her interview, she said that the only children she has are her two cats.) Although she said it started "as a joke," she wondered how far she could take it.

"Realistically, I know that me pretending to be pregnant isn't going to do anything, but it's kind of like looking outside of the fishbowl," she said. "It's fucking over the big businesses, and who doesn't like to do that." 

i gave myself a pregnant bitmoji to see if it would screw with the way ads are targeted toward me and..... im here to tell you that nothings changed pic.twitter.com/SmfWkpRGys

— שוש (@swodinsky) February 13, 2019

fb thinks im preggers,,,,,, success

— שוש (@swodinsky) February 13, 2019

Less than half an hour after creating the Bitmoji, her ad interests included "motherhood" and "breastfeeding."

It's unclear what prompted Facebook to include those options in her interests — it could have been her Bitmoji, or it could have been the fact that she tweeted about it. 

Realistically, just clicking on and engaging with specific ads won't do much to your digital footprint; if you really wanted to go deep, you'd have to change your entire online behavior. Your ads aren't just targeted based on what you interact with on specific social media platforms, but what you search and interact with across the entire internet. Thanks to the cookies Facebook uses to track users, regardless of whether or not you're logged in, you can leave fingerprints all over the web. Truly tricking the algorithm would mean a complete overhaul of your search habits, your social media, and whatever personal information is publicly available. 

Meddling with your ad preferences by intentionally engaging with them sounds like a harmless prank, but it might have a dark side. Dr. Russell Newman, a professor at Emerson College who specializes in internet privacy, surveillance, and political communication, worries that any engagement with ads can have long term consequences. 

"You might feel like you're exercising some bit of control, but in fact, you have none," he said during a phone interview. "There are unknown ways that the game you are playing right now will affect your future existence, and you won't really be able to know."

Newman stresses that we really have no idea what information can be pulled from our online interactions, and how it can be used in the future. Because internet users are "seen in a particular way, quantified in a particular way, and identified in a particular way," he says, engaging with certain ads and showing a preference for certain ads can preclude certain options. He worries that engagement like this can affect life-altering factors like credit score. It sounds far fetched, but Newman said convincing advertisers that my cat is actually my baby, for example, could possibly affect my future health insurance premiums without me even knowing. 

"All the decisions that are going to be made about you going forward," Newman said. "Or the rest of your existence, are going to be based on the truth provided digitally."

Washington Post editor Gillian Brockell experienced the insidious side of online advertising last year. Shortly after she delivered her son, who was stillborn, the credit company Experian sent her an email prompting her to "finish registering" her child to track his credit for life. She noted in a viral Twitter thread that she had never even started registering her baby, and it was particularly cruel that companies wanted his information after his death.

I find this hard to believe. I'd been using Experian to check my credit regularly, & I'd never received any spam like this from them before, just a monthly email saying my report was updated. + the ad didn't say “family protection solution.” it said “register your child.” 3/ pic.twitter.com/dUPRxyWRKH

— Gillian Brockell (@gbrockell) March 12, 2019

"These tech companies triggered that on their own, based on information we shared, Brockell wrote in a piece reflecting on how she never asked to be targeted with parenting ads. "So what I’m asking is that there be similar triggers to turn this stuff off on its own, based on information we’ve shared."

Newman emphasizes that while Google, Facebook, and Amazon market themselves as a search engine, social media network, and online marketplace, respectively, the companies have a greater goal: advertising. 

"It's notable that you're saying, 'My privacy is gone, so I'm just going to roll with it,'" Newman said during a phone interview. "The problem isn't that your privacy is gone, the problem is that we don't actually have a nationwide regime set in place in regards to privacy."

Luckily, there are a number of ways to scale back on ad tracking, from opting out of social media data collection to using private browsers. 

Here's the bottom line: It turns out messing with my targeted ads probably wasn't a good idea. As satisfying as it is to make it slightly more inconvenient for advertisers, purposely engaging with ads for kraken-specific products is less damaging than limiting the data that advertisers can hold over me. Since my conversation with Newman, I've stopped haphazardly clicking on strange ads and opted out of sharing across my social media presence. 

But old habits are hard to break, and I admit that when I'm scrolling through Facebook before bed, I'll still linger on ads that include octopi. 

WATCH: BTS' 'Boy With Luv' shatters viewing records on YouTube

[steviemillersdiary-blog]

TRIGGERRRRRRRR

EXTREME GIANT BIG FAT HUGE MOTHER FUCKER OF A TRIGGER WARNING!!!!!!!!!!! I TALK ABOUT SELF HARM!!!!!!!!! DONT READ IF YOU’RE TRIGGERED BY THIS!!!!!!!!  ----------------------------------------------------------

I’ve been staring at the post button for 15 minutes.. I’m scared.

I’m having urges to hurt myself, so i thought i’d try writing to see if it helps at all. 

I’m having such a shitty time at the minute, my mood has had a major shift and i just feel so exhausted. It’s such bullshit having such horrid mood swings, like a woman on her period times 1 million. And with those mood swings comes bad thoughts and with bad thoughts comes bad actions and bad feelings and then next thing you know, the idea of a blade running across my skin makes my heart skip, like some sort of sick and twisted fantasy. 

So many people asked me how i started self harming, why i started and so on.. STORYTIME HEY!

Believe it or not, i didn’t start hurting myself intentionally. I was 13, miserable, tired, hungry, weak, basically a walking sap. I was walking into the kitchen and then BOOM, my world changed.

You know on a kitchen side, where it ends, the metal bit that stops you getting splinters from where the piece of wood was cut? Well, that thing was missing a screw and was poking out, i walked past it unknowingly and it scraped across my leg. I remember the feeling i got, i was sooo dizzy, but like a beautiful dizzy, that kinda dizzy you get when you go for a wee after a few drinks which leaves you questioning your ability to life but in a good way.. Does that even make sense? My whole body went weak for a moment, like i wasn’t quite in my body. My mind was erased for such a brief moment, and there was nothing but pure bliss, contentment, EUPHORIA FUCK the euphoria. I could feel the adrenaline pumping, it was beautiful, it felt amazing.. But it ruined me.

I was gagging to feel that rush again, so whilst i was in the bath, i took a knife to my leg, the rush was close to orgasmic. But also extremely highly crazily not goodly ADDICTIVE! If i knew how easily and quickly i’d lose control, i don’t think i’d have ever started..

I felt in control, I choose when I hurt myself cause i’m the one in charge. But it quickly went from once a week, to once every other day, to once a day, to multiple times a day. It went from a scratch from a bit of metal, to a slice, to a gash, to me needing surgery, to a cut to my artery that left me flatlined for over 7 minutes.. And it all happened so quick.

One moment, i was in control, the next moment, i couldn’t stop myself. I started to do it to escape my mind, escape my emotions but that rapidly changed into me doing it because i CRAVED the cut, i would push myself further and further each time, i’d get stitches, i’d rip the stitches out, i’d fucking HATE myself if it wasn’t deep enough, i’d feel like a failure.. I remember begging a nurse in the psych unit to let me finish because i hadn’t gone deep enough yet, i gripped onto the blade (that i managed to manipulate my way into getting) until my hand was pouring blood.. She stared me in the eyes, said “Not on my watch” and tackled me, managing to get the blade out of my hand.. 

It all sounds so fucked up now i’m putting it down. I know it’s fucked up. But it was a beautiful nightmare fuck up of an escape. I’ve managed to stay clean for long periods of time now, which is one huge fucking leap further than where i was.. Which i guess is a good thing?

Never hurt yourself, physically, mentally, emotionally, and every other ally in the book. You may think it’s a good idea at the time FUCK i know i did, but i promise you with every single inch of my heart, body, mind and soul that it’s not.. It couldn’t get further from a good idea and your worth more than that.

Be happy xo

[finalproblem]

Ludmila

Bullet points only for Ludmila Dyachenko, because I’m out of time and that seems like an appropriate format for a sniper.

Ludmila Dyachenko was one of the assassins running around in Reichenbach. She’s the one who shot the two other assassins who came into close contact with Sherlock.

At first I’d classified her differently than the other folks working directly for Moriarty that day (who I later realized were Scowrers) because the stuff she was doing seemed so different that what the rest of the team was working on. (I did peg her as a possible former Scowrer at one point, though, because her data sheet mentioned a tattoo. So at least I got that far.)

Turns out Ludmila was also involved in the Reichenbach kidnapping just like the other Scowrers.

Which, considering one of her aliases was Alice Creed and the movie The Disappearance of Alice Creed is about a kidnapping... duh, me. (That movie is even about a kidnapping where the victim was in on it, in case you needed more Priory School vibes from that case.)

Once I realized that the “Eurus” we see in TLD is really Ludmila with plastic surgery, I knew the chalk and linseed oil clues related to the kidnapping applied to her. She’s probably the one who faked the footprints at the crime scene.

It’s important to note, though, that up until maybe as late as the very end of His Last Vow Ludmila looked like the photo Mycroft showed John and not like Sian Brooke. So if you go looking for Ludmila in the past, she’s got a different face. Genuinely different, this time.

I didn’t have time to do a really, really thorough look for clues with Ludmila after I realized what her deal is. Plus Series 4 is making my faceblindness itch. If I had to guess, though, I’d say original-face Ludmila is the female police officer comforting Miss Mackenzie at the school. (Right next to pink shirt! So obvious in retrospect.) If Ludmila was the one to create the fake footprint clues, she may also have been the one who took the crime scene photos that included the sealed bundle of chalk. (If Ludmila was there and not the comforting police officer, then she’d pretty much have to be the one who was on guard in Claudette’s room. Which also works.)

There are other moments when Ludmila could be involved in the kidnapping, too. When they run into the sweet factory, there’s female officers there. But I had no time to track and ID them today. (It would be really easy to believe she was there helping pink shirt move the kids, though.)

Since Ludmila is a Scowrer and I missed her the first time, I thought I should check out the Waters Gang robbery as well. From a very quick check, my most likely suspect is a female police officer standing in the background. As Sally and Greg start to walk into the bank to kick off the raid, the background officer appears to pull up her collar and speak into it--maybe giving a signal to the Scowrers inside the bank that the cops are coming. (It was implied the robbers always know when the police are coming, and Ludmila could be the reason.)

Jumping back to the present, as I’ve been mentioning in my ‘E’ posts, Ludmila and the Scowrers captured the real Eurus, then Ludmila had plastic surgery to steal Eurus’ face and identity.

Mycroft and Lady Smallwood believed Eurus had died and her Ugly Duckling laptop had fallen into enemy hands. That’s what they were sending Sherlock to retrieve on his Eastern Europe mission.

Conveniently, Ludmila as fake!Eurus showed up miraculously alive right around the time the “miss me” messages appeared. And either the appearance of the messages suggested it was too late to retrieve the Ugly Duckling laptop, or fake!Eurus brought it home with her. And that’s why suddenly nobody cares about the Eastern Europe mission at all anymore.

Sir Edwin is working with the Scowrers, so if Ludmila needed help “proving” she was Eurus, he was there to provide it.

The biggest challenge would be fooling real!Eurus’ mother, Lady Smallwood. Which we may well get a taste of, since Lady Smallwood was taking a week off work...

Ludmila has been going around as fake!Eurus acting like she’s Mycroft’s regular agent and helping him with getting ready to fake Mary’s death. (Ludmila may be specifically after Mary--our equivalent of Ted Baldwin from The Valley of Fear. Meaning she’s why Mary had to fake her own death in the first place.)

If Ludmila is posing as Eurus and Eurus is not the secret Holmes sister, and there is in fact no secret Holmes sister at all... what??? Either 1) Ludmila is just saying it to screw with John for some reason, because it’s not like he’d know the truth, or 2) Ludmila is operating on bad intel. For example, if when Jim got Mycroft to tell him all about Sherlock’s past in TRF, Mycroft intentionally fed Jim some garbage about how there was a secret Holmes sibling thanks to their father having an affair. (I am somewhat leaning this way, since the writers seem determined to bring down all long-standing fandom theories in the next episode, and the “Mr. Holmes had an affair” one has been around for aaaaaages.)

Since the Scowrers are working with Lord Moran, it’s worth mentioning that Ludmila may have some kind of connection with Moran since she’s a sniper and was living in the house across from Baker Street in TRF, which ties back to Moran in canon. I still say that for all intents and purposes, Lord Moran is Moran, but if they’re okay with having two Morans she could turn out to be his daughter or something. Mostly I’d expect this if they wanted to tease an indefinite continuation.

But on the other hand if she’s Mary’s version of Ted Baldwin, she may be doomed to die instead.

[madpicks]

New Post has been published on https://www.madpicks.com/sports/mlb/unwritten-rules-throwing-manny-machados-danged-head/

The unwritten rules of throwing at Manny Machado’s danged head

Over the weekend, Manny Machado viciously spiked Dustin Pedroia, coming up high on a slide and intentionally filling an opponent’s calf with sharpened metal. It was unacceptable, and frontier justice needed to be taken.

Over the weekend, Machado was nearly concussed or killed because of an accidental slide a couple days before. It was an unintentional slide and he immediately, clearly showed remorse for it, but Matt Barnes decided that throwing a baseball at his head was the only rational response.

Over the weekend, a bunch of dumb baseball things happened and a bunch of dumb baseball men had dumb baseball reactions.

Which version is true? Oh, it’s a regular Rashomon over here, and we’ll have to get to the bottom of it. Also Zach Britton was saying things that somehow made people sympathetic to the Red Sox, somehow, which is some deft sleight-of-hand.

Start at the beginning:

Act I: The slide

In which an undead Ty Cobb clambers out of his cobbhole to tear your ears off for calling this a vicious slide.

An ideal slide? Oh goodness, no. It was clearly a bad slide, the kind that can get people hurt. Which it did. I can understand why Pedroia would be mad. I can understand why the Red Sox would be mad.

Still, it was an understandable slide. Machado started it late, but not out of malice. It was late enough to disrupt Pedroia, in theory, but not late enough to run afoul of the new rules about sliding into second base. Two years ago, the appropriate slide wouldn’t have worried Pedroia with spikes; the real danger would have come with Machado’s entire body, and it would have been totally acceptable.

However, because Machado is a large baseball man, his late slide took him into the base with serious force, and he was in danger of crumpling his ankle.

You can see in the GIF that it was a last-second decision, and that as soon as Machado can control his body, he avoids driving through Pedroia. A good rule of thumb is that if you have to zapruder the film, you can probably let it go with a few choice words the next time the guy is on first.

Several Red Sox players and coaches were going over the Machado slide into Pedroia frame by frame in the visitors’ clubhouse.

— Brian MacPherson (@brianmacp) April 22, 2017

If you think I’m in the tank for Machado, note that he’s not a stranger to these unwritten-rules articles, and he’s been called a dillweed because of it. He has a reputation that almost certainly played into this, in part because the Red Sox are sick of playing against him for about 40 different reasons, even if one of those reasons is absolutely about him being a wondrous baseball genie. Machado’s the guy who threw a bat at another player. So he could be the guy who spiked another player on purpose.

Still, I’m pretty sure that it was an accident, and while the Red Sox have the right to be mad, it’s more in the sense of, “Hey, control your body better, you oaf.” Here, listen to Dustin Pedroia agree with me.

What’s the appropriate punishment for a player sliding recklessly but within the written rules? I’ll tell you what it isn’t …

Act II: Vengeance is a dish served coawwww jeez, I didn’t mean to throw it there

Before we get to Barnes, note that Eduardo Rodriguez tried to solve this the inning before.

That’s it. That’s your chance. It’s over. This is close to the appropriate response, too. Throw three pitches kinda sorta at him to let the world know you haven’t forgotten about the slide, and move on. The worst unwritten rule that was broken in the series was the one that goes something like, “Don’t look like a dingus because you can’t hit someone you’re trying to,” and yet it was accidentally the most reasonable response to what Machado did.

Then Barnes did the absolute worst thing a major league pitcher can do.

No. No, no, no, no.

That is how Manny Machado becomes a Wikipedia page in 2079 that a young baseball nerd stumbles upon instead of a Hall of Famer he already knew about. Think of all the ways that could have gone wrong. Manny Machado, unable to deal with the dizziness and constant ringing in his ears, will miss the remainder of the season. Manny Machado, who underwent surgery to relieve swelling in his brain, is still in critical condition. Manny Machado, after struggling for years to return from his injuries, retired today at the age of 26.

And you know that doesn’t even include the worst-case scenario.

What did Barnes have to say about it?

I would never, ever intentionally throw at somebody’s head. That’s kind of a line that you don’t cross. I’m sorry that it kind of ended up that high, and fortunately it did not hit him.

I absolutely, 100-percent believe him. He didn’t go up there thinking, “Gonna hit this dude in the head and see if he can eat solid foods after that.”

That’s the whole point, though. My job, here, is to point out the silliness from the outside. It’s absurd from my couch, and I know some players might think that disqualifies me from weighing in. But I’m someone who stopped playing baseball in my teens because once the big-ass kids started throwing 80 and 90 mph, I was scared of the ball, and I couldn’t hit anything. That makes me supremely qualified to discuss this. I’m an expert in those-things-hurt-dammitology.

It helps to add the appropriate finish to Barnes’ sentence. “I’m sorry that it kind of ended up that high … and almost killed him.” It was an accident, but if every pitcher could throw exactly where he wanted to, every game would be a 19-inning, 1-0 game. Pitchers can kind of throw it where they want, but the difference between throwing at a butt and throwing at a head is releasing the ball a fraction of a second later. Unless you’re throwing at A.J. Pierzynski and it’s hard to tell where one ends and the other begins, but seriously, folks.

If the response to an unwritten rule is to do something that might kill another player, it’s an unjustified response. Which means baseball can figure out something better. The tradition isn’t working. The old-school mentality of “hit him in the keister, where it won’t hurt” tries to straddle a line, and it works most of the time, but the risk isn’t worth the reward.

Apply this to the real world. I carry a pocket knife around — for the tweezers and toothpick, you know — so imagine if my response to someone knocking me down on the street because they were in a hurry was to open the pocket knife and wing it at them. It’s a small knife, so even if it went into the flesh, it wouldn’t require more than a couple of stitches. More likely, the butt end would hit them, and they would say ow, or I’d miss them entirely.

I would be arrested, of course, because throwing something with the intent to hurt and potential to kill isn’t an appropriate response to anything other than an immediate, serious threat. That’s how the world has worked for hundreds of years, and it’s a pretty good system.

Now imagine that the pocket knife somehow hit the magic spot and nicked a jugular, or maybe it’s dirty (what with the tweezers and toothpick and all) and the cut caused an infection that became life-threatening.

ME: I’m sorry that it kind of ended up that high, your honor.

JUDGE: Oh, yeah, well, it happens.

Nope. I would go to jail for years. And I’m not rich, so it would be real jail! I’m too delicate for that, so I don’t throw my pocket knife.

For some reason, though, baseball is in a weird bubble where this stuff has been codified and passed down from generation to generation. It takes someone screwing up like Matt Barnes to remember that, oh, right, pitchers can screw up when they’re trying to retaliate, and it invalidates the whole system.

Two different Red Sox players used four different pitches to try to hit Manny Machado in the legs or butt, and they missed with all four. That means that throwing pitches at a batter’s legs or butt isn’t a functional system. Think of something new. This one is too dumb, too dangerous.

Maybe the catcher can carry an extremely large spider in a jar and shake it on the batter when he isn’t looking. Help me out with suggestions that don’t involve projectiles, people.

Act III: Zach Britton blames Dustin Pedroia

I went longer on the last section than I wanted to, so I’ll be quick here. Orioles closer Zach Britton said that Pedroia could have stopped the whole thing before it happened by telling his clubhouse not to retaliate. That’s probably true!

That doesn’t mean it’s Pedroia’s fault. Everyone in baseball is caught up in the weird disconnection from reality. Even Britton in the same damned interview:

“I think you should have the ability to control the ball enough if you want to hit somebody. You do it in their body,” Britton said.

Yeah, well, it doesn’t always work like that, which is the problem. Britton threw 10 wild pitches last year. He tried to execute a specific pitch in a specific location, and because that’s really hard, there were 10 instances of him missing badly enough that it couldn’t be caught by a major league catcher.

If the same mistake happens when Britton is trying to “do it in their body,” he could kill someone, too.

The answer is to stop throwing baseballs on people on purpose. “Tradition” isn’t a synonym for “good thing,” and some traditions are incredibly shortsighted and awful. It takes Manny Machado almost bleeding out of his ears to remind us that this is one of them.

[junker-town]

The unwritten rules of throwing at Manny Machado’s danged head

There are written rules, of course, as there usually are. There’s also common sense.

Over the weekend, Manny Machado viciously spiked Dustin Pedroia, coming up high on a slide and intentionally filling an opponent’s calf with sharpened metal. It was unacceptable, and frontier justice needed to be taken.

Over the weekend, Machado was nearly concussed or killed because of an accidental slide a couple days before. It was an unintentional slide and he immediately, clearly showed remorse for it, but Matt Barnes decided that throwing a baseball at his head was the only rational response.

Over the weekend, a bunch of dumb baseball things happened and a bunch of dumb baseball men had dumb baseball reactions.

Which version is true? Oh, it’s a regular Rashomon over here, and we’ll have to get to the bottom of it. Also Zach Britton was saying things that somehow made people sympathetic to the Red Sox, somehow, which is some deft sleight-of-hand.

Start at the beginning:

Act I: The slide

In which an undead Ty Cobb clambers out of his cobbhole to tear your ears off for calling this a vicious slide.

An ideal slide? Oh goodness, no. It was clearly a bad slide, the kind that can get people hurt. Which it did. I can understand why Pedroia would be mad. I can understand why the Red Sox would be mad.

Still, it was an understandable slide. Machado started it late, but not out of malice. It was late enough to disrupt Pedroia, in theory, but not late enough to run afoul of the new rules about sliding into second base. Two years ago, the appropriate slide wouldn’t have worried Pedroia with spikes; the real danger would have come with Machado’s entire body, and it would have been totally acceptable.

However, because Machado is a large baseball man, his late slide took him into the base with serious force, and he was in danger of crumpling his ankle.

You can see in the GIF that it was a last-second decision, and that as soon as Machado can control his body, he avoids driving through Pedroia. A good rule of thumb is that if you have to zapruder the film, you can probably let it go with a few choice words the next time the guy is on first.

Several Red Sox players and coaches were going over the Machado slide into Pedroia frame by frame in the visitors' clubhouse.

— Brian MacPherson (@brianmacp) April 22, 2017

If you think I’m in the tank for Machado, note that he’s not a stranger to these unwritten-rules articles, and he’s been called a dillweed because of it. He has a reputation that almost certainly played into this, in part because the Red Sox are sick of playing against him for about 40 different reasons, even if one of those reasons is absolutely about him being a wondrous baseball genie. Machado’s the guy who threw a bat at another player. So he could be the guy who spiked another player on purpose.

Still, I’m pretty sure that it was an accident, and while the Red Sox have the right to be mad, it’s more in the sense of, “Hey, control your body better, you oaf.” Here, listen to Dustin Pedroia agree with me.

What’s the appropriate punishment for a player sliding recklessly but within the written rules? I’ll tell you what it isn’t ...

Act II: Vengeance is a dish served coawwww jeez, I didn’t mean to throw it there

Before we get to Barnes, note that Eduardo Rodriguez tried to solve this the inning before.

That’s it. That’s your chance. It’s over. This is close to the appropriate response, too. Throw three pitches kinda sorta at him to let the world know you haven’t forgotten about the slide, and move on. The worst unwritten rule that was broken in the series was the one that goes something like, “Don’t look like a dingus because you can’t hit someone you’re trying to,” and yet it was accidentally the most reasonable response to what Machado did.

Then Barnes did the absolute worst thing a major league pitcher can do.

No. No, no, no, no.

That is how Manny Machado becomes a Wikipedia page in 2079 that a young baseball nerd stumbles upon instead of a Hall of Famer he already knew about. Think of all the ways that could have gone wrong. Manny Machado, unable to deal with the dizziness and constant ringing in his ears, will miss the remainder of the season. Manny Machado, who underwent surgery to relieve swelling in his brain, is still in critical condition. Manny Machado, after struggling for years to return from his injuries, retired today at the age of 26.

And you know that doesn’t even include the worst-case scenario.

What did Barnes have to say about it?

I would never, ever intentionally throw at somebody’s head. That’s kind of a line that you don’t cross. I’m sorry that it kind of ended up that high, and fortunately it did not hit him.

I absolutely, 100-percent believe him. He didn’t go up there thinking, “Gonna hit this dude in the head and see if he can eat solid foods after that.”

That’s the whole point, though. My job, here, is to point out the silliness from the outside. It’s absurd from my couch, and I know some players might think that disqualifies me from weighing in. But I’m someone who stopped playing baseball in my teens because once the big-ass kids started throwing 80 and 90 mph, I was scared of the ball, and I couldn’t hit anything. That makes me supremely qualified to discuss this. I’m an expert in those-things-hurt-dammitology.

It helps to add the appropriate finish to Barnes’ sentence. “I’m sorry that it kind of ended up that high ... and almost killed him.” It was an accident, but if every pitcher could throw exactly where he wanted to, every game would be a 19-inning, 1-0 game. Pitchers can kind of throw it where they want, but the difference between throwing at a butt and throwing at a head is releasing the ball a fraction of a second later. Unless you’re throwing at A.J. Pierzynski and it’s hard to tell where one ends and the other begins, but seriously, folks.

If the response to an unwritten rule is to do something that might kill another player, it’s an unjustified response. Which means baseball can figure out something better. The tradition isn’t working. The old-school mentality of “hit him in the keister, where it won’t hurt” tries to straddle a line, and it works most of the time, but the risk isn’t worth the reward.

Apply this to the real world. I carry a pocket knife around — for the tweezers and toothpick, you know — so imagine if my response to someone knocking me down on the street because they were in a hurry was to open the pocket knife and wing it at them. It’s a small knife, so even if it went into the flesh, it wouldn’t require more than a couple of stitches. More likely, the butt end would hit them, and they would say ow, or I’d miss them entirely.

I would be arrested, of course, because throwing something with the intent to hurt and potential to kill isn’t an appropriate response to anything other than an immediate, serious threat. That’s how the world has worked for hundreds of years, and it’s a pretty good system.

Now imagine that the pocket knife somehow hit the magic spot and nicked a jugular, or maybe it’s dirty (what with the tweezers and toothpick and all) and the cut caused an infection that became life-threatening.

ME: I’m sorry that it kind of ended up that high, your honor.

JUDGE: Oh, yeah, well, it happens.

Nope. I would go to jail for years. And I’m not rich, so it would be real jail! I’m too delicate for that, so I don’t throw my pocket knife.

For some reason, though, baseball is in a weird bubble where this stuff has been codified and passed down from generation to generation. It takes someone screwing up like Matt Barnes to remember that, oh, right, pitchers can screw up when they’re trying to retaliate, and it invalidates the whole system.

Two different Red Sox players used four different pitches to try to hit Manny Machado in the legs or butt, and they missed with all four. That means that throwing pitches at a batter’s legs or butt isn’t a functional system. Think of something new. This one is too dumb, too dangerous.

Maybe the catcher can carry an extremely large spider in a jar and shake it on the batter when he isn’t looking. Help me out with suggestions that don’t involve projectiles, people.

Act III: Zach Britton blames Dustin Pedroia

I went longer on the last section than I wanted to, so I’ll be quick here. Orioles closer Zach Britton said that Pedroia could have stopped the whole thing before it happened by telling his clubhouse not to retaliate. That’s probably true!

That doesn’t mean it’s Pedroia’s fault. Everyone in baseball is caught up in the weird disconnection from reality. Even Britton in the same damned interview:

“I think you should have the ability to control the ball enough if you want to hit somebody. You do it in their body,” Britton said.

Yeah, well, it doesn’t always work like that, which is the problem. Britton threw 10 wild pitches last year. He tried to execute a specific pitch in a specific location, and because that’s really hard, there were 10 instances of him missing badly enough that it couldn’t be caught by a major league catcher.

If the same mistake happens when Britton is trying to “do it in their body,” he could kill someone, too.

The answer is to stop throwing baseballs on people on purpose. “Tradition” isn’t a synonym for “good thing,” and some traditions are incredibly shortsighted and awful. It takes Manny Machado almost bleeding out of his ears to remind us that this is one of them.