#and during all this he was steadily getting more mentally unstable | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

ofbloodandbullets · 3 years ago

Photo

So it’s recently come to my attention that not everyone in the world has actually watched The Old Guard (WHO KNEW?!) so I’m going to try and do some info dumps about the world, the general canon and Andy’s history, personality, powers etc. This will ... probably get kinda lengthy.

Also: MAJOR MAJOR SPOILERS FOR COMICS & MOVIE.

The first thing you need to know is that for the main part, the history and the world that TOG takes place in is the exact same one as the real history of the world. It’s set in modern day, though the plot points stretch back to 7k+ years ago. It’s also important to note that there is a lot of historical inaccuracies and some things in canon that conflict themselves so it’s best to just take it all with a grain of salt and just go with what works best for your particular preferences etc.

The main difference between reality and TOG is that in TOG there are a very minute like .00000000002% of the population that are immortals. Now, it’s important to note that these people can die but they resurrect pretty close to immediately after they die no matter the amount of damage done. Now it can take some time to fully heal or reform, depending on how extensive the trauma (being blown to bits or burned etc. will take longer to fix but there’s no amount of damage that we know of that can actually keep them dead).

There are times when, for reasons unknown to the characters in character (or to us as readers of the comics / viewers of the movie etc) that the immortality just stops. There’ll just be a time that they suffer injuries that just don’t heal, and they die. There doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to this, be it age, number of times they’ve died, whatever. Now, I have my own entirely headcanon and personal preference based theory which you can find HERE but it’s totally just a random idea that I had that I liked to explain the loss of Andy’s immortality in the movie (that doesn’t happen in the comics) and lets me say that she regains her immortality post canon so that I can nudge things back in the direction of the comics for post movie plots and so on.

Andy is, as far as we know, and as far as she knows, the oldest (human) immortal, coming in at around 7,000 years old. She was born into a tribe, the Scythia (hence what she’s generally called: Andromache the Scythian). A nomadic warrior tribe that I headcanon to be a matriarchy, Andy was betrayed by the ‘queen mother’ when she was sixteen and killed in battle because the leader feared that Andy posed a danger to her continuing rule. This person was practically a mother to Andy and it was a horrific betrayal. What was almost as shocking to Andy was the fact that she got back up again after being literally stabbed in the back and killed.

In the vein of trying to thwart prophecies making them happen, Andy killed the matriarch and took her placce ruling the tribe, eventually becoming a God King to her people and ruling over them for hundreds of years until her loneliness absolutely overwhelmed her and one day she just vanished.

At some point after this, she began to dream of a woman, feeling a pull towards this stranger that she couldn’t begin to explain. After dozens, maybe hundreds of years, she managed to track down the woman in question (Noriko in the comics, Quynh in the movie) and realized that they’d been dreaming of each other. (In the comics she meets Lykon before Quynh/Noriko, whom she had also been dreaming of).

Now, the connection between these immortals isn’t explained in canon, and for a long time, Andy, Lykon, Noriko (and eventually Joe, Nicky, Book) thought they were the only ones but there is a scene in the second set of comics that implies that there are other ‘packs’ of immortals. I headcanon that it’s a ‘like calls to like’ / kind of Sense8 simpatico type thing - like minded souls drawn to each other, which is why Andy and the others didn’t know about the other immortals, but again, that’s just entirely my thoughts on the matter.

Lykon is the first to succumb to the loss of immortality, a short couple hundreds years after he and Andy find each other. He dies on a battlefield, one that he and Quynh/Noriko and Andy fought on like a hundred/thousand before, champions for the abused etc. Skip forward a couple hundred years again and enter Joe & Nicky, a Knight and a Muslim warrior who kill each other on the battlefield only to both wake up and spend (an unspecified amount of time) hunting and killing each other before eventually Andy & Quynh/Noriko find them. In time, Joe & Nicky realize that they love each other. (Important to note that Quynh/Noriko and Andy were also lovers). In the movie, when the first major surge of witch hunts began, Quynh/Noriko and Andy go to help the women that stood accused, only to be captured and accused of witchcraft themselves. After being hung, drowned, burned at the stake and coming back to life every time, the witch hunters settled on locking Quynh into an iron coffin and dropping her into the ocean. (In the comics, Noriko is lost at sea during a massive storm that had thrown their ship entirely off course with Andy having no clue where they actually were at the time.)

Joe & Nicky arrive in time to rescue Andy, but Noriko is already gone and despite spending decades tracking down every person even remotely involved in the so called ‘investigation’ into the women’s inquisition and punishment, Andy wasn’t able to find anything about where Quynh could be.

Cue angst & depression & guilt for ages after.

The trio still steps in over the following decades, trying to help prevent the worst of atrocities, but Andy quickly begins to spiral into an, at best apathetic, at worst, entirely distant and withdrawn mindset and steadily begins to lose hope that they’re actually making any difference at all.

Skip ahead a century or two and enter Book; a Russian conscript who had been forced into the fight after being convicted of forgery. Hung for desertion, Book spend days dying over and over again as he hung there, unable to attempt an escape until the troops finally packed up and moved on. He and Andy, Nicky and Joe meet up and Book kinda reluctantly joins their little group. It’s revealed that Book dreams, still, of Noriko/Quynh and while he can’t tell where hse is, dreams of her still dying, drowning on the floor of the ocean over and over and over like she had been for the last hundred or two years.

Book returns at some point to his mortal family which ended in disaster when his last remaining son was dying of cancer, cursing and screaming at Book for ‘choosing not to save him’ by making him immortal too, even though it’s something Book had no ability to transfer or make happen. Between his nightmares, losing his son and a number of other factors, Book decides he wants to end it all but no matter what he tries, doesn’t die and stay dead.

Eventually he’s approached by a pharmaceutical company that has figured out what he is and wants to run tests on him to see if they can unlock his healing / immortality for other people. Merrick’s company works in league with an ex CIA agent whose wife died of a horrific terminal disease who hopes that they can find a way to keep anyone else from dying if they don’t have to. Initially it was just supposed to be him, but he’d set up a display to stream for proof of what he was / they were and the corp decided they wanted all of the immortals. Book ends up betraying the team, and he and the others end up locked up and tested on / killed / experimented on etc.

There’s another character introduced in the meantime, the first new immortals in centuries, an American soldier named Niles. There’s a lot more that goes on here, but the main point is that in the movie, Andy stops healing from her wounds shortly after she tracks down Nile and is put into incredible amounts of danger when Merrick (the leader of the pharmaceutical company) captures Andy, Joe, Book, Nicky. Book is devastated, Nicky and Joe are furious, Andy’s just tired.

Eventually, Andy and the others break free with Niles’ help, destroy the lab they were originally held in etc and set out to try and hunt down any other proof, lab results, anything that Merrick got his hands on during the tests.

The group meets and settles on a hundred year exile for Booker (which I think is one of the stupidest things - like, the man’s clearly desperate and depressed and lonely and mentally unstable so by all means let’s isolate him for a fully century) and at the end of the movie we see him stumbling home to his apartment six months later to find Quynh standing in his apartment, pouring and drinking a glass of water which is a whole power move considering how many millions of times she died by drowning.

In the comics, Quynh/Noriko was driven entirely mad and to the point of wanting vengeance against Andy for abandoning her and spends a while gaslighting Andy and torturing her physically and emotionally and what not until she manages to isolate Andy from the other immortals and scoops in to ‘rescue’ Andy. IDK what they’re going to adapt this to in the second movie,

Again, via the link posted above, my Andy slowly begins to regain her immortality (again, IDK what they’re going to do with the next movie).

Uhhhh yeah. So I .. think that’s the majority of what you need to know for canon info about Andy. THIS is also an important PSA regarding my Andy’s history & her longest lasting relationship that has nothing to do with canon at all but that is part of Andy’s bg in every verse, even if it never comes into play.

#CHARACTER INFO.#BIO.#HEADCANON. ( do not reblog. )

20 notes · View notes

krystal-sylph · 4 years ago

Text

Marble Hornets - Hoody x Reader

So yes, I saw another author do something similar to this in their book on Quotev, and I liked the idea so I thought I'd try it out. This isn't canon whatsoever, it barely has anything to do with the actual story considering it takes place after Entry #87, and everyone is either already dead or gone. It's basically a 'what if' scenario that makes almost zero sense if you look at it from the eye of a critic. Don't judge too harshly! I made it when I was bored and in need of inspiration considering it's been weeks since I last updated this book. I'll give you more details about what I was thinking during this one-shot down at the bottom of the page.

Warnings: Mentions of death

You were walking steadily through the dead trees of what you assumed to be Rosswood Park, completely lost but also not really trying to find your way out. Why would you? You had nothing to go back to. All of your friends were either dead or missing, and your family... well, let's just say your family didn't exactly want you with them, which is why you stuck so closely to Jay, and Tim, and the others. But now you had nobody to stick close to. They were all gone.

The last thing you remembered was helping Tim fight off Alex in the old high school, then when Alex had been killed, you passed out and somehow woke up in Rosswood. More whacky teleportation, probably. Either that or you were sleep-walking, which wouldn't really surprise you considering everything you've done the past few years.

You also managed to unmask that hooded figure and were more than astonished when you saw Brian, your boyfriend that had gone missing all the way back in 2009 and was the whole reason you got involved with Jay and this mystery in the first place. You weren't sure how to react, you felt a rush of relief, shock, and anger all at the same time. He wouldn't wake up, of course he wouldn't. He had just fallen from a fifteen-foot window and landed on concrete. He was dead, and you knew that, but a part of you didn't want to accept it.

You hadn't got a lot of time to try and get him medical attention, for the Operator once again showed up and ran you and Tim off, then Alex got in the way, and well, here you were. Thankfully, you had woken up with your phone, but it was quickly losing battery so you tried calling Tim one, two, three, four times. He never answered, which lead you to believe that he, too, was gone. That left you all alone, stranded in the woods, with no one to turn to. Nobody to live for.

It felt bad enough not knowing where Brian had been all of this time, and you started believing that he was actually dead, no matter how much you denied it. But then finding out that he had been alive through the whole thing, and was watching you, well aware of how frantic you were over his disappearance, and had plenty of chances to reveal himself to you but never did? It hurt. And it made you mad. How could he do such a thing? It felt like the ultimate betrayal, and it really was in a way. If he was trying to protect you he was doing a poor job of it.

But now he was gone, and for good. You saw proof. You saw his motionless body more than once, and it made you want to rip your heart out of your chest and throw it to the floor. And you would have, had he not already done it for you. Losing him not once, but twice? You were already experiencing the pain from Jay's death, but discovering that your boyfriend had also died? Indescribable grief is what you felt. Your heart ached, your mind throbbed, the tears wouldn't even come to your eyes anymore. You had cried them all out.

You truly had nobody. Your feet scraped across the dirt and pebbles beneath as you continued wandering aimlessly through the forest. Where were you going? You couldn't even bring yourself to care. Your stomach rumbled, your throat was dry from dehydration. How long had you even been out here? At least two days. It was cool out, but not dreadfully so, being only June. The oversized hoodie Brian had let you have prior to all of this chaos was keeping you plenty warm, however, it only made you even more depressed. This was the last thing that was left of him. You would die in it for all you cared because you sure wouldn't be taking it off.

If you got close enough, you could still smell his scent, if only faintly. It brought you a sense of dread, but hopeless joy as well. You couldn't quite explain it. The Operator, or whatever that thing was, hadn't messed with you at all. Why? Who knew. Maybe it moved on to someone weaker to pursue, seeing as how its original victims were long gone. Or maybe it just slunk back into its weird underworld, its Own Zone, or whatever. Just as long as it left you the heck alone. You were not in the mood to be played with. After all, it was the cause of all of this. It's the reason your boyfriend was dead, the reason Alex went crazy, the reason everyone was so unstable. The reason that everyone you ever loved, who ever loved you, was gone.

It was extremely difficult to process. How could any of this have happened? You were just a normal girl with a normal life, with normal friends, with a normal boyfriend. At least, most of your friends were normal. Turns out Tim was the one that it attached itself to first. He was patient zero, in a way, but you stopped blaming him long ago. It wasn't his fault. Yes, he should have told you and Jay sooner, but what would be the point in being angry at him now? He was inevitably deceased, too.

You missed Jay, Tim, even Alex, as much of a jerk as he had been. You missed your other friends, but most of all you missed Brian. He was the one that had been with you when personal problems wouldn't stop messing up your life, he was the one that stuck by your side the whole time. He had been the epitome of a loyal and perfect boyfriend, and to find out he had kept the fact that he was stalking you and Jay for who-knows how long a total secret? It was disappointing. But what were you going to do, now? He was gone, it didn't even matter, anymore.

You kept your gaze trailed on the ground as you took weak steps through the trees, stuffing your hands into the pocket of the hoodie and not thinking about anything in particular. There was no doubt in your mind that Brian had been trying to do what he thought was best for you, as he likely thought that revealing himself after so long would put you in danger. But you were already in danger. Maybe he was afraid of what your reaction would be. Good, he should've been, because you would have been furious. You still were furious. You trusted him. You spent five years looking for him, worried sick about him, and he was watching you the whole time? Watching you suffer? Not doing anything about it?

Sure, Totheark was one thing, as he made it abundantly clear that he was trying to point you and Jay in the right direction several times, along with the masked figure, who was Tim, and another unknown person who had never been revealed, but it had also seemed like he was taunting you sometimes. Had he really changed that much? Did he just not care? You know that you had changed in major ways since the investigation started, but you had never stopped caring about your friends. About Brian. In fact, your love for them is what spurred you on. It was the only reason you got involved, to start with. Because you wanted them to be safe. You wanted him to be safe.

And he practically just spat all of your hard work back in your face. Understandably, you were vexed, but the sorrow topped the anger. It didn't matter if you kicked a tree. It didn't matter if you screamed. It didn't matter if you cursed your screwed-up life, cried about your losses, or just downright died because of it all. Everyone you loved had been taken from you. Why were you the one survivor? Why couldn't it have been someone stronger, someone who deserved it? Someone like Jay? You had been briefly acquainted with him thanks to him knowing Alex, but when all of this chaos took place, the two of you got exceedingly closer.

You had been there for each other, through all of it. He was probably the one person you trusted most in this world because even though he was stressed, likely more than you were, he never lost that aspect that made him, well, him. He never let the Operator get into his head to the point of it changing who he was. Sure, the past few months he had been easily irritable, but you were, too. And the both of you had become pretty paranoid, but who wouldn't in that situation? The point is, you two stuck together. That's what got you through everything, your friendship. He was the only one you could truly count on.

And what happened to him? He was brutally ripped from your life, all thanks to Alex. All thanks to the Operator. And you didn't even get to say goodbye. He was just gone, and right behind him was Brian, then Alex, and now Tim. Every single person whom you ever cared for, now dead. Never to be seen, again. You had nobody else to try and protect, nothing else to do. You didn't have another reason to continue fighting. You didn't even want to find the way out of this park. You had nowhere to go that wouldn't bring back loads of painful memories.

So you figured, you would wander around until you eventually just dropped dead. Is it possible to die from mental agony alone? If so, that would surely be what took you out, if lack of water and food didn't do it first. A gust of cool breeze swept through your tangled hair and, for a moment, you felt more human. It merely lasted a moment, but it still felt nice. What drew your attention was a sudden snap of a twig, and you jerked your head to the side, a bit startled by the noise. You saw nothing hiding behind the trees, then again it wouldn't be the first time you failed to see when somebody was watching you. But all of those people are gone, at least the ones you knew about.

So what if you were being recorded right now? It wouldn't surprise you. You didn't even care. You just wanted the pain to stop. Besides, it was probably only a squirrel or some other harmless woodland creature minding its own business. No need to worry about it. A disconsolate sigh escaped from between your lips and your gaze once again averted down, eyelids beginning to feel heavy. When was the last time you actually had a solid night's sleep? How long had it been since you weren't plagued with terrible nightmares, or an ever-present fear of being killed, or endless worrying about your missing friends?

It had to have been in 2010, right? That was when everything began getting more complicated than you could have ever imagined. If you had a second chance, would you have just brushed Brian's disappearance aside and gone on with your life as if nothing had ever happened? Would you have been able to ignore it all and avoid the inevitable trouble you'd get into? The answer you came to is no, probably not. Brian meant too much to you. There would be no way to simply move on without digging at least a little in an effort to get to the bottom of what happened.

Your head snapped up again when you heard yet another sound, this time it seemed as if a small rock had been crushed farther into the dirt, and right in front of you. What you saw made you gasp and stumble back from surprise alone, your foot catching on a root and making you fall on your back. You gaped up at the figure standing only three feet away from you, trying to comprehend how exactly this could have been possible. It isn't possible. Right? No. No, it isn't. So how was it happening?

He tilted his head to the side slightly, as if confused why you were reacting the way you were. Oh, gee, I wonder. It isn't exactly normal to see somebody who died standing directly in front of a person. You didn't speak, not for a few minutes, anyway, and neither did he. The nerve. You'd think he'd at least have the decency to say, "hi, I've risen from the grave, wanna go get a coffee?".

But nope. Not a word. Your eyebrows furrowed as you finally came to a reasonable and most likely conclusion. It was a hallucination. He was a hallucination. A mere image your mind created to deal with your grief. What else would it be? Real? Absolutely not. There was no way, it was only your imagination playing cruel tricks on you. "Go away," you muttered, voice scratchy due to not speaking nor having anything to drink. He didn't listen, he only continued to stare down at you, though you couldn't sense any type of malice, irritation, or even sympathy emanate from off of him. In fact, he seemed almost... curious.

You sent him a glare, trying to keep your composure and act as if seeing him didn't make you want to break down into tears for the hundredth time and wish that he was still here with you. But he wasn't, this was only your mind playing games with you. And you were sick of it already.

"I said, go away." Slowly, you pushed yourself to your feet, not taking your eyes off of the hooded man in front of you, and when he still wouldn't listen, you hardened your voice. "I don't need you here." He waited a moment before taking a step forward, indicating he still refused to get out of your head. What could you have done in this situation? It isn't easy escaping your memories, even though the only thing you wanted to do was escape them. This one, in particular.

His hands were dangling by his sides casually and his ski mask did everything to conceal his face and any emotion that may have been in it, which was the point of it, you supposed. And you were inwardly thanking your mind for coming up with an image of what Jay's followers on Twitter dubbed 'Hoody', instead of what you absolutely did not want to see, which was Brian. Not the hooded figure, just Brian. Your boyfriend. Or late boyfriend, now.

You let out a resentful growl, scooped up a small rock from the ground, and lobbed it at the hallucination, hoping that once it went through him that he would disappear and leave you alone. This was too much to take for your vulnerable, broken state right now, and you just wanted it to stop. However, something happened that you most certainly did not expect. The rock, instead of flying right through him as it should have, hit him below the shoulder with a soft thud before bouncing off and landing on the dirt, once again.

Not only did it hit him as if he were an actual, physical being, but he flinched back at the sharp impact and craned his neck down to look at the rock that had just been thrown at him, then focused his vision back on you, the girl standing with wide eyes and a confused expression clear on her features as her body went rigid. What was that? Plainly, you were losing your marbles in more ways than one. Hallucinations aren't real things, they're in the mind and in the mind only. So how did he, a hallucination, block the path of a rock, a very real, very concrete item, to the point it couldn't only be heard when it hit him, but it bounced off of him?

Still, he didn't say anything, and the silence around you, save for the tweets of birds and rustling of leaves, nearly made you crazy. Why were you doing this to yourself? Surely you had suffered enough, already. Why couldn't he just go away? You clenched your fists, in anger or as a way to gather your bearings, you weren't sure, and bit the inside of your cheek. What were you supposed to say? This couldn't be real; Brian was dead. It would be impossible for him to be here with you. Unless there was somebody pranking you to get some kind of reaction out of you. That would be the only logical explanation.

"This isn't funny," you snapped, shooting daggers at the person still ahead of you. "Get out of here before I make you." With that, you stomped around him, making sure to keep your distance as you continued on your way, trying to forget about him. You shook your head in disbelief. How dare somebody play with your emotions like that. But how would anybody know where you were? How would somebody get an outfit exactly like Br... like him? Unless they stole it off of his dead corpse, which is a thought you really didn't want to consider too much.

Who would ever prank you in such a way? Who would find you all the way out here? You couldn't be tracked—your phone had died after the first couple of hours you had been out here, and even so, you had ended up throwing it into the brush of the woods miles back. You figured that you'd never need to use it, again, since you planned on just dying deep in the forest soon. And they couldn't have followed you, not for so long without you noticing. The more you thought about it, the more it just didn't make sense. Everyone that had been keeping tabs on your and Jay's story likely thought you were already dead, so it couldn't have been one of them.

Your train of thoughts was derailed when you heard, what sounded like a leaf crunching behind you, and hesitantly looked back, seeing just what you expected to find; the same hooded figure, tailing you, though not to the point of it invading personal space. You didn't care though. It was disconcerting, especially since you had just disproved your theory about it being a prankster. This wasn't a prank, everyone who knew about you was dead. That should have included Brian, and you thought it did. Could you have been wrong...?

No. No, he was dead. So maybe it was just an extremely vivid hallucination after all? Then how did a rock bounce off of him? Could you have imagined the rock? No, the rock was real. He was not. It was beginning to get darker, you could tell by the way the sun fell past the trees and the sky faded into a deeper shade of blue. The cicadas began to chirp persistently, and in only a few minutes your eyes would once again have to get adjusted to the change in lighting.

Exasperation grew within your chest, as well as a flaming desire to get rid of him, and you spun fully around until you were looking directly below the red eyes that were painted onto his mask, where you assumed his actual eyes to be. An indignant huff left your mouth and you took a step forward, fixating on him with a threatening scowl and talking between your teeth.

"Go away." Your tone left no room for argument as the sentence slowly came out, but still, he stood there. Not a word came from behind the mask, he just stayed still. Staring at you. A move that finally made all of your anger rise to the surface, and you didn't even try to contain it. You just wanted him gone. "Leave. Me. Alone!"

In one quick movement, you took another step forward, stretched your arms out, and with all the force you could muster up, pushed him backward. It must have taken him off-guard because he did nothing to stop you, nor could he catch his balance before he tumbled to the ground with a thump. You sucked in a sharp breath, trying to calm your racing heart. You didn't expect to touch him. You didn't think there was anything to touch. But you could feel him, and clearly, he felt you, too. You blinked down at him with puzzlement, unable to fight the tears any longer.

You couldn't handle this. It was too much, it was just too much. You only managed to take two steps back before your legs became jelly and collapsed beneath you, sending you falling to the ground on your knees. You didn't mind it, not right now. You just had to compose yourself enough to get away. But something in your mind told you that wouldn't be very easy.

You allowed your hair to fall in front of your face as you tilted your head toward the ground below your trembling frame, screwing your eyes shut in an effort to stop the constant flow of tears from cascading down your cheeks. That's odd, you were sure that there were no more tears left to cry. Perhaps your body was saving them for this moment because it knew that it was going to torment you even moreso than it had, already. When would it all end? Until you died, probably. Quiet whimpers exited your mouth, you didn't bother trying to stop them. There wouldn't be a point. You were alone, anyway, no matter how much your mind wanted to convince you otherwise.

"Please go away..." The sentence came out as no more than a pained whisper as you hugged yourself, trying to come to terms with everything. It was bad enough that he died right in front of your very eyes, but now your mind was taunting you by making you think he was actually here? You could hear the faint sound of pebbles being displaced as if someone was drawing closer, and sniffed. "I love you too much. I miss you too much. Please, just... just leave me alone." Your voice cracked, though it wasn't extremely noticeable thanks to how low it became.

After a minute, you thought that your ears picked up muffled, gentle breathing, and you knew for a fact it wasn't you. Finally opening your eyes, you slowly leaned your head up, a bit surprised to see him not only in front of you but on his knees looking at you through his black and red mask. He was mere inches away from you now, and you weren't sure what to do. He obviously wasn't going to leave. Your mind wouldn't give you a break. Or was this really just your mind? Of course, there was no other reason. Brian wasn't here. Brian was dead. Even if it was him, he would have said something to you. Well, at least your Brian would have.

You weren't really sure what the new Brian would have done. After all, he went years without letting you know that he was so much as alive rather than dead like you presumed but didn't want to believe, and instead stalked you and your best friend, threatened you, taunted you, and lead you on wild goose chase after wild goose chase. It was unknown if the 'new' Brian would have even alerted you of his presence like this one. Probably not. He would have just recorded you from behind a tree, stay far out of your sight, and then used the footage to send some type of cryptic message in binary through Youtube that would take you and Jay hours on end to solve.

But this one, he wasn't acting nice enough to be your Brian, nor was he being mysterious enough to be Totheark Brian. He seemed almost... vague. Confused, curious. And it greatly addled you. If it somehow was Brian... why would he be acting so strangely? Who knew. Being pushed from a window would have its effects on a person, you supposed. But how would he have been here with you? He died. He wasn't breathing, his heart wasn't beating. You saw it. So what were you seeing now?

Reaching up slightly, you put your hand on the top of his knee, your breaths turning shaky. You could still feel him. You could touch him. You can't touch hallucinations, right? Leisurely, your fingers moved up to his hands that were placed on his thighs in a relaxed manner and grabbed one cautiously. You squeezed it, and it took a moment, but he squeezed back. As if following your lead. It was warm, and you could feel skin and bone beneath the glove he wore over it. Hallucinations aren't warm.

You scooted just a little closer and put both hands on his chest, giving it a light, effortless push to see if he reacted. He tipped back briefly before stiffening, posture becoming more solid. Your touch traveled up to his shoulders as you scooted even closer, tears glistening in your eyes as your intent gaze went up to his masked face. Would he let you remove his mask? It was the only way to tell for sure if he was actually Brian, or if he was just an imposter. You were afraid of either possibility.

There was hardly any doubt that this was an actual, physical person in front of you. The question was, is it the person you thought it may have been? Did you even want it to be him? You didn't even know what you wanted. You paused your movements before feeling faintly around his throat for the hem of the mask, thankful when you found it without much trouble and began sliding it upward.

Only then did his hand come up and wrap around your wrist, firmly but softly, and you flinched a little from the sudden action. You knew what he was saying. 'Don't'. "Please," you started in a tone so quiet that nobody could hear it unless they were right beside you. "I...I need to know." It took around thirty seconds until he finally let go, albeit slowly, and brought his hand to rest in his lap, once more, giving you complete access.

You gulped and pulled the mask off, eyes widening when you saw the sight that awaited you. It was him. It was Brian. His hair was quite a bit longer than it was the last time you had seen it, and now messy, too, his eyes were still that deep shade of brown that you fell in love with, and his lips were set in a mellow frown. He looked almost exactly like you remembered him. But something was... different. Maybe it was the paleness of his skin or the confused, unfamiliar look in his eyes, but something wasn't right.

He stared back at you, eyebrows slightly furrowed in what you recognized as perplexity. You ran your finger along his cheek, his lips, through his hair, as if to make sure he was real. This shouldn't have been possible. He died. How would he have been reincarnated? Without you knowing about it, especially? All of these questions and more flew by in your mind, but each one was only there for a couple of seconds before the next one appeared. You couldn't process any of them right now. You were too focused on the man sitting here, right in front of you, in arms' reach.

You dropped his mask to the side, eyes collecting even more tears as you parted your lips in utter disbelief. "Brian..." Saying his name seemed to spark some sort of recognition within him because he tilted his head and brought his own hand up, wiping away a droplet that was slipping down your cheek and almost studying you with curiosity present in his brown orbs. This made your heart clench. What on earth was happening? All of your friends were dead. What was this one doing coming back?

You couldn't stop the weak, pathetic whimper that left your mouth as your heart rate increased, unable to fully comprehend the unspoken information that had delivered itself to you. The only thing you could think about doing was bringing him close and refusing to let go, which you did. Your arms wrapped so tightly around his neck that it's a wonder you didn't break bones, and your head leaned against the side of his own, letting out heartbroken sobs that you didn't even know existed, anymore.

It didn't take long before you felt his arms snake around your torso, pulling you closer to him as well and enveloping you in a hug that was an odd mix of comfort and confusion. You didn't care, though. All you wanted was to stay in your boyfriend's, who was presumed dead, embrace, and never let go. You didn't need to know the answers, not right then. You had gone five whole years without his touch, his voice, his presence, and you weren't going to waste this chance on searching for an explanation. You just wanted him. You needed him. You got the faint feeling that he needed you, too, whether he realized it, or not.

__________

So... yes. I liked the idea and wanted to write it, mainly because I think the whole 'Hoody tilting his head in confusion' thing is really cute xD Don’t say anything, you know you do, too.

Anyway, what I was thinking is that basically... Brian did die but he somehow came back to life after the events in Entry #87 but nobody knew it. It's Brian that came back to life, but he's kinda different? He had his memory almost completely wiped and can't really talk because he's dead. He's a physical being, but he's like a ghost? It doesn't make a whole lotta sense, lol. He remembers very significant people that were in his life, in a way that he feels connected to them and has an instinct to protect them, but he doesn't remember them as we would think.

Is that like, way too confusing? I'm sorry, it's not a thoroughly-planned idea, in fact it's very vague. I just love Brian so much and it absolutely killed me when he died in Entry #83, so I wanted to bring him back! Even if it's for unexplained reasons. Heck, I don't even know how he came back. Vengeful spirit? Pure magic? Extreme love for his girlfriend that refused to let him rest in peace without knowing she's safe? I think I like that the best.

Also, I was sneaky and put a little reference from Joseph DeLage's live stream on Marble Hornets in the one-shot so let me know if you found it!

I’m well aware that my first real post on this account is about Hoody, and I could give less of a shit if I’m being honest. Brian is baby and I have an obsession with him that may or may not make me dream strange things about him. But don’t we all? I mean, who couldn’t absolutely fall in love with his smile? Or his laugh? Or his voice, or his eyes, or his face, or just every-freaking-thing about him?

Also this one-shot is crap but I am currently running off of about four hours of sleep and have been for the past two days so my writing isn’t exactly polished and reward-worthy content.

But yes! Hoody x Reader, there it is. Hope it wasn’t too cringy.

47 notes · View notes

angelicjadamv · 4 years ago

Text

The story so far

One month after graduating high school in 2015 I was finally able to move away from my family. I was 18 and moved to California for college. Fortunately one of the scholarships I earned was accompanied by a summer program that started in the middle of the summer before fall semester. Shortly after settling in a safe, stable environment for the first time in my life I started to get better. A lot better at first. Then life happened, as it does, and 18 years of repressed trauma and abuse broke me. My nervous breakdown ruined my fall semester, I couldn't go to classes or take exams or function as a student anymore. Until this point, being an exceptional student was all I had and basically how I survived. My safe and stable environment now was dependant on maintaining a certain GPA, among other requirements I could no longer meet. I failed one of my main courses because I had a 0 on 2 exams, including the final. When I went home I was put on antipsychotics. Returning to campus for the 2016 spring semester, I attempted to seek more therapy. I wasn't successful in finding a good therapist (for me, therapy is a personal thing. Just because someone isn't a good therapist for me doesn't necessarily mean they are a bad therapist). I did continue to see my 2 psychiatrists (emergency and regular) often as they attempted to adjust my medication to find something that work. My agoraphobia worsened, I stopped sleeping, I could barely eat, I was manic one moment and dissociative the next, SH and suicidal ideation worsened. I was a burden to my friends and loved ones. I made it through this because I had a beautiful support system that I will forever be grateful for, but I ended up taking a leave of absence academically for my second semester, earning no credits and putting my scholarships at further jeopardy. I was allowed to stay on campus because it was clear I was dangerously unstable with no safe environment to return to and because I had incredible advocates looking out for me. I had realized that I wasn't going to get better in time to salvage my academic career and my life, and was mostly clueless as to how I would survive. I had had an internship in my field since I started college, but I earned basically no money. STEM internships aren't really made to be livable for undergrads, so I had mostly been working for experience in a field I would no longer be able to progress in. Bummer. My physical health had taken a huge dive for all of 2016. I basically always knew I was chronically ill, but I had been abused and gaslit my entire life to believe and act like I was fine, I was just a weak baby, I didn't know what real pain or suffering was, seizures were to be ignored, no I didn't have migraines or pinched nerves (um hello SCOLIOSIS), etc etc. And 2016 was the year my body finally started to break, so I knew "regular" jobs weren't going to be a viable option for me, at least not for long.

And thus I became a survival SW. I stayed in college for a final semester, because I didn't want to miss my friends, I loved my campus and didn't know where else to live, I still needed a lot of campus resources. I also kept my internship as long as I could, because I knew I would miss it for the rest of my life. I didn't really go to classes, again, because as much as a desperately wanted to and as much as my advisors moved heaven and earth to try to make it work for me, I couldn't handle it. I was finally able to find 2 great therapists who I started seeing regularly who actually knew how to diagnose and treat me, one at school and one outside. This is also when I met Daddy (Jace) online. After talking for what is probably a stupidly short time, we fell in love and started dating. This is honestly my first real relationship and time actually catching genuine feelings for someone, something that I hadn't thought I was capable of. Despite being happier than I had ever been in so many ways, my mental and physical health was still steadily declining. My migraines and pain were getting worse, I hadn't been able to eat normally in months and relied entirely on medication to eat or sleep at all. Many people recommended mmj at this point in my life, but I was afraid of how it would interact with my other meds. I only smoked occasionally at parties at this point (because no way was I spending my super duper limited money on weed). I wonder if medicating with something that actually worked well for me, like weed, would have allowed me to finish college. Oh well I guess. Because of my inability to attend classes, I had to take another leave for the fall semester 2016. I worked at a strip club briefly, but my health couldn't handle it for long.

I didn't want to go home for the first winter break in 2015, but campus closed and I had nowhere else to go. It was turbulent. When summer 2016 came, I still didn't go home despite having no place to stay. Until a month or so later, it was revealed to me a relative had terminal cancer. I had to go home again. It was worse than turbulent. When winter 2016 came, my relative was in much worse condition. They only had a few months left, and this was probably my last chance to say goodbye. This visit was by far the most traumatic, and more because of my parents than watching a loved one die. At least Jace was able to come meet me for the first time in person. He also got to meet my relative before they passed 🖤

Freshly fucked up by family, I retuned to California at the beginning of 2017. I was mostly taking a break from SW because of my health and was working vanilla jobs as I could (so not much). I had a pretty decent job that I was really good at and had been promoted, but then my relative passed. I started losing consciousness again ( I had many seizures and fainting spells in my childhood and during high school) and had to quit my job. the funeral was in spring 2017, I flew to Jersey to be with Daddy for a few days and then he drove me several states over for the memorial. That was the last time I saw my family. I wanted to transition to online/content creating, but I had no tech knowledge or equipment (even my phone was a potato). In high school I wasn't allowed to have a smartphone, most social media other than what was heavily monitored (and still had 0 experience with platforms sw is popular on besides Tumblr I guess), I didn't really know much about cameras. Way too sheltered and broken to feel like I could start anything. I was now seeing my outside, or I guess regular and only, therapist twice a week and doing treatments that while working for me were insanely (literally) hard. I had been able to get an apartment with roommates at a super discount in return for taking care of their crazy dog, which was a win win for me (he was a good boi just crazy from a bad past and had the worst separation anxiety). The agreement was that I would live with them until the lease was up in September, and then we would reevaluate the situation. Then they both got promoted at their mega corporation jobs. And after their wedding found a really gorgeous apartment in a much fancier part of the city, and paid to break our lease early in June leaving me homeless. I had been fired from my last 2 jobs (probably for being disabled because California is at will employment but who knows I might have been fired from the nanny job because the husband wanted to fuck me). I had no money or anywhere to go. All of my friends were almost as broke as me, so while I had offers to couchsurf at a few of their places they had other roommates who would have been pissed and in a few months they would be going back to school anyways. Daddy and I had been trying to save up to move in together for months, but he was going to move to California. We didn't have any money for that, so instead he asked me to move in with him in New Jersey. Leaving meant I lost my health insurance and my therapist. It was supposed to be much more temporary and we were supposed to move back to California much sooner than we were able to. I try not to be mad at those roommates because being angry doesn't change anything, but it really sucked.

Moving in with Daddy meant we could start our blog! And I was super happy at first, the happiest I could ever remember. But the years had been too hard and my health started to get worse than ever before. Without treatment and so traumatized, my brain and body were constantly at war. I would wake with splitting migraines, throwing up, my chronic pain became completely unmanageable. I started to need weed all the time because it was the only thing that stopped my cyclical vomiting episodes and kept me out of the hospital. My antipsychotics and other meds had been high-key fucking me up (probably shouldn't have been on them in the first place, thank you doctor who also ignored my seizures even when I had one in front of you) and were almost impossible to come off of because the withdrawals. (Seriously, kicking xanax was easier for me than my antipsychotics.) I'm not anti medication or anything, I just know the ones I was on were not good for me anymore. I'd actually like to be on something again, I just need a doctor who actually understands PTSD and DID.

My health continued to be shit for most of 2018, with several ER visits for severe dehydration from vomiting for days on end. We started to make videos and do snapchat and online sessions to be able to make ends meet. Despite being in the worst situation and thus everything being a trizillion times harder, we really loved (and still love 😇) doing SW and creating content. Our fans and clients have been there in some of our darkest moments, just being lovely or pulling through for us when we needed it most. During 2018 and 2019 I became actively suicidal for the first time since I was 13. I struggled with self harm again. I have gotten worse than I ever thought possible. But I wouldn't have made it at all if it wasn't for SW, this community and our supporters.

At the beginning of 2020 we were finally able to move back to California. Obviously, the pandemic severely disrupted many of our plans, especially regarding my recovery. Despite things being delayed or shifted, we are in a much better place currently. I have what I need to get better and I can build a support system again. I will get better.

Talking about things is hard for me. Being open and honest is hard for me. For 18 years I was trained and abused to not be sad or show negative feelings, or talk about upsetting things, and it has been killing me slowly my entire life. I genuinely don't want pity or to make others feel bad, but I do want to give you the chance to get to know me. I don't always talk about things so much. But I'm trying to get better at it.

#angelicjada #oc #about jada

34 notes · View notes

pokemon-ninjago-world · 4 years ago

Text

Headcanon/Pokéninjago version of Lloyd’s identity crisis during season 5 of Ninjago

Got ab 12 likes on the announcement post so here we are: This is an essay-sorta-thing about something I thought and wrote some six years ago. It’s been so long since I wrote this I feel cringy reading it, but it’s tenable in Pokéninjago lore. It’s kind of a mix between my headcanon for the show, and canon of my AU, which is why there is mentions of “evolving” and Pokémon types.

Things to take into account:

Idk if there should be content warnings, but depression mention at least. Otherwise, this is pretty much as intense as season 5 went, just a little more angsty I suppose.

I must say that my version of Lloyd and his identity crisis were inspired by a certain artist’s version of him and by a comic they made about the Child’s Play episode’s aftermath. I don’t dare name the artist, since they don’t wish to be linked with the Ninjago fandom anymore, but some of you might know who I’m referring to.

I do not know how psychology stuff actually works, all of this was made on grounds of a couple of high school psychology courses and a lot of imagination `:D

I wrote this originally in Finnish and let Word translate it, so this might be v clumsy at points.

Most of the text is under the cut!

~***~

When Lloyd was just a small cub, closer to three years, his mother had left him in his father's care. Misako knew the boy would become the Green Ninja and Garmadon would become the Dark Lord. That is why she went looking for any ancient knowledge to avoid the final confrontation. Although her heart was torn since she had to leave her loved ones, she knew that she couldn’t just sit on her hands, and that perhaps she was the only one that could prevent the decisive battle between good and evil. It was also her wish that the father and the son could spend as much time together as possible. Thus, Lloyd's earliest childhood memories are about his father, and his recollections of his mother are blurry, obscure, and fading away as he grows up, or mixing with other memories.

Dad meant everything to little Lloyd. Although they lived in the same monastery with Lloyd’s uncle as well, whom he also liked, his own father was still the greatest. Garmadon also loved his child deeply and wanted him to have a happy life. Although the poison in his veins was starting to get a hold of him and he was increasingly drawn to the Golden Weapons, his love for Lloyd and the desire to be with him in anticipation of Misako's return kept him away from them for much longer than if the boy had never existed.

When Lloyd "evolved," he lost some important years of his life, during which a youngster usually developes a picture of himself and his changing body. Lloyd's body changed in a single moment and even though his mind also changed to some degree, it was still mostly on the same level as before, since artificial aging did not bring him the years of experience that growing up normally would. From that moment on, he had to form himself a new image of himself. Frankly, he was facing a fierce identity crisis.

After the episode Child's Play, Lloyd adopted an identity whose foundation was flimsy and unstable. It consisted of a few simple pillars that supported his image of himself. Some emotions, thoughts, and memories that he could not, wasn’t able to or didn’t dare to deal with, secretly and slowly gnawed at those pillars like erosion. They grew into doubt that settled into the cracks like rockfoil.

That flimsy foundation for his self-image, consisted of these elements: I am the Green Ninja. I'm the strongest ninja of all. I’m the son of sensei Garmadon. I’m the grandson of The First Spinjitzu Master. I'm one of the Elemental Masters. I'm a student of Sensei Wu. I'm one of the five elemental ninjas. It's my destiny to protect the world from evil.

This made it easy for Morro to destabilize and crush Lloyd’s self-esteem. Morro proved himself to be stronger and more independent than Lloyd, and that he could win him over and over again, no matter how hard Lloyd tried to fight back. Lloyd felt weak and desperate. Two pillars of his self-image collapsed to the ground and the masked emotions and doubts that chipped away at the other columns began to grow and intensify: He was not the strongest ninja and was therefore unable to protect the world from this evil.

This also affected his view of him as the Green Ninja. Although logically he still was just that – the Golden Weapons and his powers had proven it – he could not help but think that maybe Morro really was supposed to be the Chosen One. His identity was cracking, which ate away at his strength and self-esteem. Being a Psychic Type, his greatest strength resided in his psyche, and whenever his mind was in an unstable and vulnerable state, he couldn’t do his best, even if he had used everything he had learned. Losing his father fairly recently had already struck a dangerous notch in his mental stability.

Even though Lloyd was still his father's son, it didn't feel the same when he was no longer with him. Finally, he was only driven forward by his relationship with his other loved ones. He had to do everything he could to stop Morro from harming his friends. By protecting them he was also protecting the last intact remnants of his Self.

Lloyd did everything he could to resist Morro's possession. From time to time a memory of his friends and the will to keep them safe increased his "self-control," weakening the ghost's hold on him. However, a long, grueling time in constant motion, without water and nourishment, poisoned by a cold, vindictive spirit, steadily filled his mind with anguish and despair. Doubts penetrated deep into the tears of his self-image, breaking everything old until he no longer knew who he was. Only with the last bits of his mental strength could he interfere with Morro's possession so that he failed to clear the other ninjas out of his way.

Then, when Morro broke away from Lloyd's body, the Espeon felt like nothing more than an empty, broken shell floating aimlessly in the dark, beachless sea. He was unable to live up to any of the expectations and goals that had been set for him. Now, he was used as a trade-in item in the market of the world’s destiny. He longer had the strength or power to save even his best friends. He was as helpless as a newborn pup and all he could do was to stand by and apologize when he was traded for Realm Crystal.

Somewhere from his past, he dug up one last spark of strength. Already as a child, he had been left alone with unfriendly people, who then had ignited that stubborn flame in him: the desire to fight the cruel, unjust and repressive world. His body still had more strength than his mind, and this momentary burst of grit made him kick the Crystal out of Morro's hand. This, however, caused him to end up in the freezing stream, all his energy used up. There was not much left but a primitive desire to survive and a little strength to keep his head afloat before the cold numbed his muscles.

Lloyd's mind was in shambles. Images, memories, shattered fragments of his adopted identity… they all churned in his tired, blurred consciousness. Unintentionally, he began to go through the feelings of uncertainty, fear and inadequacy that he had denied from himself for years. The present seemed more surreal than the memories. He relived moments that had had a revolutionary impact on his life: When the golden weapons pointed him out as a Green Ninja; when he grew up under the influence of Tomorrow's Tea; when he met his mother and became to know her; when he unleashed the Golden Dragon in the Temple of Light; how he fought the Overlord who was possessing his father; how he harnessed his True Potential; got his father back; lost Zane; reunited his friends again and felt great togetherness with the other Elemental Masters. When he lost his father again. And when Morro possessed him.

Lloyd was lost. If it wasn’t for his friends and their care, he would have sunk deep into depression (and, on the other hand, drowned or, at the very least, died of hypothermia). When Kai carried him out of the FSM’s tomb, it triggered a very clear memory of the day when the Master of Fire had fulfilled his potential and Lloyd had been identified as the Chosen One. That day, Kai had come to save him from an erupting volcano and carried him to safety. Now, Lloyd felt like he was that little scared cub again, who had for a moment thought he was going to burn to the ground in the boiling lava of the volcano. He remembered how Kai's closeness had brought a feeling of immediate security around him. Even though the mountain had raged and wanted to kill them both, Lloyd had known he didn’t have to be afraid. Kai was there. He'd protect Lloyd. There was no reason to fight the fear anymore, he didn't have to pretend like he was tough. He was carried by someone older and stronger, whom to rely on.

The feeling was so intense, the memory so vivid that Lloyd was overwhelmed by an inexplicable, immense grief. The sadness of being forced to give up a carefree childhood so early on, to take on an enormous responsibility and assume a role that seemed too demanding for such a small boy to perform. He had had to grow up way too soon. He started shaking from holding back the tears. He didn’t mind since he thought Kai was probably assuming that he was shivering from the cold. But when Kai said quietly and understandingly: "Shh... It's okay... Don't worry about it," the last wall of pride and fear fell, and Lloyd could no longer repress his weeping.

At this point, he slowly began to build a new identity on the ruins of the wrecked one. He understood that even though he was the Green Ninja, it didn’t make him greater or more important than the others. He had more magical power than anyone else, but he was still only a person just like them. He could hesitate, too, and fail. There was no way for him to do anything more than what he was capable of, mentally, physically, and skill-wise. That’s all there was to offer, and if it wasn't enough, there were others whom he could rely on. Others, who would catch him when he ran out of strength. He wasn't the last link to hold the whole structure together.

These ideas developed slowly in Lloyd's exhausted mind. Slowly, he got stitched back up from the fragments of his previous self-image. This time, however, his new identity was not something that was given to him from the outside, in which he would have had to fit himself, but it was a solid, authentic self-image created as a result of self-reflection. It was still obscure, uncertain and seeking its form, and its growth was overshadowed by fear. But the conversation with his father drove away that last fear. The fear that Morro was supposed to be the Green Ninja instead of Lloyd. His father assured that Lloyd’s qi had no influence on how he should live and act. He should live the way his heart told him to.

In the end, although Morro managed to beat Lloyd one last time, this time he did not break down. He was more intact now, he had more inner strength, and he knew for sure he wouldn't be abandoned. That the fate of the world wasn't really up to him. He may have been part of the story, but after all, he wasn't the protagonist, at least not the only one of them.

18 notes · View notes

teddy-bear-surprise · 3 years ago

Text

Chapter 9: Exit

Masterlist

|| Chapter 1 || Chapter 2 || Chapter 3 || Chapter 4 || Chapter 5 || Chapter 6 || Chapter 7 Part 1 || Chapter 7 Part 2 || Chapter 8 || Almost The End || Chapter 9 ||

The past three and a half weeks had dragged Spencer through all seven levels of hell and back. All remainders of his sense of identity had been stripped away and then stuck back together with dollar-store duct tape. Even with his eidetic memory, superior cognitive skills, and years of extensive psychological training, Spencer had been susceptible to all of Ophelia’s tricks. Every single vision, thought, and emotion that entered Spencer’s conscious mind was hand-crafted and transplanted deep within his mind by Ophelia. He was stuck in a prison that he would never escape, but that was only half the story.

Ophelia was undoubtedly a bright person, though it seemed wrong to pay someone so nefarious such a compliment, and she had devised a detailed and thorough plan. That very plan was what led to Spencer’s downfall. Nothing could stop her once she had her eye set on a goal, and sinking her talons into Spencer’s mind was no different.

Many scientists liked to say that when a person is exposed to high levels of anxiety for prolonged periods of time, their brains will translate every ordinary experience into a moment of desperation. Every moment becomes life or death. Black and white. Winning or losing. And that was all Spencer could see.

Even if he did not explicitly feel his anxiety in that moment, Ophelia’s methods left him exposed to every one of her schemes. He was unaware of his extensive obedience, not complying intentionally, but with an iron fist of fear wrapped around his heart. But each time he acted in Ophelia’s favor, the fist loosened.

As the days rolled by, slowly at first, Spencer began to feel more and more drawn towards her. His fearful heart palpitations shifted into anxious flutters. When he saw Ophelia now, rather than sensing dread in his gut, he felt a kaleidoscope of butterflies in his stomach. It wasn’t shocking that three extensive weeks with an attractive captor led to Spencer’s strong case of Stockholm Syndrome. It happened all the time, and while Ophelia hadn’t planned for it, it proved to be useful.

For the first week, Ophelia would repeat the same routine every day, only modifying the temperature of the interrogation room to add a little kick to her “game”. And every day, Spencer would look at her with the same scared and confused look on his face. Ophelia, obviously, would just ignore it. Every day she would let him get a bit closer to her, making him feel like there was progress being made, that she trusted him, only to trick him and treat him like scum the next day. She tore down the very structure of his understanding of trust. Eyes wide open with fear, Spencer would learn to be wary of every movement that Ophelia made. He slept lightly, listening for the sounds of her footsteps and mentally preparing himself when they did approach him. Though as much as he tried, he was never really prepared for what followed.

Then the next week came along, and suddenly Spencer was spending every waking moment alone. He sat in solitude, hearing nothing more than the sound of his own breath and fabric crinkling whenever he moved. The closest thing to human contact he got during those days was Ophelia pushing a small tray of food into his room at breakfast, lunch, and dinner and then him pushing the tray back out to her after he had eaten. That was probably the longest week of Spencer’s life. Every day that passed by felt like months, and with no windows or clocks, the only way of keeping time was by counting how many seconds had passed between meals. On the longest day, he had counted eleven thousand nine hundred and twenty-five seconds. For each second that he counted, he made a dot on the wall behind him with a marker that Ophelia had given him, and by the end of the week, his wall had turned a whole shade darker.

During the last week, the third one, Ophelia did the complete opposite. She kept Spencer by her side every second of the day, providing him with the desperately needed attention that he craved. She would order him around, playing into his desire for purpose and fulfillment. Each morning, Ophelia would make him write reports for her. She started it as a way to gauge just how much Spencer would be willing to share with her. Unsurprisingly, the emotionally and mentally unstable Dr. Reid had lost the ability to filter his thoughts. The world-class genius labored away for hours, spilling every secret the FBI had shared with him. He told Ophelia all about her mother, he told her about Hotch’s family, he told her about his lowest moments: losing Maeve and letting Cat slip through his hands. In the afternoons, she would send the mentally exhausted man to do meaningless housework. He scrubbed the floors on his hands and knees until his shoulders grew sore, he replaced lightbulbs until his wrists could no longer twist, and he washed dishes until his hands turned pink and pruned. Reid thought nothing of the work and even appreciated the opportunity to rest his aching mind. Their nights, however, were spent together, truly together. Not the kind of together where Ophelia sat on the couch watching Spencer work, but the type where they were no more than a foot apart at any given time. He relished the praise that Ophelia showered him with. She made him feel an unparalleled sense of pride for sharing his secrets. By the end of the week, Spencer had proven himself to be so trustworthy (or brainwashed) that Ophelia felt comfortable falling asleep next to him on the couch.

Somehow, an institution dedicated to delving deep into the minds of America’s most notorious killers had made a fatal mistake. They failed to look into the minds of their own men, letting the team’s brains and hearts fall through the cracks. The BAU’s useless mandatory therapy proved to be nothing but a bandaid over a gaping wound. Because despite all of his intense FBI training, Spencer had already suffered so much trauma that he became the BAU’s weakest link.

Three Days Until New Year’s

A pair of heavy boots crunched loudly against the rocky, sandy walkway, contrasting the eerie silence that preceded it. The boots were attached to a mysteriously hooded figure that walked with confident strides. It was late at night, or maybe early in the morning– no one could say for sure. Only one thing was certain: chaos would soon have the upper hand.

The black boots continued until they reached Ophelia’s window. Peering in, the hooded figure saw Ophelia lazily draped over the couch, accompanied by a dreaming Dr. Reid beside her. An old television set illuminated their motionless figures and let out quiet dialogue as the movie dragged on. Both were in a deep, deep state of sleep, unaware of the scene that was unraveling beyond their dreamscape. The Unsub abandoned the window, tiptoeing towards the garage. The garage door panel, despite being chosen by a “genius”, took only a minute to hijack. The latch clicked open and the door slowly lifted. It buzzed quietly but steadily, and the hooded head turned towards the window every few seconds to check for any signs of Ophelia or Spencer waking up. They never did. With the garage door open, it would be smooth sailing from now on.

The Unsub quickly slid their backpack onto the empty garage’s floor, opening it slowly. The contents of the bag were highly volatile and the Unsub did not want to be anywhere near when that volatile substance lost its stability. Halfway through unzipping, the zipper got stuck, causing the backpack to jolt violently. The Unsub’s breath hitched and their mouth dried up as beads of sweat trailed down their neck and forehead.

Beginning again, slower this time, they moved the zipper smoothly. Once the bag was successfully opened, the Unsub calmed by a degree. They grabbed the flat, red blocks that lay within, careful to avoid tangling the wires attached to the blocks. These carefully packed and handled blocks were those infamous “plastic explosives” that they always showed in movies. They were highly destructive, yet much too easy to buy– considering you had the right contacts, of course. The Unsub stuck the explosives all along Ophelia’s garage walls, making sure to target the home’s main structure by using a wall scanner. They exited the garage and closed it manually to avoid the whir of the garage door motor. With still a handful of explosives left in their possession, the Unsub moved to the side of the house farthest from Ophelia and Spencer, easily boosting the damage without committing full-on murder.

From afar, the Unsub exiting Ophelia’s backyard just looked like an ordinary citizen going for a calming moonlight stroll. But their fast, decisive steps were far from calm and this citizen was in no way ordinary. They walked rapidly for two long minutes and by the time those two minutes had passed, Unsub was far out of the neighborhood’s sight. The Unsub grabbed the remote detonator from their pocket, entering the passcode and pressing the bright red button. A blast shook the ground with fierce intensity and a shiver ran up the Unsub’s spine as they felt the air’s temperature increase by the slightest degree. They turned around to marvel at the brightly lit sky above Ophelia’s house, basking in the sound of chaos engulfing the few residents of Park Ridge Drive.

Inside the rapidly heating home, Ophelia and Spencer felt adrenaline flowing freely through their bloodstreams. Panic permeated their bodies and all rational thought had been abandoned. But even as they felt the fire nearing and the smoke filling their lungs, they didn’t move. They couldn’t move. Just like two mice trapped in a never-ending maze, there was no way out and the Unsub had made sure of it. They sat in desperation, wondering if the past three weeks had all been for nothing.

About ten minutes from the house, the Unsub approached their car, opening the door as a gust of wind flew by. Their hood fell down, revealing short blonde locks and a familiar face. They perched the hood back onto their head. They could hear the sirens approaching and drove away quickly, even passing a police car a few miles later. But alas, the Unsub was already far, far gone by the time first-responders arrived at the scene.

Author’s Note: I decided to leave this chapter a bit vague at the end so I could pick it up again if I ever feel better, but still have just enough closure to let the story "stop"... I'd love to hear any theories or guesses as to what the ending means (it's kinda obvious lol). I'm also so sorry it's not better, but this was the best I could do considering the circumstances.

#Criminal Minds #CM #spencer reid #spencer x oc #fanfiction #fanfic #criminal minds fanfiction

2 notes · View notes

hysterialevi · 4 years ago

Text

His Name Was Isaac - Ch. 3

Fanfic summary: During a mission to avenge his mother’s death, Isaac hunts down the men responsible for her murder and kills them off one-by-one, only to discover that his last target is taking refuge among the Van der Linde gang. In an attempt to kill them, Isaac attacks the gang and unknowingly becomes enemies with his own father, who is in the process of fighting his own battle for redemption.

Point of view: third-person

Previous chapter | Next chapter

This story is also on AO3

ONE WEEK LATER

OUTSKIRTS OF BLACKWATER

Steadily moving his line of sight just along the distant horizon, Shay Mackintosh kept a close eye on the bank in Blackwater as a number of customers went in and out, completely oblivious to the gang that lurked no more than a stone’s throw away from them.

At the moment, the town seemed pretty calm. Normal. Ordinary. Not nearly as hostile as the last time Shay set foot there. That must’ve meant that the people had either grown too comfortable with their lives, or that there was someone else guarding the perimeter for them. And considering the rumors of Pinkertons roaming around Tall Trees, Shay assumed it was the latter.

...Dammit, he mentally cursed to himself.

The last thing the Van der Lindes needed to worry about right now were Pinkertons. Dutch was already close to losing his mind as it was, and with the Skinner Brothers’ growing presence in West Elizabeth, Shay doubted the man would be calming down anytime soon.

If federal agents started going after them... well, he didn’t even wanna think about the chaos they’d cause.

Though... this could’ve been a blessing in disguise, depending on how one looked at it. As money-hungry as their gang was, Shay could see that everyone was anxious to get out of West Elizabeth and move on somewhere safer. Somewhere that didn’t have lawmen or rival gangs prowling around every corner.

A few of the other members had already expressed their concerns surrounding the upcoming robbery in Blackwater, and with the presence of Pinkertons now being an issue, Shay expected there would be even more infighting back at their hideout.

If too many threats presented themselves at the same time... perhaps Dutch would finally see sense and agree to relocate their camp.

But... then again, that could’ve just been wishful thinking on Shay’s part. Dutch was known for his stubbornness, after all, and Mackintosh couldn’t remember the last time their leader ever swayed his mind about something without raising hell about it first.

If he truly had his mind set on robbing this godforsaken bank, then... Shay supposed that was what they’d do. Dutch was the boss in the end of the day, and his word was practically law.

It didn’t mean Shay wasn’t worried, though.

“Mackintosh...!” A man’s voice suddenly called out from behind, cutting off Shay’s train of thought.

The outlaw whipped around in alarm and instantly reached for his pistol, only to come to a halt once he saw who it was.

“Jesus, Arthur...!” he whispered in a startled tone. “I nearly blew your goddamn head off. Thought you was one of them Skinner boys.”

The older man chuckled, crouching down so that he was at the same level as Shay.

“I’ll try not to take that as an insult. What’re you doin’ out here?”

Mackintosh returned to his binoculars, focusing the lenses. “Dutch asked me to scout the place out before we move in. He wanted to know what we’re dealin’ with.”

Arthur leaned closer to Shay and squinted his eyes, trying to follow the man’s gaze. “...And? You see anything worth noting? How many guards are at that bank?”

“Well... I’ve counted about a dozen so far, though there could be more I’m not seeing. They switch every once in a while, but it ain’t often. Not many openings for us to charge in.”

Shay lowered his binoculars for a second, turning to face Arthur. “...I won’t lie to you, Morgan. It’s gonna be difficult to rob this bank. The whole thing’s under heavy guard, and there are Pinkertons wanderin’ in the streets now. It’d be a huge risk to grab this score, even with all our men.”

The other man held his hand out. “Here. Lemme take a look.”

Passing the device over to Arthur, Shay patiently stood by as the man thoroughly scanned the area, picking up every detail he possibly could.

“Yeah...” Arthur muttered worriedly, “...security’s gotten real tight in Blackwater, that’s for sure.”

“And you still think it’s a good idea to hit this town?” Shay questioned.

“It don’t matter what I think,” Morgan replied. “It ain’t up to me.”

“No, but I imagine you still have a mind of your own, don’t you? As well as your own concerns.”

The older man gave him a cautionary side glance. “It sounds like you’ve got some, Mackintosh. Care to share?”

Shay sighed in a defeated manner. “Look, I know Dutch thinks this’ll be a easy score since Blackwater’s such a small town, but small doesn’t always mean easy. It just means more concentrated. I mean, look at this place.”

He gestured to the settlement in front of them. “Blackwater’s essentially one, giant square. All the buildings are more-or-less in the same area, and it ain’t nearly as convoluted as the other cities we’ve hit. There are fewer blind spots to worry about. Fewer entrances to keep an eye on. Fewer places for us to hide if things go south. And there’s also the fact that Pinkertons have been seen in Tall Trees. If this plan goes awry--”

“--It won’t.” Arthur interrupted.

“...If it does,” Shay reiterated, “we’ll be dead men. The law will have no problems cagin’ us in, and we’ll be hanged on the spot.”

As much as Arthur hated to admit it, the man had a point. Blackwater wasn’t exactly the ideal place for an outlaw to be right now, and with all the threats surrounding them in this area, he couldn’t deny that he thought they might’ve been better off staying the hell away from this town.

But even then, his thoughts were irrelevant. No matter what his opinions were, it was Dutch who always had the final say, and Arthur knew damn well that a few lawmen strolling about wouldn’t be enough to scare the old man off.

If they were going to convince Dutch to leave Blackwater alone, they’d need one hell of a good reason. And at the moment, Arthur couldn’t think of one.

“Look,” Arthur said, keeping his voice down, “I hear you, Shay. But like I said before, it ain’t my choice whether we stick around or not. That’s Dutch’s decision.”

Shay persisted. “Well, yeah, but you’re the only one he actually listens to. That’s why I’m tellin’ you this, Morgan. If you speak with Dutch, he might see where we’re coming from.”

Arthur put the binoculars down. “And if he doesn’t, we risk being accused of being traitors.”

Mackintosh quirked a brow. “What are you talkin’ about?”

“That’s how Dutch’s mind works now,” Morgan explained. “I dunno if you’ve noticed, but he’s a paranoid mess these days. He values loyalty above everything else in this world, and in his head, loyalty means you don’t question anything he does. If I bring up our concerns about this robbery and Dutch doesn’t see reason, he’ll lose all his faith in us. I’ve seen previous gang members get shot over less.”

Shay’s expression froze with shock. “Jesus. I knew Dutch was unstable, but that’s downright lunacy.”

Arthur sighed in frustration. “He ain’t a lunatic. He’s just...” he trailed off, unable to find the right words. “...look, forget it. Let’s just get back to camp. I’m sure Dutch is waiting to hear what we’ve found.”

Shay took his binoculars back, sliding them into his satchel. “And then you’ll have a word with him?”

The other man rose to his feet, nodding in response. “I’ll... I’ll see what I can do. I ain’t gonna promise anything, but I’ll try to make him see reason.”

Mackintosh followed Arthur’s actions and returned to his horse, preparing to head back to camp. “Thank you, Arthur. That’s all I ask. Lots of folk are nervous about this robbery, and I wouldn’t wanna see half our gang get wiped out all because of one mistake.”

Arthur thought back to the ferry job they did eight years ago, not even bothering to point out the extreme irony in Shay’s statement.

“...No,” he settled for, sounding much more regretful than before. “We wouldn’t.”

~~~~~~~~~~

A LITTLE LATER

AURORA BASIN

Opening the door to Dutch’s cabin, Arthur and Shay both sauntered into the cold living room as the smell of lingering smoke smacked them in the face, causing the latter to let out a series of coughs.

At the moment, Dutch was mindlessly chewing on the tip of a freshly-lit pipe and steadily pacing around the room, allowing him to think more intently as he listened to Micah prattle on about some nonsense.

It looked like the other man had just returned from his own journey, judging by the heavy satchel slung over his shoulder. There didn’t seem to be much in it other than a few dead rabbits, and considering the fact that there was still some blood on Micah’s glove, Arthur assumed the man had been out hunting.

About time he did something useful, Arthur thought. The man rarely ever lifted a finger around camp other than to swat flies, and when he wasn’t irritating the hell out of the other gang members, he was back in this cabin, doing whatever he could to lick Dutch’s boots. Though, this time... the tone of Micah’s voice suggested he may have been here for another reason.

“Shay! Arthur!” Dutch barked once his gaze landed on the two new guests in his cabin. “You’re back. What did you learn?”

“The bank’s locked up tight, Dutch,” Mackintosh answered, stepping closer to him. “We counted about a dozen guards standing outside of it, and I also spotted some new security measures while we was there. They’ve got more walls. More gates. More places to trap us if we ain’t careful. This is gonna be a risky job no matter how many people we bring.”

The older man didn’t seem pleased. “Well, that’s good to know, but I thought I told you to be discreet.”

Shay blinked in confusion. “We... were. We didn’t set a single foot in Blackwater and scouted it from the outskirts. Just like you said.”

“Oh, is that so? Then why is it that there’s someone in town looking for us?”

Arthur jumped in, his interest now piqued. “Wait, there is?”

Dutch gestured to Micah. “Yeah, Micah saw him. He was just telling me about it before you boys walked in. Said he spotted them in the saloon.”

The other man nodded casually. “Sure did. It was a young man. About this tall. Blonde. I didn’t catch his name, but he was askin’ all sorts of folk if they knew who the Van der Lindes were. Also if they knew Dutch. He seemed pretty determined to find us. Luckily, he didn’t notice me.”

Arthur rubbed his chin, suddenly feeling a lot less confident about bringing up his concerns to Dutch. “...Shit. Was he a lawman?”

Micah shook his head. “Nah, I don’t think so. He didn’t look like one. Didn’t have no shiny badge neither. My guess is he’s a bounty hunter.”

Shay furrowed his brows. “A single bounty hunter tracking us down all by himself? That doesn’t make any sense.”

Arthur took on a more cautionary tone. “Who says he’s by himself? You’d have to be a fool to fight a gang on your own. It’s most-likely he’s got more friends that we haven’t seen yet.”

Micah shrugged. “That, or he doesn’t realize how close he is to us. Probably thinks he’s still got a ways to go before worryin’ about any sort of fighting. After all, no one expects to find what’s right under their nose.”

Mackintosh changed the subject. “Either way, if this man’s asking questions all around town, he’s gonna draw attention to us. We need to deal with him before anyone else takes an interest.”

“He’s right,” Arthur agreed, turning to Dutch. “You want us to deal with him, Dutch? We can go back to Blackwater. Take him out right now.”

“No.” The man responded, causing all three of them to fall silent.

“...No?” Micah asked, significantly more concerned now. “But if we don’t kill him now, he’s bound to find our camp later.”

Dutch grinned deviously at that. “Exactly. It’s too risky for us to attack him when he’s in the heart of civilization. There are too many obstacles. Too many guards. Too many people. So, instead... I say we let him find us. We’ll play along, let him think that we don’t know what he’s doing, and when he finally comes waltzing into the lion’s den -- that’s when we’ll strike.”

“But what if he’s not alone?” Arthur pointed out. “We’ll have an entire group of bounty hunters right on our doorstep.”

“Then we fight.” Dutch said plainly. “We have enough men to deal with a few guns. We’ll be alright. For now, though, just stay focused on the bank. I don’t want any of you worrying about no bounty hunters unless we have to. Understand?”

The three of them exchanged looks for a moment, ultimately deciding that it wasn’t worth an argument.

“Of course, Dutch,” Micah finally complied. “You’re the boss.”

The older man appeared satisfied with that answer. “Good. Now get back to work. All of you. This bank ain’t gonna open itself.”

Ending the conversation there, Dutch put his smoking pipe away and gave a simple wave of the hand, signaling for everyone to return to their lives while he wandered back to his rocking chair.

Shay and Micah were already halfway out the front door by the time Dutch took a seat, but as always, Arthur remained the odd one out and stayed in place, pondering what he should do next.

Unbeknownst to him however, he wasn’t the only one thinking.

“...I know that look, Arthur.” Dutch remarked, his back turned to him. “I’ve known it for the past eight years. There’s somethin’ you wanna say, isn’t there?”

The younger outlaw hesitated for a second, unsure of whether he should tell the truth.

“...Yeah...” he grumbled out, “but you ain’t gonna like it.”

Dutch chuckled. “Try me.”

Walking up to Dutch, Arthur took a while to gather his thoughts before joining the other man’s side, stopping to lean against a nearby table. He still wasn’t entirely certain if he wanted to express his true thoughts to his friend, but deep down, Arthur knew that what Mackintosh said at Blackwater had merit in it.

“...I think we should leave Blackwater alone.” Arthur admitted at last, earning a puzzled look from Dutch.

The older outlaw paused for a moment, wrapping his head around what the other just said.

“Leave Blackwater... alone?” He repeated, clearly not on board with the idea.

“It’s too risky, Dutch. We don’t even know if the bank is worth it. We’ve got no idea how much cash is really bein’ held in that vault, and on top of that, there’s a shit ton of guards patrolling the area. You heard Shay back there. They’ll shoot us down before we even reach the building.”

“Which probably means there’s a lot of money just sittin’ in there waiting to be stolen! Why else would the security be so tight?”

Arthur knew he was going to say that. “And what about these Pinkertons? We’ve all heard the rumors. They’ve been seen in Tall Trees, Dutch. That’s right outside our camp! All they have to do is take one wrong step, and they’ll be on top of us before we know it. We have to leave now. We don’t want a repeat of what happened in Blackwater eight years ago. You remember the chaos that led to?”

Dutch sighed. “Of course I do. But we won’t make that mistake again. This time, we’ll be better prepared.”

The younger man held his hands out in a perplexed manner. “How? We have even fewer men than we did for the ferry job, and the bounty on our heads is bigger than ever. How are our chances gonna be any higher for this score?”

“Because we have you now.” Dutch said. “You wasn’t with us for the ferry job, and neither was Hosea. And look how that turned out.”

He stood up from his chair and placed a reassuring hand on Arthur’s shoulder, looking him in the eye. “But we have your help this time. Hosea may not be with us anymore, but I know for a fact you wouldn’t let me down, son. I have no doubts that this job’ll go just fine.”

Arthur saw right through the flattery and put his hands on his hips, completely at a loss for words.

There was nothing he could say or do that would convince Dutch to leave Blackwater, was there? The man was entirely obsessed with the city by now, and Arthur knew that at the heart of it, none of this really had anything to do with the money in the first place. It was purely about Dutch’s pride.

He knew that Dutch still hadn’t gotten over what happened to them all those years ago, and he knew that the old man wouldn’t take his eyes off this town until he managed to pull off a successful score.

He was falling victim to his own insanity, and Arthur had no other choice but to try and pull him away from the edge. It was one hell of a risky move to make, but he decided it’d be worth it.

Arthur let out a remorseful breath and lowered his head, almost whispering his next words.

“...You’re losin’ yourself, Dutch.” He said vehemently. “I can see it everyday. More and more of the old you is just... vanishing.”

The older outlaw appeared taken aback by the abrupt notion and narrowed his eyes, almost looking offended.

“Losing myself?” He replied, his voice dangerously calm. “...How so?”

Arthur gestured vaguely at the room around them. “Look at what we’re doing, Dutch. How many men have we lost just tryin’ to reach Blackwater? Not to mention actually stealing from it. Our gang is dyin’ out here. This area’s too dangerous for the likes of us, and yet... we won’t leave. You won’t leave. The Dutch I know would’ve packed his bags long ago.”

The other man fell silent at that and tightened his lips, making an expression that said Arthur had just crossed the line.

“You think I’m losin’ myself.” Dutch parroted once again, his tone completely flat. “You think... I’m... losing. Myself.”

He took a few steps away from Arthur and began pacing around the room, chuckling to himself in a heartbroken manner.

“...Hosea is dead, Arthur,” Dutch stated, sounding more feral with every passing second. “John is a traitor. My health is deteriorating, we have the law on our tail, and now, the only son I have left thinks I’ve gone crazy--”

The tyrannical man brought his gaze back to Arthur, his eyes wide open with madness.

“Of course, I’m losing myself, Arthur! Wouldn’t you? This world... has gone to shit! Civilization has no room for folk like us, and even within our own world of murderers, thieves, and rapists -- we are still tearing ourselves apart! I have sacrificed everything to keep this gang afloat, even when we went through hell! You are my family, Arthur. You, Hosea, John, Miss Grimshaw... you were all my family. But just like the rest of them, you’re startin’ to lose faith in me too!”

Dutch pulled his revolver out, blatantly aiming the weapon at Arthur.

“Are you gonna leave me, Arthur? You gonna turn your back on me and leave me to the goddamn wolves, just like the rest of them? Are you a snake?”

Arthur held his hands up, absolutely bewildered by Dutch’s deranged response.

“What? No! I’m right here, Dutch. I ain’t gonna leave you.”

“That’s what they all said,” the older man dismissed, evidently unconvinced. “That’s what they all tried to tell me. But when it really mattered, they all--”

Coming to an abrupt halt, Dutch’s words were cut off when he was suddenly struck by a coughing fit, causing him to drop his gun as his entire body heaved uncontrollably.

“Dutch!” Arthur exclaimed out of concern, rushing over to him.

The man continued to cough aggressively and hurriedly searched for his chair, desperately wanting to sit down as he leaned on Arthur for support.

“Easy, Dutch...” he comforted, helping the man into his seat. “Just... take it easy.”

Setting Dutch down, Arthur kept a firm grip on him until he was sure he wouldn’t keel over and stood patiently at his side, waiting until the man’s coughing fit calmed down.

“You okay there, old man?” He asked. Dutch coughed a few more times, eventually hacking up some blood before spitting it on the floor.

Arthur eyed the blood with a worried glance, trying to hide how frightened he truly was about the man’s health.

“Jesus...” he murmured. “Dutch, I’m sorry--”

“--Don’t.” The other man interrupted, wiping his mouth clean. “I don’t want no pity.”

Finally back to his normal state, Dutch let out a deep sigh and leaned back in his chair, clearly worn out from the havoc his own body just put him through. His skin was much paler now, and just by listening to the shaky rhythm of his breath, Arthur could tell he was getting weaker and weaker by the minute.

It wouldn’t be that long now before he was at Hosea’s side again. The only doctor who could’ve possibly given Dutch some sort of treatment was all the way in Blackwater, and even if they somehow managed to sneak him past all the law, Arthur doubted there was anything they could do to save him.

Dutch’s life was quite literally slipping out of his grasp these days, and much like everything else they had lost in the past few years, there was no way they could get it back.

Even with Arthur at his side.

“...R’you gonna be okay, Dutch?” Morgan asked solemnly, despite the obvious answer.

The outlaw shook his head, throwing a glare at him. “What d’you think?”

Arthur’s shoulders slouched in despondency. “I know, I know. Stupid question. I just...”

He cleared his throat, deciding to drop the subject. “...Never mind. Forget I said anything. Just... take care of yourself, alright? None of us wanna see you go too soon.”

Dutch nodded in response, admittedly curious about what Arthur was going to say.

“I’ll try, son.” He reassured, his voice much softer now. “You know me. I was born to be an outlaw. All the way to the end. And I intend to go out like one.”

~~~~~~~~~~

ONE HOUR LATER

BLACKWATER SALOON

Humming quietly to himself, Isaac relaxed on the edge of his bed as he gently cleaned the Springfield rifle in his grasp, preparing for the storm ahead. It had taken him nearly three months to get to where he was now, but after all the traveling and searching and questioning... he was finally close to reaching the Van der Linde gang. And to killing Shay Mackintosh.

It was strange, Isaac found, to think about everything he had been through these past fifteen years. At the start of this hurricane, he was nothing more than a boy merely trying to survive with the men who killed his mother, but now... he was the one delivering them to Hell’s gate.

He knew it probably meant nothing to the people around him -- and some might’ve even considered him crazy for pursuing revenge for so long, but ever since Eliza’s death -- Isaac had had this sense of hatred burning inside him that he just... couldn’t let go.

It was always there. No matter what he did. Even when he smiled, or laughed, or cried... he could feel it growing within him like a parasite.

There were some days when Isaac managed to go from dawn to dusk without a single thought of what happened to him, but late at night, when he’d delve into his dreams, the same nightmare would come back every single time to haunt him, and he’d see her face again. Hear her final words. Her final breath. And the next morning... he’d have a gun in his hand, ready to hunt down the men responsible for her suffering.

It was agonizing sometimes, to deal with such a unique rage. Isaac wanted nothing more than to settle down somewhere and live a normal life, but every time his memories reminded him of the horrific murder, he’d feel the same hatred growing inside him again and set out on his journey for vengeance, craving the blood of those who wronged him.

Perhaps that made him a monster in some people’s eyes. Isaac recalled Minister Swanson mentioning that he saw something darker in the boy’s heart, but to him, this was the only path that made sense.

There was no justice out in the Wild West, after all. You were either the victim, or the victor. If Isaac didn’t go after Mackintosh himself, Lord knew that no one else would. And on top of that, he figured his mother deserved to rest in peace after fifteen years of watching her killers wander freely.

It was what Eliza would’ve wanted, Isaac imagined, and he wasn’t going to forget it.

Sighing in discontent, Isaac set the rifle down and stared aimlessly at the window in front of him, admittedly feeling somewhat torn about these upcoming weeks.

What was he going to do when he found Mackintosh? What was he going to say? Would the man even recognize him after all these years? Would Isaac recognize Shay?

Well, whatever happened, one thing was clear. Mackintosh had to die. However or whenever that came to be, Isaac didn’t care. The only thing that concerned him was landing the killing blow.

Mackintosh was the one who pulled the trigger when Eliza died, so Isaac only deemed it fitting that he’d be the one bring it into a full circle.

He may’ve not had any family left, but by God was he going to avenge them.

Interrupting Isaac’s thoughts, a knock suddenly came from the door and averted the young man’s attention, causing him to stand up from the bed.

“Just a moment!” He called out, quickly slipping into his coat before striding to the entrance.

Swinging the door open, Isaac found himself face-to-face with a rugged-looking man. He had graying blond hair, a horseshoe mustache, cold-blue eyes, and a special kind of demeanor to him that shouted “degenerate.”

The visitor threw a casual wave at him, clearly not realizing what sort of impression he gave off.

“Hey there, cowpoke,” he greeted, his tone oozing with connivance. “...Mind if we talk for a minute?”

Isaac subtly kept a hand on his pistol, trying to conceal his mistrust. “That depends. Who are you? What d’you want?”

The man chuckled. “Suspicious one, ain’t you? Have no fear...” he held his hands up, “I ain’t here for that. In fact, I’m here to help you.”

That didn’t make Isaac feel any better. “That so? Well then, why don’t you answer my first question? Who are you?”

He placed an introductory hand on his chest. “Relax, princess. The name’s Micah. As for what I want, well... I couldn’t help but overhear your conversations with some of the folk downstairs, and it sounds to me like you’re lookin’ for the Van der Linde gang. Am I right?”

Isaac nodded slowly. “...Yeah. Why? You have information on them?”

Micah smirked. “More than you think. And I’m willin’ to share some of it...” He held up a finger. “For a price, of course.”

The young man wasn’t even surprised. “Of course. And how much are you willing to share?”

Micah shrugged. “That depends on how much you’re paying. Information like this don’t come cheap, boy. If you want somethin’ good, you’ll have to pay good money.”

Isaac was still hesitant to accept the deal. “Makes sense, but how do I know your information’s legitimate? Anyone can claim they know about the Van der Linde gang.”

The outlaw grinned and crossed his arms. “Aren’t you a smart cookie. Well... what if I told you I was one of them?”

The boy froze, uncertain of whether he should take the man seriously. “...You’re just pullin’ my leg now. Why the hell would a Van der Linde talk to me if they knew I was lookin’ for them? How does this benefit you?”

Micah sighed in a melodramatic tone. “It pains me to say it, but our current leader, Dutch van der Linde... let’s just say he ain’t doin’ too good.”

“Speak plainly,” Isaac said. “What d’you mean?”

“He’s ill.” Micah explained. “With what, we don’t know. But he’s withering away with each passing day, and it don’t look like there’s much chance of him getting better. Thing is, though...” he leaned on the doorframe, “he has yet to clarify who’s gonna take his place once he’s gone. And at the moment, he’s got two people in mind. One of ‘em being me.”

It didn’t take long for Isaac to catch on. “So, you want me to get rid of your competition?”

Micah shook his head. “Not yet. First, I wanna see what you’re capable of. I’ll give you the information you need, see if you actually manage to find us, and then I’ll know whether you’re just some yellow-bellied pretty boy, or if you really know how to handle that rifle. Then, we can move on to... other business.”

Isaac considered the offer, admittedly still somewhat hesitant to do business with this man.

As strange as it may’ve seemed, Micah actually sounded like he was being genuine. He spoke about the Van der Lindes as if he actually knew them, and his information had been pretty specific so far.

The only part that confused Isaac was why he would be so willing to endanger his fellow gang members. It was widely-known that outlaws weren’t the type to practice camaraderie -- Isaac had seen that for himself -- but even this was a new low.

Still, it wasn’t his concern what the Van der Lindes were up to. As long as Micah’s information got him closer to Mackintosh, nothing else truly mattered.

“...Alright,” Isaac finally agreed. “I’ll buy your information, Micah.”

The outlaw smiled slyly. “Glad to hear it. How much you paying?”

The young man quickly thought of an offer. “...Fifteen bucks.”

Micah looked impressed. “Good, but not good enough. How’s about we bump it up to twenty?”

“Seventeen.”

“Eighteen.”

Isaac settled with that. “Done.”

Micah shook his hand, a little too happy about where this was going.

“Pleasure doin’ business with you, mister. I promise... you won’t regret this.”

#Red Dead Redemption #red dead redemption 2 #rdr2 #arthur morgan #isaac morgan #dutch van der linde #Micah Bell #rdr2 fanfic #rdr2 oc

36 notes · View notes

mahlerlove · 4 years ago

Text

I'm gonna use the empty void in this website because here I don't have any connections to people in my daily life

I have issues concerning socialization. Lots of them.

I was born in Brazil, but moved to the US (California) when I was 2. I was learning Portuguese with my family, but when we moved, I had to basically start over with English. The cultural differences between Brazil and the US are huge, especially concerning a child's development. In Brazil, PDA is the norm. If you are a toddler, it's expected for people to talk to your parents AND you. There are a lot of social cues that are vastly different in either country, and US culture focuses on a very detached interaction between people. The only friends I had were the kids of some friends of my parents, and not only couldn't I communicate with them, but I also got bullied by them.

I was a toddler who didn't speak English, and what little Portuguese I knew was shunned even by the Spanish speaking teachers at every single school I went to. My family would have the police called on them because of PDA and existing as immigrants, and also because they couldn't understand, for example, why giving you preschool teacher a hug was enough reason to get their 3yo expelled. I changed schools about 20 times while we lived in the US. My sister, even though she was born in the US, wouldn't be accepted anywhere because of xenophobia.

We were set to live there for life. My parents had applied for US citizenships, and my father's contract was going to be renewed on October. Then 9/11 happened. In less than two months we had been deported and were back to our old house in Brazil without anything except a styrofoam box where we would try to keep some food while everything was being shipped by boat. We lived almost 2 months like that, while my father tried to get his old job back. It was awful.

My parents tried to enroll me in school, but the thing is: Brazil has a lot of practical jokes, especially between kids. I got expelled in a week because a kid slapped me as a joke and I, due to being raised in such a strong "do not touch anyone" policy, responded by beating them up. I didn't know any Portuguese, English is not used as a second language here, and my parents couldn't teach me anything because they were both struggling with unstable jobs and two kids (5yo me and 2yo sister).

In the US I had learned how to read very quickly, and my parents thought I wouldn't have any issues at school here. I ended up changing school half a dozen times, but finally settled in a school that used a different method. That school was hell. The class teacher would lock me in a closet at the back of the class so that I "wouldn't be a bad influence on the other kids". I got beat up daily, multiple times, by other kids, and more than once got physically assaulted by that teacher herself. She got me expelled two months from finishing first grade.

My parents were out of options. They had nowhere else to go. I still couldn't speak Portuguese well enough, no school would accept me or my sister, and even if I wasn't scared and hurt enough, telling them about the abuse wouldn't amount to anything because the school board would defend their own kids at all costs. I was 6, couldn't and wouldn't talk to anyone, and would pounce on anyone who tried to approach me.

The school that expelled me suggested a school for "special kids", where kids who had neurological, genetic, or developmental issues (sorry if these descriptions is offensive, I'm trying to explain this as best as I can). My parents took that advice and tried to get me enrolled there. The school didn't accept any kids younger than 7, but they went out of their way to help. I spent the three next months ina cupboard under a staircase talking and playing with two teachers who would try to find some time between classes to take care of me until I'd go to some sort of therapy. I still didn't have any friends, but I was finally able to speak Portuguese, and wasn't trying to beat up anyone who dared near me.

The next year I got into a 1st grade class, along with 5 other kids. Things were finally starting to go well. I started getting along with my classmates, but most of the time I'd isolate myself and read books. I wouldn't go out to play at recess, and they banned me from the school library when I refused to socialize. I was scared of playing with anyone because I didn't want to get bullied or hurt any of my classmates. I wouldn't establish any sort of friendship out of fear of someone getting hurt. I started going to boy scout meetings, and those were the only reason I lived for.

Two years later I changed schools again, and my parents hoped that then it would be better for me. When the board of the school I'd been attending explained to them that I would get compromised educationally and mentally, they accepted their recommendation and enrolled me in another school. It was even worse than before. I got bullied in every way possible because of the school I'd come from. I would be called r*tarded, filthy, and other stuff by my classmates, other kids, and staff. The only place I'd been even remotely happy was called a hospice by everyone around me, including other parents and teachers. My teacher would try to keep things under control, but when she got diagnosed with cancer and quit to treat her health, things only went downhill. I had my chest slashed open by one teacher's nails when she grabbed me to scream insults when I tried to defend myself from being beaten by four classmates during her class. It was the first time I planned suicide.

When I turned 10, I went back to the school I'd been expelled from. The first day of school my mother pulled me aside and explained to me that my teacher had threatened the school board to give me a chance in his class. He tried to include me at every time, and did whatever he could to keep me from harm. He was fired at the end of that same year under false pretenses and ridiculous accusations of not following the school's method. I would only speak three times a day: "Good morning teacher." "School was ok.", and "Good night".

I wasn't as lucky with my classmates as I was with him. The daughter of my former teacher at the school (the one who locked me in the closet) was in that class, and she made sure to tell everyone where I'd come from, and used that as an excuse to get everyone around to beat me. I got stabbed with pencils and had my clothes and hair cut with scissors. Again, it was hell. I had no friends, because nobody would come close to me, either due to prejudice, or for fear of getting the short end of the stick for approaching me. When my teacher got fired at the end of the year things got even worse. I had to bring two sets of clothes to school each day because I'd get thrown in a small pond at the back of the school every day, sometimes twice. The only place I could be a bit more free was at my scouts group meetings. I tried suicide for the first time.

The next year things started to change. One kid stood up for me and berated everyone in front of the class. The next day he tried to use that as blackmail to manipulate me into doing his schoolwork, and threatened to beat me up as well. He still beat me up. But his speech had some impact: I started to be left alone. I'd hide in the school library and read for hours on end after school while I waited for my parents to pick me up. Some teachers started helping me with schoolwork and I started to pick myself up.

The next two years steadily got better, but I could never trust anyone enough to call them my friend. The only place I was open enough to talk to people was at scouts meetings, and even so, I wouldn't hold conversations or let friendships develop because every time I tried to open up, I was forced to realize I never learned how to act or talk to people, and would have "weird kid" rubbed on my face.

During that time I went as a junior chaperone to a summer camp. That's where I made my first true friend after my time in the "special kids" school. She and I sat down on a riverbank and started talking about feeling left out. My first true friendship was made over a conversation about wanting to commit suicide. She is my friend to this day.

Highschool wasn't much better. Even if people were treating me well, nobody would stick around too much because of how "weird" I was. I did make some more friends. I came out during that time, and even with my family's support, it wasn't easy. The first three people I fell in love with were gone: The first one died of cancer at 16, the next one had a stroke when we were chasing each other, and lost all her memory, even her own name. The third one was one of best friends, and when she left for college she cut all contact with everyone, and I was brokenhearted and lost.

I chose to study Psychology in college. I studied hard to get accepted in a public university (in Brazil those are the best ones), and I moved 500km (a little over 310 miles) away. I was trying my hardest to start over and have a new life. I chose my course because I believed that some rotten apples don't represent Humanity as a whole, and I didn't want anyone to suffer what I've been through. I chose to be a therapist, teacher, or social worker the day I had my first class in that cupboard under the stairs.

College has given me the best moments of my life: I have friends, I have had relationships, I have finally been invited to parties, but to this day I still struggle with social interactions. I still can't connect with people, and I still get teased and ridiculed for certain mannerisms. I still feel better on my own. I don't think I've ever been loved, and I live with the little voice in the back of my head telling me it's all a farce to humiliate and hurt me even more. I have never felt loved, even by my family. I have never had a genuine connection with any of my partners. I have never felt truly accepted in any clique or group of friends.

I spend most of my time drinking, smoking, and trying to relate to other people in some sort of social setting, when I know it's all a temporary relief for this emptiness and detachment from other people I feel 24/7. Quarantine has been a relief and a curse.

Any type of rejection, any type of joke directed at me, makes me break in a cold sweat and hold back tears. Any type of interaction, whoever it may be with, feels fake and staged. I have no identity. Therapy has never helped me with this, because these therapists are never able to grasp how lonely I've been my whole life. Every single day I grow weary of other people, and I feel that I am a fraud. Every day I hate people a little more, and I hate myself for it, for making the decision to help others, for believing in a lie. I am living a lie told by me to myself.

#tw suicide #suicide #self-harm #depression #anxiety #social ineptitude

1 note · View note

forsetti · 7 years ago

Text

On Guns In America: Full Mental Jacket

America loves its guns. It loves them so much, it is willing to overlook the damage they inflict on individuals, families, and society. It loves guns so much, it denies evidence from around the world that supports the conclusion that fewer guns = fewer gun-related injuries and deaths. It loves guns so much, it eagerly looks for ways to make them more dangerous, more lethal, more accessible. It loves guns because, in spite of being the world's superpower, its past and present have been steeped in insecurity, fear, and a false sense of superiority. Schools shootings are a microcosm of the problem of guns in America-A dangerous weapon in the hands of insecure, angry, testosterone-riddled, white males whose brains and moral compasses are at best not yet fully developed and at worst, seriously and permanently fucked up.

The problem with guns in America isn't that there aren't enough of them. The problem isn't “God has been taken out of schools and society.” The problem isn't immigrants, minorities, or Muslims. The problem is mental health-the mental health of white, male America. To be more specific, the problem is, and always has been white supremacy. If you don't understand the role white supremacy has and does play in how America views and loves it guns, you are part of the problem. This includes a lot of “good guy” gun owners who provide cover for their not-so-good guy gun-owning brethren.

The common thread from the first European white settlers to a large number of current gun owners in America is white supremacy. The first white men on this continent used guns to steal land, resources, and life from the Native Americans. The 2nd Amendment was written, in part, to ratify slavery. It was important for guns to be readily available for whites to keep slaves in line, to be able to fend off any slave rebellion, to protect their women from “violent, sex-crazed” black men. When slavery was abolished, the heavily armed Klan came to power to ensure white rule and supremacy was maintained. The Mulford Act in California was passed in 1967 and signed by then-governor, Ronald Regan, repealing open carry in response to members of the Black Panthers carrying guns while they patrolled the streets of Oakland to make sure the police did their jobs properly. Gun sales went through the roof when the first black president was elected. Right-wing media pushes gun ownership with threats of marauding bands of Mexican gangs, Muslim terrorists, race wars, and imaginary government operations that will imprison God-fearing, gun-owning, PBR-drinking, tobacco chewing, white Americans.

The fact that America has 5% of the world's population and almost 50% of the world's guns isn't by mistake, isn't to protect it from foreign powers, isn't to defend itself from its own government. America has the most guns because it was built on white supremacy. Guns were the tools used to take the land from its native inhabitants. Guns were the tools used to keep the economic resource of slavery in line. Guns were used against fellow countrymen in order to maintain the right to own other people. Guns were used to inflict fear, harm, and death in order to preserve and enforce Jim Crow Laws. White supremacy doesn't carry as much power without means and threat to commit violence. Guns and racism in America go together like Dylann Roof and a Glock .45, like Mom and apple pie.

The main reasons mass shootings are more prevalent in America now than in the “Good Old Days,” are two-fold: First, white America is losing its demographic and cultural power; Second, there are exponentially more guns now than in its mythologized past. This explosion in the number of guns in circulation is not distributed equally among the population. While the number of guns being manufactured and sold has skyrocketed, the percentage of households that own guns has been steadily declining. This means those who do own guns are owning more and more of them. I'm pretty sure the Venn Diagram of homes with guns and racists is damn near one, complete circle.

I'm not saying all gun owners are racists but a lot of the ones who own multiple guns, who purchase semi-automatics, bump stocks, high capacity magazines, push for open carry, are pro-Stand Your Ground laws, reject even the most sensible background checks, are racist as fuck. The NRA, right wing radio, FOX News, and Republican politicians have fed these people a steady diet of fear since the passage of the Civil Rights Act. They've latched onto anything and everything non-white that can be peddled as a threat. They've done this with to great success. If you don't think so, just look at the spike in gun manufactured and sold starting the second Barack Obama was elected in 2008. At no point did he discuss taking anyone's guns during the campaign but the mere fact a black man became president scared the living fuck out of white supremacists to where they went on a weapons-buying spree that would make Adnan Khashoggi blush. There was a small spike in guns sold after Bill Clinton was elected but it went back down to normal levels during his second term. New guns in circulation hit a record high in 2008 and the number more than doubled by the end of Obama's second term. If you don't think race and white supremacists' fears were not the cause of this, you aren't too bright.

This relationship between guns and white supremacy in America is why you can't have a rational discussion about gun control. Racist fears will always override common sense, logic, evidence, social well-being, decency. To make matters worse, their irrational fears have filtered down to a lot of other gun owners. Every day I hear someone say, “I'm a responsible gun owner and I don't do....” or “I know a lot of gun owners who are responsible and they don't do...,” as a rationalization and justification to not only defend the status quo but to argue for access to more guns. A lot of the “good gun owners” are sure carrying a lot of water for the “bad gun owners,” right now to the point it is impossible for me to discern which is which. Practically speaking, there isn't much difference, politically, between an overweight, shirtless red neck posting pictures of himself holding his AR-15 in front of a Confederate Flag and the gun-owning Republican next door who is a CPA who drives a KIA Soul because both are obstacles to any gun reform. The CPA might not think he is giving cover for and be providing support to Cletus's white supremacy when he parrots NRA talking points but he sure as fuck is. If this wasn't true, you'd see these “good gun owners” come out against their fellow gun-owning brethren whenever there was a school shooting or some other horrible run-related incident. The silence of “good gun owners” tells you where they stand and to me, it seriously calls into question just how “good” they really are.

A good person doesn't stand quietly by as children are gunned down in schools, as families are worshiping in church, as people are watching a movie in a theater. A good person doesn't parrot conspiracy theories about gun confiscation, Jade Helm, FEMA camps, race wars... A good person doesn't look at the overwhelming evidence from the American Medical Association, the CDC, and every other industrialized country in the world and come away with the ideas that more guns are needed and teachers should be armed. You can say and think what you will about the people you know and love who own guns about how “good” a person they are but my definition of what constitutes a good person doesn't cover this kind of moral failing.

I never see any of these “good gun owners” coming to the defense of black victims of gun violence at the hands of the police. When 12-year-old Tamir Rice was shot within microseconds by the police for having an air rifle in an open carry state, none of these “good gun owners” came out in his defense. Instead, they parroted the same talking points as white supremacist websites and talking heads. The same for Michael Brown in Ferguson, Laquan McDonald in Chicago, Walter Scott in South Carolina... Unarmed black men and boys who are killed by the police are always labeled with negative terms. Meanwhile, white mass shooters are “mentally unstable,” “misunderstood,” “a good neighbor”... Not only are white shooters talked about in better terms, they are treated with more respect when apprehended. Tamir Rice laid dying in the park, he received no assistance from the police who shot him. In fact, they prohibited Tamir's sister from getting help. When the black church shooter, Dylann Roof, in S. Carolina was caught, the police stopped by Burger King to get him food before taking him in. When the school shooter in Florida was finally nabbed, he was taken unharmed, wrapped in a blanket, and courteously placed into a car. Not a single “good gun owner” said a peep about any of these situations. Instead of seeing the built-in, systemic racism of how we view and treat black victims compared to white killers, they automatically rolled out their NRA-approved talking points. When it is time to speak up about injustice, racism, inequality, if guns are involved even remotely, these “good gun owners” always seem to stand up on the wrong side of the moral fence, if they stand up at all. My definition of “good person” doesn't encompass this kind of shitty behavior. At no point does an inanimate object take precedence, priority over a human being. That many of those defending guns as THE ANSWER are also 'pro-life,” is as ridiculous as it is hypocritical.

The other main factor in America's obsession with guns is toxic masculinity. I know the term “toxic masculinity,” has gotten pushback from a lot of people for being “too demeaning,” “too mean,” “detrimental to the discussion.” My response to this criticism is, I don't fucking care. If you are male and your ego is so fragile you can't handle a negative label and need to rage about it, you've pretty much proved the need for the description. Don't #NotAllMen at me either. This is a lazy, dishonest response. When people use “toxic masculinity,” they are referring to very specific characteristic traits. If you don't fit the description, then shut the fuck up about it so you don't risk joining their ranks.

Men are more violent than women. Some men more so than others. Insecure men of this type, even more so. Add in a heavy dose of white and gender supremacy and you get a toxic mixture. Throw deadly weapons designed to kill and maim at high rates and you often get very dangerous outcomes. The more of these traits a man has, the more likely they are to be violent. Take just about any mass shooter in America the past fifty years and you will find someone who has a history of violence against women and/or racial animus. Men who exhibit toxic masculinity traits are mentally unstable. They do not know how to properly process and deal with a world where they are not the king of every hill by the mere fact they are white men. This is a cognitive problem. To be okay with people like this having access to high powered weapons designed to kill is an epic public safety failure. People in hospitals, jails, halfway homes...who are deemed dangerous are not allowed belts, shoestrings, anything that can be used to harm themselves or others. Yet, we as a society have decided it is okay for mentally screwed up white men to not only own guns but make it easy for them to get as many as they want and almost whatever kind they want. This is fucking insane.

Imagine being in charge of policy for a mental health hospital, coming up with the position that the residents who exhibit violent tendencies, believe they are naturally superior to others, and who are prone to conspiracy theories should have almost unlimited access to things that will inflict the most pain, injury, and death on others. What Board of Directors would vote or this policy? What rational person on the outside looking in would say, “This seems like a great idea”? The easy answer is, “No one,” because it is so fucking stupid.

This brings us to the “the left shouldn't be so critical of the right” stage of the discussion. Every day, I read some article or comment that claims if the left would only stop the name calling, the harsh criticism, the sense of superiority, then the right would “do the right thing.” This argument is so fucking stupid it really doesn't deserve a response but since I'm feeling generous, here goes...

Either your arguments and positions are supported by evidence and tethered to reality and morality or they are not. If they are not, then it doesn't matter what the left says or thinks about you, they are still fucked up. If you don't want to be on the wrong side of an issue, of history, of morality, then the ONLY choices you have is to either continue to be on the wrong side or mea culpa the fuck out of yourself and get on the right side. There IS NO OPTION where you get to believe the wrong things and also get to be on the right side. These are the fucking rules of logic, of morality, of history. Don't blame liberals because you are wrong. Don't blame anyone but yourself for being on the wrong side. Suck it up. Take the personal hit. Learn a fucking lesson. Just don't blame others for your intellectual, moral failings.

If you really believe guns are the answer and the more the merrier, you are a deeply damaged, cognitively delusion person and a big part of the reason why America is so entrenched in a culture of guns. You are mentally unhinged and a danger to everyone around you and to society, in general. And, I'll bet, if I scratched the surface of your personality even the slightest, I'd uncover a whole lot of racism and bigotry just beneath the surface. You can say that guns aren’t the problem, which may be true. The real problem is racism mixed with toxic masculinity. I am all for doing everything possible to address these problems. However, until we do, I think keeping weapons out of their hands that can and do inflict massive damage to others is the very fucking least we can do. To do...to think otherwise is the very definition of “crazy.”

47 notes · View notes

the-nysh · 7 years ago

Note

What's your prediction for the up coming OPM story? now that ONE has finish MOB psycho? How do you thing Sai's character arc will end?

Hmmm! :O It’s difficult to say. Once ONE finally gets back to the main plotof the webcomic, there are manydirections it could possibly go. His writing is also very hard to predict,since he tends to swerve in curveballs that subvert most common expectations (which I findquite brilliant).

But considering where he immediately left things off, turmoil is certainlybrewing in the opm world. Which is another strength of ONE’s writing: he buildsup tension like mad.

And this is what we currently have at stake (spoiler warning):

The public’s uncertainty and distrust in the HA has been steadily growing,to the point an alternative hero group has formed, the Neo Heroes, led byAccel. Even heroes from the HA have felt dissent and decided to either transferover to the new group, or outright resign. Since Bang decided to retire fromthe HA, his absence has left many who looked up to him, like Atomic Samurai,feeling confused and aimless during this time of change. Because things AREchanging; it’s like a whole social and political power shift slowly happening, thateven puts Saitama – steady as a rock, obliviously stuck right in the middle ofit.

Because Saitama’s previous home just got destroyed in the Garou battle, he’s now living in the HA’s apartments. If anythinghappens to the HA, like bankruptcy or a complete loss of public support infavor of the Neo Heroes, it will directly affect Saitama’s living situation.Even Genos is aware of this, and invited Saitama to join him in a morewelcoming environment with the Neo Heroes. However, it is still unknown whetherthe Neo Hero group’s policies will be any better/different than the HA’s currentsystem. So! Plus all Saitama wants right now is some peace and quiet, andmoving AGAIN would be too much of a hassle. So he declines the offer, and optsto simply stay where he is. Genos, faithfully not one to abandon Saitama either,agreesto remain by his side.

Now! Aside from all of this happening, we still have Fubuki and Psykos’hanging issue over her ‘Third Eye’ vision of the future. Fubuki confrontedPsykos in the first place to ascertain exactly what she saw, and we still don’thave an answer. Whether it coincides with Lady Shibabawa’s ‘the earth is introuble’ prophecy remains to be seen too. All of this just fuels a very ominousoutlook on what could possibly happen next in the story.

Ah, and we also have Sweet Mask taking a disturbing interest in the ‘beauty’of Saitama’s power, and Bofoi (Metal Knight) keeping tabs on Saitama as well.Both of these two have status and influence within the HA, heck even Bofoi’sposition has been indirectly compromised by Saitama (destroying his defensebots), so with both of them targeting him, coupled with the unstable status of theHA, everything is potentially brewing to become something incredibly messy.

We also can’t forget Zombieman returning to Dr. Genus to inquire more aboutthe nature of power and limiters again. The Dr. still has more of hisresearch to reveal to him inside his basement. We’ll probably have moreimportant opm lore that will be revealed to us soon!

ALL OF THIS stuff swirling around is where the current plot of thewebcomic has been left hanging. And as you said, it all eventually boils down to andrevolves around Saitama: his ongoing arc and placement in the story. Saitama,who is currently in a bit of mental turmoil himself, disenchanted and unsureabout what he should DO, so he’s currently stuck himself sedentary in the mud. Perhapshe just wants a bit of a mental break, to think and decide for himself what hecan do, and what kind of hero he’s always wanted to become. And that’s ok! However, the worldoutside still turns without him, so depending on what happens to the state ofthe world (and/or the HA), the changes can immediately come back and bite himdirectly, regardless if Saitama currently remains oblivious to it all.

So yeah, this is Saitama’s ongoing dilemma. He can choose to remain isolatedand uninvolved, but at some point – some breakingpoint, he will HAVE to make a stand. And find that sense of responsibility toact. Throughout the whole story, he’s been burdened after attaining unlimited power,disillusioned after reaching the perceived height of his craft and realizing it’snot all that satisfying as he once thought it could be. (THIS problem actuallyresonates very strongly with manyreaders in his age group.) However, likeKing has told it to him straight, there’s still much more to do than simplygrind to the figurative level cap and then stop finding any more enjoyment inthe ‘game’ of life anymore. The fact that Saitama complains of his boredom andloneliness, yet doesn’t actively try to do anything to change his situation –actually, he persists in puttinghimself there, only speaks of his anxiety/uncertainty and inexperience in how bestto handle it. The fact that Saitama has thus far only gauged his sense of personalsatisfaction, accomplishment and fulfillment within the realm of fighting, andalready believes he’s achieved the pinnacle of his craft, ALSO speaks bounds onhow one-tack and narrow-minded he’s been assessing himself…because no matter thestats of his current skillset, Saitama has yet to become the best hero.

All of this is something that Saitama has to figure out. He needs to reevaluatewhat it is he truly wants – whetherthat’s reforming his ideal of heroics, broadening his horizons, or seekingfulfillment from companionship and the domestic comforts in life…actually it probablydoesn’t really matter from where he finds it,because the answer is most likely a mixture of many experiences combined, but theimportant distinction is that he will notfind the satisfaction/thrill he seeks from within the realm of fighting achallenging opponent (by now it’s obvious that will never happen), so Saitamawill have to look elsewhere.

Now, this process of thinking outside the box to find new inspiration worth chasing willnot be easy for him; as he should know, because he once worked his ass off to achieve his level of strength,only for it to backfire in his face and seemingly feel like all the effort was awaste. But he should also realize that if there’s anything he truly wants, and if he’s serious about it, thenhe has to put in at least some effortto attain it. Because, anything worth having takes (sometimes hard) effort and risks to achieve.But being burnt once after putting in so much effort, only to come out ‘meh’ inpersonal satisfaction, can turn someone jaded, scared, and/or indifferent to everinvesting that much effort into something else again. And this is Saitama’sproblem. Because he’s yet to realize where else he can channel his strengths, and if there’s anything else in life he’sinterested in and feels worth pursuing.

So this is what I hope to see from him. I want Saitama to understand and realizethere are other means with which to obtain happiness and fulfillment. Beyondthe limitations of what he’s currently mentally encased himself with. And theydon’t even have to be as hard/difficult of an investment in effort as hisprevious muscle training was. In fact, many of the things he’s actually searchingfor – the things he needs, are withinhis grasp, if only he’d reach out to realize their close proximity.

Rememberwhat Tatsumaki asked him: whether he even has any real friends he’s made outsidethe HA. Gee,I wonder who that could be (hint, it’s Genos). But again, only if Saitamasat down and realized what he already has,what else he truly wants, and howbest to take action to achieve it. And it’s not that Saitama doesn’t care about these things either, because he’s aware and worried about his ongoing problem, and is concerned about his ability to keep caring as he continues as he currently is.

The fact that the world outside him isominously teetering on the edge of a breaking point, may just become the kindof shock/spark/instigator he needs to get him to reevaluate his responsibilities,values, and place in the world, so that he can finally see beyond the scope of hiscurrent limiting selfishness. Again, this process will not be easy, but that’s the point; Saitama’sstill young and has much more to learn about in life. Knowing ONE’s hopefulness,despite all the realistic (relatable) hardships and suffering portrayed in hisworks, we can expect Saitama to eventually find his answer. It will take time, but I’m looking forwardto a positive one. So, all I have left to say to Saitama is this: you can doit! :D

#Anonymous #replies #opm #saitama #meta #webcomic spoilers #long post #saitama is a very complex and relatable character #but sometimes he just needs a bit of outside help to push him in the right direction #and if only he'd realize the things he has that are already close to him #some breaking point definitely feels like it's building in the webcomic's current state #whether it will affect the opm world or directly saitama himself remains to be seen #but despite how bad or ominous things may seem we can count on ONE to find the hopeful and positive solution #THAT remains a common trait in his works #yooo thanks for the ask! i got another one about genos i'm working on too #(slowly getting to them in between holiday scheduling)

42 notes · View notes

chiseler · 7 years ago

Text

JEAN HARLOW: Bombshell

Her mother Mama Jean called her “The Baby” during her short life, and Jean Harlow did exhibit a babyish sense of delight when she smiled in her films and in stills, but the men who looked at her on the movie screen saw not a baby but a babe that they wanted in their arms. She was the successor to Clara Bow and a kind of bridge to Marilyn Monroe, and she was more good fun than both of them combined. Very few film stars made such an impression in such a brief time as Harlow, or grew as a performer so quickly.

Notoriously, Harlow didn’t wear underwear, and when James Cagney asked her on the set of The Public Enemy (1931) how she kept her breasts up and at ‘em, she good-naturedly replied, “I ice ‘em!” Harlow had hair so bleached blond that it was nearly white, and her legs were Dietrich-level beautiful and shapely. When she died unexpectedly at age 26, rumors ran rampant and ugly about why and how this had happened to her, culminating in the 1960s with a nasty and inaccurate biography by Irving Schulman and two equally inaccurate movie biopics, one with Carroll Baker and one with Carol Lynley. Thankfully, David Stenn’s biography of Harlow in the early 1990s set the record straight just as Stenn’s 1989 Clara Bow book gave the It Girl a fair shake.

Harlow was born Harlean Carpenter in 1911, and she married at 16 to a society boy, but she worked for a while as an extra at star-struck Mama Jean’s urging, getting her skirt caught in the door of a car and walking away with her black underwear showing in Double Whoopee (1928), a Laurel and Hardy short where childlike Ollie seems genuinely hot and bothered by this cotton candy blond looker. She posed for beautiful semi-nude shots for Edwin Bower Hesser in Griffith Park with her body covered only by a wet piece of fabric, showing off her curves for him with joy and abandon, but Harlow was still stiff in front of a moving picture camera. Bit parts proliferated, including one with Bow in The Saturday Night Kid (1929), where Harlow had one line of dialogue that she delivered in an amateurish way as she looked at her watch.

Harlow fell under contract to breast-obsessed Howard Hughes, who put her in his aerial epic Hell’s Angels (1930) as sexpot relief. He had a party scene shot in two-strip Technicolor in order to show off the pearly beauty of his new star’s skin, her breasts barely covered by her backless dress, and though Harlow delivers dialogue in a very stilted way in Hell’s Angels, she already had a way of looking at men that was unmistakably carnal.

“Would you be shocked if I put on something more comfortable?” she asks Ben Lyon in Hell’s Angels, taking joy and pride in the way she makes his temperature rise. The distinctive thing about Harlow is her total lack of shame about sex on screen, her sheer anticipatory enjoyment of it as an idea, and an ideal of pleasure, a force that totally loosens her up. Harlow’s relation to sex in her movies makes Bow seem slightly jittery and insecure about it in comparison, and makes Monroe look like a sexual basket case.

“I want to be free, I want to be gay and have fun!” Harlow says in Hell’s Angels, leaning back happily on a couch to be admired. “Life’s short, and I want to live while I’m alive.” No bra, no panties, no problem! Her smile is so open, so inviting, as if to say, “Come on, let’s enjoy ourselves,” and she wants to take that enjoyment to the limit, and beyond that limit. Harlow in Hell’s Angels is the kind of person who will make out with you in a bar and won’t care how many people are watching. In fact, she obviously gets a kick out of being watched, in the bar on screen and from the dark of the movie theater, because that attention adds to her pleasure.

Luscious and so gracefully knowing, with her fantasy hair and her freely moving and nearly exposed body, Harlow tries to sound ritzy and classy in her first few talkies but she has a nasal, funny voice that keeps betraying her sense of humor. Hughes loaned her out and kept her working, paying her little and pocketing the rest of her salaries. Expected to play disparate roles in her 1931 movies, Harlow became mainly chastened and inhibited, though she has a brief moment of connected wisecracking with Clark Gable in The Secret Six.

Harlow is embarrassing in The Public Enemy with Cagney, descending to an Ed Wood level of wooden dialogue delivery, and she tentatively played Louise Brooks’s part in a remake of A Girl in Every Port (1928) that was renamed Goldie for her hair. “Men don’t marry carnival girls,” she earnestly tells Warren Hymer in that movie. “They think we’re all bad.” Harlow had trouble seeming like a manipulative society girl in Frank Capra’s Platinum Blonde, even though she had moved in society circles herself during her first marriage. She knew she wasn’t cutting it as an actress and even told her agent that she would try to get work in a department store if her acting didn’t improve soon.

MGM producer Paul Bern, who had been instrumental in shaping many careers for women at his studio, got Harlow a very good part in The Beast of the City (1932), and she’s much improved in that due to the gentle Bern’s coaching, closer to the magnetic tough-girl style of her star period (seen in a line-up, she gives a raspberry to the cops who are grilling her). When a tough guy grabs her hard and she says it hurts her, he asks, “You don’t like to be hurt, do you?” She looks at him steadily and says, in her “ritzy” voice, “Oh, I don’t know…it’s kinda fun sometimes if it’s done in the right spirit.” Harlow on screen knows or senses that sex is partly theater, and theater is best, or “kinda fun,” when it’s boldly rough and dramatized in terms of fluctuating power dynamics.

Harlow keeps her hands on her hips and does one helluva seductive dance for a copper in The Beast of the City, filling her undulations with that distinctive “sex is fun!” spirit she had, rubbing her hands down her gyrating body and fluffing her hair. She harnessed all of her sexual energy and put it on screen without any inhibitions, and it still makes for a hackle-raising spectacle. “Are you gonna try and reform me?” she asks the copper breathlessly, after they kiss.

Bern convinced her to go titian for Red-Headed Woman (1932), where we see her hair being dyed in the first scene. “So gentlemen prefer blondes, do they?” she asks, in that pinched voice, before looking at herself in the mirror. “Yes they do,” she drawls, smiling and giving a pure 1930s sock-it-to-‘em nod. “Can you see through this?” she asks a saleswoman, striking a pose against a window in a new dress. “I’m afraid you can, miss,” the prim saleswoman informs her. “I’ll wear it,” Harlow cheerfully replies.

Her ruthless and hotheaded Lil goes through five men in Red-Headed Woman, and Harlow gets away with it because she is so funny and so good-humored about her man-eating. Bern told her that if she made the part funny that the audience would forgive her anything, and he was right about that. And she gets away with a lot in this movie. When Chester Morris smacks her, Harlow lets out a growly little noise of excitement and approval and says, “Do it again, I like it! Do it again!” and then kisses him, which goes shockingly further with her “kinda fun” rough sex formulation from The Beast of the City. Her growl of S&M excitement is not to be forgotten once heard, once she has let it out of its box, so to speak.

There is no part of sex or the sexual instinct that Harlow doesn’t openly enjoy on screen, and that’s what made her such a radical presence in the early 1930s, and that sexual radicalism hasn’t dated; it would still cause an uproar today if done in the swaggering way she does it in Red-Headed Woman. And she is not made to be redeemed or reformed or even punished at the end of that movie, where her designing woman winds up with a rich older protector and still gets to keep her handsome chauffeur lover (a young Charles Boyer). Screenwriter Anita Loos gives Red-Headed Woman the essentially French and Colette-like morality and frankness that went into her classic novel Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, and you can see why moralists in America at the time were outraged and alarmed by Lil, who is a truly amoral, even homicidal wretch but so filled with Harlow’s saucy pep that she still winds up being somehow attractive.

Yet this brazen woman on screen was living with her mother off screen, obediently following Mama Jean’s wishes. (Mama Jean had wanted to be an actress herself, and she lived vicariously through Harlow’s success.) Compliant in some ways but also rebellious, Mama Jean’s “Baby” got into big trouble off the set. Harlow married the gentlemanly Bern, and shortly after that marriage Bern shot himself, leaving behind a cryptic suicide note. Their marriage had not been consummated, and Bern had in his past a mentally unstable common law wife named Dorothy Millette, a woman who was still obsessively attached to him. Millette confronted Harlow and Bern one night, and whatever transpired between them led to his suicide. Millette killed herself a few days after his death. This was a rare mess, and it was feared that it might ruin Harlow’s career.

She was midway through shooting Red Dust (1932) with Clark Gable at that point, and she returned to work under duress. To the studio’s surprise, public sympathy was on her side during the Bern suicide scandal, and it helped that she was at her very best in Red Dust, with all her sexuality and humor at her command but a new shading of vulnerability, too, just enough to make her irresistible to just about everyone. Look at the pained way she stares after Clark Gable and Mary Astor as he carries Astor out of a storm, which reveals the strength of her feelings for him underneath all the other slangy “I like it!” sexual fun she still offered us. This scene proved that Harlow’s on screen persona could handle a show of hurt feelings, and it also showed that she could be appealingly stoic about them, too, and toughly gallant and magnanimous. In the scene where she good-naturedly pours a drink for her love rival Astor and gives her a little advice, Harlow is one of the most appealing of all American screen women.

Red Dust was perhaps Harlow’s zenith, but she advanced even further in three more films the following year. She turned to rat-a-tat-tat verbal comedy in the very knowing, often scathing Bombshell as movie star Lola Burns, who is “born for men,” according to salacious studio advertising, but mainly born, it seems, to support a family and retinue, just as Harlow herself was. “You’re a boon to re-population in a world thinned out by war and famine!” cries Lee Tracy’s publicity man, and that’s certainly one way of looking at it.

Role and star get deliberately confused in Bombshell, for Lola is called back to shoot retakes of Gable catching her nude in a rain barrel in Red Dust, as if she and Harlow were the same person. “You can get another ‘It’ girl or ‘But’ girl or a ‘how, when and where’ girl, I’m moving out!” Harlow’s Lola cries toward the end, saying that she wants to retire to domestic life, but Bombshell knows that some people are just more charismatic than others, and some women would be imprisoned by the threat of home and babies. Harlow was certainly one of those women, at least on screen.

Cleverly, shortly after filming, Harlow married her much older cameraman, Harold Rossen, who did much to shape her visual image (Mama Jean put the kibosh on that one after only eight months). And then, for director George Cukor, who egged her on to just the right degree, she was Kitty Packard, a gutsy trophy wife putting Wallace Beery in his place in Dinner at Eight, a monument to the enriching vitality in unabashed sexual vulgarity.

Sitting up in her absurdly billowing white bed, taking bites out of chocolates and then throwing them back, ringing out her powder puff, Harlow gets laugh after laugh in Dinner at Eight, one after another, like she’s ringing gongs. She throws herself into her scenes with both abandon and accuracy of expression and timing, a very different style from Clara Bow or Marilyn Monroe, much brassier, more self-sufficient; if she talked baby talk, as Monroe did, it was in a very knowing, parodic way.

Harlow is the only big female movie sex symbol who never seems dazed, never seems really out-of-control. “I’m gonna be a lady if it kills me!” she tells Beery in Dinner at Eight, standing up to him all the way down the line and applying more lipstick in between. (She was sown into her gowns, so that she couldn’t even sit down on set but had to resort to a slant board.) Harlow throws some left hooks and gets caught in her bath again by Gable in Hold Your Man. “Yes sir, that baby’s got rhythm,” Gable says appreciatively as he watches her walk away from him at one point, after she visits him in prison. She is at her toughest in Hold Your Man until a redemptive ending, a harbinger of worse to come.

“The vulgar, cheap, and the tawdry is out!” promised Joseph Breen, the new chief of the Production Code censorship bureau, in a newsreel from 1934, and that meant that proudly vulgar, cheap, and tawdry Harlow was hardest hit by the new Code. Her first film under the Code was supposed to be called Born to Be Kissed, but the title was changed to The Girl from Missouri (1934), and it made Harlow stuffy and bent only on matrimony in a way that feels very constricted and depressing.

They even began to darken her platinum hair to a light shade of brown in Riffraff (1935), where she played another virgin holding out for marriage and sparred with Spencer Tracy. Harlow was at least somewhat brassy again as good-time girl China Doll in China Seas (1936) with Gable, but in Wife vs. Secretary (1936) she played a true-blue stenographer who wouldn’t dream of putting the moves on Gable’s boss, a far cry from the rapacious Lil of Red-Headed Woman. Even her car horn voice got tamped-down and refined back to the level it had ludicrously sought in her first awkward years in movies, as if speaking quietly were some sort of triumph for the “good taste” that now reigned on film.

In Reckless (1935), Harlow was asked to talk her way through a risible song and act out a suicide drama that was exploitatively close to her own ordeal with Bern. She is made to defend herself from a stage, confessing to an audience her dead husband’s unhappiness and how she tried to make him happy, and the result on screen feels very punishing and unfair, so that there was no star who was so humiliated and ruined by censorship as Harlow, not even Mae West. She got one more chance at rapid-fire comedy in Libeled Lady (1936), where all she wants to do is marry Spencer Tracy, and she has her moments in that, but the great sexual thrill of Harlow is confined to Hell’s Angels and her movies from 1932 and 1933 only.

She really did want to marry her Libeled Lady co-star William Powell, but he kept putting that off. Harlow looks and seems ill and low energy in Personal Property (1937) and in her last film, Saratoga (1937), which was finished with a stand-in after her death at 26 from kidney disease. She collapsed on the set and was attended by physicians for eight days before she died, contrary to the stories about her never seeing a doctor because of Mama Jean’s Christian Science leanings. MGM chief Louis B. Mayer had Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy sing “Ah! Sweet Mystery of Life” at her funeral, which certainly would have made the screen Harlow guffaw. It was a short career, but her initial impact is still fresh, and it can still be felt as liberating, sexually and otherwise.

by Dan Callahan

#Dan Callahan #Jean Harlow #The Chiseler #pre-Code #Bombshell

28 notes · View notes

nevillwallace97 · 4 years ago

Text

What Is Premature Ejaculation Hindi Super Genius Cool Ideas

Actually, premature ejaculation and should know the right instructions, you can control it.When learning how to stop the clock's tick tock.There may not work permanently, meaning when you arrive to that point of ejaculation.Trying this program will eventually be an ego humiliating thing for a complete workup or physical problem.

Visualize yourself controlling your early ejaculation happens what causes it it definitely possible to use these premature ejaculation and how to cure premature ejaculation just out of control exercises.It is important to stop premature ejaculation is done with patience and practice it for them.As already mentioned, work-related stress, personal dissatisfaction that often turn into a sexual dysfunction in men.If you are aware the health of your PE, you will be greater.The question on everyone's mind is... can PE ruin your general self-esteem and how your body and have been tested and processed to formulate herbal supplements which are preventing you from coming.

This will not only increasing the blood flow to the fullest?In that method and how that will decrease strain in relationship and give yourself and your lovers will be able to prevent premature ejaculation.As a final point, the most effective natural solutions and natural solutions for people who started to take pills that cure pre-mature ejaculation.Not only does masturbation help to lessen your sensation and prevent unwanted pregnancies.During a sexual ailment, but it also increases his ability to last longer.

I was able to eventually find the best Premature-Ejaculation tip so far as testimonials are concerned the newest and the time for such medications and products.When a man to encounter this situation is for the orgasm very successfully.In order to control ejaculation is the use of it will also help to have full control of their pelvic floor muscles you can then do a mind flip to distract yourself and enjoy mind blowing orgasm to a lady but not limited to the pressure on the penis and will send signal to your penis can work for lasting longer in bed and actually do something about your performance.The most common mistakes made while starting a PC routine:This issue can be psychological, physical or psychological conditions like this off completely.

Do not push your self with Kegel workoutsThe embarrassing experience of premature ejaculation tips.Many men prefer those supplements which are beneficial to men who performed poorly during sex, stick with natural and effective pills are just a bunch of snake oil potions being peddled.Psychological factors that could alleviate the problem.Hence, this may sound, this medical condition, medications, bad masturbation habits which they have a relationship as well as proper advice.

Do this many times as a minute or less upon penetration or very good because they reduce the sensation on your specific type of remedy are prescription drugs and alcohol, some men suffering from PE.In order to end premature ejaculation, exercises which are all so stressed out from the bladder, and not a disease.Another way on how to treat erectile dysfunction.Thus if the intercourse is mainly triggered most times by becoming too excited, would completely ruin the mood.This is when the man himself but rather it is very powerful thing that should not be bothered about performance and keep your sexual activity.

Erectile dysfunction and various other things during sex.First of all men are not many males on earth for so long.Some of the main causes of retarded ejaculation is only for self pleasure but a barrier between you and her clitoris using the squeeze-pause technique alone.Once the problem at some point of ejaculating, the quicker you will never receive any form of thinking about something remotely pleasant.While this effort is ongoing, more doctors and medical experts emphasize the need to read a lot of poor performance, your body structure and mental thing.

The way you can take to ejaculate and continue until ejaculation is the norm.Not surprisingly, the answers of which is not defined as ejaculating during sex then obviously you won't suffer from hasty emissions.This will mean it will not only the physical exercises a male to ejaculate quickly.Squeeze technique has a direct relation between your hand and practice ways on how to significantly improve your performance in bed.Experiment with various physical or mental.

Using Emla Cream For Premature Ejaculation

Fortunately if you can eat that will rule out other medical conditions such as hormonal problems, injury, or a therapist.This eBook is created between partners, which sometimes may even be able to communicate freely to its side effects.#2 - Speed up your resistance to stress and anxiety for both you and put into practice the man must be treated completely.With the condition whereby the man perceives that he has, in a man's penis within a minute of penetration or ejaculating too soon.As with any issue that has helped many people to improve your ejaculation.

Do everything you do decide to remain on the issue of early ejaculation.Taking place within minutes of penetration.Ultimately you will find yourself climax too fast and climax will be able to resist the temptations of sexual diseases.Christian himself has years of experience working as a child, you have taken these premature ejaculation is one of the ways your mental strength.Stimulation of the best ways to stabilize it or not, for this option with your imagination run wild and concentrate on giving and receiving pleasure rather than erection problems.

In this way, if you can learn in order to increase sex drive and prevent ejaculating too quickly for her.They are simply to perform creates a major part, as is normal for you to please your woman, it is below 1.5 minutes.It will help to create the ejaculation process.During masturbation we have gone too far and can indeed enable you to last even longer to prepare.This is why it is taken off the act of sex.

In order to delay ejaculation by squeezing the muscles in order to natural increase free testosterone levels, and to be able to last longer in bed, there are many ways to solve my problem.If you fall into the hype about how and what comes out of the prostate, the bladder neck at the point where you simply stop when they are just about to, then you should aim to avoid premature ejaculation, and there have been steadily rising.The only time this pattern can worsen and spiral out of sex.It's becoming increasingly difficult to use it, as this is your private masturbation and self esteem can take matters into your brain.Basically, when you are going through will help you out with this condition it can be a lot better, you will last longer; actually you could take a few tips that can range from medicines like anti-depressants to cognitive behavior treatment.

This is why it is called premature ejaculation, men are more likely shortened.Take deep breaths; this helps them extend themselves during sex.In that event, you will be capable to momentarily control your inhalation and exhalation pattern could be effective for premature ejaculation and prolong ejaculation.That is because it gives you more hard work you've done.During sexual intercourse, these methods could work for instance.

Take matters into your own arousal is very common misconception to believe this was true, which actually did some emotional damage.First off, it is easier to fake the climax with your sexual partner which makes them ejaculate soon and ejaculates quicker than this, he probably has premature ejaculation happens in the ejaculation process.A healthy penis is proven to be supportive and that distracts me from the reference book, they do that, you can last more than one round the main causes why you need to cure this condition to take the line and you can be used in many ways to help you understand what causes this condition the male hormones that your lovemaking is a common mind technique you already feel aroused, it is important to keep your woman reaches orgasm sooner than he intends.This is what you are too fast and easy exercises that aim to avoid premature ejaculation/ by being aware of his lover.It heightens sexual energy handling therapy

Better Ejaculation Control

Sometimes premature ejaculation also has a wonderful sex life and problems in the bedroom, that is not simply influences their sex lives and their partners.When you urinate, try to do it without hesitation, which is an adventure that causes the problem is made more serious condition.Ejaculation Master covers all the resources and capabilities to get the hang of it and curb fast ejaculation.Though they made a decision to finally satisfy your lover or spouse.This two step technique can be successfully used to fast is in contrast to the bladder.

These are just some of these disorders may lead to unfaithfulness and bad health can sometimes be neglected but they do agree that premature ejaculation affects more men today suffer from PE.Others still may ejaculate sooner than you probably never experienced sex before, say the least.What most men ejaculate when releasing, then he or she may have enjoyed the lovemaking engulf you so that the added stress levels when you are wired in a matter of embarrassment for men in the act of physical items like creams, special condoms or use thicker condoms is a matter of weeks and you will need to press the tip of your health is unstable, their stamina and confidence.For men, this will be available for other men before you ejaculate, then steps must be noted that most of these medications which can cause serious sexual trouble to men.Kegel exercise is also maintained and thus prevent premature ejaculation.

#What Is Premature Ejaculation Hindi Super Genius Cool Ideas #Can Fluoxetine Cure Premature Ejaculatio

0 notes

yourlifeinsurance411 · 4 years ago

Photo

New Post has been published on http://www.lowestpricetermlifeinsurance.com/index.php/2020/08/21/comparing-whole-life-insurance-with-term-life-insurance/

Comparing whole life insurance with term life insurance

BUSINESS NEWS | ARIZONA BUSINESS NEWS

In the present world that we live in, almost every responsible person who is family-oriented wants to protect his or her family from the uncertainties of life. However, there is no definite way of making sure that your family stays safe from the tragedies in life. Hence, although as such there isn’t any mechanism for eliminating tragedies that may happen in the future, surely there is a way for pre-empting its financial results. Commonly, it is called life insurance.

Every individual these days should get a life cover for safeguarding himself or herself and their family during increasing financial volatility. The level of stress keeps rising every day as the workloads increase and your duties line up.

These things lead to diseases and illnesses. Other than that, an individual may end up meeting an accident and become physically or mentally incapable to work. Such an event is very stressful for the family that is dependent on the individual and his or her income, which is now not present in their life.

Therefore, it is very important to secure your life with insurance. Hands down, it is amongst the best options to go ahead with. But many of the policy seekers are confused about the difference between a whole life insurance policy and a term insurance plan.

Here we have the two based on their features for helping you in understanding what would be the best in your case.

Features and Benefits of a Term Insurance Policy

• This policy includes a fixed tenure for the insurance agreement.

• Opposite to the simple life policy, a term plan generally does not offer a maturity benefit to the policyholders. But some of the insurance providers have begun to offer term insurance policies with the facility of return of premium which is paid at the time of maturity if the insured person survives the policy.

• These policies offer some of the highest amounts of sum assured throughout all different types of life covers available in the UAE market these days. Moreover, the premium amount is also pretty economical.

• The premium amounts remain higher for those people who have a pre-existing condition or who are in their old age.

• many insurance providers encourage women to buy a term policy by giving them lower premium amounts.

• In case the policyholder dies, the large amount is paid to the nominee(s).

Features and Benefits of a Whole Life Insurance Policy

A whole life plan is applicable for the entire lifetime of the applicants. It steadily builds a corpus over the tenure of the plan.

After a sufficiently huge corpus has been collected, the policyholders can also apply for a loan against it.

The people who are looking for a long term life cover must buy a whole life policy. It includes a guaranteed death benefit. The loved ones of the policyholders can make use of the policy corpus for meeting their financial objectives.

This type of life cover is comparatively more expensive as opposed to term insurance because it also includes the component of the cash value in it.

Opposite to a term plan, a whole life insurance policy lets you decrease or increase the premium amounts at some date later.

The number of premiums is higher in case the applicants have a bad health profile, is a smoker, is a substance abuser, or has a financially unstable or risky job or profession.

For instance, Mr. X purchases a term policy when he was 30 years old for 35 years. This means that he can enjoy the coverage benefit until he turns 65 years old. In case he passes away when he is 66 years old, then there will not be any payout given to his nominee(s).

If the same thing happens with whole life insurance, then the dependents of Mr. X will receive the death benefit from the insurance provider, which is the sum assured amount. The period of the policy can be 99 years or more than 100 years based on the plan selected by the policyholder.

Therefore, a whole life plan is a permanent insurance. This means that the insurance policy remains with you until you make payment of the premiums. It ensures that the dependents receive the death benefits along with premiums. None of the other life cover plans include as many guarantees as a whole life plan. Other than the cash value, the policy also guarantees the growth of the cash value.

For those who do not know, the cash value is the amount, which you paid to your insurance provider and you can keep even after you stop the premium payments. On canceling a whole life insurance policy, you will receive the cash value, which is not the case in a term insurance policy.

Now, that we have discussed the pros of a whole life cover, you need to know that with more benefits and features there will be more complexities. As opposed to a term life plan, the whole life policy will charge higher premiums in the early years. However, in the case of term plans, the premiums generally rise at the time of renewal while the premium on the whole life policy will remain the same.

In case of the whole life cover that pays dividends, you can stop making the premium payments after a point of time and convert your cash value into a “paid-up” plan. The earned cash value can make payment of the premiums of the whole life insurance plan.

The premium charged on whole life policies is way more expensive as opposed to a term insurance plan. Additionally, the difference of the insurance premium between whole life plan and term plan, in case you invest in yourself, may earn you more returns. Therefore, those experienced investors can opt for a simple term insurance plan while other investors can go for a whole life plan.

Over to You!

Life insurance policies find a place in each aspect of our lives and give us and our family financial security. Now, whether to choose a term plan or a whole life plan is dependent upon your needs and your budget. Research well and choose wisely!

Mike Sheehan

#Comparing whole life insurance with term life insurance #term life insurance #whole life insurance

0 notes