#and like. scott has great capacity for violence too but he is so so so so reluctant to ever engage w that side of himself

[wellnoe]

do i like the jsl love triangle? a lot of the time no. am i annoyed when the focus is pulled to the animosity between the two men involved, away from jean's introspection and what each of the men can represent in terms of her wants, instincts, and positioning? yeah.

[quetzalpapalotl]

Kinda a hot take but I feel like mtmte megatrons arc would have been so much better if he had stayed on cybertron, like if he had to stay and was around Optimus and starscream, people who arguably know him best, so he is always staring who he hurt directly in the face, bc to me while Rodimus is great for giving megatron a mostly impartial view, I think megatron redemption works best when he has to constantly confront his sins and magnus and rodimus feel to distant as characters to really be brutal with how much megatron has hurt people bc he doesn’t know them as well, tho megatrons arc in mtmte is really good I think this would have not made the rest of the story not so bogged down (sorry if this doesn’t make much sense)

You're making perfect sense to me, anon. And you're not the first person to tell me this. I do agree with you on some level, but the thing is that Mtmte Megatron's arc is Mtmte Megatron's arc. It cannot exist in any other story. I feel like this kind of what-if is runs into too much of an hypothetical for me to make any actual meaningful commentary. It's hard to explain but let me try.

I feel like saying what if Megtaron had stayed on Cybertron is not the same as saying something like "what if Drift had returned earlier" or "what if Pharma had stayed on the Lost Light" or even imagining ways in which his character could have been better integrated into Mtmte's narrative in that if Megatron had not gotten in the Lost Light, his character would effectively not exist.

I have told myself fanfiction where Megatron stays on Cybertron many times and there's lots of fun possibilities there., but there's a difference between a fannish idea and what it would have been in an official capacity. The key here is that the Megatron I'm incorporating into the exRID/OP narrative is still JRo's Megatron. He still has character traits and a backstory defined by that comic, even if I try to take as much of all IDW1 as I can in my interpretation of him.

Mtmte/LL, exRID/OP and Windblade/TAAO are all part of the same universe, yes, but they're all different stories, with different genres, tones, ideas and most importantly, different writers. I mean just look at what a different character Starscream is when written by Barber vs Scott. If Megatron stays on Cybertron then either Scott or Barber would have been his main writer and we just don't know what kind of character he would have been then.

Would they have tried to do a "good" Megatron? Well, the idea of Autobot Megatron was thrown at the brainstorming table for Dark Cybertron as a possibility and the JRo said that he wanted to do that. But the idea was there, maybe they would have picked it, maybe not.

I feel like, much like with Mtmte, Megatron just has too much gravity for Windblade/TAOO and the best way for him to be incorparated in it would have been sporadic appareances while he's in jail or something, probably to taunt Starscream, knowing Scott. This is double-edged for me, because I feel like the way the idea of Megatron was incorporated into Starscream's arc needed more buildup so this could have helped. At the same time I already feel like Starscream's character was too much reduced to being a reaction to Megatron's actions, which is no fun to me, and Megatron's inclusion in the narrative feels like it would highlight the aspects of Scott's writing I don't like as opposed to the ones I do. But again, I can't now. Maybe she would have tried to reform him as well, I have no idea how that would have looked like.

As for Barber, well, everything post DC was based around the fact that Optimus is just too big to not change the game completely, so the entire story became about that theme. It doesn't sound like including Megatron in that would be that. In fact, it's kind of a no-brainer, this is a story about the weight of Cybertronian history with is stuck in a cycle of violence riddle with war and colonization. The guy who did war an colonization better than everyone else should be there. It would be very satisfying to see Megatron, who rose up against the legacy of the Primes, be confronted with the fact that all he did was uphold their ideas of Cybertronian superiority. How does he handle the Decepticons? And then there's the mirroring where Megatron is trying to do better while Optimus is on the verge of losing it and everyone is worried he's gonna pull a Megatron. But again, who knows what kind of character Megatron would have been under Barber, maybe he would have played him as a villian until the end like he did before Dark Cybertron. He would have still been a thematic fit.

You know, I like exRID/OP a lot and I feel like Barber is more willing to take certain risks than JRo, so I think I would have liked the hypothetical version of his story that would have included Megatron but really, maybe he would have fumbled the bag, who knows how much the plot would have changed if it had included Megs, maybe he would have gotten a different idea, maybe it would have costed the Optimus and the Arcee I so adore. Also, a lot of people aren't that fond of Barber's writing so the general response to this non-existent story is another matter altogether.

Despite everything, I don't really begrudge Megatron leaving with the Lost Light in itself. Like yes, it removes him from the more direct consequences of his actions and is not fair that he gets to drop the Cons and go on a roadtrip of self-discovery. But Mtmte is a roadtrip story, there just isn't any way around this. Also, I don't care about what is fair because none of these stories are about fairness or people getting what they deserve. And finally, it makes sense in the way I read Megatron. One of his key traits for me is how his experiences led to him disregarding life and only finding worth in fighting, his arc is about peeling off layers of self delusion and it starts with giving him a place to chill so that he can see value in life again and be in a mental state to appreciate how badly he fucked up.

Problem is how much he bogs down the rest of the story as you said, and other minor things I can more easily ignore.

Side note, but you know that part in Combiner Wars where Windblade and Optimus are like "We cannot allow Starscream to have his way, but we can't just pull a coup?" I think it would have been really fun to have Megatron for that. No, Megatron you cannot beat the shit out of Starscream to solve the issue, you have to respect him as the president. Hilarous. I need to pay someone to do a short fic of this.

[princeescaluswords]

Why does the fairly well adjusted, kindhearted teenager with no training in using lethal force not use lethal force? Hmmm? Got you there, Scott fans!!!!!

Interesting observation.  It’s like you watched the show!

Someone was talking to me, last night in fact, that they believe there’s a reason many fans don’t like Scott.  They said that many parts of the fandom resent that the show, in its lead, rejected “their preferred narrative of worshiping inherited power and/or power attained through violence.”  I can’t really argue with it.  I tend to focus on the racial aspect of fandom dislike, yet I think that they’re interrelated.  It’s not just that Scott rejects the possibility of succeeding through lethal violence, it’s that he rejects it when doing so is not offered to white characters.

There are white male characters in the show who not only possess the capacity for lethal violence, they employ it as often as they can, yet it’s never shown as a victory.  Peter murders ten people, even criminals in police custody, even innocent people, even allies, even family members, and it’s never portrayed as triumphant.  Even his executions of Jennifer and the Mute are portrayed as signs of incipient madness and bloody horror.  Derek fails miserably at trying to kill people other than his own family member which brings him nothing put pain, and loses his replacement pack in the process.  Matt is more successful, but his motivations are shown as rather pathetic deficiencies in his personality.   Gerard keeps getting screwed by his own strategies.  Stiles is almost destroyed by the lethal violence he grasps for in desperation.  

To these parts of the audience, that’s not how it’s supposed to be.   Think about other examples of supernatural shows on television: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, True Blood, The Vampire Diaries, the Originals, etc.  Violence -- especially death in judgement -- is the prerogative of protagonists.  In fact, one of the ways they mark the protagonist in these shows is the casualness of how they approach lethal violence.  How many times did Buffy casually kill vampire extras like an afterthought? Don’t get me wrong, I love BTVS, but Buffy’s execution of vampires is ultimately reduced to something banal, like brushing her teeth.

Connected to this is a number of tropes that they love, especially that of aristocratic  or superior white men -- deprived of their rightful place or recognition in the world -- conquering those who oppress them and punishing them, even killing them, and thus they reassert justice in the world.  It’s literally written into the genetics of fiction that the hero kills the villain.

Yet, the audience has trouble remembering that the biggest victim -- though not the only victim -- of Season 1 is Scott McCall.  He had a life -- not a great one, but not a bad one either -- he had hopes and dreams.  He didn’t want to sit on the sidelines anymore, he wanted to play first line and he worked for it.  His father was neglectful, but he had a great mom and a fantastic best friend.  

When Peter chooses him to become his murder assistant, it all goes downhill from there.  He lies to his mother.  He stalks Stiles in the locker room  and disappoints him repeatedly due to his lycanthropy.  It threatens his relationship with Allison.   Derek manipulates him and uses him to hunt and kill the alpha.  Peter violates him and threatens his loved ones.  The Argent parents’ whole purpose in life is to kill him.   This injustice can’t be solved through lethal violence; this injustice is caused by lethal violence.  

And yet, the audience gets confused when he tells Deucalion “I’m not like you. I don’t have to kill people.”   It just doesn’t occur to them (the villains or parts of the fandom) that Scott simply doesn’t want to be forced to do to others what was done to him.  People complain that he’s a hypocrite because he makes first line due to his werewolf abilities while disliking being a werewolf, as if he’s supposed to stop playing and focus on being the Hale Family’s newest servant in gratitude.   Yeah, he gets power, but the cost is constantly too high, such as when Stiles compliments Erica’s appearance in Season 2, and Scott says “How good do you think she's gonna look with a wolfsbane bullet in her head?”  Scott’s breaking the established script the audience expected, where he learns to relish his power over others.   When Derek manipulates Scott into believing that he has to kill the alpha to be human again, Scott’s determination to do it is not presented as Scott’s decision to serve justice but as Scott’s desperation to make the nightmare end.  

Yet it doesn’t end, does it?  Do we ever see Scott have a season enjoying first line at all?  Do you think he loved being a werewolf when he held Allison’s dead body in his arms or watched Kira join the Skin-walkers?  When he used his supernatural hearing to listen to his mother cry or Dr. Geyer struggle to save her life?  When he watched Derek fall from the ledge in the mall and think it was his fault?  He rejected the capacity to do lethal violence to others as a way of reasserting justice in the world because he never saw the use of violence successfully restore anything.   Peter’s defeat in Season 1 and 4 ended a nightmare -- it didn’t erase the monumental changes to his and his friend’s lives, the horror they lived through.  Matt died miserably; Gerard died miserably; Jennifer died miserably; Derek gathered more pain into himself.  No one lived happily ever after because they could kill the people who hurt them -- they just continued the cycle.  

Scott’s development as a protagonist -- and, not coincidentally, his subversiveness as a character in an action-adventure show -- hinges on his increasing capability to employ lethal violence as a corrective, while constantly repudiating it as anything but an unfortunate and painful necessity.  Do you notice that he never talks about or takes pride in the defeat of his enemies?  Not Peter, not Derek, not Gerard, not Jennifer, not the Nogitsune, not Kate or Theo or The Beast or Douglas or the Anuk Ite.  He defeats them and then he’s done.  There’s no celebration of the defeat of the enemies, like Ewoks dancing while burning stormtrooper helmets at the end of Return of the Jedi.  He employs violence when he has to, he regrets the necessity, but he doesn’t dwell on what they did to him. Instead, he has hope for Peter and Deucalion and Theo.   

Why?  Because the motivation to reassert justice in the world by punishing enemies - the privilege of other heroes - is what ruined his life in the first place.  Lethal violence invaded his life and changed it, down to his very nature.  He’s never going to treasure it.  He’s never going to turn to it first.  Why should he?  

[elisaphoenix13]

Delusional (Ch.2)

He wished that he never went to Afghanistan. His brief trip turned into a three month nightmare, which he only escaped because of Scott. His kid was the sole reason he survived and he had been determined to get home. Thanks to Yinsen, he had been able to achieve his freedom, but it was at the cost of the other man's life. Even if he wanted to die to rejoin his family, it still weighed on Tony and gave his determination to get home to Scott a bigger boost.

By some miracle, Rhodey and a team were flying around looking for him in the middle of the desert and he was home within 24 hours. Of course he cleaned up a bit. He knew Scott would be waiting on the tarmac for him and didn't want his kid to see him beaten, bleeding, and bruised. The electromagnet in his chest would be bad enough.

"How is he?" Tony asks as the plane starts it's landing. "How's my kid?"

"Scott was…inconsolable for the first month." Rhodey answers. "Then suddenly, one day, he hunkered down in the lab and hacked everything he could think of to find you. I had to pull a lot of strings to keep him out of trouble...but he helped find you."

Tony nods. "Scotty's a force to be reckoned with. It's a good thing he doesn't like violence or the rest of the world would be in trouble."

"Speaking of, can you please tell him to stop changing the nuclear codes?"

"Even if I could, I wouldn't. He has the right idea. I should be taking a page out of his book for once."

Once the plane lands, Rhodey helps him to his feet as the ramp lowers, and then down to the tarmac where Happy, Pepper, and Scott are waiting. He saw Scott's disappointed look when Tony refused the gurney they had rolled over, but Tony didn't care. He walked straight over to the younger man and pulled him into a tight hug, sighing with relief. He never took Scott for granted, but he still missed the ridiculous cowlick in his hair and the way he smelled of oranges and...candy? Something told Tony that Scott's diet largely consisted of candy at least in the past few weeks.

"You smell like you could go for a cheeseburger too." Tony finally says and Scott looks at him incredulously.

"You've been missing for three months, assumed dead, and that's the first thing you say to me?" Scott frowns.

"What? You want me to drop to my knees and sob overdramatically about how much I missed you?" Tony asks and Scott makes a face. "Yeah. I didn't think so. So a cheeseburger and a press conference."

"A press conference?" Pepper asks, surprised as she gets in the car with the men. "You should go to the hospital-"

"Cheeseburger. And a press conference." Tony repeats firmly.

He left no room for argument and Pepper eventually relented and called whoever she needed to to get the press conference to happen. In the meantime, Tony wrapped an arm around Scott's shoulders and pulled him close, needing him to stay nearby. He needed the closeness, and for now he needed Scott to stay where he could see him. At least just for now. That was when Scott noticed the faint glow through his shirt and he sat up a little.

"Dad? What's that?" Scott reaches out and unbuttons the first few buttons before Tony can stop him and the younger male stares.

"I'll explain later alright? When we get home."

Fortunately, Scott nodded and let the subject drop and soon enough, Happy was passing a bag of Burger King back to them. Scott barely opened it and handed one to Tony before he was practically inhaling it, so his son decided to hand him his second one before getting his own. Tony was just opening his second one as the car pulled up to the building and Happy gets out and rounds the car to let them out. Everything up to the point of his announcement was a bit of a blur after that. He was tired, he hurt, and honestly he wanted to go home and fall into bed for a couple of days.

Seeing the look on Scott's face though? It made Tony absolutely sure of his decision to shut down the weapons department. They would find a new way for the company to thrive. And Tony was going to take a page from Scott's book like he should have the moment Stark Industries was his.

The Merchant of Death was no more.

======

One of the first things Tony did after he slept for 18 hours was go down to his lab and make an upgraded version of his mini arc reactor. Something more reliable that wasn't made from parts found in a cave and wouldn't remind him of the pain and torture he endured in those three months. It didn't take long for him to finish, but once he got himself hooked up to an EKG and sat himself in a chair, he realized his newest predicament.

His hands were too big.

"JARVIS? Where's Scott?" Tony asks. "Nevermind." He grabs his phone and video calls Scott. When the younger man answers, he sees him eating a sandwich. "Two things. Bring me a sandwich and come help me real quick."

"Sure."

The video call abruptly ends and in just a few minutes, Scott walks down to the lab with Tony's sandwich and walks over to him. He looks at all of the equipment around his father and then at the new arc reactor as he sets the plate down.

"You're not doing surgery on yourself are you?" Scott asks.

"Nope. You are." Tony says and Scott pales. "I'm kidding. Sort of. Let me see your hands."

Scott holds up his hands and Tony nods. They were definitely smaller than his. Small enough at least.

"Perfect. You're helping me replace this." Tony takes the old piece out of his chest and Scott watches in trepidation.

"What do you want me to do?" Scott asks.

"There's an exposed wire which is why I needed to replace it. Need you to pull it out without touching...just treat it like Operation. You liked that game."

"Yeah, when I was four and not pulling weird things out of my dad." Scott moves closer and reaches in anyway, making a face when his fingers squelch in the plasma. "Oh god. This is so gross and smells-"

"Yeah it does." Tony says with humor in his voice.

He tried warning Scott about the magnet at the end, but it was pulled out before he could finish his sentence and the machine beside him beeps in warning. Scott startles and looks at it, but Tony manages to get his attention again.

"Hey, don't worry about the machines. Put that down and take this." Tony says, giving Scott the new piece once his son puts the old one down. "Connect it to the plate-there you go." Tony praises and helps lock it into place. "All done. You did great. Thanks."

Scott grimaces and wipes his hands on a nearby rag. "Never ask me to do that again. Ask someone else to do it."

"I only have you kiddo." Tony says seriously and Scott looks at him before sighing and picking up the old arc reactor.

"What should I do with this?"

"Get rid of it. Destroy it... whatever." Tony shrugs and grabs his sandwich after pulling his shirt back on.

"You might need it for parts." Scott says and takes it over to an iron shelf to place with other discarded projects. "You'll thank me later."

"I doubt it."

Scott rolls his eyes and follows Tony over to his desk where he sits down and starts scrolling through some files until sending one over to the holotable. Blueprints of the iron suit he had made and escaped in. Ever since he got back, all he could think about was keeping Scott safe. And he figured he could do that with the suit. A properly upgraded one that wasn't clunky...but this would be for him. He was serious when he said he was shutting down the weapons department of the company, but he couldn't just sit back with this idea in his lap.

"What's that?" Scott asks.

"This," Tony starts, trashing parts of the blueprint in the Holo trash can. "Is how I escaped."

"Shall I upload this to the company server Sir?" JARVIS asks.

"No. Keep it in my private server. I don't know who I can trust right now."

"Not Obie." Scott grumbles and Tony looks over at him.

"What? Why?"

Scott shrugs. "I don't know. He was weirdly calm while you were missing...and he tried to give me a cheeseburger." When Tony gives him a confused look, he clarifies. "The bun had sesame seeds on it."

"He probably forgot or didn't realize." Tony says and looks back at the suit. "But noted."

He didn't want Scott to think he was brushing him off.

"Why are you making adjustments to that?" Scott asks, watching his father work.

"I'm making this for myself...and you in a way. It will give me peace of mind to know I have a way to protect you." Tony trashes another part and opens the arms of the suit.

"Dad-"

"Please." Tony says, stopping and looking at Scott again. "I'm not making weapons for the rest of the world anymore, but you can be damn well sure that I'm going to make armor to protect what's important to me."

Scott didn't argue further. Maybe because he realized how much Tony needed this. And even more surprising? He actually helped. Over the next week, he helped write the code JARVIS would need when they integrated him into the suit, and helped find screwdrivers that Tony misplaced. Tony liked having a project to do with Scott. It used to be cars since Scott refused to work with weapons, but now they had the suit.

And on some occasions Scott had to console DUM-E. Especially after Tony called him a tragedy. It wasn't his fault DUM-E couldn't follow simple directions.

Okay, maybe it was...a little.

"Okay. Got the camera rolling?" Tony asks Scott as he steps onto the testing area wearing the flight pieces of his suit.

"Yup...and DUM-E has the fire extinguisher as always." Scott answers and looks up from the camera.

"Alright." Tony readies his stance. "We'll start off with 10% thrust capacity and see if it gets us off the ground."

The whirring grows louder and then Tony starts his countdown from three. The moment he hits one, he presses the handheld switches, immediately getting thrown up and backwards. He hits the low ceiling before crumpling to the floor and DUM-E turns to him and sprays him with the fire extinguisher as Scott runs over to him. The second the younger realizes he's generally okay, he bites his lip and starts to turn red.

Probably from trying not to laugh.

"If I hear a snicker from you, I will ground you forever. No oranges or lollipops."

Scott bursts into laughter a moment later and Tony sighs and holds up his arm.

"Help me up you brat."

"I think it's safe to say that 10% gets you off the ground." Scott snickers once he gets himself under control, and reaches down to help him to his feet.

"Ahahaha, so funny." Tony takes off the suit pieces with Scott's help and walks over to the workbench.

"It was. And now we will forever have a record of it." Scott smiles and watches Tony start designing the arms of the suit.

"I'd delete it but I'm sure you'll find a way to restore it and squirrel it away somewhere."

Scott only confirms his theory with a laugh and they both look over to the door when it hisses open. Pepper walks in and approaches them after setting some paperwork down.

"Didn't you hear the intercom? I've been buzzing you. Obadiah's upstairs." She tells them and Scott scrunches his nose.

"What? Oh, right. I'll be right up." He pulls his arm and the bones of the suit's arm from the stand with it.

"I thought you were done making weapons."

"He is." Scott answers. "That's a flight stabilizer."

"Completely harmless." Tony adds.

He powers it up and activates it, sending things - and himself - flying. Unfortunately his landing pad had been Scott, who was standing behind him when he shot the stabilizer and Tony immediately rolled off of him. Scott groans and holds the back of his head as he sits up and Pepper looks down at both of them incredulously.

"Seriously, how is he still alive?" Pepper asks.

"In my defense, I didn't expect that." Tony says and gets up with Scott's help once the younger recovers.

"You say that more than you think." Pepper says. "Brought paperwork for you to look at and sign. Obie is upstairs. Scott? Are you okay sweetie?"

"Still better than an asthma attack." Scott answers.

"I swear one of these days I'm going to come down here and find you both dead." Pepper sighs.

"It's plausible." Tony says and starts for the stairs.

Pepper only scoffs.

[sadoeuphemist]

A Brief Catalogue of Horse-Human Hybrids:

1. Centaur (Horse Body + 1/2 Human Body + Human Head)

The most likely origin of centaurs is the sight of of Thessalian riders on horseback, as witnessed by a civilization that had not yet learned the art. To the early Minoans, from the vantage of their own two feet, these beings galloping across the plains must have seemed monstrous hybrids, the lower half of a horse and the upper half of a man, this disparate combination of parts all somehow moving as a whole.

As a combination of man and beast, though presumably it was the human head that made decision, it was their beast-natures that were said to predominate. Centaurs were reputed as savage, prone to drunkenness, and violent. Perhaps they had a reason. “The Centauri often complain to me of plundered homes and herds stolen before their eyes [by the young Achilles],” writes Statius, “and that they themselves are driven from field and river; they devise violence and fraud, and utter angry threats." In any case, while the centauri may have been vilified, their bloodline was not: the horses of Thessaly (of whose lineage Alexander the Great’s steed Bucephalus is the most famous) were reputed to have been descended from centaur blood.

2. Chiron (1/2 Horse Body + Human Body + Human Head)

Perhaps better categorized as a variant of the centaur, Chiron was notable among his brutish countrymen for having mastered medicine, archery, prophesy, credited by Pliny as the inventor of botany and the pharmaceutical arts. This civilized element in his nature manifested physically: though he still had the hindquarters of a horse, two distinctly human feet could be seen emerging from beneath his robes. That this physical dissimilarity elevated him above other centaurs points to an unintuitive conclusion: that perhaps our civilizing capacity rests not in our heads, but in our toes.

3. Genitor (Horse Body + Horse Head + Human Toes)

Perhaps corroborating this theory is Julius Caesar’s beloved horse, Genitor, handpicked by Caesar due to its resonance with Alexander the Great’s steed, itself reputed to have extra toes. Of this magnificent creature, Suetonius writes:

He rode a remarkable horse, too, with feet that were almost human; for its hoofs were cloven in such a way as to look like toes. This horse was foaled on his own place, and since the soothsayers had declared that it foretold the rule of the world for its master, he reared it with the greatest care, and was the first to mount it, for it would endure no other rider.

4. Lusus  Naturae (Horse Body + Human Head)

Various accounts of these creatures persist well up to the 20th century, hideous one-eyed creatures born from mares, all of them dying or being killed shortly after birth. While these accounts can easily be explained as cases of equine cyclopia, what is notable is the perception of humanity in their deformations. Despite only having one bulging eye, their features in contemporaneous newspaper accounts are consistently described as humanlike - the skull phrenologically suggesting a human intelligence, its malformed face curiously resembling that of our own. I have seen pictures of cycloptic horses; they are monstrous and pitiful. And yet, the descriptions from the time are unvarying. The mouth, the lips, the chin, the outline of the face - in the features of this poor dead creature we somehow see the semblance of ourselves.

5. Tikbalang (1/2 Horse Body + 1/2 Human Body + Horse Head)

A creature from Philippine folklore, the Tikbalang is said to be a humanoid creature with the head and hooves of a horse, along with disproportionately large legs. They feed on human flesh and lead travelers astray, and in this resemble an equine version of the Minotaur. They would be otherwise unmemorable aside from one notable fact: that horses are not native to the Philippines, and that legends of the Tikbalang predate any records of a horse first arriving on its shores.

As folklore has it, when Filipino natives first encountered Spanish cavalry, their reaction was not that of the Minoans, to conjoin rider and mount into one monstrous beast. Rather, the conquerors atop their steeds remained human and it was their mounts instead that were monstrous, with the body of a water buffalo, and the head of the Tikbalang.

6. Ipotane (1/2 Horse Body + 1/2 Human Body + Human Head)

The exact composition - and perhaps existence - of the ipotane is disputed. As a sort of proto-centaur mentioned sparsely in Greek mythology, they may have had the legs and hindquarters of a horse and the upper half of a human - although then again, by some accounts they had humanlike legs. How this makes them different from humans is uncertain.

The Wikipedia article, from which all other mention of ipotanes on the internet seem to be sourced, cites no sources itself save for A Greek-English Lexicon, by Liddell and Scott, ipotane (ιππότης)  meaning “a horseman, knight.” Beneath it, though, the variant ιππότης λεώς, meaning either “the horse” or “the horsemen”. It is unclear here whether the horse is the rider or the ridden - allowing that it is perhaps a horse knight riding a human, that it is only our chivalrous nature (chivalry, deriving from cheval, meaning horse) that harnesses our apish human frames.

7. Hayagriva (Human Body + Human Arms + Horse Head)

The inclusion of Hayagriva (literally, Horse-neck) on this list is controversial, as being an avatar of the Lord Vishnu, it would be incorrect to describe him as any sort of human hybrid. Still, speaking only from the perspective of iconography, we can state briefly that he is the god of wisdom and knowledge, and that his white horse’s head evokes the speed and power and intelligence for which it was once worshiped.

8. Houyhnhnm (Horse Body + Horse Head)

The Houyhnhnm are a race of intelligent horses with so rational a civilization that they knew neither wars nor lawyers nor politics, had no notion of lying, reproduced only at replacement numbers, did not mourn the dead. That they are horse in their entirety would seem to put them outside of our purview, as we are not covering other mythological horses such as the Mares of Diomedes, or Sleipnir, or so on. However, the Houyhnhnm are unique in that they only exist in comparison with the humanoid Yahoos - a violent, venal, brutish, unsanitary race who murder each other over useless shiny stones, the target of the satire being obvious. We might say, then, that the Houyhnhnm are a human hybrid conceptually, if only by negation - that it is an integral part of their composition that they exist in contrast with humanity; that they are not human, emphatically not.

9. Headless Horseman (Horse Body + Human Body + Horse Head)

With the sight of the cavalryman become commonplace, the image of the centaur lost its conceptual power. Instead, to make the mounted rider monstrous, his head was severed from its shoulders, the man made into a faceless soldier galloping across a battlefield. By uniform he might be identified as Hessian, and so a threat, but he was no longer a human being. His identity was reduced to both his headlessness - the absence of identity, of being, the absence of sight and smell and sound and voice and thought - and his horsemanship - the steed beneath him still galloping away implacably, harnessed to some phantom command.  

The head - abandoned, discolored, eyes swollen shut - continues to exist, presumably, even if only defined by its absence. Should the horseman be reunited with his head we might imagine the rider shall dismount, and we will behold again a horse, and a human being. Until then, he shall ride on, monstrous and pitiful, and outside our houses hoofbeats sound.

[streetharmacist]

[meta] What, if any, games, movies, books, tv shows, etc. have you drawn influence from for your character?

[meta] Felix has a few key influences from different places!

So one of the biggest ones and the main thing I was watching when I started to draw up Felix, is the show Boardwalk Empire. I love that show and in particular, the character of Arnold Rothstein. He’s a soft-spoken New York gangster that takes his business very seriously and is super calculated when it comes to making moves. He can also be somewhat unpredictable with acts of violence or cruelty. Rothstein isn’t super violent himself on the show but things sure happen around him. He isn’t super about the party life like some of the other characters or Felix himself but his business sense, as well as capacity for what he’s really capable of and the way he sorta conceals it, is something that was really influential on Felix’s initial development.

As for themes and stuff, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Dashiel Hammett and Raymond Chandler novels are pretty big for him too. Felix really started to thrive in the 20s and 30s and the same way that Jay Gatbsy is so entrenched in the past, Felix can be too. Fitzgerald wrote a lot about the unseen troubles of the Jazz Age and how the excess really started to spill over. So carrying that theme over into the 2020s with Felix has been really fun to do. Whereas Fitzgerald talks about the excess and the glamour, Hammett and Chandler are the hard-boiled, grimy, and unforgiving side of the decades that Felix was most successful during. Both can be representative of the sides of excess and crime that Felix has. His drug dealing can be seen as representative of that too, I think! In particular, The Great Gatsby, The Beautiful and Damned, The Maltese Falcon, and The Big Sleep.

Benny Gecko from Fallout: New Vegas is also a character influence, with his wild ambitions and what he’ll do to achieve them. He wants to be at the top and while Felix tries to focus on the smaller steps to achieve the big one, he also wouldn’t mind being at the top. Depending.

Film noir and gangster films are another and instead of going on another tangent lol I’ll list some! Laura, Kiss Me Deadly, Gilda, Too Late for Tears, The Asphalt Jungle, Sin City, Public Enemy (’31).

[teenwolf-rarepairs]

Teen Wolf Zodiac

This isn’t the signs as teen wolf characters. this is which signs I imagine the characters of teen wolf are based on their personalities and how they act.

Lydia Martin — Aries

Lydia’s creative, fiery, independent and stylish. She’s also energetic, and intelligent. Her world is in constant motion. If a new challenge arises, she tackles it full steam ahead. She has a sizzling personality and is creative in unique ways, but she’s also forceful and impulsive, with lots of drama thrown in for good mesure.

Malia Tate — Taurus

Tauruses are known for being stubborn, a trait Malia definitely has. She’s also fierce and loyal to her friends, determined and unfailingly persistent. She’s not usually emotional, but when she snaps it’s like an explosion. Determined, argumentative, and independent, she also chooses her friendships based on quality and not on quantity. 

Ethan and Aiden Steiner — Gemini

No, it’s not because they’re twins though that’s a nice coincidence here. Ethan and Aiden can be social, talkative, and whimsical, but they can also be indecisive and nosy. They’re adventurous and reckless, willing to follow any plan no matter how crazy it might sound, but while being fairly adaptable, they’re also very impulsive and unreliable. 

Allison Argent — Cancer

Sensitive, protective and sometimes underestimated. Is not coincidence that she was the best matriarch the Argents had in generations. Allison is sweet and tender hearted, loyal to her family and friends but also petulant and has proved to be quite resentful. She’s artistic and creative, kind, dependable and persistent, a true action taker, but also unforgiving and prone to revenge when it comes to her grudges.

Jackson Whittemore — Leo

I bet you saw this coming. Leo people are natural leaders and passionate people. Just like Jackson, they also are dramatic, self-centered and dominant, able to achieve anything they want to in any area of life they commit to. There is a specific strength to a Leo and their "king of the jungle" status. They can be generous and very loyal, but they’re also arrogant, VERY stubborn and inflexible.

Isaac Lahey — Virgo 

Isaac is shy, kind and overly critical of himself and others. He pays attention to the smallest details and has a deep sense of humanity. He worries a lot, and although he’s often tender, his heart might be closed for the outer world. This is a sign often misunderstood, not because they lack the ability to express, but because they won’t accept their feelings as valid, true, or even relevant when opposed to reason. 

Scott McCall — Libra

Scott is a libra from head to toes. People born under the sign of Libra are peaceful, fair, and they hate being alone. Partnership is very important for them. These individuals are fascinated by balance and symmetry, they are in a constant chase for justice and equality, and hate violence and injustice. This is someone ready to do nearly anything to avoid conflict, keeping the peace whenever possible. 

Erica Reyes — Scorpio

Sexy, mysterious, stubborn and passionate. Once Erica has the chance to be herself, unbound, this is what she becomes. Scorpio-born are passionate and assertive people. They are determined and decisive, though they have a tendency to be violent or aggressive in some way. Honesty and loyalty are the two qualities that make Scorpio a great friend. They are quick-witted and intelligent, so they would feel better to be in the company of witty and fun people.

Braeden — Sagittarius

Braeden is strong, independent and open-minded, all great sagittarius traits. She’s also curious and energetic, Sagittarius is extrovert and enthusiastic, they like changes. Sagittarius-born are able to transform their thoughts into concrete actions and they will do anything to achieve their goals. Freedom is their greatest treasure,Because of their honesty, Sagittarius-born are often impatient and tactless when they need to say or do something.

Derek Hale — Capricorn

Derek, as it happened with Scott, seems to be the epitome of his zodiac sign. His positive traits sometimes become his flaws when stretched too far: he’s ambitious and persistent but also relentless, he’s realistic and down-to-earth but it traslates in pessimism. Capricorns guard they emotions very closely, and can be very possessive of their people. Their discipline can be seen as uptightness, but underneath it all they have tender hearts, fierce loyalty and deep love for their family and (very few) friends. 

Stiles Stiinski — Aquarius

Stiles is progressive, original, independent and humanitarian but also temperamental and sometimes aloof. Like most aquarius-born, he’s eccentric and energetic they are deep thinkers and highly intellectual people who love helping others. They are able to see without prejudice, on both sides, which makes them people who can easily solve problems.Although they can easily adapt to the energy that surrounds them, Aquarius is an air sign, and as such, uses his mind at every opportunity. If there is no mental stimulation, they are bored and lack a motivation to achieve the best result.

Kira Yukimura — Pisces

Kira is gentle, compassionate, intuitive shy and sensitive. Like most pisces, she’s very friendly. They often find themselves in a company of very different people. Pisces are selfless, they are always willing to help others, without hoping to get anything back, and as a water sign this zodiac sign is characterized by empathy and expressed emotional capacity.

[feelingsdusk-writes]

Of territory rules, wolves and megawatt smiles

@stetersecretsanta fic for @platypusesrneat. Hope you like it?

"Stiles," his dad says when Stiles is done talking and he can only hear his laboured breathing at the other end of the line. Because Stiles has apparently forgotten how to do that and has to concentrate actively on it or he'll suffocate. It's great, ten out of ten would repeat again. Not. "Listen to me, kiddo," he says in that calm voice that has always reached him, even when they couldn't look at each other without feeling pain and frustration. "Are you listening, kid?"

"Yeah," he lets out between one deep breath and another.

"Good," his dad says decisively, like he's preparing to tackle an insurmountable obstacle and Stiles braces himself for the verdict. "You did what you had to do."

"What?"

"You heard me, kiddo. You did what you had to do. Am I happy that you had to do that? No, I'm not. Do I wish there had been another way to do it? Yes, emphatically yes. But there wasn't, kiddo, and a father has to do what he has to do and I'm proud that you didn't hesitate." The way I didn't, goes unsaid, and Stiles bites his lip, reminding himself that it's been years and things are better now. "I'm proud of you, you'll be a good dad."

"Jesus Christ, dad. I'm not- He's not-"

"But he is, isn't he? Call yourself his big brother or uncle or whatever, but for all intents and purposes, he's your son now. Your responsibility. Unless you're thinking of-"

"No!" Stiles protests before he can even think of it.

"Then there you have it."

Stiles looks at the occupant of the second bed of the motel room and watches for a moment the steady rise and fall of his chest. He takes a deep breath himself and reaches to run his hands through the twelve-year-old's locks. Liam's mouth curves into a slight smile but he continues sleeping.

"What are you going to do now?"

"They want me out of the territory. It may have been justified, but apparently I've demonstrated my capacity for violence or something? I guess they're wary."

"So pure bullshit, you mean. You're the same kid that babysat their kids just two days ago. You haven't just suddenly become more powerful or whatever. If anything, this should show that you're not afraid to defend a child when needed," his dad scoffs and Stiles can't help but smile at it."Come with me, kiddo," he finally says after some more intelligible grumbles. He seems to hesitate for a second before adding. "I... I have a room for you. I thought... maybe one day you'd like to visit and you'd like to have your own space, you know? Just... Maybe until you get back on your feet again?"

Stiles takes a second to answer. They have their issues, his dad and him. The separation and long telephone conversations have helped iron some of them, but there are still some that...

"Yeah," he answers finally. "Yeah, I'd like that. But dad, I'm..."

"An adult with your own life now. I understand, kiddo, I really do. But maybe... I can be part of it again? If you'd like that?"

"Yeah- I- Yeah, I would, dad."

---

It's well into the night and Liam is out like a light when Stiles finally pulls into his dad's drive. As he turns off the car, the lights of the front turn on and the door opens. Stiles smiles because it's been a long time.

(It's a bittersweet smile. The last time he laid eyes on his dad was nearly eight years ago, when he saw him passed out on the sofa of the house they used to have in Fresno. They had just had one of the worst fights they'd ever had. Looking back, Stiles knows that a lot of the things that he let out that night needed to be said, but he'll forever regret the way that he went out of his way to hurt the man as much as he was hurting.)

"Hey, kid," his dad says softly, approaching him almost awkwardly.

"Hey, dad," Stiles says back, reaching for one big Stilinski hug because he refuses to let this be awkward. He didn't leave because he didn't love his dad, he left because he was starting to hate him too and he couldn't handle it. "Missed you," he adds when he feels his dad tighten his grip around him.

"Yeah- I- I've missed you too, kiddo," he replies, voice thick. "So," his dad asks after, clearing his throat a couple of times. "Where's the kid?"

"He's out like a light," Stiles snorts. "I swear, enhanced hearing or not, he'd sleep through the apocalypse."

"Huh, that doesn't sound familiar at all."

"Hey! I wasn't that bad!"

"Should I remind you of the vending machine?"

"The what?"

"The vending machine at the precinct." When Stiles still has the clueless expression after the clarification, John elaborates. "You pestered me for hours for one of those candy bags because I didn't want to buy you, and I quote, just one measly bag of candy. For the record, you had already charmed at least seven deputies out of their own stash and you were so high on sugar that it was a miracle you weren't walking on the ceiling." Stiles emits a dying whale noise at that. "So then you went on strike and tried to chain yourself to the vending machine. Finally, you fell asleep upright against it, slobbering all over the crystal. The other deputies kept getting things from that vending machine and you didn't even stir."

"What?! I did not! You're making this up!"

"I have pictures."

"Oh my god," Stiles whines, covering his eyes, and John pats his back consolingly. Stiles leans on his dad's arm for a moment before he starts moving. "Let's get this show moving, shall we?"

"Are you going to wake him up?" John asks, nodding.

"Yeah, at least so he can see where we are. He won't react well to waking up in an unknown place," Stiles explains rubbing his face tiredly. "I'll probably sleep in his room too, for tonight at least. Or until he wants his own room, in any case."

"Isn't he a little too o-"

"Don't-" Stiles takes a deep breath to stomp on the instinctive reaction of protecting his kid, even against his own dad. "Don't-"

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean anything by..."

"Yeah, I know, dad," Stiles sighs. He waves a hand and a rune array lights up on the car, from the bumper to the tail, before vanishing as fast as it appeared. "Just, never say something like that. If he hears you... It's taken me so much time to even begin to fix..." Stiles takes another deep breath. "He wasn't in a good place, before."

"His parents?"

"Uncles. They took him in when his parents died." John straightens up, face going hard as granite. "No, dad, they never abused him. They just... didn't care enough? They provided anything he could need money wise, but..."

"They never..."

"Yeah," Stiles nods. "And then..."

"Scott."

"Yeah." Stiles clears his throat a couple of times, fist clenched and eyes locked onto the kid asleep on the backseat. "A pack is different, ok? Touch is important. Very important. Add to that that I'm his only pack right now. And his anchor too," Stiles says before taking his eyes off his charge to turn them seriously on his dad. "It took me a lot of time to make him comfortable enough to touch me as much as he wants without feeling like... I'm not letting anyone ruin that."

"One room, got it," John nods. "The basement is bigger, if you'd prefer that? We can fit in a bigger bed and also personalize a corner of the room to be yours and another to be the kid's. That way you can be together even when you need some space? Does that sound good?"

"That sounds... awesome, dad," Stiles says smiling, feeling unbelievably relieved that something looks to be going well for a change. "Thanks."

"Come on, let's get you inside. You look like you need that sleep, son."

"What gave it away, the bags or the black under the eyes?" Stiles laughs.

"You look like a racoon," John says dryly as he takes a step back to avoid crowding Liam.

Stiles sends a grateful smile his way and opens the door slowly. "Hey, kiddo," he says softly as he reaches to run a hand through his hair lovingly. "Time to wake up, we've made it." Liam grumbles as he pulls on the blanket to cover his face. When he's done, only a tuft of hair is visible. "Come on, kiddo, there's a bed with your name on it inside."

"Dun wanna," Liam grumbles from inside his cocoon.

He shares an amused look with his dad and then spends the next ten minutes cajoling the kid into moving. The result is that he ends up with a cuddly eighty-something pound bundle in his arms and his dad has to carry the bags inside by himself.

Later, with Liam already completely out for the count again, Stiles bids goodnight to his dad and, after a lot of tense days in which he didn't know what was going to happen, he finally lets himself relax. Tomorrow he has a lot of things to do, but for now he's safe.

He falls asleep in seconds.

---

As much as Stiles doesn't like it, his first stop has to be wherever the local pack resides. Big city packs are much more open about other werewolves staying (since there are universities and other things in their vicinity), so asking for a temporary residency is a mere formality that takes very little time and effort. Beacon Hills is not a big city, however, so that means Stiles has to meet with the local alpha and explain his intentions clearly to get granted residency or at least safe passage for a while. If he doesn't convince the alpha, he'll either have to fight his way out or leave in the next few hours. It sucks, especially since Liam has to be there and he hates putting him at risk, but that's how things are.

He pinpoints the pack lands very easily. The local pack either has or used to have a druid, because there are wards protecting the place. Not very good wards, mind you, but wards nonetheless. And yes, Stiles may or may not be a snob about wards, but hell, even the first one he created was better and less obvious than this one. It's offensive, that's what it is. It hurts his delicate sensibilities and his hand itches to fix it.

Focus, Stiles, focus.

He shakes his head and grabs the kid before he can stick his foot into the only hole on the whole road. Liam smiles sheepishly and with a mighty jump that nearly sends Stiles to the ground, he gets onto Stiles' back for a piggy ride. Stiles huffs out a laugh but makes no move to dislodge him.

"I'm hungry, Stiles," Liam says as he swings his legs back and forth, a distinct pout in his voice.

"Pancakes?"

"Really?" Liam says, perking up. "I thought we were meeting the alpha?"

"Well, kiddo, in the Middle Ages all you'd have to do is howl right at the edge of the pack lands, and they'd be here in a jiffy. But we're not in the Middle Ages, are we?" He feels Liam shaking his head no. "So now that we know who they are, we're going to call them to set a meeting. Do you know what that means, buddy?"

"Pancakes?"

"Exactly. Pancakes."

He walks back to his car, listening to Liam speak a mile a minute about the toppings he wants on his pancakes. When they're almost by the car, Liam slides down until his feet are back on the ground and then rushes to get inside because in his mind, the faster he goes, the faster he gets pancakes.

"If only you were this fast every morning, getting out of bed," Stiles snorts.

"I would be if there were pancakes every morning," Liam replies earning a hearty laugh from Stiles.

"Cheeky little brat," he mutters fondly as he walks to his side of the car and gets inside.

He drives back to the town's center and looks for the diner his dad suggested. Once inside, he calls him to ask about the owners of the land and, from there, it's easy to find a way to contact them and set a meeting.

---

"We've heard of you," Talia Hale says, not quite walking around him to intimidate him but close enough to make him mildly dislike her from the get-go.

"Is that so?" Stiles replies glibly. He's already presented his case, at this point he can only wait for the verdict. He may want to live here, but he refuses to be cowed or to grovel for it. If push comes to shove and Talia pushes for a violent outcome, well, Beacon Hills' territory may find itself without an alpha. Stiles won't start it, but he sure as hell will end it if they put his kid in danger. "Do share," he adds with a smile, polite but razor-sharp. The way he sees things, he has to set a standard here because these people look like they will chew him up and come back for seconds if he lets them walk over him.

Talia studies him intently for a moment before speaking again. "You don't seem very remorseful about what you did."

Liam pales and tenses under his arm. Just for that, Stiles' smile cools down quite a few notches, going well into glacial territory, which makes the two other werewolves present shift into more obvious protective stances. Stiles doesn't even spare them a glance, his eyes focused into the alpha reds of one Talia Hale.

"Well, that would be because I'm not remorseful at all. I did what I had to do."

"Your alpha-"

"Not mine," he cuts in sharply.

"But you were like brothers. Or so they say at least, and my sources are rarely wrong."

"You're prying."

"What?"

"Let me rephrase that: you're sticking your nose where it doesn't belong, madam."

"I'd tread carefully, boy," the older man that stands to Talia's right growls, showing fang, "if-"

"I would too," he cuts in, "if I was you, but thankfully I'm not. But let's not digress, shall we?" The man takes a step forward and Talia halts him with a gesture. "You're prying. The proper authorities were called after the incident and the matter was resolved. The information that you need, you already have."

"Is that right?" she replies slowly. "Because I don't think so. This is my territory and I won't have you bring strife into it."

"Strife," Stiles states flatly.

"We don't know you. What's stopping you from a repeat performance?" the man sneers.

"Well, that would be telling, wouldn't it?" Stiles sneers back.

"Stiles?" Liam whines, obviously picking up on the aggression that's building up. Stiles tightens his arm around him, lifting his hand to squeeze the back of his neck gently.

"You protected him," the younger man finally speaks after watching the exchange. It's telling that the older one goes silent despite the age difference. It's even more telling that Talia goes silent too. "That's what happened, wasn't it? He..." he stops speaking, his eyes taking in the way that Liam seems to be curling in on himself.

"I did what I had to do," Stiles repeats, chin raising a bit in challenge. "And I'd do it again if I had to."

And just like that, the tension in the three in front of him eases. Stiles fights a frown. Were they testing him? He's pretty sure they were and he doesn't like the feeling at all. He's also pretty sure that these people had enacted some sort of play to be able to judge Stiles' character and Stiles just fell into it headfirst. Irritation bubbles inside him despite knowing he'd do the same.

"Lady, my patience is running thin," Stiles says after a beat of silence, smile finally gone. "I've stated our purpose and intentions clearly. Do you grant Liam the right to stay or not?"

"Just the kid?" the older man asks, face falling into a frown of disapproval, and Liam looks wide-eyed at Stiles. "Are you asking us to take-"

"Do not finish that statement, sir, it's as badly thought as your wards," Stiles snarls, hugging the kid to him. "But we digress. Again. Let me spell it out for you: so long I create no problems of supernatural nature, you hold no authority over me. I'm no werewolf."

"You're pack, though, or the kid would be omega. That means the alpha does hold a measure of authority over you," the younger man points out placidly and Stiles narrows his eyes at him. "We're not asking for much, aren't we? Just a little bit of reassurance since we're also protecting a lot of kids under us. You wouldn't begrudge us that, now would you?"

Stiles is very aware that the man's manipulating him, but at the same time he, very reluctantly, can see the truth behind that statement. He sighs in defeat, leveling an unimpressed glare at the younger man and earning an unrepentant smirk for it.

"Do you grant us residency or not, alpha Hale?" he finally scowls, having to resist the urge to smack the smirk out of the man's face very badly.

"I do," she replies, very amused.

"Great," Stiles grumbles. "So if you have no more questions, we're done here and-"

"I do have one question, though," the younger man says, prompting a groan from the older one.

"Peter," Talia says, amused and exasperated at the same time.

"What? He's the one that-"

"Do ask, Peter," Stiles cuts in flatly, shaking Liam playfully when the kid giggles.

"Why, thank you! You're so very kind to indulge me, Stiles."

"I'm a regular Gandhi, what can I say."

"So, my question."

"Yes?"

"The one you said you'll answer, remember."

"How curious, I don't remember saying that."

"You did."

"Did I now?"

"Yes, right at the start of this meeting, which you now very graciously extended by your own choice by saying that so if you have no more questions," he lilts, making a so on gesture instead of finishing quoting. And fuck, he's right, the little shit. "You're really a regular Gandhi, aren't you?"

Stiles smiles shark-like and Peter matches it.

"Do ask then, Peter."

"Why thank you! So gracious."

"Very."

"Oh, for the love of-" the other man groans. "Pup, ask your damn question!"

"Uncle David!" Peter growls, cheeks pinking in embarrassment for the nickname that the older man obviously didn't really mean to use but came out anyways by force of habit.

"Yes, pup, do ask," Stiles snarks mockingly.

Peter narrows his eyes at him and Stiles feels like he's being sized up, as if the man is looking for the most vulnerable part to bite into. He smiles challengingly. Peter smiles back.

"Oh, for the love of-" says Talia this time. "Peter ask your question, please?"

Peter's smirk widens and Stiles braces himself, waiting for the blow that's sure to come.

"So, the question."

"The question in question, yes."

"The question in question that you have to answer."

"That pesky question in question that I'll have to answer when you actually get around to finally ask the question in question, you mean."

"I swear to- Peter, the question in quest- Just ask it!"

"Tsk, no patience," both of them say at the same time and Liam dissolves into giggles, hiding his face in Stiles' t-shirt.

"So, the question in question," Peter says, clearly enjoying the groans it elicits.

"Do ask that pesky question in question, Peter," Stiles smirks, earning even more groans.

"So what's wrong with the wards?" Peter finally asks, putting them out of their misery.

Stiles blinks, surprised.

"Oh, now you've done it," Liam pipes in.

Stiles grins shark-like, enjoying Peter's sudden wariness. He searches in his bag for some snacks and a console for Liam, patting his head as he hands them to him. Liam plops down to the ground right there, getting comfy against Stiles' legs.

And then he lays it on them.

For one hour.

---

The next day is hectic to say the least. He has a lot of matters to settle (from a primary doctor for Liam to their registration certificate, with a veritable ton of other things in between) and it's better to have them done as quickly as possible.

Leaving Liam at home is not an option because he's still wary of his dad, so Stiles has to find new and inventive ways to keep him happy and entertained. Thankfully, he has his own ADHD filled childhood experience to fall back into, so at least he has a head start.

Still, after quite a few hours of bureaucratic frustrations, Liam is one cranky kid and Stiles is frazzled, so he stages a tactical retreat for pizza back at home base. His dad takes a look at the pouting kid and his own nearly manic son and is clearly torn between amusement (karma, Stiles can hear him thinking) and sympathy. Stiles has to remember quite a few times that he's an adult and a rolemodel now, and resist the temptation to stick his tongue out at him and his damn twitching lips.

Still, Stiles calls the whole morning a success. Thanks to Beacon Hills being a relatively small town, everything is practically one step away from the other, so that's saved him a lot of time and effort. Add in that Stiles keeps all his documentation in order out of sheer self-preservation (because his ADHD may be almost gone, but there was a time when it wasn't and not keeping everything in order meant the mental equivalent to blood and tears) and things have gone mostly without a hitch.

As of now, only one big thing remains: Liam's schooling. Liam had already decided that he wanted to actually go to school, not be homeschooled. However, that was before the whole thing with Scott happened, so Stiles doesn't know if it has changed.

"So," he says when they've finally finished lunch and his dad is already dozing before the TV. "School." Liam freezes like a deer in headlights. "Hey, none of that kiddo. Come here," he beckons him.

Liam practically plasters himself against Stiles, his face hidden against his stomach. Stiles squeezes the back of the kid's neck and he goes boneless against him, making him carry his weight entirely.

"I said I wanted to go," he says, muffled.

"Yeah, but do you still want to? There's nothing wrong with changing your mind, kiddo."

"But..."

"Whatever you want," Stiles says firmly. "You can even give it a try, and if you decide that you're not ready yet, we take you out and homeschool you until you feel you are."

"Really?"

"Scout's honor."

"You were never a scout," Liam pouts. "So that doesn't count."

"I swear on my limited edition Chewbacca figurine and Star Wars DVD trilogy."

"Really???" Liam squeaks, turning his head up to look at Stiles with eyes wide as saucers. Stiles nods seriously. "Then I wanna try!"

"Try you will then, my little padawan."

And that's that, Stiles thinks as Liam grins and squeezes Stiles, burying his face on his stomach once again. Stiles smiles fondly, rubbing his back. They'll take this afternoon to relax and go tomorrow to take care of the enrolment formalities. Apart from that, everything is mostly taken care of since Stiles is a freelancer that can work from anywhere so long he has an internet connection.

"Star Wars marathon?" he offers, even though he knows that Liam is so tired that he'll conk out before the first one is over.

"And cookies?"

"Hmm, double chocolate?"

"And snickerdoodles."

"With milk?"

"Yes!"

---

Stiles is a little giddy. It feels a little stupid, but at the same time... Well, it's progress, isn't it? It's been nearly three weeks since they made it to Beacon Hills and it's the first time that Liam has decided to stay at home instead of following Stiles wherever he went. Not that he minds the kid's presence! If he could, he'd bundle him up and keep him by his side to cuddle and keep safe forever. He loves Liam so much... But at the same time he knows that most of his clinginess stems from trauma and other issues, so this feels like a huge step forward. Like he finally trusts that Stiles won't disappear if he loses sight of him, that he loves him. And it also means that he's finally comfortable enough to be alone with his dad. So yeah, progress.

And no, he's definitely not checking his phone again and again like a father leaving his baby with a babysitter for the first time. He's not. Nope. Not at all. He's... He's just looking at his grocery list and taking out his phone by mistake, that's all.

Just.

Peanut butter. He needs peanut butter.

"Uncle Peter, no," Stiles hears a boy say at the milk aisle of the supermarket. A gleeful duet of "Uncle Peter, yes," follows, this time by two little girls, one way more articulate than the other. And finally, as Stiles is getting a premonitory shiver down his back, a "Well, hello there, Stiles," finishes.

Stiles turns around slowly, preparing for battle. He's greeted first by the sight of a little boy with an impressive judgey frown leveled at the rest of his party. A little to the left, a little girl still in diapers is trying to torpedo her way around, seemingly only stopped by the hand another little girl with a shit-eating grin is keeping latched to the hood of her jacket. And then there's a smiling Peter, who makes him instantly echo his shark-smile in response.

"Hello, Peter," he greets back.

"It's been a while. How are you liking our little town so far? I'm sure it's quite a change from the big city. Phoenix, was it? Or was it Philadelphia?"

"Philadelphia," Stiles answers flatly after a bit of a staring contest. "And yes, quite the change in some ways."

"In some ways?"

"Some things never change, no matter where you are," Stiles elaborates, smile still razor-sharp. "There are busybodies and assholes everywhere. You'll be minding your own business and suddenly they appear out of nowhere."

Peter's smile widens. "Don't forget the smartasses, Stiles, there are quite a few of those everywhere too. But language, please, there are kids present, Talia will be most unhappy if they come back repeating what they shouldn't."

"Oh, my bad, I apologize. Busybodies and anuses."

They stand there brandishing a megawatt smile and using it against the other like a weapon of mass destruction for a few seconds. The moment is broken when the little peanut tries to crash into a stand with so much force that the other girl holding her gets pulled after her with a startled eep. The boy grabs the girl out of reflex and Peter grabs the boy, pulling them all backwards to avoid the train wreck. Then he grabs the little peanut by the back of her jacket and hoists her up to his shoulder like a bag of potatoes, earning squeals of laughter for it.

"Speaking of Talia," Peter continues as if nothing happened. "She was wondering if you had any plans for Thursday."

For a moment, Stiles draws a blank, but then it clicks. The full moon. In Philly, most of the stragglers in the city used to join the official pack of the area. It didn't mean anything, it was just a chance to run free for a night without having to worry about being fully in control. Scott and Liam would do that, and Stiles used to join the emissary and druids living there to create an enclosed place for the werewolves to run wild.

Bottom line, Stiles has run with Liam many times before, but never on a full moon. Still, even if he accepts what he thinks Peter is offering, he's not going to leave Liam alone this time.

"That depends."

"Oh? On what exactly?"

"On if there will be a problem with me joining in." At Peter's surprised face he adds. "You don't think that I'm going to leave him alone, do you?"

Peter's smile sharpens. "Surely you aren't insinuating that we-"

"That's not it."

There's a beat of silence where Peter studies him intently. Whatever he finds satisfies him, because he lets that line of questioning die and relaxes his stance. The kids, who had gone abruptly still and silent, start talking again.

"You've done it before?"

"Not like on Thursday, but yeah. I used to... provide the safety measures."

"Oh? That's interesting," Peter hums. He absently dodges a small fist that comes towards his face with the force of a tiny missile. "You do realize that it's not the same, right? That... there are more risks involved because of the special circumstances?"

"I do," Stiles nods. "I have some... tricks up my sleeve to handle the situation. Other than that, I've run with him before."

"You mean he's run you down," Peter snorts, earning a flat stare from Stiles. He raises his free hand placatingly, if slightly mocking. "I don't see a problem with it, but I'll have to run it by Talia first, just in case. She may be interested in those... safety measures too. I suppose part of it was some sort of enclosure?"

For a second, Stiles nearly puffs up like an offended cat, because his wards are much more complex than that, thank you very much. If the amused tilting of Peter's mouth is anything to go by, the man can tell and Stiles has to resist the urge to pout too.

"Yeah, among other things," he settles for saying instead, voice dry as the desert.

"Great," Peter, honest to god, chirps. "Expect a call from her then."

"Sure," Stiles sighs.

And then they stand there, Peter looking at Stiles expectantly and Stiles just wanting to leave and go home to his kid.

"The phone, Stiles," Peter says finally.

"Yeah, I heard you. She'll call."

"My big sister is a woman of many, many talents, Stiles, but even she can't call someone if she doesn't have the number."

And so Stiles gives him his number, of course. But as Peter leaves, Stiles revisits the wording he used in his head and starts to strongly suspect that he's just somehow been tricked into giving the man his number because he's pretty sure Talia already had it.

Stiles groans internally and goes in search of the damn peanut butter.

---

Stiles talks to Liam first, of course. It's nice that they have the option to run with others, but if Liam is uncomfortable then they'll have to find another alternative and that's it. Stiles can create a safe space anywhere he wants, after all, and not all the preserve is Hale land.

To his surprise, Liam is really open to the idea from the get-go. Stiles bets it has to do with the fact that the Hales have quite a few children in his age range. That, and that he won't be alone no matter what since Stiles told him he'd be there at all times, of course.

With that settled, Stiles finalizes the details with Talia pretty easily. Stiles is surprised at first by her openness, but the more they talk, the more he suspects that she's hoping to learn if what he does can be replicated so she can include the human pack members that normally have to sit the full moons out. (Which, if he's right, is very thoughtful of her since not many packs even think to try.) Add in that Stiles is going to provide a very safe enclosure and he can definitely see why she's so open about any thing he suggests.

All in all, Stiles is quite happy about how things are progressing. He could do without Peter tagging along like a particularly annoying puppy while he lays the wards, though, even if their verbal spars are quite amusing.

Still, he'll give it to the man, he does know when he has to be silent... and he's quite adept at catching Liam before he falls into any hole on top of controlling the veritable troupe of kids that have followed them as he lays the foundation of the proximity wards.

Stiles really doesn't know how that happened. It's like fungus, they multiplied the moment he wasn't looking. One moment there was only Liam, the next Talia's terrible trio were there and the next another five little cousins were tagging along. Stiles is afraid that by the next focus point of the ward they'll have their own lacrosse team and then, by the next after that one, they'll have two and will be able to hold an actual match.

(Still, Liam looks so happy that Stiles can't even be annoyed. God, he's turned into such a sap.)

"Stiles!" Liam hollers cheerfully, and that's the only warning Stiles gets before an eighty-something pound projectile impacts into his back and then proceeds to climb him as high as he can. Four tiny growling monsters in diapers surround him right after that, including torpedo peanut (and Stiles maybe, just maybe, should start learning their names), and try their best to bring him down while Liam squeaks and hums and laughs.

Stiles, of course, does his best to resist, but then the rest of the troupe jumps him and a controlled fall is the best he can do.

"The full moon is going to be so much fun," Peter says smiling smarmily from above.

Stiles, who is too busy trying to protect his most vulnerable parts while also pursing his lips as hard as he can so a tiny foot doesn't come inside his mouth, mud and all, just flips him the bird.

---

Thursday greets him bright and early with Liam jumping onto him as if it's Christmas morning. And look, call him weird but, even as a child, the promise of presents wasn't enough to peel him out of bed early, candy and sweets had to be added to the offer for him to even consider moving. Adulthood certainly hasn't made that any better, so having a twelve-year-old jump on him as if Stiles is an elastic bed at the ass-crack of dawn may as well be Chinese torture for him.

Stiles grumbles into his pillow before hiding his head under it and making his best effort at suffocating himself. Because upon the first impact of the meteorite on the Earth, he spied the clock and no. No, no and no.

"Stileeeeees," Liam complains.

Categorically no.

"Stiiiiileeees," Liam whines.

Unconditionally no.

"Stiiiiiiii-leeeeeeesssss," Liam pouts.

No, he thinks, that won't work, he's immune. Liam may have the pouting of an adorable golden retriever puppy (with a destructive power to match), but Stiles has developed a strong resistance to it. It won't work. Nope.

Silence. Why is he silent? No more whining? Has he given up? Has he resigned to the inevitable and is conceding to a superior opponent? Can Stiles go back to sleep until a more reasonable hour?

Wait.

No.

That's not it, he thinks feeling alarm raising like a tidal wave. He can't see them with his head buried as it is, but he can feel them. It's silent pouting combined with the puppy eyes. Nonono, Stiles wails internally, trying his best to resist.

He...

... will...

... not...

Ah, crap, who is he kidding? All is lost. Their combined power of destruction is staggering and he knows his end is near with unshakable certainty. It's penetrating his titanium shield of resolve like anti-tank ammunition going through a lead plate.

Stiles groans and turns, unearthing his head from under the pillow. This earns a cheer from Liam, who now drapes over his stomach and bounces and Stiles groans again. He rises with what's definitely not a pout, lifting Liam over his shoulder like a potato sack on his way up. He ignores the way, even thrown over his shoulder, the kid puffs up triumphantly and makes a straight line towards the kitchen and the coffee machine.

Because look, his pride is in shambles but he still has coffee. Coffee makes everything better, just like curly fries. If Stiles was faced with the decision of what to bring with him to a deserted island, it would be those. And a boat, of course, because he's not stupid. But yeah, coffee and curly fries. Give him those and he'll be happy, he doesn't need anything else. Well, hello, scurvy, let's be toxic friends. Wait, no, potatoes have a lot of vitamin C, don't they? He needs to google...

No, coffee. Coffee's what he needs. Coffee. Black as his mortal soul.

And some actual food to go with that coffee.

He sets Liam down on one of the kitchen chairs and starts preparing a very high-calorie breakfast. It's going to be a very eventful day for both of them (Stiles is going to be running a lot and the full moon shift always makes Liam ravenous) and they're really going to need the extra energy.

"Do I wake grandpa up for breakfast too?" Liam asks.

Stiles has two simultaneous reactions. The first one is to coo and actually get emotional because, well, grandpa, but he covers that one immediately because with Liam the best course of action is to not bring attention to it. The second is a very evil glee because if he has to suffer being up at don't-look-at-the-clock-or-you'll-cry AM, so does his dad.

"Sure, go for it," he says simply, not even turning from where he's measuring the coffee. Liam shoots out from his seat, dashing towards his dad's room. "No jumping on him, kid!"

"I knoooow, because I'm strong and he's old and fragile and something could break," Liam recites as he climbs the stairs.

"Exactly!" Stiles confirms, trying very hard to not burst out laughing.

Liam leaves his dad's door open as he goes in, so Stiles is treated to pained groans almost immediately. Ah, music to his ears. Then it gets even better when he hears Liam explaining very earnestly that of course he won't jump on him because he's old and, well, he likes grandpa and he doesn't want to break any bones. Stiles has to bite his cheek very hard to not burst out laughing.

When Liam dashes back, a very rumpled former sheriff follows. He throws a very deadpan stare towards Stiles and he loses the battle immediately and starts cackling. He accepts the kitchen towel that flies to his head as his fair dues for laughing at his dad and continues cooking breakfast.

After they're done, Liam, still all nervous energy, runs back to their room to get ready. Because he doesn't want to be late, he yells as he leaves, even though they still don't have to be at the Hale's for about six hours. Now alone with his dad at the kitchen, they share a fond smile.

"Grandpa, huh?" the man mutters softly, mystified but clearly happy.

"Yeah," Stiles grins, clicking his mug lightly against his dad's. "Yeah."

---

Stiles has to admit that, for all he's still not entirely sold on the Hales, he likes the way they organize the full moons. He can tell that it's a system they've perfected over the years to be able to accommodate all the participant's schedules and also include the humans in the whole process. For Stiles, who as a rule has seen the opposite, it's a really well-thought out affair.

They try to make it a full-day event if it's on a weekend, during vacation or a holiday. They have lunch together, normally a big barbecue. Then they have numerous activities designed to burn as much energy of the youngest members of the pack because that makes the night easier for the adults that have to keep an eye on them. And that means both the human and the werewolf children. Stiles has babysat enough tiny humans to know why that's a very good idea. What he didn't know is that shifted children are tiny and evil Duracell bunnies that never stop and raze everything in their way while playing. Stiles can't help but to remember how destructive torpedo peanut was on a regular day and blanch. It's a terrifying concept that makes him shudder in dread just thinking about it.

(Nope, abort, abort.)

(Mental picture deleted.)

That changes a bit if the day of the full moon falls on a weekday. Kids that have school and adults that haven't been able to free their day, come for lunch and then go back while the rest continue with the normal schedule of activities. They will join back once school or work is over and the schedule will resume as normal.

It's vacation time, so Stiles and Liam get treated to a very full house when they arrive at lunch time. In fact, even before Talia opens her mouth to greet them upon opening the door, they get treated to the sight of torpedo peanut balancing on the chandelier of the entrance and the five cousins that trailed after them while placing the wards barking like dogs right underneath.

Stiles smiles politely like there's nothing out of the norm and his hand clamps down on the hood of Liam's jacket lightning fast before he can gleefully rush in to join.

"Good afternoon, Talia. Thank-"

"Stileeeees," Liam whines, making grabby hands towards the kids. The pack stops barking and all their eyes, including torpedo peanut's, zero in on Liam. Exactly like a predator's on prey and woah, that's adorable in a creepy as fuck way.

"-you for having us."

"Thank you for having us," Liam parrots sheepishly before fidgeting in his place, eyes going back to the kids.

"Welcome Stiles, Liam," Talia answers placidly, as if her child isn't hanging several feet above her. "Thank you for joining us. Oh that smells divine," she adds looking at the bag Stiles is carrying as she lets them in. "Pecan fudge brownie? And... lemon?"

Stiles nods. "Lemon meringue pie for the ones that prefer something less sweet."

"Oh, thank you! That's so thoughtful, but you shouldn't have. You're our guest, after all."

"It was no problem," Stiles says, hand still holding Liam in.

"Stiles loves baking," Liam beams, finally tearing his eyes from the pack of little monsters that looks like it's planning on eating him alive. "All he makes is super yummy too! The cakes and the cookies. The pies! And the cupcakes and- and- Carrot cake! Even though carrots taste bad, but his cake is good! Everything he makes is super good."

"Even carrot cake, huh? That's truly impressive," Peter says as he glides in. Torpedo peanut lets go of the chandelier and he catches her without even looking. He doesn't even react when she starts pulling at his hair gleefully. "Well hello, Stiles."

"Peter! Aren't you a sight for sore eyes," Stiles enthuses smiling brightly and Peter, getting the double meaning, echoes his gesture immediately.

"Same, same," he volleys back placidly. "And meeting you is always like finding light in the darkness, Stiles."

Stiles' smile widens.

Peter's smile widens.

They beam at each other as if the light of their smiles has the power of a thousand burning suns in their intensity. Talia groans softly and rolls her eyes.

"Let's let the kids play, shall we?" she sighs. "In the backyard," she adds pointedly.

The poor boy with the impressive eyebrows that Stiles met in the supermarket shows up out of nowhere with a very long-suffering face. (And if this is what the kid's been dealing with since the day started or, god forbid, on a regular basis, Stiles feels for him, he really does.) Stiles lets go of Liam and, after a second of very intense staring between the pack and his kid, he dashes in the direction the other boy is pointing at with a gleeful shriek. The pack of little monsters take immediately after him with high-pitched growls. Torpedo peanut looks considering for a second before she takes her pacifier out, hands it solemnly to Peter and demands to be put down. Then she wobbles forward for a few steps before she picks up speed and runs after them.

Stiles is pretty sure she doesn't know how to brake yet, so the only way she's stopping is by colliding with something that doesn't give into her destructive force. It gets confirmed when he hears a crashing sound that Stiles can't help but wince at. He expects some truly epic crying but, instead, mirthful shrieks erupt after that, followed by, if Stiles isn't mistaken, the oldest girl he met at the supermarket's goading. The boy sighs, looking heavenwards as if asking for patience and then visibly girds his loins before jumping into the fray.

Stiles salutes at his retreating back solemnly, wishing him all the luck. He hears an amused snort and turns his attention back to Peter, arching an eyebrow.

"Let me show you to the kitchen so you can leave that there, Stiles," Peter says, twirling the pacifier that Cora speared on his finger. "If you'd like?"

"That does pacify me, yes." Peter twitches and Stiles is also pretty sure he hears several pained groans coming from different directions. He grins brightly. "Thank you, Peter, how very kind of you."

"If you follow me," Peter motions lazily.

"To the moon and back," Stiles replies cheerfully and he hears Talia groan once again.

"We've got no matches, Peter," a man, Talia's husband Stiles thinks, says from the backyard as soon as they make it to the kitchen. "Could you get me some from the kitchen?"

"Lets hope there are some or you'll have to do a quick run to the store," Talia says.

"Or you could always google it if there aren't any," Stiles says helpfully.

"What?" Talia's husband says as Peter raises an eyebrow. "No delivery device is that fast..."

"But it will give you a lot of matches," Stiles points out, face earnest.

There are several pained groans and Peter looks like he's trying very hard to not wince. Stiles lets his helpful smile descend into shark-like territory.

"Are you sure taking some weight off the grill won't work better?" Peter joins in, eyes challenging.

"Oh my god, Peter," the man cries. "No."

"Joshua, really, just trying to be helpful here," Peter lilts. Stiles bites the inside of his cheek to contain himself, because he's never seen someone pained but at the same time proud of making a bad pun. "Because, you know, lighter."

"People are so ungrateful, it's such a shame," Stiles sighs.

"True that," Peter agrees, looking pointedly at Stiles.

"Right???" Stiles nods, looking at him as pointedly or even more.

What follows is several hours of battle of wits between Peter and Stiles while he keeps an eye on his kid. It's exhilarating and funny because they have to keep it PG with all the little ones around them. They brandish double meaning statements, puns and word games like weapons of mass destruction and Stiles hasn't had this much fun in a long time. Even funnier is that at one point it stops being entirely about one-upping each other and it starts being about how far they can push it before the people around them snap.

And then, the moon starts coming out and it gets even better.

Stiles grants them access into the enclosed safe space half an hour before the night sets in completely and then reminds them very briefly of how the wards work. (Peter's lips twitch like he knows how hard it is for Stiles not to get into it in depth and he has to resist the urge to throw something at the obnoxious man out of irritation.) After that, while they start shifting, Stiles activates his tattoos and the rune arrays he painted on himself this morning as a precaution, even though he doesn't think he'll actually need them. Some of them will sharpen his senses and the others will provide quite the level of protection against physical injury, so he's covered if any accidents happen.

Standing a little bit to the side, Stiles remembers that rumor has it that some of the Hales can do a full shift even out of the full moon and he wonders absently about its veracity while he watches them change.

The first few moments after the shift are chaotic, so Stiles simply observes from the sidelines, keeping a keen eye on Liam. It's like a free for all melee where only the adults have some semblance of control. A little violent because of the instincts running rampant, yes, but not too bad, all things considered. The violence seems to come mostly from the teens and some adults and the pups are clearly off limits, though, so Stiles doesn't intervene.

Liam jumps Stiles like an over-excited puppy as soon as he stops wobbling and gets used to the shift to four legs. He laughs, and lets himself fall, rolling with the impulse. He wrestles playfully with him for a bit before more little bodies join in with playful yips. Stiles is completely aware of how the rest of the pack is watching so he treads carefully.

They let them join, yes, but both he and Liam are unknowns and they're not completely trusted. (Especially Stiles, with his "mysterious" magical energy.) And Stiles is with their pups, he has no doubt they'll try to rip him to shreds if he tries something funny. He wholeheartedly approves, of course, God knows that he'd wipe them from existence without a thought if they even breathed wrong in his kid's direction.

His eyes cross paths with Peter's and they share an understanding right there, in a matter of seconds, smiles bloodthirsty and implacable.

The one that he's sure is torpedo peanut chooses that moment to jump on Liam and they fall to the side. The rest of the pack of terrors follow and Liam starts running in circles. Stiles, right in the middle, watches him fondly.

His eyes come back to Peter's and then an idea hits. He lets his smile widen and then, without any remorse whatsoever, he twists things so that the pups' new target is Peter. Maybe he should feel bad about manipulating kids into doing what he wants, but watching Peter get swarmed is too good to pass up.

Talia huffs, amused, and he grins at her. "I know, I'm such a bad person. It keeps me awake at night sometimes," he sniffs and she huffs again.

He looks towards Peter once again and he's rewarded by the sight of one pup hanging from his ear and another two doing their damnedest to jump on his back. Torpedo peanut is behind him, looking fixedly at his tail and preparing to pounce. Liam is barking like crazy and play fighting from the front.

Stiles can't help it, he cackles...

... and promptly dives to the right, dodging Peter's lunge.

The kids follow the movement and latch onto Peter once again. Stiles leans on the tree beside him, grinning madly. He waggles his eyebrows mockingly and then blows a kiss, winking.

Peter pounces.

Later, way too tired and pinned down by the weight of way too many pups and one adult wolf, he can't stop smiling.

"Ten out of ten, would repeat it again," he says.

"Great," Peter replies after a very smooth shift. He grins and lets more of his weight fall on him. "Then coffee tomorrow."

"What."

"I'm still not sold on how our wards are shit," he adds, lips twitching.

"Say what."

"I mean, it can't be that hard, right?"

Stiles narrows his eyes dangerously. He opens and closes his mouth several times. Then he narrows his eyes even more.

"Are you trying to provoke me into a date, pup?"

"Such absurd ideas you have, Stiles. Who would do that? But then again you said our wards are bad..." Peter lilts, leaning even more on him.

"Let me tell you-"

"Of course," Peter cuts in. "Tomorrow, over coffee."

Stiles gapes...

...and gapes...

...and gapes some more.

And then, he notices one thing: Peter's completely naked.

Stiles squeaks.

(But he doesn't say no.)

Also on AO3.

[headlesssamurai]

review blade runner 2049 please

[Yo. @godzillaapproved asked me about this too, as did, like twenty other anons at this point, I meant to post this publicly but accidentally replied privately to the epic city-stomper. Here’s what I wrote.]

Yo, my apologies for taking a dog’s age to properly reply to this one. Between working a new job and teaching kids D&D, my schedule… actually hasn’t been that full at all, in fact being busy has got nothing at all to do with what took me so long. I’m just a lazy bastard, I reckon.

Nah, I’m playing. It’s just this write-up’s a tough one. In trying to properly discuss a movie like this, the worst obstacle I’m faced with is offering worthwhile thoughts which can rise above the more quotidian comparisons of old and new, and avoids falling to the level of all those acerbic neanderthals shouting at each other about reboots and franchise fatigue. Regardless of your opinion on it as a motion picture, Blade Runner 2049 is a film worthy of attentive consideration, approving or disapproving.

So, yeh, like, half the time I tried to write it up my thoughts veered wildly off into existentially perverse nonsense most people couldn’t follow if they were jacked up on a cocktail of Ritalin and whatever drug Bradley Cooper was addicted to in that one movie they later made into a shitty TV show. The other half of the time my critical analysis, though coherent, stretched to thirty-six pages (no exaggeration).

I was able to hack apart the latter version with a hatchet, and a few slivers of it have been included in this write-up, along with some fresh thoughts on the movie after giving it another once-over on my home theater system. Hopefully the thoughts shorn off my now axed 2049 manifesto help create a rational measure of insight to share on the artistry and agency of this contemplative film. And here I am wasting your fucking time, explaining how I wrote this thing up instead of just finishing the motherfucker.

I’ll just preface this by saying it’s impossible to discuss 2049 without at least mentioning the first Blade Runner and voicing a few of my thoughts on that film, considering how much it’s meant to me over the years. Also, so there’s no confusion I’ll usually be referring to this new film as 2049 and the earlier Ridley Scott movie as Blade Runner.

If you’re unfamiliar with the concept, Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner was very loosely based upon Philip K. Dick’s short novella Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?, retaining few elements of Dick’s story besides some character names and the general setting of the world. The setting involves a highly advanced technological future, said to be 2019 in the original film, in which genetically indistinguishable androids (the latest model of which is called a Nexus-6), known as replicants, have been created as slave labor, and mostly used for the perilously dangerous industry of colonizing other worlds. It’s not clear how many worlds have been colonized, nor if these worlds are part of Sol’s orbit, or inhabit other star systems, but Earth appears to be a mere footnote by the era of the film. It is heavily implied that Earth is highly polluted, has undergone yet survived various environmental events which have permanently altered the weather and atmosphere, including nuclear war and extinction of many different species, and is now considered a very undesirable place to live.

The original film follows the intertwining story of Rick Deckard, a type of bounty hunter known as a “blade runner” who specializes in tracking down and eliminating rogue androids, and Roy Batty, a dying combat android who Deckard has come out of retirement to hunt. Ridely Scott’s film uses this general backdrop as a mechanism for an aesthetically light narrative of show-don’t-tell, including much visual intrigue and little direct exposition. Though often viewed as a scattershot of stylistic flair with shallow depths to its storytelling, this original film has been praised for years as evolutionary cinema, and has often been interpreted to explore the nature of humanity, consciousness, mortality, and the human capacity for both violence and compassion.

Personally, I tend to shy away from the more relativistic viewpoint in terms of filmmaking, and other forms of cumulative artistic expression and storytelling mediums. I think people who say “Anything can be art” and “Quality is just an opinion” are just people who don’t really know much about art, and haven’t seen enough quality films to be able to distinguish them from those which happen to be steaming crocks of shit stew, never mind the fact that such individuals are likely too dense to grasp what makes quality storytelling worthwhile to begin with. Ipso facto, if you’ve watched enough movies and actually care about movies, and you possess an attention span somewhere north of a toddler on morphine, you probably know what I’m talking about. I want to say this without the sort of high-nosed hauteur normally associated with such statements, but as a talented dude once put it “If it is art, it is not for everyone. If it is for everyone, it is not art.” I’m thankful to say 2049 inhabits a place in cinema well within the span of that distinction and, if box office numbers are any indication, makes no apology for it.

Because Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner has been released in various cuts, some better received than others, there exists a great deal of division over what his film was trying to say, as well as a massive amount of speculation on whether or not Deckard himself actually happened to be an android without knowing it. This level of ambiguity surrounding the original film has become a major part of why its fans adore it so much as praiseworthy cinema. It’s for this, and many other reasons, that Blade Runner remains my favorite movie of all time. Not saying it’s the best movie ever made, I’m just saying it’s my favorite, rivaled only by The Empire Strikes Back.

I was pretty damn rattled when first hearing that somebody in the wretched hive of Hollywood decided it would be a good idea to make a sequel to my favorite movie of all time. Or maybe, as some at the time speculated, it would be a reboot. I couldn’t quite decide which thought was more fuckening. Considering some of the reboots we’ve had, I imagined nothing but a hollow, CGI lightshow of forgettable one-dimensional characters running about a cliché world only vaguely reminiscent of the trend-setting urban dystopia from Ridley Scott’s cultish masterpiece.

That said, clearly Denis Villeneuve isn’t here to fuck around. He’s an established director with a modest, respectably memorable body of work. Even bitterly immersed my previously mentioned revulsion at the thought of a Blade Runner sequel, I recall thinking that if any bastard in the film industry could actually pull it off, it’s probably him. As I previously stated on this very blog, my respect for Villeneuve was deeply conflicted with my closely held conviction that the first Blade Runner is laudable precisely because of the things it doesn’t tell the audience, doesn’t explain, and leaves ambiguous and open to interpretation. Its depth lies in its mystery and somewhat abstract approach to an otherwise simplistic narrative. It’s no surprise this approach wasn’t popular at the time, and continues to be debated among film critics to this day.

I was terribly afraid, despite Villeneuve’s dextrous hand at the helm, there would be a massive exposition dump somewhere in Blade Runner 2049, explaining away gargantuan volumes of plot devices and character motivations from the original movie, effectively destroying everything that made it great. I vehemently avoided any promotional material after the initial teaser trailer, because I wanted to go into the new film cold, no idea of what exactly to expect.

Imagine my surprise upon first viewing the 2049, realizing the abstract concepts from the first movie have mostly been abandoned in favor of a far more straightforward and less nebulous storytelling method, and from the patient start to the unusually optimistic end, the notional mysteries from Ridley Scott’s original film are rarely referenced and safely allowed to remain unexplained. There’s even a scene in which one character proposes an idea to another which could serve as an expository mechanism for something from the first film, yet this is left hanging for a moment before being brushed aside with the feeling that these ideas, this very discussion is irrelevant to the story at hand.

Out of the gate, I appreciated 2049’s ownership of its story, confidence in its approach to that story, and general lack of what I’d describe as cynical filmmaking tropes. Again, like Schönberg said, true art isn’t meant for everyone and by that token 2049 flat out assumes you’re into the sort of vice it’s slinging, and doesn’t even try to placate a wider audience. I loved this about the movie. I haven’t the slightest clue how Villeneuve got a studio to sign off on this approach without adding a plucky side-kick, laugh-a-minute slapstick, or overblown fantastical action sequences, but somehow the bastard grabbed that gem. It’s a movie that’s just trying to be what it is, it doesn’t give a fuck about your politics, your fandoms, your capacity to be offended, and it doesn’t much give a damn about you if romantic comedies are more your speed. From start to finish, this movie comfortably inhabits its own skin without any pandering whatsoever. Even fans of the original film aren’t really catered in any particular way. It’s goddamn amazing to see that sort of integrity in a modern, high budget movie.

Blade Runner 2049 continues the tale of its progenitor, set exactly thirty years afterward. The world is said to have suffered an event called the Blackout, in which most electronic technology was damaged beyond repair, causing digitally stored data to be lost, and some technological regression has occurred as a result. Nexus-6 androids are said to have been scrapped after various malfunctions and uprisings, possibly themselves being the cause of the Blackout, and a corporation run by mega-mogul Niander Wallace later created a new model of androids who apparently have no capacity for free will. Many older models have gone into hiding or on the run however, and thus special squads of bounty hunters still called blade runners are tasked with finding and “retiring” them. The movie follows an android blade runner created to hunt his own kind, Officer KD6-3.7, as he stumbles upon a mysterious clue which could have dangerous repercussions.

While its approach to storytelling differs significantly from its predecessor, 2049 remains a retread of certain material from the previous movie, for instance it’s still set in the dystopian futuristic world of that film, and the story also involves a fair bit of existential quandary, ruminations on human nature, and moral imperatives. It’s a reboot through and through, which builds a sense of atmosphere just as effectively as the original film, but also exists as a reputably well-made film in its own right. Blade Runner, the original, remains my favorite film of all time, so please appreciate the gravity of my admission when I confidently say that 2049 is a better movie.

It’s better because it is far less ambiguous, functions more fluently as a cinematic story, and features thematic elements which effectively translate throughout the plot without turning into fluffy schmaltz, yet still offers contemplative commentary on the human condition, potentially leading its audience to speculate for years on end. While the meditative facet remains strong, we syllogistically have far more coherent story here than the first movie. Odd that ambiguity is what makes the original Blade Runner great for me, yet the lack of it is what makes this new movie equally triumphant. Either way 2049 manages to be its own, different experience while also remaining familiar.

As Officer K follows the trail of evidence, we’re given glimpses of the world around him, once again getting small suggestions that no one wants to live on Earth anymore and that life in “the colonies” is preferable to the polluted, over-populated streets of this overused world. At the same time, it’s cool to see the film sticking to its guns as a follow-up to Blade Runner; Pan-Am still exists in this futuristic dystopia, Atari apparently remains a major manufacturer of electronics, wireless communications seem to be relatively scarce. The world has also progressed somewhat, even since the Blackout, holograms and A.I. are now more common, security and intelligence services now enjoy the convenience of surveillance drones, some cars can still fly but look slick compared to the older models. The level of detail and nuance paid to the production design is breathtaking in maintaining the flavor of the film’s world.

Of course this is aided incredibly by the fact that 2049 is fucking beautiful. CGI and inventive set designs blend wonderfully with practical effects, creating a wonderful sense of immersion. A romantic scene particularly has one of the most memorable effects shots I’ve ever seen. Dirty, polluted, over-populated cities have never looked this spectacular, expansive grub farms and endless fields of solar arrays are somehow hypnotic. Roger Deakins has several decades of cinematography under his belt, so it’s no surprise he’s earned every goddamn ounce of that Academy Award. Aesthetically, you’ll have a tough time finding a more seamless film out there.

There’s some terrific casting as well, with Canadian heartthrob Ryan Gosling in the lead role which, despite some hilarious gags to the contrary out there on the mimetic internets, does in fact require a great deal of subtlety and skill from him as a performer, and he handles the material marvelously. Ana De Armas also stars in the unusual role of K’s holographic girlfriend Joi, a concept which I found slightly uncomfortable at first, but some awesome writing on the part of this character and the way her presence affects K’s arc unexpectedly makes her massively relevant compared to romantic female characters in most movies. Jared Leto flashes his beautiful smug face at us, ironically as egomaniacal industrialist Niander Wallace, neither Lennie James nor Dave Bautista hang around quite long enough to suit me in their cameos but their presence is soothing regardless, Halt And Catch Fire fans will appreciate Mackenzie Davis’ mere existence, and the always elegant Robin Wright appears as K’s superior officer. For good measure, we get short glimpses of veterans Harrison Ford, Edward James Olmos, and Sean Young. Undercelebrated up-and-comer Carla Juri also stars as a kindhearted memory crafter, who helps create artificial histories for replicants.

If we’re talking badass casting though, hands down, Dutch actress Sylvia Hoeks positively dominates as Niander Wallace’s left-hand replicant acolyte Luv. This woman steals the fucking show for me, and I could not imagine how uncultured a motherfucker I must’ve been to have never seen any of her films before this. I’m not quite sure what it is, but she seems to hit that stride of violent femininity almost perfectly without even coming near cliché territory. Luv is my favorite and, I would argue, the most interesting character in the film. In addition to adding some much needed sense of menace to the plot momentum, Luv is written somewhat unconventionally despite being a strong woman, avoiding that flash-and-thunder spectacle most screenwriters just can’t resist, she displays a range of behavior as the movie progresses, some times conflicting, yet relentlessly driven in her purpose. Where K, in many respects, is simply doing his job, Luv seems to truly, unquestionably believe in what she is doing. I also found it interesting that Joi is named after an emotion with almost no negative connotations, meaning pure elation. Whereas Luv’s name is synonymous with a passionate, wild, chaotic mix of difficult to control complexes of emotion, sensations, and compulsions.

Luv’s name and personality reminded me of a line from Catullus;“I hate and I love. Why do I do this, perhaps you ask. I do not know, but I feel it happening and I am tortured.”

I think primarily, the most poignant thing I can tell you about this movie is you might not enjoy it as much as me. It’s very similar to the original film in that manner. It’s science fiction to the core, not swinging too far in either direction, science or fiction respectively, sitting comfortably in that niche and playing to people who are also comfortable right there. In an effort to avoid any direct spoilers, I��ll try to leave my general assessment at that, depending on who you are, you’ve as much a chance to be bored as be mystified and intrigued by this movie. I fucking love this movie, but I’m also not some heckling hipster who wants mainstream audiences to get fucked so I can regress myself back to Shakespearean times where I can head to the local theatre house, buy a tankard of ale and quartroun loaf of oat bread, and watch the players act out the most recently published archaic comedy. I feel just as strongly about this as I do the first Blade Runner, if you don’t enjoy 2049, well I actually could totally see why. It isn’t made for everyone. It’s not quite trying to entertain, or dazzle, or impress, merely trying to tell its own story in the best conceivable way.

Blade Runner 2049 it seems, in the most apropos way, is the rarest sort of movie possible; a film with a wonderful array of talent behind it, an enormous budget to back this up, and a wide net of distribution, but almost no conceit to reach anyone but its target audience. A wondrous, beautiful example of cinematic artistry potentially sold with knowledge that their return on investment would not be entirely achieved, a story both tragic and inspiring. Again, I’ve absolutely no idea how Denis Villenueve managed to get the producers to back this uncompromising approach to such a well-funded movie, but I’m very glad he did.

2049 spins its narrative with a minimum amount of overt exposition, air-tight production design, conceptually interesting visuals, and a great cast of performers, which all gels to offer one of the most memorable, thoughtful cinema-going experiences I’ve enjoyed in the past ten years. There’s a darkness and restlessness to this advanced world, both breathtaking and disturbing, as much grit and garbage as there is streamlined technology and triumphant wonder. Much of this aesthetic filters beautifully into the story Villenueve is trying to tell us. The visuals seem as finely tuned as the editing itself, weaving itself cumulatively into the associative memory of the audience, seeming to hit beats more common of an atmospheric horror movie than a futuristic sci-fi film. Perhaps that’s why I’ve found it so haunting.

My apologies if all of this is a little too generalized for your liking, I could understand if so. As with many worthwhile forms of entertainment, I recommend seeing it and deciding for yourself. I mean, I’m just some asshole on the internet whose noodles are getting cold. Some times I wonder what the hell I’m even talking about, myself. So have a kick-ass day, dudes, and carpe noctem.

               侍   headless                         

[forsetti]

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.”

[andromedaceline]

Ben Solo and The Road to Redemption

(Warning: Long post ¯\_(ツ)_/¯)

There, RIGHT there. That is not the face of a man who feels he made the right decision to kill his father, and is happy with the outcome. I can’t tell you how many posts I read from people who still believe he’s an unremorseful, evil, psychopathic maniac. Seems like they are incapable of seeing the torment this character is suffering from in not just this moment, but many others throughout both films. But it’s right THERE on the screen, LOOK AT HIS FACE! (And this is from TFA, so don’t tell me it’s ONLY in TLJ they did this). They held that long pause on his face for a reason. He’s clearly shocked, weakened and more conflicted than ever. It’s also on the official SW website, were they CONFIRM his weakened state after he kills Han and they confirm his conflict throughout the films. They’re giving the audience visual clues that this is not someone killing out of cold blood. If you’ve read his back story, it’s all there, crystal clear. He’s blinded by anger from his past, twisted and manipulated by Snoke since birth, and it’s leading him down the wrong path. Anyone who’s lost their temper and did something stupid, knows how it feels to be temporarily blinded by emotions you can’t always control.

Now I’m not justifying his actions (patricide, genocide, murder, kidnapping, etc). In fact, if redeemed, I doubt he will come out of this without SOME consequence. I’m just saying, regardless, he deserves redemption and he deserves to live. Period. I look at a character like this, and feel sadness, not anger. He’s clearly struggling to keep it together emotionally. There’s no way someone like that is a manipulative psychopath, and those who think he is need to look up what “psychopath” really is. A true psychopath is uncompromising and unbothered by their actions. There is no conflict, guilt, remorse, sadness, “call to the light”, or any authentic emotion from them at all. They are don’t feel anything, not even anger, toward anyone they hurt or abuse. However, Ben feels EVERYTHING. On multiple occasions, he’s shown a great deal of emotions, whether it’s extreme rage (after Rey escapes TFA), tremendous conflict (When he decides not kill Leia), extreme depression (In Snokes Throne Room, where he’s LITERALLY broken after killing Han), or great sadness (End TLJ, when he’s crying and looks up at Rey). These are not acts he’s putting on, he literally wears his heart on his sleeve.


For those who STILL need it spelled out, lets breakdown what that “Conflict” in Kylo really is. Simple, IT’S. HIS. CONSCIOUS!! It’s what separates man from the beasts. All of us have the moral capacity to distinguish right from wrong, and when we go against it, a little tiny voice inside speaks up and says “Umm….yeaa…that’s not right.” That’s your conscious, man. Those who have it feel the pain of going against it. You feel that tug of regret, you feel that turmoil inside. Purely evil psychopathic people DO NOT HAVE THIS VOICE (it’s scientifically proven). They feel nothing and have no emotion when carrying out horrendous deeds against others. Ben does feel (CASE IN POINT HIS REACTION SHOWN ABOVE!), therefore, NOT EVIL. No. Way.


I look at Ben and see someone suffering from tremendous pain and confusion. He thinks he’s doing the right thing, but it’s all based on lies and manipulation. He’s too blinded by his own rage to see through the bullshit. He felt hurt, abandoned, and betrayed by his family (Who were great people, but when it came to Ben, they made mistakes, GET OVER IT), so he ran to the only being he felt was ever there for him, Snoke. He joined the FO because he saw them as ridding the world of “weakness” and making the galaxy a better place. More importantly he joined to feel he belongs to something. He’s been a lonely neglected kid his whole life, it was the only place he could feel important and powerful.


You can connect his story with so many real life people. I see little difference between him, and say, a rebellious teen who joins a gang because they feel protected and looked after by them, a child soldier who was brainwashed into killing innocent people because the regime told them doing so will make them “stronger”, someone from a war-torn country, who joins a radical religious terrorist group because they think it will make their country a better and safer place, or a convicted felon who feels trapped by society’s view of them as a “monster”, so they keep lashing out because they know no other healthy way to express themselves, causing them to get into more trouble.

Now in each of these cases, do these individuals deserve to die? Do they NOT deserve redemption? Especially once they realize the groups/actions they turned to did not possess the answers they were looking for. What if they want a way out, but feel they don’t deserve it due to the horrible crimes they committed while being blinded by their false cause? What should WE as a society say to them? Should we say: “Of course you deserve to die!!” “Once evil, always evil.” It’s too late for you”??

Well…….tell that to Shaka Senghor, a convicted murderer who felt like a “monster” most his life due to his crimes, but while in prison he realized the error of his ways, and now tours prisons counseling other inmates, helping on their path to redemption. Tell that to Tommie Scott, a former gang member, who joined at 13 because they treated him like the family he never had. While on trial for armed robbery, he was shown forgiveness by one of his victims, which ultimately lead to him turning his life around. He is now married, a published author, and who devotes his life to helping kids avoid gangs and street violence. Finally, tell that to 25 year old “Khadija” (not her real name), a Syrian ISIS defector, who originally joined ISIS believing falsities that they would bring peace and Islam to her country. It was only after witnessing on numerous occasions, horrendous acts by them, she decided to risk her life by defying and leaving the group, making her a marked woman who has to hide her identity. And list goes on. All were considered unredeemable at one point, but all found a way. Redemption, is not impossible, no matter how bad the individual.


Kylo Ren’s story (and everyone’s story in Star Wars, for that matter) is about finding sympathy in the most unexpected places, learning to find common ground even with a supposed enemy, and seeing ALL beings (Jedi, Sith, and all in between) as layered, flawed complex individuals, and not just as polarized good vs evil. Also, to understand that the road to redemption is not a straight, smooth, easy path; it’s bumpy, narrow, and twisty as hell with potholes the size of craters. and slopes the size of Everast. Point is, it’s not so simple to get through to the other side, despite best efforts from others to help you find your way (i.e. Han asking Ben to come home, Rey coming to “help” him, Luke apologizing). And, true, Kylo is NOT redeemed yet, and despite the obviousness of where they’re going, there’s no guarantee that he will be at this current moment; however my point is it’s NOT impossible or undeserving for him to be redeemed, especially if he sincerely wants to be.

I’m thankful Star Wars is taking the reins on this and bring this perspective to it’s mythos. It feels much more modern and real, than what’s come before. There are definite lessons in the sequels that we all need right now in these uncertain times. A soft heart in a cruel world is not weakness. With that said, I believe Ben can and absolutely should be redeemed. I want him to live to tell the tale and to share his wisdom with the galaxy, so others don’t fall victim to the same traps he did. For him to pay it forward, just like Senghor, Scott, and Khadija. Not just for Rey, Leia, or any of the people he hurt, but for himself, and for all others who feel forgotten.


Sources:
“How she went from a schoolteacher to an ISIS member”
https://www.cnn.com/2014/10/06/world/meast/isis-female-fighter/index.html

“Redemption in an American Prison”

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/jules-horowitz/redemption-in-an-american_b_9399986.html


“He Joined a Gang by Age 13-You Won’t Believe What He’s Doing at Age 33“
http://guardianlv.com/2014/01/he-joined-a-gang-by-age-13-you-wont-believe-what-hes-doing-at-age-33/


“Sociopath vs. Psychopath: What’s the Difference?”https://www.webmd.com/mental-health/features/sociopath-psychopath-difference#1

[haroldgross]

New Post has been published on Harold Gross: The 5a.m. Critic

New Post has been published on http://literaryends.com/hgblog/raised-by-wolves/

Raised by Wolves

[3 stars]

Real science fiction is hard to come by. And, frustratingly, for all the solid bits and excellent start to this series, the writing ultimately makes some cheap choices and unforgivable mistakes in logic that takes this challenging bit of story and diminishes it.

So let me slap this around for a  couple moments before I move on to the faint praises. For instance, would a high tech world, which shows a propensity for complete body scans, rely only on ID cards and visual confirmations rather than DNA for their approvals? Or, how does a kid raised away from Earth acquire an accent. Any accent? Silly stuff like that could have been easily avoided, but they’re typical mistakes made by lesser writing in the genre. And then there’s the overall arc, but I’ll come back to that in a bit.

Now on to what’s good. The opening two episodes of this story are jaw-dropping. While riffing on several known plots like Battlestar Galactica, Brave New World, and any apocalyptic tale of Earth, it manages to build out some unique aspects. And it is quickly obvious there is a much larger story that may not take the path you think. All great things. In fact, it sets up some truly unique approaches to some standard problems… and then sacrifices them all for all the obvious paths. I picked out every major plot point early on and, while there were some misdirects, ultimately had them prove out. I don’t say this as a brag…but as a lambast. I shouldn’t have been right. At least not on all of it.

If creator Aaron Guzikowski (Papillon) was going to create a tale of restarting civilization, why riff on and recreate or make manifest everything in Western society again? Especially when he’s so brilliantly wiped the slate clean? How much of the paths taken were at the urging of Ridley Scott (Alien: Covenant), who directed the opening episodes and produced the series along with his son, Luke Scott (Morgan), I can’t say. But the issues I have are echos of many of Ridley’s stories of the past decade.

OK, that said, there is some strong acting to prop it all up. Amanda Collin as Mother and Abubakar Salim (Strike) as Father take on difficult challenges well. Even Winta McGrath, playing young Campion, brings some nice credibility (if also his improbable accent). So too do Felix Jamieson’s (Summer of Rockets) Paul and the complicated Jordan Loughran’s (Emerald City) Tempest.

However, Paul’s “parents” don’t fare as well. Niamh Algar is written with very confusing choices and slippery, plot-necessitated motives. And Travis Fimmel (Warcraft) is just completely miscast. He’s so over-the-top as to be distracting and not particularly credible for his path. Someone more like Jason Isaacs would have been better. What was needed was a strong, but damaged, intellect with the capacity for unexpected violence. A crazy man, however he gets there, just gets boring.

But what burns me the most about this opening season is the lack of answers and the number of cliff-hangers after 10 episodes. Frankly, it’s unforgivable to pay off nothing. It’s a desperate plea to get a series two, which I’m sure it will get, but I’d think twice about committing to the next round given the finale of this first. Basically, the series takes an interesting idea, chickens out in almost every respect, and refocuses on a more palatable, standard direction…and then doesn’t even have the balls to admit it with at least some resolutions.

Yes, I’m a bit conflicted. The production design and values are top notch. Some of the ideas are wonderful. Even some of the moments and writing are solid. But, in my opinion, the overall impact was so much less than it could have been with braver choices. Your mileage may vary.

[marcusssanderson]

50 Hate Quotes on the Dark Side of Human Nature

Our latest collection of hate quotes to help you alleviate this darkness.

Hatred is a feeling that everyone has experienced at some point in their lives. It’s easy to feel hateful especially if you’ve been betrayed or hurt by someone you trusted.

Hate is a profound emotion that can pollute your spirit and poison your soul. If you have hate in your life, you probably know how damaging and mind-consuming it can become. It weakens you emotionally and can affect your body’s organs and natural processes.

Although it’s human nature to feel hate, you shouldn’t late your emotions get the best of you. When you begin to feel hateful thoughts, consciously challenge them and replace them with calmer rational thoughts. 

Understand why you’re feeling hate and find a solution to the problem. Besides, you can talk to someone you trust to help alleviate the negative feelings.

Below you’ll find our collection of inspirational, profound and helpful hate quotes, hate sayings, and hate proverbs, collected from a variety of sources over the years.

Hate quotes on the dark side of human nature

1.) ”We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies.”- Martin Luther King, Jr.

2.) ”Life is one big road with lots of signs. So when you riding through the ruts, don’t complicate your mind. Flee from hate, mischief and jealousy. Don’t bury your thoughts, put your vision to reality. Wake Up and Live!” –  Bob Marley

3.) ”Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

4.) ”Throughout life people will make you mad, disrespect you and treat you bad. Let God deal with the things they do, cause hate in your heart will consume you too.”- Will Smith

5.)” From the deepest desires often come the deadliest hate.” – Socrates

6.) ”Our lack of forgiveness makes us hate, and our lack of compassion makes us hard-hearted. Pride in our hearts makes us resentful and keeps our memory in a constant whirlwind of passion and self-pity.” – Mother Angelica

7.) ”Hate is too great a burden to bear. It injures the hater more than it injures the hated.” –  Coretta Scott King

8.) ”We may not know what each day has in store for us. We could be gone tomorrow. Any minute could truly be our goodbye. But we do have this moment. This time. Today. Right now. It takes way more effort to shell out hate then it does to allow love to flow freely in our lives. After all, it’s what we were born to do.” – Grace Gealey

9.) ”Fear of something is at the root of hate for others, and hate within will eventually destroy the hater.”- George Washington Carver

10.) ”Have we not come to such an impasse in the modern world that we must love our enemies – or else? The chain reaction of evil – hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars – must be broken, or else we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation.”- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Hate quotes to help you find a solution to the problem

11.) ”I feel sorry for anybody that could let hate wrap them up. Ain’t no such thing as I can hate anybody and hope to see God’s face.” – Fannie Lou Hamer

12.)” I feel like we’ll forever live in a country that’s divided… Divided by race… Divided by love and hate.” – Raheem DeVaughn

13.) ”You reclaim your power by loving what you were once taught to hate.” – Bryant H. McGill

14.)” This world of ours… must avoid becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate, and be, instead, a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect.”- Dwight D. Eisenhower

15.)” Remember, always give your best. Never get discouraged. Never be petty. Always remember, others may hate you. But those who hate you don’t win unless you hate them. And then you destroy yourself.” – Richard M. Nixon

16.) ”When we create hope and opportunity in the lives of others, we allow love, decency and promise to triumph over cowardice and hate.” – Kirsten Gillibrand

17.)” If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn’t part of ourselves doesn’t disturb us.” – Hermann Hesse

18.) ”I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.”- James Baldwin

19.)” I don’t think you can ever be bitter about anything, because if you don’t allow your heart to stay open, then all you have is a filled heart of hate and bitterness, and you’re never able to love or like anybody.”- Debbie Reynolds

20.)” Be grateful for luck. Pay the thunder no mind – listen to the birds. And don’t hate nobody.” – Eubie Blake

Hate quotes to help you control your feelings

21.) ”In time we hate that which we often fear.”- William Shakespeare

22.)” The more people love you, the more there’s going to be people that hate you.” – Kylie Jenner

23.)” Our dilemma is that we hate change and love it at the same time; what we really want is for things to remain the same but get better.”- Sydney J. Harris

24.) ”The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people. And so long as men die, liberty will never perish.”- Charlie Chaplin

25.) ”A desire arises in the mind. It is satisfied immediately another comes. In the interval which separates two desires a perfect calm reigns in the mind. It is at this moment freed from all thought, love or hate. Complete peace equally reigns between two mental waves.”- Swami Sivananda

26.) ”A person is born with feelings of envy and hate. If he gives way to them, they will lead him to violence and crime, and any sense of loyalty and good faith will be abandoned.”- Xun Kuang

27.)” If you’re an advocate of gentleness, you’re simplistic and naive. If you’re an advocate of despair and hate, you’re sophisticated.”- Leo Buscaglia

28.)” The voice of the intelligence is drowned out by the roar of fear. It is ignored by the voice of desire. It is contradicted by the voice of shame. It is biased by hate and extinguished by anger. Most of all it is silenced by ignorance.” – Karl A. Menninger

29.) ”The wicked envy and hate; it is their way of admiring.” – Victor Hugo

30.) ”We do not hate as long as we still attach a lesser value, but only when we attach an equal or a greater value.” – Friedrich Nietzsche

Hate quotes to help alleviate the negative feelings

31.)” People can hate on you for doing what it is that makes you happy, but ultimately, it has to belong to you. It shouldn’t matter what anyone else thinks. Life is not easy. The road to happiness is not a path well trotted. You have to find your own path to enlightenment.”- Jamie Campbell Bower

32.) ”The reason men oppose progress is not that they hate progress, but that they love inertia.” – Elbert Hubbard

33.) ”Anger is like flowing water; there’s nothing wrong with it as long as you let it flow. Hate is like stagnant water; anger that you denied yourself the freedom to feel, the freedom to flow; water that you gathered in one place and left to forget. Stagnant water becomes dirty, stinky, disease-ridden, poisonous, deadly; that is your hate. On flowing water travels little paper boats; paper boats of forgiveness. Allow yourself to feel anger, allow your waters to flow, along with all the paper boats of forgiveness. Be human.” – C. JoyBell C.

34.)” When you really know somebody you can’t hate them. Or maybe it’s just that you can’t really know them until you stop hating them.” – Orson Scott Card

35.) ”I will permit no man to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him.” – Booker T. Washington

36.) ”Sensitive people usually love deeply and hate deeply. They don’t know any other way to live than by extremes because their emotional thermostat is broken.” – Shannon L. Alder

37.) ”The worst enemy is one whose doctrines are founded in hate and are thus beyond debate.” – Tobsha Learner

38.)” Race hate isn’t human nature; race hate is the abandonment of human nature.” – Orson Welles

39.) ”A man who lives, not by what he loves but what he hates, is a sick man.” – Archibald MacLeish

40.)” Hate is like a swordfish, working through water invisibly and then you see it coming with blood along its blade, but transparency disarms it.” – Pablo Neruda

More hate quotes to help you address this darkness

41.)” Hate is the consequence of fear; we fear something before we hate it; a child who fears noises becomes a man who hates noise.” – Cyril Connolly

42.) ”Impotent hatred is the most horrible of all emotions; one should hate nobody whom one cannot destroy.” – Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

43.)” The price of hating other human beings is loving oneself less.” – Eldridge Cleaver

44.) ”Love makes everything lovely; hate concentrates itself on the one thing hated.”  – George MacDonald

45.)” Chances are that when someone is hating on you, it’s not about you at all. It’s about them. It’s their fear, their jealously, their boredom, and their insecurity.”  – Unknown

46.) ”Sometimes people hate you not because you did something wrong but because you’re better than them and they cannot beat you.” – Unknown

47.) ”Beware of enemies who come disguised as friends, if a person hates you they won’t want to see you succeeding at anything and they will try to discourage you whenever they get the chance.” – Rashida Rowe

48.) ”There is no beauty in sadness. No honor in suffering. No growth in fear. No relief in hate. It’s just a waste of perfectly good happiness.”  – Katerina Stoykova Klemer

49.) ”Hate is a lack of imagination.” – Graham Greene

50.) ”To truly hate is an art one learns with time.”  – Carlos Ruiz Zafón

Did you find these hate quotes helpful?

Hate is something we all feel and experience and some point in our lives. However, you can address this negative feeling before it drains your spirit and tarnishes your soul.

When you’re confronted by irrational hateful thoughts, you can either let them consume you, or you can challenge them with positive feelings. Hopefully, the above quotes will help you address this darkness and let the sunshine shine again.

Did you find these hate quotes helpful? Do you have any other favorite quotes to add to the list? Tell us in the comment section below.

The post 50 Hate Quotes on the Dark Side of Human Nature appeared first on Everyday Power Blog.

[kierongillen]

Writer Notes: The Wicked + the Divine 26

Spoilers, obv.

This felt like a big issue to us. I mean, in a literal sense it was a big issue. We normally are 20 pages of art (plus cheats). This is 23 pages of art, due to me completely fucking up and writing a 22 page script extremely early, thinking I'd go back to it and work out a way to compress it to 20. Except I forgot I had extra work to do on the script, so didn't leave enough time to rework it before Jamie had to get it. And then Jamie insisted on expanding a sequence by a page, because he loves you guys, or at least loves the comic.

I don't really think I could have compressed it without hurting the comic either. I compress the action at the start, and it leaves a reader cheated. I talked about false drama of cliffhangers last time, and if you don't have at least some manner of satisfying that promise, it's a cheat, and not in an interesting way people would thank us for. However, at the same time, that's not what we're really doing here. Equally, losing stuff from the back of the issue would move it into the next issue... and that is also sub-optimum, for reasons you'll see next time.

Put it like this: Jamie joked “can we split this issue in two?” and I took it entirely seriously, and started doing the math on making this a seven issue arc.

But no.

There's also one change which should be mentioned – we've gone up to $3.99 from $3.50. Why? Image suggested we should. There are very few Image books that are $3.50 now. The vast majority are $3.99. We've had our price set at $3.50 ever since 2006, with the exception of Immaterial Girl. We figured we should listen to our publisher. 50 cents across a decade seems reasonable, especially in an industry where $3.99 seems standard.

Anyway, let's do this thing...

Jamie/Matt's Cover The Norns, and they are kind of core to this issue, so more of a connection between cover and contents than for most of the issue. For reasons that become clear this issue, The Norns and Baal step forward as alternative protagonists for the story structure. They are key.

There was considerable EEEK! Over the wearing of masks.

Nicola Scott's Cover

Nicola's wonderful. I've wanted a candid photo cover for most of WicDiv, and I'm surprised it's only turned up now. It's also delineating Sakhmet and Persephone, which is a key note towards the end of the issue.

The Image 25th Anniversary Cover

It should be stressed, this was Eric Stephenson's idea.

You may wonder how we did it.

This is how we did it.

In short: we did it like an episode of Playschool. The lighting being a lamp, gaffataped to a wall is a particular highpoint.

And then Katie-west worked her magic.

All the good jokes on the covers are Jamie's, which is very annoying, but makes me feel better when I laugh at it, as at least I’m not laughing at my own crap.

Page 1

I love the first panel. I almost put it in the newsletter, but decided we should save that thrill for context. It's very much in the establishing shot mode, and a promise. Jamie and Matt executing things like Minervas concussive wind blasts out of the swirling body is lovely detail too.

I did have something akin to a NOT AGAIN! As a line of dialogue from Minerva here, but was obviously killed for breaking tone. See later in the notes for other thoughts on that whole sequence.

And by the end of the page, we've changed direction entirely. No, this isn't going to be a straight fight. We have other narrative fish to fry.

Page 2-3

RISING ACTION was basically four issues of straight punchy, with a middle act of woe. We're not the sort to do that again, and immediately try and make this feel different. That first panel where we get a very human observation of a superhero event. A glance out the window, and shit is going down out there. There is a lot to try and ground this as we go on, even as it escalates...

I suspect Amaterasu's realisation is one of the cruellest lines I've written for her.

Heh. Okay – want to hear another example of me messing up? I knew I needed Amaterasu here, ASAP. But I had also set the scene at night, so her long-range-teleportation doesn't work. This led to a rewrite to bring in the Woden-designed-arm-piece from Rising Action. And it helps in other ways – we get the interaction with her mum, which says a lot about Amaterasu. I do like the idea of Amaterasu having left this piece of fancy armour lying around on her bedroom floor and her mum tidied it up.

Jamie pushed a panel from page 3 onto page 2, which is obviously a smarter call, letting him keep a steady angle on the three teleportation panels, which nails the effect. The breaking up dialogue to show that things are instantaneous is obviously one of our tropes.

The lettering on this sequence involved some messing around with layers to get work, and to make the fade in operate. Nice work, Clayton. This is also an area where my suspicion of sound-effects was entirely over-ruled.

Page 4

And hulllllo Baal's family.

This strikes me as a very WicDiv take on a reveal. It could have worked with just a reveal of his family – we'd want to see that. But to reveal that, and juxtapose it to the creeping monsters, so mixing the excitement of meeting new people with the fear of losing them? That's WicDiv, innit? Sigh.

This was also the page which went through the most colouring notes. Getting the exact level of reveal on the Great Darkness creatures, of how much they're in the light or not took quite a few takes. We're very happy.

Page 5

We are totally not rated PG.

Page 6-7

If you follow me on twitter, you'd see me doing a crowdsurfed suggestion for a line of dialogue for someone to say when they're pulling someone out of the way. That was this page, and Persephone pulling the tentacles. I decided that any dialogue was too much. It even makes it jokey (clearly not the intent) or slows down the action. Even a “NO!” felt too much for me.

We're heading more towards action here, and doing a beautifully rendered fight-scene in someone's garden. This feels a very us thing to do.

I believe I described the Amaterasu laser beam shot in the mode of a Quietly moment, that sense of a still moment in time. Jamie and Quitely don't have a huge amount of overlap as artists for me – Quitely is all about the 3D space of a shot, which Jamie simply isn't – but this captures something really furious. The colouring from Matt on the heat vision is particularly A+.

The push and pull of Amaterasu is very much her thing. Her bravery is an open question, as is her capacity for anger and violence. From Persey-Poo to incinerating her foes in a couple of pages doesn't exactly make me feel comfortable about her. So nice work, J ane M.

Also Good Job Baal's Brother on spotting the baddies.

Page 8

Jamie and my debate on exactly how to (er) Biggify the Darkness creature was quite a thing. Of course, the creatures are granular. We can't just make the grains bigger.

We were a little worried that Persephone firing red thorns being a little confusing, when red is Amaterasu's signature. We may end up tweaking them green in the trade. Not that we've seen anyone complain about it.

I think Amaterasu's living-Darkseid-stary-beam is my favourite regular power signature in this book.

Lots of careful unpacking on what is said on the phone, to ensure clear storytelling. That we never actually show the Great Darkness Creature back at the shard defeated is an unsusual choice... but we need to make sure that people know it HAS been defeated and Minerva rescued. Equally, we come back to the nature of cliffhangers we mentioned earlier. We've promised a fight against the Great Darkness, but are much more interested in introducing Baal's family, showing Amaterasu's complicity in this, Persephone's powers, etc. So you DO get a great darkness fight, just not the one you were expecting, which is hopefully okay as the one you were expecting is a lot less interesting than this. Hopefully.

The Phone is a Woden design, as referenced later in the issue. Baal can't just go down any phone. You'll see one on his living room table in last issue.

Page 9

This is the sort of page I'd have ended up cutting if I tried to reduce the issue... and why would I want to do a thing like this?

There was a discussion of whether ALL I DO IS WIN was too much. It eventually worked around to obviously it's too much, but WicDiv is too much, so that's all fine.

This is a lovely set of colouring from Matt here. The white and purple is just a delight.

Notice tiny Scarab-esque thing shooting off in the top right panel. In a moving medium the Great Darkness' nature would be a lot cleaner, but we do stuff like this.

Page 10

And we're back to grounded colours. Just turn this page and see how things change. Isn't that a delight? Matt Wilson For Eisner, etc.

Yes, Baal's name is Valentine Campbell. Obviously we chewed it over a bunch. Valentine has so many connotations seemed to be useful.

I find myself thinking that in the first half of the issue Persephone is almost back to volume 2 Laura. She's primarily an observer, one who is taken places and sees thing. That does tend to make Amaterasu's final line particularly pointed.

Lovely pair of expressions in that final panel.

Page 11

The title for this was originally ONCE MORE, leading directly into Baal's first line, and hitting the beat again. That changed when I realised I wanted to do the whole sequence as a nine panel grid.

This is the first time all the surviving gods have been in a scene together, and it's a circular table. Luckily, when I mapped the gods to the seats, the ones who are most important to interact are actually sitting beside each other – imagine how difficult it would have been if Baal and the Norns weren't seated by each other.

(We'd have done something else, clearly, and had the Norns standing like Persephone is.)

So I was trying to work out how to panel all this political-meeting style chat, and hit the bit where the gods vote. And I realised that as there were nine gods voting, it'd work really well as a nine-panel grid. That rapidly expanded to... wait, especially with Baal/Norns sitting by each other (so minimising the need for wide shots) I could do the whole thing in a nine panel grid. That allows you to cut between individual characters speaking, and not have to worry about the interactions for most of it.

That unlocked the way to best dramatically sell the Persepone's final line. If we build a structure, we can get an aesthetic effect by demolishing it.

It's not the first time we've done a Nine Panel Grid in our work, but its' certainly the longest. And if we're doing Nine Panel, it brings it back to Watchmen, which means that we should highlight that. Hence, the title altering to THE WATCH, which obviously has all kinds of connotations.

I go through this to primarily show how much fun this job can be. Stuff builds on top of other stuff, and you eventually end up with something much more full than the original idea. For me, pretty much nothing is as good as writing is when it's going right.

Which is the sort of thing I'll get depressed about if I think too much about it, so let's not for now, eh?

Page 12

If we're going to do the nine panel thing, we need to establish the scene properly. Two panels, built on a nine-panel grid superstructure.

Obviously this was a heavy described panel, as we had to cram in all the character beats for all the people. Baph's slouch is particularly on point. The coffee that Dio is hanging onto for dear life another. The Norns not getting a seat.

One thing I particularly like about this page? It forefronts the visual element of the table with twelve gods around which people may not have noted. This, on a page after a big title saying THE WATCH is more obviously a clock face.

Yes, Watchmen was a big influence on me as a writer. Did I mention it? I may have mentioned it.

Page 13

Oh man – look at Matt's use of shadow here. Baal in the darkness on last page was great, but passing from the shadow to light in the first panel.

When I first saw Jamie had put Minerva in plaid I worried for him. “Er... Jamie. Drawing Plaid is a lot of work.” He noted that as there was only a few panels with her in, it'll be fine. Jamie is not entirely foolish.

The page does show one of the things about the nine panel – as in, you get more beats... but you have to be pretty particular to choose those beats. 9 panel is good for a writer, for certain things (most important: timing), but you can do less with any one panel. On the plus side your beats are more deliberate, more delineated.

In this case, showing Persephone's is relatively “expensive” in page space, but clearly necessary – Baal is saying the stuff he's never said before. We need to see her response.

And yeah... Baal finally lays out his main motivation. I suspect for close readers or re-readers, things make a lot more sense.

The seventh panel is one of four two shots I can see in this whole sequence, to get an idea of how sparsely we tried to use them. Maybe 5 if you include the one with Woden asking “Does she get a vote.” Though I say this having only skimmed quickly, and am sure I must have missed one..

The non sequitur panel of the 8th is one of my fave things you can do with a rigid panel like this. Drop a silent panel and break it up.

Page 14-15-16

Honestly, this kind of shit is stuff I love. Just lock characters in a room and let them argue. Political dramas. Legal dramas. It's just a fascinating writing challenge – who speaks next and why. How to delineate the information, how to lampshade information is questionable, etc, etc.

I mean, in some ways this sort of debate is pure exposition – here are some statements – but the fact that each is immediately interrogated turns it into something else.

Basically, if left to my own devices, I'd have just done a 40 issue series in the style of 12 ANGRY MEN called 12 ANGRY GODS.

In terms of my outline, I knew that the pantheon would have a schism at this point. Until Brexit happened, I didn't realise that it would be by something as clear and true as a simple democratic vote.

The hand on Cass' shoulders is the sort of thing I'd have only done in a nine panel grid.

Yes, Baphomet, there was a time for jokes, and it was in the first arc.

PAGE 17

This issue, for reasons which we'll get to shortly, had some consultants' eyes on. That bit was fine. The thing which was tweaked then, and tweaked time and time over is trying to delineate the sides. The first draft simply hadn't sufficiently. Hell, the second or third lettering tweaks didn't do the trick completely. At least from the comments we've seen, no-one seems lost, so the effort seems worth it.

The problem is that each member of the debate wants to phrase their position in the best way possible and their enemies in the worst way, which actually leaves it hard to say what's actually go on. This led to Baal in the final panel actually bringing it together – the PRIORTISE THE GREAT DARKNESS vs STUDY is the key thing. ANARCHY had to be introduced explicitly by cass to describe someone else's position as a label before it could be used here too.

In terms of minor fact drops? One of the things people always ask is what's going on with the skulls. Here we just let people know they're ornaments.

In terms of the nine panel grid, I think the single hardest decision was letting go of showing the Norn's response to Sakhmet's threat. Alas, everything else is more important.

The second one would be Baal doing something like counting people around the room, to ensure that the reader knows that Baal thinks he's won. In the end, we highlight that later, and with the ellipsis  in the eighth panel. And, of course, as always a Jamie McKelvie expression goes a long way.

Er... I'm writing too much about this stuff, but I hope it's useful for people who think about comic craft. And to double-triple stress, as always in these notes, I really am just telling the surface level storytelling basics.

Page 18

And the vote page. As said earlier, was where the 9 panel grid came as possible.

These lines were especially tweaked to sell the positions and why.

And Dionysus, for the first time in the scene, speaks. Obviously a key issue for Dio, where we move him into an explicit new position in the plot.

Page 19

Man, I don't even want to unpack this page.

But I can easily imagine how both Baal and Cass are feeling in the last panel. Uh... wait...

Page 20

Formalism doing its formalism thing.

This was written in a nine panel grid, but with descriptions of which panels are covered by Persephone's hair.

Page 21

And then we go into our quick cuts to move to the new status quo, the nine panel.

It's very much our aesthetic that we show the break-up but don't show the getting-together.

I suspect it's the sort of scene I'd like to talk about further down the line, but not now.

The gold prize for Jamie here are panels 3 and 4. For me, that's comic, and that's why I love comics.

Well, one of the reasons, anyway.

Page 22-23

Cass continues to be a gift for those who like reaction images.

The strangest rewrite of the issue for me was the “What's the saying about stopped clocks?” line, which was originally a lot more suggestive and less explicit. But 2 of the first 4 people to read it didn't get it in its more suggestive form, which meant that I was always going to dial back for clarity's sake.

So, yes, this is a Cass/Dio/Woden team-up for the Study side. Splitting your cast into smaller narrative units is a good tactic in a team book (I sort of learned it properly when I was writing my 9-core-person Uncanny X-men team). You also see it all over the place – if you listen to Community notes, you'll see how they split their cast into different arrangements and see how the characters interact. Having three characters who, on the surface, appear to have very different priorties come together under a larger banner is an interesting one.

In terms of the explicitly delineating at least part of the sexualities, this has been considered for a while. Let's start with Cassandra.

Early on in WicDiv, I saw a random comment of someone annoyed with something I'd said. Specifically me saying something akin to “I sometimes need room to discover a character's sexuality.” Her response – and one I completely get – was annoyance with suggesting people don't know their own sexualities. The “No, I know I'm Bi – don't say it's a phase. Don't say it's something I'm discovering.”

As I said, I get it, but that's not what I meant. I meant characters. Writing often feels like excavation. Not always, but sometimes, and especially in a book like WicDiv. You get to know them by writing them, sometimes in actually fundamental ways, ways which were always there but now come to the surface. For all my planning in WicDiv, it's also a living creature.

So when starting off, I always had a few feelings about Cassandra. There was the possibility that she was actually asexual. It would fit with her for a few ways, and the evidence for a reading of that was certainly there. However, I rapidly realised it caused huge problems inside the narrative in terms of what it was saying about asexuality. One of Cassandra's primary traits is that she doesn't experience the performances. If she's asexual, that implies that it's linked to that – especially when the performances have been linked so strongly to sex at various places in the narrative. I thought that'd be true even if we had another asexual character in the primary cast to show the contrary. I continued writing her and thinking, and having an awareness of the various potentials I saw in her. I didn't have to make a choice yet.

The flashpoint was issue 20, where I realised that it just was untenable for her to be asexual. Because if performances are linked in the readers' mind to sex, that eventually Cassandra does response to a performance is a sign that asexuals just haven't met the right person yet.

No. I'm not writing a book that suggests that.

There is also the real world thing that trans women are viewed through a hypersexual lens or an asexual one, which is certainly one feeds into the final dialogue on the page.

So everything re-arranged and solidified in the other way I saw them – a stable lesbian polyamarous triad. I saw with Imperial Phase ahead, that felt more and more necessary. WicDiv is... not a book where relationships are healthy. Every single romantic relationship in the book is openly dysfunctional. Relevantly, there is a lot of people doing polyamory very badly. It comes to a point where it looks like the book saying this behaviour is bad rather than this specific practise is bad. The Norns would be the counter-argument. In this issue, we show them in an private, loving supportive relationship that's arguably more unconventional than any other in the book.

We don't get to see any of the sex, of course, as it's none of our business and they're not there for the readers' pleasure. But with them in our story, it shows there's nothing implicitly wrong with kink, or polyamory or anything else... as long as you don't act like sentient burning trashcans.

That was the thinking. Some of it, anyway.

Oh – on the note of discovery, I only realised that she'd lean submissive as I wrote the page. It was a surprise to me as well, but seemed to align with everything else and make a lot of things make more sense.

In Dio's case, it was there as a possibility even as I first wrote him into the bible. I see myself writing around it in my notes, saying that I just didn't feel like sex was a big drive for him in the way it was for so much of the cast. The problem eventually came for the place to introduce it, and how, and in the same action where we move Dio towards the centre stage (or at least primary supporting characters) seemed to be it.

We've had a lot of supportive messages about both of these, so thank you. And thanks again to our consultants, who we will continue to high five at the slightest encouragement.

Page 24-25

This was originally written as a page, but Jamie insisted on MOTORBIKE DRAMA!

And how could we resist that?

I actually wrote a first draft of this, and wondered if it was too much, and then did a completely different end scene based on Persephone leaving the Shard. Arguing it over with Chrissy, we came down strongly on this. It's WicDiv. We crash motorbikes into walls for the sake of it.

Worth noting: this is a return to a non-cliffhanger ending structure. The “read the next issue” comes from the whole of the issue rather than a specific beat. This is about leaving it with a mood.

Favourite thing in colour – the circle of light on the wall, a half second before impact.

I'll give you one for free: Persephone is on the phone to one of her people, probably an agent. I could have put an explicit call in that to the dialogue, but it was too crass and fake, and the specific identity doesn't really matter that much. It's just someone who's clearly going to get her a new bike.

Also: the main reason why I wondered whether this scene wasn't too much, is because it is literally the lyrics to Icona Pop's I LOVE IT.

Page 26

“Hey, C, is referencing Kesha too much on the interstitial? It sort of is a trashy pop take on Watchmen's encroaching apocalypse feel.”

“No, that sounds like exactly the sort of thing you do.”

“Cool.”

See you next month, where we reach the penultimate part of IMPERIAL PHASE (I). It's just being put to bed, and we like it a lot.

Thanks for reading.

[protego-et-servio]

The short answer: No. Absolutely not. Precedence and evidence has shown us Trump is not, and will not, be a good president. People who say that he has the potential to be have their head so far in the sand, their intestinal tract is filled with dirt.

But let’s go into details. (Though Trump doesn’t have to jump through hoops to prove his qualifications, his dissenters have to pull out receipts just to be taken seriously.)

Let’s Look At The Man Himself

No, not physically look at him. Let’s look at his actions. (A lot of these will be touched upon later on.)

He is racist. As if wanting to build a wall on the US-Mexico border and put all Muslims in concentration camps wasn’t an obvious indicator of this point, there’s tons of other examples. He’s racist against black people, against Native Americans, against Latinx, against Jewish people, against Asians. Not only that, but racists feel empowered with Trump in office.

He is homophobic. He wants to repeal the Marriage Equality act and he has one of the worst anti-LGBTQ+ advocates as his vice president. He removed LGBT rights from the White House website.

He is ableist. Don’t we remember how he made fun of a disabled man? The fact he wants the Affordable Care Act dismantled – though his back-up plan is still not released – will result is so much suffering in death of the disabled.

He is misogynistic and violent toward women. He’s grabbed women without their consent, criticized women on their looks, and even said he’d date his own daughter. Ugh… (More on this point later, though.)

And he is a opportunistic liar. He says what people want to hear in the here and now. It doesn’t matter what he said two days ago, all that matters is he has your attention and your admiration in that moment. He. Is. A. Liar.

The Company He Keeps

Let’s look at some of the people he has appointed to positions of power.

Mike Pence – Vice-President. This guy is an utter shitstain. Anti-LGBT and pro-conversion therapy (aka torture.) Climate change skeptic. Used political donations in 1990 for his own personal finances. Once described himself as “Christian, conservative, republican – in that order.”

Steve Bannon – this guy is an advisor to Trump. On top of all that, he’s also a Nazi (though hides behind the term ‘alt-right’) with an anti-Semitic website.

Betsy DeVos – appointed to head the Department of Education. Sister to Erik Prince, a literal ex-mercenary and Trump campaign adviser. Donated billions to his campaign. Anti-LGBTQ+. Has no clue how she’d handle the position.

Jeff Sessions – appointed to Attorney General, who heads the DOJ. Known for racist remarks against black people. Deemed too racist to be a federal judge in 1986.

Mike Pompeo – selected as director of the CIA. This guy is Islamophobic, pro-government surveillance (hello 1984,) pro-torture and doesn’t like women having the right to choose.

Rex Tillerson – selected for secretary of state. A CEO of ExxonMobil who has ties to Russia. While being CEO of ExxonMobil, it shouldn’t be a surprise Exxon is at fault for multiple oil spills, yet a big advocate against climate change.

Scott Pruitt – Environmental Protection Agency nomination. Climate change skeptic and ally to fossil fuels.

Suffice it to say, Trump has picked ignorant, awful, or just plain bad people for these positions. Plus there’s a dash of nepotism in there. But, hey, what do you expect from a guy who was trying to get security clearance for his kids?

Cut Off From the World

Let’s not forget the fact he just axed all ambassadors the day he got inaugurated. Which could leave 80 foreign policy ties hanging in a state of limbo for months.

These Issues Don’t Make Him Or His Colleagues Money

Not even a full 24 hours after his nomination, certain issues were removed from the White House website. LGBT Rights, Civil Rights, Heath Care, and Climate Change. Now, plenty of people argue that a prior president’s pages are moved to archives so a new president can place their issues in their own words. Bullshit on Trump, though. His team has had months to write up something for those issues. It also doesn’t bode well, since the Department of Labor removed the “advancement of LGBT rights in the workplace” from their website, as well.

Yet, oh boy, we can sure check out Melania’s jewelry line. (Conflict of interest? Nepotism?)

Grab Them By The P*ssy

Remember the legal troubles Trump got into during his campaign? I’m not talking about Trump University, though the fraud does deserve note.

I’m talking about the sexual assault and rape allegations pitted against him. One of the cases alleges Trump raped a woman, when she was 13-years-old, in 1994. There’s various women taking him to court for sexual assault, right now.

His overall list of sexual assault and misogyny is much, much longer.

That’s not all for his foray into misogyny, though. Trump wants to cut funding for Violence Against Women programs.

According to the Department of Justice website, those grants funnel money to programs “designed to develop the nation’s capacity to reduce domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault, and stalking by strengthening services to victims and holding offenders accountable.”

So, he’s going to make it harder for victims to get help and make it easier for offenders – who share so many qualities with him – to grab people by their privates (and worse) without consent.

The man is utterly disgusting.

One Person Does Not Equal One Vote

The CIA and FBI agree: Russia helped Trump get in the White House. Trump benefited from conservative gerrymandering of the lines, along with another troubling fact. This was the first election where the Equal Voting Rights Act wasn’t in full effect since it was enacted.

Regardless, we know Hillary won the popular vote by 2.8 million votes. That means 2.8 million more people wanted her, rather than Trump. The only other time when the electoral loser won the popular vote was in the Gore v. Bush election. Gore only won by 500,000 votes, though. 2.8 million is a huge anomaly and the fact Clinton “technically” lost is a travesty of democracy.

Censorship: A Fascist’s Best Friend

Trump is a huge proponent of curtailing criticism against him, also known as censorship! Which is common in fascism.

This is terrifying, just an FYI. Trump banned the National Parks Service from tweeting after it posted a picture comparing the size of Obama’s inauguration crowd compared to Trump’s crowd size. (Obama’s was bigger; it hurt Trump’s ego.)

The National Parks Service had to issue an apology when their “tweeting privilege” became reinstated.

Overall

He is in no way qualified to be President of the United States. He has multiple failed businesses. (I know you “but he’s a great businessman” apologists want to pull that out of your bungholes.) He’s a self-admitted sexual offender. He’s a puppet for Russia. He. Is. Not. Qualified.

Yeah, it’d be great if he turned out to be a great president, but we cannot ignore precedent and his sustained actions.

Past evidence has shown us he is misogynistic, hateful, bigoted, racist, xenophobic, a liar, an oppressor, ableist, a sexual assaulter, and lacks any decorum. And he aligns himself with people who are just as bad, if not worse.

Do not stick your head in the sand over any of this, because your wishful thinking and “ignorance is bliss” attitude will get marginalized groups killed.

If you’ve ever sat through a history class, listening to the horrors of genocides and slavery and lynchings; if you’ve ever thought “I’m not going to be on the wrong side of history,” now is the time to take a stand. Now is the time to be politically aware, to know what is going on in your government. Now, is the time to be critical.

Otherwise, you’re obstinately ignoring the terror that’s descending on marginalized groups and our nation, as a whole. You’re the people who enable oppressors to maim, hurt, and kill the oppressed with your determined ignorance. You’re quietly allowing the wrong side of history to remain in power.

If you remain silent and willfully oblivious, you are on the wrong side of history.

[furynewsnetwork]

In 2011, in Tucson, Gabrielle Giffords and a whole passel of others were shot; several died.  The perpetrator was a liberal, “progressive” [ironic term] nutjob who had been dutifully listening to the idiotic rhetoric and conspiracy theories of his political partisanship.  His political partisanship consisted of marginalized notions held by almost no one outside of his very small political sensibility.

Yesterday, as we all know by now, a similar thing happened in Alexandria.  The perpetrator in this case was a liberal, “progressive” [ironic term] nutjob who had been dutifully listening to the idiotic rhetoric and conspiracy theories of his political partisanship.  His political partisanship consisted of mainstream notions held by almost everyone of his very large political sensibility.

Predictably, idiot liberal “progressives” [ironic term] flooded the virtual halls of social media yesterday denying, first, that yesterday’s event was done by one of their own and, second, that even if it was it was just karma for the Giffords “matter” six years earlier which they were reconstructing into a right-wing revolution of sorts and, third, if republicans didn’t want to get shot then perhaps they shouldn’t be trying to kill sick people and destroy the planet and throw granny onto an ice floe.

…are democrats still making that granny on an ice floe claim?  Who can remember?

At any rate, I pointed a number of them at my essay from six years ago in which I expounded on a number of the rationalizations and excuses made by liberal “progressives” [ironic term] then and now to justify being grade-A self-pitying jackasses.  The essay still holds.

Here it is, with minor  style edits:

  Wagging a Civil a Tongue

© 2011  Ross Williams

  Old news by this point.  Six dead, 14 injured in Tucson.  Among the dead is a federal judge; among the injured [and presumably permanently incapacitated] is a US Representative.

I know nothing about the federal judge, but chances are I would not have approved of his ability to match the law against the Constitution and decide which to give prominence.  Most judges are a little too smugly enamored of their own “special” ability to bend words into pretzels to allow something as trivial as our nation’s Constitution to stand.

Just going with the odds, here, I’m afraid I’m going to have to quote a few famous people in response to the news of The Honorable’s death:

“I’ve never killed a man, but I’ve read many an obituary with a great deal of satisfaction.” – Clarence Darrow

“I didn’t attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it.” – Mark Twain

One fewer federal judge means one fewer person having the ability and authority to subvert the Constitution.

Yes, I know.  I’m not being very sympathetic to the gentleman, or his family, in their week of tragedy.  Well … I’m not trying to be.  This may be unfair; this judge may have been the only one in the last 90 years to have actually read the Constitution and understand what it means. …but I doubt it.  And besides:

“If you expect cheers when the crowd likes what you do, then you should expect them to boo when they don’t.” – Every Disgruntled Sports Fan, Ever

And, well, Mr Judge? Boooooooo.  Ride the pines.

As anyone could have predicted, both sides are lining up to blame each other for causing the shooter to pull the trigger.  It was the constant bath of insufferably strident, closed-minded political discourse he was subjected to on a daily basis, they say.  And as some people could have predicted, the most common target of blame is the Tea Party, and the new conservative everyone loves to hate [since the old one retired]: Sarah Palin.

Palin had put out, for the 2010 election, a map of the US with bulls eyes on it where conservatives had the best chances of unseating a liberal.  Or something.  It’s hardly a new concept, and versions of the same thing have been created every few election cycles since I’ve been voting − by both sides − when the mood of the electorate has shifted dramatically and Key Seats were being targeted for electoral change.

Liberals and democrats claiming that Palin is somehow out of bounds for doing in 2010 what they did as recently as 2006 need to see a doctor about their memory problem.  There was no shortage of graphics for eight long years showing Dubya in a scope, and the only reason I can think of that some liberal nitwit didn’t actually do what was implied by it is because “Darth Cheney” would have succeeded him.  Say what you like about Junior Bush [or what you dislike, as the case may be]; it may well be accurate.  But in the final analysis, Bush the Younger was a basically inoffensive executive, neither strongly competent, nor strongly not, and well within the century-long trend-line of federalizing new authorities.  His main flaw is being an inarticulate dweeb.

With bad table manners.

There’s no reason to believe the US would now be uninvolved in the wars we’re in, nor have responded to, um, certain events with any less statist tactics in our domestic policy if Gore had been elected.  Note how quickly we’ve exited Iraq and Afghanistan, closed Gitmo, rescinded the Patriot Act and shut down the Freedom is Slavery Department of Homeland Security under the democrat Congress we got in 2006 and the democrat White House we acquired in 2008 − both elected expressly to do those very things.

Our National Savior isn’t the first grasping elected official to subscribe to the sentiment “Never let a crisis go to waste.”  George Washington put down the Whiskey Rebellion with federalized militia; it started there.   Whoever was president on 9/11 was going to do essentially the same thing Bush did …  to within decimal places.  You’re lying to yourself if you won’t admit it.

So, no.  Both the left and the right pointing fingers at each other over which side is more responsible for the take no prisoners political rhetoric is monumental hypocrisy.  Clarence Page − who’s penned an anti-Palin polemic at least once a week since her name showed up south of Skagway − I’m looking at you, here, though I could as easily look at thousands of others.  You calling for “civility” is a Mirror, Mirror moment.

Speaking of inheriting the wind … the only example of any candidate from either side in the 2010 mud-terms calling for death or violence is Paul Kanjorski, the democrat Congressman from PA [diselected in 2010] who had this to say about republican Rick Scott, the winner of the FL governor’s election: “Put him against the wall and shoot him.”

Nice.  Paul must really be a conservative, Tea Party republican, then, right?  No democrat would say such a thing.

And not that it matters any, but parsing which side owns the political sentiments of the shooter is also a waste of time.  …though I’d have to suggest that for him to belong to the conservatives, being as he’s a 9/11 conspiracy theorist, is an extreme long shot.  Just sayin’.

Those with cooler heads have taken a different approach: it wouldn’t have mattered if our nation’s political discourse was festooned with flowery fart gas, the guy is unhinged; anything could have been enough to set him off.  Mark David Chapman believes Catcher in the Rye led him to kill John Lennon.  Loughner read Alice in Wonderland and The Phantom Tollbooth.  …and had it in for the AZ congressman for 4 years, outliving any familiarity he − or anyone else − had with Palin or the Tea Party.

Like Kaczynski, he regaled everyone with a litany of “evils” upon which the United States government is conspiring.  Perpetrating 9/11 against itself is just the first.  Not to imply anything about some of his lesser-known crackpottings, even if only because the government is involved in a helluva lotta things, but he − like every other conspiracy theorist − cites loads of circumstantial evidence as support for their favorite conspiracy.  And, as always, it is the circumstantial support that, to many people with a flimsy grasp of reality, makes sense.

The US orchestrated 9/11 because it gave an excuse to invade a muslim country, to further erode civil liberties, et cetera.

Circumstantially … all very correct.  We invaded Afghanistan, and we Patriot Acted ourselves out of still more semblance of a free country.  To people who can’t tell cause from side effect, it’s reasonable to conclude a unifying motivation.

Bush invaded Iraq [variously] to “finish Daddy’s war”, to demonstrate machismo after the defensive invasion of Afghanistan, to steal Iraqi oil…  Except for the oil-stealing thing, the circumstantial evidence is either there or can be plausibly inferred.  A commodity price doesn’t increase if there is a free supply of it, thus “stealing oil” is a tinfoil hat insanity with nothing rational behind it.  But for the rest, the only thing missing is a non-witless way of getting from Premise A to Conclusion B.

Other bits of circumstantial evidence cited by previous crackpots when doing their insanities:

certain shortcomings of industrial society and technology − Ted Kaczynski

excesses of industrial society’s government − Randy Weaver

impending Armageddon brought on by the sins of the world − David Koresh

paranoiac Waco siege − Timothy McVeigh

Et cetera.

In each case, the superficial evidence is largely accurate.  Modern industrial society has flaws.  You’re right, Ted; stick a gold star on your forehead.

Yes, Randy, there is excess of [and in] government.  I’m with you on that.

Reverend Koresh − or “god” if you prefer − the world is indeed a sinful place.  Has been ever since you gave Adam and Eve the capacity to choose Knowledge over Instinct.  It would seem to be your fault; deal with it.

Right, Tim, another in a long, long line of governmental overreactions.  Crack a history book; that’s what government does.

In all but one of those examples, the loony tune is dead − obituaries that I read with great pleasure, I might add.

Self-serving political commentators who, by and large, particularly those on the left, have been uncivil and strident in their snively rhetoric, are backtracking like mad, covering their trail of mopey partisanship by largely denying they ever participated, and are now writing treatises on “the lessons of Tucson,” with civility heading the list … as they plow all blame for their actions to the right.

Our National Savior, who called republicans and independents who lined up to vote against his party “the enemy”, is now claiming “We can do better”.  No, dude; you can do better.

Lawmakers are calling for “toning down” the harangue we give each other on a daily basis.  Some − democrats, as if it needs to be said − are actually claiming that we should, by law, be prevented from pointed political disagreement altogether, erasing one more clause from the already highly redacted First Amendment.  Unfortunately, the ADA doesn’t require handrails on Slippery Slopes.

Others − more democrats, as if it still needs to be said − are all in a panic to invent more gun control laws, as if taking away yet another of our rights is going to reduce the circumstantial evidence of all the conspiracy theories that hinge on the government taking away our rights.

Loughner is a nutjob, just like the many, many who spun conspiracy theories during Bush, and the many who spun conspiracy theories during Clinton, and the et cetera during yadda, and the blah during everyone else.  He’s just one of the few who did anything about it.  That is the only thing not always allowed in a free society.

Spout if you’re a republican, spew if you’re a democrat, write angry incoherent manifestos if you’re batshit.  Blame everyone else for your failed responsibilities if you’re in the media.  All good.

Use fists, brickbats or bullets for punctuation?  Not good.

The circumstances are there: the usurpations of power, the obliteration of rights, the elevation of a bureaucrat’s paranoias into policy.  The government is doing all these things, and much much more.  It is justified to distrust the government − indeed it’s naively delusional not to.  But it’s psychotic to conclude conspiracy; it is criminal to do much more about it than vote against every bastard when given the opportunity, and to yell at them the rest of the time.

The lesson here is not civility or any similarly puerile, cotton candy sentiment, and it certainly isn’t to fan the flames of the whack-a-mole conspiracists by giving them one more excess to rail against.  The lesson to be learned here is not for the citizen, nor even for the feckless, cowering media; it is for the asshats in our government − elected, appointed and career bureaucrat, all.

Dig it, bozos: if you don’t want the conspiratorial nitwits to step off into criminality, then don’t provide the circumstances that makes their conspiracy theory seem − to the pillocks they are − plausible.  How many Americans have gone to their graves, and taken others with them, complaining about the erosion of their rights, the highhandedness of the IRS, the paranoias of one mob of bureaucrat or other?

Their ammunition, even before they dig out the Glock, is the erosion of rights, the highhandedness of the IRS, and bureaucratic paranoias writ large and imposed upon everyone.  Do you actually need to be told this?  They have a point, and often a good one, hiding in their bonkers.

If you weren’t scanning children for naked images and groping nuns at airports, we’d be able to tell who was insane when they claimed the government was porno-scanning kids and feeling up old ladies.  As it is, we don’t know who to nod in agreement with and who to get the butterfly net for.

But we know who to yell at, and who to vote against.  And why.  Do your job, please; the one you were given by the Constitution, not the one you cut from whole cloth.  Because when you don’t do your job but instead do a job on us the way you have been, we find it very hard to scrape up any sympathy when things like this happen.

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