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dastardlydandelion · 3 years ago

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Max Mayfield and Tory Nichols in a horror film, what would be the plot/monster and would they survive?

this is it. this is the tumblr ask. the ask i've been waiting for my whole life. my time to shine, here we go!

filming begins under the cut:

tried and true creature feature, this is a werewolf movie. let's go with a werewolf between the van helsing (2004) and trick r treat (2007) variety. the beast once transformed is fucking huge, clearly both lupine and human, head almost entirely wolf, body primarily bipedal in shape, but robust, sinew shredding claws and big ass bone tearing teeth. also tails!! bc tails are cute!!! powers include monstrous strength, accelerated speed, healing factor. weaknesses silver and decapitation.

okay, so van helsing (2004) werewolves are mindless rage monsters and trick r treat (2007) werewolves are cognizant. for our max & tory creature feature, they're gonna of the in between variety. i chose a werewolf movie for these two specifically bc they both have their anger problems and the werewolf has long been a symbol of anger unleashed in the horror genre, even tho common gray wolves are just like. i mean, yk, animals, they hunt and howl and pee on trees and most of the time would rather avoid humans. but obvi horror genre werewolves are not common gray wolves, they need to be scary, and like, the remnants of traditional folklore influenced by rabies and discourse in the middle ages...wait, where was i going with this? anger, yes, max and tory both have anger problems and i think this works for what i'm gonna do with this theoretical movie.

who's the werewolf in town? terry fucking silver. bc terry is evil and dramatic and also, i think it's rly funny for a werewolf to have silver as a surname. he's fully cognizant in his transformation and he's purposefully biting kids and teenagers bc he wants more talented karate students. and like. yk, with the enhanced strength, speed, and regenerative recovery of lycanthropy, well. there u have it, more talented karate students.

do max and tory know each other, if so, how? okay, so in this 'verse tory is a lil older than max. that reflects their canon ages, i think. let's say max is 13 and tory is 16. billy has tory in some of his classes and he more or less makes a deal to spilt his allowance with her if she'll babysit max bc he's tired of neil riding his ass to babysit max. tory needs money so she's like, 'sure, why not.' max finds it rly stupid that she's 13 and neil thinks she needs a fucking babysitter but as far as babysitters go, tory is fun. she likes to show max what she's learning in cobra kai and they spar together a lot. max would actually like to join cobra kai but 1) neil would throw a fit on various fronts and 2) lucas is in miyagi-do. max knows there's some rly intense beef between cobra kai and miyagi-do. ofc tory's filled her in on the karate war, how could she not?

well one day tory takes max to the playground to watch a plane fly like she does with miggy in ck, and it's nighttime, ofc, and lo, the full moon is out. shining up in the sky. they hear a howl. they both look at each other. max is kinda curious but tory's like nah, nah, we gotta go. she grabs her, starts pulling her along. but the next howl is a lot closer and they can hear smth running and it just sounds fuckin big. they're running too now, legs pumping hard, but there's no escape once the beast is right behind them, hot, rancid breath blasting the backs of their necks and harvest gold eyes glowing in the dark.

max gets bitten first. tory tries to kick the big ass beast off of her and then it rounds and bites her too. the terror is real now. and then shockingly, as fast as it'd come, it leaves. neither girl has an explanation for wtaf just happened but tory takes max home. billy gripes at her for being out late but helps her patch up. when susan learns what happens she decides to take max to get rabies shots right away. loads her up in the car, runs her off to the emergency room-- but when the bandages come off, they are no wounds.

tory's bby bro tries to help patch her up too. but he's like 4 yrs old and his idea of "help" is sticking bandaids with cartoon characters up and down the wounds in haphazard fashion. tory plans to redo it all properly once she's put him to bed. sure enough after he's asleep, and she peels the bandaids off from every open mouthed pac-man to every green teenage mutant ninja turtle, the wounds are gone.

meanwhile there's missing ppl err day on the news. terry turns kids and teens but kills adults for the lulz.

tory and max know what happened to them was an event that tangibly, definitely happened but neither have any explanation for their wounds just disappearing. max, our resident horror fan, is the first to propose a real life werewolf as an explanation. she cites the missing ppl on the news. tory thinks she's tripping balls but reluctantly gives an inch when she acknowledges no, she can't think of any other explanation.

life goes on. max tells lucas what happened only she leaves out the part abt tory bc she's not gonna tell a miyagi-do student she's kickin it w the enemy. he doesn't rly believe her, like how she didn't rly believe him about the upside-down in their canon. he thinks the horror movies are rotting her brain.

tory almost tells her dojo but she gets distracted being pissed off by sam and that should be her priority, right? sensei kreese is always going on abt getting back at the enemy. she spends her shifts daydreaming abt revenge bc it's more comforting than worrying abt past due bills and her mother looking paler by the day.

full moon next month comes around. neither tory nor max are cognizant of or during their first respective transformations. max's first kill is neil. she's seven feet of fur and fury, tears his ribcage open with claws like daggers and sinks her teeth into his putrid, maggoty heart. susan isn't home. billy is, but he doesn't hear any of the fracas. he's unconscious on the living room floor, crisscrossing impressions of neil's belt buckle blaring red on his back.

tory's first kill is sam. sam larusso wants to think she's a bully?? fine, tory will show her a bully. she hops the miyagi-do fence after hours. she just wants a fight. just a fight, they always fight. but then she's sprouting fur and tory as tory gives way to smth else. she'd not aware of being a person when she doesn't have fur. not really, all she knows is rage and ravenousness and the morsel below her has bunny rabbit wide eyes.

neither of them remember what they did the next day. not vividly, anyway. it's there but it's cloudy and hard to discern, like a groggy fever dream more than a memory. but max burps up neil's wedding band and tory finds señor octopus (sam's stuffed animal) bloodied in her bed. it's apparent what happened. max accepts this more easily than tory bc 1) she always kind of suspected she'd turn, since she sincerely considered what attacked them was a werewolf and 2) max isn't terribly upset abt killing neil while tory is acutely horrified she killed sam.

max kinda had some smidgen of attachment to neil bc like, he's the only father figure in her life and here and there they've had their moments. but his abuse (psychological/physical toward billy, sexual/financial/psychological/emotional toward susan, psychological/emotional toward herself) outweighed any and all of those moments. she is genuinely concerned that she tore a human being to pieces and only vaguely remembers it but like, if she had to kill anyone, she figures neil was the best to kill. max is mostly concerned bc she can't kill neil a second time. she's worried the next time she turns it could be an innocent person, or one of her friends, or her mom, or billy.

tory is blindsided and scarcely able to comprehend the reality, holy shit, max was right, she's a fuckin werewolf. and she's sick to her stomach bc she hated sam but she never wanted to do anything like that. she didn't want to kill, she just wanted to break her face. scare her. rough her up. she didn't want to eat her. she just killed someone. she's a literal horror movie monster and she just killed sam. what's miguel going to think?

tory and max talk. they decide they need to find the werewolf who turned them. we get montages of them going over the news articles with a fine-toothed *ba dum tss* comb and searching areas where it seems like a werewolf would be. the woods. some caves. max all of a sudden has a freakishly tall man constantly hounding her to join cobra kai. neil's gone but she still hesitates bc of lucas being in miyagi-do. also he believes max now and with the proff, she's decided to let the rest of the party in as well. they also exist in this 'verse. she showed them the crime scene and the wedding band she burped up. billy isn't a roid rage racist in this 'verse bc that would be a giant buzzkill. he doesn't believe the werewolf shit either. he thinks max saw neil get attacked by some animal and that the carnage was so traumatizing for her, she subconsciously created a werewolf fantasy to cope.

tory meanwhile spirals downward. bc she passes sam's memorialized locker in the hall everyday. her memorial table in the other hall, full of sticky note condolences and mournful teddy bears, and a picture of sam right in the center always, always accusing her. miggy is heartbroken and distraught. hawk didn't care for sam but even he's freaked out by what happened, how the news said there were only torn up chunks and bones picked clean found in her bedroom. tory is terrified of herself. she's desperate to find whoever did this bc she wants to make them pay. if sensei silver has been asking her extra questions lately and presenting her performance to the class more than normal, she doesn't notice at all. aisha notices tory's fucked up but tory can't exactly tell aisha that she *ate* sam. aisha is also mourning, she and sam used to be bffs. so she doesn't say a word.

max has a theory that if u can learn to control ur anger, u can learn to control urself when u shift. she is, after all, v familiar with angry horror movie werewolves. and she's savvy enough to know it's smth she and tory have in common. neil is dead but that doesn't mean max isn't angry anymore. she's still angry at the damage already done and tbh also angry that there's some werewolf around turning ppl willy nilly bc she recognizes the danger in that and it wasn't smth she consented to. but controlling ur anger is an easier feat for max than tory insofar that max has a support system w her friends, and better relationships with the remainder of her fam. tory has two mentors actively, adamantly teaching her and her friends to be ruthless, view the world as ur enemy, use violence as ur go-to solution, and that mercy is weakness not to be tolerated.

when the next full moon rolls around, they decide to spend it together under the correct inference that they will transform. they think it's better to be together. they're hoping they'll be able to control each other, if not themselves. or that if they are both mindless rage monsters again, that rage will be turned on each other. this would be a better outcome operating on the presumption that one werewolf will be able to take what another can dish out, at the v least more so than a regular human being.

max is successfully able to maintain enough of her consciousness to control her actions once transformed. she feels aggressive and hungry, but not enraged and ravenous. she can keep it in check. tory, on the other hand, uh...tory can't do it. she throws her wolf head back in the most bloodcurdling howl ever and takes off like a bat outta hell. max goes loping after her. they can't speak like human speak in this form, but max tries to communicate with her. whimpers plaintively. tackles tory at one point, not out of anger but just tryna subdue her, licks at her ears and tries to get her to settle. tory bucks her off.

tory runs off again, max in pursuit. they wind up at the skate park where billy n robby are prolly up to some fuckery or another. i could easily see pre miyagi-do robby n billy getting up to all kinds of mischief. ooh, actually, they're prolly arguing abt that. now that robby's in miyagi-do he has another outlet for all his energy and he's getting the positive attention he craves so he's not participating in hooligan activity or shenanigans w billy anymore and billy is like. offended. except suddenly there's werewolves. fucking. snarling, gigantic, toothy, hairy ass werewolves.

let's say robby kicked miguel down two stories in this 'verse too and tory recognizes him in her werewolf form even if she isn't exactly cognizant of herself. she tears straight for him, jaws open. billy doesn't exactly *mean* to protect him but it's kinda an automatic reaction from putting himself in between whenever he thought neil was getting too aggressive w susan or max. and like, sure, robby's the better fighter (not that billy would ever acknowledge this) but it's not like he's gonna karate kick the motherfuckin werewolf anyway-- billy is bigger, he's bigger and it's instinct and the next thing he knows, he's in between robby and the thing w sharp teeth (tory).

and that's when max gets serious. she bowls tory over, away from billy before she can bite. they're rolling, tearing at each other with teeth and claws. lo and behold, terry silver is lurking in the background like the evil mastermind he is, just watching them shred each other and evaluating his experiment. it's a p close match and tory is the more aggressive of the two but she's also been going, going, going since she shifted and she's burning herself out. she's also fighting with the blind instinct of a threatened animal while max maintains more precision bc she has better control of herself. max also isn't wasting energy unnecessarily. max gets her jaws around tory's throat and tory just goes slack. but she can think and she doesn't want to hurt tory, so she opens her mouth and relaxes her maw, teeth grazing harmlessly thru tory's fur.

tory's being shown mercy. possibly for the first time. it's so unlike her conception of others' ruthlessness, so unlike the worldview that's been instilled into her that it startles her enough to crack thru to her cognizance. she does the wolfy deference thing where they tuck their tails and lick at the dominant pack member's muzzle. max responds in kind and lets tory up.

this is when they notice terry lurking (billy's already worked out the werewolf that came to his defense is max so he's just dumbfounded watching all this shit, and robby's not abt to leave someone who just saved his ass, so he's stuck unsuccessfully tryna pull billy away and inevitably watching too). terry calmly slinks over, sizing up his charges. he's pleased with the performance. but tory and max are anything but, another werewolf fight ensues.

so while they all get huge after transforming sheerly on the basis of being werewolves, i'm gonna guess the size is proportionate to their human forms. so tory is a little larger than max and terry significantly outsizes them both. terry is also the more experienced werewolf. it's two against one but it's not the curbstop it would be if this was some weaksauce werewolf, it's dramatic evil karate werewolf terry fuckin silver. terry's shredding tf outta these two. their healing factor can't keep up, he's dishing out faster than either of them can recover and tbh they were already winded from fighting each other first.

but it'd be a major buzzkill if our movie had a downer ending. and also, the power of determination and friendship and shit. terry's got his jaws around max's throat now. he's a millisecond away from tearing it open. tory's pinned under him but she thinks fast, frees a hind leg, and rips her claws down his soft underbelly as deep as she can and doesn't stop ripping, like pedal kicking almost for a human, but with her hind claws. his intestines shoot out like paper snakes from a gag candy can!! okay, well, maybe they don't shoot out w that much gusto, but still. the bowels are free, the bowels are hanging low and tory's tearing 'em tf up, fluids n fecal matter errywhere. on tory. i'm sorry tory. ur under him, that's just how gravity works.

terry dies. healing factor can't keep up with the damage done, it's too critical. but nobody knows it's terry until the dawn breaks and he reverts back to his human shape.

max is v much 'i told u so,' in billy's face. robby promises not to tell. he doesn't want to get mauled or killed or anything. tory's able to cope better with what she did to sam knowing that it won't happen again, that she won't hurt anyone else she doesn't want to be she can control herself now. tory believes in mercy now bc max spared her, she trashes kreese's philosophy and joins eagle fang when johnny and daniel join forces in this 'verse too. max also joins eagle fang, takes her place in the front row right between tory and lucas at her v first practice.

credits roll.

after the credits we see tory considering turning her mother in the hopes that having the healing factor would help her mom's condition improve.

is that a teaser for the sequel?

idfk.

#max mayfield #dare i tag tory #i dare not #lucdarling #ask box #my fic tag #i kind of want to write this as a fic for real #fuck

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introvertguide · 4 years ago

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High Noon (1952); AFI #27

Our next film up for review is the not-so-standard western, High Noon, starring Gary Cooper and Grace Kelly. The movie was nominated for seven Academy Awards and took home four trophies for Best Actor, Best Editing, Best Music, and Best Song. Westerns at the time were generally focused on the flawless hero who everybody loves and the citizens that band together to fight the bad guy. The good guys were all good and the bad guys were all bad. This is not the case with current film and it was one of the few Westerns nominated for Best Director, Best Picture, and Best Writing (although these were the awards that the movie did not win). It is a genre film that completely went against type. I really want to continue but I realize that now is the time to go through the plot, so let us first give the warning...

SPOILER ALERT!!! I AM GOING TO SPOIL THE WHOLE MOVIE AND IT IS WELL WORTH SEEING SO DON’T READ FURTHER UNTIL YOU WATCH ON YOUR OWN!!! IT IS ONLY 85 MINUTES LONG SO GIVE IT A CHANCE!!! IT IS VERY WORTH YOUR TIME TO SEE WITHOUT IT BEING SPOILED!!!!

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Remember that the film has a run time of 85 minutes and this is the amount of time that passes in the movie. With this in mind, there will be no “meanwhile” or “while that was happening...” in this review. Everything is shown that matters and assume that time is passing for everyone in town whether or not they are on screen.

Three men meet outside Hadleyville, a small town in the New Mexico Territory, are gathered and ride over to the train station to wait for a train. The scene switches to the retirement and wedding of Marshal Will Kane (Gary Cooper), newly married to Amy Fowler (Grace Kelly), as he kisses his bride and turns in his badge and gun. The happy couple will soon depart for a new life to raise a family and run a store in another town. However, word arrives that Frank Miller, a vicious outlaw whom Kane sent to jail, has been released and will arrive on the noon train. Miller's gang—his younger brother Ben (Sheb Wooley), Jack Colby (Lee Van Cleef), and Jim Pierce (Robert Wilke)—are the three men awaiting his arrival at the train station. It is not directly stated by the three men, but it is clear that Miller intends to exact revenge since Kane put him in jail previously. A glance at the clock shows it is 10:45. This is especially a problem since the new marshal won’t arrive until the next day and Kane doesn’t want to leave the town with no protection.

Amy is a devout Quaker and pacifist so the solution is simple—leave town before Miller arrives. They actually start out in their buggy, but Kane turns around and takes them both back to the jailhouse because Kane insists on facing Miller and his men. "They're making me run", he tells her. "I've never run from anybody before." At this point, it is assumed that Kane will get his deputies and form a posse to face Miller. He is the beloved retiring lawman and the town had banded together before to put the man in jail in the first place. Amy gives Kane an ultimatum saying she is leaving on the noon train whether he joins her or not. Kane says he has to stay so they basically split up literally minutes after being married by the Justice of the Peace.

Kane finds one man that immediately volunteers and then goes to the deputy Harvey Pell (Lloyd Bridges). Pell won’t help unless Kane puts in a good word and actually quits because he believes that Kane didn’t promote him to Marshall because of some old grudge over a woman. Kane denies even knowing about the relationship and Pell turns in his star and quits. Another person that Kane thought would help is Judge Percy Mettrick (Otto Kruger), who he finds packing up to get out of town because he doesn’t believe he will survive. The judge is the one who actually sentenced Miller, and believes the outlaw will want him dead.

Further dialogue reveals that Will Kane had stolen the lover of Frank Miller, a Mexican women named Helen Ramirez (Katy Jurado), and this was what prompted Miller to go wild and convinced the town to have him arrested. Kane is no longer with Ramirez and was not aware that she had been sleeping with the deputy. All together, it seems like Kane is not that great of a guy and that Miller has a legitimate grudge with him. The whole town knows this and some of them want Miller to kill Kane, so nobody will help him and he is again encouraged to leave. One friend named Sam Fuller hides in his house and has his wife cover for him. The old marshal is played by freaking Lon Chaney and he won’t help because he notes that members of law enforcement die and nobody really cares. Nobody at the church will help and even the one guy who volunteered backs out because he realizes it will be a slaughter. The only person who openly offers to help is a young boy, but Kane rejects that help and tells the boy to go home.

All this happens and is taking up the time before the noon train. Helen realizes that one of the men she loved will die and the lack of town support upsets her. Amy goes up to meet Helen and the two decide that they will go on the noon train together. Ramirez says she would stay with Kane and not abandon him, but Amy tells her own story of tragedy (she watched her father and brother die in a shoot out).

Deputy Pell again expresses his anger at not being named the new marshal and so he corners Kane in the horse stables and demands that he be made made the marshal and Kane ride out of town. Their conversation becomes an argument, and then a fist fight. Kane finally knocks his former deputy senseless. Forlorn, Kane returns to his office to write out his will as the clock hits high noon.

Frank Miller (Ian MacDonald) arrives on the noon train and his group of men are waiting for him with a gun belt. Helen and Amy get on the train as the outlaws ride into town. There is a very famous overhead shot which shows Kane all alone in the streets with a genuine look of fear, assuming that all of his friends have deserted him and he is about to die. The gang walks into town and starts shooting at Kane, which Amy hears from the train and she decides to go back and help. Kane is able to gun down Ben Miller and Colby but is wounded and hides in the stable. He escapes by hanging on to a fleeing horse but is again cornered by the outlaws at the jailhouse. Amy runs into town and takes a gun from one of the bodies and hides. She is able to sneak up and shoot Pierce from behind. Frank Miller sees this and takes her hostage to call out Kane. The marshal comes out and Amy scratches at Miller to let her go and Kane gets the opportunity to gun down Frank Miller.

Kane helps his bride to her feet and they embrace. As the townspeople emerge and cluster around him, Kane throws his marshal's star in the dirt, glares at the crowd, and departs with Amy on their wagon.

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I keep harping on about how this was not like any standard western of the time and I should probably explain more clearly now that the plot is known. Movies at the time focused on the American marshal as a pseudo superhero. They were honest and always on the side of good, they could ride horses and outshoot any outlaw, everybody loved them except bad guys, and women swooned in their wake. They also tended to be ruggedly handsome, tough as nails, and fearless. The antagonist, on the other hand, was completely wrong and had bad moral character. These bad guys mistreated women, disobeyed the law on purpose, stole, robbed, cheated, and had ugly scars. They traveled in groups in an attempt to intimidate people, but they were no match for the single good guy. But this movie changed everything.

An old marshal who just retired to marry a much younger woman sticks around town to fight a man whom he convicted to die. This villain had an issue with the old marshal because the lawman had stolen his woman. The deputy won’t stand with the retired marshal after being passed over for the job opening and many of the town members won’t help because they think the marshal should leave and let the new marshal deal with the problem. The marshal is scared and alone when he takes on the villains and it is his young bride who actually comes to his aid while he cowers in the jailhouse. At the end, the marshal throws his star on the ground and leaves without saying anything else.

All members of the cast need to be commend on acting against character type because the general sense of fear at what was coming explained the realistic choice of most of the town running away. It is almost comical when all of the villains are dead and the entire town comes pouring into the streets and it is obvious that there were more than enough men to make a posse and easily protect the town. But the only person that came to help when it counted was a female 20-year-old pacifist Quaker.

It has been noted by directors and film critics that this was not a very strong performance by Grace Kelly, especially when next to veteran Mexican actress Katy Jurado. Alfred Hitchcock later noted that she played a very meek part for such a strong role, but saw something in her (likely her blond hair and good looks) and gave her a much more fitting part when he cast her for Dial M for Murder, Rear Window, and To Catch a Thief.

I could not find the film on any of the subscription services when I was looking to watch it so I had the DVD shipped through Netflix. This is a good way to go because I got to watch some DVD extras and learned that everybody and their dad was attached to the making of this film. The cinematographer was Floyd Crosby, the father of rock/folk singer David Crosby. The Deputy was played by Lloyd Bridges, who had two young children on set, Beau and Jeff Bridges. According to the extras, Beau was actually in the barn loft watching during the fight between Kane and his deputy. The singer of the theme song was country musician Tex Ritter, father of actor John Ritter. A very rich history of Hollywood royalty in this single movie.

Many of the actors and writers involved in the film were concerned that they were going to get black listed for being part of this production. It was the early 50s and the Red Scare was at its height in the United States. Many actors and screenwriters were being publicly prosecuted for committing acts against America, and any movie that did not actively promote patriotism was in danger of being accused of being communist. It was a bad time for Westerns that were innovative or went against the norm, which partially explains complaints that many films in the genre during the 50s were the same. This film that depicted a lawman sticking to what he believed in and finding all his friends shunning him was interpreted by some as promoting communism or attacking McCarthyism. Director Zinnemann did say he had all this on his mind during the filming and would consider it an allegory for the Hollywood blacklisting, but that was not necessarily the point from the start.

So should this movie be on the AFI 100? Absolutely! It is part of the most American of genres at a focal point in the country’s history, yet flies in the face of all the standards of that genre. Despite this, it still was nominated for a bunch of awards and highly acclaimed by liberal and conservative leaning viewers alike. The movie is full of Old Hollywood greatness as far as the stars and the crew. The AFI list was created for innovative Americana like this. Would I recommend it? Absolutely! Just the innovate shots and the use of real time alone makes for a great watch. The story is great and the acting is great. There are few movies on the AFI list with pacing this good and it is a very easy film to watch and enjoy. Highly recommend.

#high noon #grace kelly #gary cooper #western #old hollywood #american movies #afi top 100 #best actor #Oscar winner #movie critic #spoilers #communism #red scare #introvert #introverts #50s #classic movies

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mittensmorgul · 5 years ago

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8.11, LARP and the Real Girl.

Or that one where Sam and Dean finally manage to see through their own personal messes to find some common ground... via a fantasy role playing game... irony!

There is just so much irony in this episode.

All season to this point, Dean's been the one shown to be fully engaging with "reality," while Sam's tried very hard to cling to his "fantasy" of normal life that was essentially a LARP for him. His life with Amelia pretending to be a normal guy was his version of a fantasy, while Charlie (and the villain of the piece) both used the Moondoor LARP world to varying degrees as an escape from their mundane lives. The difference was Charlie maintained her grip on reality while Gerry/Boltar lost himself completely in it, which led to his ultimate destruction.

THERE IS ONLY MOONDOOR!

Yeah, sorry, Gerry. You can't hide from your real life by cheating and lying and manipulating through the game as if it was real.

I love how Charlie as a character is all mixed up in these deeper "identity" and "reality" themes that the show still plays with in s14. Unfortunately, the horror of Carver Era is that when Charlie finally accepts her true identity (through her experiences in a "fantasy" world in Oz, literally having to reunite her two halves), she only gets one mission on which to be her own person free of that baggage before the narrative destroys her for it. I mean... Carver showed his hand in 10.21, and it's just as ugly as Kripke and Gamble's final deals were. Which is why I am SO glad we have Dabb running the game now.

But back to this episode...

When Sam and Dean show up, Gerry immediately calls them out on their fake badges and tells them they can't participate in Moondoor because their appearance violates the rules... no "genre mashup." They finally meet with Charlie, and Dean happily puts on Moondoor-appropriate clothing and picks up a fake sword to carry, even though Charlie gives him the title of "Handmaiden." (lol) Dean is willing to engage with the game to a degree, as long as doing so serves his actual goal of stopping the killings. Meanwhile, Sam stays in his FBI suit and goes to the tent designated for technology use, which isn't allowed anywhere else in Moondoor. He's not playing the game right-- according to Gerry's rules-- and stuck firmly in "reality," which lol. After spending the season to this point demonstrating that Sam's idea of a fantasy larp was settling down in a house with a girl and a dog in Kermit, Texas and working as a motel handyman, and Dean had accused him of running away from their "real lives" of hunting the supernatural, well, this is a rather pointed exclamation mark on ALL of that. Even here in a "fake fantasy world" of non-magic wands and stick-on elf ears, Sam doesn't disengage with that illusion of "normal" he clings to.

(well, until he gives in and lets himself have some fun at the end of the episode, but we'll get there...)

Then we have Gilda, Gerry's original victim who he summoned from a fairy realm to do his bidding. She was powerless to act against him, even to free herself from his control, forced by Gerry to do all these terrible things to assist him in his quest for what we see was ultimately an "imaginary" rank of power. He wanted to be King of Moondoor to Charlie's queen, while still sticking to the "letter of the rules" if not the spirit of them. If "pretend magic" was allowed in Moondoor, then "real magic" wouldn't qualify as cheating in his book.

And speaking of Gerry's book... he had a literal book of magic that he used to enslave Gilda to his will. It's not even clear if Gerry was actually "in love with Charlie" like several other people expressed of themselves throughout the episode, or if he was purely seeking a station of power for himself. It's interesting that he neither targeted Charlie directly in order to take her throne for himself, nor did he ever really attempt to woo her romantically, either. Not like he would've succeeded at that one, but if he had romantic designs on her, you'd think he would've been a bit more upset at finding her and Gilda locking lips, you know? That wasn't what upset him-- it was that his plot had been uncovered:

SAM : [nods and clears his throat] Look. It doesn't have to be like this, Boltar. Just hand over the book of spells. We can work this out. GERRY (BOLTAR) : This will all work out... [he picks up a fake sword] after I remove you from the playing field and wipe her memory. Gilda?

Oh, did I mention how Gilda is a direct parallel to what's actually happening to Cas in Heaven as these events unfolded in Moondoor? Only Gilda is fully aware of the control over her, actively wants it to end, and hates being forced to do these terrible things. Cas doesn't even have that luxury. He doesn't even KNOW he's been mind-controlled, and rather than being able to ask for help to free himself, is only forced deeper and deeper into this brainwashing instead. And, ow.

Charlie manages to free Gilda:

GILDA : He can't stop him. The book – you must destroy it. DEAN punches GERRY (BOLTAR) and a book falls to the floor. SAM gasps as the suit of armor continues to strangle him from behind. CHARLIE dashes for the book. CHARLIE : Hey, Gerry. [She holds up a dagger.] I'm the one who saves damsels in distress around here. GERRY (BOLTAR) looks down at his belt as if something is missing. CHARLIE raises the dagger over her head and stabs the book. Bright light shines from it. GERRY (BOLTAR) : No!! The suit of armor falls to the ground, freeing SAM. GILDA smiles. The sword in GERRY (BOLTAR)’s hand turns back into a fake one. He swings it at DEAN, who catches it and takes it away from him before knocking him out. GERRY (BOLTAR) falls to the floor. GILDA walks to CHARLIE.

And isn't this incredible, considering that Robbie Thompson's very next episode is 8.17, wherein Dean is finally able to help Cas break the "spell" of mind control forcing him to act against his will by helping him free the angel tablet? Except the tablet still exists, and hasn't been destroyed like Gerry's magical book, and Cas still is not entirely free. He's simply transferred his forced obedience from Heaven and Naomi's orders to the Word itself. And OWWWWW.

THEMES!

Meanwhile this entire case was brought to their attention because Garth had literally been tracking their movements by GPS and identified them as the closest hunters to investigate. They weren't exactly being controlled by Garth or forced into this hunt, but they're still creeped that he's keeping tabs on them this way... Kinda like Chuck has been their whole lives, giving them occasional nudges in the direction he wanted them to run next.

This did, however, serve as a long-needed HEALTHIER reunion for Sam and Dean.

DEAN : [clears throat] So, what's, uh... what's next? 'Cause no fun, right? Look, before you say anything, I – I – I get it. No amount of fun is gonna help you get over what you gave up. You just, uh... you need time, right? SAM : Yeah. Thanks. And you're right. Having fun won't help me. It'll help both of us. Shall we?

ETA: I forgot to mention, in that end scene at the Battle of the Five Kingdoms... the dude who tosses the frisbee into the middle of their “battlefield” and holds up the action with a literal record scratch in the soundtrack, he retrieves his frisbee and gets out of their way, but, uh, not without passing a pretty harsh judgment on everyone: He calls them “freaks.” And yet... they’re just out there trying to have a good time in their own way, just like he is playing frisbee.

#spn 8.11 #s14 hellatus rewatch #it's spirals all the way down #spn 8.17 #the scheherazade of supernatural #sam vs reality #winchester family dynamics #spiders georg of the tnt loop

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skywalkersapprentice · 6 years ago

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so when I saw infinity war the second time, i brought a pen and a notebook with me and took notes in the dark the whole time. for my second endgame viewing yesterday, i did the same. i now present to you my Thoughts About Endgame. (this is. long.)

Major Spoilers Ahead.

okay seriously, nobody called clint up when there was a giant invasion in wakanda??? nobody???

also it was daytime in wakanda when the snap happened. it’s also daytime wherever clint is in america when the snap happens. someone explain.

god the dawning panic when clint realizes his family is gone. that whole scene is so empty and unsettling, it was shot really well

i automatically associate 80s music with space thanks to marvel.

tony stark adopting strays everywhere he goes since 2013.... i love this about him

nebula finally got to win something!!!! “it was fun.”

and then she gives him their final ration. i’m- :((((

back on earth..... thank god the beard is gone.

“I lost the kid” tony’s face wow that’s devastating, no thanks

“Is um...” what was tony going to say after that??

“I thought you were a build-a-bear.” “Maybe I am.” fuckign.... tony please sdfgdfg

“And I needed you.” tony :(((

“No trust. Liar.” this entire scene is just. chilling. heartbreaking. tony has nothing left for anyone, and especially nothing left for steve, except-

him ripping the metaphorical heart out of his chest and handing it to steve made me literally gasp the first time i watched this film. i feel like it hasn’t been talked about enough, but it’s incredibly poetic.

“where are you going?” “to kill thanos” i haven’t seen captain marvel but i’m already in love with carol danvers

and now they have hope, they still think they can bring everyone back... what a dangerous thing

suddenly steve is looking at his locket of peggy all the time.starting in this film only. can we let him grieve for his actual friends?? you know, the ones he just lost? does he even mention sam or bucky in the entire film? alright russos, i have several bones to pick with you about this, but alright....

i gotta say, when i first watched this i was astounded that thanos destroyed the stones and then got beheaded in the first twenty minutes. it really left me wondering, well- what now? and that was exciting.

five years later. i mean, we knew there would be a time jump, but i wasn’t expecting this.

we’re really calling this cameo by russo representation huh

lol

and like??? steve brings up nobody he lost in the snap, instead chosing to focus on “the love of his life” that he met and lost in 1945. this struck me as odd the first time i watched and now i’m like. man they’re really trying 2 justify their later decision, huh

so they’re calling those who were snapped “The Vanished” according to the sanfran memorial

avengers r still a thing and their complex has actually grown in size?? who is funding this. is it tony

my next note just says HAIR SDFDSDFG aka heLLO carol danvers

nat :((((

crying and eating a sandwich is a mood

god. the quiet grief

natasha romanoff has come such a long way from her introduction in iron man 2. she cries freely, loves her family, actively wants to be a better person, even if a lot of her family isn’t around today. i just- love her so much.

“we both need to get a life.” “you first.” goddamnit

i.... love happy, peaceful, good dad Tony Stark, so much.

“define lunch or be disintegrated” morgan h stark is so cute

“you like going in the garage, huh? so does daddy.” tony was already so proud of her god i just :((((

me, zooming in on nat: ARROW NECKLACE

does she only wear that when she’s missing clint, or

I’m truly in my feelings about Tony being The Best Dad

Bruce apparently spent 18 months in a gamma lab, which is interesting.

god the scene with the kids asking for a selfie was so cringe are you telling me they could include this but steve couldn’t mourn for his friends

tony does dishes now. a true housedad.

that’s!!!! his first son!!!!!! :((((((

can you believe it was peter parker who pushed tony to invent time travel

“i’ve got something on my mind.” “is it juice pops?” i’m just thinking now about how howard most definitely would have sent tony straight to bed, but tony lets morgan stay up and eat juice pops with him. this is just. straight up great content.

“I love you 3000″ can you just. his face when she says that. also i’m never getting over that phrase ever

“I can stop,” Tony says, on the brink of inventing time travel.

“But would you be able to rest?” says Pepper, who has been trying and failing to get him to stop for a good 15 years.

the parallels between this and her last words to tony. ouch.

this is such a good and steady relationship now :(.

sdfgfdfg why is steve dressing like he’s from the 40s again is this a visual sign of his regression

god they did thor so dirty in this film. not with his character- him falling into great depression and having ptsd is not a bad thing, but treating it like a joke is. the audience is invited to laugh at him. Bad.

thor threatening “noobmaster69″ over the headset for his rock friend is very funny though.

hey tokyo looks alright compared to a lot of america.

every single clintasha scene in this film kills the man.

also everyone knows thanos’s name. i assume that means the world knows why everyone disappeared.

“you’re only a genius on earth” yeah but who invented time travel, rocket

rhodey wanting to straight up murder baby thanos is hilarious

the explanations of time travel in this film give me a headache

“TIME HEIST BRAINSTORMING SESSION”

bruce, nat and tony all laying around throwing ideas back and forth.... this movie is valid sometimes

“see you in a minute,” natasha says, and she’s smiling.

this is her family you guys :(((((

NEW YORK 2012

MY FAVOURITE SCENE

omg bruce making such a halfhearted attempt at smashing things please i love

okay cut to 2013 Asgard, and Thor sneaks right by his currently dead brother without even looking at him. this movie confuses me

fuck the scene where rocket slaps thor for having a panic attack. i’m glad thor ended up abandoning him.

okay so everything important happens between 2012-2014

cap/tony/scott, clintasha, nebula/rhodey.... these are such ideal teamups

“we’re a long way from budapest” give me my clintasha movie, marvel!!!

okay back in 2012, HOW did JARVIS not register the fact that there were two steves and two tonys in Stark Tower

god this entire scene is fucking hilarious the entire mcu was worth everything for the 2012 time travel scene

fuckign.... loki

ELEVATOR SCENE

as a cap 2 stan i feel so validated

HA IL HYDRA

WHEN I SAY I GASPED IN DELIGHT

CAP VS CAP

“I CAN DO THIS ALL DAY”

“YEAH, I KNOW, I KNOW”

sadfgfdfg are u really telling me that cap takes the peggy locket everywhere

BUCKY IS ALIVE

THAT IS AMERICAS ASS SDFGFSDF PLEASE

2012 avengers best avengers

meanwhile the sorcerer lady is giving bruce a time travel lesson and i didn’t understand any of it but basically each reality requires six stones in order to not be torn apart by the forces of darkness? ??

I’m just glad thor got some kind of closure by talking to his mom

side note you can definitely tell that frigga raised loki

“EAT A SALAD”

“i’m still worthy” asdfgfdf yeah but now this timeline thor has no hammer!!!

QUILL SDFGFDSDFGHFDS

this movie is so entertaining

i live for nebula and rhodey just judging everyone

so do the guardians just.... not happen in the 2014 timeline?

gamora is ready to Fight thanos when the maw threatens nebula

was that young alexander pierce headed underground in 1970?

bone 2 pick with this whole time travel thing

thor got closure by talking to his mom

tony got closure by talking to his dad

steve saw peggy working, successful and thriving, through a window. closure where????

he should have gotten a chance to talk to her and received closure that way.

hank pym is an asshole but i guess we already knew that

“my wife is expecting” so tony was born 1970/1971 ig

howard’s dad beat him with a belt. i suppose every stark does a little better parenting-wise

Jarvis!!!!!!! agent carter is canon!!!!

vormir oh god here we go

“under different circumstances, this would be totally awesome” i’m inclined to agree with clint

this part goddamit

handholding :((((

my next note just says “aveng ers 1 paralels fu k”

the way this was filmed was beautiful. the colours, the lighting, the acting, the dialogue, the parallels to the first clintasha fight in avengers 1..... if natasha had to die, this was.... a good death, i think.

“damn you!”

“it’s okay.”

clint is begging her this hurts so much :(((

god. tears.

clint just sobbing in the water with the soul stone in his hand hits some kind of way

where is natasha’s funeral, huh??? why does steve shed like one (1) tear?

also why does the gauntlet need to physically be snapped like what does that dO

i just realized that thor’s fake eye is amber.

Infinity Stones:

almost killed thanos after 2 uses

destroyed bruce’s arm

killed tony

imagine an alternate scene where all six original avengers survived until this point and all of them held one stone as they snapped thanos’s army out of existence. that would have been the ultimate fanservice and i would have astral projected. anyway we’re getting off topic

“don’t change anything from the last five years.” what tony means is “please don’t erase my daughter”.

SNAP

yay they did it except-

how did everyone survive thanos blowing up the avengers compound

2014 gamora sounds just- slightly different than 2018 gamora. a little harsher. the guardians haven’t yet softened her edges.

“we become sisters” and suddenly gamora has hope

i- did that lightning just braid thor’s hair sdfgdsdfgh

this is a harsher thanos. thanos who died in 2018 had been changed. weakened, maybe.

thor, cap and tony fought in avengers one. now, they’re fighting thanos together.

l just. love that clint has a sword now.

“he won’t let me” nebula.... :(((((( and she dies crying

i have a note here that says “thor’s lightning + tony = c o o l”

STEVE WITH MJOLNIR

ASDFGFSDF FUCK THIS WAS WORTH EVERYTHING MARVEL HAS EVER PUT ME THROUGH

LIGHTNING POWERS

i LIVE

oooh it’s personal for thanos now

YOUR

LEFT

the portals scene fUCK

this is just. worth it. on every level.

PETER AND TONY

“this is nice” please :((((((

poor peter quill gets snapped, gamora’s loss fresh in his mind, then he thinks he’s gotten her back and she’s not the gamora he knew. ouch.

tell me why everyone but steve gets a reunion scene lol

peter introducing himself to everyone!!!! he’s so sweet.

CAPTAIN MARVEL HAS ARRIVED

i’m gay. oh my god.

hhhhgn hair

GIRLS

this is fanservice!!! as in, i am a fan and i feel fuckign SERVICED

thor duel welding mjolnir and stormbreaker is AWESOME.

strange holds up one finger. tony gives a look of heartbreaking acceptance.

god. tony stark, you brave, brave man. he knew he wasn’t going to survive this one.

“I am inevitable.”

“I. am. Iron Man.”

SNAP (2)

you lose, thanos.

but also, i lose, because oh god tony.

peter :(((

“Mr Stark!”

“Sir!!”

“Tony!!”

oh. fuck.

“you can rest now” do you SEE the parallels to the earlier conversation between tony and pepper :(((

the arc reactor going out physically broke me

i didn’t take many notes after this because i was literally sobbing lol

“I love you 3000″ stabs me again

“proof that tony stark has a heart” yes well my heart is breaking

happy :((( is morgan’s jarvis :(((((

Queen!!!! Valkyrie!!!

this dick measuring contest between Quill and Thor got old five hours of content ago.

:))))) rage time :))))))

bruce tried to bring back nat with the snap :(((

oh god bucky.

his face!!!!! his voice!!!! he’s trying to be strong and find but he looks dead inside

i just- fuck. he knew and he let steve go.

why did he show up on that bench i don’t understand

“I’m happy for you” are you telling me sam wasn’t the least bit hurt or mad

the ONLY good thing about this is Captain Sam

fuck steve tho

what year is this dance in

i mean. it’s sweet. but this is not steve.

I think i’ve talked enough about my dislike of the direction steve’s character went in in this film. that was the major point of dislike for me, but given that the council has made a stupid ass decision i’ve elected to ignore it. i understand that both tony and steve had to make their exist from the franchise here, but.... there were better ways to go about that.

i think a few different relationships slipped through the cracks here- characters suddenly grieving people they haven’t seen in /years/ and completely ignoring others who only recently died was a big one for me. but other characters saw a lot of development- nebula was a favourite of mine in this film, which i was not expecting! she and rhodey made a really good team- i feel like they understand one another.

the Original Six all saw a decent amount of screen time, which i appreciated. nobody got left behind there. there were so many references to other films that i know i didn’t catch them all, but it really made this movie seem like a love letter to the fans.

i want to make it clear that i actually loved most of this film. i think it was a good send off for the avengers and i love a good time travel plot (like, it’s one of my all-time favourite tropes. i was vibrating with excitement in the theater during the 2012 scenes.) i went in expecting a lot of the emotion to be sidelined in favor of plot and action, and while that happened a little bit, i was overall pleasantly surprised with the amount of emotion that they fit into this film. characterization and emotion is perhaps even more important to me than a good plot, and this film got the emotion down.

it’s definitely not a perfect film but it could have been so much worse, so i’m grateful that we got a good sendoff for the avengers.

7/10.

#endgame #endgame spoilers #avengers endgame #marvel #spoilers #shelby reviews movies #it took me two hours to write this out bye

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narirose · 6 years ago

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Out of Sight, Out of Mind - Chapter 11

Watching the three Alteans try pizza for the first time was a sight to see. They were confused by the different toppings and types, especially with the added opinions off all of the Earthlings. Due to the large group of 12 people, they ordered 6 different pizzas with different combinations of toppings. By the time the group had revealed all of their weird combinations, the Alteans and Galran were skeptical. They tried Shiro and Keith’s first because of better judgment and kept the weirdest for last. That meant Pidge would be able to eat in peace for a while.

Allura ultimately liked just cheese, Krolia liked Shiro and Keith’s, Romelle liked Hunk’s Pineapple and Ham, and of course, Coran enjoyed Pidge and Matt’s. Their pizza was basically just a combination of all of the topping they could possibly get onto a pizza. Usually, the small pizza place only allowed about three toppings per pizza, but the Holt family got an exception because they were friends of the owners.

Pidge was aching to watch some Earth movies so the group decided they should just hang out all night, but they needed a few things first. They sent Lance, Hunk, Pidge, Keith, and Matt to the corner store a couple blocks down. Ultimately, they sent Keith into the store alone, and video called him so that they would be able to see. Pidge and Matt couldn’t go in because the store was owned by family friends, and Lance and Hunk couldn’t go in because they’d visited the store a few times when they visited Pidge back while they were still in high school. That left Keith. The red paladin walked aimlessly around the store for a couple minutes, allowing the group to make decisions about what they wanted to get. They had about 50 bucks, but Keith doubted they would use all of it. Most of the items in the store were only a dollar or two.

“Stop!” Lance shouted. Keith jumped back at the sudden noise. “Pick up those. The Bugles, they’re essential!” “Bugles? Out of all the Earth foods to miss, you miss Bugles?” “Uh, Yeah! They’re a classic. Plus I need to show y’all something.” “Okay…” Laughing, Keith grabs a package and keeps walking.

Every once in a while he stops and picks up a new item that the group suggested. Most of them were sweets but every few minutes he’ll be asked to pick up something weird like mini pepperoni and nacho cheese sauce. Hunk wanted smores materials and Matt wanted almost every sour candy in there. He also picked up a couple things that Shiro and Mr. and Mrs. Holt wanted. After almost an hour of walking around the small convenience store, he walked up to the register. He was carrying two full shopping baskets full of junk food and he probably looked crazy. Keith ended up using all 50 bucks and even having to call Lance in to lend him another eight bucks. He then proceeded to awkwardly carry eight bags of junk food and liters of soda out the door.

By the time they got back, the group of adults had already chosen three movies to vote from. They ended up watching Star Wars, ironically. Since they hadn’t been on Earth for quite some time, they decided to watch The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi. Keith, Pidge, Lance, and Hunk sat smushed together on the couch. Throughout the first movie, Keith quietly whispered questions between Lance and Pidge, about the series and who all the characters were. They were patient until he asked what 'the force' is. Pidge jumped up and pointed an accusatory finger at him. Shiro paused the movie and turned around to see the scene unfold.

“I can’t believe it,” they held the back of their hand to their forehead, sighing dramatically, “Keith of all people, my fellow nerd, hasn’t seen a single Star Wars movie, plus he doesn’t even know what the force is!” “I guess as a kid I never had anyone to watch it with, so I never really got into it.” Keith defended. “Oh my gosh, my poor Keith!” Lance whispered, putting a hand on Keith’s shoulder. “We must teach you!”

For the next thirty minutes, Hunk, Lance, Matt, and Pidge took it upon themselves to teach their fellow paladin all about Star Wars, its ships, and its theories. By the end, they prided themselves on getting Keith hooked into the story and characters, and they even got Shiro interested in the very, very in-depth theories. They unpaused the movie and continued watching.

Halfway into The Last Jedi, Lance hopped up and ran to the kitchen. He came back hauling all the bags of food they had gotten, and proceeded to pass them out. He passed Shiro his candied pineapple and YooHoo and Matt his Pringles and huge jar of pickles. Then he passes the liters of soda and bags of pre-popped popcorn over to Colleen and Sam and then continued to pass out the rest to his friends sitting on the couch. He handed Keith a bottle of soy milk and a gigantic bag of hot fries, Hunk his Funyuns and dark chocolate, and Pidge their sour patch kids and peanut butter cookies. Then he plopped himself in between Keith and Hunk and pulled out his Bugles and packages of Oreos. The five had also picked up a couple basic things like gummy worms, Hershey’s chocolate, Doritos, etc so that the non-earthlings could try all of the “amazing cuisine” that they had here on Earth. They watched the movie and passed their snacks around so that the Alteans and Galran would get the full experience.

After the movie ended, Pidge jumped up and popped Mamma Mia into the DVD player. Mr. and Mrs. Holt had already retired to their room, and Allura, Romelle, Krolia, and Coran had gone to sleep in the guest room. Meanwhile, Matt had grabbed a couple of sleeping bags for them to sleep on. Most of them were either asleep or about to be, but when the yellow and blue paladins heard ‘I have a Dream’ playing, they jumped up and immediately started to sing along. Although the opening song only lasted about a minute, the three had sung and laughed enough to wake Keith and Matt. The two newly awake people, looked blearily around the room to see the group of teens dancing around the room.

“Uh, what’s going on?” Keith asked, still half asleep. “Um, We’re only watching one of the best movies ever made!” Lance answered, jumping on the couch next to where Keith was sitting. “K’mon Keith! Dance with us!”

Lance pulls Keith to his feet and drags him to the center of the living room where the other two were dancing. Instead of dancing like the rest of them, Keith awkwardly stands there until he decides he would rather go raid the kitchen for a late night snack.

“Keith! Grab me more pickles!” Matt shouts to the red paladin. “I’m not doing that! I still remember when we were younger and Adam, Shiro and I had to take you to the hospital for drinking too much pickle juice.” “What!?”Pidge gasps and pauses their jumping to turn around. “I never knew that! I mean, I knew Matt had a problem, but not that big of a problem!” “Yeah,” The suddenly hear Shiro say from his positing sleeping on the ground, “That was not a fun trip to the hospital. I was the one that had to explain to the nurse what was wrong with you.” “Haha, sorry Shiro!” Matt said before flopping back down onto his sleeping bag.

Keith came back with a glass of regular milk and some Oreos, and sat next to Matt, watching the three teens dance around. He dipped his Oreos in the milk, and when he ran out of cookies to eat, he chugged the glass.

“Keith, you’re gonna regret that” Shiro sang from his own sleeping bag. “Whatever, I’ll deal with the problem in the morning” “What’s the problem,” Lance wheezed, sitting next to Shiro. He had just finished belting out a song with Hunk and Pidge and overheard the conversation. “Keith, here,” Shiro motioned to the red paladin, “Is lactose intolerant, but refuses to admit it.” “Because I’m not!” Keith huffs. Sure, milk maybe made his stomach hurt, but that didn’t mean he was lactose intolerant. That would mean he had a weakness… And Keith did NOT have weaknesses. And ever since we found out he’s part Galran, I’ve been trying to convince him that’s the reason.” Shiro said. “Awwweee, Is Keith upset that he can’t have milk because he’s part space kitty!?” Lance said, ruffling Keith’s hair. “Am not!” Keith growled, swatting Lance’s hand away, “Now can we please stop talking about my disagreement with milk!” “Sure, sure,” Lance waved his hand, changing the subject. “So did y’all wanna see why I wanted the Bugles.” “Sure.” Everyone said in unison, Hunk being the only one who was actually excited.

Lance pulled out the bag of Bugles and grabbed a blanket that was draped across the back of the couch. He adorned the blanket over his head and arranged the Bugles over his fingertips. “It is I, Haggar, the space-witch! I took the beautiful man's arm and then made a clone of him! I've tortured 6 teens for years and given then all anxiety and PTSD. I also have an Amazing husband and son who have killed trillions of people! Now give me all the quintessence!” He said in his best imitation of Haggar. The others burst into laughter, as a proud Lance watched his friends. It had been so long since any of them had joked around about their situation, that by the time they were done laughing, all of their faces were beet red. “You’re right Lance,” Keith said slowly, trying to regulate his breathing, “the Bugles were essential.” Now it was Lance’s turn to become beet red. He laughed and said, “I told you, so!”

--- --- ---

One musical later, the group of friends gathered on Pidge’s living room floor. They laid on old sleeping bags, talking in the dark. Pidge brought out their old star projector, and they set it up so it was facing the ceiling. They talked about what they were excited about, and what they would do after the war was over. They didn’t want to get too deep, so they only talked about the places they would go or the people they would see.

“What if we get to meet like... Oprah and Ellen... or like The Obamas!” Pidge suddenly said, throwing their hands up into the air. “Oh, I guess I never thought about that,” Shiro said, in deep thought. “Yeah, we’re gonna be so famous!” Lance whispered. He didn’t know how he would feel about all of the attention, but maybe he could finally be able to buy his mother the nice beach house she always wanted, or buy his brothers and sisters new stuff so that they wouldn’t steal his. “Haha, but we still have to finish this war, so stay alive!” Matt joked, grimly. “Wow, way to kill the mood, Matt,” the green paladin said, as they aimlessly punched at their brother’s arm. “Ok, well now that I’m thinking about the possibility of death, I’m ecstatic, so I’m gonna go to sleep now so that I can start dreaming about it!” the red paladin said in a monotone voice, turning on his side. “Yeah, same.” Shiro laughed, pulling the covers over himself. “Yeah, I think Hunk’s been asleep for a few minutes so I will, too.” Lance followed. “Please don’t wake me until at least 10,” Pidge grumbled as they flopped onto their stomach.

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

#klance #shadam #voltron #vld #vld spoilers #nari rose is writing

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smartchicken · 7 years ago

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Hi I show up every time you post which is haha, so funny, but I just wanna know if you've figured out that I'm a desperate bitch yet and if not, I'm a desperate bitch and I like your stuff. You're cool (also what're your thoughts on a road trip AU featuring young!Tony with a lot of trauma under his belt alongside honourably discharged Bucky who's forgotten how to live but they meet in the middle and it becomes a little easier to breathe)

-chokes-Oh manFirst off, i really would like to encourage people to just randomly describe themselves in my inbox.SECOND this is the first time I've replied to an ask with the mobile app and i don't understand why it's not automatically double spaced, it's really fucking with me, but I'm about as likely to do something about it as i am to tell my phone to auto-capitalize "i". I just Don't CareTHIRDLYROADTRIPokay first off I've had a very few good roadtrips and only one was "Long" (~18 hours) BUT i have great stories from those and now i am picturing not only a young Tony maybe on the run or just trying not to be home, and poor Bucky who got an honorable discharge but got fucked over because that's the American way, but all the avengers because the best roadtrip is when there's two cars and by about halfway through you're straight up enemiesSo like, car 1: Rhodey, Nat, Pepper, Bucky, and Tony. Car 2: Steve, Clint, Phil, and Sam. Because those are who i currently feel like giving a fuck about. Car 1 starts with a disadvantage because 5 people in one car always sucks but like, ride or die bitchesSo I'm sort of imagining this as BlackPepper combining their friendgroups in a fucking into the fire way like sink or swim love each other or else. Because it's that or awkward lunches for six months and they clearly don't have the time for that. I assume there is plotting going on because we all know it plotting redheads, but they probably lost control of the situation at one point because roadtripLike I'm imagining a college au so get in that mindset. I feel like Pepper immediately put her foot down about Tony, who's the only teenager there even though he acts like an old man. Pepper is just like okay Tony HAS to be with me or Rhodey at all times or I'll fuck everyone up Nat i stg i will kill your friends to death if they look strongly at my precious baby and Nat looks a this stubborn little asshole who is at once fearless and terrified and she's like, fair enoughBut Bucky, right? I know I'm a Tony fangirl but I'm not forgetting about Bucky. Cause Bucky went into the army at 18 and he came back three years later a different person. Steve didn't go with because a) he's a twiggy artist and b) Sarah would have murdered him after she destroyed the entire us military tbh. Bucky's a freshman, the only one in the group even though he's older than most of them. He's been back for like 6 months now and probably shouldn't even be dealing with college life but he's Bucky and lbr he's not gonna cut himself any slack. But by golly his friends love him and will absolutely fight everyone for him, even himself. So while Pepper's like "protect my son" Nat is like okay let's try to make sure Bucky's with Steve because they're kinda codependent but we're letting that happen for now because we have bigger fish to fry, but on the dl because currently Bucky won't admit to any issues under penalty of death.So day of the roadtrip. I dunno where they're going probably tourist shit they're just like get in the car we'll head for such and such and go from there. My only frame of reference here is Florida so I'm picturing them having to drive at least five hours before they have any reason to stop.Oh! Yes so first stop is gonna be a spring or river or some sort of water shitSoGetting ready to go is Hell they have to fit enough shit for nine people into two regular sized trunks. So they've gotta clean literally everything but the spare tire outta those("Fuck it, leave the tire," Clint suggests. He's packed all of a backpack and, incomprehensibly, his bow with three arrows and he's absolutely going to reek in about two days and probably didn't bring any shampoo or a toothbrush. It's probably like, a t-shirt, some boxers, and swim trunks. He'll wear the same shorts for a month he doesn't care. "If we get stuck on the side of tree road, I'll feed you to buzzards for sport," Pepper says pleasantly. She knows him a little better than most of Nat's friends because her and Clint half live together. They get along fine but Pepper progressed to threats much quicker than Clint is comfortable with. He thought about telling her it was hot but decided he liked his balls intact. "Just shove over the duffle," Bucky said. Tony's being quiet but he's got a toolkit packed in case anything goes wrong; there'll be no stuck-on-the-roadside on his watch. )So they get the trunks sorted and there's a couple bags in the backseats but it's good enough. Then Phil shows up (when did he leave???) and stuffs some blankets and pillows into both cars. "My family likes roadtrips," he says. His eyes are dead. Phil is not including himself in his family here. Phil tried to beg off but Pepper couldn't get Happy and Nat couldn't get Scott etc etc for various missing people and Phil agrees to come because, ultimately, these socially-challenged morons need a voice of reason and that's not Pepper or Nat OR Sam, no matter what they think(The truth is they're all reckless idiots and Phil's no exception but combined they can keep each other safe-ish or at least get in trouble together)((Tony didn't want to come either but more because he doesn't want to get underfoot. But Rhodey and Pepper made the mistake of trusting his "I'm fine" and leaving him alone for a few weeks at school exactly once. Pepper had hugged him and said "Pretty please?" and Tony's no good at turning down requests, especially from his few, beloved friends))(((Nat took a different approach with Bucky, who didn't want to come either. "If you don't come Steve won't come and then you'll have to say at Steve and Sam's wedding that it was delayed all because you skipped out on the best roadtrip ever.""It is going to be awful," Bucky said. Nat gave a particularly Russian shrug. Bucky sighed and gave in. He didn't exactly wanna spend a week in the dorms alone anyway.)))And then they really just wanna get going what the fuck guys it's already evening should we just wait til morning no fucking way shut your mouth we're going n o wPepper and Nat manage to be together, and they manage to pay Tony and Bucky special attention, as intended. But uh. Oops?It's Rhodey driving with Pepperi the passenger seat, mostly out of habit; they've done short road trips a lot at this point and it's always Rhodey driving to start, Pepper up front so Tony can nap in the backBut uhTony's in the middle in the back, with a pillow and a tablet in his lap. He's putting on a good show of being Totally Fine, but he's clearly tense. Bucky's smooshed against the door as much ash can, broadcasting discomfort like a cat in the rain. Nat leans against the door too, trying to be considerate, but Pepper starts texting her urgently( TOUCH HIM!!!!!hes so tense wtfNat I love you trust me and touch him a littleAnd Nat shifts over just a bit, so her legs are against Tony's, and for a second he freezes, and then he finally loses some of that tensionTOUCH STARVED?????? Nat texts Pepper, alarmed for this kid.His dad sucks, is Pepper's take, and Nat scowls and gets comfortable, pointedly touching Tony without pushing into his space.)MEANWHILE Phil is the odd man out but he's driving so it kinda works. Clint's in the passenger seat because Clint is a no good dirty cheater, and also has very stern, specific instructions from Nat. Steve and Sam are the most comfortable of the entire group, and within an hour they've got their feet a little tangled, not cuddling but not-not cuddling, and Steve's dosing a little cause he took a motion sickness thing and it always makes him a little sleepy"So Pepper seems terrifying," Clint says to Phil as an opener. They probably should've hung out at least a little before this because Pepper and Nat are the only things he can think of to talk about (and maybe it's not helping that Phil is weirdly hot and serious and he's seen him smile a couple times and he's trying to figure out how to see it up close but it turns out it's not hard cause right away Phil grins and chuckles a little and Clint thinks he's maybe having a heart attack)"So does Natasha. Or is it just Nat?""Sometimes it's Natalia," Clint says automatically, which isn't very helpful. "Uh. What are you studying?" Which is stupid and cliche but Phil manages to turn it into an actual conversation and in the backseat Sam's texting the whole thing to Bucky, who keeps sending back strings of emojis that aren't always sensible but like, Sam totally gets it. And then Sam gets a text of the top of a head of messy dark brown curls and a string of panicking emojis. There's a suspicious blushing emoji in there though and Sam snickers to himself. Steve wakes up with a little "hm?" which is too cute for words so Sam just passes him the phoneTony started off working on his tablet but he hasn't slept in...a while and he's been stressing about this but now he's in Rhodey's familiar car and Pepper's got classic rock going kinda quiet and Nat snuck her toes under his leg and he fights it for a while, but eventually he slumps over, and he doesn't even notice himself sliding towards the warmth that smells like machine oil and leather. Tony looks small and sweet and quiet and Bucky likes to watch him sometimes, when he can, even though he feels like a creep. It's just that Tony seems so alive in a way that Bucky can't really capture. Like he's so tired but so full of life and fire and maybe that's optimism he's not sure but he thinks it might be. Everyone always seems tired on campus, or young and stupid, or just so unrelatable. And it's not that he can relate to Tony so much as he wishes he could. Like watching the moon in the surface of a lake and being afraid of the ripples. Bucky slowly relaxes, lulled into it by Tony's quiet breathing, and Nat gives him a very obvious thumbs up, with a certain look in her eyes, and he catches Rhodey's eye in the rearview mirror, so he slides down a little, slowand quiet, tucks an arm around Tony and lets himself relax, puts down three phone and stares out the windowThey stop at an all-night walmart when Clint suddenly realizes they don't have SUPPLIESWATER SUPPLIES!!!Bucky and Tony go in, with Clint and Phil, to get Supplies, while everyone else stretches their legs or texts demands for snacks.They grab a bunch of stuff, everything that looks even mildly amusing, Tony sleep-fuzzy and relaxed from it, and in line him and Clint attack each other with pool noodles, earning a few glares from other shoppers, but they're laughing too!much to care. There's not really room in the cars for everything but they make it work and they're all wide awake then, everyone chattering for the last two hours before they realize they should've arrived by now and then Rhodey stops (he was the one leading) and there's dogs barking and they're in a trailer park andPhil calls him just to ask, "What the fuck Rhodes."They all get out their phones and they're yelling directions at Rhodey and they're lucky he loves them because seriously they deserve death at this point. They pull up to the park at 5am when they should've been there at, oh, 1 or so no one's sure how they got so turned around but they made it yaaayAnd then "Fuck," Pepper says. "Tents."And that's where I'm leaving this for now cause I'm tired of typing on mobile but tbh i wanna write a college roadtrip now. I'm just imagining a lot of cuddles at this point everyone gets maximum hugs plz. Also i can't tag this??? So thanks mobile

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top40gordy · 6 years ago

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Twitt https://twitter.com/share?text=Everything%20You%20Know%20About%20Obesity%20Is%20Wrong&url=https://highline.huffingtonpost.com/articles/en/everything-you-know-about-obesity-is-wrong/&via=HiSEPTEMBER 19, 2018

For decades, the medical community has ignored mountains of evidence to wage a cruel and futile war on fat people, poisoning public perception and ruining millions of lives.

It’s time for a new paradigm.

STORY BY Michael Hobbes

IMAGES BY Finlay MacKay

From the 16th century to the 19th, scurvy killed around 2 million sailors, more than warfare, shipwrecks and syphilis combined. It was an ugly, smelly death, too, beginning with rattling teeth and ending with a body so rotted out from the inside that its victims could literally be startled to death by a loud noise. Just as horrifying as the disease itself, though, is that for most of those 300 years, medical experts knew how to prevent it and simply failed to.

In the 1600s, some sea captains distributed lemons, limes and oranges to sailors, driven by the belief that a daily dose of citrus fruit would stave off scurvy’s progress. The British Navy, wary of the cost of expanding the treatment, turned to malt wort, a mashed and cooked byproduct of barley which had the advantage of being cheaper but the disadvantage of doing nothing whatsoever to cure scurvy. In 1747, a British doctor named James Lind conducted an experiment where he gave one group of sailors citrus slices and the others vinegar or seawater or cider. The results couldn’t have been clearer. The crewmen who ate fruit improved so quickly that they were able to help care for the others as they languished. Lind published his findings, but died before anyone got around to implementing them nearly 50 years later.

This kind of myopia repeats throughout history. Seat belts were invented long before the automobile but weren’t mandatory in cars until the 1960s. The first confirmed death from asbestos exposure was recorded in 1906, but the U.S. didn’t start banning the chemical until 1973. Every discovery in public health, no matter how significant, must compete with the traditions, assumptions and financial incentives of the society implementing it.

Which brings us to one of the largest gaps between science and practice in our own time. Years from now, we will look back in horror at the counterproductive ways we addressed the obesity epidemic and the barbaric ways we treated fat people—long after we knew there was a better path.

I have never written a story where so many of my sources cried during interviews, where they shook with anger describing their interactions with doctors and strangers and their own families.

About 40 years ago, Americans started getting much larger. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nearly 80 percent of adults and about one-third of children now meet the clinical definition of overweight or obese. More Americans live with “extreme obesity“ than with breast cancer, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and HIV put together.

And the medical community’s primary response to this shift has been to blame fat people for being fat. Obesity, we are told, is a personal failing that strains our health care system, shrinks our GDP and saps our military strength. It is also an excuse to bully fat people in one sentence and then inform them in the next that you are doing it for their own good. That’s why the fear of becoming fat, or staying that way, drives Americans to spend more on dieting every year than we spend on video games or movies. Forty-five percent of adults say they’re preoccupied with their weight some or all of the time—an 11-point rise since 1990. Nearly half of 3- to 6- year old girls say they worry about being fat.

The emotional costs are incalculable. I have never written a story where so many of my sources cried during interviews, where they double- and triple-checked that I would not reveal their names, where they shook with anger describing their interactions with doctors and strangers and their own families. One remembered kids singing “Baby Beluga” as she boarded the school bus, another said she has tried diets so extreme she has passed out and yet another described the elaborate measures he takes to keep his spouse from seeing him naked in the light. A medical technician I’ll call Sam (he asked me to change his name so his wife wouldn’t find out he spoke to me) said that one glimpse of himself in a mirror can destroy his mood for days. “I have this sense I’m fat and I shouldn’t be,” he says. “It feels like the worst kind of weakness.”

My interest in this issue is slightly more than journalistic. Growing up, my mother’s weight was the uncredited co-star of every family drama, the obvious, unspoken reason why she never got out of the car when she picked me up from school, why she disappeared from the family photo album for years at a time, why she spent hours making meatloaf then sat beside us eating a bowl of carrots.

Last year, for the first time, we talked about her weight in detail. When I asked if she was ever bullied, she recalled some guy calling her a “fat slob” as she biked past him years ago. “But that was rare,” she says. “The bigger way my weight affected my life was that I waited to do things because I thought fat people couldn’t do them.” She got her master’s degree at 38, her Ph.D. at 55. “I avoided so many activities where I thought my weight would discredit me.”

Chances of a woman classified as obese achieving a “normal” weight:.008%Source: American Journal of Public Health, 2015

But my mother’s story, like Sam’s, like everyone’s, didn’t have to turn out like this. For 60 years, doctors and researchers have known two things that could have improved, or even saved, millions of lives. The first is that diets do not work. Not just paleo or Atkins or Weight Watchers or Goop, but all diets. Since 1959, research has shown that 95 to 98 percent of attempts to lose weight fail and that two-thirds of dieters gain back more than they lost. The reasons are biological and irreversible.

As early as 1969, research showed that losing just 3 percent of your body weight resulted in a 17 percent slowdown in your metabolism—a body-wide starvation response that blasts you with hunger hormones and drops your internal temperature until you rise back to your highest weight. Keeping weight off means fighting your body’s energy-regulation system and battling hunger all day, every day, for the rest of your life.

The second big lesson the medical establishment has learned and rejected over and over again is that weight and health are not perfect synonyms. Yes, nearly every population-level study finds that fat people have worse cardiovascular health than thin people. But individuals are not averages: Studies have found that anywhere from one-third to three-quarters of people classified as obese are metabolically healthy. They show no signs of elevated blood pressure, insulin resistance or high cholesterol. Meanwhile, about a quarter of non-overweight people are what epidemiologists call “the lean unhealthy.” A 2016 study that followed participants for an average of 19 years found that unfit skinny people were twice as likely to get diabetes as fit fat people. Habits, no matter your size, are what really matter. Dozens of indicators, from vegetable consumption to regular exercise to grip strength, provide a better snapshot of someone’s health than looking at her from across a room.

The terrible irony is that for 60 years, we’ve approached the obesity epidemic like a fad dieter: If we just try the exact same thing one more time, we'll get a different result. And so it’s time for a paradigm shift. We’re not going to become a skinnier country. But we still have a chance to become a healthier one.

A NOTE ABOUT OUR PHOTOGRAPHS So many images you see in articles about obesity strip fat people of their strength and personality. According to a recent study, only 11 percent of large people depicted in news reports were wearing professional clothing. Nearly 60 percent were headless torsos. So, we asked our interview subjects to take full creative control of the photos in this piece. This is how they want to present themselves to the world.

“As a kid, I thought that fat people were just lonely and sad—almost like these pathetic lost causes. So I want to show that we get to experience love, too. I’m not some 'fat friend' or some dude's chubby chasing dream. I'm genuinely happy. I just wish I'd known how possible that was when I was a kiddo.”— CORISSA ENNEKING

This is Corissa Enneking at her lightest: She wakes up, showers and smokes a cigarette to keep her appetite down. She drives to her job at a furniture store, she stands in four-inch heels all day, she eats a cup of yogurt alone in her car on her lunch break. After work, lightheaded, her feet throbbing, she counts out three Ritz crackers, eats them at her kitchen counter and writes down the calories in her food journal.

Or not. Some days she comes home and goes straight to bed, exhausted and dizzy from hunger, shivering in the Kansas heat. She rouses herself around dinnertime and drinks some orange juice or eats half a granola bar. Occasionally she’ll just sleep through the night, waking up the next day to start all over again.

The last time she lived like this, a few years ago, her mother marched her to the hospital. “My daughter is sick,” she told the doctor. “She's not eating.” He looked Enneking up and down. Despite six months of starvation, she was still wearing plus sizes, still couldn’t shop at J. Crew, still got unsolicited diet advice from colleagues and customers.

Enneking told the doctor that she used to be larger, that she’d lost some weight the same way she had lost it three or four times before—seeing how far she could get through the day without eating, trading solids for liquids, food for sleep. She was hungry all the time, but she was learning to like it. When she did eat, she got panic attacks. Her boss was starting to notice her erratic behavior.

“Well, whatever you're doing now,” the doctor said, “it's working.” He urged her to keep it up and assured her that once she got small enough, her body would start to process food differently. She could add a few hundred calories to her diet. Her period would come back. She would stay small, but without as much effort.

“If you looked at anything other than my weight,” Enneking says now, “I had an eating disorder. And my doctor was congratulating me.”

Ask almost any fat person about her interactions with the health care system and you will hear a story, sometimes three, the same as Enneking’s: rolled eyes, skeptical questions, treatments denied or delayed or revoked. Doctors are supposed to be trusted authorities, a patient’s primary gateway to healing. But for fat people, they are a source of unique and persistent trauma. No matter what you go in for or how much you’re hurting, the first thing you will be told is that it would all get better if you could just put down the Cheetos.

Emily went to a gynecological surgeon to have an ovarian cyst removed. The physician pointed out her body fat on the MRI, then said, “Look at that skinny woman in there trying to get out.”

This phenomenon is not merely anecdotal. Doctors have shorter appointments with fat patients and show less emotional rapport in the minutes they do have. Negative words—“noncompliant, “overindulgent,” “weak willed”—pop up in their medical histories with higher frequency. In one study, researchers presented doctors with case histories of patients suffering from migraines. With everything else being equal, the doctors reported that the patients who were also classified as fat had a worse attitude and were less likely to follow their advice. And that’s when they see fat patients at all: In 2011, the Sun-Sentinel polled OB-GYNs in South Florida and discovered that 14 percent had barred all new patients weighing more than 200 pounds.

Some of these doctors are simply applying the same presumptions as the society around them. An anesthesiologist on the West Coast tells me that as soon as a larger patient goes under, the surgeons start trading “high school insults” about her body over the operating table. Janice O’Keefe, a former nurse in Boston, tells me a doctor once looked at her, paused, then asked, “How could you do this to yourself?” Emily, a counselor in Eastern Washington, went to a gynecological surgeon to have an ovarian cyst removed. The physician pointed out her body fat on the MRI, then said, “Look at that skinny woman in there trying to get out.”

“I was worried I had cancer,” Emily says, “and she was turning it into a teachable moment about my weight.”

Other physicians sincerely believe that shaming fat people is the best way to motivate them to lose weight. “It’s the last area of medicine where we prescribe tough love,” says Mayo Clinic researcher Sean Phelan.

In a 2013 journal article, bioethicist Daniel Callahan argued for more stigma against fat people. “People don’t realize that they are obese or if they do realize it, it’s not enough to stir them to do anything about it,” he tells me. Shame helped him kick his cigarette habit, he argues, so it should work for obesity too.

This belief is cartoonishly out of step with a generation of research into obesity and human behavior. As one of the (many) stigma researchers who responded to Callahan’s article pointed out, shaming smokers and drug users with D.A.R.E.-style “just say no” messages may have actually increased substance abuse by making addicts less likely to bring up their habit with their doctors and family members.

Plus, rather obviously, smoking is a behavior; being fat is not. Jody Dushay, an endocrinologist and obesity specialist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, says most of her patients have tried dozens of diets and have lost and regained hundreds of pounds before they come to her.

Telling them to try again, but in harsher terms, only sets them up to fail and then blame themselves.

89%of obese adults have been bullied by their romantic partners Source: University of Connecticut, 2017

Not all physicians set out to denigrate their fat patients, of course; some of them do damage because of subtler, more unconscious biases. Most doctors, for example, are fit—“If you go to an obesity conference, good luck trying to get a treadmill at 5 a.m.,” Dushay says—and have spent more than a decade of their lives in the high-stakes, high-stress bubble of medical schools.

According to several studies, thin doctors are more confident in their recommendations, expect their patients to lose more weight and are more likely to think dieting is easy. Sarah (not her real name), a tech CEO in New England, once told her doctor that she was having trouble eating less throughout the day. “Look at me,” her doctor said. “I had one egg for breakfast and I feel fine.”

Then there are the glaring cultural differences. Kenneth Resnicow, a consultant who trains physicians to build rapport with their patients, says white, wealthy, skinny doctors will often try to bond with their low-income patients by telling them, “I know what it’s like not to have time to cook.” Their patients, who might be single mothers with three kids and two jobs, immediately think “No, you don’t,” and the relationship is irretrievably soured.

When Joy Cox, an academic in New Jersey, was 16, she went to the hospital with stomach pains. The doctor didn’t diagnose her dangerously inflamed bile duct, but he did, out of nowhere, suggest that she’d get better if she stopped eating so much fried chicken. “He managed to denigrate my fatness and my blackness in the same sentence,” she says.

“There is so much agency taken from marginalized groups to mute their voices and mask their existence. Being depicted as a female CEO—one who is also black and fat—means so much to me. It is a representation of the reclamation of power in the boardroom, classroom and living room of my body. I own all of this.”— JOY COX

Many of the financial and administrative structures doctors work within help reinforce this bad behavior. The problem starts in medical school, where, according to a 2015 survey, students receive an average of just 19 hours of nutrition education over four years of instruction—five hours fewer than they got in 2006. Then the trouble compounds once doctors get into daily practice. Primary care physicians only get 15 minutes for each appointment, barely enough time to ask patients what they ate today, much less during all the years leading up to it. And a more empathic approach to treatment simply doesn’t pay: While procedures like blood tests and CT scans command reimbursement rates from hundreds to thousands of dollars, doctors receive as little as $24 to provide a session of diet and nutrition counseling.

Lesley Williams, a family medicine doctor in Phoenix, tells me she gets an alert from her electronic health records software every time she’s about to see a patient who is above the “overweight” threshold. The reason for this is that physicians are often required, in writing, to prove to hospital administrators and insurance providers that they have brought up their patient’s weight and formulated a plan to bring it down—regardless of whether that patient came in with arthritis or a broken arm or a bad sunburn. Failing to do that could result in poor performance reviews, low ratings from insurance companies or being denied reimbursement if they refer patients to specialized care.

Another issue, says Kimberly Gudzune, an obesity specialist at Johns Hopkins, is that many doctors, no matter their specialty, think weight falls under their authority. Gudzune often spends months working with patients to set realistic goals—playing with their grandkids longer, going off a cholesterol medication—only to have other doctors threaten it all. One of her patients was making significant progress until she went to a cardiologist who told her to lose 100 pounds. “All of a sudden she goes back to feeling like a failure and we have to start over,” Gudzune says. “Or maybe she just never comes back at all.”

60%of the calories Americans consume come from “ultra-processed foods” Source: British Medical Journal, 2016

And so, working within a system that neither trains nor encourages them to meaningfully engage with their higher-weight patients, doctors fall back on recommending fad diets and delivering bland motivational platitudes. Ron Kirk, an electrician in Boston, says that for years, his doctor's first resort was to put him on some diet he couldn't maintain for more than a few weeks. “They told me lettuce was a ‘free’ food,” he says—and he’d find himself carving up a head of romaine for dinner.

In a study that recorded 461 interactions with doctors, only 13 percent of patients got any specific plan for diet or exercise and only 5 percent got help arranging a follow-up visit. “It can be stressful when [patients] start asking a lot of specific questions” about diet and weight loss, one doctor told researchers in 2012. “I don’t feel like I have the time to sit there and give them private counseling on basics. I say, ‘Here’s some websites, look at this.’” A 2016 survey found that nearly twice as many higher-weight Americans have tried meal-replacement diets—the kind most likely to fail—than have ever received counseling from a dietician.

“It borders on medical malpractice,” says Andrew (not his real name), a consultant and musician who has been large his whole life. A few years ago, on a routine visit, Andrew’s doctor weighed him, announced that he was “dangerously overweight” and told him to diet and exercise, offering no further specifics. Should he go on a low-fat diet? Low-carb? Become a vegetarian? Should he do CrossFit? Yoga? Should he buy a fucking ThighMaster?

“She didn't even ask me what I was already doing for exercise,” he says. “At the time, I was training for serious winter mountaineering trips, hiking every weekend and going to the gym four times a week. Instead of a conversation, I got a sound bite. It felt like shaming me was the entire purpose.”

All of this makes higher-weight patients more likely to avoid doctors. Three separate studies have found that fat women are more likely to die from breast and cervical cancers than non-fat women, a result partially attributed to their reluctance to see doctors and get screenings. Erin Harrop, a researcher at the University of Washington, studies higher-weight women with anorexia, who, contrary to the size-zero stereotype of most media depictions, are twice as likely to report vomiting, using laxatives and abusing diet pills. Thin women, Harrop discovered, take around three years to get into treatment, while her participants spent an average of 13 and a half years waiting for their disorders to be addressed.

“A lot of my job is helping people heal from the trauma of interacting with the medical system,” says Ginette Lenham, a counselor who specializes in obesity. The rest of it, she says, is helping them heal from the trauma of interacting with everyone else.

“My weight makes me anxious. I'm constantly sucking my stomach in when I stand, and if I'm sitting, I always grab a pillow or couch cushion to hold in front of it. I'm most comfortable in my bathrobe, alone. At the same time, my brain starves for attention. I want to be onstage. I want to be the one holding a microphone. So, I decided to split the difference with this photograph: to perform and to obscure. The worst part is that intellectually I know that I have worth beyond pounds and waist inches and stereotypes. But I still feel like I have to hide.”— SAM (NOT HIS REAL NAME)

If Sonya ever forgets that she is fat, the world will remind her. She has stopped taking the bus, she tells me, because she can sense the aggravation of the passengers squeezing past her. Sarah, the tech CEO, tenses up when anyone brings bagels to a work meeting. If she reaches for one, are her employees thinking, “There goes the fat boss”? If she doesn’t, are they silently congratulating her for showing some restraint?

Emily says it’s the do-gooders who get to her, the women who stop her on the street and tell her how brave she is for wearing a sleeveless dress on a 95-degree day. Sam, the medical technician, avoids the subject of weight altogether. “Men aren’t supposed to think about this stuff—and I think about it constantly,” he admits. “So I never let myself talk about it. Which is weird because it’s the most visible thing about me.”

Again and again, I hear stories of how the pressure to be a “good fatty” in public builds up and explodes. Jessica has four kids. Every week is a birthday party or family reunion or swimming pool social, another opportunity to stand around platters of spare ribs and dinner rolls with her fellow moms.

“Your conscious mind is busy the whole day with how many calories is in everything, what you can eat and who’s watching,” she says. After a few intrusive comments over the years—should you be eating that?—she has learned to be careful, to perform the role of the impeccable fat person. She nibbles on cherry tomatoes, drinks tap water, stays on her feet, ignores the dessert end of the buffet.

Then, as the gathering winds down, Jessica and the other parents divvy up the leftovers. She wraps up burgers or pasta salad or birthday cake, drives her children home and waits for the moment when they are finally in bed. Then, when she’s alone, she eats all the leftovers by herself, in the dark.

“It’s always hidden,” she says. “I buy a package of ice cream, then eat it all. Then I have to go to the store to buy it again. For a week my family thinks there’s a thing of ice cream in the fridge—but it’s actually five different ones.”

Ratio of soda and candy ads seen by black children compared to white children:2:1Source: UConn Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity, 2015

This is how fat-shaming works: It is visible and invisible, public and private, hidden and everywhere at the same time. Research consistently finds that larger Americans (especially larger women) earn lower salaries and are less likely to be hired and promoted. In a 2017 survey, 500 hiring managers were given a photo of an overweight female applicant. Twenty-one percent of them described her as unprofessional despite having no other information about her. What’s worse, only a few cities and one state (nice work, Michigan) officially prohibit workplace discrimination on the basis of weight.

Paradoxically, as the number of larger Americans has risen, the biases against them have become more severe. More than 40 percent of Americans classified as obese now say they experience stigma on a daily basis, a rate far higher than any other minority group. And this does terrible things to their bodies. According to a 2015 study, fat people who feel discriminated against have shorter life expectancies than fat people who don't. “These findings suggest the possibility that the stigma associated with being overweight,” the study concluded, “is more harmful than actually being overweight.”

And, in a cruel twist, one effect of weight bias is that it actually makes you eat more. The stress hormone cortisol—the one evolution designed to kick in when you’re being chased by a tiger or, it turns out, rejected for your looks—increases appetite, reduces the will to exercise and even improves the taste of food. Sam, echoing so many of the other people I spoke with, says that he drove straight to Jack in the Box last year after someone yelled, “Eat less!” at him across a parking lot.

“I don’t want to be portrayed; this is not about me. It’s about that guy you always see on the far treadmill at the gym. Or the lady who brings the most beautiful salads to work every day for lunch. It’s about the little girl who got bullied because of her size and the little boy who was told he wasn’t man enough. It’s not about me but had it been about me when I was that chubby little girl, maybe I wouldn’t be standing here, head against the door, wondering if I’m enough.”— ERIKA

There’s a grim caveman logic to our nastiness toward fat people. “We’re attuned to bodies that look different,” says Janet Tomiyama, a stigma researcher at UCLA. “In our evolutionary past, that might have meant disease risk and been seen as a threat to your tribe.” These biological breadcrumbs help explain why stigma begins so early. Kids as young as 3 describe their larger classmates with words like “mean,” “stupid” and “lazy.”

And yet, despite weight being the number one reason children are bullied at school, America’s institutions of public health continue to pursue policies perfectly designed to inflame the cruelty. TV and billboard campaigns still use slogans like “Too much screen time, too much kid” and “Being fat takes the fun out of being a kid.” Cat Pausé, a researcher at Massey University in New Zealand, spent months looking for a single public health campaign, worldwide, that attempted to reduce stigma against fat people and came up empty. In an incendiary case of good intentions gone bad, about a dozen states now send children home with “BMI report cards,” an intervention unlikely to have any effect on their weight but almost certain to increase bullying from the people closest to them.

This is not an abstract concern: Surveys of higher-weight adults find that their worst experiences of discrimination come from their own families. Erika, a health educator in Washington, can still recite the word her father used to describe her: “husky.” Her grandfather preferred “stocky.” Her mother never said anything about Erika’s body, but she didn't have to. She obsessed over her own, calling herself “enormous” despite being two sizes smaller than her daughter. By the time Erika was 11, she was sneaking into the woods behind her house and vomiting into the creek whenever social occasions made starving herself impossible.

And the abuse from loved ones continues well into adulthood. A 2017 survey found that 89 percent of obese adults had been bullied by their romantic partners. Emily, the counselor, says she spent her teens and 20s “sleeping with guys I wasn’t interested in because they wanted to sleep with me.” In her head, a guy being into her was a rare and depletable resource she couldn’t afford to waste: “I was desperate for men to give me attention. Sex was a good way to do that.”

Eventually, she ended up with someone abusive. He told her during sex that her body was beautiful and then, in the daylight, that it was revolting. “Whenever I tried to leave him, he would say, ‘Where are you gonna find someone who will put up with your disgusting body?’” she remembers.

Emily finally managed to get away from him, but she is aware that her love life will always be fraught. The guy she’s dating now is thin—“think Tony Hawk,” she says—and she notices the looks they get when they hold hands in public. “That never used to happen when I dated fat dudes,” she says. “Thin men are not allowed to be attracted to fat women.”

The effects of weight bias get worse when they’re layered on top of other types of discrimination. A 2012 study found that African-American women are more likely to become depressed after internalizing weight stigma than white women. Hispanic and black teenagers also have significantly higher rates of bulimia. And, in a remarkable finding, rich people of color have higher rates of cardiovascular disease than poor people of color—the opposite of what happens with white people. One explanation is that navigating increasingly white spaces, and increasingly higher stakes, exerts stress on racial minorities that, over time, makes them more susceptible to heart problems.

But perhaps the most unique aspect of weight stigma is how it isolates its victims from one another. For most minority groups, discrimination contributes to a sense of belongingness, a community in opposition to a majority. Gay people like other gay people; Mormons root for other Mormons. Surveys of higher-weight people, however, reveal that they hold many of the same biases as the people discriminating against them. In a 2005 study, the words obese participants used to classify other obese people included gluttonous, unclean and sluggish.

Andrea, a retired nurse in Boston, has been on commercial diets since she was 10 years old. She knows how hard it is to slim down, knows what women larger than her are going through, but she still struggles not to pass judgment when she sees them in public. “I think, ‘How did they let it happen?’” she says. “It’s more like fear. Because if I let myself go, I’ll be that big too.”

Her position is all-too understandable. As young as 9 or 10, I knew that coming out of the closet is what gay people do, even if it took me another decade to actually do it. Fat people, though, never get a moment of declaring their identity, of marking themselves as part of a distinct group. They still live in a society that believes weight is temporary, that losing it is urgent and achievable, that being comfortable in their bodies is merely “glorifying obesity.” This limbo, this lie, is why it’s so hard for fat people to discover one another or even themselves. “No one believes our It Gets Better story,” says Tigress Osborn, the director of community outreach for the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance. “You can’t claim an identity if everyone around you is saying it doesn’t or shouldn’t exist.”

Harrop, the eating disorders researcher, realized several years ago that her university had clubs for trans students, immigrant students, Republican students, but none for fat students. So she started one—and it has been a resounding, unmitigated failure. Only a handful of fat people have ever shown up; most of the time, thin folks sit around brainstorming about how to be better allies.

I ask Harrop why she thinks the group has been such a bust. It’s simple, she says: “Fat people grow up in the same fat-hating culture that non-fat people do.”

“I think some folks are genuinely surprised that a man who looks like him is with a woman like me. As a fat person, I'm very aware of when I'm being stared at—and I have never been looked at this much before. So I thought that taking the photo in public would be a good idea. It feels subversive to show my fat body doing regular stuff the world believes I don't or can't do.”— EMILY

Since 1980, the obesity rate has doubled in 73 countries and increased in 113 others. And in all that time, no nation has reduced its obesity rate. Not one.

The problem is that in America, like everywhere else, our institutions of public health have become so obsessed with body weight that they have overlooked what is really killing us: our food supply. Diet is the leading cause of death in the United States, responsible for more than five times the fatalities of gun violence and car accidents combined. But it’s not how much we’re eating—Americans actually consume fewer calories now than we did in 2003. It’s what we’re eating.

For more than a decade now, researchers have found that the quality of our food affects disease risk independently of its effect on weight. Fructose, for example, appears to damage insulin sensitivity and liver function more than other sweeteners with the same number of calories. People who eat nuts four times a week have 12 percent lower diabetes incidence and a 13 percent lower mortality rate regardless of their weight. All of our biological systems for regulating energy, hunger and satiety get thrown off by eating foods that are high in sugar, low in fiber and injected with additives. And which now, shockingly, make up 60 percent of the calories we eat.

Draining this poison from our trillion-dollar food system is not going to happen quickly or easily. Every link in the chain, from factory farms to school lunches, is dominated by a Mars or a Monsanto or a McDonald’s, each working tirelessly to lower its costs and raise its profits. But that’s still no reason to despair. There’s a lot we can do right now to improve fat people’s lives—to shift our focus for the first time from weight to health and from shame to support.

The place to start is at the doctor’s office. The central failure of the medical system when it comes to obesity is that it treats every patient exactly the same: If you’re fat, lose some weight. If you’re skinny, keep up the good work. Stephanie Sogg, a psychologist at the Mass General Weight Center, tells me she has clients who start eating compulsively after a sexual assault, others who starve themselves all day before bingeing on the commute home and others who eat 1,000 calories a day, work out five times a week and still insist that they’re fat because they “have no willpower.”

Acknowledging the infinite complexity of each person’s relationship to food, exercise and body image is at the center of her treatment, not a footnote to it. “Eighty percent of my patients cry in the first appointment,” Sogg says. “For something as emotional as weight, you have to listen for a long time before you give any advice. Telling someone, 'Lay off the cheeseburgers' is never going to work if you don't know what those cheeseburgers are doing for them.”

4% of all agricultural subsidies go to fruits and vegetables Source: Environmental Working Group, 2014-16

The medical benefits of this approach—being nicer to her patients than they are to themselves, is how Sogg describes it—are unimpeachable. In 2017, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, the expert panel that decides which treatments should be offered for free under Obamacare, found that the decisive factor in obesity care was not the diet patients went on, but how much attention and support they received while they were on it. Participants who got more than 12 sessions with a dietician saw significant reductions in their rates of prediabetes and cardiovascular risk. Those who got less personalized care showed almost no improvement at all.

Still, despite the Task Force’s explicit recommendation of “intensive, multicomponent behavioral counseling” for higher-weight patients, the vast majority of insurance companies and state health care programs define this term to mean just a session or two—exactly the superficial approach that years of research says won’t work. “Health plans refuse to treat this as anything other than a personal problem,” says Chris Gallagher, a policy consultant at the Obesity Action Coalition.

The same scurvy-ish negligence shows up at every level of government. From marketing rules to antitrust regulations to international trade agreements, U.S. policy has created a food system that excels at producing flour, sugar and oil but struggles to deliver nutrients at anywhere near the same scale. The United States spends $1.5 billion on nutrition research every year compared to around $60 billion on drug research. Just 4 percent of agricultural subsidies go to fruits and vegetables. No wonder that the healthiest foods can cost up to eight times more, calorie for calorie, than the unhealthiest—or that the gap gets wider every year.

It’s the same with exercise. The cardiovascular risks of sedentary lifestyles, suburban sprawl and long commutes are well-documented. But rather than help mitigate these risks—and their disproportionate impact on the poor—our institutions have exacerbated them. Only 13 percent of American children walk or bike to school; once they arrive, less than a third of them will take part in a daily gym class. Among adults, the number of workers commuting more than 90 minutes each way grew by more than 15 percent from 2005 to 2016, a predictable outgrowth of America’s underinvestment in public transportation and over-investment in freeways, parking and strip malls. For 40 years, as politicians have told us to eat more vegetables and take the stairs instead of the elevator, they have presided over a country where daily exercise has become a luxury and eating well has become extortionate.

“My son and I both like to play the hero. There wasn't necessarily any intentional symbolism in the costumes we chose, but I am definitely a member of the rebellion, and I see my role as an eating disorders researcher as trying to fight for justice and a better world. Also, I like that I'm sweaty, dirty and messy, not done up with makeup or with my hair down in this picture. I like that I'm not hiding my stomach, thighs or arms. Not because I'm comfortable being photographed like that, but because I want to be—and I want others to feel free to be like that, too.”— ERIN HARROP

The good news is that the best ideas for reversing these trends have already been tested. Many “failed” obesity interventions are, in fact, successful eat-healthier-and-exercise-more interventions. A review of 44 international studies found that school-based activity programs didn’t affect kids’ weight, but improved their athletic ability, tripled the amount of time they spent exercising and reduced their daily TV consumption by up to an hour. Another survey showed that two years of getting kids to exercise and eat better didn’t noticeably affect their size but did improve their math scores—an effect that was greater for black kids than white kids.

You see this in so much of the research: The most effective health interventions aren't actually health interventions—they are policies that ease the hardship of poverty and free up time for movement and play and parenting. Developing countries with higher wages for women have lower obesity rates, and lives are transformed when healthy food is made cheaper. A pilot program in Massachusetts that gave food stamp recipients an extra 30 cents for every $1 they spent on healthy food increased fruit and vegetable consumption by 26 percent. Policies like this are unlikely to affect our weight. They are almost certain, however, to significantly improve our health.

Which brings us to the most hard-wired problem of all: Our shitty attitudes toward fat people. According to Patrick Corrigan, the editor of the journal Stigma and Health, even the most well-intentioned efforts to reduce stigma break down in the face of reality. In one study, researchers told 10- to 12-year-olds all the genetic and medical factors that contribute to obesity. Afterward, the kids could recite back the message they received—fat kids didn’t get that way by choice—but they still had the same negative attitudes about the bigger kids sitting next to them. A similar approach with fifth- and sixth-graders actually increased their intention of bullying their fat classmates. Celebrity representation, meanwhile, can result in what Corrigan calls the “Thurgood Marshall effect”: Instead of updating our stereotypes (maybe fat people aren’t so bad), we just see prominent minorities as isolated exceptions to them (well, he’s not like those other fat people).

What does work, Corrigan says, is for fat people to make it clear to everyone they interact with that their size is nothing to apologize for. “When you pity someone, you think they’re less effective, less competent, more hurt,” he says. “You don’t see them as capable. The only way to get rid of stigma is from power.”

This has always been the great hope of the fat-acceptance movement. (“We’re here, we’re spheres, get used to it” was one of the slogans in the 1990s.) But this radical message has long since been co-opted by clothing brands, diet companies, and soap corporations. Weight Watchers has rebranded as a “lifestyle program,” but still promises that its members can shrink their way to happiness. Mainstream apparel companies market themselves as “body positive” but refuse to make clothes that fit the plus-size models on their own billboards. Social media, too, has provided a platform for positive representations of fat people and formed communities that make it easier to find each other. But it has also contributed to an anodyne, narrow, Dr. Phil-approved form of progress that celebrates the female entrepreneur who sells “fatkinis” on Instagram while ignoring the woman who (true story) gets fired from her management position after reportedly gaining 100 pounds over three years.

“Fat activism isn’t about making people feel better about themselves,” Pausé says. “It’s about not being denied your civil rights and not dying because a doctor misdiagnoses you.”

And so, in a world that refuses to change, it is still up to every fat person, alone, to decide how to endure. Emily, the counselor in Eastern Washington, says she made a choice about three years ago to assert herself. The first time she asked for a table instead of a booth at a restaurant, she says, she was sweating, flushed, her chest heaving. It felt like saying the words—“I can’t fit”—would dry up in her mouth as she said them.

But now, she says, “It’s just something I do.” Last month, she was at a conference and asked one of the other participants if he would trade chairs because his didn’t have arms. Like most of these requests, it was no big deal. “A tall person wouldn’t feel weird asking that, so why should I?” she says. Her skinny friends have started to inquire about the seating at restaurants before Emily even gets the chance.

Hearing about Emily’s progress reminds me of a conversation I had with Ginette Lenham, the diet counselor. Her patients, she says, often live in the past or the future with their weight. They tell her they are waiting until they are smaller to go back to school or apply for a new job. They beg her to return them to their high school or wedding or first triathlon weight, the one that will bring back their former life.

And then Lenham must explain that these dreams are a trap. Because there is no magical cure. There is no time machine. There is only the revolutionary act of being fat and happy in a world that tells you that’s impossible.

“We all have to do our best with the body that we have,” she says. “And leave everyone else’s alone.”

From <https://highline.huffingtonpost.com/articles/en/everything-you-know-about-obesity-is-wrong/>

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coffee-for-himchan · 7 years ago

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At The Aquarium (Yongguk x reader)

Requested by: a kind anon

Word count: 5.5 k+

Genre/warnings: fluffy fluff ❤ (this is a dad!Yongguk scenario)

Summary: It’s been a long time since the last little family trip or vacation had happened, all because of Yongguk’s busy work schedule and constant absence from home. When your son Minjun started talking non-stop about how he’d like to visit the aquarium, Yongguk couldn’t help it but make some free time to take you both there and have some much needed family time in order to make it up for the many times he was absent. As the day went on, you couldn’t help to think about Minjun’s issue he’s had since early childhood and how you could possibly fix it, needlessly stressing yourself out about it again up until Yongguk noticed, giving you some much needed support and advice, just as always.

(A/N) Does Yongguk actually drive a car, or just like an electric scooter, as I know he’s had issues with passing the driver’s test in the past, and I’m just not too sure about it. Well, anyways, for this scenario let’s imagine he does drive a car. Also, I’d like to clarify that I know less to nothing about going to an aquarium, as I’ve never been to one, so I hope this is at least halfways spot on. Anyways, enjoy!

You looked over at Yongguk who was trying to finish dressing your son for the oh so long awaited trip. You smiled to yourself, quietly leaning against the doorway and hoping that you wouldn’t be noticed as you wanted to admire the scenery for just a little longer. “You have to put a jacket on, it’s getting cold outside and you don’t want to get sick, do you?” Yongguk looked at Minjun’s face while kneeling down to be somewhat closer to his height and trying to zip up his hoodie. Sometimes you wondered if Yongguk was aware that the kiddo was only four (and a half, as he always said) years old and still didn’t understand many things, for example, the fact that the weather was getting colder and colder outside now with every passing day, and that he needed to put on an extra layer of clothing in order to keep nice and warm and couldn’t go out of the house in a simple plain t-shirt just like in summer. And what’s more important, Yongguk was the worst role model when it came to dressing according to weather, so he shouldn’t be the one talking. He never had proper clothing on as he was seemingly numb to the cold. Of course his son would look up to him and do the same as he did, as you knew more than well he admired Yongguk and wanted to be like him in every possible way. “You should listen to appa, he is right,” you said stepping forwards, earning a glance from both of them. “But appa isn’t wearing a jacket so I won’t wear one either,“ Minjun stated, crossing his arms. You laughed slightly, reaching up and grabbing one of Yongguk’s hoodies from the upper shelf of the wardrobe that was located to your right. "He is going to wear one too,” you told Minjun as you came forwards both of them and pulled Yongguk up by his arm. With a swift move, you put the hoodie on him, dressing this mess of a grown man almost the same way that he was dressing a toddler just seconds ago. “See? Do as appa does and you’ll be fine,” you said, sitting down on the floor and helping Minjun tie his shoelaces. There was no more complaining to be heard from him as now everything was as it had to be. You smiled, knowing your biggest trick had worked again, because whatever Yongguk did, Minjun wanted to to do too, without exception. “Guk, could you bring me my phone, please? I think I left it on the commode in the bedroom,” you looked up at him and saw him smiling down at you and your son, admiring the heartwarming view while he could. “Sure,” he simply said and unwillingly moved his body from the spot, filling the corridor that lead to the room with heavy, sloppy footsteps. He came back just as you were done getting Minjun ready, and picked him up to sit on his forearm and hold onto his shoulder. “Ready to leave?” Yongguk handed you the phone and lightly smiled at you. You looked over at Minjun who seemed happy and excited about the trip, and couldn’t tear your eyes off of the iconic duo in front of you. Yongguk had some strong genetics going on, as Minjun looked exactly like a tiny version of him. Sure, he had a few of your prettiest features too, but they were a little less noticeable. Eyeing both of them off up and down, you realized how easy it was for literally anyone to tell they were father and son, because even the looks they gave and the way they smiled looked oh so alike. And God, if he grew up to be like Yongguk, or even to be half as warm-hearted and responsible as he was, you would be so proud of having a son like him. To be honest, you already were, simply because he already was a well-mannered, polite and nice bundle of joy. Like father, like son. You couldn’t help but love it. “You still there?” Yongguk waved a hand in front of your face, making Minjun laugh a little and snapping you back to reality. You didn’t have time to say anything in defense or explain yourself as Yongguk gently took you by the hand and headed to the door, not wasting time on something that was already obvious. You just liked admiring both of your boys from time to time, as they were so precious, especially when paired up together. The car ride was a lot of fun for Minjun, as he always liked car rides when they featured the whole family. He would ask to listen to B.A.P’s songs, or as he referred to them, “appa’s and sam-chon’s songs”, and he’d make everyone sing along to whatever was on next on your phone’s playlist. It would be a mixture of him and you singing loudly and happily with Yongguk occasionally joining in to do his parts of the song. When Yongguk was rapping, as well as trying to live up to his morals of driving with no distractions around himself (so he could fully focus on the road and on driving safe) and slightly failing at that, everyone had to be quiet, according to Minjun. He was amazed by Yongguk’s low voice and ability to rap, and thought of it as impressive. Well, he wasn’t the only one, as you loved his voice too, and not only when he was spitting truth and fire in songs but also when he was whispering sweet nothings in your ear or asking for your permission to do something more to you in between long, passionate lazy afternoon kisses that you shared every now and then. You laughed out loud when “Yamazaki” came on, and Yongguk, being the old soul and inner grandpa he was, struggled to keep track of the road and meanwhile skip to the next song, as he was always very wary to the music Minjun listened to, and he for sure didn’t want him to hear something like “Yamazaki” just yet. The fact that you thought it was amusing made him relax a little, and he was finally able to skip it before any of the hard-hitting lyrics could fill up the car. He glanced at you in the backseat through the front mirror, and chuckled a little. Oh, if only Minjun knew… The car stopped soon, and you stepped out of it, undoing Minjun’s safety belt first and letting him get out of his children’s seat. You took one of his tiny hands in your bigger palm, and Yongguk took the other one right after he he had made his way around the car. As you approached the entrance door, you saw another quite similar-looking family leaving the building, the mother smiling at you as they passed by. You smiled back, knowing she had it probably just as good as you, as their son looked about the same age as Minjun, and the way the father held her close with one hand resting on her back indicated that their relationship was quite loving. You glanced over at Yongguk, who weirdly enough seemed to be enjoying the fact that he was out of the house and going to see something interesting. His peaceful facial expression that almost resembled a little, faint smile made you happy, as you knew he was the type of guy who either overworked himself or stayed home for as long as he could, enjoying the peace and solitude that was brought to him by being away from everyone and everything, except of his family. It was a rare occasion that he willingly let himself be dragged out into the public, and you were more than happy at the fact he was enjoying it.

Yongguk managed to get a little glance of you staring and smiling before you shyly turned away. He couldn’t help but melt a little at the way you looked up at him, with your eyes happy and bright, knowing that some nice and well-needed family time was about to happen. Minjun’s gaze was just as excited, and Yongguk felt slightly overwhelmed by the calm and peaceful positive feelings that slowly crept further into his heart with every passing minute. He knew he owed this and so much more to the two of you, and he was ready to give his best when it came to taking care of his family and making them feel good and happy. The Aquarium. Or, more importantly, the one and only place Minjun for some weird and unknown reason had always wanted to visit, but never got the chance to actually do so. Yongguk had promised to go there long ago, but his schedules had always been tight, and sometimes when he had the time he simply forgot. Minjun was so enthusiastic about it recently that Yongguk had decided on a specific day and date when you’d go just so he wouldn’t be able to push the trip further away, and Minjun hadn’t been talking about anything other than the trip ever since. Now, finally here, he was more than ready for all the different sea creatures that could be seen behind the thick, clear glass. His face displayed happiness, but there was also a hint of something else, a hint of something that never truly left his head and heart, no matter where he went. There was just one thing he was never prepared for and that kept bugging him always, and deep down this fear of his worried you. People. You could see it in his eyes and his behavior right after you’d entered the building. After paying for the tickets and being showed the right way, you started looking at the many different types of colorful, tropical fish that were swimming around in the huge, crystal-clear aquariums, with Minjun at your right side and Yongguk not too far away at your left. Minjun was clearly amazed and happy to be there, but couldn’t seem to fully experience a positive time, as you weren’t the only ones there. In fact, the place was packed with tons of people of different types and ages. You hadn’t expected it to be such a well-attended place, but then again, you’ve never been to an aquarium before, so you couldn’t have possibly known. As Minjun looked at the many different types of colorful, eye-catching discuses that were swimming back and forth in the aquarium, you watched him and the way he behaved, amazed by how much it differed from his attitude that he had kept up for the whole morning prior to arriving here. The always happy, cheerful and smiling child that you’d seen just minutes ago when you were in the car was completely gone now. Instead, he stood there, looking a little scared and anxious, being as quiet as ever. You sighed a little, picking him up so he could get a better look at the fish and tap his little fingers at the glass to attract their attention. For as long as you can remember, Minjun’s been afraid of people, especially big crowds and masses of people or people he didn’t know. It first showed when he was very little, as he’d always cry when your friends came over to visit both of you. You thought it was just because he was little and was confused of the may faces he’d never seen before, but as years passed and it only escalated you weren’t all that sure anymore. You hoped kindergarten would make it a little better, as he would find friends to play with and would hopefully open up a little, but soon enough you sadly were forced to realize that it was just another addition to his fears and anxieties. You’d always see him sitting alone in the corner, drawing something or playing with the teachers when you came to pick him up, and it broke your heart a little to see everyone else having fun in bigger or smaller groups of playmates while Minjun was sitting alone. When you asked him about it, he said it was fine and that he liked it this way, but you were still a little worried about his happiness and well-being. Plus, it didn’t help at all that his favorite person in the world was missing from his life oh so often, and simply wasn’t able to be there every single day. You sighed at the memories flooding back to you, as you really hoped it would just be a nice family day without any negative thoughts. “Is appa going to come?”, or “he promised he would!” were sentenced you never liked hearing, as most of the times they never came true. Well, not until Minjun’s bedtime came around at least, as Yongguk would always come home late and leave early in the mornings, that is, if he came home at all. Sometimes he’d stay at the studio, and often he was away with the group, promoting or going to different places to tour and perform. Minjun would refuse to go to sleep before he saw appa again, but every time his eyelids would feel way too heavy to keep them open for longer, and you’d often find him soundly asleep at the most random places while he was waiting for Yongguk to come back home. Minjun would also wake up every single day and be more than happy to see you as he loved you to bits, but whenever he ran to the kitchen just to find Yongguk’s tea mug already emptied on the table and his lean frame not in front of the obnoxiously large windows, his face sank. He’d brush it off every time, but you knew that spending time with Yongguk was the thing that Minjun wanted to do the most, as every time Yongguk’s frame actually was in place, looking out of the window and sipping on tea, Minjun’s laughter would fill the room as he ran forwards his father just to be picked up and spun around by him. He was the happiest when he was with Yongguk, and you didn’t like the fact that that had been only an occasionally thing in the past, especially recently. Yongguk was more than just a father figure to Minjun. He was a person Minjun looked up to and idolized. He was a hero without a cape who was away so often because he was doing his heroic deeds, making sure everyone had it good and lived happily. Yongguk’s absence always made Minjun feel a little sad, but he looked at it from the bright side, and seemed to be proud whenever you told him that appa was performing and making thousands of people happy. He was always smiling brightly when he saw performances of B.A.P through the phone screen or TV, and he never forgot to mention how good he thought Yongguk was for making so many people happy every day. You admired your son and his ability to give up his happiness for the happiness of thousands of other people who he didn’t know at all, because he never complained when Yongguk left for a longer amount of time, although you knew how much he wanted him to stay. You were sure Minjun didn’t even know how much a thousand was, and you were amazed by how forgiving and nice, as well as thoughtful he was at his very young age. You guessed it was just something that he had gotten from Yongguk - the endless ability to give up everything and think about other people first and only then himself. Even with his busy lifestyle, Yongguk never missed on the opportunity to talk to both of you, and he always made sure you had everything you needed. He kept an eye on Minjun at all times, and was a helping hand when it came to raising him. You’d hear them in the living room sometimes, with Yongguk sitting on the floor, his legs crossed and his gaze directed at the little kid who was sitting in front of him and was trying to imitate his sitting position as good as he could. Yongguk would teach him to be polite, to always say “hello”, “thank you” and “goodbye”. He’d teach him to never hit or hurt anybody, especially girls, but at the same time he’d teach him not to let anyone be mean to him and bug him. He’d teach him that he could hurt somebody not only by physical action, but by words too, and Minjun seemed to listen to all Yongguk had to say, without any complaints or comments. They’d often play afterwards, with Yongguk smiling brightly and filling the room with his contagious laughter as Minjun tried to wrestle with him, always “winning” at the end, as, apparently, Yongguk turned out to be not the strongest, but the weakest warrior of all. He’d always video call you both when he was away, and he’d always make sure you knew he loved and missed you. He’d be strict at times, not letting you spoil Minjun too much and raising him the proper way, but making sure you both always had just what you needed to live a comfortable life as well. When he was present, he was the sweetest father and husband imaginable, and when he was away absolutely nothing changed, as he was just the same. The only problem was that he was away way too often, and you found it harder and harder every passing day to spend so much time apart from him.

Yongguk had noticed your change in mood soon enough, and, as you walked into a huge hall with an impressive aquarium that featured some jellyfish in it and Minjun, for the first time during the day, ran off excitedly to look at them on his own, you felt an arm wrap around your waist and pull you a little closer.

“Hey, what’s the matter? Something’s wrong,” he said, cutting you off with an “and don’t say it’s all fine and don’t change the subject,” right after. Damn, how was it that he always knew that you were about to say?

“It’s.. I’m just worried for Minjun a little,” you said, leaning your head on his shoulder as he pulled you along to come closer to the aquarium. Yongguk’s tight grip around you radiated a wave of comfort and warmth, and you suddenly felt a little better, knowing you should talk about it with him. After all, he’d help you deal with it and find a solution, just as he always did. Yongguk never left you to battle with your problems alone, you knew that from day one.

“Tell me about it,” he simply said as he turned his head a little and planted a small, gentle kiss on the top of your head. You loved how subtle and unnoticeable his movements were, and you loved how he could always feel and notice when you were upset or nervous. He turned his head back to look at the impressive sea creatures, letting it rest on top of your head as you tried to think of a way how to put all of your concerns into words.

“It’s just that.. You know, I want him to be happy. I’m absolutely proud that I have a son like him, and I love him the most out of everyone in this world, well, excluding you, I love you just as much. You’re both my number one,” you heard Yongguk chuckle a bit, and you couldn’t help but imagine his infamous gummy smile slowly forming as he heard those words. “It concerns me that every time we leave to go somewhere, I see him being afraid and anxious just because there are people around. I thought that it was a thing that would go away with age, but seeing the fact that he gets older and older every day and his fears only keep increasing doesn’t really lower my concerns.”

“Hey, don’t break your head and heart over it,” Yongguk told you, his hand running up and down you side lightly now, “I’m sure it’s only temporary and it will go away. Whenever I see him, he’s always happy and bright, without a single worry.”

“Yongguk,” you called, feeling the need to look him right in the eyes while saying the next part and lifting your head so you could actually do that, “tell me, how often do you see Minjun when he isn’t home but actually in public?”

This question seemed to have hit a sensitive spot, as Yongguk froze a little, trying to think of what to say. Right as he was about to open his mouth, you saw Minjun running back to both of you and getting a hold of Yongguk’s leg.

“I’ll go with you,” he said in an anxious tone, and Yongguk picked him up the same way he did it when you left the house, still keeping the other arm around your waist as you went to look at other aquariums.

You felt slightly bad for bringing up this topic, as you felt like you had disturbed Yongguk’s happy and peaceful aura that he had woken up with today. At the next given opportunity, Yongguk set Minjun down on the ground so he could run off to look at some seahorses and turned to you, looking at you straight in the eyes.

“Hey, I’m sorry,” you said nervously, twisting a strand of your hair with your fingers, “I didn’t mean to upset you.”

“Babe,” you heard his low, clear voice, and froze a little, as he always knew how to attract your whole attention with just one word, “don’t worry about it. Can I say something?”

You slowly nodded, feeling slightly nervous as he took one of your hands in his and tugged you along to one of the aquariums with seahorses in it. He made you stand right in front of him, and soon enough you felt his arms wrap around you and his head rest on yours. You were sure he could feel hour slightly increased heartbeat, but you were also sure that he wrapped his arms around you like this to calm you down a little in the first place, and made you stand in front of the aquarium and look at the seahorses because they had a somewhat calming effect on you. He knew all your worries that you had about raising Minjun, as you never hesitated to tell him that you felt not wise and qualified enough to raise a child, and once again he was ready to try and clear them all off your mind for some amount of time.

“I know I’m not always there when you two need me,” he started off, indicating this would be a slightly longer and more emotional speech, “I feel bad every time I come back home too late or leave too early to see Minjun awake, and I feel bad every time I know you both are struggling back home and I am on the other side of the world, not able to be there physically with you. But please listen to what I have to say now, as I don’t know for sure if I’m wrong or right since I don’t know the full story and I haven’t always been there, but I’m certain the situation is just as I’ll explain it now.” He had your full attention now, and you nodded slightly just to let him know he could continue.

“Remember when I told you about my childhood and how I used to be? I hadn’t even started talking when I was Minjun’s age yet, not to mention I was also more on the shy side, just like him. But, as years passed, and by years I don’t mean just one or two, but a couple more than that, it went away. Despite not having too many friends at first and not liking to communicate with strangers, I had an amazing family that loved and supported me, and I think they were the people who shaped me and my personality in the first place. I know you’re always worried about being a good parent, and you’re always afraid of doing something wrong, and Minjun having this issue isn’t helping. But I want you to know that, in my eyes, you are the best. You constantly keep filling in the empty space I leave behind when I’m not around, and you constantly think not only of Minjun, but of me as well, putting the well-being of both of us in first place and putting yourself second,” he told you, sounding so serious and genuine. You admired how Yongguk could stay completely calm in every situation, and loved this ability of his as whenever you felt stressed out or about to flip he was the one in charge of taking care of you and the situation, and he always did it flawlessly.

“Give him time,” Yongguk said as he started swinging both of you lightly from side to side, “I’m sure that’s all he needs. Don’t overreact about it, instead let’s just give him our full love and attention and take him places where he feels more at ease and comfortable at, for example, places like this. Look at him,” one of Yongguk’s arms unwrapped from your waist and he pointed to the direction MInjun was in.

He was at another, much bigger seahorse aquarium. Your eyes fixated on his amazed, happy looking face, and you smiled. Minjun was too caught up with looking at the seahorses that he didn’t notice anyone or anything around him, and, even though the next thing you knew he was anxiously running back to you just to be picked up by Yongguk and seated on his forearm, for a second it seemed like Minjun had no fears or problems in this world.

“You know who those are, right?” Yongguk asked Minjun as he pointed at the aquarium and the tiny, unusual creatures swimming in it.

“Seahorses! Eomma told me about them and showed them to me,” Minjun stated, clearly proud of the fact he could correctly answer to the question. Yongguk threw you a loving glance, as if saying “of course he knows, you keep teaching him a lot of things so he grows up smart” and came up a little closer to you, gently placing his hand on your lower back.

“Oh, and where did she show you?” Yongguk asked as he turned to face Minjun, and you couldn’t help but admire once again how alike they looked.

“Eomma bought me a book with all of the sea animals in it!” Minjun stated, and you felt Yongguk slowly walking away from the aquarium, gently leading you to where he was going.

“Really, all of them? I don’t think I know all of them as good as you though, could you teach me maybe?” Yongguk said smiling, and you saw Minjun’s face light up the second he heard those words.

“There… There are seahorses. And then there are octopuses, and jellyfish. And then there are sharks too, I really like sharks because they are big and dangerous. Appa, will we see a shark today? I really want to see a shark!” Minjun exclaimed, making you smile brightly. Yongguk was the one who was always teaching him things, and the fact that Minjun could teach Yongguk something instead seemed so new and exciting to him. It was a heartwarming view, and you were glad you were able to see it right here and right now, in front of your eyes.

You walked through the rest of the building with your boys, and smiled. Yongguk seemed to be engaged in conversation with Minjun every given second, and Minjun’s never seemed happier before, at least not in the past time. Every now and then he’d ask to be put down so he could run off and get a closer look at something, and at those moments all of Yongguk’s attention was directed towards you, as he urged you to talk more, listening to your stories of different things of bigger and smaller importance and just enjoying your time together. Hours passed, but the warm and fuzzy family aura was still there, and even strangers threw you loving glances as they saw the three of you walking around and showing everybody how a real family is supposed to look like. Right as you thought that you’d seen everything and were already slowly preparing for departure, you wandered into the huge hallway that lead from the aquariums to the lobby and froze a little in happy disbelief.

“Appa, eomma, look! Sharks!” you heard Minjun exclaim as he looked up, trying to capture and remember this view for as long as he could. Indeed, those were sharks. Not the big and impressive type of sharks, but still good enough to make Minjun stand in one place, looking happy and amazed at the sight. This was by far one of the most beautiful wall built-in aquariums you’d seen today, and you were glad that the people who planned and designed this building kept it as the cherry on top.

Yongguk was still by your side, his arm still wrapped around you as you leaned your head on his shoulder to admire the view.

“You know, I like sharks too, I have to admit that even the small ones are impressive,” you chuckled a little at Yongguk’s remark, and silently agreed.

“Thanks for taking us here today,” you told him and felt a tiny little kiss being placed on the top of your head.

“I’ll make sure to plan ahead for the next weekend as well, if you don’t mind.”

“I don’t mind at all. In fact, I’d love it.”

“In that case, everyone else will have to wait a little. I have a family to take care of, so I will try my best to do it the proper way,” Yongguk said as you looked over at Minjun, thinking of how happy he will be about another trip.

Before Minjun, you were just two people hopelessly in love, and, even after you had been together for years and had finally gotten married, you were hesitant to call yourselves a family. Could a family consist of just simply two married people, or did they have to have at least one child to be considered a family? To be honest, thinking back at it you realized you had no time to think about it back then, as soon after the wedding you were staring down at a positive pregnancy test, and soon after that you were telling Yongguk, feeling nervous and anxious about it because you hadn’t planned it. You remembered his face that displayed pure happiness from the second he heard those words leave your lips, and you remembered how he held you in his arms back then, telling you how happy he was that he’d have his own little family. That was the first time when he addressed you as his family, and now, after more than five years, you stood there and thought of how happy you actually were. You remembered how despite his schedules and big amounts of work Yongguk always tried to be there, and you remembered how you slowly shaped Minjun into the little person he was now, teaching him good manners and the right way to do many things together with Yongguk.

“Hey, Yongguk?” you looked up at him and smiled, getting a questioning look from him in response.

“I think you’re right. I don’t have to worry about Minjun that much, as he just needs some time and encouragement. And places like this. Look at him, he looks so happy,” you both threw a glance at Minjun who had forgotten about the whole world and was staring at the sea creatures, seemingly impressed by them.

“Told you,” Yongguk simply said, as he knew you didn’t need more of an answer than that. After waiting for Minjun to be done looking at the tiny sharks and coming back home, as well as playing with him a little, eating dinner and putting him to bed, you couldn’t resist to wrap your arms tightly around Yongguk’s frame as he made himself comfortable under the blankets right next to you in bed. Yongguk was fast asleep, as the day must’ve been fun but tiring for him, and as you felt his body slightly move from his light breathing you couldn’t help but remember his words.

“Everyone else will have to wait a little. I have a family to take care of, so I will try my best to do it the proper way.”

You smiled, knowing he meant it and would try to free as much time as possible for you and Minjun in the future. After all, you needed your loving husband, and Minjun needed his hero without a cape. And of course, Yongguk needed you both too, because you were the closest people he had - his family.

#b.a.p #bap #best absolute perfect #baplibrary #b.a.p yongguk #bap yongguk #bang yongguk #yongguk #b.a.p scenarios #bap scenarios #b.a.p imagines #bap imagines #yongguk scenarios #yongguk imagines #b.a.p yongguk scenarios #bang yongguk scenario #bang yongguk imagine

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mystacoceti · 5 years ago

Text

longish excerpt of John Barth’s “On with the Story”

She (I mean our distraught “Freeze Frame protagonist) happens to be gridlocked in actual sight of that river: There’s the symbolic catenary arch of the “Gateway to the West,” and beyond it are the sightseeing boats along the parkfront and out among the freight-barge strings. As She tries to divert and calm herself by regarding the nearest of those tourist boats — an ornate replica of a Mark Twain-vintage sternwheeler, just leaving its pier to nose upstream — her attention is caught by an odd phenomenon that, come to think of it, has fascinated her since small-girlhood (happier days!) whenever she has happened to see it: The river is, as ever, flowing south, New Orleansward; the paddle-steamer is headed north, gaining slow upstream momentum (standard procedure for sightseeing boats, in order to abbreviate the anticlimactic return leg of their tour), and as it begins to make headway, a deckhand ambles aft in process of casting off the vessel’s docklines, with the effect that he appears to be walking in place, with respect to the shore and Her angle of view, while the boat moves under him. It is the same disconcerting illusion, She guess, as that sometimes experienced when two trains stand side by side in the station and a passenger on one thinks momentarily that the other has begun to move, when in fact the movement is his own — an illusion compoundable if the observer on Train A (this has happened to Her at least once) happens to be strolling down the car’s aisle like that crewman on the sternwheeler’s deck, at approximately equal speed in the opposite direction as the train pulls out. Dear-present-reader Alice suddenly remembers one such occasion, somewhere or other, when for a giddy moment it appeared to her that she herself, aisle-walking was standing still, while Train A, Train B, and Boston’s South Street Station platform (it now comes back to her) all seemed in various motion.

As in fact they were, the “Freeze Frame” narrator declares in italics at this point, his end-of-paragraph language having echoed mine above, or vice verse — and here the narrative, after a space-break, takes a curious turn. Instead of proceeding with the story of Her several concentric plights — how She extricates or fails to extricate herself from the traffic jam; whether She misses the interview appointment or, making it despite all, nevertheless fails to get the university job; whether or not in either case She and the twins slip even farther down the middle-class scale (right now, alarmingly, if Bill really “cuts her odd” as threatened, She’s literally about two months away from the public-assistance rolls, unless her aging parents bail her out: she who once seriously considered Ph.D.hood and professorship); and whether in either of those cases anything really satisfying, not to say fulfilling, lies ahead for her in the second half of her life, comparable to the early joys of her marriage and motherhood — instead of going on with these nested stories, in which our Alice understandably takes a more than literary interest, the author here suspends the action and launches into an elaborate digression upon, of all things, the physics of relative motion in the universe as currently understood, together with the spatiotemporal nature of written narrative and — Ready? — Zeno’s Seventh Paradox, which three phenomena he attempts to interconnect more or less as follows: Seat-belted in her gridlocked and overheating Subaru, the protagonist of “Freeze Frame” is moving from St. Louis’s Gateway Arch toward University City at a velocity, alas, of zero miles per hour. Likewise (although her nerves are twinging, her hazel eyes brimming, her pulse and respiration pulsing and respiring, and her thoughts returning already from tourist boats to the life-problems that have her by the throat) her movement from the recentest even in her troubled story to whatever next: zero narrative mph, so to speak, as the station wagon idles and the author digresses. Even as the clock of Her life is running, however, so are time in general and the physical universe. The city of St. Louis and its temporarily stalled downtown traffic, together with our now-sobbing protagonist, the state of Missouri, and variously troubled America, all spin eastward on Earth’s axis at roughly a thousand miles per hour. The rotating planet itself careens through its solar orbit at a dizzying 66,662 miles per hour (with the incidental effect that even “stationary” objects on its surface, like Her Subaru, for half of every daily rotation are “strolling aft” with respect to orbital direction, though at nothing approaching orbital velocity). Our entire whirling system, meanwhile, is rushing in its own orbit through our Milky Way Galaxy at the stupendous rate of nearly half a million miles per hour: lots of compounded South Street Station effects going on within that overall motion! What’s more, although our galaxy appears to have no relative motion within its Local Group of celestial companions, that whole Local group — plus the great Virgo Cluster of which it’s a member, plus other, neighboring multigalactic clusters — is apparently rushing en bloc at a staggering near-million miles per hour (950,724) toward some point in interclusteral space known as the Great Attractor. And moreover yet — who’s to say finally? — that Attractor and everything thereto so ardently attracted would seem to be speeding at an only slightly less staggering 805,319 mph toward another supercluster, as yet ill-mapped, called the Shapley Concentration, or, to put it mildly, the Even Greater Attractor. All these several motions-within-motions, mind, over and above the grand general expansion of the universe, wherein even as the present reader reads this present sentence, the galaxies all flee on another’s company at speeds proportional to their respective distances (specifically, in scientific metrics, at the rate of fifty to eighty kilometers per second — let’s say 150,000 miles per hour — per “megaparsec” from the observer, a megaparsec being one thousand parsecs and each parsec 3.26 light-years). Don’t think about this last too closely, advises the author of “Freeze Frame,” but in fact out Alice — who has always had a head for figures, and who once upon a time maintained a lively curiosity about such impersonal matters as the constellations, at least, if not the overall structure of the universe — is at this point stopped quite as still by vertiginous reflection as is the unnamed Mrs. William Alfred Barns by traffic down there in her gridlocked Subaru, and this for several reasons. Apart from the similarities between Her situation vis-à-vis “Bill” and Alice’s vis-à-vis Howard — unsettling, but not extraordinary in a time and place where half of all marriages end in separation or divorce — is the coincidence of Alice’s happening upon “Freeze Frame” during a caesura in her own life-story and reading through the narratives of Her nonplusment up to the author’s digression-in-progress just as, lap-belted in a DC-10 at thirty-two thousand feet, she’s crossing the Mississippi River in virtual sight of St. Louis not long past midday (Central Daylight Savings Time), flying westward at an airspeed of six hundred eight miles per hour (so the captain has announced), against a contrary prevailing jet stream of maybe a hundred mph, for a net speed-over-ground of let’s say five hundred, while Earth and its atmosphere spin eastward under her, carrying the DC-10 backward (though not relatively) at maybe double its forward airspeed, while simultaneously the planet, the solar system, the galaxy, and so forth all tear along in their various directions at their various clips — and just now two flight attendants emerge from the forward galley and stroll aft down the parallel aisles like that deckhand on the tourist stern-wheeler, taking the passengers’ drink orders before the meal service. Alice stares awhile, transfixed, almost literally dizzied, remembering from her happier schooldays (and from trying to explain relative motion to Sam and Jessica one evening as the family camped out under the stars) that any point or object in the universe can be considered to be at rest, the unmoving center of it all, while everything else is in complex motion with respect to it. The arrow, released, may be said to stand still while the earth rushes under, the target toward, the archer away from it, et cetera.

[. . .]

Back, rather, she goes, to that extended digression, wherein by one more coincidence (she having just imaged the arrow in “stationary” flight — but not impossibly she glanced ahead in “Freeze Frame” before those flight attendants caught her eye) the author now invokes two other arrows: the celebrated Arrow of Time, along whose irreversible trajectory the universe has expanded ever since Big Bang, generating and carrying with it not only all those internal relative celestial motions but also the story of Mr. and Mrs. W. A. Barnes from wedlock through deadlock to gridlock (and of Alice and Howard likewise, up to her reading of these sentences); and the arrow in Zeno’s Seventh Paradox, which Alice may long ago have heard of but can’t recollect until the author now reminds her. If an arrow in flight can be said to traverse every point in its path from bow to target, Zeno teases, and if at any given moment it can be said to be at and only at some on of those points, then it must be at rest for the moment it’s there (otherwise it’s not “there”); therefore it’s at rest at every moment of its flight, and its apparent motion is illusory. To the author’s way of thinking, Zeno’s Seventh Paradox oddly anticipates not only motion pictures (whose motion truly is illusory in a different sense, our brain’s reconstruction of the serial “freeze-frames” on the film) but also Werner Heisenberg’s celebrated Uncertainty Principle, which maintains in effect that the more we know about a particle’s position, the less we know about its momentum, and vice versa — although how that principle relates to Mrs. Barne’s sore predicament, Alice herself is uncertain. In her own mind, the paradox recalls that arrow “at rest” in mid-flight aforeposited as the center of the exploding universe . . . like Her herself down there at this moment of Her story; like Alice herself at this moment of hers, reading about Hers and from time to time pausing to reflect as she reads; like very one of us — fired from the bow of our mother’s loins and arcing toward the target of our grave — at any and every moment of our interim life-stories.

[. . .]

[. . .]then returns, glass in hand, to the freeze-framed “Freeze Frame,” whose point she think she’s beginning to see, out of practice though she is in reading “serious” fiction. To the extent that anything is where it is [the author therein now declares], it has no momentum. To the extent that it moves, it isn’t “where it is.” Likewise made-up characters in made-up stories; likewise ourselves in the more-or-less made-up stories of our lives. All freeze-frames [he concludes (concludes this elaborate digression, that is, with another space-break, after which the text, perhaps even the story, resumes)] are blurred at the edges.

An arresting passage, Alice acknowledges to herself.

#pearl diver

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