#as if it hasn't been done dozens of times in this show alone

[paceypeternathanslawyer]

I actually saw a Jiara stan on Twitter who said that the pregnancy plot would have suited Jiara much better than Jarah in season 4. I don't even know where to start with this stupidity.

1. Do you really think the man who hardly gave Kiara any attention or affection, the man who freaked out on John B when he found out that Sarah was pregnant/John B asked him to be godfather and told John B that he wasn't going to be a good father and then went on about how John B wouldn't want him anywhere near his child. JJ was drunk during practically the whole season. He went on a rampage rioting around town which I believe led to some deaths if I remember correctly. Either way even if there weren't any deaths, it certainly could have led to deaths. JJ was impulsive to a detrimental level where he was betting the last of their money on a race he was in and now because of that John B and Sarah are broke just before having a baby. You really fucking think that guy should be a dad!?

2. Also JJ died... so you want Kiara to be pregnant without JJ to help... if he could even help at all.

But no... heaven forbid two people who love each other and are married get pregnant... that's not fucking suited to them. I really can't with JJ/Jiara stans. They have such tunnel vision where they act like the only thing about this show that matters is JJ/Jiara, that every good plot idea should belong to Jiara, and act like JJ was the only person that carried this show. I've also seen some JJ stans say that John B should have been the one who died. Truly from the bottom of my heart... fuck you to those people. You want his friends, his wife, and his child to be left without him. I get that most people didn't want any character to die and I get that but then take that up with Rudy. It was his fault.

[call-me-chips]

Hey, could any of the christians/christ followers on here please pray for me?

Religious trauma(?) warning

(Idk if this counts as religious trauma or not)

Don't know how to word this, so bear with me

I've decided to stop pursuing a relationship with God, because trying to do so has just been detrimental to my mental health

Every time I go to church, everyone there is putting up their hands, singing, some are even on their knees. And here I am, having never experienced God, and feeling like he's there. I've always felt alone in that sense

He's never answered my prayers, and because of this, I've doubted his existence since I was like, 10. When I was having nightmares and couldn't sleep, I tried praying with mother, but I always had to calm myself because I felt no comfort at all, prayer after prayer

I've really started struggling over the past few years as I've started finding my sexuality and gender identity. Although I feel happy with who I am, I still have a LOT of doubts. I've been told all my life that gays go to hell, and although I don't believe that God would create people just to send them to hell, it's still a prominent thought. I've quite literally been sobbing on the floor dozens of times, begging God to show me ANY sign from him that being gay is either wrong or right, he hasn't answered me at all. It's just been me crying at the wind. Nothing.

I can't change who I am or who I like, and it really scares me that I could be sent to eternal torment because of it. If I could choose to be a normal, cishet person, I absolutely would, no hesitation, just to remove all doubt and fear

I really wanna believe that god exists, but I'm really not sure at this point. Every time I try to pray, I wanna cry because I feel nothing, while EVERYONE ELSE seems to have a relationship with God and is happy. I dread going to church because I nearly cry every time I see everyone in the room worshipping and genuinely enjoying being there. I just feel so tired of trying and done with God and christianity

So yeah, if any of the religious people could please pray for me, that would be very appreciated /nf :)

[buckevantommy]

Arranged marriage and online friends au! 😊

Buck realises after two months of emailing back and forth that he doesn't actually know what Tommy looks like. And it's bugging him.

It's not like he wasn't aware of it before; Tommy has been a faceless presence across the digital void, features interchangeable with B-role actors and strangers on the street until Buck had given up trying to put someone else's likeness to someone unlike anyone he's ever met. Still technically hasn't.

After this long, he considers Tommy a friend. Buck just wishes he could put a face to the words.

There have been context clues helping piece together an image of what he might look like - brown hair (at least no one noticed the mud in my hair. I'll have to make sure to schedule time for a shower next time I want to take Annie for a jog in the park before a work event), defined muscles (not that lugging around spare car parts isn't its own workout, but I do have a standing appointment with my trainer to get to. I'm sorry I have to cut this short), tall (Granted, it's easier to get a good look at an engine when you have the height to bend over and not lose your footing) - but no descriptions and definitely no photos (unless you count the pics of his rescue dog Annie and a cameo appearance of his sneakers, which Buck wants to but they don't exactly fill in the blanks).

It probably doesn't matter. It's not like they're ever going to meet in person - Buck is on the west coast and Tommy's on eastern time. They can't just casually meet up for coffee when there's a dozen states between them.

He's not sure Tommy would even want to. Because while Tommy has tossed a few crumbs of his appearance Buck's way over the past eight and a half weeks, Tommy doesn't have to wonder about Buck in return. Because Buck had linked his insta account in his second email. It was the quickest way to show Tommy the state of his beloved Wrangler Renegade given he was at work and it was currently taking up space in Eddie's yard. Tommy sure knows his engines, even from photos that likely didn't show the whole story. With Bobby and Eddie's help (and with Chris being more help than Eddie) they managed to pinpoint the problem thanks to Tommy - something multiple mechanics couldn't nail down let alone fix, instead giving Buck the same excuse of how an old engine with that many miles was bound to give up the ghost sooner or later.

Buck took the jeep up the coast for the first time on his recent 48 off - the first time since his cross-country tour led him to the 118 and a few weeks in she'd stalled out and hadn't been the same since. But there was no sputtering, no chugging fits, no weird noises. Just miles of highway being eaten up under her wheels.

And he couldn't even picture the face of the person he wanted to thank. Maybe it was silly, or petty, but Buck couldn't shake his annoyance at Tommy having never sent him a photo of himself. He totally gets the anonymity of the internet, especially with forums, but he really thought they were becoming friends. Thought they'd keep emailing even if they managed to fix the Renegade.

He also hadn't heard from Tommy in over a week, so maybe that was adding to his irritation. And worry. As soon as they got her running smoothly, Buck posted a video of the jeep to insta and sent Tommy the link. He posted a few more pics of her on the road north and thanked him in the caption:

couldn't have done it without your help T 🌅🚙💻🛠️

Tommy knows how much this jeep means to him, and the more Buck thinks about it the more certain he is that the radio silence isn't like Tommy. He was looking forward to an update! It was the last thing he wrote: Keep me updated!, exclamation mark and all. Maybe he had to go away suddenly for work. Or his computer died. Or his email got hacked. Maybe something happened to him - he could be hurt, or sick, or worse. Maybe he read your emails and saw your posts and knows he fixed the problem so now he's done with you.

Buck stews in that thought longer than he should. It's not impossible, it just. Hurts. He likes Tommy. And screw distance - he wants to keep emailing and getting to know each other. Maybe Buck will get called out east for a nautral disaster (okay, not a great reason) or some kind of specialty training program. Or Tommy will travel out west for work.

Work which he's been pretty vague about, come to think of it. Buck doesn't actually know what he does - some kind of office-type job, going by the mentions of suits and gladhanding. Tommy knows Buck is a firefighter in L.A., but the nature of Tommy's work has been left mostly up to Buck's imagination. Maybe he's a special agent. Or a criminal. Or in witness protection. Or maybe the thought of a secretive existence helps soothe the ache of his abandonment issues; Tommy would reach out if he could but extenuating cirumstances are stopping him.

It happens to be a q-word shift which means no calls to distract him. Pocketing his phone, Buck sinks into the couch and turns on the tv desperate for something to take his mind off Tommy. Taylor Kelly is reporting from the studio these days, no longer chasing stories with a cameraman in a shady white van.

"..And now to political news. Vice President Kinard today announced the long-awaited engagement of his son to the eldest daughter of prominent Senator Olivia Ortiz. Thomas Kinard is the Vice President's only child, and the union is expected to strengthen ties.."

As Taylor talks, photos overlay on-screen: a professional family portrait complete with closed-mouth smiles; a young man - Thomas Kinard - in a khaki flightsuit standing in front of a military chopper; a college graduation gown.

"..Thomas Kinard minored in Mechanical Engineering.."

Another image: tall and broad and now with a mop of brown curls competing in a marathon and helping someone cross the finish line with their arm slung over his shoulders.

It's a minor detail. He doesn't even know why he notices. But Buck's eyes are drawn to his sneakers: Thomas is wearing a black pair with white half-trim and a reflective trapezoid on the heel. Not anything unusual, except that the guy he's helping is wearing a neon yellow pair that somehow didn't catch Buck's attention.

The next image shows an animal shelter and a small crowd of volunteers in candid and posed photos. In one of the candid shots, Thomas can be seen crouching to pet a familiar looking dog.. Annie.

No fucking way.

"..Tommy?"

doing this thing

[fractalcloning]

In the shadow of Ganmadan.

It was a little offensive, the clear sky and beautiful weather. It should be raining, thundering, like in her dreams--red and scary, foreboding--but it isn't. Jean Luc Picard died and it is...just another day. She knows that Alton Soong and Dr. Jurati are working on it, maping and copying his neural patterns into the golem Soong had reserved for himself. There's no guarantee it will work, that they can take the patterns off a dead man and expect them to function. He may not be restored at all, and Soji feels terribly lost. She has siblings here, dozens of them, but she's the odd one out. Not one of them can really comprehend what she's been through in the last few days. None of them can even start to relate. Dahj is gone. Her mother is an AI, a holo construct that was meant to keep her from breaking her cover. Narek is--somewhere outside. In a cell? The fact that she'd even consider talking to him only enhances her distress. She's all alone. Again. And the Romulan fleet is gone, but so is most of the Starfleet one. They are defenseless, completely out of orchids, and only Soji seems to recognize that the danger hasn't passed. That they aren't actually safe from anything. Another nudge to her bedrock could topple everything again, and again, and again and she chose to let the guarantee of safety go. She hates herself for giving that up, for shutting down the transmitter, and then hates herself in another way for even considering summoning the extra-galactic synthetics. Her life isn't worth every organic one. It's objectively true but so very hard to remember when the threat of death and destruction seems to hover over her like her own personal raincloud. So Soji sits, miserable and distraught, on the edge of Alton Soong's desk and tries not to think about it. Unfortunately the only distractions she has are the synthetics littered around the office. Alton Soong had been so proud, so excited to show her his prototypes. The golem, the next set of fractal clones, mice for Spot II to chase. Each one was meticulously designed and he loved them, truly. His crowning masterpiece was the reproduction of Data. It took up the center of the room and all Soji could do was stare. He looked peaceful, like he was sleeping and not just an empty, expertly sculpted husk in a stasis chamber. She was almost jealous, that he got to sleep so softly while she was vibrating with anxiety about the next calamity, the next loss, the next inevitable, crushing death. She runs both hands through her hair, tugging it to try and clear the maudline catastrophizing. It half works. "I wish I could have met you," Soji says to the stasis chamber and her arms drop back to her sides. "If half of what everyone said was true, you'd probably have something profound to say."

"Or...at least you might give me a hug."

She was tearing up, thinking of her Dad, the fake ghost in her dreams. He never existed but she had memories of him saying profound things. She recalled her mom trying to cheer her up--or Dahj, who may have actually done that before they were separated. Picard had even tried to comfort her, in his own way--and now she comes back to Narek again. The last man standing. God, her life was pathetic if the Tal'Shiar were her best choice for a hug. She wipes her eyes and tries to stop thinking again. It doesn't work any better this time. "Fuck," Soji says to the empty room. To the construct that is not her kind of father. It required a quantum computer to hold what they had of Data's neural patterns--if the code, the information, were any less she might have been able to boot him up, to talk to him through holograms like she did her mom, but even Soji understood that he was too complex for that. Data required a body and Soong had never completed the method to transfer-- "Wait--Agnes fixed it," Soji says, largely to herself, partly to the construct. Alton Soong had lamented how his masterpiece copy of Data would forever lie dormant. Because Bruce Maddox hadn't finished the work to make transfering consciousness possible. But Dr. Jurati had finished it. They were using it on Picard right now. Which meant-- Soji shot up from the side of the desk and all but darted to the stasis pod in the center of the room. Now, looking at the unoccupied copy, she saw something other than a hollow body--she could--she could put him back, right? If it were a copy of Data, he could work in this body? She immediately pulls up the controls on the stasis chamber and snatches a data slate off Soong's desk. Data was kept in the computer, he was the cornerstone of it, she should be able to just...run Jurati's protocols and put him into the duplicate, right? The tiny thread of hope that wrapped itself around her heart was as cutting as it was fragile, but Soji was desperate and so very alone. If she thought anything could work, anything at all, she couldn't have stopped herself from trying it.

[autumnshowell]

arguments

'You've been out so often lately.'

'You've been so hard to get ahold of.' 'I worry when you don't answer my texts.' 'I thought you said you didn't have to work.' 'I guess I just didn't realize you had better things to do.' She throws handfuls of what is essentially into the trash. Part of Autumn wants to scream as she turns her mother's words around in her head, every spin of it gouging an angry red barb into the figurative mental flesh of her hand as she considers just how angry she is right now. "I have a life outside of you, mom." She says, exasperated in tone but forcing herself to keep calm. Autumn ties the trash bag off and moves to set it next to the door that leads out of the kitchen to the driveway, lifting it to show her before she does so. "And by the way, you're allowed to actually throw stuff away without me here." Helpless and useless she thinks to herself. She'll feel awful for thinking it later, but right now she's so angry because she spent the whole of her last day off cleaning the filth out of this kitchen and it looks like she never even touched it. It's always something. Always some mess that needs cleaning or something that sits broken because she can't pick up a phone and call for a repair herself. It'd be one thing, Autumn gripes, if her mother were incapable. If she were unable to do the things that Autumn does. But she isn't. She just knows she can get away with it, because her daughter promised her late husband that she would take care of her. Because if she plays dumb and she plays useless, it keeps Autumn close, ensures that she'll never go far from home. Autumn knows it, because her mother's said so a dozen times in her drunken rants, even if she doesn't remember it, and she hates that she's right. Because who else does she have? Kevin is, at best, a work friend. Everyone she counted as a close friend in town growing up is too busy with life or has left town altogether. She hasn't had anybody better to be around. Hasn't had anything better to do. But now she does. And it's becoming apparent. And she knows her mother hates this. And she relishes in it. "You're gonna have to cook for yourself or order out this Saturday - I'm not gonna be around." That pries her mother's eyes from her wine glass. "Why?" "I've got a thing." Sharp. "What thing?" Pointed "Just a thing." Deflecting. "What kind of thing? I remember when my daughter didn't keep secrets." "Oh my fucking god, really?" She says, slapping a rag down on the counter top. "I'm going to a studio to look at tattoo stuff, okay?" "A tattoo? Why the hell do you want a tattoo?" "I don't even know if I want one - and what does it matter to you anyways. it's not for you it's for me." "That's so tacky Autumn Marie, when have you ever wanted a tattoo?" "Jesus, and you wonder why I didn't want to tell you." "Well if you can't even tell me about it, what are you going to tell people when they see it? You'll look trashy." It's the certitude and confidence with which her own mother calls her trashy. It makes her breath catch. She feels her nails digging so deeply into the palms of one hand that she's sure when she rubs her face in frustration, it's going to leave a trail of red behind. It doesn't but her hand hurts. "It's 2024, mom, maybe I want to look trashy." She hates how much she sounds like a fucking teenager. It's humiliating and demoralizing, despite the audience of nobody. "Well, mission accomplished if you go through with that." Leigh says, moving to pour more Moscato into her glass. "No wonder I don't have grandkids."

Silly enough, that's what gets her, what shuts her off, what rips her out of her own mind and sends her off to the broom closet eve though her mother's not done talking. She thinks of just how many times she's told her mother she's not interested in men, let alone starting a family with one. It's the closes she ever gets to telling her mother that she's never going to have grand children. That she's never going to have a son-in-law. But she never has the stone to say it outright.

The rest of the evening is quiet - quiet as the dead. Or at least it might as well be; her mother's voice is somewhere behind her, over her shoulder - quite and muffled every once in a while, like she's yelling through the deep ocean. She doesn't listen as she cleans up.

She's reminded of just why she does all this in the morning, while her mother is at work where she has to at least pretend to be sober and functional and can't inform her daughter of how wrong she is about everything she does. She wonders why she comes here at all anymore - but she knows why - no matter how awful it is, or how draining it is, it's less lonely this way. It's nice to be needed, even if she isn't necessarily wanted.

[colleenmurphy]

A/N: the number is in service you just have to register to here and you'll be good to go with it. It does not tie into my OC Drabble at all it's just a nod to an awesome thing that hasn't left my brain for the better part of the month.

Mini Playlist for the mini verse

"I've got to work late the rest of the week. I won't be home in time for celebrate with you..I'm sorry, Col."

"But the cabin's finally done and I was planning on a quiet weekend together there."

"I know you were...and I'll make it up to you."

"Don't work too hard. Happy Anniversary, Hellman."

Sliding the phone back into the cradle with a thud Colleen noticed her left hand felt obscenely heavy under the weight of her three stoned platinum wedding set.

This was supposed to be their Crystal anniversary, a footnote in their marriage as how far they'd come and what they'd built together. Their wedding back in 1970 had been a very small affair in her parents front parlor dressed in their Sunday best. They'd moved four times each time to a larger city. The Averys now called the lush gated oasis community of Sage Brush Hunt and Riding Club home and it drove Colleen utterly insane. Their inherited cattle operation had come from her side of the family once her granddad Clancy Delaney had passed. Minnie, Col's mother had wanted nothing to do with the entire thing and passed it onto Colleen herself along with a dozen roses and an apology card with 'You're stronger than I am. Love you to the moon and back kiddo. xxx - Mama' scrawled in Minnie's distinct handwriting. The rest had come from her own endorsements with a few grain companies and a boot retailer had proved lucrative. Her former rodeo sweetheart past was well behind her but sadly so was barrel racing. Heck had never shared her love of horses or actual farm work but his friend, Ace Briggs did.

"Helene's showing in Falsterbro and Liz is running on Ranch time of her own out in British Columbia..."

She thought to herself as she quietly rage cleaned the lofty six bedroom mini mansion that they now called home. Every single house in this 'estate community' was cookie cutter right down to the topiary animals in their front yards. It gave her a case of the Stepfords. An hour later a courier popped up at the front door with two bouquets of roses saying that he was needed in New England and that he'd be later coming back than he'd said. There was also a weekend get away pass to her favorite spa out by the ocean and a stone's throw from the cabin she would now be setting up for a while. A wicked little smile spread across Colleen's face as she pulled up her curly strawberry blonde hair.

"Where is that paper..."

She muttered to herself as she shuffled the various envelopes and papers spread across the desk of her tiny little office off the main foyer. It was her inner sanctuary away from the expectations of being part of his family. Marrying into the Avery clan had been a bit of a to do in the upper echelon's circle that her family didn't run in. She knew he was 'working late all weekend' just as she herself was 'preparing to go over to Galveston intent on having a spa weekend alone. ' She knew about Kelli and she knew Heck had a suspicion that she was seeing someone he just had no idea who.

"270 301-5797..."

She recited to herself from memory as she closed her eyes and focused. Twirling the chord between her long slender fingers she prayed he'd pick up.

"This is Briggs."

"What're you up to this weekend?"

"I was going to go out with this new littler of pups...I've been meaning to ask you. I know you've got that big huge house of yours and now you've got this cabin. A cabin ain't a cabin without a hound on the front porch."

She knew exactly what Alan Briggs was playing at and she smiled.

"I would love to help you any way I can."

"There's a lonesome little dark grey boy here that hasn't got a forever home..."

"His name is Goose then."

"W-wow. My easiest sell yet. Goose it is, pack your milk bones and chew toys buddy boy you've got a Mama. I'm not doing anything this weekend what about you?"

"I'm going to the cabin. Would you and Goose and his litter mates like to join me?"

The jovial tone changed entirely as if someone had walked by that shouldn't be hearing him over the phone.

"What about Heck?"

"Is otherwise indisposed in New England until further notice. Business must be good."

Colleen answered cooly without a care as her mind whirred with the mental list of things to pick up for her newest little addition. Goose was the only gift she'd be getting this year and the prospect of having her own dog again made her heart swell. It had been a long time since the passing of her childhood companion, Rex.

"Oohh...he's in trouble. I'll pack a bag and make a stop by the grocery store and meet you there by 7."

Smiling to herself Colleen noted that her weekend had just taken an interesting turn indeed.

"I'll see you then. I've got dinner covered. Be safe."

[marshmallowprotection]

RFA reacting to an MC who breaks down physically after the mental toll she had to go through during Saeran's AE?

Listen, your friends are there for you through thick and thin. Jumin and Jaehee? They've already ensured you, Saeran, and Saeyoung will have someone to talk to about what you've gone through. Sure, that wasn't easy to do in the time before the After Ending began, but now, it's happening. Jumin wants his friends to have someone safe to talk to about what they've gone through. He will not minimize what you've gone through now that he's got a full grasp of Mint Eye and every bit of information that came afterward.

So, if you need therapy, a bit of medication, or more, for what you've gone through or if you needed it before all of this but couldn't afford it, best believe you're covered for life. Jaehee is in agreement, and it's time for her to take some down time and enjoy days off with you. It's time to relax and watch some television together, no more trying to be on top of things, just a normal day of gushing about Zen instead of this mess.

Yoosung and Zen have been cheering you on from the start. They've both known this hasn't been easy for you, and those two have done all they can to make sure you've been smiling. Seeing you collapse at the end would be painful, but they won't let you be alone. They've got smiles, gift baskets, and hours to talk with you about everything your heart desires. You deserve friends who listen when you need to vent, but also friends who make you laugh when you need a distraction to breathe.

Saeyoung gets it but he's got his own stuff to work through, too. He would drop everything in an instant for you and Saeran, even at the cost of his health. But, knowing him, if you need someone to yell with or cry with, he's there to be the best brother-in-law. Lay down, even if he needs to time to recover, he's guarding your bed to make sure you don't try to get out of it. If he can't, neither can you. It's time to let go and breathe. No more fighting, you've survived. Let's talk about what comes next, he'll say, when are you and Saeran getting married? Get your mind on something better.

Hey, if you're lucky, you'll even get a Vanderwood apology with a dozen flowers. He won't know what to say, but that's alright. The fact that he found something to show it matters.

Saeran would be pained to see you collapse. He would kick himself for everything that happened, and for his role in making you feel so stressed and exhausted. The two of you have a lot to talk about and that's okay, talking is the road to communication and recovery. You can cry, scream, and rest now. He can do the same. After all, there's nobody in this world who understands what you're going through at that moment better than him. It'll be okay.

Cuddle in the same hospital bed and rest, no more fighting, no more crying, and no more pain. It's just happily ever after, a life made for a couple who want to recover and live freely.

[gamesception]

Sception reads Cass Cain #8

Azrael: Agent of the Bat #60, 61, 66 written by Dennis O'Neil, pencils by Roger Robinson

The last time Cass appeared in A:AotB it was for a pretty goofy and very 90s little side story. Not much was done with Cass but it established a pretty nice baseline of what ~Comics Were Like~ at the time to contrast Cass's eventual solo title against. This time I'm getting the rest of Cass's A:AotB appearances out of the way. #60 is a fun stand alone story in its own right, and there's actually a fair bit more going on with Cass in #61. They each could have been their own post, but I'm eager to get to Cass's Solo title, so this will just be a long post.

It took a while for the Joker to show up in NML, but by A:AotB #60 he had claimed a territory of his own, and gathered a small gang of Harley & some clown goons. Right now they're rounding up street people - homeless, starving, mentally ill, anyone too out-of-it to resist - and painting them up in joker faces, too. Later on they'll be used as decoys when the police raid their territory. Pretty grim stuff, but that hasn't happened yet.

Batman knows the police are planning to raid the Joker's territory soon, and sends Jean-Paul and Cass get to evacuate as many innocent people from the area as they can before the shooting starts.

They get the order on this page from Batman: Shadow of the Bat #93, which we looked at last time.

In this issue, Jean-Paul and Cass evacuate like a dozen people including some kids - so much for the 'over a thousand people' bit. Then they fight some of Joker's goons in clown makeup, one particularly eager volunteer in a full joker get up, purple suit and all. Jean thinks it's actually the joker, until Cass knocks the guy out and he realizes the white face was just makeup.

Meanwhile Joker finds a kid who was left behind, and grabs her as a potential hostage. Jean-Paul and Cass bump into them when they come back looking for the girl.

I think I mentioned this last time we looked at Azrael: Agent of the Bat, but Robinson draws some ridiculous facial expressions and I kind of love them.

Jean-Paul assumes the real joker is another fake, and Mr. J. is so affronted that he just sort of stands there while Azrael and Batgirl take the kid and walk off. It's honestly pretty funny, just a stand alone comic story that doesn't really advance the overall mega crossover narrative much. I think it was even left out of the trade compilations, but it's also a more enjoyable issue overall than the Nick Scratch stuff from Cass's last guest appearance in Azrael's book. There's something to be said for plain old one off comic book adventures, even in the middle of a mega crossover event.

That said, it is a bit of an odd, brief, rather underplayed encounter for what is technically the first meeting between the new Batgirl and the Joker. Something you might otherwise expect to be treated with a bit more gravity given the Joker's history with the previous Batgirl.

Later on there is a stand alone comic making a bigger deal of that, so it's not like we're missing out or anything.

...

As for Cass, well, as with her previous appearance in Azrael's book, she doesn't really get to convey much of her personality here. But we do get this nice moment of Barbara worrying about her, in particular with regard to the Joker and her own past there. It's a nice little character beat, touching on a relationship that would be one of the pillars of Cass's solo title.

...

The real meat in terms of characterization for Cass out of all of her A:AotB appearances is here in issue 61.

In the time since the last issue, the Police raided Joker's territory and murdered a bunch of innocent hostages in clown makeup while Batman's crew struggled to stop the bloodshed. With the cops and the capes tied up, Joker's actual crew spread out through the city kidnapping as many infants as possible, with Joker's plan being to kill them as sort of a holiday prank.

Yeesh. Very dark, especially coming off the relatively lighthearted previous issue. He was stopped in the end, of course, but ended up killing Commissioner Gordon's wife in a pretty shitty bit of fridging, and frankly it was such a huge mistake to end No Man's Land on such a downer. I don't always hate dark or violent moments or deaths in superhero books, but the whole year-long No Mans Land crossover had been this struggle from the darkness of the Cataclysm into a long midnight of Batman and his crew and the Commissioner being at each other's throats into an eventual dawn of everyone starting to work together again and the eventual daybreak of hope and restoration for Gotham. The mean-spirited ending was a sour note that deeply undermined the entire thrust of the story.

But back to this issue, Jean-Paul is spending more time with Bat-Clan "moral conscience" Dr. Thompkins when Cass shows up with orders from Bruce. This art for her... again, it's not ~bad~ by 90's female character standards, but it doesn't really convey Cass's age or personality very well, imo.

I'm mostly here just to talk about Cass, but these panels of Jean-Paul reacting to the news really does capture the gravity of the situation. Just some good comic art worth calling out, since I've been maybe a bit overly critical of this team.

This issue puts a lot more effort into characterizing Cass, and building something like a meaningful rapport between her and Azrael, starting by explicitly calling out the parallels in their backgrounds. Also, again, I really like the art in these panels. The coloring work by Rob Ro and Alex Bleyaert is very nice here, with the stark white snowfield contrasting sharply with Azrael's red and Batgirls deep blue - which in turn contrast nicely with each other - Azraels angelic aesthetic against with Cass's more demonic look, with the extra twist of their personalities kind of being opposite to that, at least in costume.

Speaking of, there's even some personality showing on Cass's face as she's turned to look up at Jean-Paul here, like she's realizing this aspect of shared history or trauma for the first time.

It's good. It's actually good.

That bit about 'Batman saved me... but never told me how to get my father's voice out of my head' bit is a good line in terms of conveying what Jean-Paul is about on a character level. It almost makes me care about this character who I have never had any interest in otherwise. And while this is mostly establishing Jean-Paul's character more than Cass's, the 'You're a good listener' line is treating Cass as more than just Batman's silent enforcer.

And it leads to at least one panel of Cass without the mask. It's a nice moment.

Jean-Paul and Cass stop off by Oracle for more detailed orders - they're to search Lex-corp's camp (it was a thing, don't worry about it) to see if Joker has the kids there. Which seems unlikely, but... Joker. There's also some additional bad news in that Batman believes Joker has somehow gotten his hands on a bunch of high explosives. Before they head out, Babs gives the two Christmas gifts - perfume for Cass, which, whatever I guess, and a harmonica for Jean-Paul.

Which leads to another nice moment outside. With her body-reading gimmick of course Cass would take to dance - something I think post reboot depictions of Cass made more and better use of. One area at least where the reboot improved on the original. That the A:AotB crew had thought of it as a natural character beat makes the relative lack of dance as a theme in Cass's own early book stand out more.

Anyway, Azrael & Batgirl make it to the Lexcorp compound, fight through some guards to get in, and find that someone has redecorated the Lescorp Christmas tree with what first seems to be babies as ornaments - though they turn out to be just dolls.

But the tree is rigged with the stolen explosives, And Azrael just barely has time to jump in front of Cass and Luthor's enforcer Mercy Graves - yet another character from the cartoons iirc.

Jean-Paul survives, barely, and even through the pain notices something and grabs it before he passes out.

Another nice moment between Jean-Paul and Cass to end out the issue on. I wouldn't have wanted to see a romantic relationship between the two, but this issue really goes a long way towards establishing what could have been a strong dynamic between them. I don't think I recall ever seeing the ornament in the background of Cass's book, but since this story is new to me I'm not sure I would have noticed it before.

....

Unfortunately, that was pretty much it for Cass and Jean-Paul working together. Injuries from the explosion basically took Valley out of the action for the remainder of No Man's Land, and after the mega crossover ended his and Cass's respective creative teams took their characters in different directions. We're skipping ahead a good bit to look at issue 66 here, but there's not much to her appearance here so I figure it's better to get it out of the way now.

Cass shows up for a couple pages in this issue to check on how Jean-Paul is doing...

But gets frustrated at his inability to understand her and leaves. As far as I know that's the last she shows up in his book, and I don't recall him ever showing up in hers.

Kind of a shame, honestly.

[shecharm]

more human verse inari headcanons;

an actual dumbass; very forgetful so she writes everything down like birthdays or important information. she's got about a dozen journals at home that are just packed full of things she's desperate not to forget.

diagnosed with severe social anxiety; she stares a lot and that often gets her in trouble with strangers. the only time she actually approaches people for conversation is if she needs something or is buzzed because it takes the edge off. she's awful with maintaining eye contact, though. it makes her very uncomfortable. she'll look anywhere else such as your nose, forehead or mouth but not your eyes.

don't ask her anything related to math, she has no clue!

always wearing a few hair ties of some sort on her wrist because she gets hot at work, due to easily overheating and will need to put her hair up and one point or another. her hair is down to the back of her knees so it's a lot to manage.

her apartment is a mess! don't come in, you'll regret it. there's clothes everywhere and boxes that she hasn't unpacked for like, a year. and yes, she is the type that still has christmas decorations up in the middle of the next year. don't judge her.

always takes care of her physical appearance because she's extremely picky and very self conscious! always wears makeup, has her nails done and her hair is always styled unless she's in the comfort of her own home then it can get a little messy and / or tangled at the ends.

has an oral fixation of sorts that revolves around her anxiety, so she'll bite her lip or the ends of pens or chew on the inside of her cheek. she always has to nibble or bite something or fidget to ease her nerves. she'll bounce her leg if she's sat still too long as well as pick at her nails or clench her hands together or ball her fists up.

under a readmore regarding her past due to tw of abuse.

her mother was a severe alcoholic and her dad kept a distance due to his work so he was rarely home. her mother physically and mentally abused her off and on for several years until she moved out. she has had bones broken, been bruised and has scars on her body from it. don't ask about it, she will cry.

she's an only child and didn't have many friends growing up due to her mothers behavior and attitude. she always had to be the best at everything otherwise her mother would get mad. other kids didn't like that, they thought she was showing off.

inari loved her father but she can never forgive him for leaving her alone all the time with her mother the way that he did. all inari could do was pray to god that it'd stop one day but no matter how much she prayed, nothing got better.

[evecolourshock]

...why must my brain give me somewhat-related fic

Tron's eyes go wide at the sight of a User that is not Flynn on the Grid. So wide, and his breath so panicky, that Clu stops whatever he was doing to attempt to comfort the suddenly terrified Security Monitor.

Before Clu can do anything, Tron bolts. He's never done that before.

The User shares Tron's face, and Clu has a horrible sinking feeling. Tron's always fretted about the Grid not being safe enough, not being good enough, not being up to his User's standards. Clu has shared most of those concerns, and been more vocal about it, for a very long time. Flynn's brushed them both off about it for almost as long.

But Tron's User is here, and Tron is afraid.

Alan_One stops close enough that Clu can see his face is set in lines Clu's not confident he can interpret. He fluffs his armour panels slightly, looking bigger than he already is, fully prepared to do anything it takes to save Tron's data.

And yet. And yet Alan_One just sighs and deflates, running a hand down his face like Tron does, visibly exhausted by something Clu can't identify. "What did Flynn fuck up this time?" The User asks resignedly, and Clu...

Clu finds out what it's like to be blindsided.

He doesn't like it, but it's welcome to the alternative of having to fight a User. He can't help the humourless chuckle. "What didn't he would be easier to answer." He responds, and finds his words almost as heavy with bitterness.

Alan_One's eyes flick in the direction Tron fled. "Everyone's been scared of me since I punched Flynn for leaving Sam alone with no explanation." He comments quietly. Clu barely stifles a growl - he didn't think he'd be feeling a kinship with the nebulous new User he's been told is his brother, whatever that means, but being abandoned by Flynn is something he's all too familiar with. "He won't be back until he can get his priorities in order, so in the meantime I'm stepping in." Clu braces himself for new orders, for something that will grate against his directive, but... "What can I do to help?" ...he's pleasantly surprised.

Clu can't find the words for what's wrong, so he just pulls up his task list and shows it to Alan_One. It's grown since he last checked it, and no doubt will grow again before Alan_One has finished reading it.

Alan_One makes a copy of the list and sorts it through a series of categories Clu's unfamiliar with. The User notices his curiosity, and lets Clu see. "These ones in the red category would be better fixed from the other side, through modifying or upgrading the hardware. The blue ones are software upgrades, these yellow ones are things that will require an installation..." Alan_One explains each of the dozen or so categories, and adds that they're ordered by priority as well - the ones at the top of each category list hold a higher priority than the ones lower down. It's sensible, logical.

Clu approves. Mostly.

The entire category related to Tron has his hackles raising, borrowing another of Flynn's expressions. Tron doesn't need to be fixed, he's perfect the way he is. The fact that Clu can't get the system to match up is not the Monitor's fault.

"And this?" He hisses, gesturing at it.

"The only things Tron should be focused on." Alan_One responds firmly. "Everything else in his task list should not be his responsibility. He was written to protect, not fix bugs - I'll be doing those. You've both done a marvellous job so far, but unfortunately some things have just been too out of spec with what you have to work with."

Clu settles, mollified - though he doesn't relax his plating. Tron is scared to the point of flight from his own User. There'll be a reason, even if Clu hasn't found it yet.

Alan_One leaves after fixing some of the more pressing bugs on what had been Tron's task list before he took it over. He fixes Clu with a steely look before stepping into the beacon. "I'm asking you this not as a User, but out of concern for a fellow person. Do not let Tron try and tackle more tasks than what's on the list I curated unless something's about to go more critical than it already has and there isn't enough time to contact me, and do not take on more tasks than on the list I gave you unless the same condition applies. Both of you are already overworked, I cannot and will not let either of you be corrupted by running yourselves until you crash from stress." He sighs, that look softening. "You are too important, both to the Grid and to me."

And then the User is gone. Clu blinks away the afterimages of the Beacon flash, and has to take a moment to process the concept of a User caring.

Tron reappears shortly afterwards, and it's the first time Clu has seen the Monitor skittish. "Alan_One is back in his world." Clu affirms quietly, dropping his normally stoic and distant persona to allow the Monitor the comfort of a hug. "He told me he'll be looking after the Grid while Flynn takes an enforced leave of absence, and that we've done well with what we have available." He's pretty sure Alan_One will permit him one additional task - defend Tron. Glitch knows someone has to.

Tron takes one look at his new task list, and warbles out something relieved and exhausted. Finally, something he can manage.

Clu doesn't think he'll have much fight getting Tron to not take more on - not when Tron curls up on one of Clu's seats and slips into standby, taking an impossibly rare chance to rest.

He looks peaceful like that. Young, despite having a longer runtime than Clu - it is only now that Clu is reminded that while his beta run was rushed, he at least had one. Tron's was interrupted, and the Monitor still hasn't been able to finish it.

Hopefully now he can, and Clu can see more of that enthusiasm and fascination he remembers from the early cycles before things started going wrong.

Alan [in a pre-legacy AU where he finds the Grid instead of Sam]: WHY OH WHY would you borrow Tron without actually telling me what you were using him for?

Flyn: I needed a good partner to work with to stabilize the Grid! It was gonna be so cool man!

Alan: you fucked up a perfectly good program is what you did. Look at him! He's got anxiety.

[attackfish]

Could we get 5 hc on Avatar Sokka??? ❤️❤️❤️

Universe tag: [Link].

1. While Iroh has been abruptly coming to terms with just how completely his family has disintegrated, and what an absolute horror show it has been for a very long time, Sokka and Katara have been alone in a cabin with know idea what is happening, and if their father and his new companion are even still alive. I think we can all agree that's a bit rough, psychologically speaking. And Sokka's the Avatar. Frankly, they're all very lucky that he doesn't tear the ship apart accidentally in agitation.

2. He doesn't because instead, he and Katara pass the time plotting their escape. Which is to say, he plots, and Katara does her best to sort through the dozens and dozens of schemes he devises to find the ones that might work. She hasn't found any yet. The waves outside grow choppier and choppier as the weight of it sinks in on her, the reality that they might not get a chance to escape, that it might be hopeless. And as Sokka gesticulates wildly as he explains each plan. The ocean below churns, making the boat bounce and buck.

3. And then the door opens. And the man who captured them is in the doorway, promising to take them to their father. And they don't know if they should go with him or fight him, and if they do fight him, how? How would two untrained kids fight him? They don't know what to do, and they're scared, and neither one wants to admit just how scared they are.

4. But then he takes them to another door just down the corridor, and opens it, and there's their dad, and their gran-gran! They run into the room, and their dad grabs them and lifts them up into his arms, and Gran-Gran squeezes them tight, and checks them over like she's afraid they might be hurt, and the door closes behind them.

5. It's hard to overestimate just how badly Iroh is doing. This whole journey, this whole chase, was a way of putting off his grief, that overwhelming grief of losing his only child to a cause he no longer believes in. And now it's over. No, it's worse than over, because it's another cause he can no longer believe in. His family is in ruins. His niece and nephew... And what has he done in his life that means anything? Everything has burned to ash.

[darkficsyouneveraskedfor]

Hue and Cry VII

Warnings: non-consent sex and rape (series), mentions of previous forced oral, abuse of power, these men ain't shit.

This is dark!medieval!Bucky Barnes x reader and explicit. 18+ only.  Your media consumption is your own responsibility. Warnings have been given. DO NOT PROCEED if these matters upset you.

Synopsis: You face a reckoning for evading your lord.

Note: This wasn't planned but things just turned out this way because my go to is fuck the reader. Oop.

Thanks to everyone and thanks in advance for all your feedback. :)

I really hope you enjoy. 💋

<3 Let me know what you think with a like or reblog or reply or an ask! Love ya!

The nights only got harder. It didn't matter if Lord Barnes wanted to touch you or wanted you to touch him, even just laying beside him was torment. You hated what he'd done to you and what he'd made you do. You hated yourself more for how he made you feel.

You decided that day in the carriage during the rainstorm that you hated him. You hated Lord Barnes more than even Lord Rogers. At least the latter was honest in his lechery, he did not try to veil his true desires but Barnes spoke to you sweetly as he forced his needs upon you.

The night before you were due to reach the capital, you did not sleep. You couldn't in the bed next to Barnes. He wanted to be astride as he entered the city and so you were left to ride alone in the carriage. The sway soon had you across the bench in a deep slumber. It was the best sleep you had in weeks.

You only woke as a hammering came at the door and streaks of sunlight were let in as it opened. A footman called you out and helped you down the step into the dirt. You batted your sleepy eyes and marveled at the castle as it came clear. It was getting colder as the autumn wore on, bitter. It was the wrong season for a tournament.

As you trod through the beaten yard of the castle, Lord Barnes clapped off his right hand, the leather glove dusting, and approached you. He’s gaze strayed to Lord Rogers for a moment then back to you. He dropped his shoulders and scrunched his lips.

“I have an audience with the king,” he said glumly, “as much as I’d prefer you attend with me it has been brought to my attention that… the court might not be as accommodating to you as I am. Regardless, I might have a seat arranged for you at the feast and you were surely sit in the rows for the sparring.”

“I… my lord, I am only--”

“I told you,” he interjected, “you are not a maid anymore.”

You held your tongue as you wanted to spit at him. What were you? A courtesan? A whore? Was that better than emptying his pot? You dipped your head and pulled your cape snug, “my lord.”

“See her to my rooms,” Barnes directed the footman at your shoulder, “once the chests are unpacked, she is to be undisturbed. My guard will have the same orders.”

“Yes, my lord,” the footman bowed, “my lady.”

You looked at the footman and slowly followed him away from Barnes. You were eager to be away from him but not eager to be shown your new prison. You entered the castle and followed the torchlit corridors beside the footman.

“I’m not a lady,” you said at last, “I don’t want you to ever call me that again.”

“My apologies, my--” he stuttered, “the lord bid it.”

“He lies to himself and you,” you muttered, “I was born as you, likely lower. My own mother was a laundress and my father a stablehand. Cut from the finest, I am.”

The footman was quiet as he waved you ahead of him up the coiling stairwell. You regretted your harsh words but knew they could never be delivered to their true target. When you reached the chamber designated to your master, you stopped outside. Lester was already at his station by the lord’s doors.

“I am sorry,” you told the footman, “I was unkind. You do not deserve that.”

His lips curved slightly and he hid his amusement, “I know now you are like me,” he said softly, “the nobles, they don’t apologise.”

You chuckled darkly and left him. You passed the servants as they carried in trunks and opened them in a flurry of duty. You went to the bedroom and climbed up on the large feather mattress. That time you had to yourself, even surrounded by the chaos of your arrival, was a relief. You did not know how long you’d get away from Barnes.

🏰

You fell asleep again. This time, you weren’t floating in your dreams, driven wildly by the tides, but you were still, straight as a board in the ground as dirty sprinkled onto you. The cold earth warmed as the layers piled on you. Deeper, deeper, deeper until you couldn’t breathe.

You woke with a start and nearly screamed as a shadow loomed over you. Barnes sat beside you, his legs over the edge of the couch. He played with the lifeless fingers of his artificial hand. Your hood was on the pillow, crumpled and the folds of your dress were bunched awkwardly beneath your body.

“I didn’t want to wake you,” he murmured, “just wanted to sit with you.”

“How long--”

“It is almost time for supper,” he said, “but the feast is not until the morrow. You might remain and rest some more.”

You didn’t move, just looked up at the canopy and laid there. You didn’t say anything more as you folded your arms over the stiff bodice.

“You should sleep… the journey was long. Tiring,” he continued.

You just blinked but didn’t close your eyes. The canopy was a rich green marked with gold. The stitches were woven in the shape of leaves and vines. You thought of the forest and those days you were so scared. You were much more terrified now.

“I wanted to say, and I should now since you are awake,” he began as he leaned on his elbow and his other arm fell limp and heavy, “what occurred with Rogers will not arise again. I made him a promise I regret and it was sorted.”

You held back a shudder as you thought of the salty tasted and the pungent scent of their arousal. You swallowed and hugged yourself tighter.

“If he attempts to reenact the scene, or more, you will inform me, and you have my leave to see that he does not,” Barnes said sternly, “you are still mine. I would not have you confused.”

You rolled onto your side so that your back was to him. He huffed and his hand fell onto your side. He squeezed and the bed shifted. He said your name and every muscle in your body went taut.

“Do you understand?” he asked.

“I’m tired,” you said.

“I want no mistake. You--”

“I belong to you,” you sneered, “you want to use me, you want to own me, you want me to tell you I know I am nothing but the dirt beneath your boot. Let me assure you I am aware--”

“Do not speak to me as such,” he hissed.

You bit back your voice and heaved. You sucked in your cheeks and wriggled away from his reach. “It is understood, my lord. Now as you bid, I would sleep.”

🏰

The only grace allowed you at the feast, rather denied you, was a seat with your lord. As much as Barnes would prefer to have you close he was still bound by the expectations of court. He didn't let on that you were merely a servant but you didn't think anyone could believe otherwise. For his vouching, you were sat among the lower lords and ladies.

You watched as wine was poured for you. You eyed the girl who kept her chin down as the filled the cups and thought of your own time in a similar duty. What did Barnes find so fascinating about you? You had only done what dozens others had done for him before. You couldn't figure you had an outstanding feature or manner that could explain his interest, it could only be your own poor luck.

You ate without tasting, without zeal, slowly as you brought fork to lip and dissolved into the chatter of strangers around you. All those seated at the long tables had a partner or some family with them. You were alone. Your parents were dead and all those you'd ever had a kindred tie to were far away.

"Uncle," a voice perked up across from you and drew your attention as you chewed the spiced rabbit meat, "if I made the lists, surely I can win!"

"My coin got you on those lists," the older man replied, "it is all formality. Should you gace a king or a duke, you would be remiss to claim victory."

"I am to lay down for their title?" The younger scoffed, "I am a man now and I have trained--"

"But you think like a boy," the other rebuked, "a runner up can take a fine purse still and if you feed the ego of a high borne man he will be more willing to show you favour."

You lowered your fork and looked at the two men as they argued. The elder`s hair was sprinkled with grey but the rest the same shade of reddish brown as the youth. You were heartened by their familial banter but saddened at your own solace. You dropped your hands to your lap and looked at your plate.

"Dear," the woman beside you touched your sleeve, "are you well?"

You turned to her startled and nodded. "Yes, my lady," you cleared your throat, "fine indeed."

She peered past you then shared a look with the older man across the table. She was not so grey as him. She smiled and withdrew her hand. "You are alone?"

"Only me, my lady," you answered.

"And overly polite," she chuckled, "a pity. A young girl sent to court without escort. What family could do such a thing? You must be frightened out of your wits."

"I will… persevere," you said.

"Ay but it is the nature of these events to be cordial. I am May Parker, my husband is a baron," she gestured to the older man across from you, "Benjamin, and my nephew, Peter, a viscount in his beloved father's stead," she smiled at the younger man, "and your name?"

You hadn't been told what to say in the circumstance. You hadn't thought of it and surely Barnes hadn't either. You would have to garnish the truth with enough lies to get by. You twined your fingers together. You offered your name, your truth, then conjured your lies as you spoke.

"My father is, er, was, a baron as well," you said, "I am his only child."

"Oh, you sweet thing, if you would be alone for this tournament, you might stay near to us. My nephew hasn't many peers of his age just yet, and my husband is much too weary to keep up with him."

You glanced around, the two men bowed their heads in greeting. You attempted a smile and thanked her.

"Our Peter will be competing in the joust and in the sword contest," she announced, "we did urge him to enter the bow and arrow but he finds it dull."

"Oh," you were uncertain how to address these people, to speak as if you were their equal, "I've never attended a tourney before."

"Best you stay close then," she squeezed your hand gently, "why look at all these people! Even that Duke from the north came, bless him, that one who did lose his arm in the campaigns."

You reached for your wine to hide your discomfort at the mention of him. All you had to do was pretend for the evening and you'd likely not see these people again. As friendly as they were, you couldn't stand to make friends only to lose them.

You listened for the rest of the courses as May and her family did much of the talking. There were moments you forgot your predicament, even that you were born a peasant, but when it returned to you, the food turned to a lump in your stomach and your heart clamoured.

You were roused from the waking dream only as the music plucked up and the plates were cleared by your own ilk. May chuckled and stood as her husband came around to her. She paused as the bodies flooded from the benches onto the boards. She touched your shoulder kindly, "if you would be in want of a partner, our Peter is rather graceful."

You looked to the younger Parker and he lit up. "Only if you like, miss."

"I… would say I am not so," you said evasively.

"It would not bother me, I trained with the old hound that slept in our barn, he slobbered quite heavily," he laughed, "but I would be indebted should you allow me the treat of a true partner."

"I suppose…" you looked to the high table where Barnes scowled at Lord Rogers, entirely unconcerned with you for the first time in a while. Perhaps this was a chance; lose yourself in the crowd and you might find the opening you needed. Or perhaps merely a respite from him at least, "I do warn you however, I would not know where to place my feet."

May and Benjamin swept away as Peter came around to you. He offered his arm and you mimicked the other ladies as you took it.

He lifted his shoulders proudly as he led you to the floor, "only step around my own and I will do my best not to trod on your slippers, lady." He turned you in time with the music, your arms hooked so that you faced in opposing direction, "follow me and do not worry so much. No one is watching us so closely."

You smiled, a real smile that time as the strings and flutes filled your chest. As this kind stranger patiently guided you around the boards. You raised your chin as you did your best to stay on the beat but nearly tripped as your eyes met another pair.

Lord Barnes glared down at you from the high table, the only lord remaining in his seat, and his hand gripped the stem of his goblet tightly. Even at the distance, you felt his chagrin. And as he stood, your sole met Peter's toe but he only snickered and righted you.

"You're doing fine, lady," he assured as he spun and switched arms, you let him lead you dumbly as you watched Barnes descend from the dais, "a natural."

[kineticpenguin]

you know what’s funny in about five to ten years we’ll get think pieces about how Netflix Bebop was a misunderstood classic ended before it’s time and how it was groundbreaking yadda yadda you just know this shit is coming from people who never watched the original

Maybe so. But I honestly think Netflix Bebop will be forgotten under the deluge of similar IP cash grabs and MCU nonsense we can expect for the foreseeable future. Netflix gave up on it in record time, after all.

I doubt people will be asking for more of it for very long, let alone write pieces years from now about what we could've had from it, simply because it dropped the ball so much when it came to trying to do its own thing. It kept doing things backwards. Faye hooks up with a chick and afterward has a scene where she's trying to figure out who or what she's attracted to, for example. You can't have a scene where someone has good sex and then is like "I'm amnesiac and I just found out what sex is lol what kind of parts do I like?" Similarly, you can't have Spike haunted by his violent criminal past with tragic flashbacks long after you've repeatedly established that the dude just likes to kill people.

The things that make Netflix Bebop memorable are its failures. Everything it does right, or honestly attempts, has already been done better in a dozen different shows. I'm actually morbidly curious to find out what someone who hasn't seen the original but loves this show would have to say about it, because... well, I found it to be an entertaining trainwreck. I'm actually at a loss trying to imagine what this show does on its own that would have someone say "yeah, gimme more of that."

[ifuckinglovestvincent]

Switching Lanes With St. Vincent

By Molly Young

January 22, 2019

Jacket (men’s), $4,900, pants (men’s), $2,300, by Dior / Men shoes, by Christian Louboutin / Rings (throughout) by Cartier

On a cold recent night in Brooklyn, St. Vincent appeared onstage in a Saint Laurent smoking jacket to much clapping and hooting, gave the crowd a deadpan look, and said, “Without being reductive, I'd like to say that we haven't actually done anything yet.” Pause. “So let's do something.”

She launched into a cover of Lou Reed's “Perfect Day”: an arty torch-song version that made you really wonder whom she was thinking about when she sang it. This was the elusive chanteuse version of St. Vincent, at least 80 percent leg, with slicked-back hair and pale, pale skin. She belted, sipped from a tumbler of tequila (“Oh, Christ on a cracker, that's strong”), executed little feints and pounces, flung the mic cord away from herself like a filthy sock, and spat on the stage a bunch of times. Nine parts Judy Garland, one part GG Allin.

If the Garland-Allin combination suggests that St. Vincent is an acquired taste, she's one that has been acquired by a wide range of fans. The crowd in Brooklyn included young women with Haircuts in pastel fur and guys with beards of widely varying intentionality. There was a woman of at least 90 years and a Hasidic guy in a tall hat, which was too bad for whoever sat behind him. There were models, full nuclear families, and even a solitary frat bro. St. Vincent brings people together.

If you chart the career of Annie Clark, which is St. Vincent's civilian name, you will see what start-up founders and venture capitalists call “hockey-stick growth.” That is, a line that moves steadily in a northeast direction until it hits an “inflection point” and shoots steeply upward. It's called hockey-stick growth because…it looks like a hockey stick.

Dress, by Balmain

The toe of the stick starts with Marry Me, Clark's debut solo album, which came out a decade ago and established a few things that would become essential St. Vincent traits: her ability to play a zillion instruments (she's credited on the album with everything from dulcimer to vibraphone), her highbrow streak (Shakespeare citations), her goofy streak (“Marry me!” is an Arrested Development bit), and her oceanic library of musical references (Kate Bush, Steve Reich, uh…D'Angelo!). The blade of the stick is her next four albums, one of them a collaboration with David Byrne, all of them confirming her presence as an enigma of indie pop and a guitar genius. The stick of the stick took a non-musical detour in 2016, when Clark was photographed canoodling with (now ex-) girlfriend Cara Delevingne at Taylor Swift's mansion, followed a few months later by pictures of Clark holding hands with Kristen Stewart. That brought her to the realm of mainstream paparazzi-pictures-in-the-Daily-Mail celebrity. Finally, the top of the stick is Masseduction, the 2017 album she co-produced with Jack Antonoff, which revealed St. Vincent to be not only experimental and beguiling but capable of turning out incorrigible bangers.

Masseduction made the case that Clark could be as much a pop star as someone like Sia or Nicki Minaj—a performer whose idiosyncrasies didn't have to be tamped down for mainstream success but could actually be amplified. The artist Bruce Nauman once said he made work that was like “going up the stairs in the dark and either having an extra stair that you didn't expect or not having one that you thought was going to be there.” The idea applies to Masseduction: Into the familiar form of a pop song Clark introduces surprising missteps, unexpected additions and subtractions. The album reached No. 10 on the Billboard 200. The David Bowie comparisons got louder.

This past fall, she released MassEducation (not quite the same title; note the addition of the letter a), which turned a dozen of the tracks into stripped-down piano songs. Although technically off duty after being on tour for nearly all of 2018, Clark has been performing the reduced songs here and there in small venues with her collaborator, the composer and pianist Thomas Bartlett. Whereas the Masseduction tour involved a lot of latex, neon, choreographed sex-robot dance moves, and LED screens, these recent shows have been comparatively austere. When she performed in Brooklyn, the stage was empty, aside from a piano and a side table. There were blue lights, a little piped-in fog for atmosphere, and that was it. It looked like an early-'90s magazine ad for premium liquor: art-directed, yes, but not to the degree that it Pinterested itself.

Coat, (men’s) $8,475, by Versace / Shoes, by Christian Louboutin / Tights, by Wolford

The performance was similarly informal. Midway through one song, Clark forgot the lyrics and halted. “It takes a different energy to be performing [than] to sit in your sweatpants watching Babylon Berlin,” she said. “Wherever I am, I completely forget the past, and I'm like. ‘This is now.’ And sometimes this means forgetting song lyrics. So, if you will…tell me what the second fucking verse is.”

Clark has only a decade in the public eye behind her, but she's accomplished a good amount of shape-shifting. An openness to the full range of human expression, in fact, is kind of a requirement for being a St. Vincent fan. This is a person who has appeared in the front row at Chanel and also a person who played a gig dressed as a toilet, a person profiled in Vogue and on the cover of Guitar World.

The day before her Brooklyn show, I sat with Clark to find out what it's like to be utterly unstructured, time-wise, after a long stretch of knowing a year in advance that she had to be in, like, Denmark on July 4 and couldn't make plans with friends.

“I've been off tour now for three weeks,” she said. “When I say ‘off,’ I mean I didn't have to travel.”

This doesn't mean she hasn't traveled—she went to L.A. to get in the studio with Sleater-Kinney and also hopped down to Texas, where she grew up—just that she hasn't been contractually obligated to travel. What else did she do on her mini-vacation?

“I had the best weekend last weekend. I woke up and did hot Pilates, and then I got a bunch of new modular synths, and I set 'em up, and I spent ten hours with modular synths. Plugging things in. What happens when I do this? I'm unburdened by a full understanding of what's going on, so I'm very willing to experiment.”

Coat, by Boss

Jacket, and coat, by Boss / Necklace, by Cartier

Like a child?

“Exactly. Did you ever get those electronics kits as a kid for like 20 bucks from RadioShack? Where you connect this wire to that one and a light bulb turns on? It's very much like that.”

There's an element of chaos, she said, that makes synth noodling a neat way to stumble on melodies that she might not have consciously assembled. She played with the synths by herself all day. “I don't stop, necessarily,” she said, reflecting on what the idea of “vacation” means to someone for whom “job” and “things I love to do” happen to overlap more or less exactly. “I just get to do other things that are really fun. I'm in control of my time.” She had plans to see a show at the New Museum, read books, play music and see movies alone, always sitting on the aisle so she could make a quick escape if necessary. But she will probably keep working. St. Vincent doesn't have hobbies.

When it manifests in a person, this synergy between life and work is an almost physically perceptible quality, like having brown eyes or one leg or being beautiful. Like beauty, it's a result of luck, and a quality that can invoke total despair in people who aren't themselves allotted it. This isn't to say that Clark's career is a stroke of unearned fortune but that her skills and character and era and influences have collided into a perfect storm of realized talent. And to have talent and realize that talent and then be beloved by thousands for exactly the thing that is most special about you: Is there anything a person could possibly want more? Is this why Annie Clark glows? Or is it because she's super pale? Or was it because there was a sound coming through the window where we sat that sounded thrillingly familiar?

“Is Amy Sedaris running by?” Clark asked, her spine straightening. A man with a boom mic was visible on the sidewalk outside. Another guy in a baseball cap issued instructions to someone beyond the window. Someone said “Action!” and a figure in vampire makeup and a clown wig streaked across the sidewalk. Someone said “Cut!” and Clark zipped over for a look. It was, in fact, Amy Sedaris, her clown wig bobbing in the 44-degree breeze. The mic operator was gagging with laughter. It seemed like a good omen, this sighting, like the New York City version of Groundhog Day: If an Amy Sedaris streaks across your sight line in vampire makeup, spring will arrive early.

Blazer (men’s) $1,125, by Paul Smith

Another thing Clark does when off tour is absorb all the input that she misses when she's locked into performance mode. On a Monday afternoon, she met artist Lisa Yuskavage at an exhibition of her paintings at the David Zwirner gallery in Chelsea. Yuskavage was part of a mini-boom of figurative painting in the '90s, turning out portraits of Penthouse centerfolds and giant-jugged babes with Rembrandt-esque skill. It made sense that Clark wanted to meet her: Both women make art about the inner lives of female figures, both are sorcerers of technique, both are theatrical but introspective, both have incendiary style. The gallery was a white cube, skylit, with paintings around the perimeter. Yuskavage and Clark wandered through at a pace exclusive to walking tours of cultural spaces, which is to say a few steps every 10 to 15 seconds with pauses between for the proper amount of motionless appreciation.

The paintings were small, all about the size of a human head, and featured a lot of nipples, tufted pudenda, tan lines, majestic asses, and protruding tongues. “I like the idea of possessing something by painting it,” Yuskavage said. “That's the way I understand the world. Like a dog licking something.”

Clark looked at the works with the expression people make when they're meditating. She was wearing elfin boots, black pants, and a shirt with a print that I can only describe as “funky”—“funky” being an adjective that looks good on very few people, St. Vincent being one of them—and sipped from a cup of espresso furnished by a gallery minion. After she finished the drink, there was a moment when she looked blankly at the saucer, unsure what to do with it, and then stuck it in the breast pocket of her funky shirt for the rest of the tour.

A painting called Sweetpuss featured a bubble-butted blonde in beaded panties with nipples so upwardly erect they actually resembled little boners. Yuskavage based the underwear on a pair of real underwear that she'd constructed herself from colored balls and string. “I've got the beaded panties if you ever need 'em,” she said to Clark. “They might fit you. They're tiny.”

Earrings, by Erickson Beamon

“I'm picturing you going to the Garment District,” Clark said.

“There was a lot of going to the Garment District.”

As they completed their lap around the white cube, Clark interjected with questions—what year was this? were you considering getting into film? how long did these sittings take? what does “mise-en-scène” mean?—but mainly listened. And she is a good listener: an inquisitive head tilter, an encouraging nodder, a non-fidgeter, a maker of eye contact. She found analogues between painting and music. When Yuskavage mourned the death of lead white paint (due to its poisonous qualities, although, as the artist pointed out, “It's not that big a deal to not get lead poisoning; just don't eat the paint”), Clark compared it to recording's transition from tape to digital.

“Back in the day, if you wanted to hear something really reverberant”—she clapped; it reverberated—“you'd have to be in a room like this and record it, or make a reverb chamber,” Clark said. “Now we have digital plug-ins where you can say, ‘Oh, I want the acoustic resonance of the Sistine Chapel.’ Great. Somebody's gone and sampled that and created an algorithm that sounds like you're in the Sistine Chapel.”

Lately, she said, she's been way more into devices that betray their imperfections. That are slightly out of tune, or capable of messing up, or less forgiving of human intervention. “Air moving through a room,” Clark said. “That's what's interesting to me.”

They kept pacing. The paintings on the wall evolved. Conversation turned to what happens when you grow as an artist and people respond by flipping out.

“I always find it interesting when someone wants you to go back to ‘when you were good,’ ” Yuskavage said. “This is why we liked you.”

“I can't think of anybody where I go, ‘What's great about that artist is their consistency, ” Clark said. “Anything that stays the same for too long dies. It fails to capture people's imagination.”

Coat (mens), $1,150, by Acne Studios

They were identifying a problem with fans, of course, not with themselves. It was an implicit identification, because performers aren't permitted to critique their audiences, and it was definitely the artistic equivalent of a First World problem—an issue that arises only when you're so resplendent with talent that you not only nail something enough to attract adoration but nail it hard enough to get personally bored and move on—but it was still valid. They were talking about the kind of fan who clings to a specific tree when he or she could be roaming through a whole forest. In St. Vincent's case, a forest of prog-rock thickets and jazzy roots and orchestral brambles and mournful-ballad underlayers, all of it sprouting and molting under a prodigious pop canopy. They were talking about the strange phenomenon of people getting mad at you for surprising them. Even if the surprise is great.

Molly Young is a writer living in New York City. She wrote about Donatella Versace in the April 2018 issue of GQ.

A version of this story originally appeared in the February 2019 issue with the title "Switching Lanes With St. Vincent."

[itbeatsbookmarks]

(Via: Lobsters)

Configuring a connection pool is something that developers often get wrong. There are several, possibly counter-intuitive for some, principles that need to be understood when configuring the pool.

10,000 Simultaneous Front-End Users

Imagine that you have a website that while maybe not Facebook-scale still often has 10,000 users making database requests simultaneously -- accounting for some 20,000 transactions per second. How big should your connection pool be? You might be surprised that the question is not how big but rather how small!

Watch this short video from the Oracle Real-World Performance group for an eye-opening demonstration (~10 min.):

{Spoiler Alert} if you didn't watch the video. Oh come on! Watch it then come back here.

You can see from the video that reducing the connection pool size alone, in the absence of any other change, decreased the response times of the application from ~100ms to ~2ms -- over 50x improvement.

But why?

We seem to have understood in other parts of computing recently that less is more. Why is it that with only 4-threads an nginx web-server can substantially out-perform an Apache web-server with 100 processes? Isn't it obvious if you think back to Computer Science 101?

Even a computer with one CPU core can "simultaneously" support dozens or hundreds of threads. But we all [should] know that this is merely a trick by the operating system though the magic of time-slicing. In reality, that single core can only execute one thread at a time; then the OS switches contexts and that core executes code for another thread, and so on. It is a basic Law of Computing that given a single CPU resource, executing A and B sequentially will always be faster than executing A and B "simultaneously" through time-slicing. Once the number of threads exceeds the number of CPU cores, you're going slower by adding more threads, not faster.

That is almost true...

Limited Resources

It is not quite as simple as stated above, but it's close. There are a few other factors at play. When we look at what the major bottlenecks for a database are, they can be summarized as three basic categories: CPU, Disk, Network. We could add Memory in there, but compared to Disk and Network there are several orders of magnitude difference in bandwidth.

If we ignored Disk and Network it would be simple. On a server with 8 computing cores, setting the number of connections to 8 would provide optimal performance, and anything beyond this would start slowing down due to the overhead of context switching. But we cannot ignore Disk and Network. Databases typically store data on a Disk, which traditionally is comprised of spinning plates of metal with read/write heads mounted on a stepper-motor driven arm. The read/write heads can only be in one place at a time (reading/writing data for a single query) and must "seek" to a new location to read/write data for a different query. So there is a seek-time cost, and also a rotational cost whereby the disk has to wait for the data to "come around again" on the platter to be read/written. Caching of course helps here, but the principle still applies.

During this time ("I/O wait"), the connection/query/thread is simply "blocked" waiting for the disk. And it is during this time that the OS could put that CPU resource to better use by executing some more code for another thread. So, because threads become blocked on I/O, we can actually get more work done by having a number of connections/threads that is greater than the number of physical computing cores.

How many more? We shall see. The question of how many more also depends on the disk subsystem, because newer SSD drives do not have a "seek time" cost or rotational factors to deal with. Don't be tricked into thinking, "SSDs are faster and therefore I can have more threads". That is exactly 180 degrees backwards. Faster, no seeks, no rotational delays means less blocking and therefore fewer threads [closer to core count] will perform better than more threads. More threads only perform better when blocking creates opportunities for executing.

Network is similar to disk. Writing data out over the wire, through the ethernet interface, can also introduce blocking when the send/receive buffers fill up and stall. A 10-Gig interface is going to stall less than Gigabit ethernet, which will stall less than a 100-megabit. But network is a 3rd place runner in terms of resource blocking and some people often omit it from their calculations.

Here's another chart to break up the wall of text.

You can see in the above PostgreSQL benchmark that TPS rates start to flatten out at around 50 connections. And in Oracle's video above they showed dropping the connections from 2048 down to just 96. We would say that even 96 is probably too high, unless you're looking at a 16 or 32-core box.

The Formula

The formula below is provided by the PostgreSQL project as a starting point, but we believe it will be largely applicable across databases. You should test your application, i.e. simulate expected load, and try different pool settings around this starting point:

connections = ((core_count * 2) + effective_spindle_count)

A formula which has held up pretty well across a lot of benchmarks for years is that for optimal throughput the number of active connections should be somewhere near ((core_count * 2) + effective_spindle_count). Core count should not include HT threads, even if hyperthreading is enabled. Effective spindle count is zero if the active data set is fully cached, and approaches the actual number of spindles as the cache hit rate falls. ... There hasn't been any analysis so far regarding how well the formula works with SSDs.

Guess what that means? Your little 4-Core i7 server with one hard disk should be running a connection pool of: 9 = ((4 * 2) + 1). Call it 10 as a nice round number. Seem low? Give it a try, we'd wager that you could easily handle 3000 front-end users running simple queries at 6000 TPS on such a setup. If you run load tests, you will probably see TPS rates starting to fall, and front-end response times starting to climb, as you push the connection pool much past 10 (on that given hardware).

Axiom: You want a small pool, saturated with threads waiting for connections.

If you have 10,000 front-end users, having a connection pool of 10,000 would be shear insanity. 1000 still horrible. Even 100 connections, overkill. You want a small pool of a few dozen connections at most, and you want the rest of the application threads blocked on the pool awaiting connections. If the pool is properly tuned it is set right at the limit of the number of queries the database is capable of processing simultaneously -- which is rarely much more than (CPU cores * 2) as noted above.

We never cease to amaze at the in-house web applications we've encountered, with a few dozen front-end users performing periodic activity, and a connection pool of 100 connections. Don't over-provision your database.

"Pool-locking"

The prospect of "pool-locking" has been raised with respect to single actors that acquire many connections. This is largely an application-level issue. Yes, increasing the pool size can alleviate lockups in these scenarios, but we would urge you to examine first what can be done at the application level before enlarging the pool.

The calculation of pool size in order to avoid deadlock is a fairly simple resource allocation formula:

   pool size = Tn x (Cm - 1) + 1

Where Tn is the maximum number of threads, and Cm is the maximum number of simultaneous connections held by a single thread.

For example, imagine three threads (Tn=3), each of which requires four connections to perform some task (Cm=4). The pool size required to ensure that deadlock is never possible is:

   pool size = 3 x (4 - 1) + 1 = 10

Another example, you have a maximum of eight threads (Tn=8), each of which requires three connections to perform some task (Cm=3). The pool size required to ensure that deadlock is never possible is:

   pool size = 8 x (3 - 1) + 1 = 17

👉 This is not necessarily the optimal pool size, but the minimum required to avoid deadlock.

👉 In some environments, using a JTA (Java Transaction Manager) can dramatically reduce the number of connections required by returning the same Connection from getConnection() to a thread that is already holding a Connection in the current transaction.

Caveat Lector

Pool sizing is ultimately very specific to deployments.

For example, systems with a mix of long running transactions and very short transactions are generally the most difficult to tune with any connection pool. In those cases, creating two pool instances can work well (eg. one for long-running jobs, another for "realtime" queries).

In systems with primarily long running transactions, there is often an "outside" constraint on the number of connections needed -- such as a job execution queue that only allows a certain number of jobs to run at once. In these cases, the job queue size should be "right-sized" to match the pool (rather than the other way around).