#as if there aren’t billions other suffering far worse

[starswirly]

[ * hmmmm. Maybe using the name Star is a good explination for how I’m feeling ]

[unproduciblesmackdown]

anyways yeah at this rate i can readily accept it as For The Best that winston’s just a funny little guy eternally, but then it’s always been a matter of like, not expecting him to become particularly prominent but like, looking to precedent like the secondary / tertiary axe cap boys who get fun little subplots because they’re Characterful if not as prominently Characters as others. and not like generally even the rare little plot threads given to say ben &/or tuk aren’t more unfortunate for them than not, b/c it’s billions, but they’re also not only the most solemnly dramatic harsh punishing experiences ever, even in terms of being particularly worse than the smaller, non plot thread glimpses we get of them suffering through any given workday....how it’s been like, well winston getting more attention would probably result in [negative experiences] for him, b/c it’s billions, but not like he’s not overwhelmingly more often having negative experiences now, with less attention

but anyways really it is like, well look at rian, rest in pieces. she’s intended to be A More Serious Important Character who does things but like. what’s she ever gotten to do. Being Taylor’s Mentee / one employee to talk or relate to has been about taylor, which is all well & good, but rian’s disgruntlement has not yet ever mattered in any way that really affected anything and apparently 6x08 was like oh is all that resolved b/c One Time rian managed to go “here’s external / third party proof about my disagreeing with you” and taylor managed to look at it and go “huh, yeah i guess so.” vs all the prior disagreements that were more about ideas re: how taylor should ideally operate and rian wanting to be a peer i guess, which, taylor recognizing the accuracy of information given to them doesn’t seem to require that. even the weird & puzzling “oh of course we’d consider each other as worthy potential love interests” thing seems to speak more to like, well you’d better hope the few other people who aren’t interested in life outside being at the office can provide all the social fulfillment you need re: friendship &/or dating, or else you’d have to choose b/w winning at work & the rewards of relationships that need time & effort you don’t have b/c you’re too busy winning at work. which is more taylor’s thing, and rian for some reason accepting their lead on that matter. and, of course, the “is it actually good or saying anything at all to go ‘here’s something that can happen to women that sucks. and here’s even a woman character going "yeah this sucks”’” matter, which has to be so contrived to happen at all that there’s no coherent explanation for why rian as a character would be operating like this, conveniently allowing xyz to happen so prince can show the audience he sucks (but not too much, the speculation that another reason the execution of the material is weird & offputting & not that successful is b/c it’s trying too hard to also make sure the audience feels confident that this wasn’t very sexual assaulty of prince, not too much anyways) like. and then there’s her just sharing out of nowhere relationship advice with wags that has nothing to do with anything about her, so far. would she assume a romance with taylor would be so [no secrets, world of openness] too, why would she think based on Anything that it would. although the same goes for like, where in there would she think that any of her interactions w/taylor would lead to Not the most painfully awkward one date you attempt and then never talk about again for everyone’s sake. why does she care about taylor’s feelings so much when she just unfazedly turns them down, except that that’s convenient to her being willing to hug taylor later if she’s not just put off or confused. why does she also need to reassure taylor that oh i guess she would’ve smashed them instead, but they’re too lovable? does that go for literally everyone else present, too? doesn’t seem to, because....?? and even if it’s not very likable that she’s just firing on all cylinders in sudden bully mode about winston specifically, that could be character material if anyone interacted with her as a character about it, but i guess winston interacting with her as someone who Liked her, and someone vulnerable to being hurt & who she’s interested in hurting, and then just someone who’s also always trying to be just like normal & amicable as coworkers, is all just him being a funny little guy, i.e. well he’s not a character and no other characters interact with rian as a character about whatever the hell is up with her acting like this in this realm lmao, so it means nothing....she’s not Really particularly more of a character than winston, she’s Also really only serving as a plot device for other characters, and despite this character supposedly having these trappings of the [any dignity / sympathy / seriousness / General Worthiness] that more prominent characters can get, her character also gets the cringe comp highlights reel lmfao like thanks, i do hate it so much. So.

meanwhile, winston’s function is also to be taylor’s funny little guy, but i suppose it’s just as well he never gets to interact with them Really, b/c it’s that matter of how like, the lack of attention from Everyone Else just insulates him, people have no object permanence about him, so as soon as he’s out of the room after they’ve dunked on him, that’s it; once wendy’s gotten the opportunity to validate her Own insights into this other new hire’s worth by listening to her about a supposed reason to fire winston that had never prior nor afterwards been relevant to anything, she’s never interacted with him again, much less tried to get taylor to fire him or anything, and now luckily she has no formal involvement w/tmc, so. but like, speaking of, wendy does get to interact with taylor all the time, and it’s like [the whole way that it is.] see: everything above about rian, despite being taylor’s personally & professionally favored employee, to the point that they just never remember winston exists really, or are just only always exchanging emails w/him just out of frame or whatever and we’ll never see or hear about it. lauren likewise, with the more predictable “this romantic relationship is doomed, b/c it’s billions” fate, with the double misfortune of how maybe she & taylor just having this too conveniently smooth sailing relationship meant a) we then didn’t see too much of it, b/c this is billions & you show what is conflict or plays into another plotline about conflict and then b) the breakup could stem from how avoiding more direct conflict just pushed problems aside until their resurgence could force an open conflict that’s just a final split because they don’t successfully argue through things b/c they don’t really seem to argue at all, except in a sort of [debate a moment and then set it aside indefinitely] way. sara was taken seriously, and yet. mafee being taylor’s friend is excellent, but again the matter of [if there’s not conflict or something that plays into more conflict elsewhere, we don’t see it] and that apparently his being their friend doesn’t mean understanding them any better than going “i always knew you were an emotionless killbot” nor being unwilling to express that, twice

plus there’s that taylor will listen to winston sometimes regardless of not having any established personal relationship with him, and that taylor will Not listen to others sometimes regardless of the fact they Do have an at least someone personal relationship with them, so if anything, the fact that they don’t take winston seriously / don’t really pay much attention to him maybe contributes to his always being around (since he’s not seriously embroiled in any conflicts, nor by being regarded seriously by taylor is he as much of a potential Cost to staying in this sunk cost conflict factory for them) so it could just ultimately shake out that he’s able to support taylor more successfully this way even via his extracurricular advice (so everything he’s right about that has to do with them & isn’t his quantitative input) 

there’s also the fact that, of course, now there’s Philip to compare & contrast any [relationships with taylor] with, but a) that’s still all pretty new and b) it seems fairly Unique thus far, with their being essentially peers, which hasn’t been the case for taylor (except maybe Ish Kinda re: wendy, but they already tried having her as a business partner and it went so well) and their both being flexible characters who Can be petty and/or act as competitors and/or rivals, but don’t live & die by that nor even prefer to all the time / don’t want to righteously justify that & then center their whole existence around as much, unlike central characters and d) it’s not unlike what it seemed like the quants could’ve had lol as peers who could engage in little a petty rivalry but also choose to step away from that anytime to ultimately be amicable partners, & maybe even kiss if that’s on the table, go ahead and draw on that [completely wasted b/c idk what can be said about what the supposed quant duo here is meant to be about nowadays (well partially / mostly wasted; i do think it’s nonzero fun and they do clearly have momentary flashes of seemingly genuine, normal amicability that are as much a fleeting delight as they are baffling for their arbitrary & transient nature. clink!)] potential for this please lol, philip’s definitely actually intended / regarded as a character unlike winston i guess, and in fact i suppose taylor is the winston in this situation, ha ha, add it to the ever expanding list of Winnie N Tay Parallels / Similarities That They Could Bond Over / Talk About If They Ever Were Written To Converse Again Ever that is just forever hc territory i suppose lol

and it’s not unlike misalignments b/c [writer perspective] and [correct viewer perspective] that one can benefit from, such as that Taylor is the most important character in the series, which is About Them, but of course they could never be written as an endless conflict generating Central Character, and if they were, they’d’ve always been completely different from the [secondary turned main] character that they are. really, like compare “winston being a tertiary joke non character” to taylor getting Less Focus / Material vs the fringe bennie of that material being way better than it would be if it was Like chuck’s or axe’s or prince’s b/c who gives a shit. maybe people who enjoy those characters straightforwardly. which is akin to like, okay, give taylor more scenes Just Because the way those central men sometimes get. give them more monologues. give us more subplots about their just having a lower stakes issue to wrangle on some random wednesday ( ;] ) or some glimpse into their everyday goings on. but of course one wouldn’t want them upgraded to Central Character and all that that entails to get it. kind of like how it’s like, okay, looking at other kinda [funny little guy] side characters who are still treated more as characters / getting more material than winston does, can we have a Little of that energy for his material a little more? but at this rate sure just leave him right where he is b/c god fucking knows what might happen if billions gives Focus On Purpose to a character, it’s aptly a roll of the dice at least

it’s always the way that like, you don’t Really need some big overall shift, you could sprinkle little 5 second “inconsequential” interactions b/w winston and taylor in here, and that’s really all i’m asking for. but in actuality i’m not asking for anything at this point and certainly not expecting it, b/c at this point with how often we anticassandra things like writers go on our blogs and make sure to do the opposite, at this rate b/c of this post winston will get prominence in s7 only to get the “still a plot device really but worse off for the elevation” a la rian treatment, or written off a la [anyone else at tmc from back in the day], or not getting to have a better relationship with taylor b/c actually a more existent one would, in terms of the actual substance, be Worse, b/c taylor’s relationships are all like, barely clearing bars &/or often pretty wretched. except, knocking on wood, with philip maybe. the one real matter of Something That Seems To Be Set Up At This Point Which Seems Like It’d Continue Down An Enjoyable, Interesting Path Here. anything about winston in this au of [what if he was seen as a person, by taylor / tmc people] can continue to be hc’d, What Else Is New, coming back around to season four qualities. idek about rian like, expectations there are Bad, tfw a character gets the worse deal for [getting to be a character] vs winston getting to just be hanging out at least & Not having his material be consumed by [some like weird comments about other characters that just Have to be made & done this way, which is better than otherwise, right] basically. would say “like how it’s better he’s also surely Accidentally an autistic character so much” but that’s just like. more broadly true lmfao, textually autistic characters where the very premise of the choice for it to be textual isn’t uninformedly insulting to harmful for it Where. fucking society if this show that unknowingly provided tv’s first nonbinary character also had there be a Trans [Handshake] Autistic convo between them abt their Relating on various experiences, when taylor’s out here actively having to reach to relate to other very cishet people’s cringe comps, but that would be so interdimensionally brained & just a knife’s edge if they were doing it on purpose lmao. give them a conversation just about what’s Known, that winston is just forever judged to operate wrong / not fit in, that’s not a secret nor not technically canon

anyways nothing really new here lol but: the silver linings of what’s technically not the most Prominent angle on some character we enjoy but better than what those more prominent characters are getting (and/or giving). and that it just is how it apparently intractibly is like okay. when are we ever arriving here for the Usual premise of this thing or enjoying it in the Usual way, and/or [more straightforwardly] swapped in for [usual] there. in spite of low expectations for example, it’s still more fun when winston is briefly treated more normally, like 6x07, when he was still kind of treated worse & the normal treatment was out of frame, cut off in the intro or outro to scenes, and/or effectively barely in frame / with barely any dialogue for him. shoutout to the apparently one episode a season where taylor will talk to him specifically, and the one moment within that where they interact with him constructively or even positively. and everything else one can wring out of a season when your being here at all is through the winnie n tay route while billions went “obviously taylor would forget he exists & it took them a month to remember to email him to move from that basement to the upper floors” (and remembering how they didn’t give him an established desk in all of season four l o l upgraded from guy not v available for continuity bg appearances to guy who can be dropped in as a bg extra equivalent and be hanging out for his technical inclusion. vs every tmc gathering in season four excluding him except for fight night or the finale taylor midepisode monologue). anyways same as it ever was re: like let will roland act it up as winston and maybe give him less scenes that have to end with him withering, maybe give his scenes with taylor just the least ounce of flair in even implications they regard & even treat him normally, which has been seen at various points already. but where the one recorded actual hope / elevated expectation is just dedicated to taylor & philip like, okay, as ever, You Wrote This / chose to put this in the show, so here we are, can we enjoy More [straightforwardly, usually] around here lol. imagine

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Capitalism's crooked refs

Capitalism is weird.

Almost without exception, people who invest in businesses do so without personally inspecting the business, overlooking its processes, seeing its bank statements, meeting its managers and going on the road with its sales-force.

Whether you’re managing a giant pension fund, buying into a fund with your 401k, or buying stocks (or STONKS) you likely have little to no direct experience of the firm you’re buying into. At best, you have visited a retail premises or tried a product, but that’s very thin.

Even if you think a business operates a tidy and efficient store, even if you love its products, you still have no basis to assess whether it is a sound investment. Maybe the business is selling products at a loss and teetering on the verge of bankruptcy.

Maybe those gorgeous stores are run by creepy harassers who’ve created billions in liabilities by abusing their employees. Maybe the owners have borrowed heavily to fund a cocaine habit.

You have no way to personally verify a firm’s commercial soundness prior to investing.

Instead, you must rely on the business’s own assurances about its viability — the balance sheets it publishes, the risks it discloses, its own profit and loss statements.

If these are competently prepared, it’s impossible to tell fraudulent statements from true ones.

Regulators aren’t much help. They’re mostly reactive, coming in after a fraud to figure out what happened and (sometimes) punish the perps.

While the fraud is in play, they’re unwitting participants, publishing those potentially fraudulent documents blended with true ones.

The main assurance that investors get comes not from regulators, but from auditors: those arms-length, third-party referees whose job it is to personally verify all those bank-statements, sniff around the shop floor, examine the P&Ls, and promise that it all adds up.

Auditors are the refs that keep the game honest. In theory, auditors are kept from cheating by strict ethics codes, licensure and regulatory oversight. Auditors are posed as neutral, trusted third parties who mediate between businesses and investors.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the Great Neoliberal Decline: world governments stopped enforcing anti-monopoly laws, allowing every industry to shrink down to a handful of firms that are too big to audit, let along punish for wrongdoing.

This isn’t just true of the companies seeking investment — it’s especially true of the auditors themselves. The Big Four accounting firms — KPMG, PWC, E&Y and Deloitte — now control virtually the entire market for auditing, having bought all of their competitors.

But these Big Four — who audit nearly every large business — make most of their money from “consulting” — selling companies business advice. The Big Four claim that their auditors and consultants are separated, but those claims are hard to credit.

Time and again, we see Big Four firms fudging the books for their best clients — as with “zombie banks” whose reckless lending has made them the walking dead, sure to collapse and require government bailouts.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/09/28/cyberwar-tactics/#aligned-incentives

These banks pay Big Four firms vast sums to consult for them. Between 2009–17, Big Four-audited bank financials failed 800 (!) audits (!!).

But the regulator only initiated enforcement action against the auditors 53 times (!!!).

https://pluralistic.net/2020/09/28/cyberwar-tactics/#aligned-incentives

It’s not just the businesses that Big Accounting audits that are too big to regulate. Big Accounting is also too big to regulate, even when it conspires with its clients to commit vast, terrible frauds.

Accounting fraud is the norm in big business. Big Four firms have their fingers in every one of these frauds, from Exxon lying about shale gas to Facebook lying about video views.

https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/18/ink-stained-wretches/#countless

It’s the inevitable and foreseeable outcome of merging “consulting” and “auditing.” Auditing’s job is to bring clarity to numbers. Consulting’s job is to obscure them. You can always make more money with fraud (for a while) than you can with honesty.

The Big Four are far more likely to cook books than straighten them — every one of the Big Four firms is deeply implicated in tax evasion, for example, using numbers to obscure a business’s financials, rather than reveal them.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/09/15/shorter-brother/#tax-havens

It’s been nearly two decades since Arthur Andersen — part of the then-Big-Five accounting cartel — was given the corporate death penalty for its role in the Enron fraud. That was the last time a Big Accounting company really suffered over a fraud.

Since then, the regulators overseeing Big Accounting have largely ignored its crimes, or, at worst, charged the companies penalties that were smaller than the profits they realized through fraud. A fine is just a price.

Take KPMG.

In 2019, the SEC found that KPMG’s most senior managers were helping their auditors cheat…on ethics exams.

KPMG execs bribed employees at the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board to slip them advance copies of the ethics exams.

https://www.nysscpa.org/news/publications/the-trusted-professional/article/sec-probe-finds-kpmg-auditors-cheating-on-training-exams-061819

Even better (worse): the bribe that KPMG offered to regulators was a job at KPMG.

Remember, KPMG plays a vital role in the market system: to be perfectly, scrupulously honest, so that rich people (and regular slobs) can make sure that they’re not getting ripped off.

KPMG’s job is to stop cheating. And KPMG cheats.

Not surprisingly, a company whose official policy is to help its employees cheat on ethics exams keeps getting embroiled in ethics scandals, which end up costing regular investors and even very rich people a lot of money.

Here’s a good one: since 2016, investors have been suing KPMG for signing off on the books of Miller Energy Partners, a dirty-as-fuck oil company that turned out to be a giant scam.

https://www.desmog.com/2021/06/03/miller-energy-kpmg-auditors-oil-fraud/

Miller claimed that it could profitably extract oil from wells other companies had abandoned as too dry to pump (energy companies routinely incorporate standalone businesses for each field, then declare those companies bankrupt rather than pay to shut down when they dry up).

Miller was a fraud. It inflated the value of the wells it bought by $400m. Miller was run by serial scammers. Its CEO, Scott Boruff, stole $6m from his father-in-law, and was a veteran of a company that went bust after roping for Provident Asset Management, a Ponzi scheme.

Boruff brought in Provident’s former National Sales Director to oversee Gibson’s sales — publicly praising the Ponzi schemer’s “proven track record in raising capital.”

Miller was full of red flags and might have struggled to attract investors, but then it paid KPMG millions to sign off on its fraudulent books. That was the clincher than brought in millions more from investors who lost everything.

Even after the SEC fined KPMG for helping commit fraud, the partner who masterminded the crime kept his job at KPMG, staying on until retirement.

Now, it’s possible the reason KPMG’s internal watchdog missed all this was because it was a little distracted at the time — you see, that was around the time that David Middendorf — who ran KPMG’s Department of Professional Practices — was being sent to prison for fraud.

Meanwhile, Miller’s top fraudsters got paid millions — and paid fines of $125,000, each.

KPMG tried to weasel out of the Miller victims’ class-action suiit, but a judge in Tennessee just overruled its objections, so it’s going to court:

https://www.goingconcern.com/kpmg-class-action-suit-miller-energy-investors/

But the days of corporate death penalties are long behind us. If KPMG loses this suit, it will pay out a few million, but it will continue to operate, providing assurances of probity where none exist.

Big Accounting is a rarity in late-stage capitalism: a sector that preys on wealthy people as well as everyday people. Somehow, it gets away with it — perhaps because there is no honor among thieves?

[ieattaperecorders]

If I Had A Choice

Walking gives you a lot of time to think. Jon and Martin consider things after they leave Salesa's.

Read on Ao3

The thing is, it’s not about what he deserves.

Does Jon deserve to die? It’s a meaningless question now, when death is an escape that few have the luxury of imagining. Death is far from the worst fate that he intimately Knows. Even so, that isn’t the point. Not really.

Would he die to put the world back as it was? That’s no choice at all. There’s still enough humanity in him to see that there is only one answer. But it isn’t about that either. Killing him wouldn’t fix things, and chasing pointless martyrdom through the apocalypse would only leave Martin to face this world alone.

He’s not looking for a hard choice to make, whatever anyone might think. It’s just that he’s not likely to have a choice.

Martin won’t leave him, not even for the peace and comfort of Salesa’s hideaway. That thought fills Jon with more things than he can name. Relief, fear, gratitude, fear, bafflement, fear, fear, fear, but love most of all. Martin won’t leave him, and so Jon can’t leave either. Can’t let the Eye pull him away. Can’t let Terminus catch him.

Not if he has a say in the matter. (He won’t have a say in the matter.)

You really don’t deserve it.

He doesn’t, but it isn’t about that. It doesn’t matter if he deserves Martin or not. Is it even possible, really, to deserve the love of another person? Is it something that can be earned, purchased with a debt of kind acts or romantic words? No. It can only be a gift, and whatever his reasons Martin has given it to him. Martin loves him. It doesn’t matter if Jon deserves it. He has it and he's going to hold on to it.

Since when does anyone get what they deserve?

Martin deserves so many things that he will never have.

We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.

There was a time when Jon believed that he could save the world, when he threw himself into the search for answers, certain that if he could see the whole picture then he could understand it all. He ran into the Unknowing, stared at the Dark Sun, crawled into the Buried and carved a path through the Forsaken. He thought that he was preventing rituals, but all the while he was becoming the altar and the knife. It killed something in him, that realization. Whatever hubris, whatever sheer arrogance had made him believe he could save anybody, it was gone. Deep down, he doesn’t believe in a way back.

But he’s been wrong before. He hopes that he’s wrong now. It doesn’t come naturally anymore, hope, but he can try. Try to believe they can bring back a world that is more than just pain and fear. One that has comfort and safety, simple pleasures, peaceful mornings, dreamless nights.

He knows he can't live in that world.

He’s changed too much. He can’t be fixed. That is the reality of it.

Jon doesn’t deserve to be rewarded for bringing about the end. He didn’t deserve to be used by Elias. He doesn’t deserve Martin’s devotion. He doesn’t deserve to die. But it isn’t about what he deserves.

They just get whatever hurts them the most.

Martin won’t leave him. If their desperate quest somehow does succeed and Jon is severed from the Eye, he knows Martin will be with him until the end. Jon can Know every word in every language but none of them name what he feels when he thinks about that.

There are worse fates, he thinks, than spending a week or two living somewhere with Martin while he slowly loses himself, grows tired and hazy until one day he drifts off and doesn’t come back. It might be peaceful.

(Despite everything, he doesn’t want to die. It isn’t about what he wants, either.)

It would be painful to watch, he knows. There is no way to spare Martin the pain of losing him. Even if Jon wanted to (he doesn’t) or could (he couldn’t) convince Martin to leave him, it would only make that pain come sharper and sooner. It will hurt him however it happens.

Jon hopes that he won’t be alone when it does.

Maybe Melanie will reach out after it’s all over - with Jon gone, even Georgie might be willing to speak to him. Basira, she’s already coping with her own loss. Perhaps they can help each other. Jon thinks that Martin will want someone to be there for just as much as he’ll need someone to be there for him.

Even if there is no one... Martin is strong, stronger than Jon had once imagined. He found his own way out of the fog this time. If he suffers, if he mourns, he’ll also heal. He’ll have room to move on in a world of gentle rains and quiet conversations and hot cups of tea.

Jon doesn’t Know this. He doesn’t Know any of it. It’s what he hopes.

What he knows is there is no place for him in that healed world.

What he knows is he is a monster that feeds on fear.

What he knows is Martin won’t leave him.

If this world can be fixed, he’ll do what it takes to fix it. If he can’t survive in that new world, then he’ll die in it. It’s not about punishment, or sacrifice, or fate, or about what he deserves.

This is what Jon can still hope for.

He hears Martin call out and glances back. He’s fallen behind again, or Jon’s been going too fast, lost in thought. Jon holds out a hand which Martin takes, visibly annoyed. He smiles apologetically, hoping Martin will smile back. He does, after a moment of suspense - tossing his head back and rolling his eyes.

“You keep that up, I’m going to start thinking you’re trying to ditch me,” he says.

Jon’s grip tightens. His voice is blazing.

“Never,” he says.

* * *

It’s not about what Martin wants. It never is.

But right now, he is where he wants to be. He meant what he said. It would have been nice to stay in Salesa’s home a little longer, but he’d rather be here with Jon than there with Annabelle. Besides, he couldn’t abandon everyone else, couldn’t leave the world to this hell. And obviously he isn’t leaving Jon.

I mean, you could have...

Martin had waited for it as they packed. He’d braced for it as they made their way to the front, holding Jon’s hand and steering him so that he didn’t stop walking or wander off. He knew Jon would point out the obvious eventually – that if he wanted to, Martin could stay behind.

When he finally did say it, hesitant and without much force, it was almost a relief.

I f you wanted to forget all of it, stay here and just... escape. I would understand.

The thing is, Martin doesn’t want to escape. That isn’t what he’s hoping for.

What would he even do if he stayed with Salesa? Sit around on fancy furniture looking at flowers while seven billion people continued on in agony? Spend a few years drinking before noon, then blow his brains out once the food’s gone? What kind of paradise is that?

No, it isn’t for him. Nice place to visit, wouldn’t want to die there.

What Martin really wants is to ask Jon if there’s a nearby nightmare domain where he can pick up a chainsaw or a flamethrower or two, then pop back quickly to have one last chat with Annabelle. But that probably wouldn’t end as well in reality as it would in his head.

Martin isn’t an idiot, he knows nothing that Annabelle says is spoken in his interest or Jon’s. Anything she tells him is only her trying to get under his skin for her own ends. He knows this. He does. The trouble is, she’s good at it, and sometimes her words tug at his worries even if he doesn’t really believe them.

Does he even need you at all?

But she made a mistake there, because the one thing he knows is that Jon needs someone. Even now. Especially now. Maybe there are times when he can’t get all the way to “Jon needs me.” But he needs somebody, Martin has no doubts about that. If her game is to convince him otherwise, she’s going to lose.

He should expect someone like Annabelle to think that Jon doesn’t need him.

What does she know about what people need? She probably sees everyone as a tool she can use for whatever plans her spider puppet-masters are cooking up.

She wasn’t there with Jon in those first few days, when he was destroying himself with guilt. She wasn’t the one he clung to while he wept, who listened to him pour out his self-loathing and his dread, who held him when it seemed like he might shake apart.

She didn’t see the look on Jon’s face when Martin told him that he didn’t want to stay in the fog – that collapsing relief and barely-held back joy. Didn’t feel how tightly Jon clung to him as they made their way out of that house, one hand gripping his, the other around his arm, as if holding something precious that had been nearly ripped away.

She wouldn’t know or care about the small, fragile smiles that Martin can still coax from him, despite everything.

What does she know about what he needs?

Does she even have any friends that aren’t mind controlled into thinking they like her?

Has anyone ever told her she’s their reason for holding on?

Just wanted to make you say it.

Now that would be a thing to ask the next time she shows up. ‘Hey Annabelle, just curious, is there anyone who actually cares about you?’ And she’d say something like ‘well Martin, are you sure that anyone has ever really cared about you?’ in that smug voice of hers. And then Jon would say that he cared about Martin, that he loved him, and then he’d blow her up with his Archivist vision.

Yeah. That wouldn’t end as well in reality as it did in his head either.

He was in love, and he was loved, and he wouldn’t forget that. He could believe that Jon did need him.

But he still worried.

Because when was the last time Jon let himself have what he needed?

Life's always more complicated than that, isn't it?

If he put more stock in what Annabelle said, Martin might see Jon giving him these outs as trying to get rid of him. And he knows there’s something deep in him, something old and sore, that resonates with that. But that isn’t what he’s afraid of, not really. He’d have to ignore a great number of the things that Jon says and does to really believe that he doesn’t want Martin around.

What he worries is that Jon might be trying to give him up. Let him run away somewhere safe so that he won’t have to face what’s coming. Whatever it is he Sees.

He wanted to stay a little longer at Salesa’s, but it’s not about what he wants. Jon couldn’t stay, Martin couldn’t leave him, so Martin couldn’t stay either. Jon apologized, but it wasn’t like that – it wasn’t something Martin was giving up for him, he stayed with Jon for himself as well. And it’s not Jon’s fault that he can’t live without the -

Can’t live at that house. Not for long.

No. Nope. No, no, no, no. He isn’t going to give into despair about that. This world is huge, and weird, and terrible, and most of it doesn’t make sense except in the incomprehensible non-logic of dreams.

If a cracked camera can hide a bubble of peace in the apocalypse, there’s something that can be done for Jon. Martin is not going to let go of that possibility. He’s had a glimpse of the life they might have together, and he wants to have that in earnest.

But it’s never about what Martin wants.

“Hey!” He shouts at Jon, who’s beginning to shrink in the distance. “Slow down, huh?”

Jon turns rabbit-quick and startled. He smiles sheepishly as Martin approaches, holding out a hand for him to take.

Martin rolls his eyes as he grips it. “You keep that up, I’m going to start thinking you’re trying to ditch me.”

Jon stares at his words, and for a moment he squeezes Martin’s hand hard enough to hurt. He looks into Martin’s eyes and whispers never. And Martin swallows, and breathes, and breathes.

* * *

Two figures stand in a lifeless field, saying nothing. The same thought in both their minds.

If I had a choice, I would choose to be with you.

[worldofwardcraft]

Vlad the Imploder.

March 3, 2022

By invading neighboring Ukraine, Russian president Vladimir Putin just might have made the biggest blunder of his life. One that may well lead to the collapse of his power and even his overthrow. Much in the manner of fellow-psychopath Donald Trump, Putin doesn’t seem to have thought through how disastrous his decision could turn out for him personally.

To begin with, the assault appears not to be proceeding as he anticipated. Instead of pulling off a blitzkrieg-like conquest, his military is facing surprisingly stiff opposition, high casualties, plummeting morale and the prospect of determined guerilla resistance. Plus, as CNN reports,

Keeping Russia's large invasion force supplied with fuel and ammunition has also proved difficult. As one senior US official explained, Russia anticipated a fast victory and may have neglected to plan for sufficient resupply of its forces.

Things at home aren't much better. When Putin annexed the Crimean portion of Ukraine in 2014, there was a general groundswell of domestic support. This time, not so much. Public protests  — illegal under the Russian constitution — involving thousands of ordinary citizens, have cropped up all across the Federation. Including in Moscow's Pushkin Square, St. Petersburg, Yekaterinburg and other cities. With more than 5,000 reported arrests in 58 cities so far.

Even worse, the rigorous economic sanctions imposed by the US and the world promise to be devastating. The Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from Russia to Germany is dead, Russia's banks have been barred from the international financial system, and its central bank is locked out of $630 billion in reserve holdings. Meanwhile, Russia's stock market has had to close and the ruble is practically worthless. Explained one senior Biden administration official,

Our strategy to put it simply is to make sure that the Russian economy goes backward. As long as President Putin decides to go forward with his invasion of Ukraine.

Finally, Putin's oligarch pals are suffering brutal individual sanctions. Their assets are being frozen, and their yachts, private jets, condos, mansions and sports teams seized. Without their stolen riches and posh lifestyles, they'll no longer have any reason to keep propping him up.  

Put it all together and Putin's ill-considered war on a sovereign nation could lose him the support of not only the military and his kleptocrat enablers, but also (and worst of all) the Russian people. When their sons and husbands start coming home in body bags, when they learn their Ukrainian relatives are being massacred, when economic life becomes unbearable, look for the ex-KGB autocrat's demolition to begin.

[princegeorgeofwales]

7 things we learnt from Kate Middleton's revealing motherhood podcast with Giovanna Fletcher

The Duchess of Cambridge preferred labour to pregnancy

"I got very bad morning sickness. I'm not the happiest of pregnant people. Lots of people have it far, far worse. It was definitely a challenge. Not just for me, but also for your loved ones around you and I think that's the thing - being pregnant and having a newborn baby and things like that, impacts everybody in the family. William didn't feel he could do much to help and it's hard to see you're suffering without actually being able to do anything about it."

"[It was] utterly rotten. I was really sick. I wasn't eating the things I should be eating and yet the body was still able to take all the goodness from my body and to grow new life, which I think is fascinating." Kate admitted that because of her difficult pregnancies, she actually preferred being in labour. "Because it had been so bad during pregnancy, I actually really quite liked labour… Because actually it was an event that I knew there was going to be an ending to! But I know some people have really, really difficult times, so it's not for everybody. No pregnancy is the same, no birth is the same."

The Duchess of Cambridge used hypnobirthing

Like Giovanna and other famous mums, Kate tried hypnobirthing too. When asked, "Am I right in thinking you did Hypnobirthing?" the Duchess replied: "Yes! Actually it was through hyperemesis that I really realised the power of the mind over the body because I really had to try everything and everything to try and help me through it. There are levels of it. I'm not going to say that William was standing there chanting sweet nothings at me! He definitely wasn't, [laughing] I didn't even ask him about it, but it was just something I wanted to do for myself. I saw the power of it, really, the meditation and the deep breathing and things like that that they teach you in hypnobirthing when I was really sick and actually I realised that this was something that I could take control of, I suppose, during labour. It was hugely powerful."

Standing outside the Lindo Wing was 'terrifying'

With all three of her children, the Duchess presented her newborn babies to press and to the world as she posed outside the Lindo Wing of St Mary's Hospital in Paddington, London. Admittedly, Kate revealed it was a "terrifying" experience. "What was it like knowing that so many people were outside, after you've given birth and you're in your little cocoon with your new family?" asked Giovanna.

"Yeah, slightly terrifying, slightly terrifying, I'm not going to lie (laughter)," said Kate. "Everyone had been so supportive and both William and I were really conscious that this was something that everyone was excited about and you know we're hugely grateful for the support that the public had shown us, and actually for us to be able to share that joy and appreciation with the public, I felt was really important. But equally it was coupled with a newborn baby, and inexperienced parents, and the uncertainty of what that held, so there were all sorts of mixed emotions."

Of the moment she held George for the first time, Kate, who didn't know the sex of her baby, revealed: "Amazing, amazing. It is extraordinary as I've said. How can the human body do that? It is utterly extraordinary, actually. And he was very sweet. And also sort of relieved that he was a happy, healthy boy."

Prince William and Kate struggled as new parents

The Duchess was very open in how she and husband William fared with their first baby. When Giovanna asked, "How many hours after giving birth did you come out?" Kate recalled: "I… Oh my gosh, I can't remember. Everything goes in a bit of a blur. I think, yeah I did stay in hospital overnight, I remember it was one of the hottest days and night with huge thunderstorms so I didn't get a huge amount of sleep, but George did which was really great.

"I was keen to get home because, for me, being in hospital, I had all the memories of being in hospital because of being sick so it wasn't a place I wanted to hang around in. So, I was really desperate to get home and get back to normality. But I think you think, particularly with your firstborn baby, you think everything is going to go back to how it was. I totally underestimated the impact and the change it had on us from that moment really and I think, unless you've got children, you don't realise. No amount of planning and preparation can get you ready for that moment."

Mum-of-three Giovanna mused: "When you leave hospital and get home [after giving birth], I remember that eerie silence…" to which Kate revealed: "It wasn't that quiet in our household! William was like, 'oh my gosh, is this what parenting is going to be like?' No, it took us a bit of time to get ourselves settled and going again, but that's the beauty I suppose of having a newborn baby. You are pulled to your toughest and most unknown places really that you hadn't necessarily even have thought about before."

The Duchess of Cambridge on mum guilt

When asked whether she struggles with mum guilt, Kate replied: "Yes absolutely – and anyone who doesn't as a mother is actually lying! Yep – all the time, yep – and you know even this morning, coming to the nursery visit here – George and Charlotte were like 'Mummy how could you possibly not be dropping us off at school this morning?' But no it's a constant challenge – you hear it time and time again from mums, even mums who aren't necessarily working and aren't pulled in the directions of having to juggle work life and family life… and always sort of questioning your own decisions and your own judgements and things like that, and I think that starts from the moment you have a baby!

"Also I feel huge responsibility because what I've learnt over the last few years is so fascinating and I definitely would have done things differently, even during my pregnancy, than I would have done now... Because you know - the science - and I found that fascinating to see the wellbeing of the mother – not just physically, you know there's so much information about making sure you exercise and making sure you have a healthy diet and things like that, which yes is definitely important. But the emotional wellbeing of the mother directly impacts the baby that you're growing."

The one piece of advice the Duchess of Cambridge would give her younger self

"If you could write a letter to anyone about motherhood, who would it be to and what would you say," asked Giovanna. "Can I write back to myself? Is that really weird? I think I'd have liked to have written to myself at the beginning of my pregnancy with my first child because I think through I have experienced – not only as a mother but also what I've learned on my journey through, digging deeper into the early years landscape – I've learned a huge amount but I'd really love to go back and tell myself at the beginning of pregnancy, right at the start what things I feel now really matter in terms of being a parent but also what really matters to the children and my children now.

"It's the simple things that really make a difference. It's spending quality time with your children. It's not whether you've done every single drop off and every single pick up but actually it's those quality moments you spend with your child when you're properly listening to them, properly understanding what they feel, and actually when things are going wrong, actually really taking time to think, 'how as a mother am I feeling? Am I actually making this worse for my child because actually this has brought up all sorts of things that I feel rather than just focusing on them and how they might be reacting or responding to certain situations?' That would be another piece of advice I would like to give myself back then.

"Someone did ask me the other day, what would you want your children to remember about their childhood? And I thought that was a really good question because actually if you really think about that, is it that I'm sitting down trying to do their maths and spelling homework over the weekend? Or is it the fact that we've gone out and lit a bonfire and sat around trying to cook sausages that hasn't worked because it's too wet? That's what I would want them to remember, those moments with me as a mother, but also the family going to the beach, getting soaking wet, filling our boots full of water, those are what I would want them to remember. Not a stressful household where you're trying to do everything and not really succeeding at one thing."

The Duchess of Cambridge's 5 Big Questions Survey

On her survey on early childhood, Kate said: "Hopefully it's the first small step into looking at prevention and it's not just about happy, healthy children. This is actually for lifelong consequences and outcomes. I was looking at one of the stats. I think there is £17 billion estimated in England and Wales alone that is spent on late intervention and it's crazy - not only because it's an economic cost but because there is a huge social cost to our communities and our societies. So that's really why I'm doing this. It's going to take a long time – I'm talking about a generational change - but hopefully this is the first small step: to start a conversation around the importance of Early Childhood development."

- Hello Magazine

[politicaltheatre]

Depraved Indifference

"I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn't lose any voters, OK? It's, like, incredible."

- Donald Trump, at a campaign stop at Dordt College, Sioux Center, Iowa, January 23, 2016

This quote didn’t find its way into the second impeachment trial of the now-former President, but it should have. In a better world it would have, but in that better world a man such Donald Trump would not ever have been elected to any office, let alone one as powerful as president. And yet, somehow he was.

Donald Trump is no longer president, something his defenders, standing before the Senate and sitting among the trial’s jury, have taken great pains to try to focus our attention on.

Note how they talk about the importance of “moving on” and getting over it, thereby distancing us and, far more importantly, themselves from what was done.

Note how they try to frame the charge against Trump - “inciting violence against the government of the United States” - as merely “partisan” and “political”, something devoid of any legal justification or standing, as if the crimes were not witnessed by billions around the world in real time.

Note how, when faced with having to face the morally depraved actions they either encouraged or enabled in Trump and those who followed him, and having to defend their own complicity in the indefensible result, they turn to not even a little bit thinly veiled threats against those daring to accuse. Any retribution, they do declare, any continuation of violence against Trump’s declared enemies, that will be on you.

This has all the subtlety and predictability of a trial in the Jim Crow South, and, given the number of Confederate flags waving inside the Capitol on January 6th, that really isn’t too strong a comparison.

Trump, as anyone anywhere in the world even casually paying attention should know, is entirely guilty of inciting that riot. He spent years cultivating doubt in the electoral system, months casting doubt on the 2020 mail-in voting results, and, finally, weeks spreading blatant lies about voting fraud, ones that he continues to tell to this day.

He did all of this while encouraging and enabling exactly the kind of violence done on his behalf that we all saw on the 6th and, as the House impeachment managers have helpfully shown at length, in the days, weeks, months, and years leading up to it.

“Stand back and stand by”, right? The Proud Boys stuck that on t-shirts.

If the videos the House managers have played have failed to persuade, we tell ourselves, perhaps the evidence of Trump’s Defense and Justice departments undermining the Capitol police and National Guard’s response will. How about a timeline of Trump’s fiddling while the Capitol burned and his own Vice President quite literally ran for his life? No? Really?

You don’t need a lot of time to prepare a case when the defendant has been caught, figuratively, thousands of times in the middle of Fifth Avenue with a smoking gun. Trump’s thumbs offered up hundreds of smoking guns to choose from. Videos of his post-election rallies do, too. The ones he posted that day, hours after the breach, calling the men and women hunting “traitors” of both parties and battering Capitol police with American flags “patriots”, well, that’s a prosecutor’s dream. Or should be.

So, yes, he is guilty. Very, very, very guilty.

Ah, but so are at least three of his jury members: Josh Hawley, James Lankford, and Ted Cruz. They all gave credence to Trump’s lies, they all gave weight to those lies by demanding that the Senate investigate them once more and yet again before confirming the election, and that day they all cynically and repeatedly called for the rejection of President-elect Joe Biden’s victory.  Well, Hawley and Cruz did; Lankford was trying to when he was evacuated.

They were no less guilty of trying to profit from the misplaced and misguided rage of those storming the Senate chamber than Trump, and, if the rioters’ own social media accounts are to be believed, Hawley and Cruz at the very least were no less accountable for them being there. Lankford, it seems, needs to up his social media game.

Those three senators, of course, are not on trial. They are merely jurors charged with deciding the guilt or innocence of Donald Trump for doing what they did themselves. They will be joined in their guaranteed “No” votes by at least 41 other Republican senators who, like them, once again voted to claim that, despite over 200 years of clear legal precedent, this impeachment trial is “unconstitutional”.

It’s no shock that the House managers’ detailed legal history lesson fell on deaf ears, nor is it that those three and other Trump Republicans were caught “reading” during the presentation of evidence. Rand Paul, whose own ridiculous claims about the election and trial have been followed by threats of retaliation, was caught doodling like teen stuck in detention.

This, not anything said by Trump’s crack legal team, is the argument for the defense: they know what Trump did, they know it was wrong, they know what they’re doing, and they know that’s wrong, too. And they do not care. They do not care.

These aren’t stupid people, they’re just dishonest. More specifically, they’re corrupt. What they believe, what they take as a matter of faith, is that they’ll face no real consequences for anything they’re doing or anything they’ve done.

And who’s to tell them they’re wrong? What’s the worse Hawley or Cruz will face? Censure? You can’t shame the shameless. They’ll wear their censures the same way Trump would, as a badge of courage on which they can raise campaign money and, they hope, draw out votes from Trump’s millions of rabidly loyal supporters.

For Hawley, Cruz, and others already campaigning for 2024, that’s all that matters. For them, this is just an opportunity, a means to an end, as they pursue their highly profitable careers in politics. It’s just business. For them, Trump, and every other one in Congress, on TV, and on social media who chose to ignore what people might do if they lied to them and wound them up, and for all of those choosing to ignore the consequences of it now, that’s all this is: just business.

And that’s the problem.

Politics shouldn’t be a business. We know that without even having to be told. When we talk about it, we do so in terms of “service” and “doing one’s duty”, words and phrases that romanticize the selfless nature we want to see in our politics and our politicians. We don’t just do that because that’s how we’ve always heard it spoken of, we do that because we know that the ones who embody that ideal are rare. There’s just too much evidence to deny it.

Go back far as you want, there have been men and women seeking power for the purpose of defending themselves and their friends from accountability. Back in the day, they sought appointments through connections or simply joined the clergy. These days, they run for office.

The political party in this country that currently stands against accountability is the Republican Party. Sure, the Democratic Party has its own sizable share of complicity for allowing the country’s drift into right-wing aggressive selfishness, but, lucky for us, it hasn’t been able to rid itself of its accountable members the way the Republican Party has. Of course, that’s only natural, given the importance of accountability to the political Left.

The last two Republican presidents were elected in no small part because they had a background in business. Yes, they each ran their businesses into the ground, but they ran them.

George W. Bush came into office as a “corporate” president, one who would, we were assured, delegate to those more experienced and skilled in areas where he was…lacking. We waved away his inadequacies and were somehow shocked when he failed in exactly every one of those areas. Still, he and his friends made money hand over fist, so the corporate presidency was good for business, big business, in particular, which got a big bailout.

Donald Trump should have inspired even less confidence, but confidence man that he is, he played enough suckers to get him in the White House. As much pain, suffering, and death as he has caused in four excruciatingly long years, he and his cronies have made out like gangbusters, too. The government they were hired to manage, not so much.

From the start, he and his cabinet secretaries lived by the old rule, “it’s easier to ask for forgiveness than it is to get permission”. Not that they asked for forgiveness. That’s for losers. They broke laws, fleeced taxpayers, and resigned knowing that whatever penalty they might face would pale compared to the profits they took with them.

This is the mentality that drives corporate decision making around the world. For them, the adage is a bit more like, “better to settle a lawsuit than risk profits”. They, too, avoid apologies whenever possible. That keeps the damages paid to to victims and their families lower.

Currently, there are companies selling cars, drugs, baby food, and other products that they know are defective and a threat to the people using them. They know this. They know there’s a high risk that people will die, and they do it anyway. Instead of recognizing the threat and stopping, they do cost-benefit analyses to determine the number of deaths from their products they can afford.

This, it’s worth stating, is not capitalism. We may tell ourselves that it is, but that’s just us looking for an easy answer, a scapegoat for our own failures. In fact, this pattern was just as common under communism, too; just ask anybody who used to live near Chernobyl. Mistakes are hidden, a given number of deaths are accepted, and the perception of success and prestige is maintained.

This is corruption, and deaths and suffering caused by a lack of accountability are what corruption does. A death is a symptom, a great, big red flag, something to tell you that something is very, very, very wrong, but how many of those red flags do we see and ignore before we finally stop to ask what it is we’ve been seeing?

How many smaller red flags, such as poverty, racism, anti-semitism, police brutality, injustice, and sexual abuse, do we pass because we’ve just become so used to seeing them? Do we tell ourselves that there is nothing we can do? Do we even ask if there is anything we can do? Or do we, as so many senators are now preparing to do, instead embrace corruption as a virtue.

This is the real threat, a system that accepts this and holds no one accountable, and a culture that pushes back against demands for accountability, embracing the very worst of who we are and what we can do to others just to prove that we can. The result is a flood of childish acting out and a loss of trust in products and services that we must be able to trust because they are supposed to keep us safe.

Is this as great a threat to our society as the January 6th attack on the Capitol? This is that attack. The product failures that led to the attack were political. We have watched as our political and government institutions have failed. We have watched as those entrusted to deliver a product that works and keeps us safe have, again and again, deliberately or not, betrayed that trust. As with any other product sold, each breach of trust carries over into the next, accumulating and compounding, eroding not just our ability to trust those products but all products like them.

Think of the doubts Americans have about the safety of vaccines? Sure, we can chalk that down to internet conspiracy theories and echo chambers if we like, but would they have gained the traction they have in a world in which we weren’t inundated with ads featuring paid-non-attorney-spokespersons asking us if we or a loved one took this drug or that and had experienced one or more life threatening side effects? How many of us heard about the Covid-19 vaccines and asked, How long before we see the ads for that?

For decades, we have allowed ourselves to become a nation of beta-testers, taking on the cost and burden of quality control that the companies releasing and profiting from these products, and these class action lawsuits have become big business as a result. Every new pharmaceutical product that hits the shelves, part of us is just waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Time and the success of these vaccines should put an end to that, at least for this pandemic, but that we have to do so should tell us about the work we have to do to repair our society, or to build one that can exist without absolving us from being accountable to each other.

Until then, we have other kinds of corruption to face, including one that may be more destructive than anything we’re seeing in the Senate this week.

The Reddit-GameStop insurrection might have been fun to watch from the sidelines, a bit of schadenfreude for those of us on the outside of Wall Street, looking in, but the truth is the hedge fund villains still made their money, and the systemic fault lines this episode exposed should have us all scared and paying attention.

Our economy is overly concentrated in Wall Street’s product and therefore overly dependent on its success and stability. A loss of faith in its product has been underway for years. That’s how you get to day traders trying to take on hedge funds the way they did. This wasn’t David vs Goliath, this was guerrilla warfare over who gets to make the quick and easy profits.

The upside of that is that some of the “little guys” seem to win something; the downside of that is that it does nothing to fix the problems we have with Wall Street. Rather, it only makes them worse, by highlighting how easy it is to manipulate stocks and commodities and how few get to do it and get away with it.

What happens, then, when no one has any faith left in Wall Street? What happens when everyone believes it is nothing more than a casino designed to take money rather than make it?

Well, we’re almost there. We have a massive, growing online gambling industry, and with it an online gambling problem. Sports leagues, some with their own recent histories of cheaters (and worse) getting away with it, have turned their own fans onto gambling as part of the sport. How many of these people, blowing their money on bad beats, think of it as no different than investing on Wall Street stocks?

A better question: What happens to all of those stock prices when everyone, including the crooks on Wall Street, lose faith in that system, take their profits, and leave? An even better question: What happens if they do that all at once?

The answer is: Lost jobs, pensions, food and housing security, and hope.

In other words, 2020 on steroids. That’s what you get with corruption, an environment in which politicians like Donald Trump, companies willing to harm consumers, and right wing domestic terrorists thrive. As long as they aren’t held accountable, they will.

“Bad for the country”, indeed.

- Daniel Ward

[dothwrites]

15.13 coda--the price we pay

So it’s true, when all is said and done--grief is the price we pay for love.--E.A. Bucchianeri

---

Jack’s door closes with a small snick. Castiel watches it close. The thin barrier of wood separates him from his boy, but it doesn’t keep away the muffled sounds of sobs and sniffles. 

The moment had lasted an eternity, Jack looking at Dean through tear-bright eyes, begging for forgiveness, Dean staring back down at Jack, his jaw set and eyes gimlet hard. Dean feels things more deeply than anyone else, Castiel had told Jack. He’d meant it. Joy, anger, guilt...Dean feels, so much all of the time, that it spills out onto anyone else who gets in his way. 

What he hadn’t told Jack was that that was the reason that he loved Dean. Was because he felt. As an angel, a being who was never intended for emotion, the sight of a human soul, writhing with emotion so bright that it managed to shine through hell, was enough to captivate him. He’d been drawn towards Dean, helpless as a moth towards flame, and there he’d stayed, caught in Dean’s orbit. There he weathers the tempest of Dean’s anger as well as the brightness of his joy. 

And he’s had time, firsthand, to experience to balm of Dean’s forgiveness. 

Dean’s hand had descended towards Jack and Castiel had hated Jack’s flinch. Hated it for Jack, hated it for Dean. He knew that that flinch hurt Dean, reinforced what Dean had suspected all along--that he was nothing but a brute, nothing but a monster. 

But Dean’s hand had landed on Jack’s shoulder, just a moment before Dean was on his knees, pulling Jack into a fierce embrace. “It’s ok kid,” he said, voice thick and gravel-rough. “You’re ok.” 

Sam had knelt alongside them, his long arms wrapping up Jack and Dean alike, and Castiel...His work was done, in a sense. He’d facilitated Jack’s return to the Winchesters, seen his soul restored. Gotten one step closer to the ultimate goal. So Castiel had taken a few small steps out of the room, silently. No one had seen him go, no one had noticed his presence, until Dean and Sam walked out. Sam’s eyes were glassy, his face flushed. Dean’s mouth was flat, but there was something calm and peaceful in his eyes, something that had been missing for long weeks. 

Anger takes a toll on the soul. 

And then they’d walked away, leaving Jack’s door to close behind them. And Castiel watches--Watches his boy deal with the pain of his actions, watches the Winchesters walk away. After a moment, Castiel follows. 

Dean glances up when he enters the room. Something hard glints at him. It reminds Castiel of the pain of the word idiot when it comes from Dean’s lips, the curling realization that no matter his contribution, he’ll never be valued. 

Castiel is still a soldier, first and foremost. He understands the necessity of sacrifice, knows that in chess, sometimes you have to lose pieces in order to win. 

He just wishes that Dean would care a little more when he’s finally taken off the board. 

---

Cas looks at him with wide eyes and Dean knows that they’re going to have to talk. Probably sooner than later, judging by the stubborn little purse to his mouth. Dean takes another sip from his beer (those bastards drank them down to almost nothing, greedy little sons of bitches) and luxuriates in the swallow. He’ll put off this conversation as long as he can. 

He still doesn’t know, how to put all the concern that he feels, the worry that continuously scrabbles at the inside of his skull, into words that don’t spit and fizzle like poison. He’d seen the minute little flinch in Cas’ face when he said idiot, just like he’d seen the Jack’s flinch when he reached out towards him. He’s doing better, he’s trying, but what the hell does it say about him that the people that he loves best in the world literally draw back from him? 

“I’m going to bed,” Sam says, his voice still scratchy and rough. Dean knows that the deal with Jack hit him hard, but there’s something else there too. Sam’s continuous glances at his phone tell a fairly convincing story. No doubt there’s a series of texts from Eileen waiting for him. 

Which would be fine, Dean’s all aboard the good ship Saileen, except that Sam’s departure leaves him alone with Cas. And Cas isn’t leaving or starting the conversation, which means that he’s going to leave Dean to deal with this whole mess. 

The silence between them takes on a distinctly stony feel the longer they sit in it. It’s so damned uncomfortable sitting in it, yet breaking it would somehow be worse. Dean will give it to Cas--he’s a passive-aggressive little shit when he wants to be. 

After the quiet becomes so uncomfortable that Dean’s teeth are itching, he finally decides to rip the band-aid off in one, vicious tug. 

“It was a damn stupid thing, what you did.” 

He didn’t mean it to sound like that, he really didn’t. But his intentions are worthless--the words fall harsh and flat between them, like little loaded weapons. Whatever softness might have been lurking in Cas is gone. 

“It was the only way to get what we needed.” Cas’ voice is tight with repressed emotion, but the words are enough to spark a wildfire in Dean. 

“It was the only--what the fuck man?” he spits. He stands up, his chair skittering backwards across the floor. Its feet scrape against the wood, loud enough to send the hairs rising on Dean’s arms, but he ignores that in favor of focusing on Cas. 

“The only way was to go and get yourself killed? Again?” 

Try as he might, he can’t erase the image--Cas, slumped motionless in the chair, face gone that particular shade of pale and waxy that Dean knows and wishes that he didn’t. How many times has he been forced to watch Cas die, right in front of him? How many times has he said goodbye? And they’ve been lucky--for every goodbye, there’s always been a Hello Dean waiting, but Winchesters aren’t known for their luck. How long before it runs out? How long before Cas does something so monumentally reckless that there’s no coming back from it? 

How long before Dean has to say goodbye permanently? 

“It wasn’t like that--” 

“It was exactly like that!” Dean’s anxiety and worry spills out of him in a vicious tirade. “Sam and I come back, find you--”

“So you’re the only one who can take pointless risks?” Castiel is standing now, and there’s a dangerous, sharp edge in his voice that Dean should probably heed, but he’s too far gone for that. 

“That’s different--” Though it really isn’t, the difference is that Dean is just...Dean, just some schmuck who doesn’t have a trust fund, who doesn’t know any life other than that which cakes blood and dirt underneath his nails. He doesn’t matter, not in the long run. But Castiel...Castiel is made of stardust and the cosmos. It would be a sin, if Dean were left on the world while Castiel ceased to exist. 

For a moment Cas is speechless with rage. Then he’s striding over to Dean, pushing an angry finger into his chest, so hard that Dean’s sure there will be small, circular bruises blooming over his skin within the next day or so. 

“How dare you? How dare you assume that everyone...that I would be fine without you? How dare you think so little of yourself?” 

Dean laughs, a wretched ugly sound. “Yeah? Well, right back at you pal.” 

It hits him then, weights falling from the sky: how tenuous their grip on this life is. How any wrong move could be their last. How any of them could be snuffed out in the merest flicker of an instant and nothing of them would be left behind, save grief. 

Dean isn’t aware of the series of events that end with him crashing into Cas. He knows that his knees buckle, that he reaches out for Cas, that Cas is there to catch him, steady as ever. He folds himself into Cas, burrowing his nose between the collar of Cas’ shirt and his neck, brushing against warm skin. 

“I thought I lost you,” Dean finally says, the words dredged out of him like vomit, coming from somewhere dark and desperate that he keeps inside himself. Cas, his head lolling backward, hands limp on his stomach. Cas, light pouring out of his eyes and mouth, angel blade pierced through his chest...”I thought that I’d lost you again.” 

He doesn’t cry, but it’s a near thing as his shoulders shake with the release of pent-up emotion. He tries to crawl away to lick his wounds and hide his shame, but Cas’ arms tighten like a vice around his shoulders, keeping him present. 

“I can’t...don’t make me lose you again.” It’s half order, half-plea, but wholly sincere, gasped into Cas’ neck. “You think that you’re fucking expendable, that the ends justify the means, or whatever else your stupid chess metaphors say. But I need you in this with me Cas. I need you with me.” 

“And how dare you assume that I don’t feel the same,” Cas answers back. “How dare you think that I could go through this earth without you with me.” 

Dean draws back, just enough that he can take Cas’ face in his hands. Cas’ skin is warm against his palms. He can feel the flutter of Cas’ pulse underneath his hands, wild and thready and so very alive. “You ain’t fucking leaving me,” Dean says, before he kisses Cas. 

Just before his lips meet Cas’, he thinks that he sees something flicker across Cas’ face. A hint of regret maybe, a deeper secret coiling underneath the surface of those blue eyes. 

Dean pushes it aside before he kisses Cas, hard enough to bruise. Permanent. 

---

“I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.”―Mark Twain

[upsettingandunfortunateclasshate]

The co-ordinated effort by users of the online forum Reddit to drive up the share price of GameStop and other companies is designed to turn the screw on short-sellers.

To the layman, the dynamics at play here can seem dizzyingly labyrinthine.

But a good place to start is by understanding what short-selling is – and how the Wall Street wizards who do it could end up being wrong-footed by a group of amateur traders.

What is short-selling?

It’s a way of making money by betting that a company’s share price will fall.

Let’s say StuffCo (a made-up company) has a share price of £10. If I believe the share price is going to rise, I’ll simply buy shares at £10. If the price rises to £15, I can then sell my stock for a profit of £5 per share.

Shorting is a little more complicated. If I expect the share price to fall (because I think it is a rubbish business: badly run, for instance, or selling outdated products), I can borrow a share in StuffCo from someone who has it, in return for a small fee. If I sell it straight away, that puts £10 in my pocket.

I no longer have the share I borrowed but I will have to give it back at an agreed time. So I wait for the StuffCo share price to fall to £5, then buy it and return one share to the person I borrowed from in the first place.

They get their share back and I’ve still got the £10 I sold it for, minus the £5 I had to pay to replace it. I have pocketed £5 by correctly anticipating the fall in the share price.

What can go wrong?

If my prediction is incorrect and StuffCo’s shares go through the roof, I’m in big trouble. I’ve sold the share I borrowed at £10 but if the value increases to £100, I’ll have to spend £100 in order to give a share back to the person I borrowed from. I’d lose £90.

Theoretically my losses are unlimited – because there is no defined ceiling on how far a share can rise.

What has happened with GameStop?

In this case, Reddit users in a group called WallStreetBets noticed that hedge funds, including one called Melvin Capital, had taken a large short position in GameStop. They decided to punish the Wall Street big boys and launched a co-ordinated buying spree. That began forcing the price up – it is now up more than 1800% – increasing the losses for the short-sellers who had bet against it. They had suffered losses of $1bn already, according to reports on Thursday.

The hedge funds found themselves trapped in what is called a “short squeeze”, a kind of feedback loop that drives the price ever upwards. The hedge funds have to start buying the shares, in order to “cover” their position and limit their potential losses. But that buying forces the share price up even more – making their position even worse. Effectively they have been forced to bet on shares rising in order to offset their previous bet on them falling.

How can Reddit users afford the buying spree?

They aren’t only buying shares, they’re also using call options. These are the right to buy shares at a certain price and they effectively function as a leveraged bet, a purchase that only requires you to pay a fraction of the share price. This is the fuel that stokes the short-squeeze fire.

Do short-sellers deserve it?

Hedge funds aren’t exactly the world’s favourite people, given that they make vast quantities of money, often with ruthless disregard for the businesses that become little more than chips in a financial casino game.

During the financial crisis, shorting became a byword for vulture capitalism. Hedge funds were accused of deliberately driving companies into the ground by taking out billion-dollar short positions, artificially pushing down share prices to the point that they collapsed, when they might otherwise have survived.

Several national financial regulators across the world imposed temporary bans on short-selling certain vulnerable stocks – such as banks or insurers during the post-2008 financial crisis – or even blanket bans on the practice.

[96thdayofrage]

Blockbuster settlements with people and corporations that used to be the biggest names in the opioid industry came in rapid order this July.

First, New York Attorney General Letitia James announced a $4.5 billion dollar deal that would ban the Sackler family from the trade, and then, the so-called “big three” drug distributors and a pharmaceutical giant proposed a $26 billion global settlement that would end persistent litigation with more than a dozen states.

The numbers sounded large, and they landed with stern-sounding consequences. Johnson & Johnson would be out of the opioid business. The Sackler family’s name, a mainstay of countless museums, hospital, and other buildings, would be banned at least for a time from future dedications. Various entities that distributed, marketed and made products like Oxycontin would have to cough up millions of documents to a repository for scholars and journalists to name and shame the parties involved in a deadly public health scourge.

For many legal experts and suffering families, however, the civil resolution fell far short of a resounding ring of justice.

“You know, $4 billion sounds like a lot of money, but at the end of the day, the family that made billions of dollars from selling a highly addictive drug that the corporation fraudulently peddled as safe and effective—and not as addictive as other opioids—they will still be exceedingly wealthy,” Western New England University School of Law Professor Jennifer Taub said on Law&Crime’s podcast “Objections: with Adam Klasfeld.”

“And nothing will bring back the lives of the people who lost their lives to prescription opioid addiction or the the suffering of families who aren’t as well off as the Sacklers as a result of their behavior,” Taub added.

When the deal was first announced, the Raymond and Mortimer Sackler families released a statement in support of the resolution.

“This resolution to the mediation is an important step toward providing substantial resources for people and communities in need,” they wrote. “The Sackler family hopes these funds will help achieve that goal.”

The author of the book “Big, Dirty Money,” Taub is used to inveighing against a two-tiered system of justice for the wealthy. Her previous tome, “Other People’s Houses,” delved into the same subject in relation to the 2008 financial crisis.

The opioid saga provides plenty of grist for her thesis, and it discussed at length in her latest non-fiction book.

For Taub, a telling calendar event in the timeline of the opioid crisis happened in 2007, when three Purdue Pharma executives pleaded guilty to misdemeanor offenses that would avoid jail time. Taub said that the offending conduct continued after the accompanying settlement.

“They went back to their illegal drug dealing scheme,” Taub said.

Purdue pleaded guilty to criminal allegations again in late 2020, agreeing to a more than $8 billion deal.

“The criminals settlement from 2007 was just the cost of doing business,” Taub said. “The criminal settlement in 2020 […] and now this one in 2021 with the states—you know, yet another slap on the wrist.”

Also on the podcast, Taub discusses whether former President Donald Trump will face consequences now that New York District Attorney Cyrus Vance has indicted Trump Organization, Trump Payroll Corp., and the company’s longtime chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg.

Prosecutors have alleged 15-year tax fraud scheme that they claim netted Weisselberg about $1.76 million dollars in “off-the-books” payments.

According to prosecutors, Weisselberg ducked taxes on about $359,058 in tuition expenses for multiple family members, $196,245 for leases on his Mercedes Benzes, $29,400 in unreported cash, and ad hoc personal expenses like new beds, flat-screen televisions, the installation of carpeting, and furniture for his home in Florida.

Taub had little patience for the argument that allegations like these could not bring down a former president, if prosecutors could connect the scheme to Trump.

Otherwise, Taub said, the phrase “Nobody is above the law” rings hollow.

“No one believes that anymore,” Taub says, referring to equal justice for the powerful. “No one believes that, especially after the Trump era. And the number one job, I believe, for law enforcement is to see how far we’ve slid. Trump made it worse. And to make clear that there’s no longer a free pass for people who are either really wealthy and well connected or can whine really loud, like Trump does.”

[flirting-with-psychology]

100 good questions to ask your friends at 4:02 am when you can’t sleep (can also function as an asks list)

Are you bothered by your cosmic insignificance? Maybe just a little bit

Do you mourn for a place or person you’ve never known? I mourn for the college experience I didn’t quite manage to have, and for the utopian life from the end of The Good Place that is impossible to get in real life

Do you really think there is somebody for everybody? Hopefully

Do you place any value in gender roles? Anyone can do whatever they want but I do associate some things with gender

Do you have to be related to be family? I don’t consider non-relatives my family

Are your platonic relationships just as valuable as romantic or family ones? I have always put a lot of weight on romantic relationships

Are you in love? Do you want to be? Not quite but I want to be

Do you think you can put love into categories (family, platonic, romantic, etc.) or is it just one general sensation? I can put it into categories

Would you be happy with a life without romance? No

Are you always going to be a little in love with somebody? Yes, probably Captain and Candy Cane

Would you change your appearance if you could? Yes, but not surgically

Do you have the feeling you’ve lost something you might have had in another life - whether it be a person, a place, a world, a language, etc.? I feel like I could have had a different life experience if I was born a decade or two sooner

Do you believe in reincarnation? No but I wish I did, there are definitely things I want a second chance at

Would you want to be reincarnated? Yes

Do you think you’re special, or just another person amongst billions? Can you be both? I would like to be special but probably not

Do theoretical ethical debates have any value? Is it important people discuss ethical dilemmas, e.g. the trolley problem? Yes, they are interesting and can often lead to real-life scenarios

Did you have imaginary friends? Do you still have them? I did when I was a kid. I still like to make up characters but I don’t consider them imaginary friends

Are you religious? Do you think your religion is ‘correct’? I am not religious, and I think it is most likely that there is no god or spiritual force

If you aren’t religious, do you wish you were? Why? I don’t really wish I were but sometimes I can understand the desire to believe your life will have a guaranteed happy ending

Do you want a grand adventure? Yes

Do you have somebody, whether it be a friend or stranger, who you think you could have loved if the circumstances were different? Yes

How long does it take you to fall in love with somebody?Is the sensation of ‘falling in love’ or ‘being in love’ better? I’m not sure where exactly like turns into love, and I have never experienced being in love in a relationship

Is love about convenience or something more? Can it be about both? It would have to be about more than just convenience

Do you think you really understand your gender and sexuality? I have not really questioned it much. I am a cis girl and I am happy being a girl, but I think if I were born a boy I would probably be happy being a boy too. I am mostly straight but maybe just a little bit bi, although I don’t think I would have romantic feelings for a girl

How fluid is your concept of gender and sexuality? Not too fluid but idk

What’s the most life-changing choice you’ve made so far? Probably where to go to college

Are you afraid of growing old? Yes

Would you want to live forever? How about for a billion years, a million, a millennium, a century? I think I would get tired and lonely living forever, but a few centuries would give me enough time to try things

Do you believe in some form of god/s? No

Are your choices fated or of your own free will? Free will

Do you have a hunch about how you’re going to die? Lately I’ve been fearing dying of covid, but hopefully not

Do you believe in star signs? No

How old do you have to be to be considered an adult? Legally 18, socially probably like 30

Was your childhood happy? I think so

What are you missing from your life? A passion

Have you ever met someone who had a very similar personality to your own? Did you get along? Not any more so than regular friends

Do opposites attract? Not really

Is your life what you expected it would be five years ago? No, even if you take out the pandemic I still thought I would be doing something interesting with my career

Do you know what you want out of life? No

What makes a person ‘good’? Are you a ‘good person’? I guess if they help people? I would not necessarily say I am a very good person but I think I am more good than bad

What fundamentally matters do you? Love and fun

Is freewill an illusion? Not spiritually, but maybe capitalistically

Do you create art? How do you define art? I make jewelry and other crafts, and videos. Art is stuff that is there to be entertaining or beautiful, rather than just utilitarian

How often do you lie? Is all lying inherently bad? Are you generally truthful? I rarely lie and I usually disapprove of lying but in some cases it can be ok

Do you want to be remembered after your death? What for? Something I create

Is true world peace ever possible? Idk. Not looking like it

Do you have to suffer to truly understand the human condition? What is the human condition? How can you really experience it? Who the fuck knows. Everyone experiences things differently, even if you suffer the same thing

Are you free? Will you ever be? Can anyone be truly free? I am legally free but not free of capitalism

Do you hold yourself to higher standards than you hold others? Yes

What do you expect from a friend or partner? Someone with a sense of humor who is easy to talk to, and romantic for a partner

What question could you ask to find out the most about a person? No idea

Do you justify all your beliefs or have you just inherited/absorbed some? I’m sure I have abosrbed some

Which beliefs do you have that is most likely to be wrong? Idk maybe still supporting Harry Potter even though I don’t agree with JK Rowling’s anti-trans beliefs

Can human really understand the complete nature of the universe, space and time? No

Is a conscious what makes someone a person? Probably

What do you think about artificial intelligence? It’s kinda cool but I don’t understand how it works

Do you thinks humans are obsessed with escapism (books, video games, movies, etc.)? Are you looking for an escape? Do you think that’s a bad thing? Yes but it’s not a bad thing

Are we eventually going to ‘run out’ of new combinations for music, art, language, etc.? Is there a limit to human creativity? I doubt it

What do you think the next era of music will be like? Who knows, I barely even listen to this era

What do you think the next era of fashion will be like? Masks will be incorporated into it

Do we live in tumultuous times, or do they just seem so strange because we’re living in them? It’s hard to say

Would you want to meet a clone of yourself? Would you like them? No, and I probably wouldn’t

How confident are you, really? Not very

How consistent is your perception of time? Not very

What age should people be allowed to vote? Should children and teenagers be allowed to vote? 18 is probably a good age, I think it’s hard to make an informed decision as a kid. I know I would either want whoever my parents wanted or whoever was more attractive

How do you feel about the idea ‘an eye for an eye’? Probably not a good idea in general

What’s the worse thing a person can be? A murderer

How do you feel about monogamy? I would like to have it

Can you be in love with someone and still fall in love with someone else? Probably

What’s the tragedy of your life? Losing all my potential

Would your life make a good play? No it would be hella boring

Should people be prosecuted for crimes that weren’t considered crimes at the time? No

Would you fight for your country? Do you feel a sense of loyalty to your nation? I feel some loyalty I guess because it’s home, but I would not fight

Do you believe in gender equality in every aspect? I believe in equal opportunities but not forcing people to act a certain way

Do we have a moral obligation to care for others? To what extent? I think as a society we need to take care of people and probably set up government resources to do so, but the specific people who do that should be the ones who feel fulfilled by it

Do you crave approval and/or praise? Yes

Is there comedy in all tragedy and tragedy in all comedy? Idk

Are you ever going to be satisfied? I hope so but knowing me, probably not

When you are sad, do you listen to music that conveys your emotions or music that makes you happy? Music that conveys my emotions

Is your music organised by mood or sensation or do you just listen to everything at any time? Most of the time I just shuffle it but I do have some playlists

Would you marry a friend if they needed you to (e.g. for citizenship)? Probably not

Are you a deep person? Eh

Given the chance to live your life on Mars, with no hope of returning to Earth but with the promise of scientific discovery and glory, would you take it? Not unless there was already an established society on mars with opportunities for entertainment and community interaction

Are you who people think you are? Not really. I think I am more extroverted than people think (even though I’m really an ambivert), and a lot of people think I should do sales or customer service which I hate even though I’m ok at them

Do you think you would be happier if you had been born a different gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, nationality or religion? I might be happier if I was a boy, but only if I was an outgoing boy. And I might be happier if I was in one of those happier-on-average countries

What’s your toxic trait? Are you trying to improve yourself and fix it? My toxic traits are stubbornnes, procrastination, and lack of motivation, which are by nature extremely hard to work on

Do you anger easily? Maybe a little but I also let go of it easily

Are you a jealous person? Yes

If you lost all your memories, would you have the same personality? I assume not

Given the chance to reset your life (with none of the knowledge you currently have), would you take it? Maybe

Is hate as strong as love? Who do you hate? No. I hate Mitch McConnell

Do you speak multiple languages? Which do you dream in? What language would you want to learn? I only speak a little french and italian, I am not fluent. I dream in English. I might want to learn Gaelic

Do you draw meaning from your dreams, or do you disregard them? Sometimes I draw meaning

How would you describe yourself when you love? Do you love forcefully, unconditionally, gently, quietly, desperately? Probably desperately lol

Is unrequited love real love? I think so

Is your perception of yourself similar or the same to how others perceive you? Idk

Are you overly analytical? Yes

Do you ever feel that you are really a terrible person, and only act good out of societal or some other obligation? Occasionally

Do you believe in magic? Are you superstitious? No, but I wish it was real

What belief do you have that isn’t logically grounded, but you still firmly believe in? That I’ll end up with an interesting or exceptional life. Idk if I firmly believe it but I would like to believe it, because the alternative is depressing

[happymeishappylife]

The Cybermen (1st Appearance: The Tenth Planet)

Finally! It’s taken three whole seasons to introduce our next classic Doctor Who Villain, but finally they appear and as they are introduced, humanities nightmares begin. Because what could be more terrifying than other humans who have ripped out all of their emotions and organic parts to become fully robotic? That’s the true terror of the Cybermen and its felt loud and clear in their first serial, even if they are only in two actual episodes.

Now, I wondered how people in the 1960s could find these ‘robotic men’ scary, because unlike our first classic villain, the Cybermen have had quite an upgrade (pun fully intended) since their debut story:

But thanks to The Doctor Falls and World Enough and Time, these Mondasian Cybermen actually freak me out. And that’s also because while they may look a little funny, once the idea of what these creatures are settles in, its why they truly are the villains of humanity. Because they are us at our absolute worse and frankly even I can’t say we would never do that to ourselves. Even now, it feels like slowly and slowly we are integrating more tech into ourselves and our lives, so will we end up in these horrible suits? Only time will tell.

But in this introduction, we also get introduced to an idea that apparently many people have had throughout time, myself included, that not only is there intelligent life out there among the stars, but that there is a very rare possibility they at one time or another were human. In this serial, we quickly learn after seeing the planet appear on screen of the South Pole space control base that this is a twin planet of Earth, created billions of years ago. The two planets were alike in biology and ecology, but Mondas eventually travelled away from Earth and into some unknown part of space. But as their planet was dying and the humans turned to create themselves into the Cybermen, they realize that their only real chance of survival is to have Mondas return to Earth to drain its energy and continue on. A truly terrifying idea which is why everyone the base panics to solve many of the issues facing them.

Now of course there are some scientific flaws to this idea, like the idea that an earthlike planet can just drift away from the Sun and survive in the first place, but once humanity sees what its so call twin species does themselves and how they threaten Earth of course it is scary. When everyone from the Doctor, Polly, Barclay, and others question them after they arrive on the base, their horrified by the idea that the Cybermen aren’t phased of killing Earth, despite the fact that they were once humans too. Instead they calmly explain that this is the best idea for their survival and those willing to come to Mondas and convert. It’s why they have no feelings towards the death of the astronauts on Zues Rocket 4. In fact, they are untroubled by the idea of not doing anything to help them. But because they’ve been so far estranged by their emotions, they don’t realize the fear these humans feel quickly turns into a fight for their own survival.

In the early design, the Cybermen’s weapons are outside their suit in a square two handed death ray of some sort plus their small stun ray on their helmets. When one of them puts the weapons down, Ben quickly takes it and turns it against them, which emboldens the humans to take action and figure out a solution to solve the crisis. But as I already said, the Cybermen are humanities worst enemies, not the Doctor’s. He of course helps because of his love for humanity, but we see just how the Cybermen twist our own emotions against us in the way different people respond to the threat.

One the hand, General Cutler is truly of the military mind of shoot first and ask questions later. The better this threat is destroyed, then it doesn’t matter what casualties on the Earth’s side suffer, as long as the Cybermen are gone. Now part of this I understand because one of the driving forces behind this mindset is that his one is stuck orbiting the planet on a solo astronaut mission and suffering under the same power and fuel loss that Zeus 4 was and the General doesn’t want his son to die. But even as others explain his plan to deactivate the deadliest nuke on Mondas will have serious repercussions against Earth, he doesn’t listen and is full steam ahead.

On the other, Ben, who has only been with the Doctor for a short amount of time, already trusts him and his logic implicitly. He argues with Cutler that if they just hold the Cybermen at bay and wait then Mondas will simply implode from too much energy gain (Which why the Cybermen, who are technically advance enough to realize that Earth is an energy source, don’t realize that part of the plan is a bit baffling). So he fights against these men and finally pulls the man in the middle to his cause.

Barclay is one of the senior members of the base, but is based in science as opposed to pure military. He questions Cutler but at first doesn’t have the guts to stand against his orders. Only when Ben and Polly persuade him, does he eventually help them prevent catastrophe. In this, we see that by exploiting our emotions and our beliefs, the Cybermen can truly be powerful enemies which is also why they are quick to takeover the world. Thankfully, they don’t get the chance to because the Doctor is there and though he is having there own personal struggles, he still manages to stand strong against the Cybermen.

Now the final interesting fact about the Cybermen at this stage is the two weaknesses they have. The first is that they can’t handle radiation… seems weird if you are nothing but a metallic robot, but okay I guess we role with it as a plot device to have the humans fight back at the end. The other is truly strange. When Mondas eventually implodes from too much energy gain and dies off, so do the Cybermen because as someone comments, their power must come from Mondas. Now this is of course before we learn of the Cybernetwork, but is it because the network is on Mondas and that’s why they die? Possibly, but then as the Cybermen shrivel up and die, it does leave us wondering what exactly powers the Cybermen. Something to explore as we see them in more serials.

[thedailycourtney]

Some Things

I’ve been checking in sporadically, but sort of avoiding social media in general. I have to take occasional breaks for my own sanity.

I know being content, even happy, isn’t The Thing To Do these days, so I haven’t been posting much on any platform.

I know so many people have it far worse, that so many people are suffering, whether from Covid, or financial issues, or systemic racism, or the weight of the world, or any other of the billions of reasons people suffer, and I recognize it’s my privilege that allows me to step back from things that bum me out and affect my mood.

I know we’re supposed to be outraged every second of every day, but I just don’t have it in me, y’all. It’s not my nature. Again, privilege check.

Someone at my mom’s office is Covid positive, and my 94 year old grandpa - the sole caretaker for my grandma, who has Alzheimer’s - might have leukemia. So those are fun things to worry about!

I had this weird allergic reaction to… something? in the middle of the night Thursday. This is the third time this has ever happened, and I haven’t got a clue what triggers it. I took a Benadryl Friday morning and slept from 10:30 AM to almost 4 PM! So Friday was a total waste, but I guess I needed it?

The rest of the weekend was super chill, caught up with a friend I haven’t seen in a few months, had a couple neighbors over, spent it by or in the pool, as per usual.

It’s the kind of hot out that makes people who aren’t me hate summer - heavy air, immediate sweat, minimal to no breeze, no rain for weeks. I personally love it. It occurred to me recently that I’ve never lived anywhere I couldn’t quickly escape to a large body of water in the summer, which I’m sure has a lot to do with that. Pools/lakes/the ocean, even backyard ponds or streams have been such a huge part of my life, for my whole life. It’s wild that I never even considered an alternative. Again, privilege check. 

For real, you have NO idea how much I’ve thought about that in the last couple weeks.

My annual summer road trip is off, for obvious reasons, which sucks, but it is what it is. I’ve pretty much resigned myself to the fact that staying home, not going to restaurants, not traveling, etc etc is going to be life until there’s a good treatment or a vaccine. That this ever became political is truly absurd, but such is life in the USA. One thing I am, for certain, is adaptable.

I hope every one of you are getting enough sleep, able to relax, and are at peace with things you can’t change. I admire you all more than you know.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Web-wide copyright filters would be a disaster

I have enormous sympathy for artists suffering financial anxiety during the pandemic. I have 3 books out in 2020 and my family was really counting on them selling well to pay our bills, so I really, really get it.

The anxiety is real and justified, but music-industry calls to force US online services to filter everything we post with automated copyright filters are not. They are a terrible, awful idea.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/04/copyright-and-crisis-filters-are-not-answer

Anyone who's ever dealt with existing copyright filters - like Youtube's Content ID - knows that they are (and this is being charitable), a giant fucking flaming shit-show that everyone hates with the heat of a thousand suns.

Not only do these filters fail to police copyright adequately (source: the exact same people calling for MOAR FILTERZ), they also flag and block entire libraries' worth of legit material.

It's hard to overstate just how bad the overblocking is. Youtube blocked a panel where copyright experts discussed how its blocking system worked. That video was only unblocked because one of the experts knew a top lawyer at Youtube and made a call.

https://www.eff.org/takedowns/automated-copyright-filter-cant-detect-infringement-or-irony

Also blocked: classical musicans' own performances of centuries-old Bach compositions. Birdsong. Silence. Static. Videos of adorable toddlers dancing in their parents' kitchens.

And - this should surprise no one - when you create a system that allows scumbags to fraudulently claim copyright to other peoples' work, with no effective system to reverse those claims, scumbags do exactly that.

Sometimes it's to steal artists' money. Sometimes its to censor their work. Sometimes it's to blackmail artists (three "copystrikes" and Youtube nukes your account from orbit, with no recourse for you).

Filters aren't just bad at stopping infringement, nor merely bad at permitting lawful material to pass, nor simply an invitation to fraud and censorship.

They're also really, really expensive.

Content ID (the aforementioned flaming shit-show) cost $100 MILLION. SO FAR.

You know how many online companies have an extra hundred mil kicking around during the crisis? About five of 'em. The exact same Big Tech companies that are ripping the rest of us off.

Big Tech is happy to cough up a mere $100m or so to annihilate every possible competitor. $100m isn't chump change, but it represents a STELLAR BARGAIN as a fee for a Perpetual Internet Domination License.

And if you think Youtube and FB are hard get a decent deal out of in a world where they have to worry about smaller competitors getting bigger, just imagine what they'll be like once they've carved up the internet forever.

I want a diverse, pluralistic internet, not five giant websites filled with screenshots from the other four.

https://twitter.com/tveastman/status/1069674780826071040

Not just because  that's a better internet, but because it's a better internet for artists.

The internet is already terrible enough, and it's all we've got to see us through this crisis.

Subjecting every word, image, video and sound we upload to automated black-box filters operated by high-handed faceless corps that can't be bothered to answer their email?

That'll make it a billion times worse.

For everyone.

[like-i-need-a-hole-in-my-head]

100 good questions to ask your friends at 4:02 am when you can’t sleep (can also function as an asks list)

Are you bothered by your cosmic insignificance? no

Do you mourn for a place or person you’ve never known? yes

Do you really think there is somebody for everybody? no

Do you place any value in gender roles? I don’t place any value in gender. 

Do you have to be related to be family? Definitions in advance, please.

Are your platonic relationships just as valuable as romantic or family ones? Me personally? No.

Are you in love? Do you want to be? Yes. Yes. 

Do you think you can put love into categories (family, platonic, romantic, etc.) or is it just one general sensation? Categories. 

Would you be happy with a life without romance? No

Are you always going to be a little in love with somebody? Yes

Would you change your appearance if you could? No except to be invisible to enhance my already considerable spying powers

Do you have the feeling you’ve lost something you might have had in another life - whether it be a person, a place, a world, a language, etc.? Yes

Do you believe in reincarnation? Yes

Would you want to be reincarnated? It’s a bit late to ask now

Do you think you’re special, or just another person amongst billions? Can you be both? Yes and yes

Do theoretical ethical debates have any value? Is it important people discuss ethical dilemmas, e.g. the trolley problem? Yes and yes, but understand the value of considering your own values and don’t take it too seriously. 

Did you have imaginary friends? Do you still have them? No and n/a

Are you religious? Do you think your religion is ‘correct’? No and no

If you aren’t religious, do you wish you were? Why? No and why would I want to be?

Do you want a grand adventure? Another? Depends on if I get free ibuprofen

Do you have somebody, whether it be a friend or stranger, who you think you could have loved if the circumstances were different? No. I love you for what you are, not what you could be. 

How long does it take you to fall in love with somebody? Is the sensation of ‘falling in love’ or ‘being in love’ better? How long is a piece of string?

Is love about convenience or something more? Can it be about both? Wha? Love is anything BUT convenient

Do you think you really understand your gender and sexuality? yes

How fluid is your concept of gender and sexuality? I don’t care so I guess that’s fluid?

What’s the most life-changing choice you’ve made so far? To continue living

Are you afraid of growing old? Older? No.

Would you want to live forever? How about for a billion years, a million, a millennium, a century? No.

Do you believe in some form of god/s? Some form? yes.

Are your choices fated or of your own free will? We make our choices in the circumstances in which we find ourselves. 

Do you have a hunch about how you’re going to die? I hope not.

Do you believe in star signs? For entertainment

How old do you have to be to be considered an adult? I was an adult when I was 6

Was your childhood happy? Yes

What are you missing from your life? Discipline

Have you ever met someone who had a very similar personality to your own? Did you get along? No, people like me are too sensible to hang out with people like me

Do opposites attract? Depends on if you’re a person or a magnet

Is your life what you expected it would be five years ago? Holy shit no

Do you know what you want out of life? No

What makes a person ‘good’? Are you a ‘good person’? Actions (vs intentions). I’m pretty good.

What fundamentally matters to you? Whether you leave me alone when I need to be left alone and whether you can tell whether I just want to be alone vs need to be alone.

Is freewill an illusion? Depends on the scale.

Do you create art? How do you define art? Do something that makes someone feel something. 

How often do you lie? Is all lying inherently bad? Are you generally truthful? I’m pretty honest but I lie by omission and can get very technical when I need to be. Lying by itself, like any aspect of language, is neither good nor bad.

Do you want to be remembered after your death? What for? No.

Is true world peace ever possible? Sure. We just need a dictator strong enough to subdue everyone. No more fighting. Peace does not mean people won’t suffer.

Do you have to suffer to truly understand the human condition? What is the human condition? How can you really experience it? ffs just be human

Are you free? Will you ever be? Can anyone be truly free? Freedom is overrated and misunderstood.

Do you hold yourself to higher standards than you hold others? I hope so

What do you expect from a friend or partner? Just understand me

What question could you ask to find out the most about a person? Are you willing to complete this questionnaire? 

Do you justify all your beliefs or have you just inherited/absorbed some? Inherited but contemplated

Which beliefs do you have that is most likely to be wrong? That any of this matters in any significant way

Can humans really understand the complete nature of the universe, space and time? We don’t know the complete nature of the universe space and time so how can we understand it?

Is a conscious what makes someone a person? A conscience? No.

What do you think about artificial intelligence? I think it’s often conflated with machine learning

Do you thinks humans are obsessed with escapism (books, video games, movies, etc.)? Are you looking for an escape? Do you think that’s a bad thing? Yes. Yes. No.

Are we eventually going to ‘run out’ of new combinations for music, art, language, etc.? Is there a limit to human creativity? No. No.

What do you think the next era of music will be like? No idea and don’t want to predict it.

What do you think the next era of fashion will be like?  No idea and don’t want to predict it.

Do we live in tumultuous times, or do they just seem so strange because we’re living in them? These are objectively tumultuous times, IMO. Other times have been more tumultuous.

Would you want to meet a clone of yourself? Would you like them? No and no.

How confident are you, really? Confidence is A+, self esteem is C-

How consistent is your perception of time? Depends on how cold it is

What age should people be allowed to vote? Should children and teenagers be allowed to vote? Vote on what? 

How do you feel about the idea ‘an eye for an eye’? It’s lazy justice

What’s the worse thing a person can be? Hopeless

How do you feel about monogamy? I approve

Can you be in love with someone and still fall in love with someone else? Yes

What’s the tragedy of your life? Bias towards inaction

Would your life make a good play? Definitely

Should people be prosecuted for crimes that weren’t considered crimes at the time? Generally no, but technicalities should not impede justice

Would you fight for your country? Do you feel a sense of loyalty to your nation? I do in my own way. Yes but I wonder why sometimes

Do you believe in gender equality in every aspect? Yes, unless equal means the same.

Do we have a moral obligation to care for others? To what extent? Yes. As much as is needed. 

Do you crave approval and/or praise? Waaaaaay too much

Is there comedy in all tragedy and tragedy in all comedy? Yes.

Are you ever going to be satisfied? I hope not

When you are sad, do you listen to music that conveys your emotions or music that makes you happy? I live for sad music and fucking wallow in it

Is your music organised by mood or sensation or do you just listen to everything at any time? My music is organised by geography and time and whether I’m on a motorcycle or boat

Would you marry a friend if they needed you to (e.g. for citizenship)? Unlikely

Are you a deep person? I’ve been told so, but <shrug>

Given the chance to live your life on Mars, with no hope of returning to Earth but with the promise of scientific discovery and glory, would you take it? Don’t care about glory, but if the scientific discovery were useful and I were the only one who could do it, yeah.

Are you who people think you are? I can’t read minds.

Do you think you would be happier if you had been born a different gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, nationality or religion? You will kill yourself if you go down rabbit holes like this. 

What’s your toxic trait? Are you trying to improve yourself and fix it? I disengage. Nope. 

Do you anger easily? Yep. 

Are you a jealous person? Yep.

If you lost all your memories, would you have the same personality? No.

Given the chance to reset your life (with none of the knowledge you currently have), would you take it? Probably not

Is hate as strong as love? Who do you hate? Hate is as strong as loyalty. I don’t hate any person, I hate what certain people do.

Do you speak multiple languages? Which do you dream in? What language would you want to learn? Yes. I mostly dream in English but also some of the others. Arabic.

Do you draw meaning from your dreams, or do you disregard them? Consider and then disregard

How would you describe yourself when you love? Do you love forcefully, unconditionally, gently, quietly, desperately? Fiercely, loyally, unconventionally

Is unrequited love real love? Yes unless you think love has to be reciprocated, which is incorrect

Is your perception of yourself similar or the same to how others perceive you? I can’t read minds.

Are you overly analytical? hahahahahahaha “overly” does not come close

Do you ever feel that you are really a terrible person, and only act good out of societal or some other obligation? I think everyone feels this way unless you’re not human

Do you believe in magic? Are you superstitious? Yes and yes

What belief do you have that isn’t logically grounded, but you still firmly believe in? People are inherently good.

source 

I hate long posts / I know this isn’t how it’s supposed to be done / I’m on vacation folks / saving you time

[19mrs-barnes17]

As Long As I Can Get - Chapter Four: Secrets Spill

Summary: A celebration has arrived and along with it some uncovered secrets that make tensions rise.

Part: 4/5

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x reader (AU)

Warnings: arguing, mentions of loss/suffering

Word count: 3,093

A/N: Thanks to @wxntersoldiers​ for beta reading! Enjoy a new chapter!

~

Her heart was racing in her chest. She couldn’t believe what her instincts were telling her to do. She couldn’t kiss him. Not when they had finally begun repairing their friendship, when she was already confused about how to operate within their friendship. No need for any further complication.

And yet she could feel herself leaning in, he was doing the same. Their lips were inches from one another and she was doing everything in her power to reign in the hormones pushing her closer. 

Even worse was that she wasn’t at all trying to stop herself. Not even a little. She really wanted to close the gap but her fear prevented her from being the one to do it. Part of her hoped he had the courage because she was becoming desperate to know the taste of his kiss.

When he suddenly backed away her heart felt like a crack had run through it, but a small part of her was thankful for his restraint. 

“I…” Bucky backed toward the door, panic evident in his features. He was afraid of ruining everything too.

“Buck-”

“I’ll see you at your party.” He was out the door before she could contradict him. She watched as he crossed the street, pausing to look up at her window before ducking into his home. 

Well that was a major disaster. 

Her focus began to intensify after that incident, working extra shifts and avoiding the diner for a few days. She couldn’t quite face his meddling sister after nearly kissing him and knowing full well it wouldn’t have ended there. Going through her daily motions kept her mind off of him and improved her productivity.

Steve helped her move all her things back into her room and took her camera to develop the photo for her. Though she was in an emotional mess she still wanted to have that photo, even if it ended up being the last.

When she received the pictures she bought two frames and wrapped one up before heading to the diner.

“Hey Mama Barnes, I’ve got a present for you.” Her eyes lit up as she grabbed a hold of the paper covered frame.

“Oh sweetheart you shouldn't have.” When she saw the photo inside the frame she became blubbery and covered her mouth as tears slipped down her cheeks. 

“Aw, no. No tears.” Y/N chuckled softly, wrapping an arm around the woman who rested her head on Y/N’s shoulder. 

It was in that moment she noticed that Bucky was sitting at the counter a few stools down, features softened as he gazed at his mother. His eyes became confused as he locked onto her eyes, almost conflicted. As if he had a billion thoughts and emotions rushing through him that he didn’t know how to handle.

“I hate to cut this short but I do have a shift to get to, just wanted to make sure you got that before I forgot.” 

“Of course love, you take care now. We’ll see you Saturday for the party, but don’t be a stranger.” She gave her a hug before heading to the door.

“Wouldn’t dream of it. Can’t stay away from the Winnifred Barnes’ cooking for too long or I’ll go through withdrawal.” Bucky smiled softly at this, her eyes lingering on him a moment before walking out. 

~

He watched her make her way to her car, mind screaming at him for pulling away from her again. But fear always seemed to be the winning contender. 

“I could smack you James Buchanan Barnes.” His mother stood across the counter giving him the sternest look he’d seen on her face in a long time. 

“I know. It’s like I can’t win with her. Every time I get close something scares the hell out of me and I run away.” His voice catches in his throat as his eyes begin to tear up, his mother’s features soften.

“C’mon tell your mama about the girl you love.” At this his eyes widened and his jaw dropped.

“How did you know I was beginning to have feelings for her?” His mother chuckled softly before placing the picture before him and motioning to where his eyeline was focused.

“Because you have been looking at her like that for over a decade. And she had been doing the same.” 

“What?” 

“But that’s for her to explain, not me. Now Tell me what’s the matter with you?” His brow furrowed at her question, unsure how to proceed. “Why aren’t you chasing after her, kissing her, loving her freely?”

“Because I can’t risk letting her suffer like you did.”

~

“Are all these decorations and lights really necessary? Seems like a fire hazard.” Her mother nodded, eyes watching her father string up a banner along the loft.

“Well you try talking your father out of these things, see how far you get.” Y/N chuckled softly as her father lost his end of the banner and used some colorful language.

“Now that is a challenge.” 

“Ah, James dear! It’s good to see you after so long. So glad you made it.” Her mother hugged him tightly before pointing over to where her father was on the ladder. “Would you mind helping him get that banner up? He’s making me nervous up there on that thing.”

“Sure thing. This is for you.” He handed a bag to Y/N before heading toward her father. 

“How sweet.” Her mother smirked as her eyes flickered between the two. “I’m glad you two are repairing things, you had the strongest bond when you were younger.”

It wasn’t long before Steve showed up with a gift and the cake, and you chastised your dad for turning your friends into laborers. To which Bucky countered that his job was already hard labor and this was hardly it. Her dad smiled triumphantly at that and walked off to do a final check before everyone else arrived. 

“Don’t amp up his ego please, the man already thinks he’s the king of parties. We don’t need him thinking he’s always right.” Her mother almost choked on her lemonade before erupting into a fit of laughter.

“Ouch, you may be daddy’s little girl but you definitely have your grandmother in you.” Y/N clutched her chest and gasped, eyes wide in shock.

“Oh you take that back.” 

“She can’t take back what’s true.” Y/N threw one of her flats at Steve who ducked just in time and stuck out his tongue. 

“You met her one time Rogers, we had years of experience.” Y/N almost fell out of her chair at the sight of her oldest brother.

“Nathan!” She had him in a hug within seconds, his laughter vibrating through his chest. “When did you get back?” 

“Last night, I’m here for the party but then I’ve got to get driving to make it for a shift tomorrow.” She made a pout with her lips and he shoved her playfully. “Where did your shoe even go.”

“The ether. Or Steve stole it.” 

“You’re only saying that because you’re holding it behind your chair.” Y/n gasped and Bucky narrowed his eyes at Steve before moving to stand and holding the shoe out of reach. 

“What kind of friend are you?” Steve smirked and shrugged while Y/N jumped for her shoe and smack Bucky’s chest.

“The kind that stays it would seem.” Y/N slowly fell back onto her heels, Bucky handing her shoe over before walking toward the other end of the barn where people were beginning to congregate.

“Not cool dad.” Y/N stormed off after him and her brother shook his head.

“If you want her to still show up to Sunday night dinners then you probably shouldn’t ruin the most important relationship to her, on her birthday.” Nathan placed a hand on his dad’s shoulder before heading over to the gift table to drop off his present.

“Especially since you’re part of the reason it ended in the first place. No offense.” Steve made his way to Y/N’s mother and offered his assistance with whatever she needed.

Bucky was hidden amongst hay bales in a corner of the barn, too lost in thought to notice Y/N making her way to him through the hay until she tripped. She fell on top of him, smacking her face into his chest and very nearly kneeing him in the nethers. 

“As graceful as ever.” She smacked his chest and propped herself up, eyes locking onto his. “And just as beautiful.”

“Are you ever gonna tell me why you keep running away?” Bucky sighed, brushing a strand of hair from her face and tucking it behind her ear. “The real reason you cut me out?”

“Yes.” She was not expecting that answer and he noticed as much. “But not on your birthday, okay?”

“Then can we talk about how you won’t kiss me?” Her eyes couldn’t make contact as she spoke, but when she finished she locked eyes with him. He looked startled by the question and she instantly regretted asking it. She pushed herself off of him and sat on a hay bale, refusing to make eye contact as he stood up.

“It’s the same reason.” 

“Can’t deal or too scared?” He froze as she met his gaze, and she swore she could see the pain hidden in his eyes.

“Terrified.”

The party was going by in a blur and her focus kept getting stolen by Bucky, she couldn’t help but wonder what had him so afraid that he couldn’t tell her. So terrified to keep her close that he pushed her away. 

While he had stayed in the barn he still kept a bit of distance, hanging around his family once they had arrived. She felt crazy for still wanting him by her side, but she let him have his distance for now. 

~

“Now I really am going to smack you child.” His mother was chastising him about running from facing his fears again. “It breaks my heart to see you so crippled by the fear that man instilled in you when he had no right to do so. You never should have had that on your conscience.”

“It’s too late to change the past ma, I’m just trying to at least keep her in my life to some degree.” 

“You might want to try a little harder.”

“If I try any harder I’m going to fall completely in love with her and drag her down with me. And that’s just selfish.”

Bucky watched her greet every guest, pausing to grab people drinks, all around ensuring everyone was having a good time and taken care of. She wasn’t even trying to fill the role of host, nor was it entirely out of obligation since the party was for her. It was because being kind and taking care of others was in her nature, always had been and always would be. 

Whereas his nature had become so different from his childhood and teenage suave that he hardly recognized himself. He was reserved and closed off, but sometimes this was a blessing in disguise. It let him do exactly what he was doing now, observing. It’s how he knew she was a perfect fit for their trio after her first day in school.

His mother watched as he began to walk off as the cake was being served, her heart heavy at the sight. A sad smile on her lips as she watched Y/N stop him before he made it to the door.

He froze in his tracks when he felt a hand grip, his heart racing when he realized whose it was. Her eyes watched him cautiously as he turned around with a surprised expression, a smile stretching across her face. He was dead certain that if she asked him to do anything he’d be unable to say no to her, he was entranced by her smile and the feeling of their intertwined fingers.

“Where are you going, Barnes? You owe a girl a dance.” She led him with zero resistance to the dance floor where couples had begun to sway along to the music. 

Her arms wrapped around his neck and his hands sat on her waist as they began to sway, his heart refusing to calm with how close she was moving to him. She moved his hands to the small of her back and he couldn’t seem to resist. Everything in him was screaming not to fall, not to be trapped by her presence. But he had no control. 

The moment she shifted to rest her head on his chest he knew he was doomed, the content smile on her face putting a similar one on his as he held her. He was beginning to think dangerously. Beginning to wonder if it didn’t matter about time.

“Sorry about my dad earlier. I don’t know where that came from and it was out of line.” She tilted her head back to look into his eyes. “He’s been weird since he saw the picture in my room.”

“Your room?” 

“Steve had free reign to put it up anywhere but the bathroom.” She chuckled and shook her head as her eyes found him in the room. “He saw it and seemed surprised and then worried. It was strange.”

The song ended and he led her out of the barn, nerves spiking as he put a little distance between them and the party. 

“We need to talk.”

“I am slightly worried by your tone, but proceed.” He took a deep breath and looked her dead in the eye. 

“I know I said I wouldn’t tell you on your birthday but I can’t hold it in any longer or I’m going to burst.” She nodded and he took her hands in his, hoping they gave him the courage he required. “The reason I began to push you out of my life is because I was afraid.”

“I know that.”

“But you don’t know why I was afraid. Am afraid.” Her features were beginning to be overtaken by worry, her head tilting to the side. “Not long after my father died, your dad came to talk to me outside the diner.”

“What?”

“He told me about the disease that killed my dad and how it was passed genetically.”

“Bucky…” Her voice was small and terrified, he cupped her cheek in his hand.

“It isn’t a guarantee, there is a 50/50 shot that I have inherited it and even then the symptoms don’t show until later. Most are diagnosed between the ages 30 to 50.” He wiped a tear from her cheek before continuing, “Your dad warned me to think about you, about the fact that it could be a possibility and should I stay in your life… you would have to watch me slowly wither away like we did with my dad. I remember watching him slowly lose every ability until he could hardly swallow and I thought I would rather lose you than put you through that.”

“What about Steve? And your family? They get to be held close and enjoy the time they have but I get cut short?” She took a step back wiping the tear streaks from her cheeks. 

“That’s why I left entirely, to ease the pain.”

“But you came back and still let them all in, kept contact even if it was minimal.” He took a step toward her and she took another back.

“Because they’ve all lost people. They’ve handled it before. You… you were untouched, not losing anyone before their time. I wanted to save you some of the pain.”

“You broke my heart. How is that any better? At least losing you that way I would have still had you in my life and I could have said goodbye. The way you cut me off? I lost you but I also watched you live your life without me. And it hurt so bad to see that you could live without me and still be happy. I know that’s selfish, but so is deciding what I can handle without consulting me.”

“Y/N... “ He could feel the tear slip down his cheek but he didn’t care, his heart was tearing itself apart from guilt and heartbreak. “I’m sorry. I didn’t want to put you in the position my mother was in.”

“What?”

“Remember what I said when you asked why I ran? Why I couldn’t let myself give in and kiss you?” This time when he took a step forward she stayed where she was. “I can’t let myself pull you in when it could end so horribly. I can’t put someone I love through that if I can help it.”

Bucky began to walk away but the sound of her voice halted him in his steps, the shake of her words like a cut.

“Did you ever stop to think that you had no control over that? I’d still be losing you, just from a distance.” She didn’t even wait to watch him walk away, there were only so many times she could stomach that. 

Her dad stood in the doorway waiting with an expression dripping with guilt, but she simply walked past him. She understood why he did what he did, out of fear just like Bucky, but it would take time for her to forgive. Her brother helped her to pack the gifts into her car so that she didn’t have to linger any longer than she had to.

When everything shut down she hugged her brother goodbye and slid into the driver’s seat before pulling away from the most emotional birthday party she’s ever had.

And he never left her mind.

~

When he reached his townhouse her car was parked on the street but her lights were off, either she went to sleep or she went out on foot. Either way she wouldn’t want to talk to him after today, which had already caused him to debate leaving again. Seeing her around town would hurt like hell, but at least then he’d still see her. 

After all he’d lost, the thought of losing her forever was just another weight he’d have to bear on his shoulders. He hardly slept that night, tossing and turning until he couldn’t take it any longer.

Only when his eyes found the North Star did he begin to relax, his father’s voice reminding that he wasn’t alone. Somehow he knew he could make it right.

He wasn’t going to leave her again.

~

Tags: @qtmeryr​ @broken-hearted-barnes​ @broken-hearted-barnes​ @asphalt-cocktail​ @cantnkrusshedevil​ @gstran18​ @just-trying-to-survive-marvel