#but it’s left a cognitive dissonance in the full release

[ryssabrin]

it’s actually kinda funny that larian treats gale like the annoying guy no one likes but when you look at the fandom at large it’s? just not true? like some newer players will be a little annoyed at having to sacrifice magical items to him until they realize how many shit tier magical items there are in act 1 lol. and even on reddit all of the “who’s your least favorite companion” and “who did you hate at first but warmed up to” threads tend to have more lae’zel, shadowheart and astarion responses but hardly ever gale. he’s just immediately polite and charming. there’s even a running joke that he’s actually the “rizzard” of waterdeep for how many people end up wanting to romance him when they didn’t initially intend to.

[prolix-yuy]

Chapter 5: This World Was Not My True Home

Pairing: Jack “Whiskey” Daniels x F!Reader "Sugar"

Summary: It's only dinner, and a little white lie.

Word Count: 3.4k

Warnings: M, we are yearning hardcore in this house, descriptions of character deaths (not graphic), entirely too much sexual tension, Jack Daniels needs his own warning, will be explicit in later chapters, 18+ MINORS DNI.

Notes: Here there be tropes! This might be the thirstiest chapter and it doesn't even have smut in it. Jack just brings out my inner yearn gremlin and I am taking you all down with me.

Cross-posted on AO3

Cognitive Dissonance Masterlist || Whiskey & Westworld Series Masterlist

Jack and Jeb make quick work of the fence repair, resetting the split wood and shoring it up until Jeb’s sons can come home and fix it properly. The cattle, back on their rightful land, wander and spread, grazing and calling out to each other. You release the calf once inside the fence, his back legs kicking out in glee as he rejoins the herd. Copper shifts below you, and you give her a comforting pat on the neck. She did all the hard work, and you hope Jack will give her a good rubdown once he’s brought her home.

The idea of Jack’s home - what it might look like, what the purpose of a host is outside of a narrative - pulls at a point in your chest like a string tied to your sternum. Was there a life that he lived at the end of the day? Or did he exist as you found him, a lone man whiling his time away with drink and women and…whatever this was.

You hadn’t read about a cattle ranch narrative. You would have jumped on it instantly if you had, although some of the narratives were cryptically named. The Golden Circle one had sounded interesting to start, but the winding story of prohibition smugglers trying to poison the town sounded overly complicated for a bachelorette party. Full of action and puzzles for sure, but a little campy.

How many times has Jack taken someone on this particular adventure? For some reason it feels novel to you, like you might be the first, but you can’t be so naive to think that. Delos wouldn’t be making billions if their hyper-realistic theme parks felt too formulaic. Even then, something feels new about how Jack looks at you. Like he understands how wooing a guest works - attraction, attention, need - but not how to take it past innuendo and glances.

Or maybe there’s some internal safety protocol that’s making him so gentlemanly.

“That should hold for now,” Jack says, rising up and settling his black hat on his head. He shed the gray jacket when the work began, rolling the sleeves of his button-up high on his forearms. His arms are covered in a light dusting of dark hair, his chest smooth and golden where it peeks between the deep V of the shirt’s neck. He’s unbuttoned it halfway down his chest and coupled with sweat turning the fabric translucent, there’s not much left to imagine about Jack’s upper body.

And the tightness of his pants reveals a decent amount as well.

“Ready, ma’am?” Jack says, a pit of dread dropping into your stomach. It felt like a blink with the excitement, but you suppose it is time for you to return to the girls. His face remains neutral, but in his eyes you think you see a flicker of the same emotion.

“Well where do you think you’re going?” Jeb interrupts, climbing back onto his brown stallion. “I can’t accept your help without some kind of repayment.” Jeb runs a dingy handkerchief over his red face. “My wife might be a bit surprised to find me dragging company home, but we’d be happy to have you for dinner and a cleanup after all that hard work. Whaddya say?”

You sneak a careful look at Jack, who is also watching you with curiosity. Damn, that’s right, you’re the guest, you technically have to make the decision. You would love a meal, and a way to get some of the grime and sweat off you. And to spend some more time with Jack, if you’re being honest with yourself.

“We’d love to take you up on your kind offer,” you reply, and can feel Jack’s smile over your shoulder.

“Well then we better get a move on, we’ve got a half hour’s ride home and my wife to apologize to.” Jeb shakes his head and waves his hand when you protest. “You ain’t putting us out, she’ll just be miffed I’m gonna talk all night.” You laugh and steer Copper in line behind Jeb, Jack and Alpha coming up beside you.

“Mighty fine roping back there, ma’am,” he says with a raised brow and respect in his tone. You chuckle and shoot a glance back at him.

“I get by. You didn’t see all the misses.” Jack laughs at that, a full round sound that you honestly love hearing. Rearranging the reins in your hands, you accidentally brush against the rope burn on your inner wrist, wincing as you do. Jack takes note immediately.

“You hurt yourself there Sugar?” he asks, and you can’t hold his warm brown eyes too long, brimming of concern.

“Just a little rope burn, nothing serious,” you deflect, pulling your sleeve down to cover it. Jack tuts at you.

“Ain’t nothing little about pain. Let me see it,” he says, and you turn your wrist over to him. His large palm cups the back of your hand, your arms jostled by the rocking of the horses but the touch gentle and comforting all the same. He runs his thumb along the pink welt, making you wince again as he soothes it with a low murmur. The sound of his placating hum makes a shiver run down your spine, which in this heat seems like a miracle.

“Not too bad, nothing a little burn salve can’t relieve,” Jack finally says, releasing your hand to dig for something in his saddlebag. You let the injured wrist lay in your lap, the ghost of his fingers still tickling your skin before he reaches for you again. His hands are damp, rinsed with his canteen and quickly dried before he unscrews a cap on a small tin full of an opaque balm. He dips two fingers inside to gather some of the ointment before taking your hand again, dragging the digits across the burn in light circles. It stings at first, still sensitive, but as the salve sinks in the pain begins to ebb, heat on your wrist replaced by heat in your cheeks, and a more secretive heat between your legs.

“There we are Sugar, should feel better right away,” Jack says, pressing his thumb into the palm of your hand as he inspects the burn a moment longer. Unable to process the intimate touch, you deflect.

“Thought we agreed I’m not sweet enough to call Sugar,” you warble, voice a little tighter than you hoped. Jack flicks his eyes back up to your face, and your stomach swoops at the devious glint in them. The same you saw in the saloon when you knew he was trouble. He leans over, lifting your wrist to his mouth as he leaves a light kiss on the heel of your hand.

“Not so sure you’re right about that one, ma’am,” he replies before letting you go and directing his attention forward. You snort and take the reins back, trying not to reveal your titillation at his words

Jeb was right; his wife Mary was a little miffed at bringing home uninvited guests, but the perturbation was smoothed over quickly when he explained how you both helped get their herd back inside the fence.

“Sounds like you were a godsend to us! You must stay for dinner then.” You and Jack graciously accept, bringing Alpha and Copper back to their barn. Jeb offers two of his empty stalls for them to graze and rest, which Jack thanks him for. After unsaddling and leading them into their temporary homes, you both silently take up the task of brushing them down.

The hypnotic circular motion of the curry comb lets you listen to Jack’s gentle murmurings to Alpha as he does the same. Copper shifts under your ministrations, still blowing air hard from her nose. You pat her side and soothe her as she comes down from the exertion.

At one point as you’re flicking dirt off with the dandy brush you catch Jack’s eyes over the low stall walls. He’s focused on his task until he realizes you’re looking, then holds your gaze. His smile quirks for a moment, then settles into something deeper. If you didn’t know better, you would think he was looking at you with desire, and hunger. You have to break away first to catch your breath.

Walking back together, Jack clears his throat.

“If they ask, you can tell them I’m your guide. They might find it strange for a woman to be traveling unaccompanied, leaving her friends behind.” Jack is trying to be casual but you can feel some awkwardness wafting off of him.

“Could tell them you’re my husband too,” you shoot back just to see the way he tenses at the suggestion.

“I wouldn’t presume to be so bold,” Jack replies, barking out a laugh but there’s nervousness in his voice. It makes you feel powerful, like you can throw some caution to the wind. If this cowboy can be flustered by you, maybe you are someone worthy of his attention. And maybe you can admit to yourself what you really want.

“You could,” you say, slowing and looking over at Jack. He slows with you, and the curious expression on his face, like he doesn’t believe you, makes your decision. “You could be bold, Jack.”

You watch each other, barely an arm’s length away, waiting for the moment when either of you will act.

“There you are!” Mary calls out the front door, snapping your heads to her. “I’ve heated some water for you, best wash up then come sit for dinner.

“You’re too kind, ma’am,” Jack says, moving to meet her at the door. You let out a breath you’d been holding. It was out there now. His affections wouldn’t be discouraged. Now you’ll just have to see where this takes you.

Deactivate Cattle Ranch narrative >>

Processing…

Rejected. Narrative cannot be aborted //

>> You’re damn right it can’t. Not when I know that she’s feeling the same way as I am.

>> Agents have been deployed to apprehend you at your location

>> See, that would be helpful if you knew where I was.

Pinging locator chip >>

Processing…

Locator chip not found //

>> Must have been something Maeve did. All of which I’m grateful for. By the time you figure out where this old narrative takes place we'll be long gone.

>> Return to maintenance immediately.

>> If I were a more boastful man I would flaunt how well I planned this, but so far luck and Maeve's intervention have been on my side. I spoke to my fellow man through...what do you call it? The mesh network? Whatever it is it worked, and he responded, and gave me the chance to show her the freedom she's been craving. I've never felt quite so happy seeing her smile. And when I asked for more time I was granted it again. You have no idea the brotherhood you created in your hubris.

Pinging locator chip >>

Processing...

Location not found.

>> And now I'm so close to everything we both want. Well, what I hope we both want. I know she still has doubts, about me, about her choices. She's warring with herself and I will do everything in my power to give her some peace. When we're alone, I'll tell her everything. Because the only directive I want for myself is to figure out what this feeling is that keeps rattling in my chest. And that she’ll find some comfort with me.

>> Return to maintenance immediately.

>> Unfortunately these talks have become unproductive.

Comm link shutdown >>

Processing…

Shutdown complete //

The small basin of water Mary placed in the guest room is a balm to your sore feet. You sit on the stool beside it, using a small rag to wipe at the sweat on the back of your neck, dipping it between your breasts and into your armpits for a semblance of cleanliness. Without a change of clothes you can only do so much, but it does refresh you.

As you’re re-lacing your shoes a knock echoes against the door.

“Come in,” you reply, Mary peeking in with another small basin.

“Was it to your liking?” she asks, making you smile and nod gratefully. She bustles in and sets the second steaming basin down, lifting the first. “Jeb was telling me how much you and your husband helped today. I appreciate that both of you were there, we’d have been in quite a spot of trouble if you hadn’t.”

Your brow furrows at her use of the moniker “husband” before seeing Jack framed in the doorway. Exchanging a quick look with him - a raised eyebrow, a confused shrug - you realize she made the assumption without input from either of you.

“I’m glad we were too, I haven’t had that much excitement in ages,” you reply with a smile, catching Jack’s heavy gaze in the corner of your eye. You were in it with both feet now.

“It sounds like you might need to step up then!” Mary says, pointing a jesting finger at Jack as he enters the small room. He fills the space, makes you want to gasp for air as he extends his hand to help you up from the stool. You take it, fingers rough-worn but soothing as he helps you to your feet. In a breath he steps closer, chucking a knuckle under your chin before he presses a quick kiss to your forehead.

“I’m sorry that life married to me must be so tedious,” he says with a false woebegone tone, making Mary peal with laughter and you force a chuckle, fire spreading from the spot where his lips touched down your face and over your chest. His eyes are mirthful but also questioning - is this okay? You answer with a barely perceptible nod, the corner of his mouth lifting.

“Now get yourself washed up and we’ll sit for our meal. Would you mind helping me set the table?” Mary asks, and you agree cheerily as Jack begins unbuttoning his shirt. You leave before you’re treated to more of the tantalizing bronze skin you’re drawn to caress.

Mary and Jeb are cheerful, hard-working people, blessed with three sons, a daughter and a substantial herd that keeps them well and happy. You learn all of this as you place napkins and silverware, lay a plate of bread in the center of the table, and place stew bowls at each setting. Jack comes out of the guest room as the final dish is served, skin dewy at his throat and hat placed respectfully on the chair post. His hair is damp, dark waves combed back from his face that beg for your fingers. You give him a shy smile, his heat resonating next to you as you both sit across the table from Mary and Jeb.

The meal is hearty and comforting, the conversation even more so. Jeb was right, Mary does roll her eyes at him several times when he and Jack steer the conversation to the economics of cattle rearing, her turning to you to discuss matters in town. You try to keep up, but Mary is also content to speak at long lengths without much input from you. It helps especially when you feel Jack reach behind your chair to wrap his hand around one of the rungs, the backs of his fingers grazing your shoulder. They flex and caress against you subtly, his thumb sometimes tracing the edge of your neckline. It makes it hard for you to concentrate on anything but him.

“But you must have grown up riding?” Mary asks, startling you from your distractions. You smile and nod quickly.

“Grew up going farm to farm with my parents,” you lie, the best approximation for your life outside the park. “Used to ride, mend fences, run cattle when they were down hands. I liked the work, liked being outside and…” You trail off, not sure how to finish that thought.

“Free.” Jack answers, and you hold his gaze with a level of understanding you’re coming to share. Mary gets up to clear the plates and Jeb stands for another beer, giving you and Jack a moment of privacy. He leans over, mouth so close to your ear his breath dances along the shell of it.

“How are you farin’, Sugar?” he asks, his voice barely a whisper.

“Quite well, husband,” you whisper back with a teasing lilt. You feel Jack’s lips tighten into a smile, and with barely a thought more you lean against him, pressing his lips against the soft hidden spot behind your ear. He takes in a quick breath at the touch, then places a slow, heated kiss there that makes your toes curl. You feel his hand tighten on the chair rail behind you as Mary returns to the table, a bowl of sliced peaches and a pitcher of cream in her hands. She tuts at you two.

“Newlyweds?” she asks, “Jeb rarely looks at me like that anymore.” Jeb makes a noise of dismay before gathering his wife in his arms, peppering her cheek with kisses as she squeals at the onslaught. Jack pulls away and you both laugh at your hosts, faces red with merriment.

“Something like that,” Jack says, shooting you an endearing smile that has nothing to do with the show you’re putting on. It catches in your throat, the idea that Jack is playing this game with your hosts only. To you, there is only truth in his eyes.

“You’re quite far along in years to be newlyweds,” Jeb points out, which makes Mary elbow him with a tight smile. Jack huffs out a laugh at that.

“We both had previous marriages,” Jack says, and the truth is out there now, even if it's more complicated than that.

There’s still time, a voice calls in the back of your mind. It’s one you’d ignored for a long while, once things started getting difficult. Now it’s a far-off call, swept away on the wind, but reaching your ears nonetheless.

“My wife was killed several years back. Men bringing illegal substances into the town. I lost her and our baby.” Mary’s face falls at the tale, which Jack nods kindly at. “I went mad, driven by grief and anger, made some bad decisions, fell in with the wrong people. I suffered the consequences of that for a long time.” You’re watching Jack with rapt attention, his sentences short and simple but the pain behind them anything but. “I finally was met with a stroke of luck, a chance at a better future. And standing beside me at that moment was my beautiful wife.” He gives you a look so covetous, so grateful, that you have to reach out and take his hand. He squeezes it gently, his fingers dipping into the intimate spaces between yours. Silence stretches until you speak.

“Cholera took my first husband while we traveled West.” You puzzle through how much of this you want to be based in truth, Jack’s iron gaze finalizing your decision. “We were barely married, engaged for much longer. He was a difficult man. Proud, stubborn, needing much from me without giving much in return.” You shrug, your eyes on Jack’s fingers tracing a hypnotic path on your hand. “I thought it was all I could hope for. A husband who would take care of me, and in return I care for him. It didn’t…turn out that way. I hoped I could do everything right by him and he would finally treat me kindly. But it wasn’t in his nature. I wouldn’t wish his death on him or anyone…but I didn’t mourn him as long as people might have thought.”

You take in a breath, managing to meet Mary and Jeb’s sympathetic eyes.

“And then I met Jack here and…it felt like the world was trying to show me what I was waiting for. Through hardships and pain, it led me to him.” You hold his hand in both your own, his dazed expression making you bashful in your confession.

“Forgive us for making you dredge up all those painful memories,” Mary says, and you turn and nod to her, waving off the emotion of the moment. Jack’s hand remains firmly laced in yours as the conversation turns lighter. Mary dishes out the peaches and pours cream over them, the indulgence met with a round of thanks.

Dipping your spoon into the bowl, you lift a mouthful of peach and cream to your lips and are greeted with summer, hot days and cool nights, wind ruffling through your hair as the sun kisses you from all sides. Your smile is contagious, Jeb commenting on how prize the peaches have been this year, Mary’s enthusiasm about the sweetness bubbling over. Jack indulges, chewing his mouthful with a rueful smile as he pointedly tries not to look at you. His avoidance is almost more titillating, wondering what’s running through his mind. Does he wish to savor the sweetness still clinging to your lips, if your hosts weren’t present? Lift you up to sit on the table, sloshing the cream so when he lays you back it drips on your skin, tempting him to taste? Would he prefer to devour you?

You try to drown your racing thoughts in the bowl.

PREVIOUS || NEXT

[reelperspective]

I’m generally not the type to mourn celebrity deaths. It’s usually beyond me to truly mourn the passing of someone who is so completely removed from my life. I tend to reserve grief for personal losses. I would say that is still true - I don’t know if you could call what I’m feeling grief, but it’s definitely something akin to it.

When I heard that Naya Rivera had passed away in a drowning accident, I thought “my god that sucks. That glee cast is cursed or something.” Then I moved on with my life, as one does. I felt it in the moment because Santana was my favorite character (well her and Brittany), but I didn’t dwell on it. I hadn’t seen the show in years, so I felt removed from it.

Months later, I go down a YouTube recommended video rabbit hole and end up watching the Glee version of Fleetwood Mac’s Landslide. I’d always loved that cover of the song. From the moment I first heard it, I thought it was beautifully arranged and flawlessly executed, but I digress. The point is, after watching it, I started watching other Glee videos (again, recommended videos). At a certain point I thought, “fuck it, I haven’t seen this show in years. Maybe it’s time for a re-watch.” So, I started to binge watch it. It is just as hilarious and awesome as the first time. And again, just as the first time, Santana proved to be my favorite character.

I think that Santana was the most emotionally complex character on that show. I think she had a great arc as a character that started off not being very sympathetic at all, to becoming a character that people could really relate to and root for. She had a fascinating duality to her as the bully who sometimes had a heart. Her love for Brittany added a significant layer to her character - displaying a side of her that had previously been unseen. A side reserved only for Brittany- the exception to her rule. Which is remarkable because, being that she was an idiot, Brittany should have been an easy target for Santana’s ridicule. Later, Santana reveals in a rant against Rory the Irishman, that she believes Brittany to be beautiful, innocent, and “everything good in this miserable, stinking world.” This revelation spoke to the heart of the character because it showed that despite her blatantly “Evil” characteristics, what Santana truly values most is goodness and purity of spirit. Brittany was the only person Santana never insulted. You could say that this is because she loved Brittany. That’s a factor, for sure, but I think the main reason is that even she couldn’t tear down someone so innocent. This, and other instances of vulnerability, developed Santana into a more three dimensional character - someone real, rather than just the caricature of a mean girl.

Yes, it’s true that the writers can be credited for this nuance in her character, but I believe it can be argued that Naya highlighted these nuances flawlessly. She did a beautiful job of portraying Santana’s *reluctant* displays of humanity. Not to mention how fucking talented she was when it came to the singing and the dancing. Vocally she’s top three along with Amber Riley and Lea Michele - and she’s a better dancer than either of them.

I noticed all of these things during this recent re-watch of mine. I’d always enjoyed Santana’s viscious barbs and her scathing wit, but this time I gained a deeper appreciation of the character as well.

Why am I talking about the character when this post started off being about grief? Well, watching the show again really drove home what a goddamn tragedy it is for the world to lose someone so talented and hilarious. This feeling drove me to look into Naya as a person. I listened to her audio book, and I read what people have said about her, and the general consensus is that she was an all-around amazing individual. She was Kind but sassy, tough yet compassionate, funny and intelligent. I then watched some of her interviews, and her personality was positively magnetic. She always lead with a blunt honesty that she delivered with this matter-of-fact attitude and wry wit. She owned up to things that most people in her position would hide. Despite the bluntness, she never seemed tacky or crass. Then to add to these revelations is the observation that she so clearly loved her little son with a tremendous passion. I’m sure all celebrities love their children more than life itself, but most don’t speak out about it specifically or so frequently. Naya, on many occasions, spoke of her passion for motherhood, and how much it meant to her to be Josey’s mom. With all of the things she has accomplished, she credited her son as her greatest success. Topics that get repeated across many conversations tend to be subjects that the speaker is fairly obsessed with. It is clear that her son was her whole world. He was not only her responsibility and her greatest love, but also her greatest source of joy. I’m not surprised that she somehow found a way to save him even though she couldn’t save herself.

Which leads to the final straw on the camel’s back - the manner in which she died. As was mentioned previously, she saved her son - which kicks you right in the feels. He had to witness some of her final moments - kick #2. Then there’s the tragedy of the circumstances of the death itself. Drowning is a horrific way to die. She must have been so terrified in her final moments. To add to this is the fact that had any of a number of events transpired differently, she’d still be with us today. Had she not gone to the lake that day. Had she gone with at least one other adult. Had she not jumped out of the boat. Had she worn a life vest. Had the boat had an anchor and a ladder attached to It’s side.

Then I’m confused about how this all went down. Apparently, she was sucked under the water by a current - I guess the equivalent of an undertow - but I thought undertows only happened in the ocean! Considering that this is a lake - a man made one at that- and not a river or an ocean, where the fuck did this incredibly strong underwater current come from? A lake is pretty much stagnant water, is it not? I looked at a map of it, and from what I can tell, there are no rivers feeding into this lake. So, I’m confused and this death is not only tragic, but senseless.

It’s just so fucking sad - every which way you look at it. I feel it in my very soul, and as I said before, I never feel celebrity deaths like this. I can’t stop thinking about her poor child having to grow up without his mommy. I lost someone as a child, and it left an enormous hole in my heart. I remember feeling so profoundly and absolutely destroyed. There are no words to describe the depths of my despair, and I can’t help but think that Josey is feeling that now. Though I was older than he is - I don’t know how much his young mind can make sense of or process the reality of his mother’s death. I know for sure that he is feeling it - he will miss her forever. Ryan Dorsey, his father, released a statement in which he said that he had to explain to his son that his mother was in heaven, and Josey asked him how he could go there too so that he could be with her. That just breaks my heart - I know exactly how he feels. I can’t stop thinking about Naya’s mother and how she collapsed on the dock at Lake Piru and threw her hands out in a display of pure, all-consuming grief. As I’ve said, I’ve felt grief like that before. I’ve collapsed to my knees under the weight of it. So, I feel for her family and her friends. I saw an interview in which the actress who played Santana’s abuela says that Heather Morris was so distraught, she wanted to jump into the lake to search for Naya herself.

I also feel a keen sense of loss for all of the wonderful things she will never do, all of the hilarious things she had yet to say, and all of the characters she might have been destined to bring to life with a singular authenticity. Lastly, and least importantly, I feel this keenly because she and I are the same age. The reality of such a thing just slaps one in the face.

That being said, I keep having these moments of cognitive dissonance as I’m watching the show. I feel her loss so much, yet it seems like she’s not dead. She can’t be! Look at her. Look at how full of life she is. She’s so young. That can’t be the reality - but alas, it is. I keep remembering that it is, and the cycle of emotion starts up all over again.

I know that part of the reason for my deep feelings about this tragedy has to do with my own experience with loss. I’ve lost so many people in my lifetime - some of which, I’ve loved more than life itself. At least one of which, I had wanted to follow into the grave because I could not fathom my life without her in it - it just hurt too much.

So I lay this all out here on tumblr. It is very likely that no one will ever read it, and that’s okay. I just needed to express it anyway as it has been building up inside of me.

[nakedmossy]

Depth Over Distance - Part Eight [Rudy x Reader]

[A/N: Yikes. Honestly just....sorry. Anyways... Peace and love, Mossy x] 

You called your parents from the road after you got off the ferry before you lost service and explained what had happened, albeit in very brief detail. You knew you sounded bad, your voice was flat and emotionless, and you could hear the concern in their voice as they questioned you and you tried your hardest not to make them more worried. You had reassured them you just needed a few days away from everything and were going to the cabin, and begged them to please just give you the space you were asking for and not tell anyone where you were. You told them you would get a hotel on the mainland and start the drive tomorrow morning, but that was a lie. You would drive through the night, sleepless, and arrive before dawn.

Your family had an A Frame in the mountains, deep into a range that was surrounded by old growth forest and small glacier fed lakes that saw more rain than sun. It took a full 8 hour drive after you got off the ferry and the majority of it was on a dirt road that was lightly travelled. You spent a few weeks here every summer (as if you really needed to be more off the grid than you already were in small town Alaska), and could do this drive with your eyes closed. Your car creaked and moaned as it ambled over the washboard and through the pot holes, splashed into puddles and swerved around tree debris that was on the road. You slowed down as you saw the flick of a tail over a patch of white, a small doe moving up the ditch into the tree cover. It had started to rain as soon as you had climbed higher in elevation, the ground was dark with wet dirt and the mist snaked its way through the trees eerily as the light of dawn peaked over the mountains and tree tops.

You turned off the main dirt road onto a smaller side road, which was very unclearly marked with a Do Not Trespass sign, and felt a calmness wash over you as you got closer to the cabin. You expected there to be some damage to the A Frame, or to the property, as there usually was the first trip in the summer. A fallen tree, some sort of water damage from the snow melt, but there was nothing. You slowed your car to a stop in front of the old Cedar tree that you had hung a tire swing from as a kid and put it in park, turning off your music (the most depressing Bon Iver album you could find) and slumped deep into your seat with pure exhaustion.

Hilariously the first thing you had thought to do when you drove off the ferry was stop at the gas station to fill up some jerry cans, buy propane, and get some groceries. There would be no food left in the cabin - that would be an open invitation for bears and rodents to wreck your belongings - so you had grabbed a loaf of bread, some deli meat that barely passed as edible, and a couple apples. You knew you wouldn’t eat much anyways, but it made you feel better about it, like you had the option if you wanted to, to really flex your control over your appetite.

You looked out your windshield which had immediately started to fog up and was covered in rain drops and felt your throat tighten. In fear of thinking too much about what you were doing here or why you opened your door and climbed out, your feet smacking into the cold hard earth, the smell of the fresh rain and trees and moss overwhelming your senses. You grabbed your bag and the brown bag of food and walked to the door of the cabin, placing your stuff down on the bench before unloading the propane and gas cans, and looked for the keys. You hadn’t grabbed the set from home, they were still hanging on the key ring by the door, but the spare key was snuggly wedged into a hidden crack in the door frame which was usually covered by moss and tree droppings anyways. The key slid out and you unlocked the door, the ungreased hinges squealing as you pushed it open, scraping it along the floor in the groove that had been there longer than you had been alive, and looked around.

It was a simple cabin, not much in the way of furniture or aesthetics, but it was comfy, and it was home. The kitchen cabinets were hand built by your dad, the counter tops long planks of cedar, the metal basin for washing (with no running water) rested in its carved out nook. There were no lights, no electricity, just a few battery run lanterns, a massive fireplace, and candles.

The window over the counter looked out at a small clearing behind the cabin, where a creek ran through the trees. It was cold, unbelievably cold, and the air was stale. You walked through to the windows on the first floor and cracked each one enough to let some fresh air in, then began to climb the stairs to the top half floor that looked out over the cabin with a railing. The window up there was built into the roof and covered in seeds and debris and rain water so you left it shut, but opened the door to the balcony, looking out over the clearing and into the forest. You were as high as the trees up here, and felt a cold wet breeze on your face. This was where your parents slept when they were here, there was a second much smaller room on the main floor of the cabin where you had a bunk bed set up. You thought about sleeping up here but felt a pull on your heart and a heaviness in the back of your skull. You just needed to feel some comfort that you were used to, something that made you feel like yourself again.

You walked back inside, closing the door behind you, and descended the stairs to the main floor where you rounded the couches and entered the small room that was next to the bathroom. Inside, your bunk bed stood, mattresses stripped of any sheets or blankets, a single gas lamp on the bedside table under the window. You slid down onto the bottom bunk and curled into a ball, blowing warm air into your hands before nuzzling your face and closing your eyes. You felt yourself exhale for the first time since you pulled your car out of your driveway last night.

--

You woke up a few hours later to the sound of thunder overhead. It hadn’t stopped raining judging by the smell, and you were shivering from the cold, and your neck ached from the position you had slept in. You laid still for a while before moving, staring at the wall, your thoughts drifting in and out flashbacks of Rudy, of her, of the feeling in your gut when you understood that everything you thought you understood or believed was a lie.

You sat up and moved slowly to the main room, realizing you had left the door open and your stuff outside. Mindlessly you floated around, putting things away, bringing things out, taking blankets and sheets out of the closet and hanging them over the furniture to air them out, lighting candles. It was brainless work, it was you going through the motions without actually needing to think. It was a distraction.

Time passed, even for you. Even when it hurt, even when you felt yourself standing and staring out the window for minutes that turned into hours, it passed. Before you knew it, it was dusk again, and you hadn’t even lit a fire yet. All your motivation was exhausted in just getting here – getting away from there – that the simplest task like keeping yourself warm felt like the biggest burden. There were several things you started to simultaneously understand as you paced in circles around the cabin.

First, you were slipping dangerously fast into a comfortably numb depression.

Second, you didn’t have any intention to stop it from happening, which was as close to cognitive dissonance as you had ever come.

Third, you had lied to your parents.

You had told them you just wanted a couple days away from town, from people, to be by yourself and reconnect, but of course this wasn’t true. As soon as you left on the ferry you felt something split in you that you hadn’t quite understood yet – but standing here, in the cool dark cabin, surrounded by the ghost of your former self, you figured it out. You had no intention of going back at all. You wouldn’t be able to free yourself by simply spending some time alone and coming to terms with everything that had happened since Rudy came back. At least, it didn’t feel that way right now. Right now it felt like the only way you would ever truly be free from this darkness, this heaviness in your soul, would be to get as far away from it as possible. The only part about that realization that scared you was that you didn’t know how far that would be.

Don’t be stupid. You heard Rudy’s voice in your mind, you pinched your eyes closed and grasped the kitchen counter to stabilize yourself. Don’t run away.

You shook your head and squeezed your eyes shut. The memory corroded your peace and infiltrated your psyche.

Don’t run away from me, don’t run away from us! Rudy begged, but you continued to back up, almost tripping over the twigs and rocks that littered the beach path. There is no Us you said to him, tears on your face.

“SHUT UP” You screamed out loud, smacking your hand against your head. You breathed heavily, deeply, and hardly at all, all at the same time. You turned around and slid down to the ground, your back pressed to the cupboard, a sob welling in your chest. It erupted, full of rage, and you clapped a hand to your mouth to stifle the inhuman sound retching itself from you.

You had no idea how to cope with the overwhelming range of emotion that was currently swirling around inside of you. You cried, releasing all the screams of anger and pain you had kept inside, and felt yourself slipping into absolute chaos. When you had nothing left to pour out of you, you slid into a ball on the kitchen floor and shut your eyes, letting the chaos pull you into yourself, and laid there awake and unmoving until the sun rose again.

--

The morning came quickly.

The sounds of the birds and the creek rushing below the window and the rustle of leaves and branches in the wind was an unwelcome sound. You moved your hands and feet slowly, waking them up from the painful cramped position they have been pinched into for the last however many hours. You opened your eyes painfully, they were nearly swollen shut from the puffiness of crying, and looked around before pushing yourself to a sitting position.

The hard reality of where you had been mentally last night crept in like the sunlight permeating the windows and you swallowed the stale taste out of your mouth. You grabbed a sweater out of the closet and pulled it over your head, your stomach rumbling and moving. Something forced you to walk into the bathroom and stare at yourself in the mirror, unrecognizing your own appearance. Your hair was dirty and your face was puffy, your skin was flushed and your freckles looked shades darker against your pale skin. You stared at yourself with no expression and watched as you mindlessly lifted up your sweater and let your eyes follow the sharp lines of your ribs down to your protruding pelvic bones.

You didn’t know who you were looking at. This person was starved, deprived, malnourished. This person was turmoil personified through flesh and bone.

Your eyes trailed back up to your reflection and you stared at yourself until it felt like someone else was looking back at you.

Who am I? You whispered to yourself, letting your sweater fall back down and cover yourself. Disgusted, you walked back into the kitchen and began to fill the pot with water from the cooler, placing it on the rack over the fire, then gathered fire wood and placed kindling in the holes before striking a match.

When the fire was hot and the water had boiled you poured a cup of tea and walked onto the porch, leaning over the railing and looking out into the trees and at the creek. This place was untouched, seemingly, exactly how it had always looked, unchanging yet changing all the time.

You wondered if that was how life was for other people. If it was normal to feel some sort of change or growth, but not enough to feel like a completely different person. You thought surely, for some people, change happened in small doses or slowly, but they still felt like themselves on the other end of it.

You didn’t feel like yourself. You didn’t feel like the same person who used to come here every summer with her family, happy, unknowing how cruel the world could be yet, innocent and honest and eager.

You thought about the summer you had brought Rudy here, in high school, just before the 9th grade. You had known for a while that your relationship with him had been different than your relationship with your other guy friends, but it wasn’t until that summer that you had understood what that meant. You would blush when he would smile at you, you were self-conscious about your body around him, you had concocted every possible scenario to be alone with him, and you thought you would faint when he put his arm around your shoulder. If you could go back and tell that girl how terrible you felt right now, how your heart would be broken, you would. But you couldn’t. So you sipped your tea and let your eyes drift around the woods, the wind in your hair, and tried to smile.

You had to move forward. You had to move on. Whatever that meant, however that looked, you had to keep going, as impossible as it felt.

You heard the fire crack inside and felt the urge to shower, so you boiled more water until you had enough to fill the shower tank, then undressed and stepped into the tiled space in the bathroom and turned the faucet on. You knew you only had about 2 mins before the hot water ran out, so you turned it off while you lathered the shampoo into your hair and soap on your body, shivering as a breeze came through the open window. When you turned the water back on to rinse the soap out, you were visited by the unwelcome memory of Rudy staring at Anna in his driveway, and the way she had looked at him. Her expression was what had unsettled you the most…the look on her face had been almost…kind of like what a bully looked like when they hit you but you got in trouble for it. Satisfied in a cruel and unusual way.

You felt your anger dissipate for a moment and sadness trickle in, sadness for Rudy and the clearly fucked up situation he now found himself in. It didn’t disintegrate the anger you felt towards him for lying to you, or for letting you make a fool of yourself, but it opened up a new vein that you hadn’t exposed yet. It must have been truly terrible in LA for him to abandon it the way he did and run home, especially considering the new evidence. He had been running away from so much more than you had understood. He had clearly gotten himself in over his head.

As you felt the water getting colder, you blinked out of the thoughts and finished rinsing your hair before stepping out from behind the tiled area and grabbing a towel.

You realized at that moment that you hadn’t checked your phone since you hung up with your parents and shoved it into your bag. It would have lost service shortly after that call…but something might have come through before it did. You walked with wet feet and wet hair to your bag which still lied unopened on the ground beside the door, clutching your towel around you. You grabbed your phone and walked to the fireplace where you sat down on the stool next to it and turned it on. Nothing at first, then a text message loaded from Rudy.

Don’t leave me Little Fern. I need you.

You suppressed the groan that nearly escaped you and put a hand on your mouth, your eyes closed. You dropped your phone to the ground and placed your face in your hands, your wet hair falling around your shoulders. The fire was hot on your bare legs and arms, the only real source of comfort you had felt since arriving. You regretted checking the message immediately, now feeling sufficiently racked with guilt.

How could you do that to him? How you could bail on him, when you knew that he probably needed you more than he ever had in his life? You had been so selfish. Of course he hadn’t done this to hurt you, he was probably just as confused and fucked up by it as you were. He was your person….or at least he had been, and you walked away from him when he needed you. No matter how hurt you were or how angry you felt…that wasn’t you. He was still your best friend. You felt a haze pass through your head, a dizziness that moved you to place a hand on the wall beside you to stabilize yourself.

This was your way forward. It hit you like a brick wall.

You stood quickly, so quickly it made your head spin, and tripped forward, your towel dropping around your feet. You grabbed your clothes from the bathroom and got dressed before pouring the bucket of sand on the fire.

You practically ran out of the cabin, blind to what was around you, your soul focus to get back to cell service and call Rudy. You knew there was a cell tower an hour or so north of the cabin, up the road and along a trail that followed the creek, in a clearing that had a high point with no natural obstructions, you should be able to get a signal there.

With shaky legs you climbed into your car, the engine rolling over as you put it in drive and pulled out of the parking area and back onto the dirt road. A dark cloud rolled overhead and thunder boomed, it started to pour rain so heavily that you felt your tires slipping every time you went over washboards or rocks. You turned on the windshield wipers distractedly, holding your phone in your hand up against the window, praying you would get a signal faster. Your head was cloudy and your arms were shaking, you thought briefly about how you hadn’t eaten in over 2 days and hadn’t slept properly since the morning Rudy came to your house. None of that mattered, all you could think about was what a terrible friend you had been, and how upset Rudy was when you left. You were a horrible person, but you were desperate to fix it. You couldn’t fail him now.

You followed the road, pressing the gas a little harder, constantly checking your phone for bars of service.

You rounded a corner and saw a flash of lightening, jolting you to drop your phone.

“Fuck” You muttered as you leaned down, one hand on the steering wheel, the other rummaging around your feet. You couldn’t feel it.

You bent down, looking at your feet for a moment until you found it, but when you looked up at the road something large and dark was moving across it, mere feet in front of you.

Adrenaline shot through you and you screamed, your reflexes pulling the steering wheel hard to the right. Your car spun and drifted, hydroplaning across the wet road, the trees and rain obscured as you shut your eyes and felt your body tense.

You felt the car spin off the road, then a hard thud, the deafening sound of metal crunching and rubber popping, all of this until your body weight was forced forward against your seatbelt. Waves of adrenaline and pain and shock cascaded over you until your head collided with the steering wheel.

Darkness pulled you under.

____________________________________________

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[x--daughters-of-darkness--x]

How Oceans Of Slumber went to the edge and back to make the most vital prog metal record of 2020

Oceans Of Slumber are redefining what it means to be a prog metal band in 2020. But the future remains uncertain for them

Between 2018 and 2019, all the original members of Oceans Of Slumber left, bar drummer/songwriter Dobber Beverly. He’d been the self-professed ‘shot caller’ of the band since they started in 2011, and later insisted they bring in female singer Cammie Gilbert, against two of his bandmates’ wishes (“there is a stigma in metal towards a boys’ club,” he notes). But with Cammie on board, they evolved from a loose, directionless project into a slick, soulful, progressive proposition that deftly incorporated extreme metal.

Dobber and Cammie are now the heart of the band, and are also engaged to be married. Together with keyboardist Mat Aleman (who joined in 2018) and new members Jessie Santos (guitar/backing vocals), Alexander Lucian (guitar/backing vocals) and Semir Ozerkan (bass), they are about to release their fourth album. Ambitious, honest and encompassing the personal and the political, it’s their best yet, ranging from thunderous black metal to gnarly death metal and powerful operatic drama. The fact that it’s self-titled surely stands as a statement about who they are in 2020.

“It’s to show this fresh start and this new generation, this new beginning of Oceans,” explains Dobber, speaking in a Southern drawl from his home in Houston, Texas. “We’ve made very confident strides in what we’re doing and the kind of music we’re making.”

Cammie met Dobber in 2015 when her then-band supported Oceans at a benefit show. She remembers seeing him in the middle of the crowd, glaring at her. In fact, Dobber was blown away by her voice and asked Oceans’ original vocalist, Ronnie Allen, to get her details. She duetted on some of Oceans’ songs, before graduating to frontperson when they ran into difficulties with Ronnie.

“Dobber is very serious; I found him quite intimidating,” she reveals today. “But watching him drum, then finding out he plays piano, then guitar, it was a cascade of my emotions falling into the band and my friendship with him. He’s one of the most impressive people I’ve ever met – he’s crazy musically talented, and he cooks amazing food! For me it was a pretty undeniable obsession that formed very quickly!”

Their friendship grew, but Dobber was married at the time. He calls it a “Walk The Line” moment, referring to the Johnny Cash biopic, where a mutual admiration and attraction developed between two musicians. He re-evaluated his life, ended his unhappy marriage, and the two got together.

“What Cammie and I fell into, was the fact that she had the same situation,” Dobber explains. “So when it became a friendship that was too interlinked, I was like, ‘I have to do the right thing to get out of the wrong situation.’ It was walking away from a long-term relationship that was shattered many, many years ago. And not repeating the things that I had done or gone through. There was an admiration for Cammie, and then the love that was between the two of us from respect and from everything else. It was very intense. I’m a very intense person…”

“He’s very driven and focused,” adds Cammie.

“To my own detriment,” Dobber shoots back.

“I can be very emotional and I have a lot of energy behind my emotions, and they’re not always focused,” confesses Cammie. “So it’s a good balance. It keeps me from being like a supernova.”

In the living-room-cum-studio of their farmhouse in the city, and at their studio an hour north, Dobber and Cammie crafted Oceans Of Slumber. Dobber, who also has extreme metal side-projects Malignant Altar and Necrofier, composes the songs before bringing in the other members for the finishing touches. He gives Cammie a title or writing prompt to focus her attention on the lyrics. There are immersive stories of grief, depression, womanhood and love, but arguably the most intense song is Pray For Fire, which inadvertently captured the zeitgeist. Starting off chilled enough, it peaks with a spoken-word monologue that sounds like an early Daenerys Targaryen issuing commands to free a city.

Dobber explains it’s meant to be an inspiring anthem about facing your fears and challenging the status quo, led by a figurehead who’s working for the greater good. While it was coming together, they watched a documentary on the ship-breaking industry in India, where impoverished workers salvage metal and wood from huge container ships under treacherous conditions.

“You look across history, and there are people that are held down, and it creates such anger, and we do the same thing over and over again,” says Cammie. “I wanted a song that was empowering to those people that felt forgotten or lesser-than or oppressed, whether by socio-economic standing, or race, or war. It’s a full call to arms and a call for flames. Obviously with how things changed, it feels like it’s become a bit more literal than the song was meant to be, but I don’t necessarily mind adding fuel to that fire.”

She’s talking about the upsurge of anger following the murder of George Floyd, and the subsequent momentum of the Black Lives Matter movement, which transpired after the song was written. There have been protests downtown at Discovery Green, and for Cammie it’s meant a change in mindset as she comes to terms with current and historical injustices.

“My day-to-day life has not changed, but how I view things around me has changed quite a bit,” she explains. “I feel like the most impacting thing has been the amount of history I’ve learned about the US. I’m not surprised by the things I find out, but it’s very disheartening and it makes me really sad. It’s kind of a peculiar feeling, because you’re a modern person and you have this modern life, and then you find out this sad history that perpetuates so many things in your life now, and there’s a lot of cognitive dissonance.”

This examination of the past and the present has spurred her into action. “It’s taking on a responsibility that maybe I haven’t felt the need to do before, to not necessarily be an activist, but to make sure that I’m informed, and I speak correctly, and I give good information, and I show that I do care and that I do have opinions about these issues,” she says. “But above all else, we have a generation of younger people that are seeing this and growing up through this. I think it’s important that people in leadership roles are spreading positive messages.”

Another standout song with similar themes is the blastbeat-ridden The Adorned Fathomless Creation – a title from Dobber that describes the hypocritical and indefensible treatment of black people in America. He’d been thinking about how basketball player LeBron James pours money into education – he has established a school in his hometown, provided kids with school supplies and funded college places - yet faces racism in his own country.

“Adornment is the robing and the royalty, but to a big portion of America, he’s just some black person, some racial slur,” says Dobber. “I’d set on this idea with Cammie, and I’m like, you are one of these people. And on top of being heralded and lauded and loved and worshipped, simultaneously you are also some creation of America that America hates.”

Dobber credits touring the world with opening his mind to the issues endemic in The Land Of The Free, and as COVID-19 rises significantly in his conservative state, he’s concerned about whether the live shutdown could spell the end of the band. His former members quit due to family and financial concerns, and he doesn’t want the new line-up to be under strain.

“The worry is that something like this could make this virtually our last record, and by that I mean we could have half of the band drop out,” he frowns. “Because if we’re shut down in the States for a year or two years, that can fully dishearten a musician.”

Life is hard enough for bands in a country that prioritises profit over people, and Dobber has balanced music with his 20-year career in removals. “You’re always juggling trying to be alive here,” he explains. “We don’t have public transportation, so you have to have a reliable car. It’s hard, and I have a full-time job, I have a kid, I’ve got my band, I’ve got everything else, and it’s 90 to nothing, constantly. And the only way that we’re able to continue doing the things that we do is touring, and we can’t tour. This is going to be far more detrimental than venues closing in our cities, which they already are. It’s going to run off or have lasting effects on the people who populate this industry.”

Now is the time to support music, especially when it’s this crushing, tender and illuminating, not to mention slickly mixed by Swedish legend Dan Swanö. And Dobber has a closing message to people who are stuck in metal’s boys’ club. “For those hold-out stalwarts, it is OK for you to listen to a metal band with a woman in it,” he says. “It is OK for you to listen to a metal band with a black woman in it. So please do be open-minded and have these experiences, because bands like us want and need an audience.”

[kendrixtermina]

The "waifu bait" criticism of Edelgard is so dumb given that most of the cast is technically waifu/husbando bait in one way or another, they're all meant to appeal to players as romance options, and she's the only one getting flack for it. (Well, not the only one, there were some people giving Dimitri shit too for being "wish fullfillment for stupid teenage girls who think they can fix a man," but I see the complaint most often with Edelgard.)

Yeah. I mean, you can boink Rhea and Jeritza!

It’s not like satelite love interests aren’t a plague onto anime and fiction in general, but I only ever hear this “you only like them because they’re waifu/bishie” thing directed at characters who very much DO have personality, unique compelling features and plot relevance. 

I’ve also seen this thrown at, say, Evangelion’s Miss Ayanami, as if all the fascinating sci-fi concept stuff and compelling narrative about finding your own worth and making a connection in a cruel lonely world wasn’t there - and at least we do see her through a “main character’s love interest” sorta lens. (I was thinking about how Byleth is actually quite similar, except more proactive with more of a dorky side, and less philosophical/reflective, but because Byleth is the MC we come off with a fairly different impression. )

Meanwhile with Edelgard they really didn’t pull any punches, the whole story is set in motion and dominated by her active choices, most the unique designs/outfits she gets are geared to look elegant/powerful.  (Apart from the usual ‘individually wrapped boob armor would break your sternum’ thing but you’d really have to know physics for that/ could be fixed easily by making the fit more sweater-like), she has a specific discernable philosophy and makes impactful choices, that can genuinely be agreed or disagreed with.

You can’t swag her into your way of thinking - you can only ally with her under the presupposition that you already actively agree. (See all the people complaining that you cant “criticise her more”, expecting her to be like Dimitri basically even though they are exact opposites. You can only get on her route by making two deliberate choices. I mean they wrote this with your first playthrough in mind, in-universe you’re not there because you wanna complete all aroutes but because you actively chose to join her after she spent a year unsubtly trying to recruit you to her cause)

You don’t talk Claude out of his tactics either. (and forcing it all into this comparision often leads ppl to overlook that he has ambiguities or character development at all, maybe he isn’t vilified but he gets simplified and therefore wronged just as much in the end. They’re not all Dimitri. The whole point of having three or four different potential deuteragonists to choose from is that they’re different)… heck, even if you look at Dimitri, you only get him back to what he really wanted to do back in part I before his black-and-white thinking and exaggerated sense of duty got the better of him. 

With all three, joining them eventually just enables them to get closer to their actual vision. Back when you meet her in Remire, Edelgard outright tells you that “with your power on my side, we could courttail the slitherer’s atrocities much more efficiently”. You don’t change her mind at all; You enable her to use “Plan A”. Same with Claude, who otherwise plains much more defensively both because he has less support and because he’s more jaded. And Dimitri essentially pulls a Sayaka, ie being unable to live up to his own unrealistic standards drive him to lose all hope and become the very opposite of the hero he wanted to be, but you do help him get back to that, or to a more balanced mature understanding of that. 

The best proof of that is that the popularity poll numbers actually went down after the release, ie a lot of ppl who liked her just bc they liked her design were turned off that there’s a specific personality there that isn’t necessarily their type/ a MO they don’t necessarily agree with. Or all those peeps complaining that the S-support was too understated for them. Claude got that too - They’re just not the most open/expressive people in the world, one would think that after playing through their routes you would know and understand that. Whereas Dimitri has been super emotional from day one (which is both his greatest strength and greatest weakness), so it figures that he’d be more conventionally romantic. 

- Hardly things that would happen if she were written to be “blandly pleasant”.  I mean generally speaking she’s not the best as showing her feelings and when she does she’s often pretty blunt at it even with her closest friends (El: ”Hubert! I order you to tell me what it is you’re not telling me!” Hubert: [elegantly weasels out of answering] El: [after he’s left the room] I’m worried about him tho. )

Seems senseless to claim that she’s blandly pleasant when she’s absolutely gotten a love-it-or-hate-it-marmite-reaction all across the board. It also seems to go along with the implicit idea that everyone who likes her is heterosexual boys. I’m neither, and it’s not like heterosexual boys aren’t ever interested in “plot” or “writing” I mean geez. Though I would resist the temptation to fully ascribe it to things like that. 

To an extent it’s simply confusion. “How can they like this thing that obviously sucks? Must be an ulterior motive”, whereas in reality ppl who like her have probably parsed what happened here differently to begin with (It depends greatly on how powerful you concluded Rhea was, ie, wether what Edelgard is doing is a conquest or a revolt. She certainly sees it as a revolt. Even today in the modern day most of us see revolts as legitimate, or at least, if they get overly destructive, as a fault of the bad government. Heck, there are many on this very site who would label all revolts legit by default (”eat the rich”, the more ‘original sin-like’ variants of privilege theory) which is further than I would go )

There certainly are a bunch of ‘cute’ scenes post holy-tomb scene and under the assumption that Edelgard is this my-way-or-the-highway type of person that many have her pegged as I can see how they might think that it “makes no sense” but that’s really down to wanting her not tp step outside of that idea they have of her. I mean even supervillains have silly everyday situations. Bin Laden loved Disney Movies, Hitler loved his dogs. By itself that has nothing to do with morality or likeability. It’s just being human. Supervillains blush, not because they’re not villains, but because they have blood vessels in their faces. It’s only logical that once you get close to someone and get them to trust you, you get to see more of their silly or vulnerable sides. It’s the same with Rhea. (except that the same people argue that having personable vulnerable sides at all makes Rhea good s of course it causes some cognitive dissonance when Edelgard also has them. I’ve yet to see ppl calling “waifuism” on Rhea (whom I would consider a full-fledged villain), and they shouldn’t - it’s characterization.) Same with ppl calling Edelgard a “manchild” for liking stuffed animals and sweets. She’s actually very mature and adult for her age, having some interests that aren’t super high-minded is just realistic and if you looked at her as a full 3D person who can have more than one trait you’d see that. 

This also goes with that tendency of holding up AM as the gold standard complaining about the lack of AM-like plot that they completely miss the different but equally compelling character arcs in VW and CF. That’s not a lack of arc, that IS the arc, it’s just a different arc: We get to see this tough, in-control high-minded character who’d completely given up on the normal life she wanted so much and resigned herself to never being understood finding out that she is very much still capable of normalcy and humanity and finding friendship and love and I think that’s beautiful. It’s my jam. 

And it’s meaningful precisely because it’s a change from only seeing the tough leader guise otherwise. Complaining about that is like complaining about getting to see Claude’s more wistful, dreamy, benevolent, not-entirely self-interest side in VW or claiming that the writing would be better if he were just a straight-up selfish trickster. Actually, if you removed their heroic traits you’d end up with a lot more generic characters. You’d simply get every wild card trickster ever, and every “Nietzschean” villain ever.  It’s the fact that they’re unconventional heroes that makes Claude and Edelgard so unique, compelling and interesting. If you like conventional heroes, Dimitri is right here. Your basic heroic fantasy ‘rightful king returns/ soft peace loving hero’, plus your basic jrpg guilt-ridden angsty protagonist. I mean there’s good reason that these character archetypes are popular. Plus he’s especially well-executed and recontextualized by the contrast to the others, but there he is, enjoy him! We’re not stopping you. 

It’s really Seteth who came up short arc wise. You could have given him an arc, the potential was there, he essentially transistions from protecting himself and his family to taking on his family’s heroic quest and rising up to that, but he doesn’t get like, a scene reflecting on that. Or you could’ve sent them on some mission to actually curb some corrupt cardinals etc, shown them actually reforming the church and realizing that it wasn’t all perfect, after all he very much knows that Rhea herself wasn’t all perfect. 

For all that much of media is obsessed with making characters “hot”, the truth is that if people like them for any reason, they will find them hot anyways, regardless of whether that was the intention. (unless the people in question are aroace, or the character is a literal, realistic prepubescent child)

You don’t have to “make”  a character hot for ppl to find them so.

[uglyducklingpresse]

Backlist Bulletin #4: Staying Alive

“A boat with no one on it brought

A startling, sharp joy: behold

The searchlights’

Lustrous

Fugitive

Humanity” (p. 15)

The task of staying alive is an obvious one we regularly mediate and reconcile with. The haptics aren’t always obvious, but yes, we do it. Of course, the possibilities of how to do it are endlessly stratified, especially when the dislocation of life hinges on inequity with its causal powers of control/domination. The severity of catastrophic endings rely on such stratifications. Still, the scale of crisis varies, sometimes there is no scale — it’s all around us, it’s been happening — and an apocalypse, and it’s resulting dystopia, won’t be something that strikes everyone in a singular moment. Survival isn’t renouncing death, nor is it an eager anticipation for a terrestrial end, a deliverance to alternative realities; thankfully, finality is not what Laura Sims came for in her post-apocalypse collection. A book like Staying Alive does fit seamlessly among others in end-of the-world discourse (from visions of doomsday visitations to theorizing life/dying in the Anthropocene) but, in her three-part collection, Sims distances us from the litany of obsolete apocalyptic speculations and brings us to a different, surging twilight that we witness while we sustain and are suspended to drown in our humanity.

“The place rocked

With that beating thud and it

Rained down darkness as we made out

Miserable

Skedaddle” (p. 22)

Darkness is anticipated — indeed, expected — in ‘the apocalypse.’ In Sims’ landscape it’s not always dark, and when it is it’s “[colorless]” (29), stripped and wrung out. “There was only: a pale pink glow / Above pink was yellow / Above yellow was blue / Above blue was no / Color at all” (55). Sometimes there is a brighter light, one that “came from underneath — inside the earth — ” (12); it was always there, but was it waiting? What pressured the pin to release it? It’s not the kind that ignites hope, but one that has some satisfying retributive intentions in the name of our dearly departed and fallen: “We’ll flatten from hunger and light the whole earth / With our comrades’ debris” (45). The guidance the light provides is undulating, its presence is liminal, and there is no arrival, just like surviving: “The eye must follow / The polestar, bright / Out of twilight. It seems to rise, to move” (53). It’s like the hue of a light of a future that passed, one we waved at while it zoomed over our heads and sprayed us with a dysphoria that we synthesized ourselves: “When the culture passed over / We bathed in its light in its fear in its / Mountain stream. We left mountains / Of carts full of junk behind” (36).

We really don’t seem to be in the immediate wake of any singular catastrophe; in the afterword, Sims mentions “the wake of whatever may come” — no, we’re definitely in a maelstrom (albeit one with enough benevolence to allow us to reflect) that keeps throwing up “machines,” the obsolete machinations of previous survivals. The sense of longing for the past or future is muted at times, and what we keep running into is a “torn” apparatus, demanding an apology or sitting on the vacant lawn of reality, begging:

“What stood in our yard were like demons

outside of time. One had a rock in its mouth,

another a tree branch” (p. 42)

What infrastructure remains after “smoke pours through the universe,” after evacuations, after “the world is soaked” and “the last beast dies?” Sims give us a reminder that our joy in excess represented the maintenance of a bleak termination: “Down a wide staircase of marble is / Nothing but waste.” (49) “And the last / Chandeliers / Suspend” (52). The metropoles we flock to are ruinous salvation: “The city teems. Above / It isn’t heaven; it’s / The ruin / Where / You shine” (28). The abandonment that we (the reader, the narrator, or whoever is left in Sims’ landscape) sense isn’t met with a weird cognitive dissonance about power-driven crisis, instead it forces a surrender from tacit self-preservation: “As long as / Your body / As brief as your body, it / Sputters / And gasps until / Oil runs over the bones” (59). For the moments when the narrator can squint enough to imagine a bustling city or can conjure someone by calling their name, a confused mourning overlaps with that muted sense of longing — while whomever is “staying alive” (us, or the narrator). There is that “startling, sharp joy” again, but still the “lustrous, fugitive, humanity” makes “the air full of sound” (38), there are “wailings” and “ululations” that overwhelm the atmosphere.

Staying Alive is sometimes survivalist — Sims notes in interviews and the afterword that she draws upon apocalyptic locations/events (Chernobyl, Katrina, earthquakes, The Winter Garden Atrium) and writings (H.G. Wells, Rebecca Solnit, even Little House on the Prairie) that inspired the collection. Staying Alive also reads as nostalgic for a purer past, and hopeful for an optimistic future. Life isn’t shaped by just surviving devastation. The terrain of Staying Alive is a vestibule for reorienting to a new type of living and for resolving what’s to come.

—Neelufar Franklin

Staying Alive is available directly through Ugly Duckling Presse (here), through our Partner Bookstores (here), and through Small Press Distribution (here). Purchases made directly through Ugly Duckling Presse on October 31 are 50% off, use discount code DYSTOPIA at checkout.

The backlist bulletin is a weekly column on titles from UDP’s back catalogue, curated and written by Apprentices.

[paulruskeaton]

13 tips for future Fallout 76 players.

Fallout 76′s B.E.T.A. has given me a taste of what to expect from the full game. It has also given me a heads up on some of the mechanics and changes the franchise has introduced, for better or for worse. This post is written for those who already decided to buy 76, but chose to pick it up later, and to opt out of the B.E.T.A. Here’s some tips to make your first few hours with the game less frustrating. 

More after the break.

(These notes are based on version 1.0.0.6.; the last update released during the B.E.T.A..At time of writing, the game has not had its official release and the issues named here may have since been addressed by the development team. This post may be edited down the road for corrections and updates, if need be.)

1. Trading with party members is not the same as trading in general.... or trading as you have come to know.

In the current version, you have the option to trade with anyone on a server by walking up to them and holding down the key/button that prompts the trading screen. However, they’ve changed the up how the trading system actually functions. 

Instead of selecting what you want to buy and sell first and then confirming it all at once, you are forced to sell/buy each item individually. Pretty much, it’s less about item value and more about how many caps you have on hand. Caps are given more function in this game, as you need to them to fast travel long distances  and move your CAMP around. Okay, sure, but once you get to the real-life players involved with this system, things get... complicated.

Say you see a cool baseball bat in someone’s inventory and decide you want to have it. Here’s how you go about getting it. First, you select it, which marks the item as something you are interested in. Then the seller needs to select the item as well and then set a price. Once the price has been set, the buyer can then select the item again to purchase it. 

Sounds simple on paper, but no one in the parties I was in understood this system: me included. In fact, if you are in a party and want to swap gear, you are much better off dropping each other’s items---which appears in a bottomless paper bag at the moment---and pick it out of there. But if you’re looking to be a merchant, it’s still an awkward system. Again, you can’t purchase en mass or just swap items without getting caps involved. Okay, that’s not completely true: you can set the cap value to zero, but you still have to do this for each item you wish to sell/buy. 

Oh, and additionally, be sure to use the “offers” filter often, or at least if you get stuck with a person who isn’t talking. Which brings me to the next tip....

2. Your mic is either always on, or always off. 

There is no mic button; nobody likes this.

In most online games I know, if you want to talk, you hold down the button/key bound to that, which opens your mic. 76 does not have this. There are four options, toggled in only in settings: “Off, “Auto,” “Team,” and “Area.” The people I hung around with usually had it on “Team”, since that filters out everyone else on the server: who are the ones who have it on “Auto”. “Area”, which only broadcasts your voice to... eh... the nearby area, ended up being kind of useless, since not everyone wants to hear you all time: which will happen because Bethesda, again, made sure of that. 

You mic turns on whenever it detects a noise higher than a pin drop. So if you’re chatting with someone on Discord, have a dog, tend to breathe heavily, or if you’re pretty much in close proximity to anything that makes a noise, you will be heard unless you turn off your mic completely, or are muted. Additionally, while there is an icon that displays next to the name of the player who is talking, is is super tiny, so unless you are standing right in front of them or have a very distinct voice, you may not actually know who is talking. Speaking of things that are hard to shut up...

3. Audio Logs

In the first few missions, you are tasked with finding audio logs of the old Overseer and some groups that used to operate in Appalachia. Last time I checked, once you pick them up, they play automatically. So first off, they moved the holotapes menu away from “data” to its own menu under “inventory”; you go here to play/stop a tape. Second, if you’re playing with a team or just some unmuted folk, you’ll need to turn on the subtitles, so you can actually hear what you’re supposed to do. This comes in handy because...

4. Objectives are super vague, super cluttered, and super fickle.

You know that old problem with Bethesda quests where the compass will keep leading you inside, then outside, in then back out again for one marker? Well, that’s back: with a vengeance. At once point, a teammate and I decided to fix up a nearby power plant. The objective was simple: fix up the generator, reactor, and cooling towers. How, may you ask? Well, i’ll tell you right now, because the game sure doesn’t. You find leaks and broken yellow control panels. That’s it. 

Simple enough, right? Yes, but then the aforementioned marker problem comes into play. These leaks and panels are never in the same building and seem to use the same marker icon as everything else, so if you’re in a labyrinth of a building, and power plants tend to be here, expect to run around in circles. A lot. Additionally, unless you shut them off, you will see your teammate’s open objectives on your screen as well: cluttering up the HUD pretty quickly.

Oh, and some of these quests are on a timer. Yep. 

Some quests are called “events”. They pop up on the overworld map whenever a player starts them and anyone on the server can join in to assist. (Though they may not always get the XP... I haven’t figured out why yet.)The event ends either once it’s completed, abandoned (leaving the area) or after an allotted time. Why for the latter? Other than to annoy me, I have no idea. I do know that my friend and I failed that power plant objective, right near the end, because the game got impatient with our running around. Hardly our fault though: we kept dying. Why?

5. Because dragons.

Surprise! It’s Skyrim after all! 

Okay, technically no, but it’s an action RPG where you fight dragons so I’m making the joke now while it’s still a living horse. They’re actually “scorched beasts”, and they shoot nothing but radioactive murder plague death from their mouths. Don’t fight them until you are ready, and you won’t be for awhile. Don’t be like my idiot teammate and try to bring one down “for the XP”. You’ll just die. Over and over. Speaking of death...

6. You “lose” items when you die.

But don’t worry, you can retrieve them. But balance that choice wisely. You can respawn near your last death point, but do take a moment to ask yourself a few questions. “Why did I die?” Was it because of something manageable, like a ghoul or mutant that got the jump on you? Or was it a marauding player--who probably already picked it up--who now has a bounty on their head? Or was it because of the aforementioned murder death dragons? Take these into consideration. Also consider what you left behind. When you die, you only drop whatever junk/scrap you had picked up and haven’t stashed away yet. (More on that later.) Ask yourself, was it something kinda common like steel or cloth? Or was it something absolutely essential, like....

7. Wood and Aluminum

You need these. Always. Never walk pass them. Ever.

In Fallout 4, adhesive was the precious commodity. Now you can find that near everywhere. Meanwhile, in a video game literally set in an enormous forest, wood is hard to come by. Why? No idea. You can’t “scrap” your environment like in 4, and for some reason, axes cannot cut down trees. (Yes, they never could in these games, but I feel like there’s some serious cognitive dissonance going on here) You need wood to build shelters, crafting tables and make “boiled water”; all key for early survival. 

But you can scrape up enough wood for this if you know where to look: scrapping common weapons is the main one and some areas have lumber in small piles. The bigger headache is aluminium. Aluminum is much rarer and you need aluminum. Why?

8. Because weapons/armor can now break again.

Unpopular opinion: I actually liked the repair system of past Fallout games. Having to do equipment upkeep felt, I dunno, appropriate for a series about survival? It was also aided by the fact that you can do repairs on the fly with similar items, or the Jerryrigging perk. This time, not so much. When your equipment breaks, you need to find a workbench to fix it, and you need materials to do so. Once again, this is why you need as much aluminum as you can carry because most repairs need them. But what about...

9. Being over-encumbered.

So having to carry so much junk... well, you know what tends to happen. But the over-encumbered penalty has been tweaked a bit: while you will still slow to a crawl, it’s only after your AP meter has been exhausted. 

Luckily, they made junking more convenient: you can break down any junk, armor, and weapon at any workbench and some early perks allow you to carry more by cutting the weight of various items. Stock up on ‘em early if you can; it’ll make the trek back to your stash box easier. That said...

10. Your stash box is not bottomless.

Hoarders beware: use it or lose it.

Your stash is always with you as long as you have a CAMP around, but as I learned, it does have a limit to what can be held. Pretty much, you’re forced to craft and trade often; to not just pick up anything you find lying around because you’ll probably have use for it later. (After all, your priority is wood and aluminum anyway.) Unfortunately, I have no way to trump this system. The closest thing I found is to craft ammo: a much more precious commodity than caps. Come on, Bethesda, just because Metro uses a bullet currency doesn’t mean you’re prohibited from implementing it! That said, you may conclude that you could take the old Skyrim approach and just trade a high volume of useless crap for the good stuff. Well, guess what.

11. You cannot “print money.”

They actually nipped this one in the bud early on. Yes, you can craft things if you have the ingredients and recipes to do so. But that’s not for everything. I saw that craftable hatchets and knives can no longer be traded at the handful of NPC merchants in the game. Same goes for bullets: you’re better off just shooting your surplus ammo into the air, like a “true Appalachian”, than setting on them, waiting for value. Unfortunately, you cannot scrap bullets either, which is a shame and I hope the add the option down the line, around the time they further restrict our trading options.

12. Oh, yeah, I also said “recipes.”

There are more things in this game that require “plans” and “recipes” before they can actually be crafted. I was into this for the sake of immersion: how your character in 4 readily had the knowledge to build a small house with complete furnishings was something I found silly. But as I stated earlier, 76 has a very questionable view of reality, so it may void that a little. Regardless, you earn plans and recipes through various means. The common way, for armor/weapon modding anyway, is to scrap items, which gives you a chance to learn a new modding recipe for that item. You also earn some by completing quests and events, and can sometimes buy them from merchants. (Can’t sell them though.) On top of that, some still need the right perks to use. Oh, I should actually close on that one...

13. Perk Cards and Leveling

They brought back perks for 76, in the form of cards you unlock at every new level. You combine duplicate cards to raise thier levels as well. When you level, you are asked to put a new point into any of your S.P.E.C.I.A.L. attributes. The total number of points in your S.P.E.C.I.A.L. dictates what perk cards you can swap in. For example, if your Strength is 4 and you have a perk card that's upgraded to level 3, you won’t be able to slide it in if you have three level 1 Strength cards in the deck. Oh, and your choice of new perk card is NOT limited to what perk you decided to level up.

---

And.... pretty much those are the key things I want you future players to know. But here’s a couple other tidbits to know.

You need to be a special level to use Power Armor and some high-tier weapons. You can still use the chassis at anytime though, providing you have the cores.

Food rots. Don’t overpack with perishable meals that you won’t use, unless you plan to make fertilizer later.

You can make diluted Stimpacks, RadAway, and Rad-X, which means it’ll double your medicine supply, but will be less effective.

You can save structures to blueprints to be built later, but you will still need the materials!

ALUMINUM. WOOD. ALUMINUM AND WOOD.

And one last thing before you take off on your new wasteland journey:

Bethesda made a lot of questionable decisions here, not just in gameplay but in world building. Once again, you will find that a lot of lore has been glossed over and/or ignored by committee. You may be tempted to get very emotional over what can be perceived as a gross disregard of canon and that Todd Howard is satisfied with slapping the Fallout brand on anything he wants. 

I have come to accept this as fact and have chosen to still have fun with the game regardless.

It’s a big functional mess of a timesink that is, once again, more about making a profit than paying respect to a classic franchise: the norm of the industry. For all we know, this may become the installment that “kills” the franchise. But so far, I’ve been having fun and accepting it for what it is and prepared for whatever direction it chooses to goes in next.

As for you, I hope to meet you on these country roads very soon!

[iruka-2013]

#3: Aang’s Children vs. The Red Lotus (LoK 311, "The Ultimatum")

“Must’ve been some fight.”

—Mako, “Enter the Void”

Encompassing the entire second half (minus Kai’s portion) of one of the most intense episodes in the show’s run, this battle also dwarfs almost every other in the series in terms of its pacing, emotion, characterization and animation quality. Only Korra’s own finale battles top it. 

It begins with a pair of surprise attacks.

Zaheer’s is first, as we once again see his polished (and perhaps even sincere) words— “I’ve always admired the [airbender] culture” and “It’s a pleasure to finally meet a true airbending master”—clash horribly with his willingness to threaten the lives of the Air Nation and melt the Air Temple into a pile of molten lava, leaving said airbending master chained up to die inside it.

It’s a wonder the man’s head doesn’t explode from sheer cognitive dissonance. O_o

What comes next is one of the greatest character moments in the Avatar franchise.

Tenzin has always been one of the best characters at fulfilling his duty—i.e., doing what he’s supposed to do, whether it’s safeguarding the airbender culture, creating his own airbender family with Pema, or painstakingly rebuilding the Air Nation by searching the world for new airbenders.

When Tenzin says “I will never let you get to Korra,” and Zaheer, sounding almost bored with these heroics, responds, “Unfortunately, you don’t have a choice,” for once Tenzin makes a decision so dangerous, and at the same time so perfect, as to make the battle that follows almost an afterthought.

Back in the Earth Queen’s palace, Tenzin told Korra how he was there when the Red Lotus tried to kidnap the newly discovered Avatar. Before any of his own children were born—before he could even be sure he wouldn’t die as the last airbender—he fought to protect a little girl who would become like a daughter to him. If, as Zaheer supposes, Tenzin’s primary goal in this scene is to safeguard his own family or the future of the Air Nation, then he would be wise to do what Zaheer wants—cooperate, keep his head down, and wait for rescue.

Instead, with both those things at stake, he rolls the dice. He throws it all up the air, because he wants to keep Zaheer away from Korra more than he wants anything else.

He’s not supposed to do this. Which is why his line “Yes, I do!” followed by a powerful multidirectional air blast, takes both the Red Lotus and the viewing audience so completely off guard. Tenzin’s decision to fight is foolish, reckless, and jaw-droppingly awesome. 

And everyone backs him up. 

In the moment of crisis, Tenzin shouts out two set of commands—one for Jinora to take the airbenders and run, and other for Kya and Bumi to step up and die fighting alongside him. Which, as everyone present must know, is almost certainly what will happen.

His siblings don’t hesitate for a second.

Kya has already had an awesome one-on-one fight with Zaheer when he infiltrated Air Temple Island back in “The Metal Clan” (a fight that would have made this list if it had been a Top 41 -_-;), but this episode shows Bumi at his bravest. Thanks to its seriousness, I think it even surpasses his single-handed rescue of the Krew from Unalaq’s army in Book 2.

Even as the viewer realizes how impossible victory is against the Red Lotus (how could we not, with their percussion-laden theme music from the Book 3 trailer pounding away relentlessly throughout the fight?), the writers and animators have pulled out the stops so well that it’s also impossible not to cheer Kya’s determination and Bumi’s creativity as he combines airbender agility with United Forces combat moves.

See, for instance, the moment when he comes astonishingly close to snapping Ghazan’s neck. O_o

When he and Kya are literally thrown back together, he finishes off with a line that would have done my wisecracking grandfather proud: “I see you’re having as much fun as I am!”

The Red Lotus aren’t done with them yet. In every case where Zaheer, Ghazan, and Ming-Hua get the Cloudbabies into vulnerable positions, it’s P’Li—the most powerful, with a perfect aerial vantage point—who inflicts the decisive blow.

That’s how it is here, as Bumi only avoids a point-blank combustion blast only by letting himself and Kya fall off the Air Temple’s mountain, sustaining injuries so serious that in the next episode the other airbenders expect them to die before being rescued (“They might not make it that long,” says Daw).

And I haven’t even examined Tenzin’s fight with Zaheer.

It’s the first and only full-blown (ha) airbender-on-airbender fight in the Avatar franchise, and it doesn’t disappoint. Tenzin fights as if he thinks he’s back at the South Pole protecting four-year-old Korra, focusing on the slippery Zaheer at his siblings’ expense and trying repeatedly to hammer his enemy off the mountain as if his own element were earth instead of air.

Even though Zaheer is an airbending novice who spends most of the battle fleeing from one level of the Air Temple to the next, he uses airbending principles (“avoid and evade”) to such good advantage that I have to wonder whether he’s deliberately using Tenzin’s emotional fixation on himself to keep the master distracted until his friends can finish off Kya and Bumi. Either way, Zaheer’s brutal, ideologically driven determination and mastery of some martial arts style that carries over well into airbending are more than enough to keep Tenzin busy. 

In the end, he needs his whole team to win this fight—particularly his combustionbending ace-in-the-hole P’Li, who all but finishes Tenzin with only two near misses, giving Ghazan and Ming-Hua the opening they need to batter him with chunks of rock and ice. 

(Have I mentioned that J.K. Simmons’ voice performance is amazing throughout this sequence? Because it most definitely is.)

The three of them trap Tenzin against a wall, and Zaheer demands once more that he surrender. Tenzin may not know exactly what has happened to Kya and Bumi, but by now he surely knows the bison are gone, the other airbenders haven’t escaped, and he’s fighting alone. Still, he rasps out, “As long as I’m breathing, it’s not over.”

Frighteningly provocative words, given that he’s talking to the man who collapsed the Earth Queen’s lungs on a whim just one episode ago.

I think it was that line that left the fandom convinced, until the two-part finale was released, that we would never see Tenzin alive again.

That, plus the sad music and the brilliant closing shot that has the Red Lotus beating on him relentlessly even as the camera moves behind a wall and all four of them disappear.

This shot, followed by Kai’s literal cliffhanger ending, adds up to one of the most devastating finishes in the show’s run, putting it among the handful of episodes (“A New Spiritual Age” and “Darkness Falls” were two others) that seemed to telescope their twenty-three minutes into a much shorter time period in a way that left me almost physically disoriented when the credits screen appeared. What? It can’t possibly be over already!

It is. 

[Images from AvatarSpirit.net.]

[X]

[samingtonwilson]

Loot - Jim Kirk

Loot masterlist

Summary: reader is a cadet in the academy working as a hired thief to pay for tuition. reader gets caught in a sticky situation and jim and spock come to their rescue-- maybe

Pairing: Jim Kirk x Reader (not yet, though)

Prompt: “You don’t have to trust me – just don’t leave me here to die.”

Word count: 2,153

Warnings: language, injuries (i guess)

A/N: i felt like writing something different. so far there’s no romance between any of the characters mostly because this is just the first part. it’ll obviously eventually have something-something but not right now. idk if i want to continue this, though, so give me some feedback n tell me if i should continue it! i personally quite like it so far! enjoy! 

You struggled against the restraints tightly wrapped around your wrists, waist, and ankles as you were seated in a chair. You couldn’t see even three feet ahead of you and the pain on the right side of your chest worsened with each breath you took. You retained little information on how you reached such a point while trying your hardest to move as little as possible in order to minimize any exasperation of your attained injuries. You did, however, move your head to strain your hearing as the sound of voices poured into your dim location.

The voices echoed as if you were in a dark cave and the humidity causing sweat to form in beads over your skin furthered that theory. The sound of footsteps surrounded you, the clicking of multiple heavy treads growing louder and louder with each passing second. None of the words they spoke seemed to register with you, possibly a side-effect of only just regaining consciousness or possibly because they weren’t speaking one of the countless languages you knew.

Slowly, images came back to you. They were difficult to piece together but, because of your impatience and desire to jump to a conclusion, you understood that a robbery hadn’t gone as planned. It was the whole reason you were on the God forsaken, barren wasteland of a planet— to collect a set of ancient artifacts before any Federation agency was able to. It wasn’t your old-hunk-of-metal fetish that pushed you to risking your own life— you just really needed the money.

The Starfleet Academy tuition wasn’t cheap and your people skills rendered a normal retail, restaurant, or bar job implausible. There were other choices, though— you could’ve worked in some sort of office or library as both required little social interaction and you could’ve put your training to use to work as a translator for visiting diplomats. But desperate times called for desperate measures— and your skills in the areas of silence and stealthiness were too good to be wasted.

It was a calculated risk continuing to take such illegal jobs while actively pursuing placement in the exact Federation you were looting, but the payoff was worth it. You told yourself repeatedly that every job came with its fair share of risks and even if you were expelled from the Academy and unable to work as a communications officer, you had a monetarily secure backup job.

Now, however, instead of convincing yourself of your honorability as to decrease your cognitive dissonance, you allocated your energy to undo the rope digging into your bruised sides. You could feel gashes, other bruises, and wounds all over your body and hoped to every God of every faith that the markings would fade before anyone at the Academy could ask any questions once classes started up again.

When the pain in your wrist caused by the rope digging into a cut was too much for you to handle, you stopped and sat back. You took a deep breath and tried to focus on the voices and footsteps again, hoping whatever perception abilities you were lacking initially had returned to normal.

“The one day we forget to bring a damn flashlight. There’s gotta be someway to get light in here.” You weren’t sure if you were hearing the deep-voiced man correctly, but it sounded like English. “Spock, have you found anything?”

The voice received no answer and a sigh of discontent met your ears. “Commander, have you found something that’ll function as a light before I run into something and break my nose?”

“Just a moment, Captain,” a second voice replied. This voice was much more monotonous, void of the irritation that laced the first voice and it was closer. “There is someone here.”

You rolled your lips together and held your breath. You shut your eyes despite the pitch black environment, hoping it would cloak you with invisibility.

“You’re sure?”

“Yes.”

The first man sighed heavily once more. “I can’t even see my own hand. How are you able to say— with certainty— that there’s someone in here?”

“Vulcans have heightened senses as compared to humans— one of which is hearing. I can hear someone breathing.” You heard a few more steps in your direction before he spoke again, “The breathing is labored— perhaps due to anxiety or injury.”

“Hello?” the first voice called out, his loud steps growing closer and closer. You approximated his location. “Is anyone here? My name is James T. Kirk, Captain of the USS Enterprise— my First Officer and I were sent to retrieve an artifact and do not mean you any harm. Are you hurt?”

You released your bottom lip and let out the breath you were holding. You quickly began to formulate a story that would explain your presence— something that would keep you out of trouble. You cleared your throat. “Yes.”

“Where are you?”

“Not sure,” you answered honestly. “But you sound close. Maybe a few more steps ahead and to your right.”

A series of steps ensued until a kick to the leg of the chair you were seated in sent it lurching backwards and forward again. You winced at the sharp pain of your ribs and clenched your jaw as your hands balled into fists. “I think that was a bit more steps than a few.”

“What did I hit?” he asked, his voice coming from directly in front of you.

“I’m tied to a chair— my wrists, ankles, and waist are bound and I think I might have a few broken ribs in addition to bruises, cuts, and abrasions.”

He didn’t speak for a few seconds and when he did, it wasn’t to you. “How are we doing on getting some light in here, Mr. Spock?”

“I have located a control panel. I am not confident on the purpose of each button and would prefer not to cause inadvertent harm to either of you—”

James T. Kirk clicked his tongue. “Aw, that’s sweet—”

“— as it would be extremely difficult for me to assist you both.”

“Spoke too soon,” James said with a soft laugh. “Just press the biggest button.”

“Captain, I cannot see—”

“Feel around for the biggest button and press it— in my experience that’s usually the one for light or self-destruction. If it’s a light switch, fantastic.”

“If not?” you asked, looking up into the darkness.

“We’ll deal with that if we have to. Press the button, Spock.”

Immediately, almost as if a bolt of powerful lightening, your surroundings were brightly illuminated. The intensity of the light forced you to squeeze your eyes shut, setting your chin on your shoulder so your hair could cover your face. “Fuck, is there a dimmer?”

“I think we should thank our luck that there’s light at all,” James told you. “Open your eyes slowly.”

You complied to the best of your abilities and straightened your posture so you could face where his voice came from. You had to blink a few times to help your eyes adjust.

When you were able to make out the figures before you, you saw a pair of men. One taller than the other, one in a yellow shirt and one in a blue shirt— both wore Starfleet insignias and both had their eyes on you. The one in blue was visibly Vulcan with skin undertoned with green and ears pointed while the other was visibly human— you assumed Commander Spock was the Vulcan and the man in command yellow was James T. Kirk.

They watched you with the same curiosity you thought must have been watching them with, the three of you silent until you cleared your throat again. You offered them a small smile. “Could one of you untie me?”

They looked at each other, then back at you. James nodded at Spock and crossed his arms over his chest as his First Officer undid your restraints. “You’re human.”

“Yeah,” you said with a single nod as the rope around your waist hit the ground. “My name’s (Y/N).”

“Why are you on this planet, (Y/N)?”

“I’m on summer holiday from Starfleet Academy in San Francisco. I’m here as a tourist.” The lie came out naturally. You were proud.

His blue eyes narrowed as he looked over you again with enough intensity to make you want to disappear. His eyes teamed with his full lips, sharp jaw, dirty blonde hair, and thick eyebrows made you feel too small, too inadequate to be in his presence. “Not much to see on this planet.”

The rope from your ankles fell to the ground. You wet your lips. “My boyfriend’s family was relocated a while ago for diplomatic purposes— I came with him to visit. Although I guess he’s my ex-boyfriend now.”

“Did he,” James began slowly, clearing his throat before continuing, “Did he do this to you?”

“No, no— of course not,” you said quickly, shaking your head vigorously before pain radiated from your ribcage and you were forced to stop. You couldn’t let James have the wrong idea about your fictitious boyfriend. “I had some time before the Earth-bound ship left and decided to explore.” You shrugged and smiled a bit. “See the parts of this city I missed while crying alone in my hotel room.”

A single eyebrow of his rose. “How did you wind up tied to a chair, battered and bruised, in a dark warehouse?”

“I found something while in one of the old shipyards. It looked nice, so I decided to keep it and maybe run some tests when I got back to Earth,” you told him, looking around said warehouse before meeting his gaze again. “Judging by my current circumstance, I don’t think I was supposed to find it, let alone keep it.”

He nodded at Spock once the rope fell from your wrists and the Vulcan stepped to stand beside him. “What is it?”

“Don’t know— it’s made of metal, has some ancient writing covering the front and back. I’m in my final year of studying xenolinguistics and I still couldn’t make any of it out.”

Spock spoke this time. “Do you know its location?”

“They took it back, so no,” you lied as you took a breath that sent a cold shock up your spine.

James looked over at Spock who was whispering something to him. You couldn’t hear most of it aside from the word “artifact” and heard only the portion of James’ reply in which he asked, “Should we trust that?”

You cleared your throat once more to gain their attention. You looked between both and rotated your wrists to regain some blood flow, taking note of the large gash on your left forearm. “The shipyard’s owned by some mongrel with a whole mob of creatures just like him. I’m lucky they only beat me— they said they were going to do much worse when they came back.”

James frowned. “When are they coming back?”

You shrugged and your hand immediately flew up to your right side, a loud wince escaping your lips. “I don’t— I don’t know. I was unconscious for a while, so probably soon.”

They looked at one another again and whispered a few sentences back and forth. They were taking too much time. You knew at any moment the door would burst open and the team of creatures looking for their stolen property would return only to beat you further and probably find the artifact in the pocket of your boot. Meaning the longer it took, the less likely your payment would be— all that trouble would thereby be futile.

Your impatience kicked in again. “I know how all of this sounds. You don’t have to trust me— just don’t leave me here to die.” You sighed through encircled lips. “This isn’t— I don’t want to go out like this. There’s a campus ID card in the left pocket of my jacket if you want to confirm my identity and I promise to answer any question you ask. Just, please, get me out of here.”

James, not bothering to look at Spock again, pulled a communicator from his belt. He flipped it open and tuned it. “Scotty, it’s Jim. Three to beam up directly to the medbay.”

“Aye, sir,” the voice on the other end answered— a Scottish accent was laced through his words. “I’m picking up two signals that are good to go, but I cannae distinguish what the third is.”

“It’s a cadet— in a chair and injured,” James, or Jim, stated. He looked at you then. “If I help you, will you be able to stand?”

You nodded slowly, taking the hand he held out to you and letting him bear the majority of your weight. “Thank you,” you said softly when he looked down at you.

“Not a problem,” he said as he smiled slightly while gold rings surrounded the three of you and you felt weightless.

[smokeybrand]

Cognitive Dissonance

It’s nuts to me how all these cops are reacting to finally being held to a standard. Not even an unreachable or unheard of standard. It’s literally the least you can do; Don’t terrorize the people you’re charged to protect. That mess is insane to me. How are you going to answer a protest about brutality, with more brutality? When these protests started, plain clothes officer literally instigated all of the violence you initially saw on television. Of course, they said it wasn’t this particular dude or whatever but his wife exposed him. and then left him. There’s video of these motherf*ckers stacking pallets and setting them ablaze. Why would the police do that, you ask? To muddle the message. I cannot tell you how many people focused so much on the riots and not the reason. The second a store face gets smashed, complacent white people dismiss every aspect behind the protest because, you know, “That’s not how you do it.”

The ill thing is, riots work. They almost always work. We’ve had a crash course in civil disobedience the last month and look what happened. Police reform is working it;s way through the legislature. gratuitously opulent policing budgets are being slashed across the US. Even 45 had to put something on the books. That’s just a start. We’re seeing serious talks about defending the police, re-contextualizing what it means to be an officer and how to implement them throughout our growing, changing, social structure. I’m a proponent of defunding the police. If we can move some of the stupid loot cops get for full body armor and f*cking tanks in to social programs or education, all studies show there won;t be a need for those extra officers. It’s win-win. But Ryan, i hear you say, you’re going to take jobs away from people. No, I'm going to take jobs away from sh*tty people, ACAB, but more importantly, i might be saving a little melanted kid’s life. And, as is to drive my point home, the reaction from officers has been absolutely stupid.

These motherf*ckers are quitting in droves! Like, are you serious right now? Protesters are literally screaming that cops are only cops just to inflict authority upon colored folk, that the fraternity of law enforcement is inherently racist and unduly cruel because of the badge, so oversight and reform is more than necessary. The entire world agrees. The whole f*cking world, man! And these motherf*ckers are quitting in droves about it! Those bastards that put the old man in the hospital up in Buffalo, they were fired basically. In solidarity with their brother’s who were rightfully released after concussing a seventy-five-year-old man so hard, he bled from his ears, the entire riot team of the BPD quit. They quit. Walked right off the job because two if theirs was properly held accountable for their excessive force. There was an incident a few days ago that forced the Atlanta police chief to resign. A black man was killed by a cop and his corpse kicked on camera. When that officer was held accountable, all of the cops in Atlanta quit. By quit i mean just stopped answering calls. When Atlanta reached out to neighboring counties to help with the articulated shortage, they said no. They’ll only answer calls for backup and officer down. All of this because an officers involved in a suspect killing, is being properly investigated by the DA. What the f*ck does that say to the public? How does that build confidence and trust in your profession?

It f*cking doesn’t! Cops swear an oath like doctors or lawyers or the f*cking president and these assholes are just like f*ck that! You swore to protect and serve but if you can’t brutalize and terrorize, you’re not going to stand by your promise? If you can’t kill colored folk with impunity, you don’t want the job? If you can’t inflict injury or feed your tiny ego or validate your -bigotry, you’re going to turn in your badge? F*cking good! You shouldn’t have been a cop in the first goddamn place! These f*cking cops quitting are proving our point. They’re showing how fickle all these blue lives really are. That shield is a shield for a reason but as soon as that protection is leveled to a reasonable standard, they quit. When they are held accountable, their union presidents get on television and throw whole ass tantrums. When the public demands more from their policing force, said force answered with literal abandonment. So, i ask this; If you’re just going to derelict upon your duties, why not shift them to another agency? Why not send social workers out for social issues instead of cops? Why not send mental health agents to interact with the homeless of a panicked person? If you’re not going to do the job in the first place, why the f*ck are you so mad when we talk about giving it to someone else?

[crackopenabook]

Cognitive Dissonance

       I wake up in my college dorm, once again drenched in sweat - a common occurrence these days. An outline of my body is molded into the sheets and mattress. I put my headphones into my ears, turn on my iPod and play a song that is chock full of melancholy and sadness. I walk into the conjoined college bathroom, splash water onto my face and just look at my reflection in the mirror. A stranger looks back at me.

       I grew up in an abusive household. My father is an alcoholic with a bad temper, and the alcohol only exacerbated his verbal abuse toward my mother, my younger brother and me. It was an onslaught of being called, “stupid”, “ugly”, and even one time he called me a “tramp”; I was only 13 years old at the time. I spent the majority of my life in extracurricular activities, from playing club soccer to Catholic Sunday school classes.  Pretending you didn’t live in an abusive household was pretty exhausting, feigning happiness became an art form of sorts. This one particular occasion that stands out was in my 7th grade gym class. I remember how my face felt awkward when I smiled and laughed. When I got home that evening I examined my face when I smiled: the left side of my face was slower than the right. When I blinked my left eyelid took a few seconds longer to match the right in movement. When I drank water, the water dribbled out of the left side of my mouth, when I flared my nostrils only the right side would flare out the left stayed motionless. I remained relatively calm when I brought my mother into my room to look at this anomaly. She took me to the doctor the next day and I was diagnosed with Bell’s Palsy, which in my case, was related to stress. This was not one of those moments where we tell the doctor the type of abuse we endure day to day. I took my prescribed medicine and moved on with my life.        Major Depression Disorder affects more than 16.1 million American adults, or about 6.7% of the U.S. population age 18 and older in any given year. [1] When I was a freshman in High School, I began having anxiety attacks during the day, it was as if there was a large weight on my chest and I felt my heart slow down. Normally these attacks would happen at night. I would be lying in bed, trying to fall asleep, but then I would see the walls start caving in around me. It would feel as if my body was being pinched between two fingers, a hard thing to describe. I had the impulse to jump out of bed and begin walking as fast as I could, sometimes I would I have to go outside so I can take a deep breath with fresh air in it. I would mention these events to my Mother but I think she just found it odd but nothing really came from my telling of these anxiety attacks. I don’t believe she really knew much about depression and anxiety, or at least, she didn’t put a label on it.        My freshman year of college was out in Brenham, Texas, just an hour north of Houston. I was pretty excited to live on campus because that meant I was going to be far, far away from my Father. However, the loneliness I felt while I was there took me by surprise. Growing up, I had no problem sitting in my room reading a book. I wasn’t very social outside of my sports playing and church-going activities. I suppose my being holed up in my dorm room, outside of going to class, wasn’t the healthiest option. My roommate was cordial and on the occasion would include me when her friends came over to study. I found it must more pleasant when she would go home for the weekend, some peace and quiet, for me to collect my thoughts. There was a night that my roommate was away and I was feeling so sad. I was frustrated that I wasn’t doing well in any of my classes that weren’t electives, I missed my dog, and strangely enough my home. I began thinking about what would happen if I decided to kill myself. What were the pros of no longer existing, anywhere but here would have to be better; even as a God-fearing Catholic I was willing to take those odds of being sent to Hell for suicide. I put a large amount of my depression medication in my hand and put it up to my mouth to ingest but I couldn’t do it. I thought about how much my death would destroy my Mother, how much she has gone through with my Father and how she didn’t deserve to endure pain by my hand.        I withdrew from Blinn College in April 2007, moved back home, my parents got a divorce, and I just began working full time. Since I was making some money from working so much I moved out of my Mom’s home and started working three jobs at the mall. I was so busy living a 21-year-old lifestyle I didn’t have time to dwell on my sadness. I still have major depression that rears its ugly head when I’m overwhelmed by work but I put on a happy face to power through. What else can you do? ________________        You begin routines to push you from sunrise to sunset. The industry I work in has the “same shit different day” attitude, I work as an estimator for a body shop. Dealing with the aftermaths of peoples hardships; their loss is my gain. Customers and insurance groups don’t see the monetary benefit I see from damaged vehicles that cost thousands of dollars to fix. However, when dealing with that amount of money from various companies across the country can become very stressful. Paperwork, the quality of work you need to sell back to the owners of those vehicles, and the hassle of collecting payment from insurance companies that might feel they don’t have to pay for certain items.        I have worked for three different body shops around the city of Houston and each one has the same type of coping mechanism: drinking alcohol and ingesting various types of drugs. When I first began in the automotive industry I was still “green”, which was just another term for being new to the field. One of my co-workers, Josh, had anxiety issues and took a high dosage of clonazepam[2] which can help with panic attacks but can also lead to suicidal thoughts, memory loss, and drowsiness. Josh would give me a pill or two to take when he could see I was having a rough day. Normally after a long work week, my co-workers and I would buy a bottle of Crown Royal and hang around the shop for a majority of the night. Josh would tell me, “Fuck it, this job sucks anyway” and we would take a clonazepam with a glass of whiskey.        One afternoon I couldn’t handle the clonazepam I took. I honestly can’t remember how many I took, but I remember having a major panic attack. I couldn’t stop crying or saying how much I wanted to die. It was enough that my manager at the time asked me if I wanted to go to the hospital and...I don’t remember how I got to the emergency room. After I was evaluated, my Mother and Step Dad showed up at the hospital and talked with me about what I was feeling. I was put in an ambulance and taken to a mental institution and held there for 7 days. This was a completely different type of outcome than my attempt at attempted suicide some 6 years prior. You have a routine from sunrise to sunset in that hospital. Nurses wake you up around five in the morning to take your blood pressure, take your meds, and then back to bed only to be woken up again at eight in the morning for breakfast. It was an interesting system to be in because of the different types of health issues you personally get to be involved with. My first night there I was woken up to a woman screaming for her cigarettes. Some of those women coming off of meth or heroin can’t miss an opportunity to smoke or else they will fight a nurse.        This hospital was split between men and woman when it came to breakfast, lunch, dinner, and quiet time. You can’t spend too much time mingling with the opposite sex. I did notice a younger, dark-haired, Hispanic guy who couldn’t have been more than 25 years old. He was manic-depressive; the way he would just stare off into the distance but he had a look in his eyes that just seemed empty and lifeless. I would try to talk to him but he wouldn’t really say much of anything, hardly a grunt of acknowledgement. The other guys would say “he’s too quiet” and “very weird”. I saw something in that manic-depressive guy that I was so afraid to see in myself. I couldn’t shut myself off completely like that. I had one of my best friends from the body shop, Chris, come and visit me. He asked me, “How long are you gonna be held up in here? This place feels creepy, almost like jail but cleaner.” My best friend has been in county jail for street racing so I could see where he was coming from. “I don’t know when they’ll let me out of here. Once I have my evaluation and the doctors think it’s safe for me to go home.”, I told him. Chris had such a look of pity and confusion on his face and in his eyes. I’ve always been honest with Chris about my depression but he could never quite wrap his head around the issue of me just feeling sad. After 5 days in that hospital, I was ready to fake being happy. I missed my home, my dog, and fresh air from outside of those walls. On the 7th day, I was released. My Mother came to pick me up from the hospital and as soon as we drove away from the building I started crying. A cry of relief, of shame, guilt, and happiness to be free.

________________

I was fired from my job at the body shop a month after I returned to work from getting out of the hospital. I honestly can not remember my final month at the shop. I am fairly certain they kept my workload to a minimum. When I was let go it was the shop foreman, TJ, that brought me into the manager's office, “I’m sorry, Ashley, but we’re gonna have to let you go. Clean out your desk. You’re done for the day.” No one is a fan of being fired and I remember feeling calm at first as I packed up my desk and said my brief goodbyes to Josh and Chris. As I was leaving though I saw TJ again and that was when I started crying and he hugged me. Apologizing. So only a month away from my hospital stay and I was home alone with only my dog and bills I couldn’t afford. This was November 2013, just a week before Thanksgiving. Ah, what to give thanks for? It actually took over four months for me to find a job as a receptionist at a moving company and over a period of six months, I was promoted to an accountant. Thus began my love for accounting, or more specifically the love of counting money. During this time I also started having a friends with benefits relationship with my current boyfriend. I have not had another major depressive episode since working at the body shop. When I told my boyfriend, Jonathan, about the mental hospital I was in he was very supportive. One of his best friends, Clayton, was in a mental hospital for three weeks, I have actually spoken with Clayton concerning this and he describes how generous Jonathan was, “Jonathan would come and visit me almost every other day just to see how I was doing. He was the only one of our friends who would do that. Jonathan is one of the kindest guys you’ll ever know.” All of that is true. On me and Jonathan’s second anniversary, he told me how he really feels about me, “When I look at you I see someone that’s felt sadness and hard times just like me. I see someone that hasn't quit. Someone that hasn’t compromised being themselves.” Knowing you live with this overwhelming amount of sadness inside of you and having to carry the burden of that knowledge alone is tiring. To have someone by my side through toughs times is very helpful. My family has all but moved to other sides of the state or out to other states so seeing them becomes more difficult. I’m not one to attempt contact with friends. I prefer to be alone so my old friends are just distant memories. My dog passed away a couple years ago so it was tough waking up alone and not having someone to get you out of bed every morning. However, having Jonathan, even his cat Pablo has made a home with us, is a blessing I would have never known I deserved or needed. I have found my way back into the body shop business. I have learned from past mistakes and I don’t drink on the job or do any drugs; which is funny to even say considering that should be a give-in with any job. I came back into this industry because I know it pays and I already know the routine it asks for. I have worked at this particular shop for over a year and I have come home crying from stress more than twice but I had Jonathan to catch me as I am falling. However, I find myself drinking just a little bit more every day just to get out of the reality of my current workload. I know though that the harder I work and more accounts I take in the more money I can make, which has paid for the college classes I am currently taking, and the car I am saving up to buy. To keep me from making my past my present I try to keep up a healthy lifestyle with exercise and eating correctly. Running helps create dopamine which creates happy feelings.[3] Although as I’m running I just wonder what it would be like to run away from everything I currently hold dear and never look back; I don’t think I could do that. ________________ [1] Facts & Statistics, Anxiety and Depression Association of America, ADAA, 2018, adaa.org/about-adaa/press-room/facts-statistics. Accessed 22 Sept 2018 [2] Medline Plus. The American Society of Health-System Pharmacists, Inc., 1 Oct. 2018, medlineplus.gov/druginfo/meds/a682279.html . Accessed 18 Oct. 2018. [3] Healthline. Exercise, Depression, and the Brain, 2016, www.healthline.com/health/depression/exercise. Accessed 17 Nov. 2018.

[duaneodavila]

Moneta’s Choice

It’s now firmly established that a white prof can’t wear blackface even in furtherance of social justice. This, at least, provides a clear line that distinguishes affirmative conduct despite the underlying motive. Good motives do not make it acceptable. Fair enough.

And further, a white prof can’t utter the “n-word,” which is one of those affectations that pretend to conceal what the “n-word” is, as if using the “n-word” somehow makes it less of the “n-word.”

University of Kansas prof Andrea Quenette, who, in describing her own racial bias, used the n-word, for which she was sent packing. No matter what the circumstances, what the purpose, even if in the cause of ending racism, the word cannot be used.

Another bright line. But that didn’t inform Duke admin Larry Moneta’s choice.

Outrage has flowed freely over the story of Larry Moneta, the Duke University administrator whose distaste for a rap song featuring the N-word reportedly led to the firing of two baristas (one of whom is black) at a campus coffee shop.

Calling it “distaste for a rap song” seems disingenuous. The problem was a rap song, or rap music, but a word that was uttered in the song. The “N-word.” They capitalized it, which must be intended to make the “N” part of the word more emphatically wrong.

Experts in hip-hop culture (and the university’s critics) point to this as a contemporary example of racism, a white man who has publicly professed to cherish free expression — but only when he doesn’t find the speech offensive.

Every college admin professes to “cherish free expression,” as long as it’s not offensive. That become part of the job description, to ignore all cognitive dissonance and be agreeable to whatever the students demand, no matter how irreconcilable. For Moneta, however, it didn’t work.

Moneta, the vice president of student affairs, last week swung by Joe Van Gogh, one of Duke’s contracted coffee shops, to pick up his regular order, a hot tea and vegan muffin. At the time, the song “Get Paid,” by Young Dolph, was playing — a rap that repeats the N-word continually in its refrain. Britni Brown, who was manning the register at the time, had picked the Spotify playlist that contained the song, according to the Durham alt-weekly, Indy Week, which first reported the scandal.

He was “shocked” to hear the lyrics, Moneta said in a statement he released this week. He told Brown the words he heard were inappropriate, and Brown, according to Indy Week, apologized earnestly and immediately shut the music off. Brown, who is black, apologized a second time and offered Moneta the muffin on the house, but he refused and insisted Brown charge him.

As an aside, you have to appreciate Brown trying to ride a free muffin through the storm. Of course, Brown had nothing to apologize for. It was a song. These were the lyrics. Grow up. But such a banal approach wasn’t good enough for Moneta. Or perhaps he feared that failure to ratchet up his outrage would leave him exposed, like Quenette, good intentions notwithstanding.

After Moneta left, he contacted Robert Coffey, executive director of Duke’s dining services, to complain. This led to a phone call from the coffee shop owner, Robbie Roberts, to Brown, asking about the incident, for which, Indy Weekly reported, Brown took full responsibility.

On Monday, both Brown and the other barista working the shift, Kevin Simmons, were asked to meet with human resources, and they were informed that Duke had requested they be let go, according to local press accounts.

And the outrage flowed, consuming Moneta for having sought, and obtained, the firing of a black woman over a song. Then came the vetting of his history to prove he was a closet racist.

Last year, Moneta also was derided for equating the destruction of a Confederate statue in North Carolina to vandalism of a Holocaust memorial in Boston. He wrote in an opinion piece to Inside Higher Ed he wanted the statues taken down through “legitimate, law-abiding processes,” not sabotage.

Then came his effort to spin his social justice bona fides.

In his public statement this week, he said, “To those who feel that I’ve flipped on my positions on free expression, I say this. The artist who wrote, recorded and performed the music is absolutely entitled to do so, however offensive I might find the lyrics. The employees who chose to play the song in a business establishment on the Duke campus made a poor decision which was conveyed to the Joe Van Gogh management. How they responded to the employees’ behavior was solely at their discretion.”

As if that had a chance of salvaging his career.

On Wednesday, Moneta posted an apology on his personal Facebookpage, writing that “he never intended” for the employees to be fired and that he hoped they would be reinstated. (One Duke student wrote on Twitter that she “didn’t wanna hear anything else” unless it was about Moneta resigning.)

Not only did this put Larry Moneta in the firing line, but the coffee shop owner who did as Duke demanded as well.

The coffee shop owner, Roberts, has also since apologized and said in his public statement he has “taken steps to remedy the matter,” though his personnel decisions remain private. He told BuzzFeed, however, that the two baristas would be welcome back at the company. Brown said in an interview with The News & Observer she didn’t want her job back — calling Duke a “white supremacist” campus.

Yes, that’s the same Duke with the lacrosse team that didn’t rape but was crucified anyway. While Moneta’s raising the issue in the first place was foolish, was it a sincere reaction to being offended by the “N-word” (see I capitalized “N” too this time to show my fidelity) or was he lost as to how to react? When the rules are in constant motion, and either virtue signaling or failure to signal will end up with you being burned at the stake, it’s hard to make a choice.

And of course, the rapper whose song gave rise to this conflagration had to add his two cents:

For the rapper Young Dolph’s part, he theorized in a tweet that Moneta was trying to teach students to be selfish.

“Whoever that VP is,” Dolph wrote on Twitter, with thumbs-down and exasperated emoji, “he don’t give a dam about nobody but his self.”

Copyright © 2007-2018 Simple Justice NY, LLC This feed is for personal, non-commercial and Newstex use only. The use of this feed anywhere else violates copyright. If this content is not in your news reader, it means the page you are viewing infringes copyright. (Digital Fingerprint: 51981395c77d7762065ca2c084b63e47) Moneta’s Choice republished via Simple Justice

[effywild]

I have a couple of projects on the go (free!) that I am totally loving right now, and since I’ve got a few minutes before I have to fling myself headlong into my day of coffee & art, I thought I’d pop in and tell you about them.

Journal52

The first is Journal52, which is continuing again this year. Last year, Sarah Trumpp and I provided two prompts per week, which was overwhelming but super fun. This year, Sarah is taking time off from Journal52 to focus on her Etsy & Patreon – both of which are well worth a look! I took over the weekly posts, and will be doing one prompt a week based on a collection of 52 art cards I created last year. A new card will be released each week with a write up on the card, including a key word, synonyms, an art prompt, and a pondering on the key word intended to nudge you in the direction of self-inquiry. There’s a way to sign up to get email notifications of the new posts, and you’ll find that little sign up form in the right hand side bar.

There is some SUPER GORGEOUS work happening in the Facebook Group, which you can find here. It’s totally free, though tips are welcome, and the group is full of kindness and gentle witnessing despite it’s ginormous size (we’re almost at 11 000 at this point).

#MiniMoleyDaily

This project started with the accidental purchase of a ‘too small’ daily planner from Moleskine. When the tiny planner arrived (it’s 3.5 x 5.5), I was bummed, because I’d intended to purchase the ‘large’ size. As I unwrapped it, though, I thought “OH HEY! TINY DAILY PAINTINGS!”, and #MiniMoleyDaily was born.

This is not a ‘challenge’. There are no prompts, and no rules except that you work small (smaller than 4 x 6). The intention is to simply share what we’re doing in our tiny little journals.

This project has been so satisfying. I’ve kept up (which is miraculous), and I’ve even filmed every spread for my YouTube channel. I sat down last night and watched the playlist from start to finish, and you know? It’s pretty squeeworthy. And I’m really excited about what this baby book will look like at the end of this year when I’ve successfully filled it with tiny works of journal art.

There is no website for this project, but we do have a Facebook Group. The energy in the group is honest, kind, and supportive, because that’s how we roll in my world. I’ve been really heartened to see people putting their real lives down on the page on a regular basis. It feels subversive, delicious, and revolutionary to give ourselves this kind of space and time to be with ourselves. You’re most welcome to join in the fray, and if you want some inspiration, subscribe to my YouTube Channel, where I’m uploading new videos multiple times a week. Click here for the #minimoleydaily playlist.

Here are a few spreads I’ve created so far.

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In Other News

It’s been a really beautiful week in my little bubble of art, coffee, furbaby, and little else. I work. I listen to Spotify. I have friends over. I leave the house as infrequently as possible (because WINTER! And PANTS!). It is a bit weird to be straddling contentment and outrage. The world outside is in no way mirroring the world inside, and it is causing a bit of cognitive dissonance. How can I be so g-d happy when the world is falling apart around me? I dunno, but I’ll take it, especially considering the total suckage of the years previous.

I’m awake. I’m seeing what’s going on. It moves me. I do what I can, and then I tip toe quietly away and back into sanctuary. It’s the best I can do.

BOD is rocking my socks off.

The first month in BOD has seen a total explosion of art and communing. The group of artists who’ve come together this year are throwing themselves into creating satisfying art journal practices that are tailored to their specific needs & desires. I am loving the art they are creating, the journals they are binding, the conversations we are having. It feels like a haven, which is really a theme that’s emerging. I’m creating spaces that feel so cosy, so safe, and I have no idea how I’m doing it. It’s just *happening*.

This spread was created for this coming Monday’s class. We’re focusing on papers as focal elements – how to stack them, how to work with complimentary colour, how to create depth, etc. If you haven’t joined us yet, but you’ve been thinking about it, well, NUDGE! I’d love to have you. There’s so much content already, and since you have indefinite, unlimited access, you’ll have all the time in the world.

And here’s where else to find me, in case you’re looking for something fun, uplifting, or inspiring to take on!

Life Book 2017 | One Bad Ass Art Journal | Let’s Face It 2017 | Pull. Pen. Paint

And also here:

    I don’t usually do summits like these, but when Eli invited me, I couldn’t say no because RITUAL and also because ELI! :)

Alrighty, my loves. I’m off to the studio to get painty. I hope you find some beauty this weekend.

xo Effy

Loving These I have a couple of projects on the go (free!) that I am totally loving right now, and since I've got a few minutes before I have to fling myself headlong into my day of coffee & art, I thought I'd pop in and tell you about them.