#do we think the fact that some small morally neutral turns of phrase or small actions of brennans remind me of my father

[caruliaa]

i think if my father was a good man hed be a fan of brennan lee mulligan . but well i dont really know if he is a good man or not so whether he would be a fan right now is up for debate

[wooahaeproductions]

Haru Haru (svt smau)-thirty: Everyday (written)

Summary: Your friend, Soonyoung confesses to you in some form all the time despite knowing you don’t like him like that. But what happens when suddenly someone becomes interested in him and he eventually stops confessing to you?

Pairing: Kwon Soonyoung (Hoshi) x Gender Neutral Reader

Genre: college au, fluff, angst, and comedy

Word Count: 774

Warnings (for the chapter): embarrassment and honestly some real cringe stuff haha

Rating (for the chapter): PG-13

Here you were once again at one of Bust a Move’s showcases, your three friends with you for moral support (and maybe to see if this whole plan would work or not). This time was different though, you wouldn’t be embarrassed by Soonyoung this time. This time he would most likely be embarrassed by you and that all started with the fact that you were in the middle of the auditorium wearing a tiger onesie. While Soonyoung had many fans, none had ever gone that far when dressing up. Some had worn tiger ear headbands but never had they dressed up in an entire tiger outfit. 

You had prepared a large poster as well with the help of Seungkwan, hoping the phrase written in big, bold letters and decorations around it would jog something in Soonyoung’s memory. The end of the show was nearing and if he had noticed you, he showed no indication that he had. They did their last performance and still nothing. Desperate for him to notice, you waited for a quiet moment before they started their ending speeches. 

You brought the poster higher above your head and screamed the very phrase written on it. “Soonyoung, I horanghae you!” All three of your friends looked at you like you were insane. The old you, the one in complete denial would have never done something like that. While you gained your friends' notice and most of the crowd, Soonyoung didn’t even bat an eye.

A few minutes after the showcase ended, you left your friends in the auditorium with a growl and a “don’t wait for me.” You rushed down the aisle and made your way into the wing behind the stage. You burst into the backstage greenroom, looking annoyed and determined. How dare he act like he hadn’t noticed?  Minghao noticed your expression and elbowed Chan. “Chan and I, uh have something to do. Bye!” he lied and they quickly escaped, leaving you and Soonyoung alone in the room.

“Soonyoung, did you really not notice your best friend dressed up as a tiger? And the poster?” you all but screeched. You knew you had said you were going to prove your feelings for him and that you weren’t going to give up, but now you were starting to reach the end of your rope. You were aware that he must have felt this way too but your vexation was overtaking that knowledge. 

Soonyoung sighed, pulling at his hair before saying, “I noticed.”

You rolled your eyes, irritation continuing to rise. “And?” you asked sharply with a stomp of your foot.

“I didn’t think you would remember our inside joke from camp all those years ago,” he responded, quietly.

Your annoyance started to dissipate just as quickly as it had appeared. You crossed the small room and sat in a chair next to the one Soonyoung was sitting in. “Of course, I remembered it. I would never forget something from that summer. We became best friends that summer, despite how annoying I pretended you were,” you said and Soonyoung couldn’t help his lips turning up into a smirk at your words. “I think that’s when I actually fell for you, I just didn’t realize it and then I spent so much time denying it that I convinced myself that I really didn’t feel that way. I mean, who really ends up with the person they liked when they were 12? Sorry, I’m rambling but…Soonyoung, I horanghae you!” you cringed at that last bit, hoping he would understand your true meaning. 

“I horanghae you too, Y/N,” he responded and you knew he didn’t get it.

“No, Soonyoung. I horanghae you,” you repeated with emphasis. 

He was silent for a few seconds before he closed the space between you completely, his lips covering yours in a kiss. You kissed him back, embracing all the feelings you had been holding back for all these years, and the ones that you had set out to prove to him when you spoke in the studio a few weeks ago. 

Not only did you mean those three important words with that phrase, but you also hoped he understood that you would always be and had always been best friends first. However, there was space to be more, to be both.

“I love you too,” Soonyoung said with a grin when you two finally parted. Finally. Your determination had succeeded. Your face brightened to match his. 

“I promise, I’ll continue to prove my feelings for you every day,” you declared.

“Every day?” 

“Every day,” 

He let himself fall forward again to rest his forehead against yours and said, “Deal.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE | MASTERLIST | CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE (END)

A/N: FINALLY!!! can you believe we just have next week's chapter and we are finished! 😛

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[thepoliticalvulcan]

Being mad at CNN misses the point.

You don't want CNN to fact check in real time during a debate. You want fact checks to not be needed. A 2 hour block of time wherein people are exposed to unchallenged, unedited Trump is not the thing to have a moral panic about. Its too late to hide him, shame him, or otherwise debunk him in the eyes of the people you think cannot be trusted to spot his lies and to be appropriately offended that a criminal and coup leader has the nerve to run for President again. You want to live in a world where someone who has said and done the things he has done, who associates with the people he associates with cannot earn one vote, let alone tens of millions.

CNN has a cynical financial interest in agreeing to not fact check the candidates in real time if that's the only way both of them will agree to show up. It has a cynical financial interest in "platforming" a fascist.

Its also the only viable path I can think of to discredit the fascist. I firmly believe this. Those ~15 million people who sat on their hands in 2016 "cause Killery" or "Bernie was robbed" had to live and breath Trump for 4 years to be persuaded to show up in 2020. We can't go back and redo the Trump Presidency for these people. If Jan 6, the Secret Documents stuff, the torrent of abuse guaranteed to incite harassment, stalking, and possibly violence against his critics, juries, and court officers, or memories of his Presidency aren't enough to nudge these people back into the voting booth; then the only thing I can think of is to just let Trump be Trump in a neutral-ish setting where neither he nor Biden are in control of the narrative and hope for the best.

The pithy phrase that "sunlight is the best disinfectant" is a rule of thumb not a law of physics. Journalism also alternates between holding the idiot ball and aiding and abetting authoritarianism for all the reasons that are widely discussed: corruption, incompetence, golden mean fallacies, legitimate human frailty, structural oppression of real journalists. etc.

But I firmly believe this, if we're at the point where we can't think of anything better than trying to keep the monster off the screens of the people we think may be too dumb or monstrous themselves to know a monster when they see one; then having a demagogue demagogue his heart out for two hours while a person who has been a politician longer than I have been alive* turns in a shockingly poor performance is the least of our problems.

*And I have existed in equal parts in the 20th and 21st centuries as of this writing.

Whatever theory of change or principled desire to contain contagion and avoid guilt by association is represented by getting mad at CNN for not being meaner to Trump during the debate is a fundamental misunderstanding of how we got here.

And again, CNN is guilty of many, many, many monumental sins against intellectual integrity and journalistic competency. That's one small piece of the problem. Because that's how you get to a debate where its pointless to fact check because its physically impossible to parse the gishgallop and I think the moderators also likely understand something the commentariat does not: the point of a gish gallop is to break and exhaust the fact checker because the lies contained in a gish gallop do not matter. Heck, the audience isn't even expected to remember them. Its meant to evoke a mood.

Devoting more time to them gives them more legitimacy than simply ignoring them and allowing their absurd antics to speak for themselves. If you're fact checking a gish gallop then the gish galloper has won.

I think I understand where this instinct comes from. In some small part it’s mistrust of other people who could be watching and be influenced by this spectacle. In a huge part I think it’s more about vengeance and hope. Vengeance in that by dragging Trump out of the safety of the mirror universe and the apocalyptic new apostolic epistemology that succors him, that the disgraced priests of expertise will redeem themselves by shaming the bad man and exposing him as a fool and villain. Then forever afterwards we can return to a mythic past or go forward into a utopian future where even if we have very different values and interests, we at least agree on the facts and deviations from reality will result in appropriate amounts of shame instead of election to highest office.

[lovemesomerafael]

It’s Complicated                      Chapter 9:  Aggravated Crimes

Source:  @viennainspring

Chapters 1-5   Chapter 6   Chapter 7   Chapter 8   Read Story on AO3

Barba was not happy.  In fact, he was angry, confused, and frustrated.  It hadn’t been a good couple of weeks, and there was no reason at all for that.  It should have been a great couple of weeks.  He’d gotten all the evidence in for the Fowler trial, even with Judge Paul “Evidence?  What Evidence?” Ivanovitch.  He’d practically made Trevor Langan cry when he got both Gonzalez brothers indicted. His Mami had finally given up the idea of a mother/son cruise without him having to actually admit he’d rather be eaten alive by a rabid wildebeest.  And he’d finally gotten somewhere with Adrien St. George.  Life was good.  So why was he so out of sorts?

Well, he knew one reason.  Something was off in the romance department.  He’d taken Janice Edwards to dinner a couple weeks before, thinking he’d just have a nice, relaxing night with a woman who didn’t require a lot of effort, followed by some uninspired but guaranteed sex.  She was certainly a lot less difficult than, for example, Francisca Rojas, with a much lower likelihood of fisticuffs breaking out between the appetizers and the entrée.  And Janice hadn’t done anything wrong or different, except that Barba had found himself bored out of his mind and couldn’t face the idea of spending the night with her. So he hadn’t.  Lunch with Bess Quinn had been just fine until he’d said something she didn’t like.  He’d tried to get her to talk about it – hell, no doubt Francisca would have been perfectly happy to blast him right there at the table – but Bess had simply frozen him out for the rest of the meal.  He tried to remember whether she’d always been like that, and had to admit that she had. He just hadn’t cared before.  And his date with Adrien, who was the worst but sexiest court administrator he’d ever seen, had been – OK.  She was interesting enough.  Maybe not “arrested for murdering her ex-boyfriend” interesting, but that was a good thing, right?  And speaking of Francisca, Adrien wasn’t nearly as difficult, and she actually seemed to like him.  Everything with Adrien was just fine.  She’d even invited herself back to his apartment after the opera.  He didn’t understand what had happened, but what had happened was… nothing.  They’d had a drink and he’d sent her home in a cab.  

At first, he’d thought maybe he needed a vacation or something.  But then he realized that what he needed was to stop comparing every woman to Francisca Rojas.  

The more he thought about it, the angrier at her he became.  She was just like the rest of her privileged ilk, swishing around in her Prada and pearls, positive that the moral high ground was her birthright and turning up her nose at the idea that sometimes life got messy.   And where the hell did she get off bludgeoning him for using a common phrase like “spin a story”?  People said that all the time, for fuck’s sake, it wasn’t intended as a moral indictment of her character.  I can’t date you if you think I did something bad?  What kind of bullshit was that?  Fuck, he hated rich, entitled people like her.

 *********

Her skirt was soft, brushed suede and fit her beautifully, modest and insanely sexy at the same time.  Rafael could only imagine the price tag.   Her silky fuchsia button-down blouse was a filmy, clingy cloud that exerted a draw on his eyes so powerful that he constantly had to refocus, tearing his gaze from the few buttons she’d casually left undone and the swell of her breasts.  It physically hurt him, somewhere in the center of his chest, to look at her and want her as much as he did, to remember what it was like to work and argue and laugh with her, sick with the knowledge that, in truth, she was not who he’d briefly allowed himself to imagine she was.  Instead, he had been right all along.  She was everything he hated.

“I needed to talk to you about something.  I’d really rather not discuss this here, and I’m sorry I had to ask Carmen to put me on your schedule, but I haven’t been able to connect with you.”

“What is it you need, Doctor?”  Was Barba’s voice cold?  Was he purposely continuing to focus on his computer screen rather than look at her?  That was not what she’d come to expect from him.  She had never seen him intentionally impolite, but he was now.

“May I close your door?”

He waved nonchalantly, still not looking at her.

“May I sit?”  The edge that now crept into in her voice finally made him look up.  

“Go ahead,” he said without inflection, flicking a hand in the direction of the chairs before his desk.

Maybe he thought she was still upset with him.  Of course, she thought, that had to be it.  He didn’t know why she was here.  “I’ve learned some things that you deserve to know.  And I owe you an apology.”

He didn’t respond.  He stayed still, not a flicker of emotion crossing his closed features, and he said nothing.  What the hell?

“I know why Juwon Jefferson came forward with his information about Alan Canady.  I swear on my mother’s grave that I didn’t kill Alan, and I believe that every word Jefferson said was true.  But you were right.  He was… coerced.”

Still Barba said nothing.  He kept his face completely neutral, but his breathing had become just a bit deeper and, consciously or not, he was clenching his jaw.  Which didn’t look to Frankie like surprise.  Well, she’d expected him to be mad.  He was entitled to some righteous anger at her for taking such a holier-than-thou attitude with him when she left his apartment. She’d certainly expected a hefty ration of mocking for being so wrong.  Except this looked like… disgust.  Hate, almost.

“I needed to tell you that you were right, and I was wrong.  And I apologize to you for the way I reacted.”

Frankie had said what she had to say, so she waited for him to respond.  Maybe he was thinking about what he wanted to say?  She tried to be patient and give him time to do that.  It ended up taking a full minute.

“And what is it you want from me in return for this blinding revelation that I can, in fact, see what’s right in front of my nose and may perhaps not be an entirely soulless bottom-dweller after all?  Or am I giving myself too much credit?”

Frankie recoiled as though he had struck her.  She felt like he had. 

“I think you once told me you like being on the receiving end of an apology.”  She tried a small smile, which died as she looked into his eyes.

“I don’t particularly like anything about this conversation, Doctor.  What is it you want?”

“Barba, I…  I don’t want anything from you.”

“Then why are you here?”

“I don’t understand.  What…  We were starting to be friends before Jefferson, weren’t we?  And I messed that up.  I’m trying to fix that.  I need you to know that I know you were right, but I’m having a hard time dealing with that, and I…  just…”

“Ah.  So that’s it.  You want absolution.  You want me to tell you that you’re still pure as the driven snow, even though somebody else had to get dirty to keep you that way, and I had the regrettably poor breeding to mention it.” 

“What?  No, I…” 

“Apology accepted.  Now, did you need anything else?  Anything work-related?” 

“What’s this about?  Why are you talking to me like this?  I said I was wrong, and I’m sorry…”

“I heard you.  And I’ve accepted your apology.  You’ll forgive me if I don’t give you a damn parade for it.”

“I don’t want-“

“What do you want?  I’ve asked you that several times since you waltzed in here and I have yet to get an answer.  I have things to do, even if you don’t.” 

Frankie was blindsided and too wounded even to feel anger at this point.  She was too appalled even to cry.  This was far worse than when Alan had turned on her.  With Alan, there had been some warning.  It had come on gradually.  Besides which, she had never had deep feelings for Alan.  But this, with Barba…  she had fallen in love with him, never having the first inkling this side of him existed.  So he had been able to get right next to her heart before he struck. 

She stumbled out of his office, her only instinct being to run.  Just as it had been with Alan.

Unbelievable.  It was exactly as he’d thought.  Expressing all sorts of wonderment at having discovered – apparently all by herself, as though Barba hadn’t said it to her five minutes after it happened - that someone beat the tar out of Juwon Jefferson to make him come forward.  And then she just sat there, all big eyes and expectation, as though he was going to – what?  Thank her for sharing?  Congratulate her on her wisdom and foresight in having friends who would put themselves in that kind of jeopardy for her?  It had been all he could do not to throw her out of his office.  

 ******************

The suspect was a notorious South American playboy, son of a diplomat, who appeared entirely uninterested in the severity of the aggravated rape charges pending against him.  The entire Western Hemisphere knew that Guillermo Maduro could speak English if he chose, but he insisted on being interrogated in Spanish, which meant that Barba and Rojas were doing the questioning.  They both hated Maduro on sight, as did everyone who had been involved in his arrest.  That wasn’t going to get them any evidence they could use, however, which was why, at that moment, Frankie was laughing softly at his inappropriate joke and touching her hair. 

Maduro was a pig.  He kept aiming his hooded gaze at her breasts, then raising his eyebrows.  She wanted to pull a garbage bag over herself to protect her body from his leer, but she swallowed her disgust and preened instead.  Barba wanted to kill him.  As he watched Maduro basically lick Francisca with his eyes, Barba had recurring fantasies of taking him out with a hatchet.  

“Come on, Doctor, it’s different for people like us, yes?” Maduro’s voice, as he apparently tried to sound smooth, sounded instead like a cold lump of Vaseline.

Barba could feel his pulse throbbing in his temples.  He remembered hearing someone say something like that, a long time ago, to differentiate themselves from him.    

“Tell me,” Frankie said.  Every instinct she had told her to punch Maduro in his drooling mug.   Instead, she tried to look demure and interested instead.  “What does that mean?”

“Those people, they have all these tired rules.”  

“Such as?”

“Oh, come now, Doctor.  This woman, she says I attacked her.  I did not attack.  A man like me, I do not need to attack.  But your police pretend to believe her because of the news.  They must look as though they believe that woman over me.”

“But they should believe you over her,” Frankie said.

“Well,” Maduro bestowed his wide, white, greasy smile on her.  “Of course, we cannot say these things too loudly. You know how those kind of people are.  People who do not understand, they will misinterpret.”

It came to Barba in that moment where he had last heard someone so shamelessly asserting that money and social standing came with different rules. It had been at Harvard, during a cocktail party that Rafael had attended as an officer of La Alianza, the Latino student association at the law school.  He was standing close together with two other officers of the group, feeling small and wildly out of place.  His little knot of overwhelmed students were standing just to the side of a large, well-lubricated group in which a tall, red-faced white man was holding forth about how admirable it was that Harvard allowed “those kinds of people” to attend so that they could return home and “fix their neighborhoods.”  The talk went on to a discussion of how “people like that” simply had “different values,” “didn’t understand how we do things” and, after graduation would be happiest if they returned to where they were “comfortable.”  From there, it had only gotten worse.  By the time Rafael finally signaled that they should simply leave, the President of La Alianza, a young woman of Venezuelan descent who seemed mousy until she opened her mouth and blew you away with her rhetorical skills, actually had tears in her eyes.  Maduro would have fit right in with that Harvard crowd except, of course, that he would not have been welcome.

“You can tell us,” Frankie purred.  “We’ll understand.”

“Yes, I can see by your clothes, both of you, that you are not like the police.  We are a different sort, aren’t we?  We understand each other.”

For a moment, Frankie thought that Barba had exploded out of his chair in order to attack Maduro.  She wouldn’t have blamed him, but she prepared to try to intervene.

“Dr. Rojas, a word, please.”  His voice was low and tight.

In the squad room, Rafael poured himself a cup of coffee and drank half of it before he spoke.

¿Estas bien?  ¿Cuál es el problema?[1]  Frankie asked, concern evident on her face and in her posture as she stood and touched his arm.  He roughly threw her hand from him.  That stung, but she chose to ignore it.

“That man is…  I can’t even think of words vile enough.”

“And you know all the good ones, too,” she said, trying to lighten the mood.  “Good idea to take a break for a while.”

They walked slowly back toward the hallway where Benson, Dodds, and Carisi stood in front of the one-way window into the interrogation room, chatting together.  Still speaking Spanish, Frankie and Rafael stayed to the side of that group as Frankie tried to understand what was happening with Barba.  Of course, she had been trying to figure that out since he’d basically tossed her out of his office the other day, but that was a different matter.

“I find it incomprehensible that you can be so obsequious to him.”

“I’m not being obsequious.  Maybe a lot more sympathetic than I really feel…”

“He doesn’t seem to bother you.”  

That got under Frankie’s skin.  “Well, I’m going to take that as a compliment to my rapport-building skills, because I detest that prick.  When he’s gone, I’m gonna bleach my brain to get him out.  This whole precinct.  Maybe the entire city.”

“Really.”  Rafael’s voice had a nasty edge.

Frankie was stunned.  He could not be serious.  He could not be saying that he thought she had any sympathy for that cretin.  “Of course, really.  I fucking hate that asshole.”

“Are you sure?  Because that’s not what it looks like from here.”

“That’s not what it’s supposed to look like from here.  You do understand what I’m trying to do here, right?”

“Yeah, I’m familiar with the basic concept of flirtation, Doctor.”

The hurt in her eyes was unmistakable, as was the shock at this fresh assault.  She physically flinched.  When she responded, there was no trace of challenge, vanity, or anything resembling humor in her voice.  There was only a raw plea.

“Barba, can we be real for just a second?  Please?  This man is filth.  I want to just brick in the windows and doors and leave him in there to rot.  Yeah, I’m trying to build rapport with him by putting my gag reflex on hold and pretending to be sympathetic.  Because that’s my job.   I’m doing it to get him.  Is that not clear to you?  You and I are on the same side.”

“People like you and Maduro, are you ever really on any side, other than your own?”

She didn’t intend to do it.  She didn’t even see it coming.  If she had, she certainly would have stopped herself.  But when she heard Barba, the man she loved, lump her together with the smarmy, hateful rapist in the box, Frankie emitted a loud, wordless yell as the last of her patience frayed and snapped.  She reached back and slapped him across the face as hard as she possibly could.  Which was pretty hard. 

“You prejudiced snob asshole!  I am nothing like him!  And I will finish this interrogation on my own because I really, really need you to get the fuck out of my sight.”

There was no sound but the soft clunk of Rafael’s shoes as he walked out of the squad room.

Frankie turned a deep shade of red and stormed back into the interrogation room.

Standing next to the one-way glass, Dodds leaned in to Carisi, asking softly, “What do you suppose he said?”

“With Barba?  It’s anyone’s guess.  I’m just glad I got to be here to see that!”

“Neither of you saw that,” Olivia said severely.

Carisi blinked, innocence flowing down to cover his expression like a mask.  “Saw what, Lieu?” 

Olivia went into the box.  She wasn’t exactly bilingual, but her Spanish would have to do.  It was enough.  By the time she and Rojas emerged again, Frankie had flirted Guillermo Maduro into a noose he was not going to escape.   Olivia didn’t think some of the names she’d called him after his confession were particularly necessary, but then she didn’t think they were all really aimed at Maduro, either.

 Rafael walked down the hall to the elevators, holding his cheek and smiling like an absolute lunatic.  In one second, the bottom had dropped out of his carefully-constructed self-delusion at the same time a blinding ray of hope pierced the sky.  That slap had hurt for sure.  But now he understood, and he knew that he deserved it.

Francisca Rojas was nothing like the caricature he’d painted of her in his mind, and she’d done absolutely nothing to deserve the way he’d treated her. She had been nothing but her genuine self every moment he’d known her.  It was all him.  He was the asshole.  

He had treated her like absolute garbage when they’d met, for no reason other than his own – well, she’d said it - snobbery and prejudice.  But then, as soon as he could swoop in and protect her from Alan Canady, and be her stability when she’d been rocked to her core by her arrest, he had been perfectly happy to fall in love with her.  Yes, Barba, admit it, you fell in love even before she did. Because when she was in need, he could feel superior to her.  But the moment she’d begun to recover, to show signs of strength and self-sufficiency, he’d reverted to the scholarship kid from Harvard and rejected her before she could reject him.  Or something like that.  It didn’t matter.  What mattered was that he had finally seen the truth of who she’d been all along, and it was so clear and obvious he marveled at his own disastrous ability to pretend otherwise for as long as he had. 

Oh, he was a complete and utter dick; he had no illusions about that anymore.  But he would make that up to her if it took him the rest of his life, and he would love every second of it.  And she’d let him.  No matter what he had to do, he would get her back, and he would make her let him apologize to her until she could no longer even remember what he was apologizing for.  Rafael would never have imagined he could be so deliriously happy about getting smacked around by the woman he loved in front of a room full of cops.  

What to do?  Fill her apartment with roses.  No, she was a little too pissed for that right now; she was likely to stuff them all in his apartment and take a flamethrower to them.  Go to her on his knees with the biggest diamond ring he could find.  No again, and for the same reason.  If he put his chin in the neighborhood of her legs right now, she would boot him into New Jersey.  Hold a boom box over his head outside her apartment window?  Still no.  She said she could shoot the eye out of… something small.  The point was, that wasn’t going to work. 

 OK, he was going to have to find a way to get her to at least hear what he had to say.  He smiled evilly.  There was one sure-fire way to do that.  And he knew some very clever people who would help him make it happen.  By the time she figured out she’d been had, hopefully he would have at least talked her into not killing him.  What was a little unlawful imprisonment after everything else he’d done to her?

 For the rest of the day, Rafael felt really stupid wearing a dopey grin around all the time.  But he couldn’t seem to get rid of it. 

 ***************

“Carisi, I got an assignment for you.”

“Yeah, Sarge.  What is it?”

“Well, it’s a little bit off the books.  So feel free to say no.  It’s kind of a personal favor for Barba.”

 ************

Sitting in the back seat of the squad car, Frankie thought this might be what an out-of-body experience felt like.  She had been upset for days after Barba had basically thrown her out of his office, and she still had no idea what she’d done to deserve it.  Then, today, the things he’d said…  The things he’d accused her of…  And then, as though she had never done the slightest bit of work on controlling her temper, as though she was a teenage drama queen or a big-haired siren on a telenovela, she’d slapped Barba across the face in front of the entire NYPD.  Or at least, that’s how it had felt.  

Now, as though she wasn’t unhinged enough, Dodds and Carisi were hustling her to some building somewhere, where there was a man who needed… something. It was all still confusing to her, but Dodds kept reassuring her that they just needed her psychiatric expertise to talk to this guy.  He didn’t have a hostage.  He didn’t have any weapons, there was no danger, he was just a guy who, for some reason unfathomable to Frankie, they needed her to talk to.  It was ridiculous and doomed to failure, because she knew absolutely nothing about this man or what his issues were, but Frankie had worked for a federal bureaucracy for a long time.  Sometimes the brass made decisions for reasons known only to them and God.  And sometimes even God was a little iffy on the logic.  

The car pulled up to a small, empty-looking unit in an industrial park.  In the fading light of late afternoon, the unit appeared to be a few offices attached to a larger space that could be used for a small manufacturing or warehousing business. It was sort of a lonely-looking area since it was after business hours and at least half the units appeared to be untenanted.   

“OK, so, Doc, you stay here.  We’re gonna go in, do a little recon, talk to the guy and see if everything’s secure.  Won’t take more than a minute or two.  As long as everything’s kosher, we’ll come out and get you.”

“OK, whatever.  I still say this is a jacked up way to be doing things.”

“Welcome to the NYPD,” Carisi grinned, unfolding his long legs from the vehicle.

The two walked toward the door of the unit, tried it and found it unlocked, then went in.  In her tired irritation, Frankie nonetheless had a second to notice how good Dodds and Carisi looked together.  She really hoped something nice would happen for them.  Which kicked her mind back over into the track it had been stuck in. What the hell was the matter with Rafael Barba?  And what was she going to do about it?

Only a few minutes later, Dodds and Carisi stepped out the front door of the office section of the unit, signaling her.  Frankie sighed, looped her carryall over her shoulder, and got out of the car.  She went to them.

“So?  What’s the situation?”

“It’s all good.  Come on in,” Dodds said.  “Everything’s copacetic, we just need you to talk to this guy.”

Shaking her head slightly, Frankie walked through the door Carisi held open for her.  She didn’t see the look that passed between him and Dodds behind her.  She found herself in a small reception area empty of furniture, with a short hallway running toward a door that appeared to connect to the larger workroom/warehouse section of the unit.  Two doors opened on each side of the hallway.

“He’s in the last office on the left,” Dodds said.  “We’ll wait here in the lobby.”

Frankie walked uncertainly down the hallway to the door Dodds had indicated, then knocked.

“Come in,” a male voice said.  

She opened the door and was stunned to see Barba sitting on the edge of a bare metal desk.  

“What the hell…?”  She said.

“Come on in.  Have a seat,” he said, indicating two cheap stacking chairs with metal frames and torn fabric seats.  

“What’s going on?” Frankie asked, scowling at Barba and considering backing up out of the room.

“I need to talk to you,” he answered, his voice softer and kinder than she’d heard it for months.

At that moment, she heard the front door of the unit close, and the sound of something metal.  

“What...”  She turned and rushed down the hall to see Dodds and Carisi just finishing padlocking the door on the outside.  She yelled at them and pounded on the door, but they simply waved at her, smiling, and went to sit in their squad car.

She pulled her phone from her carryall and texted Dodds.

Frankie Rojas:

WTF

Mike Dodds:

Listen to him.

Frankie Rojas:

I will break the glass out of this door.

Mike Dodds:

Good luck with that.  It’s unbreakable Hammerglass.  Let him say what he has to say.

 She tried Carisi.

 Frankie Rojas:

Don’t be a party to this BS – you’re nicer than them.

Sonny Carisi:

Dodds is my boss, Barba’s helping me get hooked up with the D.A.’s office.

Frankie Rojas:

I am vengeful and creative and have a long memory.

Sonny Carisi:

He needs to talk to you. Let him.

 Frankie blew out her breath in annoyance as she leaned her back against the wall of the lobby.  From down the hall she heard Barba call, “I could have told you they’re on my side, but you would have tried anyway.”

“I could call other cops.  Cops who don’t owe you favors,” she shouted to him.

“That’s why Dodds and Carisi are staying.  Just in case they need to intervene.”

“I really hate you right now.”

“I know.  But you’ll get over it.”

 [1]   Are you OK? What’s the problem?

@scarletsoldierrr thanks for asking to be tagged and liking "I get around” Barba!

[my-bread]

I used to be an Onision fan. Here’s what happened.

I’m going to go ahead and say that this is a longer post, so I know most people won’t read all of it, so here’s the short and sweet: I used to love onision videos. Now I don’t. Somewhere in there I get stabbed and come out as queer. I give some bad advice and say goodbye. Story over.

For those willing to read the entire thing, find a good place to sit, this is a long one.

I got introduced to Onision by a friend of mine. We had just got done shooting guns in his backyard and wanted to watch some YouTube videos, and he asked me if I had ever seen the “I’m a banana” song. We watched it as well as some other stupid videos. At the time we both loved comedy sketch and controversial humor so Onision was like a gold mine to us.

This was about the time where I started to make my own opinions about things in life. I started to take stances on certain subjects, I started trying to figure out who I was, I wanted to stop shooting guns, color my hair, become vegetarian, get some piercings, and eventually, wanted to come out as queer. I lived in a small conservative town so YouTube was how I learned about everything, got exposed to everything, and I definitely became obsessed.

I loved so many big name YouTubers practically religiously, and Onision was one of them. But the world of YouTube was changing, and shock humor sketch comedy was no longer on the forefront of the website. But unlike the other YouTubers who were trying to change with the times, Onision continued with his videos practically unfaltered. Practically cornering the market of self produced sketch comedy and parody. That was what made me continue watching was the fact that he was still self produced, unlike a lot of other creators who had large scale productions, management, employees, contracts, he presented as an original content creator.

I started coming out as queer to my close friends, with some understanding and others not. I had some very dark nights where the only thing that kept me from doing something stupid was parody videos. Onision (UhOhBro especially) had helped me a lot. And at the time I didn’t really know there was a controversy, I was just a anxious/depressed kid who had a bad sense in jokes. To me at the time Onision seemed like a good guy. While yes, his humor was dark, offensive, and probably wrong on so many levels, he seemed to have good morals and I shared his same views (at least the ones he had when I was that age) I saw Onision as someone who had been in the military but was for gun control, someone who believed in women’s rights, someone who believed in gay rights, a vegetarian, and someone who was against child abuse and mutilation. Views that were not found around where I lived.

It was around this time where I had lost a very valuable friendship in a really ironic way. The same friend from earlier (the one who intoduced me to Onision) and I were just finishing up going through his knife collection when he made some sort of side comment about how it would be hilarious if Onision made a video with a certain other YouTuber. (I’m leaving their name out to be polite because this is supposed to be about my time as an Onision fan, but from what happens next, anyone with basic understanding of Onision drama will know exactly who it is.) I lost it laughing, because the insane fangirl I was knew that they had kissed before and had a falling out. This is also when I rushed to get out my phone and show him the video. Him being extremely homophobic was disgusted by the video and instantly became revolted by Onision. Being the queer kid that I am (I was not out to him) tried to get him to understand (especially since we were so close) but the argument just got more heated, I was trying to defend gay rights, he was trying to convince me that it was wrong beyond sin, and after lots of yelling it ended with a decent sized cut on my arm from the knife he was holding in his hand. (He didn’t stab me on purpose FYI. It was a total accident) I was on the ground crying, mainly because I didn’t want to get stitches, and he was wrapping up my arm, cleaning up all the blood, telling me that as long as wore long sleeves for a little bit, my parents wouldn’t even have to know. Now this is where you would expect us to have a romantic moment, our eyes meet, and he would kiss me, we would fall in love, but no. That’s not what happened. I just simply looked had him, still crying as we sat on the floor, arm all wrapped up in gause, clothes covered in blood, that I was queer. I was still crying, and he helped me get to my feet. He stayed silent, getting me a clean shirt to walk home in, from his closet. After I changed, he was giving me a hug, telling me he was sorry, that he would pray for me, that I was still one of his best friends, that it didn’t change anything that I was queer. But it definitely did, because after I left his house that night, we haven’t talked since. I cried all night that night and the only thing that gave me any kind of happiness was Onision videos. The same videos that had also made my hyper conservative, super pro gun, sexist, homophobic, ultra religious, believer in ‘children are property’ friend happy. Looking back I can tell that Onisions values were not the most structurally sound, but hindsight is 20/20.

I stayed a fan for quite some time, never getting too involved, but occasionally getting smack from my friends for watching his videos because of his controversies that were happening at the time. Then, the adpocolypse had begun on YouTube.

Lots of creators were effected by this, not going to lie, but no one handled it quite like Onision. Like that last huge algorithm change, Onision stayed mostly the same. Still making stereotypical sketch comedy. But because of his language and content choices, could get barely any ads on any of the videos across any of his channels. So the patreon ads began, and I honestly don’t mind when creators promote their patreons. Their are plenty of people that I watch still that premote it, but it’s just how Onisiony he promoted it.

Onision has always been very vocal about his opinions, and if he’s upset about something he will make a statement. The same thing happened with patreon. Almost every joke turned to “for patreons only” or “unsensored hentai break on patreon” videos became less and less about what they were supposed to be, and more just an ad for patreon. Which I was not a fan of. I don’t know if it was just I had gotten older, or my comedic tastes have changed, but I was starting to not find his videos funny. They seemed brash, with overdone characters, rushed production, stale acting, over the top themes, and just trying too hard to hold on to the same thing he had been doing for ten years. I was never a fan of the ‘hot or not’ videos, and slowly he just faded out of my recommendation list when I got online. I never had some major realization while I was watching his videos that I didn’t like them, I just slowly stopped watching.

And the truth is, I would still go back and watch his old comedy sketch, or UhOhBro, or shock humor because I still find those videos funny.

But then I started seeing it from the other side. And oh boy with was a shit show. When I was a fan of Onision, I never saw any of the controversy. Literally zero. Especially since I was a fan of his comedy work. You’d see the ‘apology videos’ or the ‘my side of the story’ but as a fan I literally knew nothing that was going on. Everything was phrased in those videos to not seem as serious as they could potentially be, or be just as serious of a situation but make it look neutral, and that no one person was the instigator. But as soon as you step away from the crowd and saw the whole show, it was a lot more complex. As a fan, at least in my experience, everything was seen as under control. That everyone else is overreacting. That were within our bounds, everything is fine, this isn’t really that bad. It’s just YouTube videos, just jokes. Everything was fine. But everything definitely isn’t fine. That’s for damn sure. When I followed his content, I would never come across anyone’s complaints about his content. Now that I don’t follow his content, I probably see a new controversy of his a month.

I completely understand why people who follow him so blindly do, because from their standpoint, he is a poster child. But it doesn’t mean he still hasn’t done wrong things.

Looking back, you can see his content change over the years, but in some ways it still stays the same. It’s all still controversial. It didn’t really matter if it was shock humor or scandals, it was still views, still ad revenue, still his life. And you can see he’s burned out over the years. Just trying to get content out and keep the numbers up any way he can. But always trying to stay true to what he founded his channel on. Shock humor and angst.

As my (very unqualified) advice to Onision. It’s okay to change what kind of content you make. Emo Charlie and Chibi are literally ten years old. Your sketch characters could be in the 5th grade learning long division and growing out of the Disney channel. I know there are new characters but they are still around. That says how much your content has changed. Also, you are the final filter for your content. You ultimately decide what goes on the Internet under your name. You decide how private or public your life is. No one is forcing you to upload personal content. Sometimes someone else might try to paint you in a bad light but so be it. Fight fire with water, I promise you it’s more effective. Finally, think about what you actually stand for. People call you out for a lot of stuff and actually stop and think about if your actually doing it. Don’t just blindly shoot back a response.

Of course I do not expect him to ever take any of that advice, but I’ll just put that out there so maybe someday it might just find it’s way to him.

Thank you Onision for helping me through my adolescence, I do not regret to inform you I will not be watching your videos. My best regards.

[xtruss]

The Powerful New Financial Argument for Fossil-Fuel Divestment

A report by BlackRock, the world’s largest investment house, shows that those who have divested have profited not only morally but also financially.

— By Bill McKibben | April 3, 2021 | The New Yorker

Protesters have argued that you shouldn’t try to profit off the end of the world. New analysis shows that, in any event, you won’t. Photograph by David Grossman / Alamy

In a few months, a small British financial think tank will mark the tenth anniversary of the publication of a landmark research report that helped launch the global fossil-fuel-divestment movement. As that celebration takes place, another seminal report—this one obtained under the Freedom of Information Act from the world’s largest investment house—closes the loop on one of the key arguments of that decade-long fight. It definitively shows that the firms that joined that divestment effort have profited not only morally but also financially.

The original report, from the London-based Carbon Tracker Initiative, found something stark: the world’s fossil-fuel companies had five times more carbon in their reserves than scientists thought we could burn and stay within any sane temperature target. The numbers meant that, if those companies carried out their business plans, the planet would overheat. At the time, I discussed the report with Naomi Klein, who, like me, had been a college student when divestment campaigns helped undercut corporate support for apartheid, and to us this seemed a similar fight; indeed, efforts were already under way at a few scattered places like Swarthmore College, in Pennsylvania. In July, 2012, I published an article in Rolling Stone calling for a broader, large-scale campaign, and, over the next few years, helped organize roadshows here and abroad. Today, portfolios and endowments have committed to divest nearly fifteen trillion dollars; the most recent converts, the University of Michigan and Amherst College, made the pledge in the last week.

No one really pushed back against the core idea behind the campaign—the numbers were clear—but two reasonable questions were asked. One was, would divestment achieve tangible results? The idea was that, at the least, it would tarnish the fossil-fuel industry, and would, eventually, help constrain its ability to raise investment money. That’s been borne out over time: as the stock picker Jim Cramer put it on CNBC a year ago, “I’m done with fossil fuels. . . . They’re just done.” He continued, “You’re seeing divestiture by a lot of different funds. It’s going to be a parade. It’s going to be a parade that says, ‘Look, these are tobacco, and we’re not going to own them.’ ”

The second question was: Would investors lose money? Early proponents such as the investor Tom Steyer argued that, because fossil fuel threatened the planet, it would come under increased regulatory pressure, even as a new generation of engineers would be devising ways to provide cleaner and cheaper energy using wind and sun and batteries. The fossil-fuel industry fought back—the Independent Petroleum Association of America, for instance, set up a Web site crowded with research papers from a few academics arguing that divestment would be a costly financial mistake. One report claimed that “the loss from divestment is due to the simple fact that a divested portfolio is suboptimally diversified, as it excludes one of the most important sectors of the economy.”

As the decade wore on, and more investors took the divestment plunge, that argument faltered: the philanthropic Rockefeller Brothers Fund said that divestment had not adversely affected their returns, and the investment-fund guru Jeremy Grantham published data showing that excluding any single sector of the economy had no real effect on long-term financial returns. But the Rockefeller Brothers and Grantham were active participants in the fight against global warming, so perhaps, the fossil-fuel industry suggested, motivated reasoning was influencing their conclusions.

The latest findings are making that charge difficult to sustain. For one thing, they come from the research arm of BlackRock, a company that has been under fire from activists for its longtime refusal to do much about climate. (The company’s stance has slowly begun to shift. Last January, Larry Fink, its C.E.O., released a letter to clients saying that climate risk would lead them to “reassess core assumptions about modern finance.”) BlackRock carried out the research over the past year for two major clients, the New York City teachers’ and public employees’ retirement funds, which were considering divestment and wanted to know the financial risk involved. Bernard Tuchman, a retiree in New York City and a member of Divest NY, a nonprofit advocacy group, used public-records requests to obtain BlackRock’s findings from the city late last month. Tuchman then shared them with the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, a nonprofit that studies the energy transition.

In places, BlackRock’s findings are redacted, so as not to show the size of particular holdings, but the conclusions are clear: after examining “divestment actions by hundreds of funds worldwide,” the BlackRock analysts concluded that the portfolios “experienced no negative financial impacts from divesting from fossil fuels. In fact, they found evidence of modest improvement in fund return.” The report’s executive summary states that “no investors found negative performance from divestment; rather, neutral to positive results.” In the conclusion to the report, the BlackRock team used a phrase beloved by investors: divested portfolios “outperformed their benchmarks.”

In a statement, the investment firm downplayed that language, saying, “BlackRock did not make a recommendation for TRS to divest from fossil fuel reserves. The research was meant to help TRS determine a path forward to meet their stated divestment goals.” But Tom Sanzillo—I.E.E.F.A.’s director of financial analysis, and a former New York State first deputy comptroller who oversaw a hundred-and-fifty-billion-dollar pension fund—said in an interview that BlackRock’s findings were clear. “Any investment fund looking to protect itself against losses from coal, oil, and gas companies now has the largest investment house in the world showing them why, how, and when to protect themselves, the economy, and the planet.” In short, the financial debate about divestment is as settled as the ethical one—you shouldn’t try to profit off the end of the world and, in any event, you won’t.

These findings will gradually filter out into the world’s markets, doubtless pushing more investors to divest. But its impact will be more immediate if its author—BlackRock—takes its own findings seriously and acts on them. BlackRock handles more money than any firm in the world, mostly in the form of passive investments—it basically buys some of everything on the index. But, given the climate emergency, it would be awfully useful if, over a few years, BlackRock eliminated the big fossil-fuel companies from those indexes, something they could certainly do. And, given its own research findings, doing so would make more money for their clients—the pensioners whose money they invest.

BlackRock could accomplish even more than that. It is the biggest asset manager on earth, with about eight trillion dollars in its digital vaults. It also leases its Aladdin software system to other big financial organizations; last year, the Financial Times called Aladdin the “technology hub of modern finance.” BlackRock stopped revealing how much money sat on its system in 2017, when the figure topped twenty trillion dollars. Now, with stock prices soaring, the Financial Times reported that public documents from just a third of Aladdin’s clients show assets topping twenty-one trillion. Casey Harrell, who works with Australia’s Sunrise Project, an N.G.O. that urges asset managers to divest, believes that the BlackRock system likely directs at least twenty-five trillion in assets. “BlackRock’s own research explains the financial rationale for divestment,” Harrell told me. “BlackRock should be bold and proactively offer this as a core piece of its financial advice.”

What would happen if the world’s largest investment firm issued that advice and its clients followed it? Fifteen trillion dollars plus twenty-five trillion is a lot of money. It’s roughly twice the size of the current U.S. economy. It’s almost half the size of the total world economy. It would show that a report issued by a small London think tank a decade ago had turned the financial world’s view of climate upside down.

A previous version of this post incorrectly described some aspects of Tuchman’s public-records request.

— Bill McKibben is a founder of the grassroots climate campaign 350.org and a contributing writer to The New Yorker. He writes The Climate Crisis, The New Yorker’s newsletter on the environment.

[metamorpheus-blog1]

c h a r a c t e r + q u e s t i o n n a i r e

[ tw for: drug/alcohol use, death, mental illness ] 

Holy shit, why the fuck is this so long

BASICS

Full name: Marcus Christopher Russo

Any nicknames?: Morpheus, Mark, Marky, Russ, plus a slew of unflattering nicknames from old Army buddies that belong solely to that group of people. 

Age: 35 

Birthday/Zodiac sign: May 9th, 1982 // Taurus. Marcus has a majority of the typical Taurus traits: practical, dependable, down to earth. Regardless of his line of work, this isn’t a guy with a hair-trigger temper or the type to get his rocks off on on the violence in what he does, though he does have a very grim self awareness of just what kind of person he has to be to excel without apology at this job. That sense of strong commitment that keeps him nailed down to assignments with single-minded dedication tends to be a double-edged sword in the way it can overwhelm pretty much everything else and push it to the side in favor of finishing the task at hand. He’s the type that really needs and values internal stability in himself and others, which is BIG when it comes to why his lack of it is so self destructive. 

Height: 5′10. Taller guys, don’t talk shit.

Any tattoos, piercings?: 15 y/o Marcus had a bathroom + sewing needle variety of piercing in his left ear that has long since closed up and been forgotten. Cocky young recruit Marcus got the ‘onward to victory’ printed in neat stacked black script on his ribcage, right side, that he shares with three other recruits from his hometown (this phrase picked from several equally dramatic Big Damn Hero quotes they threw around, all freshly eighteen and very full of aspirations of being badasses), and under that, in ascending levels of freshness, are the month/year arrival and return dates for his three deployments. Deployment #1 has one small dot beside it, #3 has two, tallying those in his squadron ‘fallen in line of duty’, as much as he hates that term. There’s no ‘falling’ involved in an IED on the side of the road blasting you straight to hell but - ! Marcus’ bitterness internalized again, we move on to, of course, this classic number on his left forearm. 

FAVORITES

Sound: He likes NYC’s urban flavor of white noise. Anything repetitive without harshness to it: wind chimes, a clock ticking, steady rain. Back when he used to live on the coast in South Carolina, Marcus went in for all those soothing beach sounds, but the bustle on the city streets has its own charm against waves and seagulls. 

Color: Marcus lives in washed out colors, closer to neutrals, with a side of beige and olive green. Even his black is a little less harsh, like a t shirt that’s still being worn years after it’s faded and started collecting holes. His mind is all vibrant orange though, that Mad Max sandstorm orange, Norah’s orange when he thinks of her every time he peels a tangerine, that kind of desert orange that’s still stuck on him after all these years -- even if in the scope of his service, six years in the real world isn’t very long at all. 

Person: He won’t forgive himself if he says Artemis. That’s too much responsibility to put on her shoulders. So maybe not favorite, but most important? That’s pretty hefty too. Whatever it is, Sunny’s calming influence on this guy can’t be overstated. 

Memory: BCT, or basic training. Now listen, a lot of basic is really really shitty. Shitty food, shitty schedule, shitty exercise, the same shitty drills over and over and over every day. You get tear gassed in basic training. You sweat harder than you’ve ever sweat in your life and you go to bed at night absolutely exhausted. But BCT was the first time Marcus actually saw his future falling into place in a way he could be proud of, when he started to figure out his strengths and advance, and where he found people he could relate to and build friendships with. Really, with that in mind, he’d happily take the shitty food again. 

Place: Lmfao his apartment, messy as he and it are on the inside. Always good to have a good secure place to come back to. Weirdly enough though, he is also pretty comfortable with/fond of the Westside Dock, just because of the sheer amount of time he spends camped out there supervising deals from a distance just in case anything goes wrong. Zeus would’ve kept him parked plenty busy on his main trade, but Hades spreads Marcus over more varied tasks, which is what’s led to his familiarity with every boat, rooftop, and shipping container in that yard. He used to frequent the Warehouse with weekly regularity for the good live music, but understandably some work disagreements have rendered that a no-go zone.

Vice: He’s got the holy trio of Drugs, Booze, and Cigarettes going on, but in light of Madi’s favorite vice mini-meme I’m going to go with his complete lack of any sort of positive coping mechanisms or drive to start trying to develop them. Marcus’ constant self-reassurance is ‘it could be so much worse stop being a whiny bitch’, even the very middle of a panic attack, so shout out to that toxic suck-it-up type of masculinity the Army cultivates along with an unhealthy dose of ‘mental illness isn’t that extreme’ mentality. Keep tellin yourself that, bud.

HAVE THEY EVER…

Been in love?: Yes, in both the high school puppy variety and his one experience in slow-burning, real n’ deep adult love. 

Done drugs?: Oh yeah, and a pretty big variety. Marcus’ hard limit is anything requiring a needle, he knows just how easy it is to fall headlong into addiction with something that potent. Most of his heaviest various drug use was high school and right after his discharge, but he’s settled into a routine of pot whenever the opportunity shows itself and the rare bump of cocaine when he really really needs it. The latter tends to allow him to get what he needs done done, but it understandably sends his mental state straight to shit in the fallout, not to mention it’s an expensive for a picker-upper.  Cocaine is down as something that happens a handful of times a year, maybe. Doing a line is, in his mind, a lot less extreme than shooting something up straight to your veins. Marky’s pretty willfully blind to the fact that something you snort can be just as addictive as something you inject. 

Killed someone?: 

Marcus isn’t really keeping track of that number anymore. There’s a lot of the emotional part of his psyche that gets turned off for this process -- it’s not a person, it’s not murder, it’s a mission, you get it done clean and fast and you get out. Never think of a mark as an individual, complex human being. You’re screwed the second you do.

Betrayed someone’s trust?: Not on the scale of large deceptions. Eurydice might just count, positive and unsuspecting enough as their interactions were before Cronus’ order came down and Marcus had a hit to carry out. But, he reasons, it is the mob. Their definition of trust stands on shaky ground. And thinking that, it’s hard for him to resist the urge to just laugh at how malformed his morality has gotten these past few years.

Had their heart broken?: I mean, yeah, but he did it his damn self and he still thinks it was the right thing. Ending the engagement would never hurt as much as going through with it and waking up twenty years down the road, miserably unhappy. Norah is the closest he’s ever gotten to feeling truly understood but shackling her to his troubled ass would only bog her down and foster a resent towards him he could honestly never hypothetically blame her for feeling. We’ll call it heart break in the name of the greater good. 

Lost someone?: Everyone in the combat zone has a story about losing someone, but Marcus never felt his squad buddies were so close to him he had that kind of ownership over their lives to say they were someone he’d ‘lost’. No close family members dead either, Norah might be something closer to loss if their split hadn’t been his choice. So no, there’s no one he’s mourning, just some still strangely vacant spaces in his mental roster and more than enough persistent ghosts left in his memories.

DO THEY…

Have any pets?: Nope, though he is very firmly a dog person.

Have a family they still talk to?: Yes, but he’s not overly fond of doing it, #1 Son of the Year. Maria and Randy are still firmly parked in Newburgh and it’s honestly just depressing to him to call home and visualize them sitting in the same shitty house on the same shitty couch living the same aimless repetitive lives. 

Have a best friend?: It’s tempting to say Artemis again, real tempting in the kneejerk way, but he’s got way too much insecurity around their relationship and how much pressure his problems can put on a person once they’re close enough to know about them to weigh her down with best friend, if that’s even the phrase for what their relationship is. He’s not about to try and compete with the likes of Apollo and Dionysus either, not when he knows how much they both mean to her. 

Want to get married and/or have kids?: Oh boy. Well, there’s a difference between wanting it and actually pursuing it. Marcus is of the give-your-kids-a-better-life-than-you mentality and he doesn’t think he could do that now that he’s pretty deep in an illegal lifestyle. As for marriage, we all know about his track record with that. 

Want to leave?: He might, if he had any idea of where else he could go without immediately falling into the mental Pit of Despair. NYC has pretty much everything keeping him somewhat together. 

THIS OR THAT?

CALL OR TEXT; texting is convenient but there’s too much in tone and word choice left up for interpretation and it can turn into a liability when he’s got time-sensitive information he needs to know. Marcus almost always calls, especially if it’s about a job; texting is for sharing contact information or an address, or more casual ‘off-duty’ plans.

WEALTH OR LOYALTY; loyalty wins out, but just barely. Wealth is mighty tempting to someone who’s never had it, but at the same time, he’s never had it. When it comes down to choosing one or the other, wealth is the one he’s most capable of living without (no matter how sweet it would be to have). There’s the added fact that genuine excessive wealth makes him almost uncomfortable?? There’s the conspicuous feeling off a sign taped to his back that tells more bougie people ‘this man considers Kraft the superior kind of cheese’ and that’s not gonna change if he suddenly pulls the winning lotto ticket at the minimart below his apartment. 

LOVE OR LUST; not that Marcus is some heartbroken cynic cruising bars every night, but lust is easy and manageable and the occasional one night stand gets lost in the big city without any of those pesky loose ends; it’s been six years and the soreness of parting ways with Norah isn’t so fresh he feels her absence like he did first time he went home with a girl in NYC. He’s not about to entertain any fantasies of romance. The pool of people with shared life experience, or at least similar enough experiences to understand, is... small, to say the least. Why rope some poor unsuspecting soul into his personal whirlpool of bullshit? 

5 FRIENDS OR 100 ACQUAINTANCES; that’s a lot closer to his situation now, Marcus doesn’t tend to accumulate close friends, or at least semi-purposefully he doesn’t. He’s good at that kind of (surprisingly) pleasant, simple interaction that tends to fix a version of himself in people’s minds that doesn’t invite further speculation or questions (though if you ask, he’ll nine times out of ten be an open book). What you see with Mark is what you get, unless you stumble into or purposefully try for something deeper. 

SUMMER OR WINTER; you’d think summer, considering Marcus’ open air approach to his apartment (though that’s more of a claustrophobia thing than anything else), but he finds winter a lot more manageable and he’s had more than enough time in the Middle East to properly enjoy heat, even though going outside when it’s warm and he isn’t wearing 60 pounds of gear is a little treasure in itself. People are easier to track during winter too, their patterns are more predictable, there’s less roaming outside when it’s fuckin cold. 

OTHERS:

Wanted plots/connections: will be linked soon!

[ruetheend]

BitterBlossoms - Chapter 3: Ruins, a moral compass.

The story so far: Frisk learned more about Tori, Asgore, and Flowey. It seems that in this timeline, Tori and Asgore are not royalty. Meanwhile, Frisk suffers from her own memories as she prepares to battle the ex-captain of the royal guard, Tori Dreemurr.

Click to read the chapter below.

Chapter 3

Author’s Note: Best read on AO3. For original readers of this fic who are wondering where all the chapters have gone, check out my update.

Frisk made an attempt to smile as her adoptive mother placed a piece of pie down on the table before her, but her expression remained neutral despite her intentions. It was hard for Frisk to feel anything aside from a singular feeling of loathing. It had been months since the incident, and Toriel grew more and more concerned with her daughter's behavior. The human girl barely managed to pass her GED test despite Toriel's tutelage. The older goat woman had been shaken up as much as anyone else had been when they heard the news of the dusting, but Frisk's grief was paralyzing. Toriel talked around the issue often, trying phrase things gently or avoiding the topic altogether, but she could not stand to see her child look so wrapped up with... guilt. The mother placed a loving hand on her child's shoulder, and offered her daughter her ear once more, hoping this time Frisk would take it. "My child, you know you can tell me anything, do you not? I desire to give you the space you need to process what happened... but I worry that in doing so I am now enabling you to... give up on life."

The silence that hung between them seemed to burn in Toriel's mind. She could not let Frisk feel so overwhelmed by herself. She could not go through this again with another child. Toriel worried about drawing parallels between Frisk and her other children, but the burning sensation would not let up. Her words were like the water required to stop the flames. "There was nothing more you could have done, my child," Toriel pulled Frisk into a tight embrace. The corners of Frisk's eyes burned as she felt the tears fighting to escape. "Had you become more involved... if you had stepped in... Frisk, we could have lost more than-"

With that, Frisk pushed away from Toriel. Despite herself, Frisk's tears ran down her face. She wanted to be like him, smiling despite how horrible the world could be. Frisk wanted to be strong, but all she could do was cry and feel sorry for herself. The one emotion she could summon in her voice was anger. "Mom, you don't... You don't get it."

Toriel's eyes narrowed at her child. She looked from Frisk to the ground, "Do you not recall? I was around for the war that had my people sealed away. I understa-"

"No, mom, no." Frisk interrupted, her tone taut. "You don't understand. In fact, it's impossible for you to understand. If I just had more control, I could fix everything! If I could just bring up the damn menu-" It was Frisk's turn to be interrupted.

"Frisk," Toriel commanded in her motherly voice. "In this home, you will listen to me and obey my rules. We do not curse in this household, and we certainly do not shout at each other. I love you. You are my child. I think it is time that we discuss active healing from this incident. Perhaps it is time to seek help or meditation..."

Frisk stared at the slice of pie as Toriel lectured her. It was butterscotch-cinnamon, Toriel and Frisk's shared favorite. She noticed then that there was also a small, red cookie on the side in the shape of a heart. It had a sugary powder on it. Dust on red...

Red eyes flashed from beyond the witch hat. Tori stood before Frisk wearing a big brimmed witch hat and holding an oaken staff. A feeling of deja vu overtook Frisk. She had fought her mother before in this very same room. The delta rune on the double doors leading to Snowdin seemed to have something etched around them, but Frisk had no time to inspect this now. Frisk felt the air around her chill as Tori began to levitate from the ground. The goat woman was poised, ready for battle. This Tori was not like the Toriel of her past. Was it so wrong to feel excited? To see something new from a familiar face? Frisk immediately CHECKed Tori.

* Tori - ATK 80 DEF 80

* Only wants what is best for everyone.

"You know, I had once stood in the sun, protecting not only my people... but your people as well," Tori spoke to the ground as icicles began to appear from the ground beneath Frisk's SOUL. The red SOUL moved around, dodging the attacks. It was unexpected, and Frisk felt a strange feeling in her heart. She was about to see something truly awe inspiring.

Frisk lingered on the ACT menu but saw nothing there for her aside from CHECK. She considered for a moment trying to MERCY her would-be mother, but, weren't monsters always at their best when actually challenged? As she fought, Frisk had expected to fight with her bare hands. However, a red knife materialized in her right palm. She looked at it strangely. Tori didn't wait for Frisk to make her attack.

"Even after the humans banished us, I believed in them." Tori summoned a micro hail storm over the red SOUL. The small, hard pellets came out in a zigzag of sorts. Frisk struggled to find the pattern, taking some damage in response.

Once the spell finished, Frisk lunged at Tori with the red knife. The red knife seemed to hit something right in front of Tori that Frisk had not seen. It crackled under the slice of the knife. Tori looked up at Frisk with a determined look.

"Even after our people banished us, I still believed," Tori's next attack was familiar to Frisk. It resembled a giant double helix, made of snowflakes rather than fire. Frisk felt relieved by the familiar attack, weaving her soul in and out of the attack. The attack dissipated, and Frisk wasted no time. With a tight grip, she attacked Tori once again.

Again it was deflected by some invisible barrier.

"But here we are, human, fighting. I cannot help but wonder if I have been wrong to believe... Would my son... my son..." Tori muttered, her face lowering even more, her face completely obscured by her hat. Frisk couldn't help but feel her interest piqued. Of course Asriel had died in this timeline too, after all, Flowey was present. The hail storm fell again, dropping Frisk down to half her health. She cursed under her breath at the damage. Frisk tried again to attack, but already knew the result: no hit. What would it take to land a blow to Tori?

"My son... my poor... son..." The room became deathly quiet as Tori landed on her knees. Frisk tilted her head confused for a moment, but realized the goat woman was crying. It was then Frisk noticed her ACT button glowing red. She examined her new options...

* BARRIER BREAK

What was that? She had never seen an ACT like that before. Without a second thought, Frisk pressed it. Her body seemed to work on its own. She lifted her free, left hand toward Tori and shouted, "Barrier break!" The once invisible wall surrounding Tori shattered visibly before her like glass. Once the shards hit the ground, they dissipated from existence. Frisk noticed Tori holding her face in her hands as she wept. Tori was completely distracted by her grief.

The red knife burned in Frisk's right hand. Its heat comforted her, and she felt guided to end this mother's suffering. That was her mission this whole time, was it not? To end suffering for everyone. Was this not just another means to that end?

You are filled with determination.

The words echoed through her body and mind. Her unstoppable force of will. What she wanted would happen, no matter what. Even the impossible was not outside of her reach. Her constant reincarnation was proof of this, was it not?

With a wicked smile, she approached the grieving mother. Still a wretch as ever. Still just a sad, old woman. The knife came down...

And was met with her staff!

"I am done with believing in humans," Tori looked up from her grounded position. With those words, a large, white circle appeared below Frisk's feet. Frisk could not see Tori's obscured face, but the eye Frisk could see flashed white. As it did, Tori managed to push Frisk far from her, whirling her staff with a flourish. "You would attack me at my lowest point... I cannot go easy on you any longer. This is the point of no return..."

The sorceress floated high into the air, both of her eyes glowing white with power. "I was told it is dangerous for me to go all out while I carry another little one... but in your case, I have run low on options." Tori started to chant a spell beneath her breath. A triangle appeared within the circle, its lines traced in white. Distracted by the appearing lines, Frisk didn't notice the room grow hotter until fire balls summoned and spiraled around. Frisk found little room for error as she danced with the flames. In many ways, she was already practiced to handle this particular spell. It was a piece of King Asgore's repertoire. Before Frisk could even react, Tori whirled her staff around. Several electrical bolts shot from it, following the red SOUL despite being unprepared. Frisk tumbled backward, not having expected the attack.

The Supreme Sorceress has appeared.

Frisk narrowed her eyes at Tori, and through gritted teeth rolled quickly out of the way of a large bolt Tori launched to finish the electrical attack with.

"I am the master of magic, human," Tori's voice was calm. In many ways, she sounded just like the Toriel Frisk knew. "No human has ever gotten past me. You will surely perish."

Her SOUL suddenly turned orange-red. As she stood still, she felt her body and SOUL burn, she rolled into a standing position, finding that it alleviated the pain and quickly began running side to side as Tori fired off another round of fire balls.

"You will witness my special attack," Tori stated plainly. A crescent moon shape appeared within the circle. As it did, more shapes brightly formed alongside the crescent moon both within and without the triangle. "Good bye, foolish one."

Frisk could feel that this would be the end of the fight if she didn't act quickly. Her ACT was a dark red color once more, and so she pulled it up.

* ???

With nothing left to lose, Frisk pressed the curious option. Once again, she reached out with her free, left hand and chanted, "$@#!! &$%*^." The words were foreign to her, and she did not understand what she had even said. However, the magic circle that had started to swirl beneath her feet seemed to go haywire. The lines spun quickly, wire-like strings breaking from the circle. Quickly, the whole thing faded away. For once, Tori looked shocked, even horrified. Without realizing it, Frisk had leaped toward Tori and slashed. Her hand felt guided. Her blade bore deep into Tori's shoulder. Her already widened eyes opened more as the pain flooded her body.

"That's high-level magic... how...?" Tori exclaimed pulling away from Frisk; the red knife buried deep into her shoulder. She collapsed to the floor on her knees again, but her form looked completely unstable. "I... I... I was wrong about you humans..." Tori pulled her head back and laughed. "D.e.s.p.i.t.e. e.v.e.r.y.t.h.i.n.g., I... c.o.u.l.d. n.o.t. p.r.o.t.e.c.t..." As she spoke, her voice wavered as if these words took all her leftover power to say. Her body began to disintegrate, turning to dust. First her legs, then her waist, and as it reached her torso, Tori managed to utter her last words. "... e.i.t.h.e.r. o.f. m.y. c.h.i.l.d.r.e.n."

All that remained in that room of Tori was her hat. Everything else about her turned to dust. Frisk looked down at the ground, seeing an insignificant pile of dust. Without another word, Frisk walked into the long hallway behind the double doors. Each step felt like hours as the distance grew between Frisk and Tori. It was okay, right? It wasn't like Tori was dead for good. Frisk was just curious about Tori and her power. Tori and the story she would probably not tell her without being pushed to the brink of death. Seeing her monster family in all their glory... that was okay, was it not? All she needed to do was...

Reset?

Frisk stood in front of Flowey. His blue face pointed at her, but his eyes seemed to look beyond Frisk. He was looking at her face, but not into her eyes. Frisk clenched her fists, ready to be ridiculed by Flowey for giving in again. For, again, killing Toriel in this kill or be killed world.

"Did you really... have to go that far?" Flowey's voice was soft and sounded more closely like the voice Frisk had only heard a few times before. "Don't you think there could've been another way?"

There was a long silence between them. Frisk could say nothing to Flowey. Instead, she felt guilt surging up her spine.

"I... I understand how you feel, Frisk," Flowey's lips curled into a small smile as he looked away from Frisk. "When I watched you fight... You reminded me of me... I can't help but wonder if maybe you've already seen this all before. I wonder if you feel bored of this world..."

Frisk felt her breath catch in her throat. If she said a word, she knew she would start crying. Instead, she stayed silent and held her ground.

"There is still hope for you if you have the same power that I had... go back and undo what you have done. You didn't kill anyone in the ruins, so I think that... the fight was some weird mistake. Mom would never have gone after you so viciously as she did... reset this mistake, Frisk."

With that, Flowey plunged into the earth. By themselves, Frisk's feet moved forward. One after another. Her health was extremely low, but Frisk did not care. Finally, she was outside.

The brisk air chilled her to the bone. Frisk didn't seem to notice. Her mind was numb as she walked with one foot in front of the other. Reset, Frisk thought as she walked toward the bridge. Reset this mistake, reset this mistake. It was so simple, wasn't it? Any mistake could just be reset, and it would be as if nothing had ever happened. Isn't that how Frisk got into this mess in the first place? Her heart felt heavy with guilt. Reset. Isn't that what caused her to feel free with her curiosity? She could kill some of her friends. She could spare some of her friends. She could start out merciful and destroy everyone near New Home. Frisk could commit mass murder in the ruins and come out a saint. She killed in various combinations when she came back into the Underground. When she realized that it was her last chance to see the different outcomes.

Frisk reached the bridge and stood paralyzed before it. How had she not learned her lesson? Frisk cannot quickly reset her mistakes in this world. She could not let her strange and morbid curiosity overcome her. The human let out a breath she hadn't realized she was holding in. Hot tears streamed down her face, leaving streaks as it did. That was when she sensed it. The hooded creature that had killed her stood behind her. She turned around to meet it.

They stood before her, towering her by a whole head and a half. Frisk had a hard time seeing this monster, as the hot tears in her eyes blurred her vision. They seemed to be dressed like death, in black robes with a black hood. The hood completely shrouded the monster's head in darkness, but she could make out the delta rune symbol on their chest. It was in white; however, it laid on a dark blue color. Frisk was certain this was the monster who had killed her before. It seemed to let her live for longer this time around. Reset.

Frisk suddenly reached out to the creature, grabbing at what seemed like it's arm. Hysterically, she yanked them toward her, but they resisted, pulling away and retaking a step.

"H-help me," Frisk stuttered as she continued to pull at his sleeve. "I-I... I need to die." She looked up at the grim reaper with wide, frightened eyes. "I need-" The wind was taken out of her as the great monster pulled her close, his hood falling back with the motion. They had a skull for a head. They wore a familiar, broad smile.

"would be wrong of me not to help a lady in need," he mused, his skeletal mouth not moving an inch. Somehow, his eyes were not as friendly as she remembered, and his smile, while full, did not seem quite as happy. He brought his face close to Frisk's, almost as if he intended to kiss her somehow. "though i guess i would never have considered myself a lady killer." He chuckled at his pun. Frisk looked up at him, some of the fear leaving her face. Something about that disturbed the skeleton, and he reared his head back. Shortly after he shrugged. "now, since you won't mind... i'll take your SOUL as payment, little lady."

The human felt a sudden pain in her abdomen, and she could feel her vision turning white just has it had before. The world around her burned out, though she could feel her body drop into the snowy ground as the skeleton seemed to curse to himself over and over. His voice became so distant that she could no longer understand anything he said.

The entire world was dark. Much darker than she had seen anywhere else in the Underground. A ray of light grew from a singular point, bathing golden flowers in its radiance. Facing away was a young human. They had brown hair tied up in a messy ponytail, fair skin, and their eyes were such a rich brown they could be mistaken for red. It took Frisk a moment to realize she was alive, but somewhere else. She approached the young human, but paused in her footsteps. Something about them was uncomfortably familiar. Nevertheless, they were human. Humans only wanted to hurt others... even Frisk, herself, was proof of that. The other human seemed to sense her presence and took his gaze from the flowers to her eyes. There was no mistaking it this person looked like an older Chara. He wore different clothing, a green button-up shirt with a yellow bow tie. Despite his soft look and friendly face, Frisk knew better than to trust him.

Greetings, I am Chara.

Frisk narrowed her eyes at him. She took a step back but was ready to fight.

I understand if you are angry with me, however, you are mad at the wrong people.

I am not the Chara of your world. I am also not the one who has killed others for the sake of curiosity.

Even without a weapon, Chara found the right dagger to twist. Frisk paused in her tracks and flinched as he spoke the words.

In fact, am I quite sure I am a victim of your brutality, Frisk. After all... you used my magic to kill poor Toriel Dreemurr.

Frisk looked at him confused.

Your connection to... let us call him, C D for the sake of simplicity. Chara Dreemurr, or C D, is the Chara of your world.

Do you not think you may have molded him into who he is now? Do you say you are entirely blameless in this?

And now you use this connection to corrupt me as well... When you first appeared here, I made the same mistake as he...

I lent you my determination because I sensed that you had none. However, it seemed that you were meant like a Trojan Horse.

You were sent here to infect me, but I was more cunning... and now you are cursed.

The flowers that sprout from your body are my doing, but my hand was forced.

Each time you die, you are closer to true death. Each flower signifies your weakening hold over the material world.

However...

Chara looked Frisk up and down, and his eyes softened.

I can sense that you feel guilt. You feel regret for what you have done in the past... and despite your actions most recently, you regret killing our great captain.

You do not trust me as I do not trust you. However, if there is hope you can be made right again... then I shall aid you.

Frisk took in a deep breath. She always found it difficult to speak to Chara the few times he had bothered to approach her in the abyss. She wasn't sure what to say.

Say nothing, Frisk. Prove to me that you will change, and I will help you in any way that I can... Until we meet again.

When Frisk blinked, she appeared from that otherworldly space to the save point in front of the Dreemurr's home. Her head hurt somewhat, and she hugged something close to her body. She stood there holding Flowey in his flower pot, which she now hugged. He looked up at her with a soft smile. His eyes traveled from her eyes up to where the blue flower had been. He grew a concerned look.

"There is another flower on your head, Frisk," His smile wavered for a moment, but he tried his best to look sharp. "Thank you... for resetting. I know it is a bit hard, but... I know you are a good person."

"How can you tell that?" Frisk responded quickly and shortly. She felt like a monster. Not like her friends, but the sort of monsters she heard of as a child before she found her family beneath the earth. "How can everyone be so sure that I'm..."

"You didn't attack me, for one thing," Flowey gestured with his leaf, tapping it with his other leaf. "For another, you didn't kill da-Gori." He tapped his blade, but fumbled with his words, apparently forgetting he had already referred to Tori as his mother earlier. "Finally... Tori came after you pretty harshly out of nowhere. I mean, I knew a lil about how strong she was, but... what was that about? Were you trying to leave again?"

"Yeah..." Frisk sighed. Toriel always blocked the way to the ruins, but this time her words were starkly different. She wasn't trying to protect Frisk from the monsters. No, she was trying to protect the monsters from Frisk. Rightfully so. Frisk hated the strange feeling that crawled up her spine. She wanted to be a better person, and not descend into madness as she had in the prior run. Her curiosity got the better of her. Sometimes, she felt like her body moved on its own, but Frisk felt that a poor excuse. She lamented how quickly she turned away from pacifism.

"Listen, Frisk," Flowey folded his petals and seemed to prepare to lecture her. "I can tell that Tori is going to guard that door again... and if you want to leave so badly, well... I guess I've got to go with you."

Frisk gave Flowey a blank stare. Flowey was strange enough with his helpful demeanor and his lack of calling her an idiot. She was unsure about bringing him along. Flowey seemed able to read the expression on her face and rolled his eyes.

"Look, I don't want you to feel forced to kill Tori again, but I also don't want anything bad to happen to you." Flowey suddenly blushed, looked away, and quickly added, "O-or anybody else Underground! I-I mean, you defeated Tori at her full power! I am not sure how you did that, and honestly, that means I should keep my eye on you, right?"

Frisk laughed to herself and shook her head. Flowey wanted to help her out. Oddly, this time... perhaps Flowey would help be her moral compass as opposed to goading her to hurt her friends.

[filmpeaks66]

On Moonlight (2016)

[This review was originally written two months ago, due to the Oscar controversy and all that matter, we decided that there is no better time to publish it than today].

Valeria:

After a month of waiting for the screeners to come out and two weeks for me to, finally, get them, my boy Alex and I watched Moonlight. We've already seen several screeners, but Moonlight was the one I was waiting for the most.

Alex:

I’m sorry Gosling, but it also was the one I was waiting for the most. After watching La La Land and (preparing to fight everyone) get a bit disappointed, we were curious about whether or not Moonlight would be the movie of the year.

Valeria:

You really had to unnecessarily bring Ryan Gosling?

Alex:

Always. It’s why I made you watch his filmography with me.

Valeria:

You're lucky Leonardo was busy fighting global warming last year.

Alex:

I am! But, back to the topic. Moonlight, Moonlight, Moonlight… Did it live up the hype?

Valeria:

At first, I was a little skeptical about it, but thinking about how ambitious it was to make a movie like that got me excited, and now, I can say that Moonlight was what 2016 needed.

Alex:

To be honest, a "gay black coming of age drama" is not exactly what would move audiences, but describing it that way, as many do, would be like describing Brokeback Mountain as "gay cowboys who have an affair".

Valeria:

What do you mean it wouldn’t exactly "move audiences"?

Alex:

Talking in terms of Box Office only, I don’t think Moonlight is the “you have to watch this!” kind of film.

Valeria:

Yes, most likely for its simplicity, but it happened to be another one of those "low budget" films with unexpected box office success. I’m going to make everyone go watch it.

Alex:

Exactly.

Valeria:

But talking in different terms from box office, its critique of masculinity is similar to the one made by Brokeback Mountain in 2005, and I have the feeling that it will cause the same impact, in a different area: the “black male” stereotype.

Alex:

This is something that we had never seen before. A story told in three different acts, with three different performers, trusting that the viewer will connect with the character and not just with the actor, which is both risky and unconventional. I think it worked out perfectly though.

Valeria:

The fact that Moonlight is a about the life of a black, bullied, gay boy makes it intricate enough to develop, but it certainly turned out to be a great analysis of character and a moving story at the same time.

Alex:

It’s amazing how the cinematography speaks for itself in more than one scene.

Valeria:

The camera angles made the film feel quite natural! And the script, subtle, just like the protagonist, managed to reveal the qualities of each character.

Alex: 

Yes! Those POV shots of the mom and Kevin, sometimes with desynchronized audio also created a great effect.

Valeria: 

The editing worked as a complement to the strong performances of the cast.

Alex:

One of the most memorable scenes was in the third act, when Kevin called Chiron on the phone. You could see in his face everything that had happened to him between the two spaces in the second and third story.

Valeria:

Also, when Juan teaches Little how to swim, which by the way, was happening in real life. I think the water touching the camera was a nice touch, scenes like that one help the audience to become a part of the character's world.

Alex:

An interesting thing is that even if we separate each one of the acts into "shorts", let's say, they keep its own narrative perfectly. They don’t depend on the previous story told. What do you think?

Valeria:

They would keep their own narrative perfectly. Although, I think the acts were separated that way because of the protagonist’s absence of identity. His three stages were based on nicknames imposed to him by third parties, and we can tell that Little, Chiron and Black are three different personas, but they are so closely intertwined, that even if I agree in technical terms, I don’t think it would’ve had the same insight, which was what made it special.

Alex:

Wow, that’s incredible. I have to admit that I had not seen it that way. I totally agree.

Valeria:

The person he tries to become isn’t even that convincing for us to ignore that something’s not well, and while we watch the third act, we’re all lowkey waiting for Kevin to ask him “who you is, man?”.

Alex:

And the visuals, again, are a very strong support of what we’re saying.

Valeria:

The visuals stole the show. The color balance (their clothes even combined with their food!) contrasted the protagonist’s mental imbalance. On the other hand, the score was on point, quite dramatic.

Alex:

The score made a perfect combination with the cinematography. I thought the night shots of the third act were amazing.

Valeria:

We haven’t spoken enough about the three-act structure. The introduction of characters felt pretty natural, despite it revolving around a coincidence. It didn’t leave you thinking it happened all of sudden, and it never felt too long.

Alex:

The opening of each one of the acts was excellent, and the supporting actors were amazing. Mahershala Ali’s exit from the story was very well handled, although I expected to see him a bit more, and Naomie Harris had the role of her life, just seeing her going up the stairs, I totally believed her performance.

Valeria:

I was hoping to see Mahershala more too.

Alex:

And I think that’s my only critique, which I can’t even categorize as criticism because nor structurally nor plotwise it was wrong. It’s just a personal nitpick.

Valeria:

The first act of the movie is a good reflect of how events that happen during our childhood can affect our lives, and how a small detail, a phrase or a person can follow us during decades. That’s what Moonlight was about. Little wasn’t precisely fortunate, but he was living inside a bubble that exploded when Juan told him that he sold drugs to his mother. From that scene, a more aware but still scared teenager came out.

Alex:

You couldn’t have said it better. In the way the second act ends, we can see the transiction of a character that, at first, looks different, but it’s really the same.

Valeria:

He’s terrified and confused. He doesnt want to be him anymore. We know what he has gone through, but the people around him don’t. This is evidenced when the school’s counselor advices him to press charges against the bullies, and Chiron, crying his heart out, tells her “you just don’t know!“ Amazing performance by Ashton Sanders, kinda reminded me of Hilary Swank in Boys Don’t Cry.

Alex:

I like that.

Valeria:

I have a theory, by the way!

Alex:

Go on, I want to know.

Valeria:

In a certain way, Chiron’s character is influenced the most by the only person who can get a smile from him: his friend Kevin. When they were kids, he advised him to show the bullies that he had courage so they would stop picking on him, no matter if he didn’t truly have the guts ”it don’t mean nothing, if they don’t know”. I think that line foreshadowed the last scene of the second act, and when they met again on the third, we see Chiron trying to show Kevin how he had “straighten up”. Perhaps because he thought he was expecting that from him, but to his surprise, Kevin tells him “I wasn’t expecting this” and starts to talk about how he had spent his whole life trying to be someone he wasn’t. In that instant, Chiron realized that he didn’t have to keep pretending any longer, and let his inner child talk: “You’re the only man that’s ever touched me”. A powerful scene. You may think Moonlight is about the loss of innocence but it’s more about the preservation of it.

Alex:

“You’re the only man that’s ever touched me” was one of the most shocking lines ever. I loved your opinion and I totally agree that the last scene, the last shot, shows exactly that.

Valeria:

The way Jenkins dealt with the whole subject of two black men who knew that they were more than friends but never said it explicitly was outstanding. The jukebox scene was brilliant, the look in their eyes, the lyrics of the song. It told us everything without a word between them.

Alex:

Yes! Remember what I told you after finishing the movie, that there wasn’t a moment where he tried to sexualize their relationship.

Valeria:

Something very uncommon in queer films nowadays. It reminded me of My Own Private Idaho because of the use of audiovisuals and the protagonist in search of identity and a home. I also thought it was cool how the movie didn’t treat its subjects in a moral way and it still caused controversy.

Alex:

That’s a very nice comment, but how could’ve been handled that way?

Valeria:

A moral message could have been exposed to the audience during the story in a explicit way. but the screenplay remained neutral. I don’t think someone came out of the cinema thinking it was « too much » or that it tried too hard to give a message of « acceptance ». It actually normalized it, maybe that’s why some people got bored.

Alex:

Got your point, and along everything you’ve said, I totally agree. Nothing felt forced, nothing remained too much time, nothing was given too much importance. I think we’ve said enough about why this is our favorite film of the year and why we bet that it will win the Oscar.

Valeria: 

We saw Chiron grow up and Moonlight will keep growing inside us. The fact that this movie is receiving so much deserved attention broke paradigms, it’s a masterpiece that, without a doubt, will mean a lot to the future of the industry.

[theconservativebrief]

“From this day forward, a new vision will govern our land. From this moment on, it’s going to be America First.”

That’s how President Donald Trump summed up his governing philosophy during his inaugural address last January. The phrase “America First” has been a feature of Trump’s rhetorical shtick since he began campaigning for the White House, but the phrase itself has a long and troubling backstory.

Sarah Churchwell is a professor of American literature and humanities at the University of London, and the author of new book titled Behold, America. It’s a timely survey of two of the most loaded phrases in the American lexicon: “America First” and “American dream,” and how they’ve evolved in opposition to each other.

In this interview, we discuss that evolution and what these century-old slogans have meant to the people who have co-opted them. Language matters, Churchwell argues, and the words we use carry their own historical baggage, whether we’re aware of it or not.

In the case of America First, that history is dark but also deeply instructive. And in the case of the American dream, it’s a history that needs to be understood afresh if we want to reclaim it’s original meaning.

A lightly edited transcript of our conversation follows.

Sean Illing

Let’s start with “America First,” a phrase our current president has frequently used to sum up his worldview. Where does this phrase come from?

Sarah Churchwell

It was a Republican campaign slogan in the 1880s, which means it appeared much earlier than most people think. But it didn’t become a national catchphrase until President Woodrow Wilson used it in 1915. He was using it to try to keep America out of the first World War. But he was kind of doing a tap dance, because he wanted to placate the isolationists, although he was himself an internationalist.

So Wilson was using America First as a way to maneuver his way through a political minefield by saying America would be first to lead the world, and that it should stay neutral so it could pick up the pieces in Europe after the war. It was ostensibly about maintaining neutrality in the name of leadership.

But then the phrase gets taken up in the name of isolationism almost instantly, and it is quickly connected with other ideas that were also on the rise at the time, especially the rise of the Ku Klux Klan. It became linked to anti-immigration movements, and sympathizers of fascism, and was popularized by Charles Lindbergh, the famous American pilot who lead the “America First Committee” — a group of some 800,000 Americans who wanted to keep us out of WWII.

“Trump represents a strain of American thinking that goes back a long, long way”

Sean Illing

So it began as an antiwar isolationist slogan, and then morphed into an explicitly xenophobic and fascist slogan?

Sarah Churchwell

Yeah, and it happened pretty predictably. If you’re in an anti-immigrant and xenophobic debate, then “America First” will kind of magnetically accrue those anti-immigrant sentiments. Put America first, native-born people first. It connects back to the nativism of the 1840s and 1850s, and it sounds broadly anti-immigrant. In a moment where people were very concerned about waves of immigration, which was a big motivating force for the KKK, it was only natural that America First would become a rallying cry for nativists and racists.

Sean llling

To be clear, who did the America First-ers want to keep out?

Sarah Churchwell

Anybody who’s not white, not Protestant, not what they saw as a native-born American, an old-style American. And that was their notion of what America was supposed to be.

So America First did have very strong resonances with ideals like “Make America Great Again,” which was a phrase that they nearly echoed as well. The idea then, as now, was that the true version of America is the America that looks like me, the American fantasy I imagine existed before it was diluted with other races and other people.

America First spoke directly and powerfully to that segment of white America that felt they were losing their power, their dominance. It was a way of saying me first, only my version of America should be allowed to have any sway here.

You have to remember, too, that there was this notion at the time of “100 percent American,” which meant 100 percent Anglo Saxon blood. And that coincided with the so-called one-drop rule, which was an old racist rule in America in which one drop of black blood made someone legally black and therefore subject to slavery or Jim Crow or miscegenation laws. So all of these ideas were used interchangeably, and they folded neatly into the America First movement.

Sean Illing

I want to pivot to this idea of the “American dream,” which intersects with the America First movement.

So the American dream, as initially conceived, was very much rooted in a working-class social democratic aspiration for equality and upward mobility, but you describe how this notion was gradually co-opted and turned upside down. What happened?

Sarah Churchwell

We associate this phrase with ideas of free market capitalism and with conversations on the right about individual opportunity and liberty and all this small government stuff.

But when you search for the origins of the phrase “American dream,” it turns out it emerged on the progressive left to argue the opposite side of the case — to say that unchecked capitalism and huge increases in private wealth would destroy the American dream of opportunity, because of inequality.

The meaning of the phrase started to change after WWII. The newfound emphasis on individual economic liberty was in tension with the idea of justice for all, and this became more of a problem as economic inequality increased and the spoils of capitalism were restricted to a privileged few later in the century.

So what we had was a series of debates as the country tried to keep liberty and justice in some kind of uneasy equilibrium, but ultimately the emphasis on individual liberty and free market capitalism trumped everything else.

Sean Illing

In the book, you talk about how these two phrases, “America First” and the “American dream,” naturally collided and came to represent the struggle between liberal democracy and authoritarian fascism.

Sarah Churchwell

Well, the collision was inevitable, especially when America First shifted from an isolationist slogan to an explicitly nativist, white nationalist slogan.

Early on, the American dream was being used all the way up to WWII as a way to describe not free market capitalism, but the rights of everybody within a democratic society, and the dreams of America for fairness and self-government. Those ideas were bound to collide with the America First movement.

What I found so interesting was that people were speaking of the American dream as a concept that had racial equality built into it, that was inimical to anti-Semitism and other kinds of bigotries or racial prejudices, as early as the 1930s.

Most people would say that we first started to have a conversation about social justice related to the American dream with Martin Luther King in 1963, but people were arguing this from at least as early as the 1930s, and saying if this anti-Semitic America First thing starts to take hold, it will be the death of the American dream. Racial injustice would be the death of the American dream.

Sean Illing

When you hear President Donald Trump declare the American dream dead and promise to put America first, what do you think?

Sarah Churchwell

I think it would be good if we all read more history. Trump’s version of the American dream is a cartoon version from the 1950s, when guys like him had it really good, even better than today. But other people are pushing back, and saying you can’t dominate everybody, and Trump feeds into this resentment and he has unleashed it as well as anyone.

And when he says he’s going to put America first, he specifically means this vision of America first. His advisors know this stuff. Steve Bannon knows this stuff. Bannon has read history, and he uses phrases like “economic nationalism” which were also associated with America First in the 1920s. It’s not a coincidence.

They chose the phrase “America First” pretty late in the campaign, and it seem pretty deliberate. Donald Trump didn’t stumble on it. One of the things I talk about in the book is that Trump was very well aware of what it meant, at least in the 1990s when he talked about it in relation to Pat Buchanan’s campaign, and called Buchanan an anti-Semite and said that he was using the phrase to curry favor with the right-wing wacko nut jobs, which he obviously decided was a good tactic in 2016.

“America First spoke directly and powerfully to that segment of white America that felt they were losing their power, their dominance”

Sean Illing

Trump personifies one side of the moral and political tension this book describes, and maybe that’s the most important fact about his political existence — that there is nothing new about him or what he represents, that he is simply the latest expression of a core feature of the American psyche.

Sarah Churchwell

I totally agree with that. Indeed, I wanted this book to make that very point. Trump represents a strain of American thinking that goes back a long, long way, and the debate we’re having now about what kind of country we want to live in, and who has the right to be here, is hardly new.

We’ve always been divided and we’ve also been divided along exactly these lines. And at that moment, the side that wants America to go backward, to include fewer people, is in the ascendancy, and it’s important that we recognize that and realize that we’ve been here before, and that nothing is inevitable.

Sean Illing

If knowledge of history is truly emancipatory, and I think it is, what does knowledge of this history — the history of America First and the American dream — emancipate us from?

Sarah Churchwell

Well, it emancipated me from the belief that the American dream was always what we say it is today. It used to be so much bigger, so much more inclusive, and the version we inherited isn’t the original version or the most inspiring or just version. It reminded me that our aspirations can be bigger and better, and that the story of America can always change.

Knowing history also has a way of clarifying the fight you’re in. It’s important to know what America First means and what it represents, because that’s what we’re up against right now, and it’s a very old fight. So in a way, it’s liberating to know that, to know that the struggle is ongoing and has to be continually waged.

Original Source -> How “America First” ruined the “American dream”

via The Conservative Brief

[news-mashable-yahoopartner-blog]

No matter what happens now, history's judgment on Kavanaugh is already clear

The date is September 27, 2068. On your neural net's news feed, you catch a glimpse of an item that says "50th anniversary of Brett Kavanaugh hearings." You think you vaguely remember something about that from the American history class pills, but the details are vague (you keep confusing the name with Clarence Thomas, for some reason). You fire up the video.

What do you see, through disinterested, utterly neutral future eyes?

You see a woman — quiet, dignified, vulnerable,  heartbreakingly so. She is a neurology professor, and speaks in measured academic tones to an intimidating committee of silent men. She details a sexual assault that took place when she was 15. That's right, you remember — this is the era when women were just starting to dare speak out about this sort of thing. 

Then comes the man she said assaulted her, Judge Brett Kavanaugh, and you have to glance at the checkmark in the corner of the screen to assure yourself that this is not a Deep Fake — it is certified genuine archive material. 

But this guy looks like a ham actor playing the villain in a bad historical drama. The sneer on his face, the sense of entitlement, his hysterical outbursts, his attempts to deflect questions by attacking his interviewers — surely, even in the age of Trump, nobody actually considered this appropriate behavior for a judge? Could they not see how nearly every woman in the room seemed to look at him?

Every woman in this foto #KavanaughHearings pic.twitter.com/LysLoevrOS

— Christopher Lauer (@Schmidtlepp) September 27, 2018

He repeatedly refutes requests for an FBI investigation. He confirms his love of beer and denies problem drinking, in what any generation that has access to alcohol would recognize as the furiously aggressive manner of someone with a drinking problem. 

If he was as innocent as he says, you think, he certainly didn't act like it. 

The attitude that did Kavanaugh no favors.

Image: Michael Reynolds-Pool/Getty Images

Back in September 2018, we don't know how this historical segment will end. Judge Brett Kavanaugh may well become Justice Kavanaugh, confirmed by the Senate by a slim party-line margin, and sit on the Supreme Court for the rest of his natural life. 

Or two or more Republican senators may decide to do the right thing and refuse to confirm a man so thoroughly unknown, a political operative whose nomination came with hidden documents and mysteriously-paid debts, whose response to credible accusations was to sneer and bluster and portray himself as a beer-loving choir boy with a calendar. 

Either way, this day is it for Kavanaugh. This is how he chose to act in the spotlight of the whole world — petulant and whiny — and this is how history will remember him. 

He will become a timeless meme: Yelling Frat Boy Judge. Even if he sits on the Supreme Court and authors a hundred acerbic opinions in the style of his judicial hero Antonin Scalia; even if — especially if — he provides one of the decisive votes to overturn Roe v. Wade. 

Well, so much for the phrase “sober as a judge”

— Chris Taylor (@FutureBoy) September 27, 2018

How can we be so sure what history will think? Well, admittedly, it's possible that America will turn into some nightmare equivalent of Gilead in which Kavanaugh is worshipped by an all-male hierarchy as part of the Trump pantheon of aggrieved white men. 

But given prevailing demographic and cultural trends, given the slow but steady increase in society's ability to come to terms with an undeniable legacy of white male privilege, it seems far more likely that Kavanaugh will play the villain's role in textbook chapters on the Time's Up age. 

SEE ALSO: 'Women must be heard': Time's Up calls for walkout in light of Brett Kavanaugh accusations

Besides, we've seen this movie before. Look at Justice Clarence Thomas. In 1991, despite Anita Hill's famous Senate committee testimony about his workplace harassment, Thomas was supported by a majority of the American public (Kavanaugh was supported by a minority in recent polling, even before this hearing). 

Since then, Thomas has provided decisive votes in a number of cases that will live in infamy (such as Bush v. Gore and Citizens United). We remember those decisions; we barely remember his part in them. What we remember is the judge who allegedly boasted about his porn habit and creepily hit on his co-workers. We may also recall that former Sen. Joe Biden later apologized over his role in Thomas' confirmation.

Instead of Thomas, it is Anita Hill in the cultural ascendancy. We remember with justified horror the fact that she was described by a Republican operative as "a little bit nutty and a little bit slutty." She is the quiet hero of movies and documentaries, portrayed by one of the best-known TV actors of the age. She is the chair of a commission on gender equality in Hollywood. She is the wise old law professor giving interviews to John Oliver, insisting that if another woman has a story like hers to tell, well, this time senators would treat the allegations with more respect. 

If Hill's prediction turns out to be accurate, her historical stock will rise even further. Even if she is being too optimistic, we will remember the tragic irony (and also recall the prediction of Martin Luther King that "the arc of the moral universe is long but bends towards justice;" his successors suffered setbacks, too).

Either way, Hill has the mic, not Thomas. No matter how long he continues to serve on the court, the only thing he could do to change his reputation is to do the one thing he has consistently refused to do: apologize. 

Likewise, Kavanaugh's reputation now seems sealed in amber. His cultural tombstone lies here, in the moment he followed a credible accusation of assault with a whiny rage-fueled protest at his own victimhood. 

It may be of small comfort if he is confirmed, but September 27, 2018 is a day that will live in infamy. And its impact on November 6, 2018 remains to be seen. 

[ourzentasmicharmony-blog]

Giving the Elbow to Moral Outrage

The following perspective has grown out of email exchanges with a friend as we communicated how we’ve been experiencing the current political landscape. What has it brought up in (and out of) us? How are we showing up to the issues and to our feelings about them? How are we showing up to others? How are we navigating the stormy seas of discord? Are we practicing self-care? Are we practicing compassion? In the “age of moral outrage,” how can we have meaningful exchanges with others on the “opposite side” of an issue?

Such written exchanges allow me to explore patterns in how we engage with others, especially on social media. Perhaps exchanges on social media are so often framed by such adversarial, “either/or” thinking (especially those of a “political” nature) because of the new frequency at which we gut-check the information bombarding us from everywhere, and measuring countless issues against our own moral compass, pointing towards our northern star, aligning our actions with our beliefs. “This is right, that is wrong. Therefore, I will do this, but I won’t do that. I admire this, but abhor that.” (And how many of these countless issues really count as meaningful and worthy of all the energy spent on them?)

Gut-checks on such issues can happen instantaneously, and by extension, so too can our judgment of others, especially of those who don’t see things as we do. How quickly, especially on social media, do we extend our judgment well beyond events and issues and onto other people, many of whom we know quite well? How swiftly and carelessly do we throw about labels, not just to describe or categorize things, but to define fellow humans, and end up judging each other? When we instantly judge the other, is it done with consideration of the values and experiences of the individual, or only by considering our own values and experiences, and our assumptions of the people who hold such different views? How often do we negate others with our judgments? With our speaking? With our actions? And not just negate their opinions on a matter, but negate their beliefs, their experiences, their very existence?  

Have we allowed our anger and fear over the dehumanizing of certain groups by other groups, to blind us to our own growing intolerance? Are we allowing ourselves to become intolerant of not just certain ideas, or the dehumanizing ideas promoted by specific groups of people, but of people themselves? Aren’t we showing an intolerance towards individuals, friends as well as strangers, and thereby creating foes, each time we show up to a showdown of words on social media, raining bullets all around us, and wounding others, even as we denounce such intolerance?

What are the consequences of negating the experiences and feelings of others? Of excluding the opinions and voices of those who place a different value on things than we do? (Have we forgotten that holding a different value is not equivalent to seeing no value at all in something? So why must we react as such?) What happens to our society when we cannot tolerate even hearing out the thoughts of someone with a different perspective? What does it cost us to hear them out? What does it cost us when we don’t? How do we communicate through such a sharp “political divide,” without sharpening our own weapons and brandishing them with moral superiority as soon as we’re baited? (And doesn’t our growing intolerance just provide people who disagree with our views greater opportunities to slap the label of “hypocrite” on us, and completely negate us? 

Is it even possible for us to experience civil discourse and truly discuss an issue through a real exchange of ideas anymore? I believe the answer to that question is a resounding yes. Yes, and it may not be easy, but it is possible. Yes, and it starts with taking personal responsibility. Yes, and I can begin with small steps. Yes, and it will take me responding to others in ways I’m not yet practiced. Yes, and I can show up to others in new ways to create this experience for myself and others. Yes, and it will take more effort, but I believe it is worth it!

To begin the shift towards creating a different experience, I’ve increasingly turned towards searching for the shades of grey in the issues that seem to be only “black or white.” Shifting away from declarations and pronouncements and towards curiosity and offerings, I’m taking small steps towards “the other” with less judgment and more compassion as I practice “the nudge” towards more common ground.

Elbowing with Empathy

The following is an example of how I show up on social media with small, shaky steps towards keeping judgment on the issues, not the people. A dear cousin of mine, who believes we should “free our minds” from what the media dictates (an opinion we share), posted an article on Facebook about media bias, (which pointed out to me some things about our own biases, including where and how they differ.) News stories posted by this cousin are most often from media sources with a conservative bias, ranging from slight to extreme bias. The article she shared in this example came from a site that is categorized as having “moderate to strong bias” by mediabiasfactcheck.com. Commenting in the manner I did below, I attempted to engage someone who holds a different view of what is considered “untrustworthy media” with a nudge rather than pounding my views on her like a sledgehammer. The screenshot below shows the article she shared and my original comment on it.

Could I have phrased it differently or even posed it as a question or two or five? Yes. And had I done so, maybe her response to my comment would have been different. But this is the phrasing I used. And the immediate response by my loved one was a typical initial reaction, aimed to elicit a particular response through the use of baited phrasing (and almost all of us have done it in some form or another…)

But is her question the most pressing one to ask here? A few things caught my eye that made me think not…

Now I’m no expert on Congress, but I’m tuned in enough that I’m familiar with commonly known committees and I didn’t recognize the name “House Media Fairness Caucus.” (Of course, that’s because a caucus is not a formal committee, even though it sounds like one. It is an informal organization of Congressional members to discuss issues of mutual concern.) So, I clearly needed to learn more about this caucus, whose leaders have just stated (according to this post) that “the depth of bias by broadcast networks is putting the nation’s democracy at risk,” as was documented by this Media Research Center. (And that phrase sounds, well, alarming, doesn’t it?)  Of course, I’d learn more about this caucus before commenting about it on my cousin’s FB page, as well as learn about what the Media Research Center is (never heard of that one before either.) But first, I’d need to find out more about “CNS News” site to decide for myself how credible all this information really was.

Side note: After some basic research, here’s what I learned about the House Media Fairness Caucus: it was formed by “a dozen Republican members of Congress” in 2009 led by Lamar Smith (TX), and currently co-chaired by Smith and Alex Mooney (VA); and its purpose, as stated on Congressman Smith’s official house.gov page, is to “encourage the media to adhere to the highest standards of their profession, and to provide the American people with the facts, not tell them what to think.” Interesting though, that the source of this article posted by my cousin comes directly from the blog page of the Media Research Center. Yes indeed, that is the very organization that generated this “alarming proof” in the first place! How can that be?! Because “CNS News” is not a news source that adheres to the standards of journalism and its code of ethics. No, “CNS News” is really…(and yes, the following quote comes directly from their site…) “NewsBusters.org: a project of the Media Research Center, America’s leading media watchdog in documenting, exposing and neutralizing liberal news bias.” (My, what a gift this harmless, little writing project is, coming directly to me on Facebook from someone I love and trust, all wrapped up in a pretty bow of provocatively misleading phrases! I sure am glad this project adheres to such high standards, [whose standards?!] presenting us with facts rather than telling us what to think! Wait a minute... on second thought [can we have those?] this piece does seem to be trying to tell me what to think…Oh well, it’s not a liberal bias after all, so it’s all good!) I wonder no more about why this caucus was a new one on me as it seems to be the Congressional equivalent of a PTA meeting, only with fewer people…Ooops! I’m afraid this side note has shown more than just my sarcastic wit, but also my liberal bias! Oh dear…let me see if I can ever find my way back to my point…did I ever even have one?! (I’m such a flaky little snowflake…)

WWLD?

Of course, I have several points, and here’s my next one: just like the character Leo McGarry from The West Wing, I did not accept the premise of her question. Instead of following my cousin’s question to a place upon which she was ready to go (locked and loaded,) my next response was based in evidence that speaks to her belief in not allowing media to dictate one’s opinions. Why look at that, common ground, in a lovely shade of grey! (Until I’m struck down by the flick of an evil, magic wand for including the phrase “based in evidence.” Even so, I’d rather focus on this beautiful shade of grey, than shades of idiocracy.) Since this belief is also a part of the image reflected on her FB page, it left my cousin without a strong “push-back” towards me that squares with that image. Besides, she loves and respects me, so that is where she left it… But alas, a new voice chimed in!

There it is, right on cue, a friend who likely gathers his information from the same sources as my cousin, chimes in to show the opposition what’s what. How fun, new bait!  

BTW: I found his comment quite comical in its irony, and literally laughed out loud. (You’re about to get the joke too, I promise.) Apparently, I didn’t provide him with a sufficient reaction because when I laughed instead of biting, he didn’t laugh along, he just dangled juicier, more personal bait my way...

Yes, yes, I got a little “cheeky” there, but I wasn’t angry and hey, teachers like to have fun too! We get offered this kind of bait (in multiples) on the daily...

And that’s where this exchange ended. I didn’t hear back again on this matter from my cousin, nor her friend. There were many possibilities as to how this exchange could have gone. (Including no exchange at all, just judgmental silence on my part.) Yes, I could have done it better. And I could’ve done a lot worse too, including some damage to a treasured relationship with my cousin. Did I “win over opponents” to my “side”? Ha! As if that’s the point here! However, I believe I did achieve my goal of engaging someone who holds a different view from mine and did so in a different way – using a bit of a nudge without any moral outrage. I know, I didn’t achieve a true exchange of ideas, either. Yes, that is true. And communication did not devolve into a “tit for tat” match either, and this may all be part of laying the groundwork to get there. (There is no “one and done” in these exchanges. Just like good parenting and teaching of kids, it’s all about consistency.) No, I didn’t win over any friends either, even after sending him a “winky-face” while refraining from name-calling! (C’mon, that deserves a medal! I am a Snowflake after all, so I should at least get my participation trophy, right?) 

Seriously though, I also just may have influenced people too. Don’t know for sure, but since they both dropped the baiting tactics, let’s consider that a small victory on the road towards more compassionate communication, and keep traveling a more peaceful path. Because, well let’s get real here: neither “side” of any of these adversarial exchanges on social media are productive in the powers of persuasion. No matter how logically sound, or cleverly phrased an argument is, it’s still argument. How can we ever get to true civil discourse if all we’re doing is lobbing grenades at one another? We’ll even pick up grenades thrown at us and just lob them right back. Now is not the time of showing how right or how clever we are. It only looks ridiculous to the “other side” anyway. What is needed now is to use our words to build bridges across the divide and build relationships. With every exchange, express a little empathy. Sometimes all that takes is to lay down an assumption and get a little curious. So ask questions. What makes you say that? Why do you feel that way? What experience do you have with this? What information do you have that I don’t....

Bottom line: I’m not saying, “Why don’t we all just play nice?” because who cares about nice when everything else is falling apart?! Maybe we’ve “played nice” for too long already, with lots of judgmental silence just hanging in the air like odorless poison. Maybe now it’s time to get a little dirty, not with trickery, fraud, or even our cleverness, but in getting a little more comfortable with the uncomfortable. Let’s not wait another moment for “the other side” to change their minds. Let’s not wait another moment to reach out across the divide looking for allies instead of adversaries. Let’s not wait another moment to add more empathy, however awkwardly, into our “fierce conversations.” Let’s speak truth to power, and to each other, and temper it all with compassion. Perhaps if enough of us make such a shift even in small ways, we’ll all reap some benefits. Maybe just a little shake up in how we engage one another in each interaction, is the beginning of ensuring we’ll all come out of this time of divisiveness as a more united people. As more tolerant and understanding people. Maybe we are the ones we’ve been waiting for to ameliorate our collective wounds. Who knows? Anything is possible in world framed by Yes, and…

 Love & Peace,

 Z Harmony        January 4, 2018