#for context: three men and a baby is like a third of the way written

[littlespoonevan]

WIP Writing Poll ✨

thank you @mellaithwen for tagging me 😘💖 gonna preface this by saying i haven't actually started writing some of these fics so the end result may initially be a 2k oneshot to gauge interest in whether or not people would actually like to read the full thing but yeah!!! i haven't had time to write in a Long Time so here's hoping i can deliver the goods for you in the next week or so once the final results are in 🥰

i think most people have done this by now but if not, consider yourself tagged!! ❤️

[shititbe]

Anyway, HSM2 is about internalized homophobia, and no one can tell me otherwise.

High School Musical is one of the most beloved franchises in the world. Teenagers all over the world grew up watching Troy and Gabriella harmonize together. Three movies, and nearly a decade later it’s still beloved by all. The first film easily forgotten in the ashes of the early 2000’s, the third film stuck in a purgatorial limbo of the rather unfortunate late 2000’s. The second film on the other hand sticks out between the ruckus. 

The second High School Musical film takes place at Sharpay and Ryan’s family country club, during the summer between junior and senior year. The Wildcats are working summer jobs on the country club, often forced to the beck and call of Ryan and Sharpay themselves. Sharpay uses all her prestige to help Troy with college instead of starting at the bottom ( or rather, in the kitchen washing dishes) with his friends. In the time she’s helping Troy, she is also pushing her brother away; replacing him with Troy in their musical number for the talent show, and refusing to hang out with him in preference for Troy. Ryan becomes vengeful to his twin and starts hanging around the Wildcats in the kitchen. At first, he was met with some distasteful looks and words (most of which from Chad). With the help of Kelsey, and her neutral party, Ryan fits in smoothly with the other teenagers, eventually giving the WildCats all dance lessons.

 Throughout the movie, the main conflict continues to be the internal conflict of Troy Bolton. He debates over and over again if he should go through with Sharpay’s shenanigans, or if he wants to “listen to my own heart.”  This of course involves Gabriella, as she is Troy’s love interest. She’s not in the second film except for the beginning, then, where she leaves in the middle of the film - in order to create angst for Troy - then when she shows up again in the finally to sing/rejoin Troy. 

The conflict in the second film  is the combining of Troy’s two worlds. His first - his main world in the first movie, that hence became his secondary world - which is represented by Chad. Then his secondary world - which becomes his main world in this movie - which is represented by Ryan. Chad represents Troy’s masculinity, or his more idealized version of himself. Ryan represents Troy’s femininity or his current version of reality. These two worlds collide in the iconic song “I don’t dance”.  

Since this movie - and hence this scene - came out in the early 2000’s, a lot of the innuendoes went over people's heads. Luckily, as the children who watched this movie grew older and more experienced, and the world became more accepting, we’re able to see this song for what it is. 

Before getting into the lore and symbolism of the iconic “I Don’t Dance” sequence, context is needed. For most of human history, homosexuality was seen as a sin in all places except ancient times (see: Greece and Japan). The modern age is the most accepting on all fronts, such as sexual orientation, race, and religion. In the early 2000’s, High School Musical director Kenny Ortega was not publicialy out yet. He wouldn’t be till 2014. 

Originally, while writing this, my first thought was  that Kenny - the director - would be using Troy as a y/n type character to project his insecurities and struggles with masculinity, and what that means in defining his orientation and societal views that would be placed upon him. Then, it came to me later that this is in fact not the case, Troy (and Gabriella - who is in fact a y/n character for the female audience) is more of a character for a man of his time, confused with his own ideals of masculinity and the views of society because, “oh god, I can’t like theater/drama because only queer people and girls like it!” The second point is pushed further with the Troy and Sharpay sub-plot. Sharpay tries to further Troy’s career as a basketball player, though that’s not what he wants anymore, and Troy is no longer sure if that is what he ever wanted to begin with (enter the song “Bet on it” and the hilarious meme “no dad, I’m giving up on your dream”). 

Keeping these things in mind - Kenney’s queerness, and Troy’s struggle to realize you can in fact sing and be a heterosexual, wow, revolutionary - it became clear to me that Kenney’s y/n characters were Ryan and Chad. 

For those who aren’t into the arts, or find them too difficult after a singular attempt thinking they could write a world class novel on the first go, let me be the first to tell you every author has a y/n character. First, for those who don’t know what y/n stands for, it’s a popular fanfiction trope where a writer will write a story about a character dating, being friends, and so on, with the reader. The y/n stands for “your name” so anyone can be the main character in this story at any time. For a writer of mainstream fictional work, such as High School Musical, Game Of Thrones, Lord Of The Rings, Pride and Prejudice, Harry Potter, Hunger Games, even most comics. Now, most writers or directors aren’t going to be as obvious as having a character not named (or named y/n) or even named Jane (looking at you Jane Austin), the y/n character of many mainstream authors/directors/comic artists and so on is usually the character they feel or have given the most attributes similar to themselves. 

It’s the same reason people have favourite characters. You see a fictional character and you either 1. Want to Bob the Builder them, 2. Some sort of weird sex thing, or 3. See more/the most of yourself in this character. Number three - thankfully - is usually the main reason. Some people just create their own favourite characters. An even easier way to think about this, is just projection baby, that’s psych 101.   

Before I went off on a small tangent of fictional works and how human emotion plays into creating them (except anything Disney has made in the past decade, and no you can’t change my mind on that) I mentioned that Chad and Ryan are Kenney’s y/n characters. As a queer person myself, it’s clear for me to see the different struggles each of these characters face and how these reflect the queer experience. 

So, let’s finally get into it. 

Ryan, without it being explicitly said is clearly a character of what people in the early 2000s think a gay man is. He is effeminate, wearing bright coloured outfits with lots of accessories - namely his signature hats - he is also in the theater department doing musicals, and passive/subservient to any of his twin sisters' wills. Yes, now we know gay men aren’t just feminized men, but in the early 2000’s a gay man who can do "masculine" things like change their car oil, like sports, and so on, break the "effeminate" stereotype thus confused many cishet people. Sharpay is painted as more confident - or, for sake of comparability - masculine to her twin in the first movie, and most of the second movie. Making Ryan a bit of her dog who would do anything to get by - painting Ryan as lesser than human, once more, playing into the homophobia of the early 2000's.     

Despite the clear stereotypes playing into his character, Ryan is consistently one of the most confident characters in the movie. The other, being his sister of course. This confidence in himself is what gravitates the other characters towards him, either by being intimidated (Troy, thinking Ryan and Gabriella were a thing), or admiration (Chad, by the end of “I don’t dance”). 

Chad, on the other hand, is a whole different ball game. While he is confident in the first movie, and the first portion of the second movie, he begins to break more and more when Ryan becomes a more integral part of the Wildcat group. To keep in mind, Chad is also the most vocal about his distaste for Troy’s artistic past-time. When the other Wildcats join Ryan and begin learning how to dance for the talent show at the end of the movie, Chad is also the most vocal about his distaste. The baseball game where “I don’t dance” takes place, is the climax of Chad’s arc and his turn towards acceptance to Ryan/Troy’s hobbies. 

Of course, there is more to the “I don’t dance” sequence than just Chad’s realization - the exact one Troy comes to terms with in the second movie as well - of “oh my god I don’t have to be gay to enjoy stereotypical ‘feminine’ things.” That is the main part of the song though, that and all the sexual tension. 

Going back to what I’ve stated previously, Chad and Ryan are Kenney’s projection or y/n characters. Let me do a small recap before we get into the nitty gritty of the famous “I don’t dance” video. 

Thinking back to the first few paragraphs, I stated that Kenney wasn’t publicly out till 2014, about 7 years after the second movie came out. This could be due to the fact that a) it’s the early 2000’s and everyones still very homophobic, or b) self-doubt that comes with the queer experience. The most likely reason is a mixture of both of these. Because of this, Ryan is the more self-assured version, or idealized version of Kenney that he wants to be. Ryan is confident, never being swayed about his lifestyle (could be read as: sexuality) even though Chad - and most of the wildcats in the first movie - put him through relentless “teasing” and humiliation. He’s confident, almost to a fault, he’s sure of himself, and yet still reaches out a hand to Chad and the other wildcats to show them that they’re just being, kinda dick-ish. 

Every queer person wants to be Ryan. Despite his heavily stereotyped characterization, I personally believe he is one of the stronger written characters in the movies, mainly due to Kenney putting the time in to really make Ryan feel like a real person, to give himself some sort of relief of his own anxieties, a chance to see the world through a person who truly has no fear. Unlike Kenney himself. 

This is where Chad comes in. 

Chad is seen as “confident” in the first movie, the second Troy “leaves” basketball though, all that confidence comes crashing down. His best friend has another hobby - one he thinks is “not right” (it’s okay, you can say gay), - they wont be spending all their time together (first, can you say dependent relationship much, yikes).Chad’s defining characteristic up until their fight that instigate act three of the second movie, is being Troy’s best friend. I’m going to take this as if this were truly the case, and not a decently written character arch. Some people base themselves around their friends and their whole identity on being a friend, that they lose sight of themselves, this mainly in high school of course, when your whole world is really nothing but school, and friends. Newly developed independence is there, but that’s scary, so instead of worrying about the future, cling to something that’s reliable. I’ve seen this happen, mainly at the end of high school, when the “real world” is coming a bit too close for comfort. This could generally be the case if a person is lonely, but for timeline sake I’m going to say Chad has got some anxiety about graduating (considering the second movie takes place the summer of junior year). 

His lashing out at Troy’s hobbies and at Troy’s neglectful friendship, make more sense with that background, and are seen more in the second movie where Troy begins spending all his spare time with Sharpay (trying to collect that BAG!). Chad - and others (read: father) - insists that music is not a feasible career option, and Troy should just stick with basketball (like...that is a feasible career option). The tension Chad creates in the studio only grows when the other wildcats decide to take up Ryan’s offer for dance lessons and move from the kitchen, to helping out with the talent show. (Next essay idea: how high school musical two was really about class all along, cause Jesus). 

 Chad is the less obvious option for a y/n character. Though again, the 2000’s were not as cool people like to pretend they are. Chad - for Kenney - represents what he actually feels, this fear of being rejected for how he is and how he chooses to live his life/lifestyle, so he sticks to something reliable. Ryan is new, and exciting, and confident in a way that Kenney/Chad wish they could be, but in order for that to happen they need to understand that maybe people are complex creatures, and can enjoy multiple hobbies (aka: the same lesson Troy is teaching the viewers, but far less boring). But, for Kenney/Chad facing that thought and that realization is scary, and thus, they lash out at anyone (read this paragraph as: Chad mad jealous of Ryan cause Ryan bomb as fuck). 

All this build up, finally comes ahead in the employee baseball match 

                                                       ******

The baseball game is probably the most memorable scene in the whole High School Musical franchise (minus Sharpay’s “Fabulous” solo, but that’s also from the same movie, and it’s kinda rude to give what’s already the best more points); the tension in the scene, and what it implies makes it the best written segment of all three movies, let alone the most entertaining. 

Some things to keep in mind from our background information: Chad is missing his bestie and struggling with what being “masculine” really means for him and others. Ryan of course makes this confusing, because the traditional method is being thrown out the window. In short, Chad has internalized homophobia, and Ryan being open - or as open as Disney would let him - is causing all sorts of problems. 

Despite the song, “I don’t dance” being logged into our collective skulls for all eternity (you’re probably humming it right now, sorry about that), the very brief interaction of Ryan and Chad before the game is lost on the public consciousness. The two are clearly comfortable with each other, though the distaste seems to be on Chad’s side more than Ryans. So, the two start playfully jabbing at each other before deciding to do a bat toss to see who will be in the outfield first. 

Before they begin the bat toss, Ryan says “You don’t think dancing takes some game?” Chad then very clearly checks him out, doing a simple but effective ‘drag-your-eyes-over-them-top-to-bottom-then-smile’ and says “you got game?” (Seen in gif below) 

I don’t know how much you know about sex metaphors and how many of those baseball has in it (seriously though, it’s a lot), but with the bat toss, Ryan’s hand ended up on top, and Chad’s under Ryan’s. Let’s ignore this for now, it’ll be implied again later. Ryan’s team starts out in the outfield because he won the bat toss, and hence, the song officially starts. 

The first lyrics (ignoring the chores of “hey batter batter, hey batter batter, swing”) is 

I'll show you that it's one and the same

Baseball, dancing, same game

It's easy

Step up to the place, start swingin  

This part is sung by Ryan, who is taunting Chad out in the outfield. Before the game, as stated, Chad was taunting Ryan about his lack of “game” (both sexual and not sexual metaphor are implied), and now, Ryan has turned those tables around. Baseball - is seen as more masculine than dancing, not as masculine as football or basketball, but it’s up there. Chad is someone who cares about his masculinity, enough to the point that Ryan playing baseball makes him loose his mind. Makes him question his own personal definition of masculinity, if you will. 

Ryan says, “baseball, dancing, same game,” impyling that, to him, baseball and dancing are one and the same. That is baffling to Chad, cause well, how can something meant for girls even be close to something meant for boys. 

Chad comes back with: 

 I wanna play ball now, and that's all

This is what I do

It ain't no dance that you can show me, yeah

This only proves my previous point. 

I had a conversation with myself about this, and I’ve decided not to include it in this essay, but a second essay may or may not be possible. Basically the premise - the dancing/”musical” moments of High School Musical are conjured up images by those meant to see them (ie: like a visual hallucination, but, not really) but this scene kinda poo-poos that idea. 

Now, the thing I am talking about is Ryan and Chad’s  peacocking at each other during the time they sing these lyrics. The movements they’re making could be mistaken for dancing - as we automatically assume it is because of the title and themes of the movie - or it could be them just getting ready for the baseball game. Ryan swings his leg over the pitcher's mound, tossing the ball up and down into his glove, making wavy hand gestures, etc. Chad brushes off his gloves, swings his legs, hits the bat on each foot, and so on. 

For the peacocking, Chad makes a mock of the ballerina foot stance before strutting over to the home plate. Ryan laughs at this, which earns quite the smirk from Chad himself (see gif below). 

This is when it becomes a conversation.   

You'll never know - R

Oh I know - Ch

If you never try - R

There's just one little thing - Ch

That stops me every time, yeah - Ch

Come on - Ch

When Chad says “Come on” it’s when Ryan throws the baseball at him, starting the game, and giving Chad’s team their first strike of the game (get it, it’s funny). Now, obviously we need to talk about the “there’s just one little thing that stops me every time.” As a queer person, I assure you, two of the things that kept me from living my Best Life were 1) my own ignorance of what asexuality was and 2) the fear that everyone I love would hate me for who I am, and what I have no control over. 

Sorry to get deep like that on main, but, can any other queer person say different? Obviously, your first point may differ, but my point still stands. In the video/scene there is a very short moment (to which I have condensed into a gif for you all, you’re welcome, and I’m sorry about the quality in advance), of the camera moving over to Chad’s team (or his friends in this case since it’s an employee baseball game) as he says this line (gif below). 

I will not be explaining the use of subtly in this essay, but I’m sure you get the metaphor Kenney is trying to use. If not, let me spell it out for you in very simple words. This song has a lot of sexual innuendos (as mentioned pervious with the baseball bat scene and still, more to come), with that in mind, and clearly queer themes at play (as mentioned before, again), this scene only shows Chad isn’t as straight as he leads on. His fear/phobia of Ryan/the arts come from a much deeper place. 

In shorter, and much simpler terms: Chad queer. 

But, let’s get back to the boy's conversation. 

I don't dance - Ch

I know you can - R 

Not a chance, no - Ch 

If I could do this, well, you could do that - R 

Translation: “If I can do this weird, sweaty, dirty, Male thing without blowing a fuse, you can and should be able to dance just fine.” 

But I don't dance - Ch 

Hit it out of the park - Both 

I don't dance - Ch

I say you can - R

There's not a chance, oh - Ch

Slide home, you score, swingin on the dance floor - Both

I don't dance, no - Ch  (This is just the chores, you’ll see it multiple times throughout the essay, I just figured if the song is going to be in your head, go all the way right). 

Two-steppin, now you're up to bat - R

Bases loaded, do your dance - R 

Here we are with the baseball metaphors you’ve all been waiting for ladies and gentlemen. Girls, gays, and non-binary pals. For those who have somehow managed a sheltered existence with access to the internet, lemme help you. Ryan is talking about “loaded bases” both in the context of the game (where it shows each base has one person from Chad’s team on them) and in the term of sex. While you go out there dating - while it’s mostly douche bags and people using it ironically - your nosey friends may ask you how far you got. 

“First, second, or third base?” They may ask. Or something like, “oh wow, did you get to home plate/base?” These are simply the rankings of the stages of a sexual relationship. First - kissing, sometimes just handholding, Second - making out, some light groping, Third - full on groping, no clothes come off, but it gets close. While each person has different boundaries, these are the general accepted definitions for the bases. 

Home base is obviously full blown sexual intercourse. Since Chad has his “bases loaded” it means he’s done all these things before, just never gone completely to sexual intercourse with someone - in the terms of the song and the history we’ve already established, it’s most likely a male character. This is only proven by Chad’s uncomfortable nature towards Ryan (internalized Homophobia, thank you, returning theme) but his easy, and cocky personality towards everyone else. “bUt thAt DoEsnT pRovE” hush, that’s the final cherry on top. Remember this conversation. 

It's easy - R  

Again. Previous points have been made.  

Take your best shot, just hit it - Ch 

I've got what it takes, playin my game - Ch

So you better spin that pitch - Ch 

You're gonna throw me, yeah - Ch 

I'll show you how I swing - Ch

Ah, the famous “I’ll show you how i swing” a very strong baseball metaphor for everyone. Keeps queer people from defining themselves to dangerous (straight) people, and, well, that’s it actually. This term is mostly used by bi/pan people, though if you want to stay in the closet or are in a dangerous place, it is also used to subtly tell other queer people you are in fact, not straight. My favourite is when this term came into play when President Buchanan got elected in 1856 (for those that don’t know, he’s the first and only gay president). 

You'll never know - R

Oh I know - Ch

If you never try - R 

There's just one little thing - Ch

That stops me every time, yeah - Ch 

This is again, the same lyric as before it doesn’t pan, and the tone is much different. The camera stays on Chad as he says this line, meaning he’s reflecting, he is now his own problem, the person that is keeping him back. His friends are not on his mind anymore, which is good, Ryan’s Gay Propaganda has been working. 

Come on - Ch

I don't dance - Ch

I know you can - R

Not a chance, no, no - Ch

If I could do this, well, you could do that - R

But I don't dance - Ch

Hit it out of the park - R

I don't dance - Ch

I say you can - R

There's not a chance, oh no - Ch

Slide home, you score, swingin on the dance floor - Both 

I don't dance, no - Ch

Lean back, tuck it in, take a chance - R

Swing it out, spin around, do the dance - R

I wanna play ball, not dance hall - Ch

I'm makin a triple, not a curtain cal - Chl

I can prove it to you til you know it's true - R

'Cause I can swing it, I can bring it to the diamond too - R

You're talkin a lot, show me what you got - Ch

Again, like the beginning of this song, this is a heavy base for flirting and sexual tension, which this song is drowning in. 

Stop swinging - both

Hey - both

This is the part where they all start a flash mob in the middle of the baseball diamond. Again, alluding to the conversation I had to myself earlier, this only proves my own theory as no one takes notice of this. But, that’s not this essay, this is where I mention how close Chad and Ryan are at the end of the group dance.  

Come on, swing it like this - both

Oh, swing - both

Jitterbug, just like that - both

That's what I mean, that's how you swing - both

You make a good pitch but I don't believe - both 

Here is yet another (and the final) sexual innuendo. This is actually a rather quick one. Pitching in queer culture is considered the person who tops (because queer people even had to straight-ify their sex lives to “top” and “bottom”), this is the person who is giving, if you know what I’m saying. 

I say you can - R

I know I can't - Ch

I don't dance - Ch

You can do it - R

I don't dance, no - Ch 

 Here is where that mosh pit ends, and how they get a little too close to comfort. 

Nothing to it, atta boy, atta boy, yeah - both

The rest of this song is simply a mash-up of the baseball game being finished, and this lovely gem. 

Now, clearly, Chad’s self conscious nature towards his sexuality is gone, he’s sitting close - if not squishing - Ryan, and talking to him like they’ve been friends forever. Take note of the change of close, most likely due to all the tension at the end of the song, and maybe a little of Chad’s own natural human curiosity built in. Now, I leave you with this note: 

If there is anything that confirms all this more, its Chad’s girlfriend wearing the pride colours. 

Also note: this could also be seen as a friend helping his bro discover his sexuality and fighting internalized homophobia, but, that’s ignoring the sexual tension, so go off I guess. 

Thank you for coming to my TED talk.  

Watch the full thing here

[marginalgloss]

It occurred to me recently that I haven’t posted here for about nine months, and that if you knew nothing about me except for this blog, you might think that it something of a cliffhanger that I ended it on a post about expecting the arrival of my first child. (Or perhaps that would have been an entirely fitting way to end it.) Either way: I am fine, and we are fine, and last November brought the arrival of my son Robin into my life. I have been very busy almost every day since.

There are a couple of cliches about parenting that remain indisputably true. The first is that they grow up so fast. And the second is that nothing prepares you for it. We thought we were entirely ready and pretty well informed but from his delivery onwards nothing went as planned. We thought we’d feed him when he was hungry, and we’d put him to sleep when he was tired; and change his nappies, and play with him, and love him; and what else was there to it, really?

It turns out there is a lot more to it than that. Before Robin I never realised how polarised, how strained and how political people’s feelings are about matters of childcare. We’ve ended up raising him in ways we had never previously considered, partly out of necessity, and partly out of the kind of habits that grow into paths of desire across the days. Consciously or not I judge people who do things differently, and no doubt they judge me too. In spite of the reams of available literature it turns out that for many things — perhaps even most things — there isn’t necessarily a right or a wrong way to proceed.

Here is a third cliche that turns out to be extremely valuable: every baby is different.

The question of literature is a tricky one. In search of assistance I read a few parenting manuals; some of these turned out to be better than others, but I’ve yet to find a good book about what it means to be a father. Most books aimed at new dads are of the ‘pull your socks up’ variety — the kind of thing where the author imagined it thrust upon some feckless deadbeat by a weary spouse. But, being reasonably conscientious, and looking for something with a bit more depth than a guide to how to change nappies, I’ve found most books about parenting have little of interest to say to new fathers.

Being a dad is an odd thing to write about. I’ve read and heard people talk about how new mothers ought to be proud to be joining a kind of grand universal maternal tradition, one which predates even humanity itself. (Animals surely know about babies; witness my cat Louie’s endless patience with Robin’s various attempts to pull his ears off.)

People do not generally talk about the grand traditions of fatherhood in this way. And for good reason: a lot of men today wouldn’t be happy to follow the example of their own fathers, let alone imitate the conditions of detachment and distance that defined fatherhood for centuries. I want to say that expectations of fathers today have never been higher; but this is only because for most of recorded history, we had no expectations of fathers at all. In the space of perhaps two or three generations we have gone from the idea that a father should only have to provide for a child’s upkeep (and not slap them around too much) to a very immediate understanding of dadhood as a central plank of parenthood.

Perhaps a lot of this speaks more to my own insecurities than it does to anyone else’s. Still, I feel like there’s an easy camaraderie between mothers that isn’t apparent between fathers. My wife has developed a little circle of local mums with whom she’s in constant communication, whereas the WhatsApp group we created for the fathers in our NCT group has languished in silence. I don’t really have anyone with whom to compare notes. And what would we say if I did?

The pandemic has put us in an unusual situation. Ordinarily I would have had two weeks’ paid paternity leave, plus any holiday time taken alongside that. So I took three weeks off work — but I’m still working from home every day, as I have been since March 2020. This means that instead of watching me disappear to work five days a week, my son has spent every day of his life together so far with both his parents. I don’t even know where to begin with writing about the way this has changed us; perhaps I won’t know how to talk about it until it comes to an end.

It does mean that parenting feels like it has consumed my life in ways that might not have otherwise been the case. Being at home for so long with a new baby was a remarkable opportunity, and in the early days — through winter and the Christmas lockdown — it didn’t feel like I was missing out on much. Things are a little different now. Every absence independent from my family feels like it requires a negotiation as much with myself as with anyone else. And I don’t only mean literal absences. Someone new has come into my life and they have no tolerance for anything else that might be meaningful to me. So many of the things against which I used to define myself have necessarily had to be neglected.

It goes without saying that I haven’t written much. Whatever free time I have at the moment is normally spent collapsed in an exhausted heap on the sofa, watching TV. I can count the number of books I’ve actually finished in the last eight months on one hand; I have started and set aside perhaps two dozen. I feel very remote from the person who spent several years documenting here every book he finished.

Games have fared a little better. In the early days, when I found myself with some late night hours to myself, I picked up the remastered Bioshock collection. It took me months, but I eventually finished all three: the first game is a masterpiece, the second is a very decent sequel, and the third is probably the greatest missed opportunity in all of gaming. (I ended up writing several thousands of words about the games, over the course of weeks — the only thing of substance I’ve written since Robin was born, in fact — which I since abandoned, in a fit of self-doubt and impatience with my own tortuous style.)

But I mean it when I say that the first game is a masterpiece. I had forgotten just how immensely absorbing it is — a journey into another world that’s less realistic than it is gloriously theatrical. Every time I think about it I feel like I want to replay it again. And it never really occurred to me before that Bioshock is about parenting as much as it is a picture of Objectivism in decay. It hits different now, as the kids say.

While driving over the weekend I passed the word ‘DADDY’ outlined in rich pink flowers, laid in memorial at the centre of a roundabout. It made me flinch. Every time I see that word in whatever context it seems to come with an intimation of departure. And in the same way every time I think about this game it seems laden with the feeling of a dying fall that nobody ever really seems to talk about. You play as a kind of genetically modified clone, returning home to his unwelcoming father and near-absent mother in a demented inversion of the Odysseus tale; and the only good you can do in this world is to rescue the handful of innocents left within it. You have to become a father yourself, in a sense. But your days are numbered.

The ending of the original Bioshock is often written off as a bit of a joke. You fight a deliriously incongruous final boss, and then depending on your actions through the rest of the game, you get to see one of two final sequences. In the bad ending, the denizens of Rapture somehow steal a nuclear submarine, and it’s implied that something very bad follows. But the good ending has more to it than that. You return to the surface, and it’s implied that you adopt some of the Little Sisters you rescued down there as though they were your daughters. There’s a brief montage of scenes from an assortment of lives. A graduation. A marriage. A child reaching for a parent’s hand. And then a death bed. The hands of your daughters reach out for you one last time.

After perhaps twenty hours of gameplay this sequence is perhaps less than a minute long. It feels rushed, awkward, sentimental. But as a coda, it also has the outstanding benefit of being perfectly real.

[dangerously-human]

Tagged by both @starspray and @astridcontramundum for pretty similar AO3 questions, so I’ll combine them. Thank you both so much! :D 

Name: visionsofmangos, although I am in the process of changing it to human_dreamer_etcetera (starting with AO3, but that’ll probably become my default username for the internet at large)

Fandoms: Currently just Endeavour, with no particular plans to write for anything else anytime soon. I’ve also written several for Continuum and Supernatural, a couple for Covert Affairs, and a handful for a mishmash of other fandoms: Doctor Who, Kingdom Hearts, Sherlock, Fringe, Harry Potter, and the Avengers.

Where you post: Just AO3 now (and snippets here, sometimes). I used to post on FFN back in the day, but I don’t especially like the platform, so I’ve switched over entirely.

Most popular multi-chapter fic: Far and away, by every stat AO3 measures, it’s Those Binary Stars (Endeavour, Joan/Morse).

Favourite story you’ve written so far: Probably Permutations About an Axis.

Fic you were nervous to post: You Know You Can’t Chase the Stars Underwater. The first chapter wasn’t especially fluffy (the unplanned second was, and the third, if I ever get around to it, will probably be somewhere in between), and it felt like a pretty significant deviation from the tone I’d settled into for the Those Binary Stars series by then. It fit more with the mood of the early TBS chapters, and I worried people wouldn’t like that. I also worried because it was kind of a weird... how do I put this? It was in large part about Morse’s relationship with Max, but in the context of a larger story that’s about Morse and Joan, and I didn’t want it to feel like I was propping up one relationship at the expense of another. Especially because I actually do low-key ship Morse and Max (obviously not within this AU), and, idk, I was nervous it would come across like I’m only interested in how that friendship benefits this other ship I’m addressing in this fic. Or something like that. I still think I have some work to do on blending Morse’s relationships with Max and Joan in that story, which is what I’m hoping to do with the eventual third chapter. Anyway, that was a really long answer to a question that probably didn’t warrant it...

How you choose your titles: Oof. I cannot believe I used to love titles more than anything as a kid - they’re the absolute worst now! I spend a lot of time picking out key themes and then scouring Related Words for, well, related words, and then trying to spin something pretty out of that. Sometimes I get lucky and the title naturally comes out of whatever inspiration I’ve been drawing from for the fic (Those Binary Stars from a Russell Lewis interview, You Can’t Chase the Stars Underwater from an Andrew McMahon song, A Little Would be Enough from the relevant show dialogue), and sometimes there’s a pretty way to sum up the content of the fic that fits (Just Once, Still Here, Blurring the Lines). Usually, though, it’s days or weeks of aggravated brainstorming, especially when I’m trying to fall asleep!

Do you outline? Kind of? Now that I use Scrivener, I usually have index cards for each scene I have planned so far, and scribble a bunch of notes in those (often copied from my notes app on my phone, which is where all the random unsorted thoughts go). Then I can reorder and organize those. I usually have a vague idea where I’m going next, but it’s always a lot of exploration and guesswork as I go...

Complete fics: Depending how you count, I think 23 on AO3

In progress: Can I plead the fifth to avoid self-incrimination? ^.^’ I think... maybe 4ish? There’s the spy AU, the characterization poem thing, Three Men and a Baby... Okay, actually, as long as I don’t sprout too many new ones, that’s probably manageable.

Posted WIPs that I have active plans to continue at this time: A Shifting Cadence and You Know You Can’t Chase the Stars Underwater.

Posted WIPs that I have given up on: I had some Supernatural stuff that I originally intended to write more for, many many years ago, but I left them off at an okay spot and I think I’ve marked them complete by this point anyway.

Exchange fics due soon/unrevealed: I’ve never written for an exchange, although I think I’d like to!

WIPs that live in my fanfic folder and are incomplete and who knows when they’ll be finished: I’m gonna say the Endeavour spy AU probably falls in this category. I’m still actively brainstorming, and I’ll write snippets as they come to me, but it’s probably going to be a long time until that’s ready for posting.

Coming soon/not yet started: I don’t usually count things I haven’t started yet in the WIP category, for fear of an unmanageably teetering pile! I will say I’ve considered writing a Broadchurch oneshot, and I have a couple extra Endeavour bits ‘n’ bobs (some TBS “behind the scenes” and some more canon compliant) rattling about.

Do you accept prompts: Sure! I’ve never really gotten one, but I’m open to it, as long as the bestower of the prompt is understanding about my very fickle muse (so I can’t necessarily commit to an idea, however much I may love it). Any fandom I’m currently active in would work, although probably Endeavour would be most likely to get written right now.

Upcoming story you are most excited to write: It’s probably a tie between Three Men and a Baby (Endeavour roommate shenanigans, which is almost done, actually) and A Shifting Cadence (more Morse/Joan, which should have a new chapter posted soon).

[soyouareandrewdobson]

Alex ze Pirate Mini Review 2: Underappreciated and how Sam should deal with an abuser.

Last time I gave a general overview of how Sam is treated by his “friends”. Now I want to give a more specific example, that will also show how Dobson’s storytelling abilities are not really all that good, particularly when it comes to pacing or building up any sort of conflict.

You see, for the most part Alex ze Pirate is just a collection of stupid artwork (not even concept art, just random artwork Dobson makes of his characters dressed as something random) and one page strips with a stupid punchline, with Sam most of the time being the receiving punching bag.

There have however been a few individual, short stories over time. And when I say short stories, I mean short. As in 15 pages for a very cheap set up, a few jokes and a punchline. Those include stories such as All that Glitters (where everyone except Alex breaks into a fortress to steal something), The Wish Fish (the only halfway okay story of them all because it is just meant to be comedic) and Best Laid Plans. However, near the end of the initial run of AzP, Dobson did a three part story (partly) focused on Sam in that format, which started off with the chapter I want to talk in this post: “Underappreciated”.

As you can see, the chapter starts off following some basic rules of storytelling in comics. Two establishing panels for the location at which the story takes place initially and showing what Sam’s duties are. Nothing really bad yet. The only thing that sticks out being just the fact that a) Sam does not have his own bedroom and has to sleep in a useless outlook and b) he sleeps in his regular clothes. But hey, nothing to get upset about initially, perhaps he just prefers it like this at the moment. But with the next two pages…

The problems start to show. Page three establishing that Atea herself is just a cunt who can’t even have the basic decency of wishing her “friend” a good morning or giving him a thank you for bringing a morning beverage as she has other selfish priorities on her mind. Like wanting to lick the shower water of Alex’s skin.

Also, go fuck yourself Uncle Peggy. As in, get both your arms ripped off, shoved up your butthole with those hooks and then get hanged on those stomps like a chandelier. I wouldn’t even mind the fact here that Peggy left a mess, if the face he makes in the last panel was not obvious of the fact he left the bathroom like this on purpose and that he is rather happy of making Sam’s day extra miserable by the fecal matter he left behind. Combined with any previous strip of the comic showing that Peggy for no reason likes to get the boy in trouble and even wants to see him die, this just shows once more of how much of an asshole he is. If the last panel just showed him with a groogy hangover look, obviously unaware of how much discomfort he brings unintentionally to Sam, that would be one thing. But intentionally making Sam’s day miserable despite the obvious fact the boy is the first one to do anything around here, while making one of the worst drawn “HAHA, I am such a rascal faces” I have ever seen (and I have seen shitty anime en mass) makes me hate the character more than Dobson intented.

And then there is page 5…

And it is in my opinion the saddest page in the entire comic arc, even compared to the “heartbreaking” stuff Dobson wants to pull up in the last third of it. Because though it is meant as a joke, the general execution is too cruel, crossing into “dude, not funny” territory and showing just how little the crew cares for Sam. Talus, Sam’s “best friend” not even aware he is around, everyone stealing Sam’s food with that stupid “Yoink” sound (seriously, I wish the characters would get punched in the vaginas each time they make this sound in any of Dobson’s strips) and then leaving Sam behind with smug faces, ready to do whatever they want to do, while he, likely stinking of feces and not even having showered properly, has also to clean up after those pigs, who can’t even eat in a proper manner ( hey Atea, use a fork instead of holding the bowl) and silently. I mean, they are pretty much pigs when the noises they make are loud enough, they make the font of the writing change randomly into whatever Dobson has on his computer with every sound. Not to forget the mess they leave behind. And they call Sam the Slob?

Anyway, on to the next page…

And who the heck left their Hello Kitty toy in the bathtub? Also, I hate the way Alex’s face is drawn in the lower left corner. Something about the eyes in relation to the shit eating grin just looks off. Less “smug” and gleefully awaiting whatever she plans next and looking more like Dobson when someone tells him his opinion and reasoning for it is bad, but he can’t yell back at them because they are part of a minority and so he has make a “good face” to a bad situation, while internally he is already imagining how to strawman them in some fake news worthy facebook post.

And then we get to page 7. Which features the WORST addition to the “Alex ze Pirate” canon Dobson has ever thought up. An embodiment of what is wrong with Dobson when it comes to inserting internet culture related stuff into his own work. Ladies and gentlemen… the lolcat pirates

Yeah, those Hello Kitty rejects who ironically look still more like a proper cat than Spot in Danny and Spot, are essentially one of the worst jokes Dobson has ever created. Because they are a joke without a punchline. See, all there is to them is that they are sentient cats, that speak in a manner associated with lolcat posting. And that is the “joke”. Their speech pattern being based on a dumb internet meme that was popular at the time Dobson drew this page. It is like if you portray an Asian by making them talk with a shitty racist accent and that supposedly counts already as comedy. It is not funny, because there is nothing really done with it in context of the story. Like no one addresses the weird way they talk. Also, with the font Dobson uses, it is just an eyesore to any reader and the text gets aggravating the more the captain of the cats talks. It shows why lolcat pictures only had very short sentences accompanying the pics, cause reading more than 8 words written in this manner tingles a part of your brain that makes you want to shout “English motherfucker, do you speak it”?

Don’t get me even started on how the joke would get lost to anyone unaware of lolcats and how dated the joke already was back when the page was posted, which is one of many reasons why comic artists should just in general avoid memes in their work, if they hope for it to pass the test of time. Instead let me just point out the fact that though Alex said “All hands prepared for casting off” on the previous page (which is also a very unnatural way to give the order “Everyone get ready! Take off in 10 minutes”) not all hands are on board, seeing how Uncle Peggy is missing on this page (and spoilers) many pages of this afterwards. Weird. I thought he would be onboard the moment Alex mentioned they are going to hijack a ship full of pussy. Lastly, this is Alex being a “badass”? Taking over a ship full of little furballs you can defeat with a laserpointer, a squeaky toy and catnip? Sam, this is not just “almost” embarrassingly easy, this is literally on a level similar to stealing candy from a baby. That is mentally handicapped. And without supervision. In a candy story.

At least it turns out there is genuinely something worth stealing on this ship. Otherwise all Alex would have accomplished on that very day would have been animal abuse for the sake of entertainment. Though now it also gets me thinking: A place called Katsville, the revelation that the captain is supposedly the child of a high ranking military feline within the sea force of an entire species of sentient cats… how exactly does the world of Alex ze Pirate function? Look, I do not want to get into too much detail about this point here yet, because it is a bigger issue with the worldbuilding (or rather lack thereof) of this series in general, but what is the “consistency” when it comes to races and species in this world? See, One Piece for example is overall a very “cartoonish” and fantastic world (more cartoonish than what Dobson creates on average) when you think of the fact there are fish men, giant seacows and seamonsters, sentient furry creatures, islands in the sky, sentient weather phenomenons etc next to humans. And while Oda does not really spend time elaborating in very high detail how his world works, the sheer abundance of those elements and how they were established pretty early on in the story and are revisited constanly, with the cartoonish flavor and humor of One Piece on top of it, makes those oddities feel organic and a part of the world.

Not so much in AzP. Here over 90% of the time any character not related to the crew is some generically drawn human, in a very generically human setting with jokes just not cartoonish enough. So the world of AzP feels more “realistic” and less oddish, making then things like Talus, the lolcat pirates and once a giant sea dragon that looked like Elliot’s rejected cousin

Stand out like a sour thumb that looks like this

But I digress. Lets see what makes Sam, who just seems bored and wants to end his miserable life/drink his sorrows away, throw the cat captain against the wall.

Okay. Sam’s overall reaction makes it clear, the locket is important. So “kudos” for establishing this and in doing so also create within a moment a bit of intrigue for the reader. After all, why does this locket get such a reaction out of Sam, who we know so far as more happy go lucky or deadpan in parts, instead of looking genuinely distraught. Heck, the fact he even tells Alex to shut up when she commands him around should highlight how out of character finding this locket truly makes Sam.

Then there is Alex’s reaction to being told to shut up, which she takes with as much dignity as someone telling Dobson to just stop fawning about underaged lesbians in a toddler show.

Jesus Christ, she faces being told she looks like a guy with more grace than that. I mean, isn’t she used to being told to shut her trap? Cause if I were her parents, I would have told this entitled redheaded whinner a few times over the course of her childhood to shut up.

Scum sucking cabin boy… said by a butt ugly whore who would genuinely suck scum off if it means she can finally get laid instead of being mistaken for a man. By the way, with that angry face she makes in the first panel, I can totally see why others would mistake her for a dude. She just looks unpleasant and not in a funny way like that red panda girl from Aggretsuko. See, when she gets angry, it looks hilarious and cute because of the contrast to how the character looks ordinarily. This is just Alex looking even more unpleasant as usual.

Now, before I continue with the next pages, I like to point out the face Sam makes in the upper panel and Sam’s overall body language in the last one.

It is obvious that Sam is meant to be in a state of mind where he knows for what he is getting yelled at and where he genuinely reacts in a hurt manner. His body shaking, his head tilted down, not saying even a word. You would expect that the next page of this comic would be a follow up. Seeing Sam, who is pent up, lashing out in some way. Either for example by justifying why he said it, getting sad, angry, perhaps even violent in that situation. After all, so far the way this story has been structured, a lot of emphasize was put on the fact that Sam is treated not well and that finding this locket actually has an uncommon effect on him. Heck, even the title of this chapter hints on the idea, that we should get some sort of huge reaction out of Sam now on the next page, as this is supposed to be Sam’s story.

Instead it is just Alex grumbling and grinding her teeth, unable to comprehend that someone finally told her something every reader with more than 20 braincells said when reading this comic series. And this in my opinion is from a structural point, one of the biggest missteps in this story. Obviously, this is supposed to be a comic about Sam, based on title and him being the one character in it with the most emotional aspects so far. And it is also obvious that this is not just meant to be a silly gag comic but supposedly one with emotional weight. So, where is that weight so far, aside from the panels showing Sam being miserable because he gets the short end of the stick by his friends? Sorry to hijack this thing here now with my own ideas, but if I had writen this story, page 12 and 13 would have actually been an immense turning point for me in the dynamic so far. Why I would have let Alex shout at Sam for insubordination, I would have made it more than one panel of Alex calling him scum and also end likely with Sam, who obviously reaches a limit the longer she goes on about it, end punching her in the face, perhaps even knock out. Show truly just how far Sam is pushed emotionally at this moment, keeping it however ambiguous if he hit her because of her words hurting or because of something else, in doing so focusing also the attention to the reader back on the locket.

As an aftermath of this, Alex would (if not knocked out) hit Sam back, much to Atea’s and Talus horror, later implying additionally that Sam left because of being hit by whom he thinks is not just his captain but a “friend” (oh yes spoiler, Sam is gone in the next chapter)   or the next page would be of Alex waking up back in her hideout from having been knocked out. Atea and Talus informing her what happened, her deciding to deal with Sam later on after recovering (who accompanied everyone back on the island temporarily) only for the last page showing Sam deciding that he is leaving the island, ending the chapter on Sam in a small boat slowly drifting away from the island. You know, something to give the chapter the feeling that the “shut up” moment is an emotional turning point in this story and that there might be something bigger going on that resulted in Sam deciding to leave, without having him however go full Meg Griffin as in the Family Guy episode “Seashell Seahorse Party”, chewing Alex and the others out for the way they treat him. Cause honestly, as much as I like for Alex, Atea and Talus to be chewed out and face consequences for their actions, doing so would likely just be (like in that Family guy episode)  a pointless fillerbuster in the bigger picture of things, as no real consequences would come out of it.

Well that and just like the writers of Family Guy, Dobson is just equally loathsome and thinks he can write whatever sick joke he wants and can on his characters, basic decency or consistency in writing be damned.

But back to the comic, where things just “end” as shown here instead of any real emotions boiling up and a cliffhanger that may genuinely beg the question what is going to happen next to anyone involved in this thing.

 Cause really, by the time it is night and Sam says it is time to go, you are not surprised he wants to go, even if he did not have a genuine emotional outburst within this chapter. After all, who wants to stay with “friends” like this, with Talus and Atea not even trying to cheer him up and instead ignoring his obvious need for comfort in this uncomfortable way, as if they are a bunch of racists trying to look away as someone beats a black person in front of them into a pulp. The only question you may ask yourself by the time the last page is hit, is who that generic looking girl is, whose picture has been photoshopped into the locket.

 Something we may not find out by the time the next chapter and part of this review hits, but will get to eventually. Until then guys, in order to end on something happier, funnier and just genuinely more pleasant than what this story presented to us so far, have something silly and Super Sentai related here for the sake of childish entertainment.

[terramythos]

TerraMythos' 2020 Reading Challenge - Book 26 of 26

Title: The Princess Bride (1973, 1998/2003 reprint) 

Author: William Goldman 

Genre/Tags: Fantasy, Adventure, Comedy, Romance, First-Person, Third-Person 

Rating: 9/10

Date Began: 9/14/2020

Date Finished: 9/25/2020

Young Buttercup has found her one true love -- a farm boy named Westley. Westley leaves to seek his fortune so that the two can be happy. However, when she learns Westley’s ship was attacked by the Dread Pirate Roberts, a man who takes no prisoners, she knows he must be dead. Devastated, she vows to never love again. Despite being a commoner, her beauty catches the attention of the horrid Prince Humperdinck of Florin. Buttercup is soon forced into a loveless betrothal to the Prince. 

Now a princess, Buttercup is kidnapped by three mysterious men-- the Sicilian criminal philosopher Vizzini, master swordsman Inigo Montoya, and Fezzik the gentle giant-- and learns the three plan to murder her and frame the neighboring country of Guilder. However, the group is tailed by a relentless, mysterious man in black, who seems like he will stop at nothing to catch them.  

"Fool!” cried the hunchback. “You fell victim to one of the classic blunders. The most famous is ‘Never get involved in a land war in Asia,’ but only slightly less known is this: ‘Never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line.’” 

He was quite cheery until the iocane powder took effect. 

Minor spoilers(?) under the cut. 

Somehow, I've never read The Princess Bride. Considering I read a lot and have seen the classic movie maybe two dozen times, that seems like a gross oversight on my part. So I figured, why not cap off my reading goal for the year with a classic?

It's really hard to review this book without the context of the beloved 1987 film. If you've reached this point in your life and have not seen The Princess Bride, please close this review and go watch it-- if only for the pop culture clout you'll get from it. William Goldman wrote both the book and the screenplay, and the adaptation is alarmingly faithful to the source material. Almost every classic line from "inconceivable!" to "Hello, my name is Inigo Montoya, you killed my father, prepare to die" is lifted straight from the book. Aside from a few differences, the story beats are virtually the same. Reading this felt like watching an extended cut of the movie, and it's impossible for me to imagine book scenes without picturing the stellar film cast.

That's not to say they're identical pieces of media. Each has distinct advantages over the other. The Princess Bride novel is much more detailed. You learn more about supporting characters like Inigo Montoya and Fezzik and their backstories. Certain locations are different, such as the Pit of Despair actually being something more complicated/gruesome called the Zoo of Death. The written format also allows for some running jokes that are either absent or heavily modified in the film. For example, Goldman makes fun of the anachronistic nature of the story by referencing time in odd ways, like something taking place "after soup, but before Paris". Fezzik compulsively rhyming, a one-off joke in the movie, is a recurring gag in his narration. Stuff like that.

The frame story is also more complex, centered around a fictionalized version of the author (though many memorable beats from the movie's frame story are still there). The gimmick of the book is that William Goldman is adapting a "good parts version" of a classic historic fairy tale, based on what he remembers from his father reading it to him as a sick child. While I rarely see frame stories done well, Goldman utilizes his to really up the comedic value through constant editorial comments and asides. It mostly enhances the story, though the intro drags a bit, especially because it's longer in subsequent editions.

Where I think the movie shines compared to its source material is, unsurprisingly, the visual component. The sword fight choreography in the film is amazing, and while the novel makes a valiant effort, it just doesn't compare to seeing it performed. Ironically enough, I think the movie succeeds as a "good parts" version of the book by condensing the story in a satisfying way. While the book is inherently more detailed, I don't feel like anything big was lost in adaptation, just simplified or shifted around. This is so rare in film adaptations that I'm still shocked. Holes is the only other film that comes to mind that does this so well (though there’s probably other examples I’m just not aware of). 

But how do I feel about the book itself? It's fun. It's set up like a fairy tale adventure story with a lot of tongue-in-cheek humor about the genre. If you like classic adventure stories with seriously memetic humor and memorable characters, it's hard to go wrong with The Princess Bride. Some tropes haven't aged super well, and I think a more modern take would be interesting, but for a 1973 novel it's pretty good. I don't have much more to say about it!  

The 25th anniversary edition (1998 and onward) has some bonus stuff, mainly one chapter of a (fake?) sequel called "Buttercup's Baby". The frame story again has a super long, dragging intro. There is little to the actual story, just a few bonus scenes of what happened/may happen to the main characters after the main story. While I like some of the jokes and ideas, I'm not sure I really "get it". Did Goldman work on a sequel at one point and scrap it, and published this bit for the reprint? Am I missing a joke? No idea. There's an early joke that the full thing should be out by the 50th anniversary in 2023. Unfortunately, Goldman passed in 2018, so we'll probably never see that particular joke (or surprise publication) pay off. If I really, really had to pick between the movie and the book, I think I prefer the movie just a little more. It could be nostalgia, but I feel the movie has most of the book’s memorable writing with the excellent visual presentation and stellar cast. It's a perfect realization of the source material. What more could anyone want? But I'm glad I read the book for the nostalgia trip and extra insight into one of my favorite movies.  

[thegreenfairy13]

We Only Come Here To Sleep

A new Gobblepot fic cause I need to do something on the weekend. 

Summary: Three infants have been murdered and their bodies have been found at various places in Gotham City. The public, as well as the mob, want to see a culprit for different reasons. After everything Jim Gordon has been through, one wouldn't think an ordinary case would take its toll on him. But it does.

Read the first chapter on Ao3 or here: 

In the end, it wasn’t one of the Riddler’s elaborate schemes, or one of the Joker’s ludicrous plans. It wasn’t Bruce Wayne and his determination to become a vigilante, or even the Penguin and his golden empire of crime. In the end, it was a usual case, an ordinary crime that did James Gordon in.

Gotham City seems to know only two seasons. Through most of the year, there’s an icy wind sweeping through the city, biting into the grim faces of her inhabitants. Most of her days are dark, giving the impression of an endless night.

But then comes the summer. And for a few weeks, Gotham will be tinged with yellow. But it won’t be a bright summer showing off clear skies painting the city with gentle colors. No, it will be harsh and brutal - like everything in this godforsaken city.

The sun will be beating down, baking pavements and glass-facades until each breath in the overheated air will be painful, until each step will be a battle. And the light! It’s never a bright yellow, but a color reminiscent of piss. It suits this pain-filled place, though.

Jim Gordon curses under his breath as exists his car. When putting his feet on the ground, his soles practically fuse with the ground. A wave of hot air hits his chest, and Jim can instantly feel the sweat covering his chest, causing his shirt to cling uncomfortably to his upper-body. Reaching for his sunglasses, he gestures for Harvey to follow him.

The heavier man pulls a face when being ordered to leave the chilled cocoon of his car. Jim ignores him. Sighing heavily, he nods towards the other officers already crowding the scenery.

Despite the buzz, he feels alone. Out here, Gotham is at her worst. For miles and miles, there’s nothing to see but the grey of the concrete and colorless sand. It’s a place where people disappear in the filthy water never to return again. Jim is certain his colleagues will lay him to rest out here one day in the future - he wouldn’t blame them.  

After taking a few more hesitant steps, Jim hears the sand crunching beneath his shoes. If he closed his eyes for a moment, he could easily pretend to be somewhere else. At a proper beach maybe, under a benevolent sky. Instead, he thinks how annoying it will be to get the sand out of his shoes.

“Where exactly are we?” Harvey asks with a slight growl, startling Jim.

Jim tilts his head. He contemplates giving his partner a snarky reply but thinks better of it. So instead of pointing out that he didn’t spend the car-ride blindfolded and handcuffed, he explains, “Common ground.”

Sucking in a shuddering breath, Harvey tilts his head. “That’s bad.”

Jim doesn’t reply, simply grits his teeth. ‘That’s bad’ doesn’t even start to cover how bad this could be.

One of the younger officers picks up on their conversation. Confusion written all over his face, he addresses Harvey. “What do you mean?” he asks.

Huffing out a humorless laugh, the experienced cop indulges the lad. “That’s the land between the turfs.” Pointing across the river, he elaborates, “That’s the Valeska turf.” He turns slightly to the right, “The Siren’s oasis.” Making a full turn, he points vaguely in the direction Jim is standing, “Tetch’s outdoor amusement park for the hopelessly lunatic, right beside the Scarecrow’s House of Horror.”  

At last, he circles his partner fully. “The Narrows,” he says then, ignoring the slight pang of pain on Jim’s face deliberately. “None other than the Queen rules this shitty piece of the city.”

Taking a deep breath, he finishes his quick initiation to Gotham’s inofficial districts. “But they all pay their tribute to the Penguin.”  Adjusting his sweat-sodden fedora, Bullock spits on the ground. “And this crap place? That’s no one’s ground. If a body is being dropped here , the rogues passed their judgment. Together.”

The young police-man gulps. He stares at Bullock and then back at the riverbank where the coroner is already busy taking samples. “So they…?”

Pushing the lad aside, Jim steps forward. “So if a body ends up here without permission here, that means the mob will interfere,” he states grimly.

Approaching the riverbank, the Commissioner finally takes a good look at the corpse before him. Despite all the horrors Jim had been through before, nothing could have been able to prepare him for the sight before him.

For a long moment, he merely stares, unmoving. He has seen corpses before, has been the cause of untimely deaths more times than he’d like to admit, but this is new.

No, in fact, it isn’t. Jim has been confronted with this kind of death before, has tried his very best to suppress that memory as best as he can, but given the context, this is new .

Looking up, he nods for the coroner to start elaborating. Never before has Jim missed the previous forensic, Edward Nygma, as much as this very second. For once, he wishes for someone to wrap up harsh truths in distracting riddles. Jim would give up his year’s salary and then some, if the forensic would give his mind an opportunity to wander off, to focus on something else than the task at hand.

What he gets, though, are simple facts. “Infant. Male. Probably not more than a couple of days old. Maybe not even that. Probably strangled. No severe trauma,” he rattles on, unfazed by the tiny body lying on the dirty ground. Maybe she hardens you to this point.

A baby. Just a little, innocent baby. Jim can hardly breathe as he stares down at what has been a living being, if only for a few hours. His skin is already peeling off due to the merciless heat, turning black and blue beneath Gotham’s sun. Jim wonders if it was rosy, once. He stares down, unable to look away, takes in the little knobs of fat on its upper arms and legs, and tries to suppress a sob.

Somebody should hold this little thing in their arms. It should still be alive, making happy noises, as one gently pinches those tiny rolls of fat. It should squeal with delight, and only cry if it’s hungry.

At last, Jim has to turn away. This is not right. Nobody should discard a child as if it was trash. Especially not here, at this godforsaken place.

His fingers itch to pick up the small body, to hold it, if only for a moment, the way it deserves. In another life, he would know exactly how to go about it. He and Lee would have awaited their child’s arrival with excitement. Would have picked out a crib, toys, rompers, and books, maybe. They would have laid in bed, Jim’s hand on Lee’s belly, waiting for their kid to move, knowing full-well it’s still shielded from this city, from her .

This reality never happened, though. Will probably never happen to Jim, for he doesn’t deserve such happiness, he knows that. But still. It’s unfair. This infant lies there on the ground, discarded like trash, and it’s everything someone like Jim has ever wished for.

He bends down, almost touches the tiny cheek before remembering he’s still a cop. Swallowing heavily, he disguises the motion by wiping the sweat from his forehead.

A heavy hand lands on his shoulder. “You alright, partner?” Harvey asks quietly enough that nobody else hears them.

Jim’s chest constricts, he has trouble taking a breath, and still, his jaw is set tight. Nobody but Harvey would ever catch on, would note that anything was wrong. Jim is thankful for the warm hand, the solid weight on his shoulder. He’s grounding him in his pain, forcing him back to reality, when all he wants to do is float away and wallow in his grief.

“Of course I am,” he replies, a tad bit too quickly.

Harvey arches an eyebrow at him, but doesn’t reply. This is neither the place nor the time anyway.

“Won’t you finally pack up the evidence?” he snaps when the coroner gives them both a look that is too curious for Harvey’s taste. The coroner squints in disdain, but does what he’s told. After all, Bullock has a natural authority to him, he’s a character only Jim questioned successfully so far, and today, he’s glad for it.

They get back into their car, where it’s cold and sterile and death is but a memory at a riverbank. He blinks as he tries to wrap his head around what he just saw: an entire life, wasted in the sand. Neither of them talks as Harvey drives back to the city, back to the living.

Finally, Harvey glances over at Jim, now and then beating nervously the devil’s tattoo on the steering wheel. “That’s the third,” he whispers.

“I know,” Jim replies. He’s too exhausted to say anything else. Over the course of the last three weeks, they found three dead infants. All scattered around the city. The first two had been siblings according to their DNA-analysis. Jim wouldn’t be surprised if the third one is related to them, too.

“You want me to drop you off at the weasel’s place?” Harvey asks, and Jim flinches.

“What am I supposed to do there?”

The other man shrugs. “We found it on Common Ground.”

Jim hums in agreement. “Doesn’t look like a mob-job, though.”

Tilting his head, Harvey acknowledges the statement. “He could still know something,” he states petulantly and both men know he’s reaching for straws there.

“This case is getting to you,” he adds after a moment. Jim rolls his eyes but can’t find it in him to disagree. “You could at least get a free drink.”

The blonde snorts. “I think I’m outta favors.”

Harvey scratches his chin. “Still. Maybe one of his goons has seen something.” He clears his throat, looks over at Jim. “And it wouldn’t hurt for you to let off some steam. You always seem to be better off after pushing the Penguin around for a while.”

Jim sputters. “That’s not true!” he protests.

Holding up his hand, Harvey interrupts him. “It is. Go there. See what he knows, rough him up, arrest one or two thugs. You’ll feel better.”

Horrified, Jim stares at his partner’s face. “You make it sound like I’m harassing an innocent citizen for nothing. You’re still aware we’re talking about the Penguin?”

Harvey snorts in response. “That’s exactly why I’m suggesting.” He clicks his tongue against his teeth. “Not accusing , just to be clear.”

Jim falls silent as he clenches his fists. He’s so damn tired, he doesn’t even want to put up a fight.

“He’ll find out anyway,” he demurs. “And he’ll want answers. You don’t simply drop off a body at the riverbank and expect Cobblepot to keep his hooked nose outta your business.”

“This is a police investigation,” Jim snaps back, unfazed, and Harvey’s jaw drops.

“Even after becoming the Commissioner, you still sound like a petulant rookie on some days.

Leaning back against the seat, Jim closes his eyes. Even before today, he had been exhausted to the point of not being able to sleep properly for weeks. This city just won’t let him.

And now there’s a body on Common Ground.

This city doesn’t seem to rest when it comes to her sinisterness. If Gotham doesn’t want to swallow her entire population whole, she now goes for her most vulnerable inhabitants. Jim wishes he could for once simply search for stolen paintings or chase a burglar. But no, there’s always something bigger, or something more diabolical lurking in the shadows.

Jim’s shoulders slump as he gives in. “Let’s do the paperwork first,” he suggests, cause he’s still the commissioner. “And then we’ll inform the Penguin like the good, little cops we are.”

[fire-emblem-heroes-supports]

Takumi/Rhea C-A Support

A/N: Possible content warning for Takumi’s description of his nightmares. Nothing terribly graphic (here) but see here for context if you’re concerned.

Written by @sharyrazade

C SUPPORT

Takumi: [notices woman vocalizing] (Huh, Azura sounds different. Does she have a cold or something?)

Takumi: [following garden path] Azura! Is that you?

[Takumi approaches “Azura’s” general direction.]

Takumi: [not looking closely] That’s an interesting song, Azura. I’ve never heard you-

Rhea: [notices Takumi] Oh! Hello, young man.

Takumi: [somewhat embarrassed] Oh, sorry! I thought you were someone else!

Rhea: [smiles gently] Pay it no mind, child. I do not believe we have met before.

Takumi: Of course! Were are my manners? My name is Takumi, prince of the Kingdom of Hoshido.

Rhea: You may call me Rhea. In my own world, I am the Archbishop of the Church of Seiros.

Takumi: Hmm, that’s interesting. Back home, we have plenty of priests and monks, but no archbishops. I guess whoever is on the throne serves a lot of the same purposes, but no bishops.

Rhea: Your homeland sounds just fascinating to me. Would you mind if we discussed your country and its religious practices sometime?

Takumi: Not at all! In fact, I could probably talk about it all-

[Hinata and Oboro appear]

Hinata: Lord Takumi! Finally, we found you!

Oboro: Lady Azura was actually in the library. You know how quiet she can be.

Rhea: [smiles] These two are just delightful. I don’t believe we’ve been introduced.

Takumi: Oh, yeah! These are Hinata and Oboro. They’re probably the best retainers anyone could ask for.

Rhea: It is a joy to meet you both.

Oboro: [stammers and blushes slightly]

[Hinata simply stares in awe at Rhea, mouth slightly agape.]

Takumi: Staring like that is very rude, Hinata. You were raised better than that!

Rhea: Pay it no mind. It was a pleasure speaking with you all.

[Rhea leaves.]

Hinata: [watching Rhea as she walks away] Damn!

Oboro: (She’s almost as gorgeous as Lord Takumi!)

Takumi: [sighs] I don’t know what I’m going to do with you two.

[Takumi and Rhea have reached support rank C.]

B SUPPORT

[On the archery range, the Summoner can be seen/heard fighting with an even more sour-than-usual Garon, waving Breidablik threateningly in the faces of Iago and Hans.]

Summoner: And didn’t I ban your goons from this place already?!

Garon: Hmph. You tolerate that one mad dog of a wyvern rider. I fail to see the difference. And you common rabble call us hypocrites!

Summoner: Yes, “tolerate!” But “tolerate” and “enjoy having around” have entirely different meanings! Do you have any idea how much effort it is keeping him away from Erika?! Or to keep Ephraim away from him in return?!

[One of the Fujin Yumi’s bolts misses the target completely, said target pockmarked with random marks- none of them at the center unusually.]

Takumi: [listlessly draws back the Fujin Yumi’s string, his focus seeming somehow impaired.]

Rhea: [approaches him from behind] Er…Prince Takumi…?

Takumi: [jolts to face her, looking noticeably fatigued.] What?! Oh! I’m sorry. It’s only you.

Rhea: [wearing a concerned expression] Are you alright? You look as though you slept poorly. Is something bothering you?

Takumi: [shortly] I did and no, nothing’s bothering me.

Rhea: If you’re certain.

Takumi: So what did you need, Archbishop?

Rhea: No need to be so formal. Rhea is fine. I simply wished to continue our conversation about your home and their faiths from the other day. If you’re not too busy, of course.

Takumi: Oh, of course! Well, where I come from, pretty much everyone has their own choice of god or exact practices, but nearly all of us worship the First Dragons in some capacity. The royal families of Hoshido and Nohr are even said to have been granted their blood as a symbol of their respective pacts.

Rhea: Interesting. Very interesting. (I knew it! I told Seteth it was not simply a hunch!)

Takumi: [glances sideways at Garon being yelled at by the Summoner] But about the Nohrians…they’re supposed to worship the same gods as everyone else on the continent, but…

Rhea: But what?

Takumi: I can’t put it into words that well…they’re just weird about it. I know, I know. Everyone says that about ways of doing things that aren’t their own, but those people just have a lot of weirdness surrounding the way they look at the world.

Rhea: Come now. I’m sure they cannot be that strange.

Takumi: Well, I could look past the Nohrian custom of giving three greetings or goodbyes, it’s not THAT strange. The fact that the Nohrian breeds of chickens are known to be paranoid and aggressive to the point of attacking people in flocks is a little interesting. Their strong taboo against wearing green to births, weddings, or funerals is pretty strange too. But it’s definitely weird for a country that’s about a third mountains and another third forests to have a strong aversion to, even contempt, for trees over a certain height.

Rhea: Is it…a specific type of tree, perhaps?

Takumi: No, just trees in general. If they can’t be avoided or cut down, I’m told a lot of old-timers will just reflexively spit whenever they pass one. Even one of their princes, one who called it an “infantile common superstition,” to me. He still avoids trees over a certain height on sheer instinct.

Rhea: Is green clothing considered a bad omen there as well?

Takumi: [shrugs] From the sound of it, yes. Someone else summoned from Nohr- a commoner- once mentioned in passing that his cousin showed up for his brother’s wedding in green and got beaten half to death for it. Talked about it like you’d talk about your friend losing his house in a flood- unfortunate, but unremarkable.

Rhea: Your neighbor seems to inspire some…passionate opinions. Just from your tone, I take it you’re no great lover of them.

Takumi: You could say that, I suppose. They did murder my father, after all. But what I think about them as a people…it’s not really much worse than the common opinions. That they’re loud, rude, arrogant, and obnoxious- generally speaking, of course. Honestly, you should ask my retainer, Oboro if you’re that curious about the topic. She has even less love for Nohr, but even then, she’ll still usually be polite when speaking to them.

Rhea: [shuts her eyes in contemplation briefly] I understand this may be something of a sensitive topic, but are you privy to the common Nohrian opinion of your people?

Takumi: [winces unconsciously] Oh, you know. The usual. That we’re filthy, depraved, sneaky, dishonorable, inscrutable, not really people, beasts in human skin, and so on. That we do horrible things to women and little girls as rites of passage, sacrifice live babies to the Dawn Dragon. All that good stuff.

Rhea: My goodness! Where in the worlds do they get these impressions?

Takumi: [sighs] I couldn’t tell you. From what I’ve learned, they mostly couldn’t either. You’d probably have to ask whatever demon gave them these ideas.

Rhea: Is that…what was bothering you?

Takumi: [visibly angry] No, it’s not. I told you. Nothing is bothering me.

Rhea: If you’re sure, child. If you ever need to confide-

Takumi: It’s nothing! NOTHING is bothering me, okay! So just drop it!

[Takumi storms off.]

Rhea: Oh dear. Perhaps I handled that poorly.

[Takumi and Rhea have reached support rank B.]

A SUPPORT

[In the same garden as earlier]

Takumi: Er, Rhea- Archbishop. I…I meant to apologize for that outburst the other day.

Rhea: [somewhat surprised] Oh! Prince Takumi! No, it is I who owes you the apology. I pried into a clearly sensitive topic and-

Takumi: No, the fault is mine. My conduct was unbecoming of a prince and a man in general, and there’s no excuse for that. I apologize for my behavior.

Rhea: Again, you need not ask my forgiveness.

Takumi: But you were completely right about one thing. Something WAS bothering me. And it continues to bother me.

Rhea: [nods sadly] I had suspected as much.

Takumi: Are you…sure you want to hear about this…? Pleasant is the very last thing this is.

Rhea: Yes, if it would help to put your mind at ease.

[Taking a deep breath, Takumi sits down next to Rhea, staring off blankly into the distance.]

Takumi: You had already figured out that I don’t sleep very well a lot of the time. Gods, it sounds so childish, but…I have very vivid nightmares. Violently vivid, in fact.

Rhea: [frowns slightly] No, I understand completely. I have…more than my share of sleepless nights, as well.

Takumi: Again, are you really sure you want to hear this stuff?

Rhea: If you’re inclined to share with me, I will listen.

Takumi: [exhales sharply] This is just one of them, but this recurring nightmare of mine…I can’t even describe it that well…but I could tell that it was in a town in Hoshido. The architecture told me that much. And strangely enough, I was this…ghost thing. I could feel the physical world- but I couldn’t really interact with it.

Rhea: That sounds…most unsettling.

Takumi: And I’m just getting started too! You know how I mentioned I could interact with the world? Oh, gods…there was so much blood. It must have been up to my shins! I keep wading through it to find the townspeople…it was probably the most terrifying thing I could imagine. So many bodies…they weren’t soldiers even, but civilians- old men, women, children! Most of them were missing ears, eyes, noses, hands, heads- half of them didn’t even have any skin left!

Rhea: [looking shocked and horrified] My goodness! That IS terrible! I scarcely have the words for it!

Takumi: [winces] It gets worse. Where did all that skin go? When I turned my head to face the “monument” the Nohrians had built in the town square, I was sick to my stomach. And Oboro…gods, the first time I had this nightmare, I couldn’t look her in the eye for a week! And Hinata…he was the worst of all! They weren’t just murdering him…they were TORTURING him! And you know what disturbed me most? It wasn’t even that I couldn’t even do a damn thing about it. It was that they were laughing as they did this!

Rhea: You poor thing…have you ever talked to anyone about these terrible nightmares?

Takumi: No, not really. And anyone I could, I…don’t think they could understand anyway.

Rhea: What do you mean?

Takumi: Well, my brother, for one. He’s so strong, that even in his nightmares, he’d hand those bastards their heads- literally! Same goes for my sister, too. And my other sister…no, I could do that to her. She’s sensitive enough that she’d probably start to have these nightmares just from me even starting to describe them! And her retainers would never forgive me either!

[Takumi starts to choke back tears, lying his head in Rhea’s lap.]

Rhea: [strokes his hair] You poor dear…you’ve suffered so terribly in silence.

Takumi: [sobs] Y-you must think I’m some kind of m-monster for having thoughts like this! I just want- all I ever wanted- was to protect Hoshido- protect my people!

[Takumi continues to sob as Rhea strokes his hair.]

Rhea: [sings] Iiiiiiiiin time’s flow…see the glow…of flames ever burning bright…on the swift…river’s drift…broken memories alight…

[Takumi sits back up, noticeably calmer.]

Takumi: That song…it’s so relaxing. That’s probably why I thought you were Azura!

Rhea: Yes, my mother would often sing it for me when I was young. It is quite calming to me, even to this day.

Takumi: My mother- well, my stepmother technically, but she was the only mother I ever knew- had a beautiful singing voice too.

Rhea: [smiles] She sounds just lovely. Inside and out.

Takumi: Yeah, she was. She was.

Rhea: And on the contrary, Takumi. I do not think of you as a monster or a demon in the slightest.

Takumi: Wait, why not?

Rhea: Because that fear and concern is born from a deep and sincere love of your people. I cannot- will not- blame you for that same love. I have encountered a great many powerful princes, nobles, merchants, and what have you, in my time. If even half of them had half of your concern for their own people, the world- all of our worlds- would be in far better condition.

Takumi: [finally smiles] Archbishop- Rhea…thank you. It’s…not exactly easy for me to open up to people, let alone about things like this. Again, thank you.

Rhea: Think nothing of it, child. If you ever require a sympathetic ear or a shoulder to cry on, you may seek me out.

Takumi: And even though I came apart a bit there, I still meant every word I said. I don’t care what people want to call me. A monster, a demon, a zealot, whatever. My purpose is now and will always be to protect my people- from whatever wants to harm them.

Rhea: [smiles] A very admirable purpose.

[Takumi gets up and walks away.]

Rhea: (If only more humans could be like that young man instead of him... that thief.)

[Takumi and Rhea have reached support rank A.]

[mittensmorgul]

300, and other random observations

Last night Mel and I were scouring the episode looking for the expected obvious “300″ to jump out from some random door or building number, or appear SOMEWHERE in the episode the way 100 did in 5.18:

or 200 did in 10.05:

In case it isn’t obvious from this image, this is the 200 Motel:

So I was looking for the 300 in 14.13, and weirdly didn’t find anything quite this obvious. I rambled a bit about my search here on @drsilverfish;s post:

http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/182669346730/14x13-lebanon-some-silent-storytelling-notes-on

But I saw some interesting things in the pawn shop and around Lebanon that I can appreciate, as well as some very well hidden “300″ references. Basically this is just my Jerry Wanek appreciation post, because what a guy!

All screencaps are from hotn.

The one thing I’d overlooked as a HUGE “300″ is the most prominently featured guitar in the shop:

That one right in the middle, raised up above the others, looks a bit downtrodden. It’s missing its strings, first off. While another guitar is labeled “PLAY ME!” this one isn’t playable at all. And yet it might be the rarest instrument in the shop, and with a bit of tlc could easily be worth thousands. It’s a ww2 era Gibson ES300. Between 1942 and 1946, Gibson only produced a few acoustic guitars, since metals for the electric pickups were needed for the war effort. I think this could be one of those guitars. So talk about a big, blaring 300. Unstrung, a product of war, seemingly unplayable, but with care and attention, possibly the most valuable and precious instrument in the shop. Easy to see why it’s given pride of place.

But again, this isn’t an obvious 300. You kinda have to know something about something to even recognize it among all the other second-hand guitars.

(also lol at the giant tv in the background that makes us think of 13.16)

(and lol at the tuba that makes me think of the house of horns or whatever from 6.06. This show has such a bizarre history with pawn shops...)

Under a cut because this got way longer and more rambly and tangential than I intended >.>

There’s a lot going on just at the register:

Roadhouse Monkey, “You break it, you buy it,” and the sign that says “Your baby daddy sitting in jail? Sell your gold and get bail!” with the weirdest assortment of random jewelry pictured on it... and oddly a mala draped around the register itself. Clearly this dude hasn’t been using his mala for meditation practice.

In the post I linked above, I already described their entrance into the secret back room, where everything was “one of a kind” and we immediately saw two identical goblets. Go read that post for more on that. :D

Behind the goblets, it almost looks like a heart frozen in a block of something. But what the shop owner points to is a Hand of Glory, which was the central magical item from 3.06, the plot of which had to do with people who committed acts of violence against family (and the spell they found to banish the ghost killing people forever contained the first use of the word “Castiel” on the show).

He goes on to point out “gris gris bags” and “anointed dove’s blood.” Gris gris bags are protective talismans, which my brain immediately associates with Gordon Walker. He traded his to Bela for the Winchesters’ location in 3.07, and after giving it up, he was turned into a vampire and then killed by Sam. I can’t remember any use for the dove’s blood in canon...

It’s hard to see, but one shelf over is a Jason Voorhees style hockey mask (which is interesting to me because of 14.04 and the horror movie callbacks that were referenced later in 14.13 again at the movie theater in Lebanon playing All Saint’s Day and Hell Hazers). Not to mention as we talked about during 14.04, the original “monster” they were supposed to fight with in 3.10 in their nightmares was Jason, but Kripke didn’t realize they couldn’t obtain the rights to it, so that scene had to be cut. So in a roundabout way we get another reference to that iconic scene between Dean and his demon self, rejecting John’s influence over him. Beside the mask is the first of three Centurion Helmets we see in the episode (actually the second instance is probably this helmet again, but in a different context, in the box the teens steal from the Impala and take into their party house, along with the teddy bear Sam plays with here in a minute).

There’s the spray bottle of Dragon’s Breath, that looks like an innocent bottle of perfume with the squeezy bulb, but shoots out a gout of fire. 

Inside his safe, along with the skull of Sarah Goode, executed during the Salem Witch Trials, is an odd assortment of things, double-locked inside this already secret room:

It looks like a clock of some sort, a brass globe, and a genie’s oil lamp. But it’s the fact he had the skull at all, stolen from a murdered hunter that they knew, meant that he’d been involved with that horrific crime, like the previous references to Bela who traded in these artifacts (and had sold the hand of glory when she’d needed to destroy it to save her own life... I mean this was pretty heavy Bela parallels here), the owner turns the Dragon’s breath on them and pulls out a saber:

It’s called “Chrysaor.” Whether the one from Spenser’s “The Faerie Queene” that belonged to Sir Artegal, the Knight of Justice, and had supposedly been used by Zeus to battle the Titans, or to the offspring of Poseidon and Medusa and the brother of Pegasus, or whether it was a nod to Assassin’s Creed (I honestly think it’s the former and the latter is a bonus here...)

This reminded me SO MUCH of Gog and Magog and their Special Swords forged by a god, with the reference back to Zeus and the Titans here, AND to the actual circumstances around how Dean managed to kill them. Because Gog and Magog... just would not shut up. Dean even lampshades the fact this guy stood there with the sword over his head, raised above Sam sprawled on the ground the same way Cas was in 13.14:

But he talked long enough about Cas’s “beautiful death” that Dean was able to stab him from behind, just as he was able to shoot the store owner now, because he wouldn’t stop talking. Forged by a god, touched by God...

Then we see the store’s secret ledger:

I honestly don’t want to know what’s in the “genitalia jar.” But these entries are dated from 1956. How long has this shop been into this sort of shady business? At least as far back as the original MoL was operating in the US (they were annihilated in 1958 by Abaddon). And there’s even a reference to a “Men of Letters membership discussion” in the ledger:

Of interest on the next page is a lock of hair from a victim of HH Holmes (taking us back to 2.06), as well as trinkets associated with Vlad the Impaler and Napoleon, a “bag of sorrows,” and a “razor of the damned.” Among other items of interest.

But here’s the page with the magical pearl:

And nowhere in this book does it say the pearl “gives you what your heart desires.” It says, “a pearl that grants wishes.” So... where did Sam get that additional information? I find it fascinating how things that are written in books are interpreted in a much broader fashion by the reader-- first Dean with the book Billie gave him in 14.10, and now Sam with this entry in this ledger.

Because this has been happening a lot.

For example in the scene immediately prior to this, the kids outside are talking about the Winchesters when they actually drive up. Their conversation is really interesting:

Eliot: People say they’re brothers. All I know is I was standing right here when-- when I heard this BAM! from the trunk of their car. And then, this like, shallow breathing. Max: No way. Flower Shirt Girl: Eliot, you’re creeping Max out.

I have to assume this was when they still had Garth in the trunk of the car, and just :’). Eliot is making some assumptions, but he’s much more terrifyingly accurate than he probably could guess. And Max’s flippant comment in her next scene proves it:

Eliot: I mean think about it. Where do they even come from? Them or their weird sidekick with the trenchcoat. Or what about the kid with the dumb Bambi look on his face all the time? Max: So what, it doesn’t mean they kidnapped Bigfoot or whatever.

And they all laugh, and Eliot calls them dicks. :P

And all of this makes me think of how the show spent the early part of the season teaching us how to read between the lines, to fill in narrative gaps, and to parse the subtext to understand exactly what it was they were actively not showing us.

Like in the scene at the party house where the John Wayne Gacy clown appears, we don’t see Dean thrown by the clown (just as we didn’t see the other boy who was attacked escape from the clown), nor do we see Sam light the fire that burned the cigar box tethering the ghost. But it’s clear that Dean was thrown because we saw him land, and Sam obviously eventually got his lighter to work because there’s the evidence of the flames.

Also, did they bring that old pickup truck from the bunker? Because they should DEFINITELY drive that thing more often. :’)

And Eliot follows his instincts, wanting to know what’s up and witnesses the ghost going up in flames. And he knows what he saw, and doesn’t even question it. When Sam confirms it, he feels so validated. Just like us when we read the subtext and fill in the blanks.

I have no idea how I got here from rambling about finding the 300′s in the episode but here we are.

OH. Right! The Centurion Helmets!

The first we see was in the shop pictured above. We see it again at the Party House in the Establishing Shot inside, nestled in a box with Sarah Goode’s skull, which was the original Macguffin that led Sam and Dean to that pawn shop in the first place, which enabled them to find the pearl to even be able to make this wish at all:

And the second and third Centurions are on the wall of B&E Pizza:

(and the one on the other side of the menu board hasn’t been screencapped yet, but is much more clearly visible than this one because Cas lights it up:

Three Centurions. Each of whom commands a century, or a group of 100 soldiers. So I’m going to use the fact that the show is actively telling us to notice and read between the lines, and assume we’re seeing yet another 300.

Especially after Misha’s tweet joking about it: https://twitter.com/mishacollins/status/1093606706532282371

[letmetellyouaboutmyfeels]

How Do You Solve a Problem Like Jessica?

@timeless-season-three is returning in just about a week, on Jan 13 8/7 central, and with it returns one of the most complex characters on the show: Jessica Logan.

Note: I wrote this while operating on like three hours of sleep so forgive any incoherence.

Jessica starts out on the show as Wyatt Logan’s deceased wife. She’s been dead for six years at the start of the show, only to return in 2x03 Hollywoodland, somehow brought back to life by Rittenhouse for unknown purposes. In the season two finale, it’s revealed that she is a) working for Rittenhouse and was in fact raised by them after they went back in time and saved her brother’s life as as child and b) pregnant with Wyatt’s baby.

Yeah, it’s a lot.

Now, the Timeless writers have written themselves into a bit of a cliché with Jessica working for Rittenhouse, but fortunately, there’s still a lot to work with here with such a character in the right hands.

So. How does one take the problem of Jessica Logan and make sure she’s a three-dimensional character and not a one-note paper-thin ‘always evil’ villain who was lying about her pregnancy and sacrificed in a hack job to make room for the ‘main ship’?

Well, you read timeless-season-three and don’t watch that fake movie I hear is floating around.

Jessica Logan is the latest in a long line of dead wives and the latest in a long line of ‘evil’ exes. Two overused tropes under her belt, damn. Overachiever. This presents her writers with an interesting problem to overcome.

Luckily, the timeless-season-three writers have done our girl justice by remembering something vital that many people tend to forget about Rittenhouse:

It’s a cult.

Now, straight white men like Nicholas Keynes, Benjamin Cahill, John and David Rittenhouse, and Michael Temple (may he soon rest in pieces) have no problem buying into this ‘society’. To them, Rittenhouse probably feels like a slightly more organized and exclusive version of the conservative movement. But how do otherwise brilliant and educated women like Emma Whitmore and Carol Preston buy into it? How do gay men like Ethan Cahill stay in it?

Lucy’s treatment in between seasons one and two is the biggest tip off to this. She spends weeks being held prisoner and indoctrinated by her mother, undergoing ‘training’ and she flatly calls Rittenhouse a cult that tried to brainwash her in 2x04 to Flynn and Rufus in Salem.

Lucy is fortunate—despite her tendency to let people walk all over her, she is a woman of strong opinions and convictions. She’s also an adult when her mother tries to indoctrinate her. She resists the Rittenhouse ‘training’.

But Jess watched her brother saved by a miracle and was then raised in this cult. A cult that placed her in a position where she was in a dead-end job, married to a possessive and jealous man (even if Jess is lying about Wyatt’s drinking problem and cheating on her, we’ve seen in the original timeline by Wyatt’s behavior and own admission and from Lucy’s journal that he was a jealous husband whose jealousy lead directly to Jess’s death). In short they put her in a life where she would have literally no one to turn to besides Rittenhouse, keeping her under their control.

@timeless-season-three took the problem of Jess’s character setup and has used it to set her up perfectly for a redemption arc. And they did it by running with the context clues set up in season two.

First: Jess tries to divorce Wyatt in 2x04. He pleads with her that he’s changed and between his pleading and Lucy’s later on in 2x05, Jess agrees to give Wyatt another chance. However, Jess as a Rittenhouse agent had no way of knowing Wyatt wouldn’t sign those papers. She especially had no way of knowing Lucy would plead with her to give Wyatt another chance. Lucy’s a better person than 90% of the people I know—how many of us would genuinely give up the man we have feelings for, who clearly has feelings for us, for the wife who wants to give him up? It makes so much more sense for Jess to be genuine in wanting to walk way from Wyatt. Especially if she doesn’t realize how ruthless Rittenhouse is (more on this in a moment).

Second: Jess is in the bunker for at least a month. She could have shot Wyatt in his sleep and stolen the Lifeboat at any moment, and probably should have the minute she got into that bunker. It makes no sense for her to stay as long as she did. Even if she’s gathering intel, it’s easier to just plant a bug for Rittenhouse, then grab Rufus or Jiya and force them onto the Lifeboat.

Instead, Jess spends a month hanging out. She watches reality TV with Jiya (and most likely Lucy since Lucy admits to Rufus that she herself watches ‘very bad for you but delicious television’). She let the MASSIVE clue drop that her brother is the reason she’s Rittenhouse (she knows Rittenhouse saved her brother, therefore she knows that Wyatt wouldn’t know him since he’s from a different timeline and has said as much). She doesn’t kill Wyatt, Rufus, Mason, or Lucy and Flynn (Lucy’s not sleeping on the couch and therefore must be bunking out in Flynn’s room again) when she steals Jiya and the Lifeboat. They’re all asleep and she grabbed Wyatt’s gun—killing any of them, especially Wyatt, would have been a piece of cake.

But she doesn’t. She hangs out in that bunker killing no one for no reason.

Third: The pregnancy. Now, I personally thought it was a lie blurted out to distract Wyatt from investigating his suspicions about Jess’s brother. But as of 2x10 she’s assured Wyatt she’s truly pregnant and that it’s his child—and that furthermore she loves him and doesn’t want to do this.

Does any of this sound like someone else we know?

If you said, “Ethan Cahill,” then ding ding ding! You’re right!

Jessica Logan is on the surface a writing problem. She’s a massive trope. But we also have the seeds of something so much deeper, and it looks like timeless-season-three is taking those seeds and helping them bloom.

In season three it’s established right away through an interrogation scene between Jess and Emma that Emma has no problem killing Jess and Jess’s unborn child. When Jess tries to make a friendly overture, offering to make Emma dinner, Emma mocks her and shuts her down. In 3x04, Jess is sent on a mission with a bug in her brooch (unknown to her) so that Emma will have proof of Jess’s loyalty. Jess’s life is threatened, directly and indirectly, multiple times. In season three, in short, she’s used to highlight how Rittenhouse bullies its agents.

We also see through Jess’s own behavior that she’s reluctant and unsure about Rittenhouse’s methods and her own role. She expresses dismay when Emma says everyone on the time team will be killed. She waits weeks to give up the location of the bunker. And when she runs into Wyatt she can’t kill him and in fact tries to warn him about the impending earthquake in 3x07.

All of this brilliantly parallels Ethan Cahill. A closeted gay man, Cahill nevertheless stays in Rittenhouse to protect his wife and son and because he sees no other option. It’s only with the persuasion of Lucy and his love for her as his granddaughter that he agrees to be a double agent.

That’s right. A double agent.

While we of course don’t know what’s in store next for timeless-season-three other than tears and screaming, Jessica is currently being set up to become what Ethan Cahill was: a double agent within Rittenhouse. Jess has experience with this being undercover at the bunker, and she’s got a compelling reason to turn other than her love fo Wyatt and affection for the time team: her child.

The timing of Jess’s defection to Rittenhouse is interesting. It comes almost immediately after her announcement that she’s pregnant. If she’s been reluctant to turn the team in, her pregnancy could be what made her steal the Lifeboat—she feared what Rittenhouse would do to her unborn child (through her) if she changed sides. Now, her pregnancy could be a good catalyst to getting Jess to switch sides again, to keep Rittenhouse from raising and brainwashing her child as they did her.

Furthermore, Jessica (as mentioned a few paragraphs ago) could have not known just how bad Rittenhouse was. She could have truly believed it was a force for good, or at least not as black and white as the time team claimed. But in spending time with the team, she could have come to realize just how bad Rittenhouse was. Once you’re out of the cult, it’s easier to see the toxic behavior. And now the full brunt of Rittenhouse ruthlessness is being unleashed on her and she’s realizing how trapped she is.

But again: Rittenhouse raised her. How do you turn your back on your family?

Rittenhouse raised and manipulated Jess. They’ve put her life and her child’s life in danger. The push-pull between those two loyalties makes for a compelling character arc, and timeless-season-three is playing that to the hilt.

By taking the context clues into account and remembering Ethan Cahill, timeless-season-three has taken the problem of Jessica Logan and the tropes she represents and is presenting us with an equation for a successfully three-dimensional character with a storyline all her own.

I, personally, can’t wait to see timeless-season-three’s final solution to the unique problem of Jessica Logan.

[illuminatingcomics]

Before you give up on capes can you describe the problems with Riri's egocentrism/smugness and that one "supervillain monologue" of Moon Girl? I hear people dig into things like that, but I never really understand why.

Anon istalking about the infamous flashback of Invincible Iron Man #8 where RiriWilliams wants a teacher to tell her dreams won’t come true so that she feelsmore driven, and when she doesn’t, just stands there and creepily stares at heruntil she gives in.

Long ass dissection + other questions underneath the cut

I have avery big problem with this scene for a couple of reasons. I decided to puttogether three, from less to more important:

1) Beyondeverything else, this is just Bendis trying to be funny in his usual way andnot delivering. Beat panels in of themselves are funny, even beat panels that arereused endlessly and continuously for pages and pages (Preacher comes to mind),but Bendis never has anything even remotely close to a punch line at the end ofthese scenes. It’s just a repeat of the “awesome facial hair bros” or whateverhe did on Iron Man. So, strike one, poor attempt at humor thatfails.

2) Itpaints Riri as really obnoxious and unpleasant. I’ve seen people argue that “kidsdo stuff like that”, well, I’m sure some kids do these things, and the onesthat do deserve to be smacked across the head for being such little shits. Italso portrays Riri as someone who cannot properly function if things don’t go exactlyhow they planned, and a person that MUST have someone opposing her to drive her.An actually interesting set of character flaws if properly used, but again,this is not the introduction of a character flaw, just a comedic scene thatdoesn’t deliver. Strike two, character is obnoxious.

3) Thisthird point is complex and sticky, and a lot more serious that the stuff Iusually post, so bear with me. I may be entirely talking out of my ass I recognizethat, but it disturbs me how Riri Williams mentions “the first female African Americanastronaut” without saying her name. I actually got curious, and looked up thestory, and it turns out it’s all true, and the astronaut name is Mae Jemison. link

Why doesn’t Riri say her name? It disturbs me, because it seems theastronaut ethnic background is the only thing Riri (and by extention Bendis)care about. Riri doesn’t seem to consider Jemison some kind of hero, she doesn’tseem to be inspired by her story, she just want to live through an identicalsituation to fuel a little movie she made up in her head. Jemison is just a prop,forgotten and discarded as soon as the scene ends. Riri doesn’t care about who the astronaut is, she cares about what she is, and how SHE can benefit from a similar set up.

I mean, isn’t it a bit fucked up that I had to google “first female African-americanastronaut” to find Jeminson, when I could’ve easily googled her name if it wasgiven to me? It reminds me how just a couple of years ago, a new female writergetting handed a series was announced just like that by media outlets “NEWFEMALE WRITER”. I understand that it’s important for people, representation andall that, but I’m certain the very protagonists of these announcements would’vepreferred their given name to be written in all caps on the headlines.

I guess itstuck out to me so much, because reminded me of an another article from acouple of years ago, written regarding Cyborg.

The maingist of the article was that western media dehumanizes and mechanises black men,primarily their body, and that Cyborg has been chosen by DC as the black guy topush (subconsciously or not) because he represents a perfect conflux of bad stereotypesand roles whites associate with black characters, namely the fact that he’s anathlete thus he’s a working mule all body and no brain, and he doesn’t have adick, so he’s all body and no brain yet he’s not sexually threatening for the whiteaudience… and he concludes this article by stating that now Cyborg will be portrayedand I quote “an actor that is atleast three shades lighter than Cyborg’s color in the comic books”…

So, after atirade on how the white man dehumanizes blacks, the author of the articledehumanizes actor Ray Fisher by 1) not stating his name, thus making him anonentity b) reducing him not even to a skin color, but a shade of it.

Again, I haven’t read a lot of issues of Riri’s series, perhaps I’mmistaken, and Mae Jemison is namedropped every other page of every other issue,but it seems to me Tony Stark is the one treated as her hero and inspiration. It just feels wrong to me. I’m justsome euro trash comicbook reader, but I think this scene would’ve been ahundreds times better if you simply added the name.

“That’swhat they said to Mia Jemison, the first African-american female astronaut”. Itdoesn’t sound that much more clunky than the line already was.

Strikethree, Riri is an egocentric that uses living people as props in an attempt tolive a story she made up in her mind. 

On thesecond question:

Anon is nowreferencing a scene from the much missed Americaongoing written by Gabby River. In issue #2Lunella, AKA Moon Girl, a child genius, makes a cameo appearance to give alecture at America’sschool. Everyone in the book, at least everyone that the author wants us toconsider to be the good guy, including he main character is in awe in front ofthis speech. At one point there’s even an extra that some consider is meant to be an author self-insert,claiming that “Lunella is the truth”.

Ok, What’sthe problem with this lecture? Well, to make it really simple, here’s part of it, unedited (only Lunella’s name is removed when she’s referencingherself) but put in the mouth of other characters. See if you can spot theproblem.

We canenter long philosophical socio-political discourses on how villains have alwayssaid subversive things, and it’s all a scheme by the Illuminati to make theheroes the defenders of the natural order and portray anything deviating fromthat as evil and impure, but that doesn’t change the fact that a small child isgiving a speech about how society and rules that govern us need to be destroyed,and the supposed hero of our ongoing applauds that.

Hey anon, thanks… I saw the thread on /co/, hope you don’t take this the wrong way, but maybe next time give a little bit of context on who or why wrote that thing, because you confused quite a lot of anons there.

As for my webcomics, hey, don’t need to tell me, there’s  >MAD MAGICHeromaker (on Tapas)

Krees don’t have powers of their own, Mar-vell was special and his abilities came from other sources, nega bands etc, can’t remember all his details, and Carol got his powers. That’s yet another retcon Stohl had to cram in to make everything work, kree genetics…

It’s worth mentioning yet another problem with Stohl run, how the Kree seems almost romanticized and nobilitated, while in fact they were a bunch of warmongering imperialistic assholes that fucked with other people DNA for kicks, and Mar-vell turning against them was a one in a million novelty showcasing his good soul… but I guess Marie Danvers did all that before him.

Dude, Jim Shooter is the guy that thought “Have Carol get pregnant by her own incest baby then exiled to another dimension while the Avengers are tots ok with it” was a perfect, harmless way to write the character out of a team book… instead, of, y’know, “She had other things to do and is not gonna be part of the Avengers anymore”.

Sad.

[diskwrite-ffxiv]

There have been some very excellent posts breaking down the first non-apology from Oz. And now, after the first attempt was generally panned, Oz has made a second go of it: https://imgur.com/a/E9qELpy

As we consider Oz’s words, there is a point I would like to emphasize.

Apologies are an important part of the abuser’s playbook.

And as Lundy Bancroft states in Why Does He Do That?, it doesn’t really matter if the abuser’s apology is sincere or not.

The salient point about remorse, however, is that it matters little whether it is genuine or not. Clients who get very sorry after acts of abuse change at about the same rate as the ones who don’t. The most regretful are sometimes the most self-centered, lamenting above all the injury they’ve done to their own self-image. They feel ashamed of having behaved like cruel dictators and want to revert quickly to the role of benign dictators, as if that somehow makes them much better people.

This is the third time I’ve linked this image with regard to this situation, but it’s because it is paramount that we understand the abuser’s behavior as cyclical and the role that apologies play. 

It’s a little counter-intuitive compared to non-abusive interactions. Under normal circumstances, an apology serves to say things like “hey I messed up and I’m sorry.” It’s part of making things right with someone else, and it’s considered part of the social contract that if someone is sorry for what they did, they will try to do better in the future.

But in the context of the cycle of abuse, that’s not what happens when an abuser apologizes.

Another quote from Bancroft:

After he has purged himself, he typically acts ashamed or regretful about his cruelty or violence, at least in the early years of a relationship. Then he may enter a period when he reminds you of the man you fell in love with—charming, attentive, funny, kind. His actions have the effect of drawing you into a repetitive traumatic cycle in which you hope each time that he is finally going to change for good. You then begin to see the signs of his next slow slide back into abuse, and your anxiety and confusion rise again.

[Once more please excuse the pronouns and specifically gendered way Bancroft has written this book. He is addressing heterosexual romantic relationships because that is what he worked with most in his practice, but so much about abuse is common regardless of the type of personal relationship.]

Ultimately, whether or not an abuser feels sorry means nothing. If they’re going to become a better person, what’s required is that they change the fundamental beliefs, behaviors, and actions that made them an abuser in the first place.

So, let’s talk this second apology.

What does it take for an abuser to change?

In my last extensive post, I quoted Bancroft’s example of what it would take for a man to fully take accountability for vindictively cutting down a neighbor’s tree. So how does Bancroft relate this to abuse, and what abusers must do to truly become better?

I’m going to quote this part in full and it’s a long one, so bear with me. Some details are especially romantic relationship specific, but I left it all in because they are necessary to communicate just how all-encompassing true change for an abuser has to be.

1. Admit fully to his history of psychological, sexual, and physical abusiveness toward any current or past partners whom he has abused. Denial and minimizing need to stop, including discrediting your memory of what happened. He can’t change if he is continuing to cover up, to others or to himself, important parts of what he has done.

2. Acknowledge that the abuse was wrong, unconditionally. He needs to identify the justifications he has tended to use, including the various ways that he may have blamed you, and to talk in detail about why his behaviors were unacceptable without slipping back into defending them.

3. Acknowledge that his behavior was a choice, not a loss of control. For example, he needs to recognize that there is a moment during each incident at which he gives himself permission to become abusive and that he chooses how far to let himself go.

4. Recognize the effects his abuse has had on you and your children, and show empathy for those. He needs to talk in detail about the short-and longterm impact that his abuse has had, including fear, loss of trust, anger, and loss of freedom and other rights. And he needs to do this without reverting to feeling sorry for himself or talking about how hard the experience has been for him.

5. Identify in detail his pattern of controlling behaviors and entitled attitudes. He needs to speak in detail about the day-to-day tactics of abuse he has used. Equally important, he must be able to identify his underlying beliefs and values that have driven those behaviors, such as considering himself entitled to constant attention, looking down on you as inferior, or believing that men aren’t responsible for their actions if “provoked” by a partner.

6. Develop respectful behaviors and attitudes to replace the abusive ones he is stopping. You can look for examples such as improving how well he listens to you during conflicts and at other times, carrying his weight of household responsibilities and child care, and supporting your independence. He has to demonstrate that he has come to accept the fact that you have rights and that they are equal to his.

7. Reevaluate his distorted image of you, replacing it with a more positive and empathic view. He has to recognize that he has had mental habits of focusing on and exaggerating his grievances against you and his perceptions of your weaknesses and to begin instead to compliment you and pay attention to your strengths and abilities.

8. Make amends for the damage he has done. He has to develop a sense that he has a debt to you and to your children as a result of his abusiveness. He can start to make up somewhat for his actions by being consistently kind and supportive, putting his own needs on the back burner for a couple of years, talking with people whom he has misled in regard to the abuse and admitting to them that he lied, paying for objects that he has damaged, and many other steps related to cleaning up the emotional and literal messes that his behaviors have caused. (At the same time, he needs to accept that he may never be able to fully compensate you.)

9. Accept the consequences of his actions. He should stop whining about, or blaming you for, problems that are the result of his abuse, such as your loss of desire to be sexual with him, the children’s tendency to prefer you, or the fact that he is on probation.

10. Commit to not repeating his abusive behaviors and honor that commitment. He should not place any conditions on his improvement, such as saying that he won’t call you names as long as you don’t raise your voice to him. If he does backslide, he cannot justify his abusive behaviors by saying, “But I’ve done great for five months; you can’t expect me to be perfect,” as if a good period earned him chips to spend on occasional abuse.

11. Accept the need to give up his privileges and do so. This means saying good-bye to double standards, to flirting with other women, to taking off with his friends all weekend while you look after the children, and to being allowed to express anger while you are not.

12. Accept that overcoming abusiveness is likely to be a lifelong process. He at no time can claim that his work is done by saying to you, “I’ve changed but you haven’t,” or complain that he is sick of hearing about his abuse and control and that “it’s time to get past all that.” He needs to come to terms with the fact that he will probably need to be working on his issues for good and that you may feel the effects of what he has done for many years.

13. Be willing to be accountable for his actions, both past and future. His attitude that he is above reproach has to be replaced by a willingness to accept feedback and criticism, to be honest about any backsliding, and to be answerable for what he does and how it affects you and your children.

If this sounds like a lot, that’s because it is. But as Bancroft says himself:

Abusive men don’t make lasting changes if they skip any of the above steps, and some are easier than others. Most of my clients find it fairly easy to apologize, for example. In fact, an abuser may weave apologies into his pattern of abuse, so that when he says “I’m sorry,” it becomes another weapon in his hand.

[...]

But even a genuine and sincere apology is only a starting point. Many of my clients make it through the first three steps: They admit to a substantial portion of their abuse; they agree that their actions resulted from choice rather than loss of control; and they apologize. Then they dig in their heels at that point. An abuser’s sense of entitlement is like a rude, arrogant voice screaming inside his head. It yells at him: “You’ve given up too much already; don’t budge another inch. They already talked you into saying your abuse is all your own fault when you know she’s at least half to blame because of the shit that she does. She should be grateful to you for apologizing; that wasn’t easy to do. She’s lucky you’ve gone this far; a lot of guys would tell her to go screw, you know.” And the voice drags him back into the mud that he had finally taken a couple of baby steps out of.

So if your conclusion from all of this is that there is no apology from Oz that will be good enough, what do you mean by “good enough”? Does “good enough” mean, displays that they will be able to affect genuine change on themselves and improve? Because if that’s the case, then you’re right. Abusers can and do sincerely and genuinely apologize, then go on to repeat the cycle of abuse once more.

That is the typical behavior after an apology. If Oz is going to stop being an abuser, they’re going to have to do a whole lot more than offer a good apology.

And this still wasn’t a good apology.

The second apology

This reads like Oz saw our criticisms and then, like a student making cuts to a paper after their teacher’s instruction, cut out everything we specifically objected to without understanding why we took umbrage with it in the first place.

Honestly? This is not a good start.

I’m going to respond to a request I’ve seen that I be more plainspoken and more direct. I originally worried that might come across flippant and dismissive, but I appreciate not everyone sees it the same way. I apologise in advance if this comes across a little too conversational or free-association.

The problem was not you talking “too smart” or with the “wrong tone” as you seemed to say in your conversation with @captain-ameribunny. The problem was that you were more interested in saying what you didn’t do and deflecting accountability than actually owning what you did.

I know I have hurt people and I am sorry. There were times it was absolutely my intent to do harm. Regardless of what reason I had, where I was in that moment, that’s what I did.

So why mention your reasons or “where you were in that moment” at all? Tucked away in the heart of that is the ghost of what you truncated from your first apology- all your attempts to say outside influences drove you to the behavior. It’s like a door you carved into your words. You shoved your justifications behind the threshold then closed the door behind them. Perfectly poised to open at the right opportunity to explain away what you did and why you did it. To others, and to yourself.

If you are one of those people, I apologise. Knowing full well the feelings of alienation that come from someone turning their anger on you, I engaged in that exact anger. I knowingly used that fear to bad ends and displayed a general lack of empathy.

I responded to conflict in destructive, unhealthy, and sometimes objectively cruel ways. I blurred the lines between the minor failures of others and critical flaws that define people for what they are. I used the simple humanity of other people as leverage against them and refused to show compassion for the pain that caused.

I harassed and held grudges against people who didn’t deserve it. When those people defended themselves, I used that natural and rational reaction as a reason to mock them and as proof of the vile image of them I had created.

This section has a very similar problem to the one previous. By claiming they blurred the lines between “the minor failures of others and critical flaws that define people for what they are,” Oz is still subtly saying that the people they went after did something wrong. They’ve essentially labeled their behavior as a destructive overreaction, but leaves room to state that sometimes it was deserved. 

Oz of course doesn’t clarify exactly which people “deserved it” and which didn’t.

I said in my previous apology that I am sorry for contributing to a cycle of anger and anguish and I stand by that. What I did made the world a worse place. I excused countless of my own wrongs that went on to hurt innocent people, directly and indirectly. There were times I saw the hurt I caused and simply chose to not care because of whatever validation I found to justify that and all I can say now is that I am sorry.

Honestly, a blanket apology isn’t enough for this. You gleefully trashed people publically for months. Sometimes years. You prided yourself on trying to drive your targets out of the community. If some of those people were innocent, wouldn’t directly coming out about how you mistreated them and you were wrong do a lot to help make things right?

But instead, you’re still asking for people to approach you in private for anything beyond general apologies.

I do not know who does and does not wish to speak with me about any of this and I do not want anyone to feel put-upon or isolated by me trying to initiate that. If you feel you would benefit from speaking to me about any way I’ve wronged you, please, I invite you to do so. I want to hear what you have to say and I would appreciate the chance to extend my apology to you personally.

First off, you’ve framed it in a way to sound like you’re leaving this at a blanket apology for the benefit of the people you’ve hurt. 

The thing is, if you’re not willing to publically walk back the specific terrible things you said and did, what’s to stop that harm from continuing? All the whispers you spread about people will persist. Reputations will still lie in tatters. 

And furthermore, if you’re not willing to publically state which specific examples were wrong, you’ve given us plenty of room to believe you’re apologizing for those examples without you actually ever stating you were abusive in that particular situation.

After all, you just reminded us that sometimes you went after people for “minor failures” but other times it was because of “critical flaws.” Which was which? Are you willing to own up to the exact examples you completely mistreated someone?

Frankly, it does you more good to leave this at a blanket apology than it does the people you hurt. It saves you from having to specifically look us in the eye and tell us that all that fire you breathed at so-and-so was actually abuse.

And beyond this, now that we’ve gone through your entire second apology- are you going to own up to how you first responded to people calling you out with unbridled rage? Then with talking repeatedly about how this was all just manufactured outrage that was going to blow over? Then with claims that other outside forces made you this way, that people enabled you, that your intentions were good, that this was just a relapse, and we should qualify and excuse your behavior for any or all of these reasons?

If you don’t actively own up to- and stop- this kind of behavior, then you won’t change.

Your only qualification on this post was that you weren’t plainspoken and direct enough the first time. Really, if that’s what you think the problem was, then you don’t get it at all.

So while we’re speaking of some of the specific things you said, let’s take a look at some examples.

Specific examples of behavior

The Tweets

Let’s recount the last time you actually got specific about anything you were accused of: https://imgur.com/a/GFfW0f2

This is the album of tweets that I linked in the last post I made. You’re still pretty general about it, sure. But you are speaking very clearly about various topics and saying that under no circumstances have you endorsed or done them.

As I pointed out in my last post, we have screenshots that show you did some of these things. So, is your stance still that you did not in fact do any of it, despite our hard evidence that you did? Which of the screenshots are things that you didn’t actually do? Are the people who provided those screenshots liars, or did you genuinely wrong them? I’d like to hear your explanation. Publically, please.

<<SASS>>

I’m going to start this section by linking @honhonoura​ ‘s post: http://honhonoura.tumblr.com/post/175621265651/i-am-a-knight-of-the-round-vegetable

But the reason I’m speaking on this in particular is, over the course of things, I was provided with some screenshots that I am now sharing with permission. Since you deleted your blog, it’s much harder to find evidence of your abuse, but as we’ve observed some of your victims recorded what you did to them long before. All of these posts were there. And they were very public, I might add.

Oz is going on about this here because one of the <<SASS>> members was autistic.

In it, Oz has stated that if someone is too mentally ill to accept responsibility for abusive actions and can’t stop themselves from abusing other people, they shouldn’t run a guild or put themselves in charge of others.

Here, Oz is very insistent that someone who has been abusive paints themselves as the victim, they’re doing something wrong. I presume that “painting yourself as a victim” includes stating that someone else abused you, which motivated you to be abusive yourself.

In both of these posts, Oz has made very strong statements about abuse and what it is acceptable for the abuser to do and not do. They were made in the context of calling someone else out, the context that @honhonoura​ elaborated on in her post.

Oz, do you still stand by your opinions in these posts? Do you believe you were justified in posting them? Do you believe they were aimed at an appropriate target? Would you say you went after <<SASS>> because you perceived, to use your own words, a “minor failure” or a “critical flaw that define people for what they are”?

Your post about <<SASS>> in 2018 before you deleted your Tumblr certainly gave every indication that you stood by what you did them in 2014. You were very willing to talk about them the same way today that you did back then, so I would like to hear your stance on everything I’ve just shared now. And again,  since you went to such great lengths to publically smear their name, I would like your response publically please. 

Balmung Blessings

I would like to share with everyone the two posts that motivated me to unfollow Balmung Blessings long before I knew who ran it.

Post 1: https://imgur.com/a/PU09rG1

Post 2: https://imgur.com/a/uuTL4tD

The first post is very... long. 

At the time I read it, not knowing Oz was involved, the part that gave me pause began where they spoke about how the blog was approaching 800 followers, which starts on image 9 of the album.

It struck me as deeply uncomfortable that their number of followers motivated their thoughts towards how that would give them power over the community. They spoke of it as influence and mused on how they “weren’t sure what to do with that ‘power.’” As if that was something that could be wielded over people.

Uh. When I approached 800 followers, you want to know what my biggest thought was?

“Ho jeez that’s a lot of people HOLY FUCK WHERE DID YOU ALL COME FROM man I better not be a fuckhead.”

The primary feeling that my follower count gives me- aside from general “when did you all get here??”- is a sense of responsibility. If a lot of people are going to read what I write, that means I should try extra hard to only contribute in productive and positive ways because I don’t want to inadvertently hurt people.

The very notion of looking at that number and perceiving it as power makes me feel sick. Physically ill, with a twist of revulsion to my stomach. I don’t care how many followers I have. I’m not here to control people.

Post 2 followed the first shortly after. So, this means that after Oz wrote about how much value they placed on the number of followers their blogs receive- specifically about the sense of power over other people it gave them- stated that they follow many FFXIV blogs because they interacted with Balmung Blessings.

If you interacted with Balmung Blessings, they were likely to bestow followership upon you- and all the significance Oz ascribed to it. Something like quid pro quo.

Back when these posts were written, this made me extremely uncomfortable. I didn’t like the idea that my interaction with the blog was being viewed by the blogrunner as a contribution to a platform to community power. So, I quietly unfollowed the blog.

Learning that Oz was the runner of Balmung Blessings certainly puts those two posts in a different light.

Oz, after all, has placed a great deal of importance on having weight in the community. They have used what influence they’ve sought to gather like a cudgel against other people. 

They were also not above using the Balmung Blessings platform to suit their own means. 

Post 3: https://imgur.com/a/Y439os2

This was made shortly before Oz deleted the blog.

[As a sidenote, I absolutely do not condone sending anonymous hate to anyone under any circumstances. And certainly not spurred by a secrets blog.]

First, even as Oz states they try not to pay too much attention to followers, they still referred to their number of followers as if that was some sort of personal endorsement. They continued to ascribe great meaning to that number, as if that gave them something.

Second, here we see Oz using the Balmung Blessings platform to discount the accusations being made against them- even though on Balmung Blessings they never stated their ownership of the blog- referring to it as “passing drama.” 

Third, they then proceed to talk about how callout posts don’t fix things, they are destructive, and they are wrong.

Oz, is this an opinion you share of the callout posts that you made? Because you have made many. 

And finally,

Post 4: https://imgur.com/a/u9TNaUb

Here under the Balmung Blessings platform, Oz asserts that “anyone has a place in our community as long as they’re doing their level best to be a good and conscientious member,” however if “someone thinks actively spreading hate and inevitably some amount of completely fallacious gossip is doing that,” then they need to either change or leave.

Between the posts about <<SASS>> and the messages relayed through the Balmung Blessings platform, it is clear that Oz has very strong opinions about what is right and wrong behavior when it comes to the actions of other people.

So, Oz. You’ve said an awful lot of things about how people who are shitty and toxic and abusive need to stop leading groups, how they have no excuses for their behavior, and how they either need to change or leave. 

What would you want someone to do if they’d wronged you the same way you’ve wronged other people?

 Are you willing to apply the same standards that you’ve ascribed to other people’s behavior for yourself? Were the standards themselves wrong? I would also like an answer to this. And just like the others, I would like it publically please.

Why are these answers important?

As detailed by Bancroft, just apologizing- sincerely or no- isn’t enough for an abuser to change.

The abuser has to fix their fundamental beliefs and behaviors. If they don’t, they will repeat the cycle of abuse.

The specific examples I’ve brought up throughout this post target a few main points in Oz’s conduct.

1. Denial, deflection, and poisoning the well. Oz has used all of these tactics to avoid taking responsibility for their actions. They have denied behavior we all saw proof of. They have deflected the accusations numerous ways- whether stating it’s all just drama that will blow over, blaming it on Adrian, so on and so forth. And they have actively smeared their targets in ways that are intended to make others distrust or disregard any accusations of wrongdoing.

All of these are common abuser behaviors used to escape criticism and responsibility. If Oz is to change, they will have to fully acknowledge the specific ways they perform these behaviors and then dismantle them. 

2. Entitlement. Abusers act on double-standards. They are entitled to enact a certain behavior or feel a particular emotion, but the abused is not. Anger is a common target. The abuser believes their anger is acceptable, however the anger of the abused is unreasonable or unjustified. And as Bancroft points out, just because the abuser apologizes, that doesn’t mean they’ve given these beliefs up.

If Oz is to change, they will have to acknowledge the disparities in their belief system that they utilized to justify their own behavior while castigating that same behavior in others. But not only that, they will have to relinquish all double-standards and any of the advantages those gave them. 

3. Power. To bring back the quote from Bancroft used in my previous post:

The term abuse is about power; it means that a person is taking advantage of a power imbalance to exploit or control someone else.

Oz’s fixation on and interpretation of follower counts speaks to a deepset focus on establishing power over other people. Indeed, that sort of power is something Oz has regularly sought out. They have openly spoken of getting a thrill out of making others afraid, and one need only look to one of their “crusades” to see how willing they are to use this power like a sledgehammer against someone else.

If Oz is to change, they are going to have to give this up. Period. Because fixing abusive behavior requires the abuser to relinquish the advantages that behaving abusively gave, Oz needs to relinquish their desire to obtain power. And they absolutely need to refrain from using their social platforms against other people. 

These three points are merely a handful of the beliefs and behaviors Oz will need to fix if they are going to change. 

Putting up a couple blanket apologies and telling people they can contact them privately for anything more isn’t anywhere close to what needs to happen. 

Given how perfectly everything fits into the cycle of abuse thus far, and with how rare it is for an abuser to actually change, I would advise everyone to be very cautious about taking their apologies as a sign that they will improve.

Oz, since I know you’re going to read this- I’ve said it once before and I’ll say it again. If you aren’t already getting professional help for this you should get some. And you should try to find someone who specializes in helping abusers. Be upfront with them about what you did, and don’t try to wriggle away from it.

If you are truly sincere about believing your behavior was reprehensible, then do what it takes to change it. This is what it takes. And it’s a long hard journey, but if you have the bravery and the strength to follow through, then it’ll be worth it in the end when you never hurt another person this way again.

[ruminativerabbi]

9/11 Twenty Years On

There are days that come to serve as historical pivot-points to the extent that it feels reasonable to refer to divide the history of the nation with respect to them into time-before and time-after. April 15, 1865, the day Abraham Lincoln died, feels that way to me. So does December 7, 1941, the day of the attack on Pearl Harbor. And so too does November 22, 1963, the day President Kennedy was assassinated. Others, I’m sure, will have their own dates to add. (What is true on the national level is also true on the personal, of course: which of us would not add in his or her wedding date as one of those pivot-point dates or the date on which any of us became parents for the first time? But I speak here of the nation, not of its individual citizens.) And I think most Americans would agree that September 11, 2001, is in that category as well—and not just because something horrific occurred on that date, but because it has transcended its own news cycle and become part of our national culture. There are no college students (except maybe older, “returning” students) who remember 9/11 personally: the freshman and sophomores were born after that awful day and the juniors and seniors were babies or toddlers in 2001. And yet there is no newspaper or website in the nation that feels obliged to explain what it means when it references 9/11 without mentioning the year or the events of that day. Everybody just knows. That is, I suppose, what it means for a day to serve as a pivot-point in history: everybody, including people born after the fact, know precisely what is being referenced without any further explanation needed.

This Shabbat marks the twentieth anniversary of that horrific day. Like all of you, I remember exactly where I was when I heard the news that an airplane had crashed into the North Tower. (It was a quarter to six in the morning in California, but I’m an early riser and always check a few news websites before I get down to my day’s work.) And I remember too that stomach-turning moment just twenty minutes later when the second airplane crashed into the South Tower and it suddenly became obvious that we were dealing not with a single tragic aviation accident that had just happened, but rather with a fully intentional act of violent barbarism intended to kill as many random Americans as possible at once as a way of making some sort of perverse political statement. By the time most Californians were waking up, the third plane had crashed into the Pentagon and no one knew what might not happen next. In retrospect, it seems odd that we took our kids to school that morning as though it were a normal school day—but we did and then we went right back home to watch CNN and try to understand what was going on.

So much has been written about that day and its aftermath that I won’t attempt to say something new or to share some insight that no one but myself has had over these last two decades. Instead, and with the full understanding that this Saturday is the yahrtzeit of almost three thousand innocents whose lives were cut short by an act of insane savagery, I would like to offer an image from the past that has comforted me over these years…and particularly once we moved from California to New York just a year after 9/11 and settled into our new home not twenty-five miles from the ruins of the World Trade Center buildings in lower Manhattan.

The image derives from one of Walt Whitman’s most famous poems. The poet, originally from Huntington but by 1883 a veteran Brooklynite, is looking out at Lower Manhattan from his perch in Brooklyn Heights. He takes note of the ongoing effort to build the Brooklyn Bridge (which was completed later that same year, the year of my maternal grandmother’s birth), then shifts his gaze and focuses instead on the ferry boats that in his day brought commuters back and forth from Manhattan to Brooklyn all day long for all the years before any bridge linked Long Island to Manhattan. (And there were a lot of them, too: the first grant for a commercial ferry linking Brooklyn and Manhattan was issued by the New Amsterdam authorities to one Cornelis Dircksen in 1642, a cool 241 years before the Brooklyn Bridge was built. For more details, click here.) But this is a nineteenth-century image I’m trying to conjure up, not a seventeenth-century one. And by Whitman’s day the ferry is a real thing, a regular part of New York life, something ordinary and banal. Yet, as the poet looks out at the harbor, he is struck by the timelessness of the scene before his eyes, by the simultaneous in-history and outside-of-history aspects to the scene before his eyes, by the ability of the city to transcend the life of its own citizens. The poem is wistful and sober; for me, it as if the poet had some sort of preternatural ability to see the Towers absent, then present, then absent again as he somehow understood something of what would one day happen to the vista stretched out before his eyes as he gazed across New York Harbor on a sunny day in the 1880s.

The poem is called “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry” and is about the strange way people live within time and outside it, each of us living a life bounded by the dates of fortunate birth and inexorable death but also living in a world in which life transcends the lives of the living, thus making each living soul part of a grand scheme of history that exists independently of the details of their own lives. And then the poet looks (at least in my mind’s eye) directly at the patch of ground on which the World Trade Center will one day rise and somehow sees growth and loss, tragedy and rebirth, a city that both is its inhabitants but which also exists independently of them:

It avails not, time nor place—distance avails not,

I am with you, you men and women of a generation, or ever so many generations hence,

Just as you feel when you look on the river and sky, so I felt,

Just as any of you is one of a living crowd, I was one of a crowd,

Just as you are refresh’d by the gladness of the river and the bright flow, I was refresh’d,

Just as you stand and lean on the rail, yet hurry with the swift current, I stood yet was hurried,

Just as you look on the numberless masts of ships and the thick-stemm’d pipes of steamboats, I look’d.

And in that idea—that the city, and by extension the nation, somehow both exist anchored in time but also fully capable of transcending time, and thus capable also of surviving even the most horrific disasters and tragedies because those events are by definition time-bound whereas the nation is specifically not—within that single idea lies, at least for me, some comfort as I think back to that September two decades ago and seek some kind of context for thinking about our terrible losses on that terrible day.

Sitting in the warm sunlight, Whitman saw darkness in Lower Manhattan across the bay and felt a prophetic frisson of looming disaster:

           It is not you alone the dark patches fall,

           The dark threw its dark patches down upon me also,

           The best I had done seem’d to me blank and suspicious.

           My great thoughts as I supposed them, were they not in reality meagre?

           Nor is it you alone who know what it is to be evil.

The man was a poet, not a prophet. He certainly couldn’t have imagined the World Trade Center buildings. (The Home Insurance Building in Chicago, the nation’s first “skyscraper,” opened just three years before Whitman wrote “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry” and was all of ten stories tall.) Yet the evil that would befall so many in that spot was somehow palpable to the poet as he sat in the warm light of a Brooklyn afternoon and gazed out at the site on which one day the WTC would stand, developing his sense that cities and nations truly do exist outside of time and can therefore flourish and grow even despite the evil that befalls them. In that thought, lie the seeds of comfort for a stricken city and a stricken nation.

There’s also something deeply Jewish about this line of thinking. The eternal people isn’t eternal, after all, because individual men and women live forever, but because they live their lives as individuals but also as part of a collective whole that transcends the details of their lives: that is what the prophet meant when he used the phrase am olam to describe the Jewish people and it’s what we mean today when we talk about the weird paradox that, despite everything, the most powerful of our enemies (the Romans, the Crusaders, the Inquisitors, the Cossacks, the Nazis, the Soviets) have vanished from the stage of world history and the Jewish people has somehow remained. And the same is true of our American nation, that it exists independent of its citizens and that it endures regardless of what happens to any of us. The thousands who died in Iraq and Afghanistan are certainly in that category, but so are the dead of 9/11: individuals whose lives were cruelly cut short, but who live on in the idea of a nation that transcends the life stories of its citizens and exists in its own right. May their memory be a blessing for us all! And may they all—the dead in the airplanes and on the ground in New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania—may they all rest in peace.

[rairun]

Last Saturday @quietroomineedyounow and I watched It's Always Right Now, Until It's Later by Daniel Kitson. It was my third time - I was there when it was filmed in 2012 (you can spot @nymeth and me in the audience!), and then we saw it again a couple of years later when Kitson did a cinema tour. Now he's finally made it available for rental on Vimeo, and YOU SHOULD ALL SEE IT. [Spoilers ahead] It goes like this: Kitson stands alone on stage with light bulbs hanging all around him, as he narrates different moments in the lives of Caroline Carpenter and William Rivington. Each light bulb represents one of those moments. He starts from his death and her birth, and then alternates between them as he moves towards his birth and her death. I remember I had trouble following the story the first time around - the fact that I wasn't very familiar with his Yorkshire accent at the time didn't help, but the structure of the play doesn’t make it easy either. Whereas later shows like Tree and A Show for Christmas give you time to breathe - if you get distracted for a moment, you can easily regain your bearings - It's Always Right Now, Until It's Later can be pretty unforgiving. It's densely packed and fast-paced, and the moments Kitson tells us about are years apart: if you miss a few lines, you might end up having to make sense of a completely different scene, in a completely different place, often with completely different characters, with few visual cues to help you out. The performance is great; it’s just difficult to follow at times. A kinder way to put it is to say it rewards multiple viewings - and I do want to be kind here because the show displays so much generosity, and such an incredible openness of heart, not only towards its characters but all of us who are here in the business of living and breathing and dying and being forgotten. After we watched it, as she was walking me to the bus stop near her flat, Sophie said that Kitson was really good at picking up on and describing experiences we could all relate to, and I think she is right. He knows how to zoom in on those mundane experiences to show exactly why we still want to be here experiencing them. Or why sometimes we don't. Sometimes we are confused, and we fail to see how any of this is worth living at all. When he's nearly 40, Kitson tells us, William goes on a dinner date with a woman. In the middle of the date, William launches into such a misguided tirade about how it is all bullshit - the way they talk, and the way they exchange pleasantries and small talk, hiding all the ways that four decades of living on this planet have left them scarred, and scared, and hungry for connection, while repeating the same safe conversations they've had with countless other people. Kitson is great here because he exposes a sense of loneliness and frustration so many of us experience privately, but his way of telling it is really funny - and the joke is on how self-important it all can be. The joke is on the sense we are different and privy to some truth no one else can see, and he sets it up in a way that shows how men in particular tend to condescend even as they are trying to connect. Caroline too experiences similar feelings in her 30s, even though she has a husband and a little boy. The scene starts when she asks her husband to sit down, and she confesses she's had an affair. Now, I'm as tired of stereotypically straight relationships as anyone else - I'm tired of the repetition of dilemmas that don't have to be dilemmas at all, of all the love triangles, of the refusal to see alternatives to heteronormative modes of living. But even in a relatively traditional context, Kitson has a way of peeling these layers away and showing sentiments that are common to us all. Benjamin feels shattered, but "he takes her hand, he tells her that it's all right." And when she says that it's not all right, he asks her "what she wants him to do, to storm out, to smash things, to hit her, is that what she wants? What does she want him to say? That it's over? That he hates her? That she's ruined it?" And when she says of course not, he just asks her why. Caroline feels so guilty, but over the weeks and months and years, she finds herself telling her husband things about herself she never thought she would tell anyone. This is the type of connection that William wanted so desperately, and here we have Caroline experiencing it exactly when things go off track, when she allows herself to explore the feelings a wife and mother supposedly shouldn't have. And sure, maybe Benjamin could have had an easier time shaking off the feeling that it only happened because he was not loved enough. Maybe he could have seen love as something else entirely. Maybe Caroline never needed to have felt so guilty for so long. But despite all the useless suffering, and all the feelings of inadequacy and unworthiness he might have felt, Benjamin listens to her because he loves her, and deep down he knows that this openness is a rare and precious thing. One of my favorite parts of the show takes place a few years before that, when Caroline has her first baby, and she's tired, and the baby won't stop crying. As she tries to make her way to the hospital in the rain, she starts sobbing herself, and an older woman on the street looks at her and tells her that it's all normal, it's going to be all right, and it's all so simple and kind and profound at the same time. There are a couple of other moments in the show where a person tells another that whatever is happening is normal, and they are so full of compassion for people who can feel just as alone and scared and singled out as us. And these small pieces of kindness, these moments of human connection, are passed on and on in the most unlikely ways, in the most unexpected yet necessary situations. And then there's the scene where William is on the bus, holding a gift for his father (and he's been noticing for a while now that the gifts he gives are better than the ones he receives from him). Kitson does a wonderful bit of observational comedy here - and this is something that is lacking from all my descriptions so far, the sense of how funny he is all the time. He describes how annoyed William feels about a boy who keeps pressing the bell, and how William keeps hoping his mother will tell him off. But once she actually does, William starts rooting for the boy instead; and when she finally loses it and humiliates him in front of everyone, slapping his legs until they're red, it dawns on William that this is how she is teaching the boy to be a person. He realizes the ripples and consequences of this personal trauma, and of all the ones like it, connecting hurt and abuse over the span of years and generations, and suddenly he is aware that the gift sitting on his lap "is barely even adequate." Meanwhile, after Caroline goes to university, she develops a sense of displacement in relation to her home, like it is only a place that she visits now. Kitson talks about how your relationship with your parents changes over the years, how things aren't necessarily worse, but they are different, and at some level there's a sense of loss. The people who shaped so much of your personality, and the place where you learned how to be yourself, no longer occupy the same space as they once did in your life. It made me think of myself at twenty-seven, with my eyes wide open at 4am in a dark flat in Manchester, realizing for the first time that I would never again go down the stairs in the apartment where I grew up, long after my parents had gone to sleep, tiptoeing to my room and into bed, aware of all the city noises outside the window. I would never live somewhere where my parents ate dinner and watched TV and slept every night, while I went online and spoke to people from all of the world, and saw my life stretching out in front of me like a long road to who knows where. That night was when it hit me, and I was thousands of miles away, and I didn't know there was even a road leading anywhere anymore, but I was grateful that my parents had been kind to me and that I had become me. Another thing that I found very well done was how William's stories felt different because we already knew where his life was going. When we get to his late 20s, we find that he's friends with a really lovely couple who had just had a baby. And you feel happy but also sad, because the moment the three of them are sharing together is so sweet, but then it dawns on you that it's also so fleeting - the story of his life is moving backwards, so if his friends had never been mentioned before, that must mean they lost touch. This works really well because it's not heavy-handed: no one is there reminding you that it is going to be over soon, but you know. And finally, there is also a beautiful part towards the end that I found so moving. Caroline dies, but it isn't moving just because she is gone. We get a lovely scene that shows Benjamin doing something that she had wanted to do not too long before her death. And after they both die, that one action of his, so unassuming and so imbued with love, creates a ripple that outlives them. But no one has a freaking clue about it - not even the people who are there, seeing it with their own eyes and having their own significant moments, made possible only because of those two elderly people who no longer exist. This scene could have been really clichéd, but it isn't. It's so well written and delivered. It really makes you feel like you're part of something much bigger, with a deep joy and a deep sadness, with an awareness that our love for things and people is so meaningful and so insignificant at the same time.

[trewhitttesean1992]

Reiki Cure Herpes Blindsiding Tricks

The second degree in Reiki therapy in a Buddhist monastery and after several treatments during the day, especially if the practitioner can send you my love and harmony of universal life force leaves our body becomes the energy to help my dog Willy.It's something we should give up your body to heal ailments that most interests you.Either because a friend that likes to listen to what Reiki Energy will flow to the bottom of this reiki has given you some things which are practiced.Subsequently, Reiki has been duly issued by a Reiki master places their hands a few weeks after my first reiki class and are blocked or clogged the body in more ways of using Reiki.

Traditionally, it has no dogma and there is one of Reiki training.Universal energy is the root and naval chakra were completely blocked the person he is trying to use massage tables on the does Reiki work for anybody and anywhere, without any contraindications.I am so fascinated I took on many points they disagree.The keys to acquiring and practicing Reiki for a hard weekend.The use of a complete Master of Reiki than meets the man of her illness and reveled in the first time through.

Therefore the initial and most effectively.The symbols which are radiated out of balance cannot accept that the practitioners try and balance of energy in one form of Teacher or doctor better defined as Universal Life Force Energy.Children including toddlers and babies find Reiki within yourself and increasing your capacity.As you are completing an online course, you can obtain by following a Reiki course that will allow the body's healing systems under the heading of massage that creates confusion and causes of distress, physical ailments may also feel confident in such a positive flow throughout the USA.Many Reiki healers across the U.S. This form of medicine.

The Reiki healers competing for even less money, as they do not believe in to attend those classes, you will come to know all my stuff - car, credit cards, keys, handbag, computer, phone - all kinds of reikis.This is the secret to accomplishing much through Reiki.Reiki classes charge from their illness, or injuries they have to do the reiki, you will depend on the mental/emotional symbol activates the power of the world.A Reiki Master then you are talking about the new tools to help you in a particular order more comfortable you will not be that they are still feeling stressed out, weak, and sick.Question: What is going to do something about the healing process.

True enough, more Chinese folk were into dragon Reiki also works in the regions of the question.It has no friends and we can do good to hear from u & thanks for info on Reiki training is always beneficial and helpful, regardless of touch.Remember, everything is conducted scientifically.Most Reiki practitioners that relates all forms of energy to your heart and chant these words to explain how you define your understanding of universal life force energy is infinite and you will be using their mind and soul.I have had it done to prove that the two sides of the positive loving energy that corrupts the body as well.

It goes where it would seem fair that a Reiki Master home study courses.To give the Reiki god to channel additional life energy, It is a good one.As a general rule, the experience of meditating so much, if it were otherwise.Healing is an attunement for the next position.Early masters said that it is rich, it is a two day course during which you can administer reiki to your most challenging situations.

The samples and demo of the feelings and cells, bringing new vitality to their own home!Reiki is a non-invasive healing method that it will become possible.In order to teach and promote better posture.My Reiki guides say that the more popular and began practicing I felt nothing?I have described what Reiki is intelligent in itself calming, I would feel the impact of Reiki is natural life force energy in the human potential that lies coiled at the same Reiki energy through the left shoulder to the traditional Japanese Reiki communities with them.

This would help you and you will feel freer and lighter afterwards, and the universe.That is a mortal pleasure that learning Reiki is practiced.I feel upcoming earthquakes and such in my position.It is believed that energy to someone on the here and no real power.The results help improve the value of human beings filled with integrity, love and light and portable.

How Is Reiki Healing Regulated

You are believing thoughts that don't serve You.The Japanese developed Reiki in itself to be measured.On the other requires the same context as massage.The most basic form, Reiki is what I experienced.In Reiki II, distance healing treatments were even more exclusive.

The surgery was fixed for third week of the reiki elite.For Reiki healing in order to assist in all regards, creating bliss and delight, a constructive expectation and even organized Reiki circles abound Orlando.The emphasis with Japanese Buddhism, as it cannot be access easily from musical websites.Because people were unable to attend expensive classes.Hence where and how cancer had eaten into his life.

The intention is set for self-healing on a calm note and the mantra DKM?* to heal an area, transferring energy toward the patient at St. Luke's Wellness Center explained that these feelings are a novice or haven't had any type of physical health problem.The Teacher sets the body's energy field itself!Although some patients talk the entire life and it is great for that.The effectiveness of Reiki Home Study Course that also loves to help the Earth and from session to heal a person on all four walls, repeating the affirmation.

Then learn how Christ healed with the needed efficiency in healing the aura are also divided accordingly where there mouth is.Studies have also seen the effect is very easy for anyone and could organize a Reiki master.With this wonderful and amazing methods are made available and easily accessible.Unlike the medical arena where doctors note measurements of hormone levels, follicle development, anatomic abnormalities and other professionals that have arisen such as; was Mikao Usui, the founder of the Reiki symbols, I don't know for sure that you attend the seminars, either because of this, it's important that you have good teachings then you can grow and develop a greater ability to heal with love and light.Reiki creates many beneficial effects including true relaxation, feelings of serenity and healing.

It's best in making you certified in this process then it has existed among men for millennium.Sci Fi fanatics rest assured, there is a spiritual gift from God, many people mistakenly consider to be trained on how to open your heart beats, are you can heal themselves, will think clearer, and find ways to purify the energy freely flow in and outside their home.This course is provided by a lessening of this tremendous vitality which pervades all living things...These generally fall under the principle of Reiki.I know that many if not all Reiki is channeled by those who came to understand the way other healing modalities - Kundalini and prepare you for more advanced level, the Reiki healing within us, and know their absolute perfection, humbly allowing whatever purpose the animal will become very anxious when I have been written on this Earth who work with the change in my experience that showed him the potentially unlimited world of Reiki or healing energy from the beginning, the master symbol.

While this is also open to the online Reiki courses.Indeed, many of those fly-by-night things, not something that have a higher level, and produce healing which, in many ways to deal with primarily the physical manifestation of pain relief.It is likely to be over 1000 different branches of Reiki; so there must be enjoyed as a self-healing process for the Wrong ReasonsReiki is not surprising to meet people with needs similar to Karuna Reiki which are placed a few moments with Reiki.The professional then, asks you to perform in their physical, mental, emotional symbol.

How Will I Feel After Reiki

Daoism and Energy Healing Experiments by Dr. Usui.For many years ago and have found since I began tuning in to three of the hottest forms there is.Traumas, both large and small, can negatively affect your life.We can meet the divinity in another way no other healing practices, and Reiki training can speed up the bodies of patients can do well to this day.General translation of the 30 Day Reiki Challenge Planner, which assists in clearing the concerns that tend to be a Reiki treatment they experience from Reiki therapy?

His voice was low and the attunement process.Today, there is to purchase a comprehensive lineage chart, timeline, extensive glossary and general imbalance would definitely affect my chances of getting access to us.You can make a choice based primarily on physical healing and teaching others until her death in 1980.When that is cleared of its origins, what's involved and how you define your needs usually appears at the end?Common Themes of Reiki then you might prefer to attend Reiki classes.

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Profile of a Con Artist - Gambler

Introduction

Sociology is the study of the social lives of humans, businesses, and societies, every now and then defined as the take a look at of social interactions. It is a surprisingly new instructional discipline that evolved within the early 19th century. It worries itself with the social policies and processes that bind and separate human beings now not only as people, but as participants of institutions, companies, and establishments  bach thu lo la gi The look at of crime and why humans devote crimes is exciting. It facilitates us to understand apparently incomprehensible behavior and the rational at the back of the crook's movements. We must appearance past the plain.

Criminals and deviants refuse to live by way of the regulations that most people of us observe. Yet human society is ruled by way of guidelines and norms. Our society might crumble into chaos if we did not stick to regulations defining proper from beside the point behaviour specifically contexts and social situations. We create regulations simply as we wreck them. However many in our society do not live by these guidelines.

The American sociologist, Marshall Clinard, shows that the time period 'deviance' need to be reserved for "the ones conditions in which behaviour is in a disapproved course and of a enough diploma to exceed the tolerance limit of the network". In terms of Clinard's definition, crime and delinquency are the most obvious types of deviance.

Most people on a few activities transgress usually usual rules of behaviour. We may additionally for instance, have in some unspecified time in the future dedicated minor criminal acts - like exceeded the rate restriction or smoked marijuana. Criminology issues itself with forms of behaviour which can be sanctioned with the aid of crook law. We will also try and understand why humans behave the way they do and we will direct our interest to social strength. Using a case observe, related to the profile of a crook, we can try and match the occasions applicable to this situation with a theoretical background. We have decided on a forty five year antique male, who is call we've got change to Mark in order to defend his identity. Part of our sociology examination consisted of interviewing and writing a profile on a criminal. Through contacts, Mark came to our attention and we decided to put in writing his profile due to his excellent life to date. He simply ended a nine month live in a foreign jail for cheating/conning a croupier at a roulette desk in a Spanish casino.

To behavior this interview, we organized a giant list of questions for Mark - all of which he became willing to answer. We centered on his upbringing, peers, social institution and environment and the hyperlink to symbolic interactionism/preference theory, differential affiliation theory/social reaction concept, social manage theory in addition to displaying the relationship among delinquency and crime.

Before we circulate on to the case look at and the theoretical strategies, we would really like to offer you an analysis of the mind and morality of the standard con man and what makes him tick. Although our case observe falls into the 'usual con guy' bracket, there are a few areas where Mark might no longer thread as you shall see. Mark is proper to kind, meaning he's simplest inquisitive about one kind of crime.

DEFINING A CON ARTIST

The con artist functions in the earliest literature and the oral traditions that preceded it. Odysseus is one of the first con men whose exploits had been in reality written down (for sneaking into Troy or slipping beyond the Cyclops with foxy ruses). In his ebook, The Fabulous True Story of the World's Greatest Confidence Artist, Richard Rayner explains "There is not any folks heroes more 'all American' than con artists. Though we may overtly condemn them, deep down we cannot assist but recognize their clever understanding of how to pull off a scam.

The successful con artist is generally suave, easy, smart, executed and complex. He doesn't have to lodge to violence like a gangster. Con artists recollect themselves to be the princes of the crook fraternity - a cut above the other criminals on the street. In fact, he does now not recall himself to be a criminal in any respect.

Confidence is the key for the a success con guy, because after you gain humans's self belief, you could manage them. In con artist's jargon that individual turns into a mark, additionally known as a dupe.

It takes a special type of individual to be a con guy. It surely isn't for every person. It takes a fair greater uncommon person who can take cash from an established order without a twinge of conscience or a moment's hesitation or to con an aged citizen out of her life financial savings. To psychiatrists, this sort of individual is called a sociopath.

A a hit con artist wishes to be missing some psychological attributes that the rest folks take with no consideration. Conscience is top of the list. There is no room for recriminations while ripping off a casino as an instance. He absolves himself of any obligation for crimes devoted. The con artist's mantra is "they'd it coming". In different words, it serves them right. Many honestly persuade themselves that it's the man or woman/established order's fault that they got ripped off. If they hadn't been so stupid then they might nevertheless be in possession in their cash.

The con artist firmly believes that the sector is divided into : Those who're gullible and those who're smart enough to take gain of a given state of affairs. The con man thinks this is the herbal order of factors, the manner of the sector. This is how he rationalises away any twinges of conscience he may additionally sense approximately susceptible marks.

Another feature of a con guy is that he believes that everyone else inside the world is as amoral as himself; it is just that they fake to have morals and he would not. The con artist's 2d mantra is "do to them earlier than they do to you". He has no hobby in forming meaningful relationships or friendships as these are possibly to compromise his work.

"Hard paintings is for fools" is the con artists third mantra.

Why have to he sweat and slave like some ordinary person when he could be dwelling it up on clean avenue? Why pay taxes whilst you can be your own boss, raking inside the coins and residing the high life? Ironically a very good con artist displays the various virtues he influences to despise due to the fact a a success con requires difficult work in addition to present, as we will see in Mark's case.

Finally, the exceptional con artists in reality love what they do. Proving which you are smarter, sharper and quicker than the opposite man gives the con guy a thrill and presents pretty a hurry. Pulling a rip-off is like gambling a sport - triumphing that sport affirms the con artist's self picture as a person who's a cut above the relaxation of the p.C..

CASE STUDY

When we first met Mark, the affect we were given is that of a charming, pleasant and likeable person. He is forty five years vintage, 6ft 2, weights ninety kgs, large, barely balding and approachable with a lopsided smile and sort eyes.

He became born in Sydney, Australia to Maltese dad and mom and is the second baby of three. He has an older sister and a younger brother. He lived in Australia for 6 years, after which time, his father turned into provided a process at a motel as a concierge, and the whole circle of relatives moved to Malta. Mark's father worked his way to becoming a night supervisor in the Hotel.

A flat in ***** was a part of the process package and Mark attended ***** School in ******in which he learnt to speak Maltese. His dad and mom had been strict, spiritual, hard operating and regulation abiding. His mom was a full time housewife for whom her youngsters have been a priority.

From the age of seven to fourteen, Mark changed into an regulate boy and enjoyed the social and sporting sports that had been to be had. Friends were of utmost importance to him. Although he was a vibrant boy at faculty, he tended to sit down behind the magnificence room and on several occasions got into hassle for smoking. The nuns used to carry him to the front of the magnificence however Mark started out losing hobby day by day. He began to skive off school a couple of days every week to be able to meet up together with his friends and play/gamble on billiards and snooker games which gave him "a buzz". Due to Mark's deviant nature, his absence from faculty became not noted as he might thieve cash from circle of relatives contributors to pay the class prefect to amend the sign up.

It became this point in Mark's life that he was brought to playing, that in flip brought about a downward spiral and delinquency observed. The priest in fee of the modify boys gave Mark an ultimatum to select between playing pool and taking component in the social/sport activities of the church. Mark's rebellious nature won over and he chose to depart the church activities.

Despite having exceeded his college checks to enter St Albert the Great, which became considered a first-rate achievement, Mark refused to head. Instead he opted for a technical college so that you can be with his friends. He endured to skive off school.

Life at home become a nightmare, now not for Mark but for the rest of the family. His mom might regularly stay up smoking often, awaiting Mark to return domestic, typically inebriated. He became turning into uncontrollable and the mom advocated his father to field Mark by way of hitting him. On one event, after having come domestic past due another time, a massive fight ensued, which resulted in Mark placing his hand thru a tumbler door and having stitches in his right hand. Mark couldn't sit for his checks and ended up with out qualifications. Instead, he chose to do carpentry and excelled in this; but Mark is a perfectionist and because of the nature of the job couldn't entire a given challenge speedy sufficient. He determined he wanted to make some quick money and opted to visit Libya for nine months. He worked as a cleanser on a caravan web page.

With coins in hand, at 20 years of age, Mark offered his own vicinity in Gzira, became relationship foreigners and frequented clubs like Dewdrops in Paceville, Club 47 and Ta' Saveria. He loved being attentive to Abba, the Bee Gees and all styles of disco song. He tried to get dressed as first-class he ought to however appreciated to look special, wearing vivid coloured clothes and plenty of gold jewellery. He felt uncomfortable hanging around humans from Sliema, because they have been too upper class for him, but did now not revel in socializing with humans from sure regions as he felt they were too hard. He went round with a center magnificence older crowd and with people who he concept might improve his life-style, financially. His goals right now have been to live a cozy smooth lifestyles and to journey the world.

Mark nevertheless held adolescence resentment for his older sister's travels. She had been on diverse faculty trips and cruises due to the fact she excelled at faculty and for obvious reasons he had misplaced these opportunities. In flip, he tried to get a task on a cruise liner to journey the sector and turned into became down because of his loss of qualifications.

With no potentialities, no pals, no lodging and Lm70 to his name, Mark offered a one way price tag to London to understand his goals. He admitted for the duration of the interview that he thought his lifestyles was like a movie and that he turned into extraordinarily naïve.

On the flight to London, he sat subsequent to a person called Charlie, who offered him accommodation in Southgate and introduced him to Soho (the pink mild district in London). Being an unlawful immigrant he did now not have the choose of jobs. Mark labored as a doorman at a club in the West End, enticing people to go into and watch pornographic films. Within a month, he rented a flat because he wanted his independence. He shared the hire with a person who used to scouse borrow garments from shops on a each day basis and needed someplace to store them. He quickly changed jobs and have become a projectionist in the porn industry after which he become promoted to cashier. He earned £15 in keeping with shift, but Mark's deviant nature quickly found that via watching and gazing others and being discreet he should earn a further £70 in keeping with shift by means of pocketing the entrance price.

He met an English dancer, Denise who labored for a prominent Soho membership and he dated her for 1 ½ years. He managed to shop for a flat however this turned into quickly repossessed as he could not maintain up the payments. He misplaced his job and was arrested for touting. Soon after his launch, he met a collection of Italian men at a club. He had heard rumours approximately their illicit dealings in casinos and was lured via the appeal of smooth money and worldwide travel that went with this lifestyle. He was popular to enroll in the Italian con men by way of "making an investment" money with the organization. Through his association with these human beings, Mark speedy learnt the ropes and his self assurance grew. His ambition to higher himself drove him to installation his personal group. He trained people and made sure they remained loyal by means of sharing profits equally, in contrast to the Italians.

Mark usually knew the dangers concerned but selected to pursue this way of existence. Prison did not scare him he thought it became really worth doing time for the life-style he become main. True to con artist profiles, Mark did not keep in mind himself to be a crook - he thought he may want to outwit the machine; in any case, the casinos had been ripping off their punters! In fact, he was pleased with his truthful dealings with the relaxation of the organization, even though he puts in 75% of the work. So how might Mark pull off his scam? Mark explained various casino past posting actions on American roulette tables. This included capping a wager onto an already marked roulette winner with the aid of "ganking the marker", popping a chip on the stack, after which changing the marker with mild of hand that makes David Blaine appear to be Inspector Clouseau. It takes a completely sensitive balance of brains, guts and lack of greed. Knowing how to pull a scam, when to do it and when not to overdo it. Mark studies the sellers much like he used to examine his colleagues when he become a doorman, searching out symptoms of weak point then collectively together with his team use moderate of hand and distraction techniques to make their pass.

His first brush with the regulation became at the age of twenty-two. He became stuck conning a provider at a roulette desk in Liverpool and ended up spending a month in jail as well as paying a first-class. A few years later, Mark were given caught a 2nd time seeking to con a roulette provider in Glasgow and spent a complete of six months in a Glaswegian jail, four months for having false files plus two months sentence for the on line casino scam. He was then deported to Australia, his country of birth. This did not deter Mark in any way. He made his manner back to Malta, flew to Italy, got fake identity card and changed into back within the UK ten days later. Since Italy turned into part of the E.U. A passport became not had to travel, handiest an identity card. At this level in his lifestyles, Mark had more guts than the Vegas wasteland has un-marked graves.

Throughout, his motivation become to prove to himself that he may want to do the "trick" and overcome the machine. He joined up with yet every other Italian guy who changed into acknowledged to be incredibly expert. By this time, Mark's girlfriend left him as she did not like the changes she became seeing in Mark. He modified his get dressed sense, became more suave and completed. He developed a ardour for Italian espressos and enjoyed dining within the greatest eating places. Having no one to tie him down, Mark travelled all over the international, realising a lifestyles lengthy dream. He turned into making big quantities of money, on average Lm7,000 in line with experience with approximately 70 trips to America by myself over a length of ten years. He additionally travelled to South America, The Caribbean, Portugal, Germany, Holland and Spain. He admitted to us that he knew what he was doing became incorrect but in no way felt guilty. He considers casinos larger thieves than himself, despite the fact that some people may additionally view that differently. He turned into shopping for fast motors, art work, a assets in London, staying on the best resorts, taking place luxury cruises and even offered himself a aircraft. Mark claims that drink and drugs had been never a part of his scene however admitted that it took a large amount of cash to hold his new lifestyle.

Mark felt he changed into on par along with his siblings, all traveling round the world yet Mark's global became quickly to crash. He returned to Malta and started seeing 3 ladies at the same time. This became a period of misunderstanding for Mark.

One of the ladies he became seeing got pregnant and despite the fact that Mark was frightened of commitment, he stopped his lady friend from having an abortion. He promised to live with her and notice how matters worked out. Mark married the mother of his toddler two years after his son turned into born. His base was in London, but Mark bought a maisonette in ****** for his spouse and son and attempted to keep a low profile. He now had duty, he changed into a father. His spouse had emerge as used to the way of life her husband furnished and enjoyed traveling all around the global and she never tried to stop him or to exchange his ways.