#how he’s been violated again and again in the most insidious ways and how his anger is gone and he never wanted this

[opheliasam]

regardless of everything I think it’s pretty much undeniable that season one dean would full on commit murder-suicide (kill late seasons dean and then himself) if he saw the state of late seasons sam and i think that’s pretty telling

[rank-sentimentalist]

(from the article)

Alice, Darling, directed by Mary Nighy from a script by Alanna Francis, is the rare film to depict the battering of the psyche, let alone one which deftly and accurately depicts the corrosive, insidious effect of coercive control absent the evidence of physical abuse. Simon never hits her, a point which Alice uses to discount the seriousness of her situation to her two best friends. “But he doesn’t hurt me though,” she insists to Tess and Sophie (Wunmi Mosaku), who too slowly realize the extent to which Simon’s yawning insecurities and possessiveness have erased Alice’s sense of self and autonomy. The film smartly prioritizes effect over cause, resisting the trap of litigating just how toxic Simon’s behavior was nor the escape hatch of “it wasn’t that bad.” We see snippets of his manipulations but mostly how it manifests in Alice: the way she obsessively buffs her body into near hairlessness, recites ominous facts about sugar, rehearses a lie about seeing her friends to escape his judgement, treats sex as responsibility rather than pleasure. The way she expunges a flirty waiter’s number from a napkin like she’s bleaching blood, lest Simon find it in the trash can.

Watching this accumulation of Alice’s distress reminded me, paradoxically, of the 2014 Rolling Stone article that hinged on the now retracted story of a brutal, bloody gang rape at the University of Virginia. In an attempt to draw attention to campus sexual assault, the journalist sought the most dramatic narrative possible and unwittingly ended up with a fake one, pulled almost line for line from a television episode. The great tragedy of that scandal was that the primacy afforded to that one discredited story – with blood and broken glass and bruises, a laundry list of visible manifestations of pain – overshadowed and ultimately undermined anything that fell short of its extremity. To be believed and to be taken seriously, the logic goes, it has to be so bad as to be indisputable. There’s a cultural desire, bolstered by countless film and television narratives about the worst things that can happen to women, to have trauma validated through physical evidence, violent action or intense drama.

The Rolling Stone saga is an egregious example of the impulse for evidence through extremity (perhaps, subconsciously, why I’m drawn to it); 2014 was a thousand years ago in internet culture time, but most narratives of abuse or violation on-screen are still clearly rendered on the body. (See, again, the many, many shows about murdered women, or the prevalence of the trauma plot.) Shows and films which have grappled with psychological fallout and self-doubt, such as Michaela Coel’s I May Destroy You and HBO’s The Tale, have been rooted in clear-cut (and reality-based) examples of sexual assault or abuse. Very few stories take on the mangled knot of emotional abuse without grounding it in something physically violent, and thus more sinister.

This makes the restraint of Alice, Darling all the more remarkable and revelatory – a case for the seriousness of coercive control, in and of itself. To be sure, Kendrick’s Alice suffers visible symptoms from the gnawing stress of her relationship with Simon. The stress of lying to him about seeing her friends, of whom he disapproves, causes her to vomit; the loss of an earring, further evidence of her “badness”, precipitates a viscerally performed, devastating panic attack.

*                      *                      *

“In society, physical abuse is very clearly defined as an evil, and I think psychological and emotional abuse, even for those who have suffered it, can sometimes question whether it’s a real thing,” Nighy told the Los Angeles Times, explaining why she had a scene in which Alice revealed bruises removed from the script. It was a move supported by Kendrick, who has spoken quite gruelingly on her personal experience in an emotionally abusive relationship. “I was begging Mary, ‘Can Alice be the evidence?’” she told the LA Times. “Because not only do I want us to not make a movie that’s already been made, but personally, I need to trust that I’m the evidence. Part of it was like, if you can’t trust Alice, then I can’t trust myself.”

Alice, Darling and the importance of showing emotional abuse on screen | Movies | The Guardian

[kiefbowl]

I think it's important to acknowledge that access to wealth can provide an avenue to securing an abortion other women might not have access to, sure. Yes, maybe a wealthy woman or two were able to get on a plane and fly to an unrestricted country and pay out of pocket for an abortion once or twice or idk even five times. If that's happened, I'm glad they were able to do that. There are probably other ways wealth might give you an avenue that poverty blocks. However, no amount of wealth protects you from your husband's violence. It's also an insane hoop to jump to access abortion, the hypothetical plane ticket. A handful of extremely wealthy and fortunate women were maybe able to manufacture a way to secure an abortion, that doesn't mean I want poor women to have access to the same hoop to jump, access to the same hypothetical plane ticket...it means I want all women to be able to walk down the street to get an abortion uninhibited. And what of the hypothetical unrestricted country, what if those start to disappear? What is the percentage of women in the world that are part of the upper echelon that can afford space ships to planet abortion, exactly? And then once we have the number, what do we do with it? Do we execute those women or like...what.

I think the ongoing public internet discussions about abortion access wrt to wealth and to race is clumsy at best on all sides, but there is something insidious about mouthy men going on twitter and shaking their little finger going "ut uh uh, don't forget to center this conversation about how we just fucking hate some women." What is that contributing? Where is that leading us? "Let's acknowledge how privilege provides access to abortion" okay what's the next steps after that? It just seems to be a means to applaud your own "political prowess" w/o providing any meaningful discourse, and a way to veil how much you don't fucking care about women and don't give a shit about abortion except with how far it can make you appear progressive, appear feminist, appear leftist, or whatever the fuck. How many articles, twitter threads, tumblr posts, memes, reddit discussions are going to circulate that regurgitate the same condescending, posturing, escalating political language that is just meant to gesture wildly at some socio-economic concepts most people have been absorbing only through osmosis in their poorly constructed and cultivated online social media presence before people get bored and we can start discussing abortion as a de facto right that's being violated? I would love to hear well constructed arguments about wealth and race and women and abortion, but that's not coming from joe shmoe asshole extraordinaire who's never held a broom in his life and who's only political contribution in the world is sometimes remembering to register to vote and his twitter that he uses to shit endlessly on women secondary only to finding porn to like. Women have got to stop thinking these are the guys who we have to measure up to politically, because he would gladly abandon his principles to take a check, a wife, and an excuse to never use a condom again. so what exactly do we gain for aligning ourselves to some conversation about how wealthy women have wealth and white women have white privilege when everyone in that arena is really just doing it to jack themselves off?

I would rather be locked in a room with the most horrible, woman hating, conservative, pro-life, unethically wealthy woman for 800 years to only discuss abortion than spend one iota of a brain cell registering another hot wet fart of a take about wealthy women from any man, and from women who can't be bothered to log-off. I'm not saying it wouldn't be hellish, I'm just saying I would rather do an 800 year nightmare than listen to one more "actually" who's only point is to derail a conversation about abortion than contribute to it. AGAIN - you point out wealthy women could have access to abortion, and the follow through is what? How does that help poor women? We're not writing a term paper, we're discussion laws that are deteriorating PRESENTLY. Currently. Materially. Right the fuck now, in the real world.

It just proves that people are extremely uncomfortable with abortion and even more uncomfortable putting any responsibility on men. Let us not forget that the cause of an abortion is some man's ejaculate. Ejaculation causes abortion, ejaculation causes unwanted children. Women could be at peace about abortion forever if men decided to never ever ejaculate inside women ever again. So let's start the conversation there, actually. We can get to hypothetical wealthy women buying hypothetical plane tickets later, let's talk about men and their non-hypothetical ejaculate first.

[truthteller-lumen]

Nox (cynicallyinkless, fiveminutemeal, lorimer-no, etc) is an internet predator, a scammer, and a chronic liar. Here’s what you need to know.

He always made it seem like I had a choice and free will but... he manipulated me so bad that leaving wasn’t an option because I felt so bad for him. It’s so insidious. - one of Nox’s many ex-partners

Nox (Noximillian, Noxim Raven, Cynicallyinkless, @SirAlthair, @SirAlthairx,  fiveminutemeal, onehalfdime, lorimer-no) is an internet predator.

He has pursued teenagers and young women nearly 10 years his junior. He is 32 and his latest partner was 19.

He has emotionally abused his numerous partners via gaslighting, emotionally manipulative language, and negging, as well as other abusive tactics.

He has cheated on his partners with multiple other women_. _Though he claims to be in happily polyamorous relationships, many of the partners he was dating were not happy about the situation. He often kept the truth about his other partners from them.

He has lied about his entire identity to his partners, up to and including faking his own voice and sending pictures and nudes that were not of him. He also lied about other details of his life, such as his family structure (claiming his mother was dead and that he had adopted a daughter) and his educational status (claiming he had finished his degree), which leads to: 

He has accepted nearly $3500 from his friends in order to fund his education, then did not finish his degree. What the money was used for is unclear, but he took multiple expensive trips with his friends after receiving the cash.

Be aware. Know the facts. Protect yourself. If you’re in a relationship like this, seek help immediately. If you see the warning signs of a relationship like this, get out as fast as you can.

More information is below the cut.

Nox’s accounts and handles are listed at the bottom of the article. Want more details? Read on.

There was one girl, first. Then more, younger and younger. More trusting, more accepting, more susceptible to his abuse. He had them compete for his attention, let them fight among themselves. And he lied to them, over and over again. He let them throw their whole lives away, their finances, their hearts, for someone who didn’t really exist.

This is a story of abuse, lies, and manipulation. This is a story that we never want to see repeated again.

Names have been censored. Labels may not be consistent between conversations to protect the identities of those speaking.

---

Nox met us when we were all teenagers. Young adults. - one of Nox’s many ex-partners

Nox has pursued girls over 10 years his junior.

Over the years, the ages of the partners Nox has taken has trended downwards dramatically. When the people his age began to reject him for his behavior, he wandered until he found a group he was accepted by.

First, she was 28. Then, 22. Then, 19. And that’s not even the complete list. 

Though she was 13 years his junior, Nox would often talk to his youngest partner in disturbing ways, including the topic of pregnancy, to the point where she had already rewritten her entire life plan after college just to accommodate having a child with him.

Even those who were not romantically involved with him were subject to sexual talk, including minors:

He cased these girls. He approached the most vulnerable, easily isolated ones.

He went after me after prodding around and kinda guessing I wasn't too close with people that didn't like him. - one of Nox’s many ex-partners

These girls were not only subject to romantic advances, but gaslighting, abuse, and controlling behavior, as well.

---

If I did anything he didn’t like or if I offered that I didn’t like something, he would just stop communicating and talking to me for days on end. - one of Nox’s many ex-partners

Nox has emotionally abused his partners.

The common thread in the swathe of abuse he has cut over the past 10+ years is control. Don’t drink, he’d say. Don’t cut your hair. Don’t leave me, or I’ll kill myself. Every action he’d take - from punishing his partners with the silent treatment to ranting and raving at them when something didn’t go his way - was taken with the intent to control their actions.

Below is an account from his longest partner of 9 years.

After breaking up with this partner, he posted to Tumblr, implying that they were the one who had broken up with him:

But the breakup was anything but shitty. In fact, he was the one who had initiated it:

A benign breakup, initiated by him, over increasing distance.

His posts on Tumblr were no more than sharpened knives, directed at his ex of 9 years. Look at how much you’ve hurt me. Look, this is all your fault.

At the time he posted these posts, he had already been dating his 19-year-old partner for several months.

Not even his youngest partners were safe from his controlling behavior.

He used them against each other:

He isolated them from their real-world communities:

He isolated them from online friends whom he knew would expose his abuse for what it was:

And he tried to control what they did in their free time:

He would fly off the rails if he thought they disobeyed him, in this case for drinking when he didn’t want them to:

And if he didn’t get his way, he would threaten suicide:

---

He said he was poly... but he couldn’t tell his other girlfriends about me yet. Not until we were fully fully official... I didn’t know when he could say we were official, though. So I believed him about it. Only then I realized that he was hiding me from his other flings and partners. - one of Nox’s many ex-partners

Nox has cheated on his partners.

He justifies it under the guise of polyamory. The girls, a decade his junior, would often be led to believe that they were the most special girlfriend, and he made no attempt to communicate otherwise. Despite this, he would often claim that he was “single” while telling his younger flings that they were still dating.

His ex of 9 years didn’t know about any of these girls. He never told her.

---

The way he talks is so smooth and persuasive, it's so easy to be manipulated. I’m just crying so hard because it was a lie. I gave myself up to a liar and a fraud and my heart can't accept it yet. - one of Nox’s many ex-partners

Nox lied about his entire identity to his partners and friends. He is a chronic liar.

To his close friends, his mother was dead, and he’d adopted a daughter. His family had abandoned him, he was living alone, and he needed help financially. These were all things they were told, and they believed him.

His mother is alive. There is no daughter. He lives with his family.

Fake dead mom.

Fake adopted daughter.

To his partners, he portrayed himself as a charming, handsome man. He sent nudes that were not his own. The selfies he sent didn’t match up with his real life appearance. He used a voice modulator to fool them into thinking he was someone he wasn’t. His web of lies is so deep that no one is sure what the truth is.

He pretended to be a cis man to his partner, and made sexual advances on her without disclosing otherwise. He is not a cis man, and the terms of his partner’s consent were violated.

The explicit picture he sent to her to further the lie of being a cis man was pulled from PornHub.

No one is really sure who the person in his selfies is.

He used a voice modulator to pretend he was someone he was not. (Full disclosure: getting closer to being someone you’re comfortable with is totally fine, and if using a voice modulator does that for you, then go for it. The chronic lying to partners that deserved full disclosure before intimacy is the issue here.)

He kept everything from his partners.

---

He mostly came to me for money because I helped pay his tuition for 3 years on my own. Thinking that I was helping to support him when his family wouldn’t... But turns out I was just being used. - one of Nox’s ex-friends

Nox accepted a large sum of money from his friends in goodwill to pay for his tuition. It’s unclear where the money went.

He lied to them, saying that his family had abandoned him and that he was living alone, unable to pay for his tuition. Despite struggling financially themselves, his friend and ex contributed $3500 to his education.

First, his friend contributed nearly a grand to his education while living on minimum wage.

Then, his ex contributed a whopping 2.4 grand.

He accepted this money happily, and recently informed the first friend, who had not kept up with him in a while, that he had graduated medical school.

But other friends with more recent experience thought otherwise. Below is a quote from yet another ex who knew him closely and recently.

And very recently, he contacted his ex of 9 years - the one who had contributed 2.4 grand - to tell her that he had not, in fact, used the money towards his schooling, or finished his schooling at all. He lied.

A poor, ailing young brother who needed money for his future. He spun his use of their generous aid as a good deed.

But was it even used that way at all?

He would often go on lavish and expensive trips with one of his younger partners at the same time that he was receiving money from his friends. Below is a receipt from a trip he took together with that partner, correlated with the timing of the money he received.

This happened while he was still dating the first ex who had donated 2.4 grand to his tuition. 

If he was strapped for money, why was he taking expensive trips with his side flings? If he needed to fund his brother’s future, why was he paying for lavish accommodations for him and his friends?

And why was he buying expensive gifts for them, too? Below is a quote from another younger partner (different from the one above).

_

If even one more girl reads this and realizes she’s in danger, then it was worth it. - an anonymous contributor

Know what abuse looks like. It could happen to you.

If your relationship looks even remotely like this, heavily consider whether or not you feel happy being there. If you’re working to escape a relationship like this, we see you. We believe in you.

If you are in a relationship with Nox and want to seek help, or have an experience you want to share, our ask box is open. Your personal information will not be published.

The following are some resources on what abuse looks like and how to escape it:

What are the signs of emotional abuse?

5 signs of emotional abuse

5 ways to escape an abusive relationship

Be wary of who you speak to online. There are more people like this out there. It is not a crime to be loving, trustful and kind, but it is unforgivable for someone to abuse that trust, to lie and to manipulate their way into receiving kindness.

And all abusers get their due. Nox, this is yours.

Get some fucking help. Stop abusing young women.

---

Nox’s handles and accounts

Nox has been known as:

Nox, Noximillian, Noxim Raven, Cynicallyinkless, @SirAlthair, @SirAlthairx,  fiveminutemeal, onehalfdime, lorimer-no

On the online game Final Fantasy XIV, he is Balthier Strahll on Mateus at the time of writing. His character ID is 20282710. He is active in the RP community on Crystal datacenter and frequents player-run RP establishments such as “The Gilded Knob” on Malboro.

This blog will be updated with any other handles or accounts as they become known to us. Have an account that isn’t listed here? Send us a message.

[et-in-arkadia]

ok listen friend the hacker au was 7 years ago and so much has changed in computerlandia since but like i am incapable of not biting at this so let’s consider:

jaskier as a defected senior systems engineer from a company we’ll call, hmm, bookface who quit in a spectacular fashion by leaking the company’s most corrupt and illegal policies to journalists and basically getting them subject to congressional hearings and under fire for antitrust violations. he made a lot of money there in the early days but now feels sick after the company essentially helped destroy democracy so he dedicates himself to hacking for good and exposing the worst players in the tech world with these dramatic disclosures but this gets him persona non grata status and it’s an open secret that there are huge bounties from massive corporations for anyone who can find and expose him to the authorities, and it’s also known that no few of those companies would mind if something more insidious were to happen to him, so he goes underground

geralt as a former special agent in the fbi turned private detective who lost his g-man job for consistently refusing to carry out unethical practices but his decisions still culminated in the death of an informant, renfri, he’d been working with for a long time and he’s haunted by his failure to protect her. he’d like nothing more than to retreat entirely but he can’t, since he somehow inherited a kid. he’s hard up for cash after his goddaughter’s parents die in an accident and he becomes her guardian, and he tries his best to keep food on the table with whatever private cases come his way and odd jobs, but it’s a struggle. he hears that there’s a windfall for finding the whereabouts of that hacker brat “thebard” who seems to be peacocking about on the world stage for attention and for ciri’s sake he’ll do anything, so he decides to track jaskier down and succeeds via good old-fashioned detective work where all other efforts had failed

geralt lets himself into jaskier’s safe house and confronts him, ready to drag him out and turn him over for breaking countless laws, but jaskier talks very fast and shows geralt what he’s working on and manages to convince him that his next project is going to indict the worst people and change the world for the greater good and all he needs is a little bit more time. after that, geralt can do whatever he likes with him (no really, thinks jaskier). eventually geralt is begrudgingly won over and agrees, and that’s when jaskier offers to hire him as security because if geralt found him, someone else could, and a lot of people want him dead. geralt doesn’t want to get any more involved in this mess, but jaskier’s offering enough to pay for ciri’s college fund and set them up in a comfortable life (and there’s something earnest and resilient about jaskier that geralt likes, though he’ll hardly say that) and he can’t say no

against his better judgment, geralt is now jaskier’s private security, and he decides to bring jaskier and his operation back to his house, which is as secure and fortified a space as geralt can make. he’s nervous to be possibly endangering ciri but doesn’t see another way, and then ciri and jaskier get along like a house on fire and after a few days it’s hard to remember what life was like before jaskier lived with them. the rapport between jaskier and geralt grows, with geralt respecting him more and more as he comes to understand jaskier’s work and jaskier impressed with geralt’s wide-ranging competency and his dedication to ciri and, well, geralt’s everything, pretty much, and the sexual tension is getting to be unbearable, resulting in a bunch of near-kisses and finally a wildly passionate kiss that geralt walks away from because it’s fucking stupid to get involved with his client, who is also a criminal, and he tells jaskier as much and jaskier retreats to the basement where he’s staying and they stop talking. ciri, meanwhile, is doing her level best to make them stop being so stupid and get them together, because she knows what jaskier doesn’t—that geralt has never been so happy as he has since jaskier came to stay

jaskier releases his project, which threatens to bring down multinational corporations and possibly some governments, with reverberations worldwide, and he becomes the most infamous person on the planet overnight. he diverts geralt and sneaks out, leaving behind a note saying he can’t risk their safety for his sake and telling geralt that he loves him, and a bank account in ciri’s name with most of his money. it’s clear he thinks he’ll never see them again. geralt just goes absolutely feral trying to find him, but it’s ciri who’s able to track him down in the end, using the white hat skills jaskier had been teaching her

geralt goes to where jaskier’s hiding out and they both apologize for being fucking idiots and end up fucking for just hours and hours and hours, and then some more. but even then jaskier says he won’t come back and put ciri in danger, and geralt tries to assure him that he can keep him safe, and that’s of course when they’re attacked by a band of delightful blackwateresque mercenaries. geralt manages to fight them off and finally kills or injures enough to know that jaskier can escape, and then geralt collapses, showing that he’s been hiding how badly he was hurt in the melee. he tells jaskier he has to go, but jaskier refuses to leave him, and he calls for help knowing he’ll be apprehended along with getting help for geralt. he tells geralt he doesn’t care about anything else if it means losing geralt, and geralt thinks that this is it, he’s dying, so he tells jaskier that he loves him too and closes his eyes

geralt wakes up in the hospital with ciri by his bedside. he’ll live, but jaskier is in custody, and the government is not happy. however, it turns out that geralt still has some friends in high places who haven’t forgotten about him. his former fbi partner yennefer is now an assistant director, and after a whole lot of wrangling and string-pulling, jaskier gets a plea deal with only a few months in prison contingent on him working for the fbi’s cyber crimes unit under yennefer for, well, as long as she feels like it. geralt and ciri visit whenever permitted, and they’re waiting the day of his release to bring jaskier home

smash cut to: a very comfortable house in a lovely leafy neighborhood in d.c., where ciri is at the best school, geralt has started a thriving security consulting firm, and jaskier finds he really likes sticking it to tech criminals, even if he lives in perpetual fear and awe of his boss, yennefer. ciri has two dads who are madly in love, even if they keep up old habits and play at bickering a lot about it. ciri knows—and they know—that they have never been so happy or so lucky as they are now.

wait sorry was there a question? anyway. hacker aus, yeah, i’m done with those no way they’re still in my system at all

[medranochav]

my moms been living with us for 4 months now. her stay was initially tolerable but is now triggering and I find myself regressing in a lot of ways. Her grief has evolved into torment and per her m.o. she'd like for her issues to take first priority. Except, my sis and I are grown now, and as a therapised household (literally we've all been in counseling, babies included) though we still lean on each other for support, we ultimately don't function codependently.

And beeecause that's not how we grew up, I think my mother is now having to contend with the reality that she has to do the emotional work of surviving her many traumas (and currently her many dramas) on her own. We support her but we can't fix it for her.

Currently, it's a crisis a day and she's spiraling into mini catastrophic states everytime. Which was sufferable at first because despite my labored support, I still maintained my boundaries and didn't adopt her distress as my own. The problem now is the increasing frequency with which these crying spells are taking place. Not to mention the fact that she's been doing so in front of the kids; something that would normally be acceptable because my sis and I make space for feelings (even our own) in our home. The difference being, we do so responsibly. We listen, we talk, give affection and/or space but always with the fundamental knowledge that our emotions belong to us individually and only we can be accountable for them. A gentle reminder that though part of a unit, they still have agency and accountability.

This interdependency makes way for a more compassionate exchange. Whenever they see us cry or be vunerable, the kids have the wherewithal to approach us without attaching themselves to our emotional circumstance. It's an empathy that perceives our emotional reactions as relatable but still not their responsibility. I've seen our work proven time and time again.

One example is when my sister's [redacted] died and the boys spotted her crying on the couch. Without being prompted, they approached her independently, commiserated, hugged and kissed her and shortly after went back to playing on their electronics. It was such a graceful display of emotional validation that demonstrated their love for her without sacrificing their own desires in doing so. Truly remarkable, that at ages 5-8 they maintained boundaries while still being there for their mom.

They're also there for one another but it's seldom a sinking ship. And when emotional support is rejected they respect that as well, without taking it personally [tbh that has more to do with concepts of mandatory consent that we impart on them, but as is evident, it applies. #intersectionality] It's an ongoing practice that I'm proud to be a part of, considering the kids have codependent figureheads in both their maternal and paternal families. WE'RE TRYING TO BREAK CYCLES HERE.

Yes, our home is a safe space for emotional processing but always leveraged with the emotional balance of self reliance, awareness and resiliency. The kids have proven to have the capacity for this and through teaching them, so do we.

It's human to have outbursts, but my mother's pattern is proving to be less intrinsic and more deliberate. She needs an audience in order to experience catharsis. A potentially reasonable behavior except for it's her only one. So it's imbalanced and seeks refuge in the reliance of our total empathy.

Furthermore she's disingenuous in her emotional performances. When approached out of concern, she responds with the proverbial, "I'm ok." Like, its subtle but super manipulative to say that, when we can CLEARLY see she's not. The kids see and hear her, the least she could do is not gaslight them. And I'm not saying her tactics are successful but it exposes the bby's to unnecessary dysfunction and covertly teaches them to assume the responsibility of communicating her emotion for her. She's also non verbal and unpredictable and tho not at her best rn [like, literally who is? this year has wrecked us all] she and we deserve proper communication.

The mind games are soul sucking and triggering for me in a way that is not for my sister. Though we share a mother, the repective versions of her that we experienced as children differ greatly.

My sister's the eldest and spent the first couple years of her life as the only child to a very young mother living alone in America after being displaced by the civil unrest in her native El Salvador. By age 3, with the addition of a new baby sister (my moms 2nd) she was sent to a country fully at war. My sisters would spend the next half decade of their lives in sunny wartorn tropics, watched over and raised by our family of four women. A blissful antithesis to their future with our mom. Upon the return to their forgotten country of origin (USA) and severed from the only family and community they've ever known, the girls were whisked away by a mother they barely remembered and a baby brother they had never met... marking the beginning of my mom's descent into single motherhood.

My mom resented having a brood of kids, namely her 2nd and 3rd, who's father was abusive and absent. Don't know much of the facts outside of what she would ritualistically berate my siblings about during her brutal tantrums -as if it were their fault they simply existed. The second born, my other sister, left home at 12 and has been estranged ever since and the third, my brother, has recently severed bonds abruptly claiming a new life with a woman he's known barely a year yet now calls wife. Proving that despite being raised by the same woman we all had different mothers.

Since my siblings endured a childhood with a volatile, violent woman who managed her emotions thru physical abuse... when she wasn't, she was neglectful of them, turning her attention onto me... the youngest (four years removed from the rest of the pack). I bore witness to said abuse until I was 5, when it was litigiously exposed, forcing her to abandon corporal punishment and rely solely on mental/emotional abuse. That's the version of my mom I got.

I was 10 when my sister left for college. Just my brother and I remained. Similarly to each other we both lived in service to our mother. Whereas his duties were more physically laborious, mine consisted of full on emotional labor. I spent most of my childhood navigating a homelife that was so saturated and occupied by my mother's opera of a life, that there was no room for my feelings, thoughts, desires or identity. I was her plaything, a person sans agency. My age and vulnerability proved advantagous when grooming me. I learned to behave in ways satisfactory to her needs. I was made to react to (and collect) her emotional distress, endorse her judgements of others, perform well in school as a testament to her rearing, and accept her violations of me as normal. I was a shackled spectator, whose own emotions were mere reflections of her dramatizations. I was tailored to be the MOST convenient. So I kept secrets and coped alone. I knew just enough abt myself to remain human but lacked the vision to actualize it. And because emotional abuse is so insidious in its indoctrination, I was really none the wiser until I too moved away years later.

I'm almost 30 now and I'm a mess. I can't establish enduring relationships, I'm fat, I'm broke, I'm debilitatingly avoidant, socially inept, codependent, confused and lack significant self worth. I spent the past decade delving deep into undoing all the work done to me to keep me a reliable supply for my mother and coming to terms with all the time lost in doing so. I've had glimpses and proof of another life but this year sent me back to old coping mechanisms and devastatingly familiar relationships. I read that by its very nature, all pandemics have to end and I thought I was strong enough to share a definite time&space with my abuser for the foreseeable future.... but with no end in sight, I kind of really wish I had established a clearer version of myself and where I stand in this family, to her.

Similar predicaments flung us both to the south and having her here is like a screen forging images of the same dysfunction I exhibited upon my arrival 7 years ago. There's so much I wish I could tell my former self, namely, "it's not your fault. you're not alone. you don't have to try so hard and tomorrow is another day" And perhapz it's this layered vision of myself as seen thru her that compels me to want to save her, but doing so requires me to get too close to a flame I've yet to extinguish. Im not foundationally sound enough to go up in flames and rebuild afterwards, I need a few more rounds of therapy for all that. I'm a stitch away from coming apart at the seams. Weak construction, but I'm still standing. I have more life to live and can't risk the breeze of my mother's chaotic whims to topple what's taken years to forge. I love her, because she's the only mom I got and because she's the kids' only access to our motherland. How can I reconcile this version of me with this version of her?

[sevenchan-translation]

Earthworm Jim Animated EP3 Assault and Battery

アースワームジム第3話　襲撃とバッテリー

Special Thanks:teddyroo12

Narration:Earthworm Jim and his fur bearing sidekick, Peter Puppy,are about to be destroyed by the insidious Professor Monkey for a Head.

アースワームジムと、毛皮を纏った相棒のピーターパピーは、狡猾なモンキーフォーアヘッド教授に破壊されようとしていました。

Professor: Ow! Will you stop that, It is time to be evil!

やめなさい！今は悪い人になる時間なんだから！

Now, I will fry your puny worm body, and the super suit will once again be mine!

さあ、そのちっぽけなミミズの身体をフライにしてやる、そしてスーパースーツは再び私の物になるのだ！

Ook! Fine fine fine, once again be ours, satisfied hm? Now I have lost my train of thought.

おぉよしよし…もう一度「私たち」の物になるのだ、これで満足したかいお猿ちゃん？もう、私は何を考えていたのか思い出せなくなってしまった。

Jim: MUST. BREAK. FREE.

壊して自由にならなければ。

Whoopsy-Daisy, Steady, Steady.

あ〜らら、危ない、危ない

Professor: Ready, AIM, Huh?

狙いを定めてと…Huh?

Jim: GUHROOVY!! and oh, would you believe I meant to do that.

グルーヴィー！信じてもらえないかもしれないが、こうするつもりだったのさ。

Peter: Not a chance big fella.

そんなわけないでしょ、イケてる君。

Jim: Come on little buddy, I got some pliers in the garage.

行くぞ坊や、ガレージにペンチがあるんだ。

Professor: Fire!

(Theme song)

Narration: Morning in the sleepy town of Terlawk, flowers bloom, birds sing.

花が咲き、鳥がさえずる、寝静まった町テルロークの朝。

Bird: Ba ba ba boo ba bo, when I woke up this morning, hoo-hoo, I was just to late to catch no Worm!

今朝起きた時にはホーホー、ミミズを捕まえるには遅過ぎたようだ！

Narration: And Terlawks most unusual resident greets the new day.

そしてテルロークで最も変わった住人が新しい1日を迎えます。

Jim: Morning neighbor!

おはよう、お隣さん！

Neighbor: Morning, hideous freak of nature.

おはよう、醜い奇形種。

Narration: Unaware that disaster awaits.

災難が待ち受けているとも知らずに。

Jim: By the Great Worm Spirit, whose borrows dwarf the meager works of man!

偉大なるミミズ魂がお粗末な仕事をする小男の理論を借用した。

The paperboy's been missing the porch again!

また新聞配達人が玄関を見落としたようだ！

HARK! The paperboy is nigh, my invincible might will help him hit the porch this Mañana!

聞こえる！新聞配達人が近づいている、俺の無敵の力で彼が玄関に命中させるのを助けられるかもしれない今朝

I got it, I got it!

捕るぞ、捕るぞ！

It was up to me now, after the hours of sweat and practice, the weeks of training, the long nights at the diner tossing waffles, it all came down to this one catch.

それは私にかかっていた、終業後の汗と練習、何週間ものトレーニング、食堂でワッフルを放り投げた長い夜、全てはこの一回のキャッ��に集約された。

At last I was a player the big game of life, too bad I haven't read the rules at the top of the box.

遂に私は人生という大きなゲームのプレイヤーになった。箱の上部にあるルールを読んでいなかったのが残念だ。

Peter: Ooh, the funnies! Why are you moving in slow motion?

おっと、調子が悪いのかい？何故そんなにゆっくり動いているの？

Jim: (Stutters in embarrassment) Just messing with the law of gravity as I can.

(恥ずかしくて吃る)重力の法則をめちゃめちゃにしていただけさ。

Ghhk! HEAVENS TO BETSY!! Don't know... whats wrong... suddenly feel... so weak...

げっ！なんてこった！！う〜ん、どうしたんだろう…急に力が入らなくなってしまった……

Peter: You've been lifting so much heavy stuff. Mountains, houses, maybe you drained the suits power.

君はとても重い物を持ち上げていたからね。山とか、家とか。もしかして、スーツのパワーが無くなったんじゃ。

Neighbors: Oh dear, it looks like rain.. Oomph!

やれやれ、雨が降ってきたようだな…おっと！

Narration: Yes it is rain, a reign of terror from beyond the stars!

そうです、雨です。星の彼方から恐怖の支配者が降ってきました。

Queen Pulsating, Bloated, Festering, Sweaty, Puss filled, Malformed, Slug for a Butt has come in search of Jim's super Suit!

女王プラスティング、ブローテッド、フェスタリング、スウェッティ、パスフィルド、モルフォームド、スラッグフォーアバットがジムのスーパースーツを求めてやって来ました！

Queen: Back off, talk boy!

下がれ、トークボーイ！

Narration: Right, sorry.

了解、すみません。

Queen: Find Earthworm Jim, or I shall feast on your entrails at dawn!

夜明けまでにアースワームジムを見つけなさい、さもないとお前たちの内臓をごちそうにする！

Uhh... Make that around 10:30, I usually sleep in on Wednesdays.

うーん、朝10時半頃にしておくれ、毎週水曜日は遅くまで寝ているの。

Narration: Jim is suddenly enthralled in a desperate battle with some zurb warriors!

But he is just too weak to prevail!

突如ジムは、ザー��の戦士たちとの絶望的な戦いにさらされてしまいます!

しかし彼はとても弱っていて打ち勝てそうにありません。

Jim: HEY! I never flee from danger!

ヘイ！俺は決して危機から逃げないぞ！

Peter: You can be macho later Jim!

Right now, we need a safe place to hide, while you figure out whats wrong with the suit.

男らしくするのは後にしてよジム。

今は安全な場所に隠れた方が良い、その間に君はスーツの不具合を見つけ出すんだ。

Jim: Lets see, wheres a place no one ever goes?

ええーっと…誰も行きそうにない場所はどこだ？

Peter: Hey, this haggis stuff is great! How come no one ever comes here?

ねえ、このハギスっていうもの、最高だね！どうして誰もここに来ないんだろう？

Jim: Because haggis is made out the heart, lungs, and liver of a sheep boiled in its own stomach.

どうしてって、ハギスは羊の心臓、肺、肝臓を、羊自身の胃袋に入れ、煮込んで作られているからな。

I've been reading the suit's users manual, there’s only one way to find out what's wrong.

スーツの取扱説明書を読んでいるが…やってみるしかないな。

I've got to go inside this bad boy, I mean REALLY inside.

この悪い子の中に入って行かなければならない、つまり本当に中に入るんだ。

Peter, you keep a look out while Snott and I journey to the center of the suit!

ピーター、スノットと俺がスーツの中心部へ小旅行している間、見張っていてくれ！

I don't know Snott, who's Jules Verne?

ジュールヴェルヌって誰だ？スノット。

Peter: Heart... Lungs... and Liver?

心臓…肺…肝臓も？

Jim: Gah.. They just put these up to keep out the tourists!

ふーむ、観光客を立ち入らせないためにこんな物を設置したんだな！

Curiouser and curiouser, what do we do now?

ますます不思議だ、奇妙だ。俺たちはどうすればいい？

Good suggestion Snott! But I don't think my mouth will hold that much marmalade.

良い提案だスノット！しかし、俺の口にそんなにたくさんのマーマレードが入るとは思えないな。

AHA! Ok I'll bite.

よし、やってやろう。

AAH!

Jim&Snott:AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!

Jim: You're right! This is a violation of the laws of physics! I'll notify physics police at once!

君の言う通り！これは物理学の法則を冒涜している！直ちに物理学警察に通報しなければならない！

Come on, my uncanny worm senses tell me our answer lies this way!

さあ行こう！俺のミミズの勘が働いている、こっちに答えがあると。

Guardian: Destroy intruders, destroy intruders.

侵入者を破壊せよ、侵入者を破壊せよ。

Jim: Yeah, go get them. Oh, you mean us.

そうだ！奴らを捕まえろ！あー、俺たちのことかぁ。

Guardian: Destroy intruders.

侵入者を破壊せよ。

Jim: Hiss hiss, Hello I am a steam pipe, the intruders went that way, Hiss hiss, Steam.

シューシュー、こんにちは、僕はスチームパイプだよ。侵入者はあっちへ行ったよ。シューシュー、湯気だよ。

Guardian: Thanks, pal.

ありがとう、親友。

Jim: AHA! We found control central!

コントロールセンターを見つけたぞ！

But how can we decipher these incredibly complicated readings?

しかし、こんな物凄く複雑な物をどうやって解読すればいいんだ？

The battery's low!

バッテリーの残量が少ない！

The Zurbs could strike at any second. GAH!

ザーブたちがいつ何時襲ってくるかもわからない！

Narration: Is this the end for Peter and Jim?Will they be grounded to paste?

Will they be torn to bits? Will their bones be-

これがピーターとジムの終わりなのでしょうか？彼らはペースト状にされてしまうのでしょうか？

刃でバラバラにされてしまうのでしょうか？彼らの骨は…

Peter: Oh give it a rest, will ya?

もう、いい加減にしてくれる？

Narration: Right. Stay tuned to find out!

了解、乞うご期待！

Psy-crow: Hehe, Hello. Are you bored with life? Yearning for excitement?

こんにちは。あなたは人生に退屈していませんか？刺激を求めていませんか？

Well come on down to Psycrow's School of Nefarious Space Villainy.

I'll train you all aspects of evil.

さっさとサイクロウの宇宙悪行学校へ行くべきです。

あなたの悪い面全てを教育致します。

You'll learn the secrets of maniacal laughter.

狂気の笑いの秘訣を学べます。

Students: (Bored) Ah ha ha ha ha

(退屈そうに)

Psy-crow: You'll amaze your friends with your fiendish vocabulary!

あなたの残酷な語彙で友達を驚かせましょう！

Cat: Face my awry... uh, awesome wrath, vile do gooder.

I shall da.. destroy you. A minor backset, uh setback.

私の顔…間違えた…あー、凄まじい怒り、不快な行いをする善人。

私はお前をは、破壊する。大した尻尾…、失敗じゃない。

Psy-crow: And you'll attend a special space villain support group.

そして特別な場所、悪党のサポートグループに参加するべきです。

Teacher: You're bad. You're so bad that's good, but in a bad way.

あなた達は悪い人だ。あなた達は良い意味で悪い人だ、しかし、悪い意味でもだ。

Psy-crow: Because if you don't respect yourself, no one will tremble at your feet in abject terror.

何故なら、もしあなたが自分自身を尊重しなければ、誰もあなたの足元で惨めたらしく恐怖に震えてくれないからです。

Professor: Before I took Psycrow's course, I was a simple dairy farmer.

サイクロウの講座を受講する前、私はただの酪農家でした。

NOW DIG ME! I've got a monkey graphed into my head!

でも今の私をご覧あれ！私は頭に移植手術をし、お猿さんを手に入れました！

I was NOT making eyes at the gorilla! I'm a happily graphed man.

違う、私はあのゴリラの方が良かったなんて思ってないよ！進んで君を移植したんだ。

Jim: Psycrow's students are the most capable villains I battled.

Psycrow, you're number one... on the galactitc's most wanted list that is. Hehe.

サイクロウの教え子たちは、俺が戦った悪党の中でも最も有能揃いだった。

サイクロウ、お前がナンバーワンだ…この銀河の最重要指名手配者だ。ハハ。

Psy-crow: Hahahaha! You said it, accursed dog-ooder!

ははは、おっしゃる通りだ、やっかいな犬畜生め！

Dogooder!

おせっかいをどうも！

You know what I'm saying! Call today, and remember our motto.

The wages of sin is death, but the hours are good.

ご理解いただけましたでしょうか？すぐにお電話をください。そして私たちのモットーを思い出してください。

罪の報いは死ですが、その時間も良いものですよ。

Narration: And now, back to Earthworm Jim!

When we left our heroes, Peter was hiding from the evil Zurb warriors as they searched for Jim's suit.

そして、アースワームジムのお話に戻りましょう！

我らがヒーローたちと別れた時、ジムのスーツを探している邪悪なザーブの戦士たちからピーターは身を隠していました。

Jim: What's going on?

どうした？

Peter: So... Scared... Going to... Going to...

すごく怖��、このままじゃ、このままじゃ…

Jim: NO! Bad time, Bad time!

ダメだ！今は都合が悪い！

Zurb: Let's try next door, grab some of that haggis for later.

他の部屋へ行ってみるか、後でハギスを買おう。

Jim: Down boy, DOWN BOY!

落ち着け坊や！

Zurb: The suit, get it!

おい、スーツだ！取り上げろ！

Jim: Ungroovy.

AHAHAHA!

Johnnydactl:Foolish Villains, cower before evil's mysterious foe, Johnnydactl! HAHA!

愚かな悪党どもよ、ミステリアスな悪の敵、ジョニーダクトの前に屈服せよ！ハハ！

Zurb:AAAH!!

Jim: Johnnydactl, you old sweater girl, you saved our bacon!

ジョニーダクト、君は古いセーターの女性、俺たちのベーコンを救ってくれた！

Johnnydactl: At the fall of night I come, and silent as a cloud I go, let any trouble come to me, BEFORE THE WRATH OF-

陽が落ちた頃に私は来る、そして雲のように静かに去る、どんな災難も私の元へ来い、怒りに満ちる前に…

Stupid CD player, I was almost done with my mysterious speech!

もう、バカなCDプレーヤーめ、もう少しで私のミステリアスなスピーチが終わるところだったのに！

Peter: Oh, I thought you were very mysterious!

ああ、僕はあなたをとてもミステリアスだと思いました！

Johnnydactl: No it's ruined, IT'S ALL RUINED!!

いや、台無しだよ、全部台無しだ！！

Jim: Touchy....

神経質だなぁ…

Growing weaker by the moment... must get my strength back...

刻々と弱っていく…力を取り戻さなければ…

Queen: Earthworm Jim, you have until sunset to bring me your suit, or I will destroy this pitiful TOWN!

アースワームジム、日没までにスーツを持って来なければ、この哀れな町を破壊する！

Thank you, and have a nice day, this message will repeat.

ありがとう、そしてごきげんよう。もう一度繰り返します。

Jim: Destroys? Only one chance, we must go to the secret headquarters and consult my super advanced Wormputer!Grrk!

破壊する？一度だけチャンスがある、秘密基地へ戻って超高度なミミズコンピューターに相談するんだ！ぐえ！

Luckily I have a secret entrance, hidden in this restroom stall!

幸いなことに、このトイレの個室に隠された入口があるんだ！

Peter: Uh Jim? I think it's this stall...

��、ジム、こっちの個室だと思うんだけど…

Jim:Ew...

おえ…

Narration: The super advanced Wormputer, miracle of modern technology, does it's usual brilliant job.

現代のテクノロジーの奇跡、超高度なミミズコンピューターがいつものように素晴らしい仕事をこなします。

Jim: WHAT DO YOU MEAN INVALID PARAMETERS?!

9000 gigs of RAM and it cant answer a simple question!

無効なパラメーターってどういう意味だ？！

9000ギガのメインメモリを搭載してもこんな簡単な質問に答えられないのか！

Dang.

Peter: Why don't we just look and see what kind of battery is in there? Then we can get a new one.

中にどんな電池が入っているか、一緒に見てみようよ。そうすれば新しいものが手に入れられるよ。

Jim: GOOD THINKING LITTLE BUDDY!

良い考えだ坊や！

Dang.

Have a look!

見てくれ！

Peter: Gods...

神の…

Jim: What does it say on the battery?

バッテリーには何て書いてあるんだ？

[bopinion]

2020 / 53

Aperçu of the week:

You've gotta dance like there's nobody watching,

Love like you'll never be hurt,

Sing like there's nobody listening,

And live like it's heaven on earth.

(William W. Purkey)

Wraping up 2020:

The year that is coming to an end has been so defined by Corona, Donald Trump, climate change and Brexit that this media oligopoly has also dominated my weekly self-reflection. Of course, as a self-confessed news junkie, my thoughts often revolve around sociopolitical aspects.

Numerous other topics fell by the wayside, which would have been worth mentioning, but could not assert themselves in my frontal lobe. Therefore, here and now a top ten compilation of my notes over the year (I jot down thoughts during the week, which I then process on the weekend to my blog), which I would like to get rid of on the last meters.

Other bad news of the year:

CIA and Mossad kill people on foreign soil. Even if you can't like terrorists and nuclear weapons scientists in principle, this clearly doesn't meet the criteria of the rule of law that they like to claim from third parties.

Black U.S. parents still have to teach their children special preemptive defensive behavior toward white police. Still way to go for "Black lifes matter"....

Corona complicates the fight against Ebola, HIV, etc. - especially in the third world. Vaccination initiatives are also set way back.

Spree killings and terrorist attacks everywhere - in France, Vienna, Trier, etc. - not only out of religious fanaticism, but also out of the blue. And there are still fellow citizens living in European societies who believe that defenders of freedom of expression, which also applies to images of the Prophet Mohammed, should be beheaded.

The extinction of species continues. Not only in the tropical forests of Asia and South America, where nature is being pushed back more and more by ruthless man. But e.g. also on the Russian peninsula Kamchatka, where unbelievably large populations were obviously poisoned insidiously - thus died due to environmental pollution. For comparison: that would be as if all wild animals of Germany were murdered within two years.

Political organizations (OpenPetition, Campact, etc.) in Germany are in danger of losing their non-profit status regarding taxes. This probably means the financial end for most of them, because they are usually overlooked when it comes to donations. Yet political education fulfills an essential social task, especially in the age of fake news.

Racism does not only exist in former slaveholding countries like the USA. In Ghana, for example, there is a frightening trend toward skin bleaching with extremely harmful agents, because lighter-skinned people have better chances in society - from dating to the job market.

QAnon - as probably the most frightening example of strange conspiracy theories.

Even if the whole world would take all possible measures to stop climate change from now on, the summer ice in the Arctic is already lost. And nobody knows what that means for the world's climate. It is dramatic how ignorant we all apparently still are.

According to the WHO, there was 60% more domestic violence in Europe in April 2020 than in April 2019 - an unexpected negative consequence of the quarantine and home office era.

Other good news of the year:

MacKenzie Scott, the ex-wife of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, says she has donated $4.2 billion to charities in the past four months. Thanks to Warren Buffett and Bill Gates for "The Giving Pledge" initiative!

My favorite weekly newspaper "Die ZEIT" has again been awarded the honorary title of "European Newspaper of the Year." Good choice!

The EU strengthens the Convention on Protection for Endangered Species and enables global prosecution of human rights offenders.

Vatican puts itself at the service of the global education pact. Which primarily benefits girls in the Third World.

More and more Republicans in the Senate battleground state of Georgia are distancing themselves from Trump. So there's hope for a tolerable GOP future. And for political balance in the Senate.

Joe Biden can make a difference even against a Republican Senate majority: Strengthen Medicare, suspend student loan repayment, launch green infrastructure project, etc. - all important issues for the younger generations. For that, however, he would have to play "hardball." In doing so, he would save American democracy by renouncing his own ideals of political style.

The job market in many nations remains relatively stable despite Corona. This also reduces the likelihood of a new wave of poverty with loss of residency, etc.

A so-called "supply chain law" in Germany is intended to oblige or hold companies liable for tracing intermediate goods or finished products procured abroad at all stages of their supply chain for any production processes that are harmful to the environment or violate working conditions. "Fair trade" is in vogue.

Siemens CEO Joe Kaeser emphasizes the importance of human rights and environmental standards in trade issues with China and intends to increasingly align the global company's future actions with compliance.

The 40% drop in burglaries in Germany shows an unexpected positive consequence of the quarantine and home office era.

Wish you a happy new year and all the best for a better 2021!

[iloveurscratchybeard]

Moirae - Part 13

BACK AFTER A 9 MONTH BREAK! I never meant to make anyone wait that long. I appreciate the messages, comments, notes, and AO3 love asking for more of this WIP. You guys are the reason I came back to the fandom and back to this story and I hope it was worth the wait. First of all...the disclaimers:

THIS STORY IS **NSFW**. That is all.

If you haven’t read all of the other *NSFW* backstories to this part, you can visit me at AO3 or find the previous chapter here.

*****

Episode: “Pusher”

*****

She keeps her distance after their conversation in the hospital. She’s hurt, she’s grieving, but he’s not exactly wrong. She should have mentioned the test to him. Shouldn't she? It was all just too much to process - her abduction, her lost time. The unimaginable violations that had been committed against her. They’d taken so much...the thought that they’d also caused her to miscarry their baby was a thought that she simply could not confront. Not just to him, but to herself.

He stopped showing up at her place with movie rentals and take out. They hadn’t been together since their tryst in the elevator after his miraculous return from the dead.

They did not discuss their conversation in the hospital. She didn’t actually think her life would be better off not knowing him. But she was too exhausted and filled with anger over Melissa’s unsolved murder to go there with him. She goes back and forth between understanding his position, to being completely angry and frustrated with him. He took a moment that was about her losing her sister, and made it about his hurt over her keeping something from him. How dare he. Really- how dare he. Not everything is about him.

She found that the best way to deal with these kinds of situations is to immerse herself in work. It was easy to do with MUFON members claiming they knew her and menacing black oil bleeding through the cracks.

She needed the space, she told herself. She was getting too wrapped up in X-Files, too wrapped up in Mulder. She needed to re-center and find herself. She got a dog. It was so unlike her. A dog left fur and chew marks on her perfectly maintained surfaces, unhinged the order she put so much stock into. A dog gave her someone to talk to when she was alone, and someone to care for that didn’t drain her emotionally. A steadfast companion. It was comfort and it was normalcy, and that brought her just a touch of happiness. Little Queequag helped her lock her feelings for Mulder away for a bit.

He saw her game and beat her at it. He acted aloof. ‘I’ll meet your indifference and raise you one.’ He actually had the nerve to hang up on her. Multiple times. She knew he was just trying to make her jealous. But how can you be a respected entomologist with a name like Bambi? Seriously. It only left her feeling more spiteful toward him.

Detective White and ‘the rare planetary alignment’ was the final straw in the tension of their relationship, leaving her emotions in a ground-up mess in her gut. Was she really so replaceable to him? Could he really care so little about what they had? She couldn’t keep this pace going. She was feeling bitter and resentful, and most of all, even more alone. She had to find a way to let him back in, to bring back down the walls her subconscious had built around her.  

Things slowly improved between them after they returned home from that small town in New Hampshire. She found the lighter, flirtatious side of their relationship coming out again from time to time. Things started to feel easier. Finding Melissa’s murderer allowed her to close the door on a bit of her anger and let go. It’s just another piece of the darkness that she’s come to know in her life that she has to file away in order to function.

Her life is different now. She knows monsters and mutants, from Pfaster’s ice-cold delirium to the Flukemen’s grotesque face. But this monster is distressing. There is something so insidious about a person who can get inside your head. That can alter your brain in a way that takes all of your power and all of your control away.

Mulder is so strong. She sees it in the quiver of his lip, the twitch of his eye as he fights back the tears. The weight of Modell’s invisible grip forces his trigger finger to twitch. The way he whispers her name, a plea.

Don’t let me do this to you. I’ll never forgive myself.

All the distance between them lately feels foolish. She sees it all in his eyes in that tense moment, the teeter between life and death where things change in a split second and everything in your life becomes so clear. She’s been blaming this man for months for a life that she had just as much of a choice in. And it’s never been more clear to her as it is in those few seconds that his glassy, unblinking eyes plead with her to run that he is unequivocally and unapologetically in love with her.

Standing over Modell’s comatose body, she slips her hand into his. An apology.  I’m sorry I’ve pushed you, too. Pushed you away when I needed you most. She wants to say the words. But they have never been that good with words. She asks him to bring her home instead. He’s hating himself right now, as she knew he would. Blaming himself for almost ending her life.

She stands in front of the door when he tries to leave. Her eyes never break contact with his as she works her fingers slowly on the buttons of her blouse, one by one, exposing her body and her heart to him. His eyes flutter briefly down, taking in a glimpse of black satin, and then purposefully back onto her eyes.

“Scully...don’t.”

She drops her hand, steps closer to him, and places it firmly on his chest. “Don’t what?”

“I don’t deserve you. You deserve so much better.”

Her face is stoic in determination. “It’s not for you to decide. Every step of the way, this has been my decision. Standing by you, fighting for the truth...it’s been my fight, too, Mulder. I accept the consequences of my own choices. And I decide to be with you.”

He sighs in resignation, but she can tell he isn’t going to let his internal self-flagellation subside so easily. She is going to have to show him. She raises her shoulders so her blouse slides back and down her arms, floating to the floor. She reaches around and unclips her bra with a single hand and allows it to join the shirt at her heels. She smiles a little to herself at the very obvious hitch in Mulder’s breath at the sight of her. He doesn’t want to give in, but he can’t avert his eyes. Her pants and underwear follow in one swoop and she stands before him completely naked, both literally and figuratively. She takes both of his hands in her own and leads him to the couch.

“I should go, Scully. It’s been a really long day. You need to rest.” His resolve is slipping as he allows her to push him down onto the couch. He seems surprised when she takes a seat at the opposite end from him.

“I am resting. I’m taking the edge off of the day and I want you to be a part of it.” He quirks his head to the side, uncertain of what she means until she brings her feet up to the cushion, leaning back into the armrest and butterflying her legs to expose herself fully to him. He audibly moans, his whole torso moving as he swallows and clenches his jaw together in restraint.

She brings her hands to the insides of her thighs and lightly tickles the sensitive skin there, inching closer and closer to her center with each downstroke. He is unblinking and thoroughly entranced as she works her fingers down to her labia and dips two fingers in, and then drags them back up along her belly, leaving a trail up to one perfectly tight nipple and then swirling her juices there. Her left fingers dive into her entrance as she continues to tease and pinch at her nipple. She is beyond turned on at this brazen act of exposing her most intimate side to him. Being completely and openly sexual, showing him exactly how she touches herself when he’s away is a huge step for her. She is saying, ‘I’m opening myself up to you, absolutely and unconditionally. Please don’t shut me out.’

She pumps her hand consistently, feels her wetness dripping down onto the fabric of the sofa. Breath thin, toes curled, she continues to watch his face despite the lightheadedness she is experiencing as the sensations heighten and all of her blood seems to leave her head in a southern journey. Her clit swells prominently and she bites her lip as she watches Mulder shift uncomfortably into the couch, clearly restricted by his own clothing.

“Take it out,” she directs sternly.

He meets her eyes, clearly surprised at the forcefulness of her request.

“Now, Mulder.”

He doesn’t speak, but complies with her order, toeing off his shoes and pulling off his trousers with some minor struggle. His penis is so erect that it slaps obscenely against his stomach as it is released from its confinement. He hurls off his shirt before settling back into the couch.

“Wrap your hand around the base.” She is the one pushing him now. She’s the one in control. He seems to realize all at once that this control is what she needs in this moment, to heal both of them. She sees this recognition all at once in his face, and she knows he will do anything for her.

He takes a firm hold on himself, painfully swollen and oozing from the tip, the precum running along the veins down to his hand. She bites her lip at the sight of him and resists the urge to immediately straddle him and sink down onto it.

“Stroke yourself for me. Use a firm grip.” She is shocked to hear herself say these words and desperately close to orgasm from the thrill of it all. Her fingers leave her breast and trail immediately to her clit, applying pressure and slow circles in line with Mulder’s stroking.

“Scul-lee…” he whimpers, his eyes fighting to stay on her and not roll back in ecstasy at the sight of her.

They increase their speed, unable to stop watching the other. Scully feels the build-up, sees the bursts of white behind her eyelids as she comes suddenly and hard, throwing her head back into the couch.

When she comes to awareness and lifts her head she’s greeted with Mulder’s very dilated pupils and a slight smirk on his lips. His hand rests still, awaiting further direction. He is completely enthralled with her display of arousal, so much that he had forgotten about his own.

She slides down the cushion in his direction, throwing one leg over the back of the couch.

“Inside me. Now.”

He doesn’t need a second to process her request as he turns and sinks into her at record speed. It’s like coming home, she thinks. She is full and overstimulated by the erotic direction that the whole day has taken. It only takes half a dozen strokes and the press of his body against her sensitized clit and she is coming again, riding on the euphoria that is being in Mulder’s essence.

His restraint is admirable as she comes down from her second orgasm and finds him watching her face in pure wonder. She reaches down between them and pulls him from her body.

“I want to watch you now. I want to watch you come...on me.”

“Scully-” he starts to protest, but as soon as she pumps him once he shuts up and squeezes his eyelids shut.

“Show me.” She demands. His eyes are hooded, dark, and dangerous. He lifts himself a little and brings his knees up to either side of her ribcage. His penis is beautiful, just like him. It’s thick, a smooth and even magenta tone that commands attention. Using his right hand, he traces the head slowly over her breasts, slicking her with her own cum. He pulls the skin back tautly and then pushes it back up and over the tip so that the head is almost covered. He is slow and purposeful as he repeats this motion, enjoying her eyes watching in rapture. She brings her hand up to her mouth and sucks on her two fingers, salty and musky from their previous dance. She makes a show of wetting them thoroughly, eyes seductively locked on his before she pulls them out with an exaggerated pop and then swirls them around the ridge of his cock. She applies pressure to the sensitive underside with her thumb just so, causing a frantic “Shit, Scully...” and a crease between his brows as he concentrates on restraining himself. She wants him to let go, to free himself and give himself over to her, so she reaffirms him of her desires by wrapping her hand firmly alongside his. Together, they pick up the speed and pump him harder.

“It’s okay, Mulder. This is what I want. I’ve always fantasized about watching you do this. Watching your face as you stroke yourself-”

She doesn’t get any further as he erupts in a strangled moan, biting his lip in the process. She feels the pressure rise up like a tidal wave along her palm as two strokes of their combined hands have him spurting hotly over her breasts. It’s one of the most erotic moments of her life.

**

Later, after a hot shower together where he washes her hair reverently and towels her dry, they lay naked and spooning in the comfort of her bed. She feels the need to reassure him of her position further, so she kisses the back of his hand.

“You push me every day. You push me to think outside the box. You push me to be stronger. You push me to delirium sometimes... but this is the life I choose. I choose it. And I don’t want a life with anybody but you.”

************************************************************************************************

A/N: Tagging @today-in-fic  @pickingoutchinapatterns @viceversawrites @alabama-metal-man @baronessblixen @frangipanidownunder @scully-eats-sushi @shyromanticfreak @observeroftheuniverse @i-gaze-at-scully @peacenik0 @defnotmeyoyoyo @tumblessuckthis @tshining @piper-scully @alienbaby-babymama @spookydarlablack @illnevermeettheground @thatsmedana @markwatneyandensemble @iusedtoknowwhatawishwasfor @reasonandfaithinharmony

[apenitentialprayer]

The Grim Reminder

Attack on Titan and the Perpetual Crisis

(x) tl;dr: the fascist believes that the nation is continually under threat, finding enemies in other nations, but the worst and most dangerous enemies being dissent originating from within. This is currently a problem in the United States, especially (but not exclusively) with the Right, which often interprets disagreement as irrational, childish behavior that is destroying the nation. From the very first episode, the characters who inhabit the world of Attack on Titan are people in constant danger; some threats are obvious, like the nearly two hundred foot tall Titan that compromises the integrity of Wall Maria; others aren’t so much, like the incompetence and corruption of the city guards. But in any case, the one consistent thing you can expect in this story is that the very world itself seems to act as an obstacle that prevents the main characters from achieving their goals. There are enemies at every turn, because the world itself is an enemy. Opponents are inhuman, strangers are potential threats waiting for you to let your guard down, and even friends are ultimately not reliable. The world is in crisis, and the only person you can trust to fix these issues is yourself. This continuous crisis is a key part of any fascist narrative. If there ever was a golden age, it is long past; the golden age, a mythic period where the fascist’s group was the best, is something that must be regained. If it is based on an actual, historical epoch, the seedier qualities of society in that time period will be de-emphasized, if not ignored. And, luckily for the people living now, the golden age is something that can be brought back; it may even be on the verge of returning, were it not for the Perpetual Crisis, the way the enemies of the state always seem able to place a new obstacle that just barely prevents the total victory of the fascist movement. The golden age is definitely a rhetorical device deployed by Eren’s father in the episodes centered on his flashbacks, and thus by Eren as well. Ignoring the history of conquest, slavery, and eugenics of the Eldian Empire, Eren’s father presents a vision of the Eldian past where his ancestors brought civilization and progress to an otherwise backward world. The ancestors of Marley and all enemies of the Eldian Empire (which seems to have been pretty much everyone) were jealous of this past, and any and all criticism of the Eldians is best viewed as propaganda weaponized against the legitimate rulers of the world. The Eldian Empire must return; it is a matter of bringing the world back to an order that has been lost. The fact that the author has made it clear that this is a rhetorical device even in-universe may actually imply that the author is critical of the distortion of the past to support a present political agenda. But even if the use golden age rhetoric is implicitly criticized, the Perpetual Crisis is a reality of the world of Attack on Titan; the story, as presented so far, makes it clear that the multitude of enemies perceived by the main characters are truly there, and are truly obstacles preventing the fulfillment of their goals. First, we have Titans who have violated the sacred boundaries of mankind by breaking through Wall Maria. Second, we have Titans who have infiltrated humanity itself, sowing discord and paranoia from within. Third, we have leaders who oppose the views of the main characters, and are thus viewed as self-serving and incompetent. It’s never the main character’s fault when something goes wrong; what prevents the main character from achieving what he wants is always a ferocious enemy, an insidious plot, or a failure to trust in one’s own feelings over the opinions of others. That’s a dirty secret of the fascist view of the world; I’ve already said that the fascist cannot abide the thought of living in peace with a rival nation. But a fascist movement thrives off of the momentum of the perpetual crisis, and thus cannot exist without the rival to define itself against. As Ernest Gellner points out, if everyone in the world was to convert to Christianity or Islam, the concept of Christianity or Islam would still have meaning - these identity labels can exist meaningfully even without an Other to define itself against. This is not the case with a nation, which defines itself as a distinct set of people, and this is even less true of a fascistic nation, which thrives best when it has enemies both within and without. We see this clearly in Nazi Germany with the concept of the lebensraum, or “living space.” Simply put, according to the Nazi regime, the Germanic peoples did not have the room it needed to thrive, and thus needed to expand. The German people were supposedly in a seminal point in history, where it either had to both expand and purify itself, or go extinct. This was an apparently urgent need, something that had to be accomplished soon, a desire so strong that the two groups acting as obstacles to fulfilling this goal were oppressive by means of their very existence; namely, the Slav already living in the lands that the Nazi regime wanted, and the Jew living among the Germanic peoples. But these weren’t the only enemies, either; anyone who questioned the need for or methods of attaining this lebensraum were also enemies, and this category would expand to include basically anyone who didn’t explicitly affirm the idea. Communists, Jews, Jehovah’s Witnesses, non-Aryans; all of these interior enemies added to the crisis, necessitating witch hunts to “purify” the Germans, with horrific results. Now, there are a lot of groups and organizations that thrive on the concept of the perpetual crisis; the Catholic Church positions itself as the Ark of Noah, keeping the faithful safe in a sea of modernist heresy; the feminist movement in recent years has emphasized chronic feelings of fear that women experience in masculinized environments, with some prominent figures taking some pretty strong positions on the #MeToo movement (Michael Che’s Kavanaugh statement comes to mind). Neither of these stances are inherently fascist, though both have the potential to become fascistic. But let’s use a slogan that wraps both the Golden Age and the Perpetual Crisis up nicely: “Make America Great Again.” The slogan clearly presupposes two things; first, that America was great at one point, and second, America is no longer great. The “greatness” America experienced seems to be located sometime before the sixties, usually during or shortly after the Second World War; we fought the Nazis and won, after all! And we came out of the Depression. Things weren’t great for many Americans, but the subgroup that was usually identified with the nation itself (middle-class, White, native-born) was doing pretty well for itself. The groups associated with America’s fall from greatness (Marxists, civil rights activists, leftist politicians) are usually those groups that challenge this Golden Age narrative. The Nazis depicted the German nation as a defeated, emasculated nation that was suffocating under the weight of the pressure placed on it; it needed more living space. The less optimistic sections of conservative Americans depicts the American nation as a declining power, rotting from the inside because of people bashing the pillars that had allowed America to stand in the first place; the Christian nation is allowing more and more Muslim immigrants even as it faces the threat of Islamic terrorism; the primarily White nation must pander to black civil rights activists and Mexican immigrants even as these populations continue to increase; a proud nation of tradition is finding its traditional ways of life slowly eroding because of modernity and an enabling, multicultural, secular liberalism. I’m not saying that America doesn’t have problems. The way it is depicted above, however, encourages the suppression of minorities and encourages conservatives to see themselves as the True Americans defending what is left of Authentic America. Like the Eldians, who depose a king because of his policy of non-violence, some Americans would like to live in a world where agitating activists are at least silenced, if not eliminated (“If you don’t like it here, move somewhere else”). Faced with the possibility of allowing power to reside in a family that would rather keep the Eldians isolated from the world and at peace in the Walls, Eren opts to murder that family in order to seize power for himself. Having finally eliminated the threat of the Titans on the island of Paradis, Eren shifts his view to Marley across the sea. The survival of the in-group is what matters most, and in a fascist worldview you must be willing to do whatever it takes in order to ensure that survival. Every disagreement is a matter of life or death, every inconvenience an existential threat; the stakes can never be too high, and your side can never be too zealous in its actions. I’m not sure how to solve the problem of dealing with enemies from without; I’m not going to touch that. But in terms of dealing with struggle from within, I’d suggest first and foremost an elimination of the us vs. them attitude. The fascist sees disagreement as malicious sabotage. We have to see political opponents as people who are equally as invested in this nation, and whose disagreements with ourselves is coming from a place of authentic concern. We have to stop attributing malicious intent where other explanations are possible; a pro-choicer declaring that pro-lifers ultimately wish to control and punish women distorts their argument and demonizes them; declaring someone who doesn’t want limits on immigration to be pro-white genocide distorts their argument and demonizes them. As a final topic, it should be noted that fascists often claim to represent the true feelings of the people, and are thus justified in accomplishing their goals as ruthlessly as possible. One of the dangers of claiming legitimacy through the people, however, is that the people are more than capable of disagreeing with you; the fascist may ignore this, overriding the general will and choosing to do what they think is best for the people. Rabindranath Tagore wrote a book back during the first agitations for Indian independence, a book called The Home and the World. Using the metaphor of husband and wife, it argues that if you are going to treat a person or group of people as if they have the right to self-determination, you have to be prepared to accept decisions that you feel don’t reflect their best interests; if you’re going to treat a government as if its power ultimately comes from the people, you have to put your money where your mouth is and take their decisions and requests seriously. Just something to think about.

[thecomposerthatwaspromised]

‘This will be the final word in the story of Skywalker . . .”

So declares the disembodied voice of Emperor Palpatine in the latest teaser for “The Rise of Skywalker.” The last film in the decades-spanning space opera promises the return of the iconic Sith lord, who’s been pulling strings in this faraway galaxy since our story began. But there is another puppet-master behind the scenes, steering every dramatic incident, orchestrating every twist: composer John Williams.

It’s said that the Devil gets the best tunes, but Williams has long proved that that maxim applies to Sith lords, too. Within Star Wars’ ever-expanding library of leitmotifs — recurring, malleable musical symbols — much of the most insinuating material belongs to the villains, from Darth Maul to Jabba the Hutt to Supreme Leader Snoke. Listening to these nefarious themes with the ear of a music scholar offers a lesson in the real power of the dark side, showing us how music can repel, deceive and, with the right compositional tricks, even charm.

The standard by which all villain themes are now judged is surely the “Imperial March,” Darth Vader’s theme. “It should be majestic — he’s a majestic fellow,” Williams remarked in 1980, “and it should be a little bit nasty, because he is our heavy.” Vader’s leitmotif is, as music theorist Mark Richards has shown, a deviously sophisticated tune, full of rhythmic quirks and harmonic corruptions. But no one in Star Wars is beyond redemption. Vader’s death in “Return of the Jedi” occasions one of the most stunning musical transformations of the saga. Williams strips away the march’s militaristic trappings, leaving behind a sputtering shadow of the theme, orchestrated with such extraordinary delicacy that part of it seems to evaporate with each new phrase. With a final, hollowed-out rendition on a solo harp, the old dark lord expires, and the once-unstoppable “Imperial March” achieves a small measure of peace.

Standing in Vader’s musical shadow is his grandson, Kylo Ren. Among the various motifs assigned to this dark side scion, the most conspicuous is a motto that is, as critic Alex Ross puts it, “dominated by a stagey tritone” — the most demonic of musical intervals. There is a distinct quality of overcompensation to Ren’s roar of a theme, a studied attempt to project the menace of his grandfather. Yet behind the bravado is insecurity. His theme is a disguise. Even when Williams hints at a more authoritative transformation at the end of “The Last Jedi,” the motif is stunted, unable to reach structurally satisfying thematic closure. Like his music, Kylo Ren is unbalanced and unfinished, still just a boy in a mask.

Of all Star Wars’ Dark Siders, though, Emperor Palpatine has the most intriguing musical representation. Williams’s material for the evidently unkillable Palpatine is aimed at making the character simultaneously repulsive and alluring. Palpatine’s primary leitmotif, introduced in “Return of the Jedi,” is constructed around commonplace minor triads that progress chromatically, in a kind of violation of natural musical law. As music theorist James Buhler writes, “The music gives the impression that only a very powerful sorcerer, perhaps only a god, could animate these chords thus.”

The brooding, wordless male chorus that intones Palpatine’s theme reinforces the sense of eldritch unease that the character exudes. Unlike the “Imperial March,” the Sith lord’s music is not overtly threatening, but mysterious and beguiling, like a dark siren’s call. The leitmotif draws from an old association in film and classical music that wordless choruses stand in as the voice of the divine — a technique especially favored by Williams’s old-Hollywood mentor, Alfred Newman, as in the vision scene in “The Song of Bernadette.” The emperor effectively takes one of the angelic choirs featured in epics like “The Robe” and “Ben-Hur” and gives it a satanic makeover.

Williams’s compositions also capture Palpatine’s insidious influence on other characters. Some discerning analysts have discerned the emperor’s melodic fingerprints in the themes for Kylo Ren and his light-side counterpart, Rey. It seems entirely possible that this latent musical relationship is a clue to Palpatine’s as-yet-unexplained role in the events of the new films.

Even more ingenious is the concealed transformation of his theme into a peppy children’s chorus in “The Phantom Menace.” This is a deliciously cynical little musical Easter egg: While the good guys think they’ve won the day, everything, including the soundtrack, is actually proceeding according to the villain’s design.

George Lucas wanted Palpatine’s rise to echo the ascents of real-life tyrants. “Democracies aren’t overthrown,” he claimed in a 2005 interview, “they’re given away.” Williams’s prequel scores reiterate that narrative with on-the-nose musical allusions. For example, when, as chancellor, Palpatine is granted emergency powers, the soundtrack channels the stately style Williams uses to characterize American politicians in a positive light: John Quincy Adams, Abraham Lincoln, John Kennedy and Barack Obama, among others. Heard against Palpatine’s power-grab, such noble strains are perversely incongruent. But they illustrate the dangerous appeal of authoritarianism when presented through a filter of (here musically constructed) nostalgia and patriotism.

An even more forceful connection to American history is made when Palpatine declares himself emperor in “Revenge of the Sith.” For this pivotal scene, Williams reworks a portentous brass chorale from his score for Oliver Stone’s “Nixon.” The passage occurs during a re-creation of Nixon’s fiery speech at the 1968 Republican National Convention. The sequence exaggerates Nixon’s fascistic tendencies and, through Williams’s hyperbolic score, works hard to whip the viewer into a fevered, receptive emotional state. As scholars of music and propaganda have shown again and again, music is as powerful as spoken rhetoric when it comes to opening people up to political messaging. Such turbulent tunes invite us to root for the disgraced president — or space dictator.

The clearest demonstration of the seductive power of Williams’s music comes during the “Tragedy of Darth Plagueis” narration in “Revenge of the Sith,” which finds Palpatine attempting to plant dark desires in Anakin’s heart during an opera house performance of “Squid Lake” (really). At no point in the scene, recently singled out by “Rise of Skywalker” director J.J. Abrams as the best sequence in the entire prequel trilogy, does the emperor’s leitmotif play, but his musical machinations are all over the score. The first half of his narration is accompanied by the deepest male choir yet heard in the saga, chanting a single low B on naked vowel sounds, in the style of Tibetan Gyuto monks. The choir ceases being underscore and becomes diegetic — that is, part of the movie’s fictional space, hearable by its characters. The emperor’s malignant music has seeped out of the soundtrack and into the world of the film.

When Palpatine finally makes his pitch to Anakin, his music does something most uncharacteristic for a Sith: It gets ecclesiastical. For a brief 15-second span, the violas and cellos state a hushed, reverential hymn in pure, unadulterated C-sharp minor. The Sith lord’s secret takes up only five measures. But these measures are profoundly salient, evocative of an antiquated style that has not been heard before in Star Wars. If anything, the hymn is a spiritual cousin to Williams’s Holy Grail theme from “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.” In the orchestral score, the performance instruction is “liturgico” — like a prayer. The ultimate appeal to evil in this series, it would seem, hinges on a feeling of religiosity. A promise of occult knowledge, presented with just the right musical halo, is all it takes. A few scenes (and a temple full of assassinated Jedi) later, Anakin has succumbed to the dark side.

Film music is inherently and unapologetically manipulative, and for decades Williams has proved himself Hollywood’s master musical manipulator. While the black-and-white morality of Star Wars is on its face as simple as can be, the way Williams contributes to this moral universe is far from simplistic. With his music for villains like Vader, Kylo Ren and the emperor, Williams invites us to lower our guards. For the Jedi, the seductive power of evil is a constant threat. And for those of us watching their adventures, likewise, it’s something we can easily hum along to.

[cryptovalid]

Watchmen: My favorite show of 2019

Now that I’ve watched HBO’s Watchmen in its entirety, I can safely say that it is by far my favorite show I’ve seen this year. The more I think about it though, the less it seems to offer a coherent statement about vigilantism, power and violence the way the original graphic novel did. I don’t think this makes it any less clever, bold or satisfying to watch, but Watchmen is more interested in playing with the weight and drama of themes than actually expressing a clear, useful thesis about them.

The show is a sequel to the graphic novel, taking place in 2019, when the fallout from the 1987 story finally comes home to roost. 

To give you some more context, I’ll be talking about Alan Moore’s 1986-1987 maxiseries of comics first, and then comparing it to the new television series narratively. In terms of acting and production values, I’d say that the show is great across the board, although your mileage may vary. This is doubly true of its narrative: I’m curious if the show is too confusing for people who’ve never read the comic, and the show doesn’t show a lot of reverence for the characters of the original. In my opinion, this is for the best and actually completely in the spirit of Alan Moore’s work. From here on out, There be Spoilers for the comic, movie and the tv series.

Watchmen (1987) by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons is by far my absolute favorite superhero comic. It is the only graphic novel to be named as one of Time’s 100 best novels of the twentieth century. It’s certainly not true that it is the only graphic novel that deserves that kind of honor, but it is not on that list for bad reasons. This post would be too long if I listed all of Watchmen’s many achievements, so I will just say this: Watchmen investigates how the existence of masked vigilantes and superheroes would change the real world, and its answer is not positive. No matter how you slice it, in order to inflict violence on strangers or save the world based purely on your own moral compass, you have to be either hopelessly naive or narcissistic, sadistic, fascistic, fetishist, manic, or untethered from human experience in one way or the other. However you imagine them, superheroes escalate danger. They are not cooperative or peace-loving by their nature, the comic says. ‘Superheroes’ will do terrible things in the name of ‘saving the world’ or ‘doing the right thing’. In this sense, the book is thoroughly anti-utopian but also anti-superhero, and it commits to this by depicting all of its ‘protagonists’ as deeply flawed, ultimately dangerous or inept people. 

In terms of plot, the big twist that effects the show is that the smartest man in the world, the vigilante Ozymandias, predicts that nuclear armageddon is inevitable unless he convinces the global superpowers that there is a massive alien threat, making their feuds appear petty and risky by comparison. He literally kills millions of people with a genetically engineered giant monster that he teleports to New York, not including the dozens of murders to prepare the ground and cover up this fact. The fear that more monsters like this could appear prevents nuclear war at the last second, but another vigilante named Rorshach figured out Ozymandias’ plan and wanted to expose it, which would undo its intended peacemaking effect. He was killed, but his notes survived.  

In the end, the only vigilante with actual superpowers, Dr. Manhattan, is so far removed from human experience because of his godlike powers and his nonlinear perception of time, that he seems to retreat from Earth itself, expressing a desire to create life elsewhere.      

This is the backdrop against which Watchmen (2019) frames itself: what would that alternate history look like about 20 years later? But instead of focusing on the evils that vigilantism and superpowers would create, this sequel puts race and policing at the core of its narrative. The main protagonists: Angela Abar, Will Reeves, Laurie Blake and Wade Tillman are all cops and all of them are at one point in their lives masked vigilantes. They are also pitted against white supremacist terrorists, and the show depicts them as regularly violating the constitutional rights of suspects and killing lots of people in justifiable situations. The show depicts both cops and civilians in both real and historical race riots.  

But the more I think about it, the less I can identify a coherent thesis about the origins or nature of racism or the morality of extra-judicial violence. It seems to say ‘violating a person’s human rights is alright as long as they’re racist’, and I mean, I can’t be too mad about that, but it also implies that the cops are basically good, that it is possible to root out specific racist conspiracies and that’s all that’s needed to set things right. There’s a definite assumption that most of the time, we can just trust cops to have integrity. The show rarely frames unmitigated violence as a systemic issue; even when the government is implicated. The protagonists are also relatable and sympathetic, and their victory against the white supremacist conspiracy is without any real moral complications or ironic personal costs. This show, unlike its source material, is pro-vigilante. Or at most neutral on the subject.   

Its message about racism is more straightforward, but also a little hollow. Racist violence is shown viscerally, but also roundly condemed, ridiculed, and avenged by the protagonists. But that’s really as deep as it goes. All racists in this show are openly and stereotypically Southern whites. There is very little exploration or covert or insidious racism: there is a clear divide between literal neo-KKK types and antiracist avengers, with little ambiguity in between. We are not really shown what drives racists to be racist. The most motivation racists are given is a resentment over two attempts at improving the world: Reparations for the Tulsa Massacre, and the aforementioned plot to stop the Cold War by faking extradimensional invasion. Not that I’m begging for a humane portrayal of racist terrorists, but it does make it extremely easy for actual, less obvious white supremacists to ignore any criticism because ‘at least they’re not like the Seventh Kavalery’. It in short, doesn’t give viewers any special insight into racism and how to deal with it in the real world.

What Watchmen does do beautifully is representation. The first masked vigilante, Hooded Justice, who in the comic was a clear reference to a Klansman, is reimagined as the victim of a threatened lynching, who fights his attackers still wearing the noose and hood they put on him. He then pretends to be white to gain the support and cover he needs to be a vigilante. This man, Will Reeves, named himself after his childhood hero, the historical inspiration for the Lone Ranger, Bass Reeves. As a child, he was smuggled out from the Bombing of Tulsa in the trunk of a carriage, much like Moses or Superman. We later discover that HJ is bisexual and is essentially strung along for years by the media-savvy Captain Metropolis for publicity purposes and sex, and ends up desillusioned by his white allies. We also learn that Angela Abar, the de facto main character, is in fact his granddaughter, and she becomes involved in his decades-spanning plans to root out the racist conspiracy that the plot revolves around.

Perhaps even more interesting is the decision to integrate Doctor Manhattan into this sequel as a jewish and a black man. Rather than simply recasting the part, the show frames the revelation in a way that Dr. Manhattan might experience it: out of order, but also clearly telegraphed. The show uses this to characterize Dr. Manhattan as someone whose decisions do not adhere to standard causality. Why does he start to woo Angela Abar in the first place? Because from his perspective, he’s always been in love with her. Just like nothing ever ends, it doesn’t really begin from his perspective either. One day, he walks into A Bar and starts explaining to Angela Abar that they will be in a relationship for ten years, which wil then end in tragedy. While she is understandably skeptical, Regina King and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II really manage to sell both the frustrating absurdity and the transcendant romance of this idea. In the end, Osterman chooses to take the shape of a dead man based purely on the fact that Angela is most attracted to, and goes to great lengths to lose is powers and become human again, as a black man named Calvin Abar, who we first meet as Angela’s charming stay-at-home husband and father to their adopted children. The fact that he is Dr. Manhattan all along is revealed to us in my favorite sequence in the whole show. We, the audience, fall in love with both the husband as well as the God, Jon Osterman, as both are vulnerable and honest about who they are. Even though everyone knows it can’t last. These scenes are both heartbreaking and beautiful, and are foreshadowed masterfully from the beginning. This is what I mean when I say the show is clever. 

The dialogue is witty and the cinematography, editing and plotting do a subtle job of worldbuilding. There are very few exposition dumps and characters rarely do or say things just to help the plot along; they are always driven by their own motivations rather than those the viewer might prefer in their hurry to learn more.

As a result, characters feel smart and their personalities and relationships develop more naturally. From Jeremy Irons’ Ozymandias to Hong Chau’s Lady Trieu to Jean Smart’s Laurie Blake, they all come across as clearly defined assholes with a charismatic competence.   

The world and its history also unfold at their own pace. This can be confusing in the first couple of episodes. It isn’t explained why cops wear masks, what ‘Redfordations’ are, or why squids rain from the sky often enough that a siren goes off whenever it happens. Instead, viewers piece a lot of it together from context. The details make it feel very believable. It makes me feel like I’m discovering an alternate history the way a lost time traveler might.

In the end, it is not the themes that make this version of Watchmen so enjoyable. Its the intricate details of its world and the interactions between its characters that make Watchmen 2019 so fun to watch. And as far as on the nose messages go, ‘vaporize as many racists as possible‘ isn’t that bad.  

[becoming-lilibet]

Reflect on your greatest struggle. What was it and how did you grow from it?

My greatest struggle has been a culmination of years that were spent between a mix of deception, of denial, a realization that my body was deteriorating like an 80 year old, lies, and a flame that would not burn out. Some stories need a back story, but when it comes to stories of an insidious fight with anorexia, they can turn into war stories of competition. I will not speak of certain weights, I will limit the discussion of behaviors as much as possible (only ones to show how an entire family unit watched their daughter die before their eyes), and omit numbers of total intake and the like, which I suppose falls under behaviors. But this is a journey that has taken place over the course of my young adolescence until now, at age 31. 

There is no onset age where a man or woman develops an eating disorder. Mine just so happened to begin around 8 years old when it was my only way to cope with being sexually abused by two neighborhood boys. My innocence was taken and I was free falling through the streets of Gracemore. My body had been violated and I in turn violated the natural equilibrium of myself. I remember being a sad kid who perfected the art of deception. If I pretended everything was okay, no one would catch on, and I could suffer in silence behind my purple painted walls. 

It started simply with chewing and spitting. TO this day I’m unsure how that behavior went unnoticed by my parents, but now I know as an adult that those struggling with EDs are sneaky little shits. I’ve written another piece called “The Obsession with Emptiness” on my recovery blog (recoverywithoutkale) that tells the tale of how around this very age I also discovered the evil of the Diet Culture aisle at stores and  began to shoplift laxatives and diuretics. 

By time I reached 13, my ED was all I thought about. You can’t diagnose a child with Bipolar disorder (I finally received that diagnosis at 19), but I was in fact struggling with towering highs and abysmal lows. My mom and I fought a lot during my middle school years. It wasn’t entirely her fault or mine. I believe my mother has untreated mental health issues that made us pit against each other. 

I found an old photograph of my mom in a bikini, lounging in the sun. She was skin and bones. It was dated 1986, before I was a thought. My sister caught me starting at it and said, “Yeah, see? Mom was anorexic, now she binges.” At the time I didn’t know what the word “anorexic” even meant. I was so out of control with my impulses, my identity, my sexuality, that I ended up losing my virginity my 8th grade year. What I didn’t anticipate was that my boyfriend was going to break up with me right after he had sex with me two or three days later. 

But I found the cure for my heartbreak even deeper. My mom was going on the South Beach Diet and asked me to join with her. I eagerly agreed. I felt so powerful. I felt so accomplished. I lost a significant amount of weight in the first two weeks of Phase 1, beating the amount of weight my mom lost by double. That’s all it took. I was addicted. She eventually stopped, but I didn’t. How could I stop now? 

Thus began my dance with ED. At age 16 I was seeing a therapist who had been consulting with my doctor and they diagnosed me with anorexia - restrictive type. At this point I wasn’t abusing laxatives or diuretics or diet pills. Just an adherence to a strict starvation diet. After that I went down a new rabbit hole: the online ED community on Xanga. It was essentially pro-ED, without a doubt. Competing, challenges, tips and tricks. It was all dangerous. Then when the summer I was 16 rolled around, I was date raped by a member of my youth group after returning from a mission trip to San Antonio. The ED swooped in and rescued me. I thought the more I lost, I could kill the femininity inside.

By time I graduated and went to college I knew my problem was out of hand, but I had no way of stopping it. At least, I had no idea how to stop it. I attended an eating disorder support group on campus but the girls were so banal and I couldn’t stand them. 

After I got pregnant, I ceased all eating disorder behaviors all the way until my daughter stopped nursing around 8 months old. I was left with untreated Post-Partum Depression and a whole lot of extra baby weight. I lost weight, to say the least. But I lost myself most of all. 

September of 2009 I admitted myself inpatient to the eating disorder ward (VITA) at Research Medical Center. How ironic, I thought to myself. The place I was born is the place I’m coming to die. There was a three month long wait list, but after assessing me they admitted me three days later. I had a myriad of tests done to evaluate the damage I’d done to my body. They pushed me around in a wheelchair because my blood pressure was so low, as was my heart rate, and because of the severity of my anorexia, they did not want me burning any calories by walking. It was humiliating. 

That first day I spent the whole day getting every test imaginable done. Then, my results. When I heard the words it was as if I were floating above my body. The doctors asked who referred me there and I was confused. “No one. I admitted myself.” Next they asked, “Are you living alone?” and I answered, “No, I live with my parents...” Their eyes widened and looked perplexed and asked, “Have you been resisting treatment? Why didn’t your parents bring you in months ago?” I was offended by his first question. I told him, “I’ve been complying with my shrink, taking all my meds, being honest with my ED therapist, and being transparent about my behaviors, but neither of them suggested treatment so I Googled it myself.” I had no answer for my parents actions. Then he leaned in and said, “I’m going to be honest and level with you here since all you’ve been doing is be honest with us and most patients aren’t forthcoming during the intake process. You are dying, Sarah. If you hadn’t admitted yourself today I would guess you’d have two weeks at most before you passed away.” Me, floating, higher and higher...

So began a three month hospitalization to weight restore and heal my disordered mind. I had a positive experience at VITA. My therapist was amazing - she convinced my parents I have a real life-threatening disorder that I did not choose. The psychiatrist Dr. Mandal taught us so many profound lessons - most of which I haven’t forgotten. And I made close friends, which is crucial when you’re forced to wake up at 4AM for vitals and be drugged to sleep at 9-10PM. I can’t say this is where I magically recovered, but it’s where I finally discovered I could, can, and will beat this. 

Eating disorder recovery is a life long journey, I was re-hospitalized at VITA again about six months after my discharge. Hung in the balance for years of recovery and relapse, and spent last summer at EDCare (a story for another time, perhaps) for 13 weeks where I experienced medical malpractice. I don’t know how to say I am now. I’m learning to embrace a few fat body in a fatphobic society, I act on ED behaviors a couple times a week, sometimes none at all. But this is certainly the furthest I’ve ever come in recovery and for that I am proud. I have a lot of hard work to do in the future but I have a small group of people who are in my support system. I won’t stop fighting now. 

[politicaltheatre]

Kill The Messengers, pt.3

This week played out like some kind of twisted symphony, the end of American representative democracy as we’ve known it in four movements.

You have the first movement, establishing the world about to be threatened, perhaps even destroyed.

You have the second, when all hope seems lost.

You have the third, chaotic, confirmation of all that has come before, of the doom and gloom we have bare escaped, and yet showing a glimmer of light, a chance at hope renewed.

The fourth movement continues from the third, an explosion of energy, of promise for a better future.

This was the week that was.

The first movement, clearly - or not considering how it played out - was the Iowa Caucus coupled with a motif of war between the Democrats and Republicans in Washington in the impeachment trial’s closing arguments. The expectations set by the caucus and the pantomime on the Senate floor seemed crystal clear at the time. And then arrogance overwhelmed everything.

The arguments weren’t much of anything, really. The House managers laid out a thorough, well reasoned, and, aside from Adam Schiff, incredibly dull closing. Yes, Trump is corrupt. Yes, Trump violated United States laws and the Constitution itself. Yes, acquittal would mean violating any standard of the rule of law and make corruption the new standard of the republic.

Trump’s lawyers turned abruptly from that to complete farce. Richard Nixon, in his shameful, post-pardon exile, infamously said, “when the president does it, that means that it is not illegal”. On Monday, Alan Dershowitz attempted to make the case that Nixon’s personal defense should be the law of the land. That’s how far we’ve come as a nation in forty years, how low our standards of behavior have been brought.

The Iowa Caucus has been around so long that its functioning has long been taken for granted. People go in a room, give their first choice, and then persuade, bully, and cajole their friends and neighbors to join them until some candidate comes out the winner. They do this all over the state in small groups and it takes time. Reporting it should take time.

And yet, in our impatient, smart phone driven new world, the idea that people should be allowed to take time with something is a thing of the past, like the rule of law. The corruption coursing through our culture at the moment has only exacerbated this, by making the chaos of reporting accurate information about a competition fodder for conspiracy theories and accusations of cheating. Everybody does it, right?

With a crisis like this comes an opportunity, and as in so many crises before that opportunity was seen as a money making one. Some geniuses who worked on Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign offered to bring Iowa’s ancient caucus system into the 21st century, and the result, predictably, went sideways.

HBO famously allowed untold millions of Americans steal its HBO GO streaming service through the use of borrowed passwords and other, less scrupulous methods. They did this for a year or so, until they knew that their highly anticipated stand alone streaming service, one not requiring cable TV, could handle the bandwidth. It cost them more money than we will ever know, but once HBO NOW launched, it never went down due to lack of bandwidth.

No one at Iowa’s Democratic Party and the Clinton veterans’ company, Shadow, Inc., thought to test their caucus app, either for bandwidth requirements or for bugs in the code. Oops.

Fortunately for the Democrats, Iowa is no more representative of them as a national party than it is representative of the nation as a whole. This embarrassment will only really last as long as it takes to count the results of the primary in New Hampshire.

The second movement, filling those of us who can feel it with sorrow and shame, encompassed a State of the Union address that had almost nothing to do with the state of this actual union and the vote less than a day later to acquit Trump.

Our expectations of State of the Union addresses is justifiably low. Rarely has anything ever been said or done that was not wholly calculated and lacking in any sense of authenticity. By that standard, Trump didn’t disappoint.

That, of course, is the only standard by which he did not, unless you count yourself among his base. Even more than any president before him, Trump has used presidential addresses as campaign opportunities, and he did so here. The low point - again, unless you just love Trump - was the pantomime award of the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Rush Limbaugh, a man who has made a fortune cultivating hatred and pitting Americans against each other.

In a way, Limbaugh is the perfect recipient of an award from Trump. He is openly racist, has bullied women, foreigners, and those with disabilities, and has lied shamelessly, all in the service of enriching himself. He is Trump.

Nancy Pelosi’s own pantomime of tearing up Trump’s speech at the end was no less calculated. It may well backfire, offering up justification to Trump’s base for every lie he’s told about Democrats, but she had to have thought about what she could possibly do knowing what was coming the next day to show that the Democrats weren’t just going to sit there and take it. She has her own base to worry about, and that of the eventual Democratic nominee in November.

What came the next day was no more surprising than hearing that “the state of the union is strong”. The only surprise, if it was even surprising, was that Utah Republican Mitt Romney voted to convict on abuse of power. He didn’t have to worry about Trump actually being convicted, and he did have to worry about his own reelection, and yet showing the courage to vote “Yes” on that one charge has cleared the low bar for courage we now hold.

His fellow Republican senators spent the day taking several, heavily scripted lines to justify voting “No”. The most laughable, offered up by a few including Maine’s possibly outgoing senator, Susan Collins, was that Trump must have learned his lesson. The most insidious, offered Ohio’s Rob Portman in an op-ed, was that he voted “No” because the time has come for America to put partisanship behind it and come together.

That’s a bit like punching someone in the mouth and insisting that he learn to turn the other cheek. While you’re punching him again in that other cheek. And picking his pocket. And laughing at him.

When Republican senators trotted out words and phrases such as “coming together”, “bipartisanship”, and “unity”, it was all coded language. What they meant, and have meant in their long journey further and further into political corruption, is “stop resisting”, “just go along”, and “consent”. They don’t want us to stop fighting, they want us to stop fighting back.

Barack Obama repeatedly tried to meet them half way, only to see Mitch McConnell and his House colleagues repeatedly move what they called “half way” further and further to the political right. There is no negotiating your way out of that trap, and there will be no campaigning against it if you give it the weight all of those senators voting “No” have been trying to give it.

So, there we were, a country watching corruption win and boast of its victory over the rule of law. It was enough to make a decent human being think that maybe those Republicans in Washington were right, that there isn’t any point fighting back, that we should just give in and take it.

The third movement is all about that feeling.

The lawsuit against Trump for violating the emoluments clause in the Constitution was dismissed because the Democrats filing it did not hold a majority in the House when they filed it. The same day, it came out that Trump has been charging the Secret Service thousands of dollars each night its agents stay at one of his hotels, which they must do when they guard him.

Trump gave a speech at a national prayer breakfast that was filled with nothing but hate. Well, almost nothing; he does love how he stuck it to those Democrats.

And then Trump began his campaign of vengeance against those who testified against him, firing Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman, Vindman’s twin brother, and Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland. They violated the rule of omertà.

And yet, a glimmer of light breaks through.

The largest newspaper in Mitt Romney’s home state praised his courage. He may be as safe as a senator can be, a beloved Morman representing Utah, but he knew the point he was making to Republicans across the country and knew all too well how history would remember him.

There were also three Democratic senators in “red” states, Wisconsin’s Tammy Baldwin, Arizona’s Kirsten Cinema, and Alabama’s Doug Jones, who all voted to convict. Doug Jones is running for reelection. He may have nothing to lose, running in a state expected to vote heavily for Trump, but he showed courage nonetheless. He’ll campaign on this, and Sinema will campaign for whomever the Democratic nominee for Senate will be in Arizona.

Baldwin may have made the toughest choice among them, knowing that she will have to run point for whomever the Democratic presidential nominee is in an attempt to swing her state back in November.

This is why this impeachment will not be so easily put behind us. It is not because Trump will be campaigning on his acquittal but because the Democrats want Americans looking at how the Republicans in Congress protected him.

Corey Gardener voted to acquit Trump and his chance at reelection in Colorado may now be lower than Doug Jones in Alabama. It was a vote for corruption. It was a vote for a double standard, a set of rules for the rich and another for everyone else. And it will be a yoke Democrats hang around his neck and those of every Republican running in the Senate and the House.

Will they succeed? Well, let’s talk about the fourth movement.

Tonight in New Hampshire, seven Democrats are answering questions on a stage and very likely offering actual answers about how they will be better than Trump. Again, that’s a mighty low bar.

What should make you feel good, unless you are a fan of Donald Trump, are those results from Iowa. Young voters, notorious generation after generation for being all talk, showed up in droves. If they show up next week in New Hampshire and keep showing up, they are likely to tip the scales in the so-called “battleground” states.

They stayed home in 2016. The Democratic presidential candidate, who for some reason keeps on trying to insert herself into every conversation and who never seems able to accept accountability for her own failures, made that campaign all about her and failed. Based on the current field of Democrats - even Bloomberg - that won’t be the case.

Turnout is everything in an election, and what the Democrats - not the DNC, but the ones campaigning to be president right now - seem to understand is that they can’t rely on converting many who voted for Trump. They need to bring out their own voters and they need to give Trump’s 2016 voters a reason to stay home.

Impeachment may not seem like a sexy campaign issue, certainly not when you failed to convict, but it doesn’t have to be the central issue in the election. It will be there, always present, always a reminder of corruption and, most importantly, those who stood to support it.

Trump is emboldened now, yes, and taking his revenge while taking a bigger piece of the pie all for himself, and that will weigh on him and on every Republican running for Congress, not just in 2020 but in 2022 and 2024. The advantage Democrats have now is one that they only just started to have in 2018, one that they could not have had in 2016.

They now have evidence, a track record of corruption and greed and racism and abuse of power that has been so pervasive and so present that ignoring it has become more and more difficult.

Memory is powerful. It’s like the body developing anti-bodies in reaction to an illness. We know now what we’re fighting. We can recognize it. We can focus our energies against it. With enough anti-bodies, we build a defense and we defeat what would destroy us.

The right wing has long spoken in these terms, of invasion, of infestation, of outsiders threatening who we are and those things we love. The threat they want us to see is the “other”, always the “other”.

What we must ask, and what Democrats at long last seem to be heard asking, is why. The right wing wants us looking away, wants us looking at others, because they don’t want us looking at ourselves.

The greatest threat we face is from ourselves. We have an economy that rewards selfishness above accountability because we allow it. We have rising temperatures and weather systems increasingly out of balance because we allow it.

We have corruption because we allow it. We have abuse because we allow it. Donald Trump has carte blanche to be corrupt and to abuse power because we, the American people, have allowed it.

And we have the power to end it, if we so choose.

You impeach a corrupt president because corruption destroys us like a cancer. You fight bullies because you are not afraid. You stand up for the least powerful among us because that is what makes us all stronger. You share what you have because someday those people might be in a position to share with you.

Isn’t that America? Isn’t that the version we tell ourselves we want to be?

That was the lesson for this week. That was the point of impeachment. That is the core issue not only of this upcoming election but of the next one and the one after that.

Big finish.

- Daniel Ward

[unfolded73]

How Do We Get Back (7/16) - schitt’s creek ff

Summary: In a literal alternate universe where the Roses escaped financial ruin, David and Patrick struggle with loneliness and a sense that something isn’t right. A chance meeting in New York and a terrible tragedy drive them to question whether the timeline they are on is the right one.

Rated explicit. This chapter 3.6k words.  (ao3)

Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapter 6

_____________________________________

Chapter 7

“We’ve reached our cruising altitude and the captain has turned off the fasten seat-belt sign, which means you are free to get up and move about the cabin. However…”

Patrick pressed his forehead against the airplane window, staring down into the darkness. He couldn’t make anything out but he kept looking, almost as if he’d see a sign out there somewhere, something to tell him what to do. He continued to ignore the constant pressure behind his eyes; Patrick feared what his seat mates would think of him if he suddenly started to cry right there in seat 27F. He wasn’t a crier, but he felt very much like crying right now.

He’d been turning his time with David Rose over and over in his mind, looking at it from all angles, trying to figure out what it was about David that has attracted him so intensely. Patrick hadn’t understood his sexual orientation long enough to even begin to think if he had a type, or if David Rose was it. Thinking back over the boys and men in his past, he tried to see them through this new filter. There was Eric, his high school teammate — and yes, Dennis had been right, Patrick had been a little bit in love with him. Eric was tall with dark hair like David, so there was another data point. Going back even farther, there had been a deaf boy at camp when Patrick was fourteen. Patrick had never met anyone who couldn’t hear before, and had been mesmerized, watching the boy’s hands move as he signed. At night Patrick had lain in his bunk, practicing how to sign ‘Hi, I’m Patrick,’ spelling out the letters of his name over and over. Then when he’d finally met the boy, all the signing he’d learned had gone out the window. Instead of signing ‘Hi, I’m Patrick,’ he’d just waved like an idiot and run away. Maybe he’d had a crush then too.

The idea of picking apart every male friendship he’d ever had, every actor he’d ever admired, every Olympic swimmer he’d ever looked at, trying to decode if there had been sexual attraction there — it was exhausting. Okay, maybe the Olympic swimmer thing didn’t take much sleuthing, but the rest of it was exhausting. Besides, this wasn’t about his past. It wasn’t really even about David Rose, even though David was occupying most of his thoughts at the moment. It was about his future. It was about living the rest of his life as who he really was.

And thinking about that made him think about Rachel and how he was going to break her heart, and then he wanted to cry again.

The flight to Toronto from Newark wasn’t long, but the drive to Oak Grove once Patrick had retrieved his car from long-term parking was. It was already late, and Patrick’s head was muddled with emotional and physical exhaustion, so he stopped at the first Tim Horton’s off the highway and bought a large coffee.

An hour outside of his hometown, buzzing from the caffeine, a song he’d been listening to a lot when he’d first moved to Schitt’s Creek came up on shuffle, and Patrick started to cry. He wept for the way he’d felt then, before the bloom was off the rose, when he was so happy to have done something just for himself for once. He wept for all the lost years of his teens and twenties, when he didn’t understand who he was attracted to, didn’t understand why things with Rachel never seemed right. He wept for the marriage he’d stumbled into when a part of him knew it was a mistake.

By the time he pulled into his parking space, it was almost one in the morning and he’d calmed down. He unlocked his apartment door carefully, setting his suitcase down and going to check the bedroom. Rachel lay on her side of the bed, her breathing slow and even. The thought of climbing into bed with her when she was completely unaware of what he’d done, it felt like one more violation of her trust. He couldn’t do it. Patrick closed the door with a soft click and once he was ready for bed, fetched a spare blanket from the hall closet and settled down on the sofa. When he finally managed to soothe himself to sleep, it was by imagining he was in David’s bed in New York with its soft sheets and the smell of expensive aftershave on the pillows.

~*~

Moira Rose swept into the dining room at ten past the hour, one of her full, curly-haired wigs on her head. “David, I’m so glad you could join us for the evening repast!”

David always felt a bit like a teenager when he sat at his parents’ dining room table. “You insisted I come. You said, ‘I won’t accept no for an answer’!” He’d almost said no anyway; the idea of dragging himself out to his parents’ house in the suburbs had sounded like torture when Moira had called. But the guilt trip his mother would have given him had he refused was just a different, more insidious kind of torture.

Seating herself at her accustomed place, Moira gave him a knowing smile, like they were in on some joke together. “Well, I wanted to see everyone before Alexis leaves on her next adventure, and before I leave for Vancouver to shoot that episode of Arrow.”

“It’s one episode, it’s not like you’re going to be gone that long,” David said, spooning ravioli onto his plate.

“What even is Arrow, anyway?” Alexis asked.

“It’s a superhero show,” David said, giving her a surreptitious eye roll. “On the CW.”

“Eww.”

“Now now, kids, don’t knock your mother’s latest job,” their father said. “She’s apparently going to be a very important villain.”

“And there’s a chance the character could recur,” Moira said.

“Oh, goodie,” Alexis replied sarcastically, then pulled her phone out and started looking at it.

Moira swallowed a prodigious sip from her martini glass, and David took a moment to hope that she wasn’t mixing booze with pills. “Besides,” she stage-whispered, looking around as if for eavesdroppers, “apparently we need the money.”

David blinked at her. “What are you talking about? We have plenty of money.”

“Moira, we don’t need to talk about that now, sweetheart,” Johnny said. “Would someone please pass the salad?”

“So, David,” Alexis said, looking up from her phone and seemingly oblivious to the discussion of money problems. “What’s happening with that cute little button-faced guy who was at your place last night?”

He glared at Alexis for bringing his love life up in front of their parents. He’d been trying to think about anything other than Patrick, and Alexis talking about him wasn’t helping. “Nothing.”

“He seemed really nice, David,” she said, continuing her prodding.

“He was nice.” Patrick might have been the nicest person David had ever met, and David cringed when he thought about how they’d parted ways. It had just broken his heart a tiny bit to be unexpectedly confronted with the fact that Patrick was leaving New York. In that moment, he’d been completely unable to deal.

“So what’s going on there?”

“Nothing. He went back to Canada, where he lives.” He took a bite of salad, trying to affect an air of not-caring.

Alexis pouted. “Too bad.”

“Oh, are you having a long-distance love affair, David?” Moira asked. She was over-enunciating more than usual, and David estimated based on her speech pattern that she was on her third martini.

“No,” he said, the phrase ‘love affair’ making him physically recoil. He tried to think of something else to talk about.

“Speaking of our mother country,” Moira said, “did you hear about Gloria Gregson?”

“Who’s Gloria Gregson?” Alexis asked.

Moira scoffed. “Only one of the most decorated soap opera actresses of my generation. Anyway, the word on the street is that she’s given away all of her money and joined a cult.” Moira looked very smug about this fact.

“Is it me, or have I been hearing a lot in the news about cults lately?” David asked. Everyone else at the table shrugged. He tried to remember what he’d seen on the news a few days ago, but came up blank.

“Sold any paintings lately, David?” Johnny asked.

“No,” David said again, focusing on his plate.

“Well, keep reaching, son, I’m sure things will perk up.”

“Hoooow can they, John, when we can’t afford to pay for his patrons anymore?” Moira slurred.

“Moira!” Johnny said, his eyes very wide.

David dropped his fork with a clatter. “What? What is she talking about?”

“No no no, n— nothing,” his father stuttered. “She’s confused.”

David turned to his mother. “Mom?”

She looked contrite. “There might have been, in the past, one or two times that you father and I bankrolled a patron of the art at your gallery. Just two or three times at most.”

Alexis hissed in what she might have imagined was sympathy. “Ouch, David.”

“Dad?” David said, swinging around. “Is this true?”

“Is it true that it was only three times?” He asked, his face still betraying his panic. “Well…”

“Oh my God.” David pushed his chair back from the table. “So how much of the past success of my gallery am I actually responsible for?”

The guilty glance between his parents was all he needed to see. David stormed out of the house and didn’t look back.

~*~

A hand was shaking him. “Why’d you sleep on the sofa?”

Patrick cracked an eye open and saw Rachel’s face swimming in his field of vision. Levering himself up, he put his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands, still exhausted after three nights of too-little sleep. “It was one a.m. when I finally got home; I didn’t want to wake you.”

She smiled. “That’s very sweet but I know this sofa sucks to sleep on. You should have just come to bed.”

Patrick didn’t respond, squinting at the clock on the mantle. “Shit, I’m gonna be late for work.” He’d forgotten to plug in his phone, so it was probably dead in the pocket of his coat, unable to sound his usual alarm.

“Yeah, that was the next thing I was going to tell you,” Rachel called as he dashed off to shower.

The day was a constant flurry of activity: a meeting with his boss to debrief him on the seminar (which Patrick had to mostly fake his way through, as he’d really only managed to pay attention on the first day), a backlog of emails to respond to, an issue with a client who was delinquent on their payments. But Patrick was glad for the distractions, glad to focus on something other than what he was going to say to Rachel.

Despite his best efforts to slow down time, the work day came to a close and as Patrick went out to his car, stomach in knots, he began to desperately entertain the idea of saying nothing. At least not right away. Maybe he needed to sit with this for longer, really figure out if his relationship with Rachel was truly unsalvageable. There was no need to rush into a conversation that once it was out, could never go back in the box. He imagined how that would go. He’d go home and they’d make dinner together. She would ask him about New York and he’d have to make something up, give some excuse for why he hadn’t taken any pictures. They’d watch something on Netflix and then eventually go to bed.

His stomach twisted, thinking of being in bed with Rachel. After him being out of town for four days, she’d have every reason to expect sex. Any normal newly-married couple, he assumed, would have sex under those circumstances. And he didn’t think he could go through with that.

Beyond that, it would be irresponsible to go through with it even if he found himself physically capable. Patrick was embarrassed to admit that it had taken until mid-way through the day for it to occur to him how reckless he’d been with David. No, he hadn’t had penetrative sex, but a few minutes of googling told him that he was at risk for a handful of STDs from what they had done together. He couldn’t go to bed with Rachel given that. He’d have to tell her.

For a few seconds, Patrick thought he might have a full blown panic attack right there in his car in the parking lot of Rollins Electrical Supply. It took several minutes of controlled breathing before he felt steady enough to drive.

“Hey, I thought we might order a pizza,” Rachel said as soon as he walked through the door.

“Yeah, that’s fine.”

She was tapping on her phone. “What toppings do you want?”

“I’m good with whatever,” Patrick said, setting his bag down and going into the kitchen. He opened the small cabinet where they stored a few bottles of rarely-opened liquor, wondering if a shot of whiskey would help. He pulled the bottle down, then put it back. Then pulled it down again, pouring a few ounces into a glass. He gulped it down, wincing at the burn in his esophagus.

“Pizza should be here shortly,” Rachel said when he rejoined her in the living room. She was still scrolling through her phone. “What is going on with these weird demonstrations everywhere?”

“What demonstrations are you talking about?”

Rachel shrugged. “I don’t know, seems like every time I look at the news people are rioting in cities, and police are killing protesters… the whole world feels like it’s falling apart.” She tossed her phone onto the sofa. “Do you want to watch something?”

He should let her eat first, he thought, not do this to her on an empty stomach. So he agreed, and Rachel spent ten minutes scrolling through the Netflix menu before finally picking an old season of Great British Bake Off. Patrick stared at the screen without really seeing it, thinking about David and wondering what he was doing. Had he gone to his gallery today? Was he out on a date with some new person from Tinder? Was he at home, also watching Netflix? Patrick wanted to text him, but he doubted that would be welcome. He pulled out his phone and read the few texts they’d exchanged on Wednesday.

“So, did you see anything good in New York?” Rachel asked when they’d set the veggie pizza up on the coffee table to share. On the TV screen, a baker sat on the floor and stared despondently into his oven.

The first image that popped into Patrick’s mind was of David stretched out naked on his bed, a beautiful and profane work of art. “I saw the Empire State building,” he lied.

“Cool, did you go up in it?”

“No, the line was too long. And I saw Rockefeller Plaza.” Another lie; he’d intended to do that, he just hadn’t quite made it.

“Aww, I’ve always wanted to skate there. Were there a lot of people skating?”

“Yep.”

When they’d both finished eating and before Netflix could auto-launch another episode, Patrick reached for the remote and flipped the TV off. “Rach, I need to talk to you.” He threaded his hands together, squeezing his fingers tight against the tops of his hands.

Rachel raised an eyebrow. “What about?” They’d never spoken about that night in the car a few weeks ago, when she’d all but said their marriage wasn’t working. Everything since that night had been mundane discussions of work and household logistics, the elephant in the room unspoken about day after day.

He opened his mouth and closed it, uncertain where to start. Terrified. “I’m so sorry,” was all he could get out, which just deepened her frown.

“Sorry for what?”

“You said the other night that getting married had made things worse, and—”

“I was just tired that night, Patrick, I didn’t mean—”

“No, you weren’t wrong. At least, you weren’t wrong that something’s never been right, but I never knew what it was. I ran away to try to figure it out, and I don’t know why it took me so long. Why I couldn’t…”

“Patrick, you aren’t making any sense,” Rachel said, bringing her knees up and wrapping her arms around them like she was trying to fold herself into a ball and disappear. “And you’re scaring me.”

“I know. I know, I just… I have to tell you…” He rubbed his hands over his face. “God, this is so hard. When I was in New York, I met someone.”

“What do you mean, you ‘met someone’?”

“I met a… a man. And I… Rachel, I broke my vows.”

The expression on her face remained confused. “Patrick, are you saying to me right now that you had sex with a guy in New York?” She didn’t look angry, but that was probably because she couldn’t wrap her head around what he was telling her.

“I mean, not sex sex, but…” He could imagine David rolling his eyes at that distinction. “But yes. Yes, I did.”

Rachel stood up and paced across the room before turning back to him. “Why?”

“Because for the first time in my life, I wanted someone,” he said without thinking, and then winced as he saw those words punch Rachel in the stomach.

“For the first time in your life,” she repeated, dazed. “So you’ve been lying to me? All these years?”

“Not consciously! Rach, I swear to you, I didn’t know. I didn’t realize that…” He hadn’t said it to anyone yet, hadn’t said the words out loud. It felt important to say them now. “That I’m gay.”

Anger was starting to flicker in her eyes. “How could you not realize? How could anyone not realize that they liked men and not women? Especially when you and I were…”

“I don’t know. Honestly, I don’t know. We got together so young, and I just… maybe I knew on some deep level, but—”

“And now you’ve gone off and fucked a guy and decided that you’re gay. Just like that.” She folded her arms across her chest.

Patrick ran his hands over his face. Her anger was the least of what he deserved, and he resolved to endure whatever she was going to throw at him. “It was different, with him. I’ve never felt…” He stopped. How could he make her understand without being needlessly cruel?

“You’ve never felt that with me, that’s what you’re saying.”

He nodded.

“So some stranger who you picked up in New York can make you feel things that I never have in fifteen years.” Rachel’s voice was like shards of glass scraping across her throat.

“I’m so sorry.”

“What the fuck does ‘sorry’ get me? It doesn’t get me back all those years I’ve wasted. It doesn’t undo this marriage.” Spots of color on her cheeks stood out against her pale skin, clashing with her red hair. “Why couldn’t you just have been honest with me that things didn’t feel right with me?”

“I tried, Rachel. Every time we broke up, I tried to tell you that. I did tell you that! But then you’d pretend to text me by accident and I’d be feeling lonely and you’d manage to glue our relationship back together—”

“Patrick, you’re a grown man; I shouldn’t be able to browbeat you into getting back together. If you weren’t happy, you could’ve just said ‘no’.”

He stood up too, now. “Don’t you get it, Rach? I never said no to anyone about anything, not in my whole life! All I’ve ever done has been to please people. My parents, my teachers, my coaches, you,… I never once did something just for me until a few nights ago. I was selfish, and I know how much this sucks. I will regret hurting you for the rest of my life, but I won’t regret finally taking something that I wanted. I won’t.”

A tear rolled down her cheek. “Must’ve been some guy.”

He smiled in spite of himself. “Yeah.”

“Are you going to see him again?”

“I doubt it,” Patrick said.

“So what do we do now?” Rachel asked.

“The apartment is yours,” he said. “I’ll go stay with my folks, see if I can find another place I can afford—”

The finality of what he was saying seemed to spark her anger again. “Just like that, it’s just over?”

“I should never have married you, and I take responsibility for that. I’ll pay whatever it takes for the… court costs or whatever. It should be easy, we don’t own much—”

“Say the words, Patrick. Say you’re divorcing me.”

“What’s the alternative, Rach? Do you want to stay married to me when we both know I can’t love you the way you deserve?”

“And you never did love me,” she said. It was realization after realization, hitting her painfully each time.

“I do love you, Rachel, but not the way a husband should love a wife. And I would pay any price to have realized that sooner, I swear I would. But all we can do now is… move forward.”

Swiping angrily at her face as more tears flowed, Rachel ran into the kitchen. His shoulders slumping, Patrick picked up his backpack and the suitcase that still stood by the front door, and he left the apartment.

Chapter 8

[irinapaleolog]

‘This will be the final word in the story of Skywalker . . .” So declares the disembodied voice of Emperor Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid) in the latest teaser for “The Rise of Skywalker.” The last film in the decades-spanning space opera promises the return of the iconic Sith lord, who’s been pulling strings in this faraway galaxy since our story began. But there is another puppet-master behind the scenes, steering every dramatic incident, orchestrating every twist: composer John Williams.

It’s said that the Devil gets the best tunes, but Williams has long proved that that maxim applies to Sith lords, too. Within Star Wars’ ever-expanding library of leitmotifs — recurring, malleable musical symbols— much of the most insinuating material belongs to the villains, from Darth Maul to Jabba the Hutt to Supreme Leader Snoke. Listening to these nefarious themes with the ear of a music scholar offers a lesson in the real power of the dark side, showing us how music can repel, deceive and, with the right compositional tricks, even charm.

The standard by which all villain themes are now judged is surely the “Imperial March,” Darth Vader’s theme. “It should be majestic — he’s a majestic fellow,” Williams remarked in 1980, “and it should be a little bit nasty, because he is our heavy.” Vader’s leitmotif is, as music theorist Mark Richards has shown, a deviously sophisticated tune, full of rhythmic quirks and harmonic corruptions. But no one in Star Wars is beyond redemption. Vader’s death in “Return of the Jedi” occasions one of the most stunning musical transformations of the saga. Williams strips away the march’s militaristic trappings, leaving behind a sputtering shadow of the theme, orchestrated with such extraordinary delicacy that part of it seems to evaporate with each new phrase. With a final, hollowed-out rendition on a solo harp, the old dark lord expires, and the once-unstoppable “Imperial March” achieves a small measure of peace.

Standing in Vader’s musical shadow is his grandson, Kylo Ren (Adam Driver). Among the various motifs assigned to this dark side scion, the most conspicuous is a motto that is, as critic Alex Ross puts it, “dominated by a stagey tritone” — the most demonic of musical intervals. There is a distinct quality of overcompensation to Ren’s roar of a theme, a studied attempt to project the menace of his grandfather. Yet behind the bravado is insecurity. His theme is a disguise. Even when Williams hints at a more authoritative transformation at the end of “The Last Jedi,” the motif is stunted, unable to reach structurally satisfying thematic closure. Like his music, Kylo Ren is unbalanced and unfinished, still just a boy in a mask.

Of all Star Wars’ Dark Siders, though, Emperor Palpatine has the most intriguing musical representation. Williams’s material for the evidently unkillable Palpatine is aimed at making the character simultaneously repulsive and alluring. Palpatine’s primary leitmotif, introduced in “Return of the Jedi,” is constructed around commonplace minor triads that progress chromatically, in a kind of violation of natural musical law. As music theorist James Buhler writes, “The music gives the impression that only a very powerful sorcerer, perhaps only a god, could animate these chords thus.”

The brooding, wordless male chorus that intones Palpatine’s theme reinforces the sense of eldritch unease that the character exudes. Unlike the “Imperial March,” the Sith lord’s music is not overtly threatening, but mysterious and beguiling, like a dark siren’s call. The leitmotif draws from an old association in film and classical music that wordless choruses stand in as the voice of the divine — a technique especially favored by Williams’s old-Hollywood mentor, Alfred Newman, as in the vision scene in “The Song of Bernadette.” The emperor effectively takes one of the angelic choirs featured in epics like “The Robe” and “Ben-Hur” and gives it a satanic makeover.

Williams’s compositions also capture Palpatine’s insidious influence on other characters. Some eagle-eared analysts have discerned the emperor’s melodic fingerprints in the themes for Kylo Ren and his light-side counterpart, Rey. It seems entirely possible that this latent musical relationship is a clue to Palpatine’s as-yet-unexplained role in the events of the new films. Even more ingenious is the concealed transformation of his theme into a peppy children’s chorus in “The Phantom Menace.” This is a deliciously cynical little musical Easter egg: While the good guys think they’ve won the day, everything, including the soundtrack, is actually proceeding according to the villain’s design.

George Lucas wanted Palpatine’s rise to echo the ascents of real-life tyrants. “Democracies aren’t overthrown,” he claimed in a 2005 interview, “they’re given away.” Williams’s prequel scores reiterate that narrative with on-the-nose musical allusions. For example, when, as chancellor, Palpatine is granted emergency powers, the soundtrack channels the stately style Williams uses to characterize American politicians in a positive light: John Quincy Adams, Abraham Lincoln, John Kennedy and Barack Obama, among others. Heard against Palpatine’s power-grab, such noble strains are perversely incongruent. But they illustrate the dangerous appeal of authoritarianism when presented through a filter of (here musically constructed) nostalgia and patriotism.

An even more forceful connection to American history is made when Palpatine declares himself emperor in “Revenge of the Sith.” For this pivotal scene, Williams reworks a portentous brass chorale from his score for Oliver Stone’s “Nixon.” The passage occurs during a re-creation of Nixon’s fiery speech at the 1968 Republican National Convention. The sequence exaggerates Nixon’s fascistic tendencies and, through Williams’s hyperbolic score, works hard to whip the viewer into a fevered, receptive emotional state. As scholars of music and propaganda have shown again and again, music is as powerful as spoken rhetoric when it comes to opening people up to political messaging. Such turbulent tunes invite us to root for the disgraced president — or space dictator.

The clearest demonstration of the seductive power of Williams’s music comes during the “Tragedy of Darth Plagueis” narration in “Revenge of the Sith,” which finds Palpatine attempting to plant dark desires in Anakin’s heart during an opera house performance of “Squid Lake” (really). At no point in the scene, recently singled out by “Rise of Skywalker” director J.J. Abrams as the best sequence in the entire prequel trilogy, does the emperor’s leitmotif play, but his musical machinations are all over the score. The first half of his narration is accompanied by the deepest male choir yet heard in the saga, chanting a single low B on naked vowel sounds, in the style of Tibetan Gyuto monks. The choir ceases being underscore and becomes diegetic — that is, part of the movie’s fictional space, hearable by its characters. It is as though the emperor’s malignant music has seeped out of the soundtrack and into the world of the film.

When Palpatine finally makes his pitch to Anakin, his music does something most uncharacteristic for a Sith: It gets ecclesiastical. For a brief 15-second span, the violas and cellos state a hushed, reverential hymn in pure, unadulterated C-sharp minor minor. The Sith lord’s secret takes up only five measures. But these measures are profoundly salient, evocative of an antiquated style that has not been heard before in Star Wars. If anything, the hymn is a spiritual cousin to Williams’s Holy Grail theme from “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.” In the orchestral score, the performance instruction is “liturgico” — like a prayer. The ultimate appeal to evil in this series, it would seem, hinges on a feeling of religiosity. A promise of occult knowledge, presented with just the right musical halo, is all it takes. A few scenes (and a temple full of assassinated Jedi) later, Anakin has succumbed to the dark side.

Film music is inherently and unapologetically manipulative, and for decades Williams has proved himself Hollywood’s master musical manipulator. While the black-and-white morality of Star Wars is on its face as simple as can be, the way Williams contributes to this moral universe is far from simplistic. With his music for villains like Vader, Kylo Ren and the emperor, Williams invites us to lower our guards. For the Jedi, the seductive power of evil is a constant threat. And for those of us watching their adventures, likewise, it’s something we can easily hum along to.