#i just don’t have anything to do agent mega justice

[silversnakedemon]

Can’t dress up as Agent Mega for Halloween, so I’m settling for Bond

[genaleah]

ANSWERING WILDCARD QUESTIONS

For the first time in about a year maybe??? Some of these might be even older than that.

Yes, it is Korka! I definitely want her involved, she’s a wonderful character and there is a *lot* of fun paranormal stuff going on in this setting that she can help them research. Also, I’d just love for her and Nelson to become friends!

Thank you! I love him a lot, and it’s fun to picture him interacting with the other guys. They’d all make for some interesting uncle figures, but they might not be that great in terms of role models.

OHOHO. Devilish laugh. That’s a wonderful idea, and a good way to keep him occupied at some point. He’s a great character, but he’s incredibly powerful, and I want these dudes to solve their own problems whenever possible. 

A good question! I don’t remember most of my dreams, but there’s usually a consistent look to the vivid ones. Lots of water, mountains, creeks, and high, winding roads. There are also a lot of buildings that are closely integrated with nature, even though I have almost never seen construction like that. 

I had not, but now I have! Here’s a trailer, for anyone else that missed it:

https://youtu.be/33HXHaaagsw

I really like these new models! I’m looking forward to watching a playthrough when that’s available. Just like with Rhombus of Ruin, I don’t think I’ll be able to play this one myself.

DOUBLE FINE, I WISH TO SPEAK WITH YOU- no, I’m kidding! I think great minds think alike. But I’m really excited to learn more about that character and possibly involve them in this whole au eventually. 

I’ve actually tried to avoid almost any info about Psychonauts 2 so I can go in mostly-blind, and a lot of the characters are vague to me. It’s fun to look forward to, but it’s also a little harrowing because I don’t know how to anticipate for it!

N...NO..... I NEED TO... Honestly those are old enough that it might be a good idea for me to re-make them, as well as the playing cards I made for the mega playlist cover. I think it’d be nice to remake them as vectors... that might make for a nice art stream sometime. I’ll mention publicly if I start doing that, and sharing any of these conceptual Wildcards arts when they’re done. 

And if you’re just curious about what the tarot cards for the other characters are going to be, it’s this:

Eddie: Judgement, The Magician, The Emperor

Manny: Death, Justice, The World

Sam: The Chariot, The Tower, Strength

Max: The Devil, Wheel of Fortune, Joker

Although! I may actually give the Moon card to Max instead of the Devil, and replace the missing card from Nelson’s selection with the High Priestess?  🤔  I’ll decide when I get to it.

Could be! I’ve flip-flopped occasionally on if I want the split-a-cab gang to participate much in the story. I think they deserve a break, and splitting an apartment in New York seems like a good situation for the four of them.

Oh boy, that must be so disorienting for him. The Psychonauts deal with a lot of hippy-dippy weirdness in a seemingly organized way, but it seems like they’re not as paranoid about safety as a real federal organization would be. Not necessarily a good thing, considering one of their camp counselors went AWOL one day, and the head of the Psychonauts got kidnapped the next. They kinda need to get their act together.

Fun fact, in one of the earlier drafts of Chapter 3 I was actually going to make Nelson get scanned by the equivalent of a metal-detector for malevolent thoughts at the door and get really spooked by it, but I decided against it.

YEAH IT’S ON THE LIST

Honestly, a big bulk of the plot in this just regards characters having to face their mental health struggles... via facing it as literal internal demons, unstable powers, etc.  It’s going to take a little while for any of Eddie’s teammates to realize how MUCH he has going on under the surface because he does a pretty good job of hiding it. “Needing to help others above ever helping themselves” is a hard issue to notice if you’re not looking for it. But it’s a guarantee that once they find out he needs help, they’ll give it; whether that’s making sure he’s not working himself too hard, or fighting off demonic cultists. Care comes in many forms.

SHE NEEDS TO REST.... POOR SYBIL (on the upside, they don’t TECHNICALLY work there, so she might be fine most of the time.)

Strong Bad isn’t a Psychonaut! He’s just a vlogger and a petty (psychic) criminal. It’s honestly not very different from canon.

Free Country, USA is a smalltown hotbed of psychic activity. Nearly everyone there has some mild capacity for supernatural powers, but nobody really notices or cares. Strong Bad just pops the tops off of cold ones and.... sometimes alters reality, a tiny bit. But mostly just in regards to media. The cartoons, comics, etc, that he invents and talks about have a tendency to suddenly voip into existence and nobody knows how. I swear, there’s actually a line of him saying something to this effect, but I can’t find it anywhere.  Don’t worry about it! Nobody in town is ever going to do anything truly nefarious with their powers, so it’s not a high priority on the Psychonauts’ radar, just a weird footnote.

The only reason Homestar is an actual agent is because he seems like exactly the kind of guy to sign up for a job like that on accident and then stick with it. And he’s a talented telekinetic! None of his other friends know about his job or notice his absences.

And just for fun, here’s some weird instances of psychic overpowering that happened in the cartoon:

---

(Poor Strong Sad)

I’ve actually answered this one before! BAM  Pretty sure all of it is still accurate.

Nelson: He sees floating sheets of paper containing notes, questions, etc. Anything that he wants to know more about regarding that person. The notes are subject to edits, cross-outs, ripped pages, etc.

Guybrush: He sees the item that the person is carrying that he wants most. As he gets to know people better, he sees them for their useful skills first.

Manny: His view of most living people is not very kind...

The people he’s closest to will eventually look a lot less garish. More like a flattering, camera-ready versions of themselves.

Eddie: Sickass sketch drawings that look like they belong in the margins of a composition book. The illustrations improve as he gets a better picture of where they’d fit in the internal lore of his mental world.

Sam: A lot like Nelson; Sam pictures case files, though his are a bit more in-depth.

Max: Max’s visions of people are highly personal and uncomfortable for those who witness them. He sees Nelson as a puzzle with a piece missing. Guybrush is a ripped up voodoo doll. Manny is a forgotten ofrenda. Eddie is a powder keg with a long, lit fuse. Sam is Sam, but he’s the wrong one.

I also got two questions that were pretty big subjects, or that I didn’t want to repeat, so I’m gonna cover them pretty broadly:

REGARDING [X] CHARACTER OR SERIES INCLUDED IN THE AU

Sure, I support it! I’ve gotten this question a few times in regards to things that I haven’t had time to delve into yet, or I’m not interested in, so I’m not going to include it into the AU myself. But if you want to explore an idea like that, feel free! This AU is pretty dang collaborative.

My main focus is just on the main 6 properties: Psychonauts, Puzzle Agent, Monkey Island, Grim Fandango, Brutal Legend, and Sam & Max.

But my general rule of thumb for “characters that exist somewhere within the background of this story” are any other properties owned by Telltale, Lucasarts, or Double Fine. And considering all of the licensed games that Telltale was getting into before it kicked the bucket, that includes some really weird characters, even up to the Venture Bros. I loved that series, but I’m not really interested in doing anything with them for this story! Partly for my sanity, the canon I’ve picked are already a lot of content to play with. 

ASSORTED QUESTIONS ABOUT THE WILDCARD AU DISCORD

There’s no particular criteria needed to join the discord, and it’s not strictly on a need-to-know basis! Because it’s been a long while since anyone has joined, I've been hesitant about adding new people in... But I‘ve decided to try sending invitations again! Everyone who had asked about it in the past will be getting a ping by me in about a day or so, since I want to double-check if you’re still interested. If you’ve been nervous to ask you can reply to this post or message me privately.

Some things to keep in mind before asking or accepting the invite:

If you’re not a friend or a follower I recognize, I will likely double-check your tumblr along with some other current members before sending the invite. 

Here’s the Rules page, so you know what to expect before you join: 

Be Mindful - Respect other people's boundaries, don't do or say things that would cross the line. If your behavior makes other people feel uncomfortable or unsafe, I will remove you from the chat. In most cases I will try to resolve things with you and offer a chance to do better, but that will depend on the severity of the situation. And if you have any concerns regarding another member of the chat, you can contact me privately.

Health Boundaries - While discussions of mental health do occasionally pop up, do not rely on the chat for help. None of us are equipped to handle serious mental health concerns, and it will only cause distress for everyone. Please seek real help if it is needed! If you rely on people beyond the point that they have asked you to stop, I will remove you from the chat.

NSFW - Generally speaking, try to keep NSFW talk to a minimum. Swearing and humor is fine, but don't get too explicit please! Discussions should usually keep to a PG-13 / occasional R, but no NC-17.

Spoilers & Censorship - Please use the spoiler function to hide story spoilers, as well as discussions and graphic depictions of gore/excessive blood/body horror/severe psychological horror. Include a content warning so that people know what they could potentially be seeing when they click on the censored content. If the spoilered content is the subject of a back-and-forth discussion, please use another warning when you are switching to a different spoilered topic. (Note that these rules were added to the chat later, so be careful when using the search function or back reading.)

The canon series involved with the Wildcard AU are Psychonauts, Puzzle Agent, Monkey Island, Grim Fandango, Brutal Legend, and Sam & Max. Please be mindful of story spoilers!

Channel Organization - Also be mindful of which channel you're in and move a discussion over if need be! That way they don't get too clogged with unrelated info.

Creative Criticism - When it comes to writing, art, or character creation; try to be open to suggestions from others! Nearly all of the creative work in the chat is collaborative, so input from others is important! Creative criticism is not the same as judgement, and is not a personal attack.

Have fun! - Discussions move quickly in this chat! Don't feel bad if you ever need to step back, whether it's because of the speed or a disinterest in whatever current topic we're focusing on. If you ever want to come back, we're happy to have you and can give quick explanations if you feel out of the loop! :thumbsup:

We’re a group of approx. a half dozen to a dozen people, either posting very very quickly in a span of a few hours or barely anything for a few days. We’ve been in an activity uptick lately and there’s about a year and half of back content, too. If it’s hard to keep up on, not that interesting to read through, or you just have a hard time gelling with the group that's already there, there’s no shame in just lurking or dipping out if you need to.

We also talk a lot about Psychonauts OCs, so anticipate that.

[vanillann]

flashback (spencer reid x f.reader)

based on season 9 ep 12, I might make a few different parts to this please let me know what you all think.

warning: swearing

flashback masterlist

2004

“I hate handcuffs.”

Penelope sat beside me, her black fingers tapping on the table. I played with the end of my large sweater, the ends frayed from the long-term nervous habit.

“I can’t believe I got us caught,” I watched as the light above shone down on my hand cuffs.

“It wasn’t you, I shouldn't have gone on the server until you got done asking questions.”

Penelope looked over at me quickly, her pissed face morphing into a gentle smile.

Suddenly the door behind us opened, a tall dark hair man walking the room. He wore a suit and a stern face.

I pulled off the frayed ends of my sweater more, the thought of going to jail was killing me.

“We’ve got you Ms. Garcia, Ms. (L/N).”

“That’s what you think, Mr. Suit.”

I rolled my eyes, this wasn’t the time to be witty.

“We’ve found multiple of your illegal servers and Ms. (L/N) coercing many of your victims,” he looked over at me, I felt myself pull back into my chair more.

“Sorry?”

Garcia chuckled slightly, looking down at me in my seat.

“This isn’t a sorry moment, both of you could be going to jail.”

I felt my eyes fill with tears, the idea of orange jumpsuits and a cell was the last thing my parents expected of me.

“Well shouldn’t the cosmetic company go down with us.”

Penelope spoke with confidence, something I wish I had right now.

“Unfortunately what they were doing wasn’t illegal.”

Penelope only pulled at the cuffs slightly before looking back up at the man.

“Okay Mr. Suit-”

“It’s Agent Hotchner and I’m here to offer you both a job for the Behavioral Analysis Unit.”

“Huh?”

The man shoved his hands in both his pockets, looking over both of us. Suddenly the handcuffs around my wrist weren’t the biggest concern.

“Ms. Garcia, you are the fastest and most efficient hacker we have ever seen, you could run circles around our last tech analysis,” Penelope only shrugged and looked up at him with a smirk.

“-and you Ms. (L/N) have impressive interrogation skills with degrees in Psychology, Sociology, and Criminal Justice.”

I felt a blush cross my cheeks, knowing taking those classes on the side paid off in some way.

“I don't think my friend and I want to teach you how to do your own job.”

I wanted to scream, I loved my best friend more than anything but she was throwing away a ‘get out of jail free” card, one we really needed right now.

“You would help us hunt psychopaths.”

Penelope looked over at me, the smirk still across her face and she looked back at Mr. Hotchner.

“We are psychopaths.”

“Excuse me?”

Penelope deadpanned me, while the agent in front of us spoke.

“You aren’t, in the hacker community you are known as “The Black Queen” and “The Pure Empress”. Both of you are known for talking down cruel organizations.”

Penelope and I both just looked at each other. The contrast between my tan sweater and her black corset would make anyone but us laugh.

“All I need is a resume for Human Resources, or I’ll hand you the jumpsuits.”

“Pen, I love you but I don’t like jumpsuits,” I whisper to her, knowing the man could still hear me but didn’t care one bit.

“Well we don't normally bring our resume to things like this, but hand us our bags and we will write down a few things we know.”

I jumped in joy within my seat, the idea of a new job that wasn’t illegal made me so excited.

Suddenly the door opened, a taller darker male walked in with a taller skinny man beside him. They walked in with our bags in their hands, serious face on.

The first man had on a light suit and his head shined slightly under the light while the second man held my bag and had his hair slicked back.

The one man placed my bag in front of me, my hands going straight to the latch on the side where I kept my notepad.

“We went though and took all their tech gear.”

I scribbled down my degrees on the paper, not knowing what else to do.

“Do you have the key?”

The man standing beside him pulled out two, looking between the two of us.

Mr. Hotchner left the room, both the men walking over to un-cuff us.

“You are very lucky,” the man unlocking Garcia spoke.

“You look like the lucky one, Mr. Calvin Klein.”

I slapped the side of her shoulder, her name quickly fell from my lips with a stern tone.

“I got us out of jail.”

She pointed a perfectly painted finger at her, the smirk took over the whole face now.

“I better be the happiest person in the world in 10 years or I’m blaming you.”

2014

Everyone sat around the woman as she talked, the words sexual harassment made me giggle, knowing where this was going.

Spencer looked down at me from where he sat on my desk, the confused little look he gets evidence on his face.

“Phrases like baby girl aren’t appropriate in the workplace.”

I covered my mouth as I looked over at my friend, her face dropping quickly.

The woman then continued with the slideshow, my finger pointed at Pen the entire time.

Spencer hit the side of my combat boot, the wicked smile on his face as he pointed to the slideshow.

The screen now read “Appropriate Work Attire”, the sight of nice suits flashed across the screen.

“Combat boots and band tee shirts are not appropriate for the workplace.”

I looked down at the Led Zeppelin shirt that I wore with a basic black blazer over it.

Suddenly Penelope whipped around in her chair, looking at me with her tongue out.

The sound of Penelope text went off, her face dropped while she waved her hand over at me. I looked up at Spencer, him already watching me with a smile. He quickly shook his head and looked up at Garcia.

I stood up and walked over to her, the woman looked at both of us telling us to sit down.

“I’m so sorry,” Garcia repeated.

“I’m not,” I smiled as Garcia pulled me over to the elevator.

Hotch stood with his stern face, holding his phone in his hand, this wasn’t a good sign.

*

“I can’t believe they called my band shirts out!”

Spencer laughed as he grabbed my bag from over my shoulder and handed in to the co-pilot.

“I mean we do work for the FBI, they probably expect a lot more appropriate outfits.”

“They shouldn’t have high expectations for me. I’m the same girl that tricked the whole 5th floor by putting whoopee cushions in their chairs,” Spencer only shook his hand as he hit his shoulder with mine.

Pen coughed from the steps of the jet, a wicked smile on her face.

Spencer ran his hand down the back of his neck while he rushed past Garcia. I went to follow him but Pen stuck her arm out.

“When are you going to tell him about the mega crush you have?”

I looked up at her, the bright pink lipstick was in a huge smile. I played with the end of my blazer, looking down at my shoes.

“I’m not telling him Pen, it’s not worth losing him.”

She only turned around and pulled me deeper into the plane.

The team sat around in their normal spots, the couch free for Pen and I both. We quickly took a seat and pulled out the tablet and hard copy, Spencer always made me carry one around.

I read through the file, my memory never forgot this case. Suddenly Hotch came on, already talking about the case.

“Well it seems Star Chambers really like secretive,” Pen nodded her head, the plane laughing from the ground.

Spence came back from the coffee machine, a tea in one hand and a coffee in the other. He handed me the tea, reading the hard copy from over my shoulder.

“It sounds like Sam Russell fit the profile perfectly.”

JJ words broke me from the small daze I fell into.

Morgan looked over at me and nodded.

“This is the case that got you caught, right?”

I looked over at Penelope, her little small smile made me look back over at the rest of the team.

“Yeah I got all three of us caught, but I didn’t know he was a killer at the time.”

Spencer just simply placed a hand on my shoulder and smiled at me.

“It’s all in the past, don’t make yourself have flashbacks.”

part ii

flashback tag list:

@snitchthewitch @summer-writes @mortallythoughtfulgurl

[qqueenofhades]

“This is because poor white people have been systematically conditioned to support white supremacy at the direct expense of their own economic and social interests; it’s terrible, but that’s how it functions.” Do you think the rich white overlords have also been conditioned to support the system?

“while disdaining the government as tyrannical the rest of the time, unless it’s Trump’s actively tyrannical lot, but hey, we don’t have time to unpack all that)” Can you unpack some of that? I don’t understand. Thanks. Love your political posts. 

Sure!

(If anyone’s wondering, this is carrying on from/in reference to this ask from yesterday on how to dismantle arguments about “I’m white and my life has been hard therefore racism isn’t real.”)

The third part of the white supremacist equation in America, aside from racism and capitalism, is religion, especially fundamentalist and evangelical Christianity. We didn’t get to that in the last ask, but it’s an equally important factor in the social and cultural landscape of this particular demographic -- especially because the GOP has essentially become its political manifestation, and religious conservatism has become tied so deeply to a set of hot-button social issues (immigration, the gays, abortion, etc). As a lot of social scientists and lay observers have noted, religious belief in America remains staggeringly high relative to the rest of the industrialized Western world. Ever since the rise of religious conservatives as a mobilised political force in the 1980s, we have had to deal with their influence and the GOP’s willingness to function as an eager and uncritical vehicle for their social agenda. Fundamentalist/evangelical Christianity in America has also served as a powerful tool of promoting white supremacy. In fundamentalist religions, it’s a sin to question anything you’re told and you have to trust that a “higher authority” has your best interests at heart. This lends itself easily to personality cults: think the charismatic mega-preachers and other high-profile figures that exist in mainstream and fringe American evangelicalism alike, as well as the cult of Trump that now exists around the Orange Fuhrer.

Some books on this:

The Sin of White Supremacy: Christianity, Racism, and Religious Diversity in America, by Jeannine Hill Fletcher

White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity by Robert P. Jones (you can also read a Washington Post interview with him here, and his piece in The Atlantic here.)

The Cult of Trump by Steven Hassan

When you intertwine the moral imperatives of fundamentalist religion (if you don’t believe the right things, you’ll go to hell), with the centuries-old American system of prizing whiteness at the expense of everything else, with the belief that your rich white overlords are more “your people” than your differently-colored working-class peers, you get an incredibly powerful and coercive system of mental conditioning that works on multiple levels, constantly reinforces itself, and is very difficult to break away from. And frankly, it’s difficult to tell if the most high-profile mouthpieces of these views actually believe it (maybe to some degree) or if they just use it to obtain a comfortable life at the expense of vulnerable people. Honestly, I’m not sure if it matters whether or not the overlords believe everything they themselves teach (and I’m pretty certain that they don’t). They know that it ends up as a good deal for them, and so it’s in their interests to maintain the system as vigorously as possible.

You may have heard of “prosperity gospel” evangelists, who claim to their poor followers that if they give them, the evangelists, all their money as a demonstration of faith, God will automatically reward them/provide for their economic needs, and it’s a sign of too little faith if you don’t believe this, therefore you will stay poor. You may have also heard of the recent sex scandal involving Jerry Falwell Jr., son of the famous Jerry Falwell and current president (though he was forced to resign) of the ultra-fundamentalist Liberty University in Virginia. This, of course, goes up there with all the other hard-right politicians who preached family values and Moral Purity and then turned out to be hypocrites who were failing to live up to these ideas in private. American evangelicalism is a deeply weird and self-reinforcing universe that provides adherents with everything they need to live in a parallel version of reality and feel holier-than-thou about not interacting with “infidels,” and yes, a huge part of that, especially white Protestant evangelicalism, involves preaching the gospel of white supremacy, implicitly or explicitly.

So at the end of this, we have a system which orchestrates and indeed insists upon complete obedience to the overlords (be they economic, racial, or religious) by the underclass at every turn. As I noted above, the rich white overlords themselves know that they benefit immensely from this setup, so the question of whether or not they actually believe it is less important. As also noted, they sure don’t make any attempt to live up to it in private, or at least trust that they won’t be found out if they don’t. That’s because (at least in my opinion) they know perfectly well that it sucks. They don’t want to be poor either, but it’s useful for them if there are poor people. Fundamentalism is also deeply predicated on suffering: it’s holy to suffer, poverty is a virtue, you shouldn’t worry about this world so much as what you will get after you die, thinking about material things is Sinful, God will magically provide everything that you need, so on and so forth. So even if they’re voting against their own self-interests, white working class religious people have been assured that is a virtue anyway and they should keep doing it. Only heathens like socialism.

That also makes it harder to get any dialogue of social justice going in (white) churches. Black churches have obviously been at the forefront of social justice struggles in America for their entire history, but that’s because white and black American Christianity are often very different. There are overlaps in places, but the black church was founded in the slave tradition, rather than the slaveholder tradition, as the establishment church in the 19th century was often a zealous supporter of slavery for the “moral good” of the slaves -- hey, they might be in terrible bondage, but at least they had the chance to be saved by becoming Christians! White Americans tend to go to church to be reassured that what they’re doing is good and doesn’t need to change, or if it does need to be changed, it’s to outlaw abortion or gay marriage or whatever social issue is the order of the day. It’s founded on repression rather than liberation. This isn’t true of every church everywhere, of course, but the overall trend is one toward social and religious hyper-conservatism.

This ties into the “civic faith” of America, i.e. the sphere of cultural Christianity that everyone participates in whether they’re actively religious or not, and which has also been the subject of political studies as to how it has been twisted into an organ of feel-good jingoistic American nationalism with very little reference to what Jesus Christ is recorded as having actually taught. The point again is that this entire belief system prizes absolute obedience and adherence to a (white and male) Supreme Leader, which is really easy for a fascist to exploit with populist rhetoric draped in the shabbiest veneer of religious language. The enthusiastic evangelical support for Trump, and the way the religious right has bent over backward from trying to impeach Bill Clinton for a blowjob in the Oval Office to defending serial rapist Trump is... both enlightening and terribly depressing. (Not to say that Clinton isn’t gross, because he is, but that’s beside the point; the GOP went on a frothing-mouth moral crusade over his behavior and it’s absolute crickets over Trump.)

In the end, we have this entire subset of people who have argued that they need their guns and their paramilitary organizations to defend against a theoretical “tyrannical” (read: non-white, non-Christian) body politic or American government. That’s why we had constant claims that Obama was going to throw people into concentration camps or send federal agents to arrest people off the streets or turn America into a military dictatorship; these proud AR-15-waving nutcases were happy to inform us that they would rise up and prevent that from happening. Of course, Obama didn’t actually do any of that, but you know who did? Trump. And his supporters, of course, didn’t make any attempt to stop it from happening. Instead they actively went out to help it happen more. (Side note: a little racist shitstain literally named RITTENHOUSE being the face of armed and murderous white supremacy in the Kenosha protests is like... ridiculously on the nose, PAGING GARCIA FLYNN.)

So when I say they’re protesting “government tyranny,” we’ve already gotten a good look at what they imagine tyranny to be: i.e. anything except the actual tyranny we’re already enduring, because it’s coming from their orange messiah and it is the culmination of everything that their religious, political, social, and cultural values have taught them. They mean “tyranny” of anything that is not their extreme right-wing, white-supremacist, religious-fundamentalist fascist version of things, which means respect or tolerance or room for anyone who isn’t exactly like them, which they can’t abide. Totalitarianism never can.

Anyway, I hope that was helpful. Thanks for the question!

[irresistiibles]

Was that [LEE SUNGKYUNG]? Oh no no, that was just [KYOSHI], a [CANON CHARACTER] from [AVATAR]. They are [TWENTY SIX] years old and [ARE NOT] aware that they are not actually from Washington DC. Too bad they can’t stray from this city for long.

how long has your character been here

a couple months but kyoshi believes she’s been here almost her entire life

what is your character’s job

lowkey considered having her be a secret service agent then decided she deserved a chill job and a break while she is memoryless she owns a gym and is a self defense teacher there. does one on one lessons as well as group classes specifically for women

where has your character been pulled from in their fandom

uuuuh tbd. while i’ve read her wiki i’m probs gonna buy and read the actual book on her and will give an update then. probably earlish in her life though anywhere between her being like 16 and 30 (which is a small range considering how long she lived

has any magic affected your character

no memories! she still has her bending but since she doesn’t remember it she doesn’t use it

and any other information you might find useful for us and the other members to know!!

time to info dump babey! i’ll be spoiling stuff from the avatar kyoshi book since there’s a bunch of canon lore there that’s never mentioned in the show but i’m barely mentioning stuff that happens in avatar so you don’t need to be worried about spoilers from there

she was the avatar two cycles before aang, so it was her, roku, and then aang

born in the earth kingdom as a daughter of two criminals. she was not actually born on kyoshi island (which wasn’t actually an island when she was born), her parents abandoned her on the then-peninsula when she was about five or six

ate fucking garbage to survive!! until meeting an airbending monk who basically became her adoptive father, then she just became a servant to survive

wasn’t discovered as the avatar until she was 16

there’s a bunch of wild shit that happens in her life including like her friends betraying her or dying that i won’t go into

strong! as! fuck! she actually wasn’t a great earthbender when she first started cause she had like no precision but could bend giant chunks of earth. fucking pulls a mountain out of the sea the first time she goes into the avatar state

there’s also one bit in the books where she straight up runs through a wall like, just, body slams her way through it

a big sense of justice. she was an avatar who got shit done. she killed a conqueror in the earth kingdom when he tried to take over the peninsula where she grew up by fucking using bending to split the earth and make an island!! and that’s how kyoshi island was born

and aang is like ‘well you didn’t technically kill the guy. he fell off a cliff cause he was stubborn’ which is like such a typical trope so the good guys can get out of murdering the bad guys and kyoshi is straight up like ‘i don’t see the difference. i would have killed him to protect my people and i still did nothing to stop him from dying. i absolutely killed that man’

also trained in a bunch of different fighting styles and does not need bending to kick ass

and responsible for starting the elite warrior group called the kyoshi warriors! 

listen like, she’ll absolutely smack a person down if they’re being awful but she’s less violence is fun and more ‘sometimes you have to do difficult shit to make things right and that’s just what it is’

speaking of getting shit done she held down the world as the avatar for 230 years!! 230!

she didn’t even really age because one of her teachers was this dude who used bending to restore his body so she just like!! bended herself to live that long

is also mega tall 6′6″ and has big feet (i promise this is a canon fact and not me just being gay for kyoshi)

rumored to have taken down a shark squid with one hand

a canon bisexual queen

the mva, or most valid avatar

in washington

believes she was born in korea but her parents shipped her off to live with her aunt in washington when she was young

they were on the poor side so kyoshi had to take up jobs starting young but they got by

not quite as shitty as her actual life so her hestiance for trust and crazy sense of justice is a little more chill

absolutely the tough but caring type.

can and will still beat someone down though and her bullshit tolerance is low she will call you out in a heartbeat.

runs a gym and teaches self defense classes and it’s like her favorite thing!

possible connections

i would love! a cute group of women who take her self defense classes. she may not have the kyoshi warriors here but she can have a version of them lol. she loves to teach

someone who works at the gym she owns

could def have an ex if anyone’s interested

some sort of incident where she bends by accident around someone so she can be like ‘hey what the fuck’

idk anything! since she’s unaware we could def come up with stuff for some fake memories with other unaware people

[mythgendered]

I still really like the Archie Mega Man comic

I recall being a little unimpressed with the comic’s second arc, Time Keeps On Slipping, when I first read it. There isn’t anything wrong with it, per se, and it does quite a lot of really fun and interesting things to advance the setting and characters.

Maybe it was the change in artist that left an odd taste in my mouth. I mean no disrespect to Chad Thomas’ pencils, as they are wonderfully expressive and great at conveying action-- but after a stunning first four issues from Patrick Spaziante, anything is gonna make for a jarring change.

So rather than jumping straight to Mega Man 2, we get an in-between arc telling an oroginal story. Here, Dr. Wily uses trickery and a pair of experimental robot masters to escape incarceration after he was caught at the end of the first game.

Dr Light is out of the picture for the meat of his arc, untintentionally pinned as an accomplice to Wily’s escape-- so it’s up to Rock, the MM1 masters and a brand new character to unravel Dr Wily’s next scheme.

If the first arc was cramped but competent, laying a good foundation for the comic while adapting 8 or so levels of video game, this arc is competent and confident. The story has room to breathe, and in doing so expands upon and furthers the character and worldbuilding from the first in a way that feels natural.

The action is also subsequently improved, avoiding the single-page brawls of the MM1 arc in favor of longer, fuller fights. And the robot masters get to join in on the fun, backing up Mega Man in boss fights and more! 

Plus, we get appearances from Time Man and Oil Man, a pair of retcon robot masters from MM1′s PSP  remake Mega Man Powered Up. There, the pair were presented a part of the original robot master set to round off the crew to the series’ traditional 8 boss format. Here, we get them as experimental bots who were  sheleved as not quite ready for use-- keeping their status as OG masters intact while explaining their off screen status from the first arc. It’s cute!

Very cute, Dr. Wily.

It, uh,probably also bears nohing that Oil Man here is slightly adjusted from his original design, which was a little...uh..

it was a little much. 

But hey! We’re all good, now! So what else is good about this arc!

Well, lots!

Rock’s characterization from the first arc continues here, eithout wearing thin. He’s eager to hang up the mega buster and live out his purpose as Light’s assistant-- and while he’s willing to fight to help and protect the people around him, it’s not a task he relishes or takes lightly.

He’s a very good boy, guys.

One thing I neglected to mention while talking about the first storyline was the similarities between Rock’s characterization here and X’s from the Mega Man X titles. Both of our heroes are fighting for peace, shouldering the burden of violence and unhappily destroying the people endangering that peace. Both do all they can to try and talk their way out of fighting, and both mourn with every failed attempt.

But where X in the games walked a...questionably written path, opting to ouright remove himself from the battlefield in X7 (mmehhh, violence!!), Rock manaes to balance his discomfort of combat with his will to do right thing. He might not like it, but it has to be done, and he has to do it. He’s just a good good boy, guys!

But on the subject of Rock and X -- and why the latter backed down while the former would not (or could not!)...

The second arc brings us this really interesting conversation that simultaneously foreshadows the X series while also getting at the heart of one of the core themes of the comic-- one of its most tragic themes.

One thing that’s always struck me as curious was the X series’s insistence that X and the other reploids were revolutionary and dangerous because of their abilitiy to think, feel and make their own decisions. And that always made me wonder-- what really sets them apart from the robot masters of the classic series? Sure, Wily reprograms all the masters to do evil, but Rock chose to be Mega Man; Proto Man chooses to live his own life; heck, the Mega Man 9 masters all choose to go AWOL to avoid retirement!

But here we get the first direct addressing of the issue-- The classic era bots, Rock included, all have no free will, full stop. Any semblance of it is just an illusion facilitated by their programming. After all, Rock said himself last arc:

He’s probably gonna regret that wording later.

But though he expresses some nominal disappointment here, Rock gets over being bluntly told he has no free will pretty quickly. In fact, it’s something that he seems not to really wrap his head around for the rest of he comic, which is more tragic than anything. He doesn’t seem to fully grasp exactly what lets him get away with what he does, and why things aren’t as easy for the other robot masters. 

But we’ll get to that.

(One wonders what might have been had we made it to a Mega Man 7 adaptation, and how Flynn might have interpreted that last scene...alas.)

For now, let’s touch on another great point of this arc: the OH SEEEES!

I love Agents Gil Stern and Roslyn Krantz. Love ‘em! They are tough, no nonsense law enforcers, but they aren’t unreasonable. They don’t mess around in investigating Dr Light, but are quick to get off his back once the evidence begins to clear his name. They’re good people, and good characters, and I love them.

Original Characters are, I imagine, something of a contentious point for any adaptation, but between this series and his work on the Sonic comic(s), it’s something that Ian Flynn manages to pull off with style.

The agents are seamless additions to the Mega Man universe, and their role as reasonable authoritiy figures help to ground the super heroics of the super fighting robots. This is a world the cast lives in, and actions impact real people, and have consequences.

And they’re just good characters. Gil is a seasoned, somewhat cynical, veteran of the agency with a sizable distrust for machinery (which will come up soon enough, in an excellent way), but always defaults to justice and doing the right thing. He even gives Light due credit when the doctor turns himself in. He’s a jerk sometimes, but not, like, 100 percent a dick, yeah?

Meanwhile, Agent Krantz is a solid counter to Stern’s surliness. She’s young, but not naive, and willing to cut more slack and hear people out. She balances out Stern’s jaded outlook and takes him to task when he goes too far, and the partners very clearly care about each other.

Plus, Kranz is super badass and shoots Time Man with an actual gun!!!

She’s great, guys. Really really great.

Like I said, not everyone could manage to insert original characters into a comic adaptation and make it work -- and if you’re at all familiar wih the Ken Penders era of the Archie Sonic comic, you’ve seen that firsthand. But Flynn pulls it off here, and will continue to do so in issues to come, creating one of my favorite settings for any Mega Man adaptation, and filling it with a cast of fitting, wonderful  characters.

I’m really excited to get to Tempo, y’all.

But before then, we have another game adaptation to ger through, the much beloved Mega Man 2! We’ve got another four issues on hand to adapt the game, so let’s see if we hit the same pacing troubles as the first game.

I’m really, really fond of this arc for what it does. It’s a simple story, but it manages to advance everything the first four issues set to build without the pacing issues of adaptation. From theme building to worldbuilding, Time Keeps On Slipping, in addition to being a delightful pun, is a great storyline that sets the stage for the next.

...oh, but I’ve forgotten something, haven’t I?

One last story beat Flynn worked in, that really put  a bow on proceedings while giving us something good to look forward to. How thoughtless of me.

I’m sure it’ll be fine.

[askthepokemutants]

Carla: Simply put, focusing on the Team Machine bit: one of their many plans were to use the Emotion Trio as weapons to control the masses-I assume anyway; the experiments imply they went for the islands around the Archipelago near where Kryona used to be. Their experiments must’ve failed, but the idea that the legends were made to control People and used them to kill Pokemon is a bit unsettling, to say the least...

King: I thought those islands were inhabited by Pokemon only...

Carla: So did I, so they were likely humans who chose to isolate themselves from advancements, which is rare in this day and age... but not unlikely, I guess. And then, there’s the bit that made me curious about other, presumably safer areas-

Nelda: This idea that Team Machine had some of their mutated Pokemon infect the population somehow? It’s a bit of a stretch... what’s the point in that?

Carla: Probably nothing, but we can assume they were going after certain kinds of places-I’m sure if they knew about the Emotion Trio, they knew about other Legends and made the effort-

Alma: To target and probably kill them-got it...

Lyle: Oooh....

Lyle: That’s quite the plan, using Pokemon like that-and presumably-based on bits from that other book-Team Machine had a habit of using their “Preserve” as a way to get more and more Pokemon for their experiments-thus more “Agents”... That’s a bit... smart, regretfully.

Bartholomew: ...

Carla: I know, but we can’t... ... ....

--

“Daaad... m-my head-” “W-what?! Son!? Terry!? Alan?! Why are they-what are you three doing here?!” “T-there was a weird... f-flash and then... they fainted, m-my head....-” “The mission is a failure! Retrea-” “We can’t!” “Try blocking my power a second time!!” “Yvetal!” “Barto-MOVE-”

--

“Terry and Alan’s dads are still “missing”-it’s been YEARS!! When are you going to tell them the truth, dad!? When are you going to tell us?!” “When I’m ready-” “They’re dead... dad, they’re dead... and it’s OUR fault! Why were you fighting Yvetal?! Why were you able to block the death beam once?! WHAT’S WRONG WITH ME?! WHAT’S WRONG WITH THEM?!” “Calm down... calm down... please... give me... time, I’ll... I’ll consider it-”

Lyle: Bartholomew?

Bartholomew: Huh...?!

Lyle: You... alright?

Bartholomew: Yeah-yeah, I was... spacing out pretty bad, huh? The idea of Terry’s dad being... a Team Machine agent, just... got me thinking back a bit...

Lyle: Anything useful?

Bartholomew: ... N-no... sorry...

...

Did I miss anything?

Lyle: Hmm...

Carla: Are you serious, King? After what I’ve said?!

Lyle: No-

King: We should not ignore their actions! If this... “Rteddy” creature was created by The Black Pikachu and it torments the Terrible Trio, has enough power to seemingly finish off Team Machine, fight with me on equal and greater footing AND after taking one of our own hostage-despite it saving her-we cannot ignore that! Any of it!

Damaris: I agree-

Gareth: I don’t.

King: What-

Gareth: Think about it from the standpoint of the available Knights; they’ve been handling their respective regions, but hearing things from others visiting; Alma’s base? They all know he’s upset with you concerning what happened with Locke and Zara and now that we all know they’re truly dead... do you THINK-once that gets out-anyone will side with another hunt for The Black Pikachu OR other members of the Terrible Trio? I WON’T be offering the Kanto Knights towards any hunts for the Trio or this Rteddy individual. Did I put enough emphasis on my words for you, King?

King: I... Gareth-

Damaris: Someone sounds a bit... testy... that’s new of you-

Gareth: This is a conversation we’ve heard and had for years; it’s about time we moved onto more serious situations, don’t you all agree?

Alma: Yeah.

King: ?!

Alma: It has nothing to do with my grudge about Locke and Zara... I’ve... moved on. I guess being in Orre and its really strange “air” has some impact on me, so, I had time to actually relax and think...

Carla: ...

Alma: We’re a team short since Annika’s entire base is apparently in shambles and her team’s missing in action-we really can’t afford it. And if it wasn’t for Gareth, Damaris and Lyle, Annika, Jett and I would likely be dead-something’s off in Hoenn and we need to investigate that over this pointless chase.

Annika: ....

Bartholomew: I wandered around the area-found a broken Mega Stone in the scorched earth; on top of that, I also met Yoshi’s mother-and learned what they’re dealing with while you let Victini run free...

Nelda: Bartholomew-

King: Victini...

Gareth: So, we’ll add Victini to the list of problem Legends...

Damaris: Those stones came up again...

Lyle: Ah, yes, Mega Stones... it is curious how problems seem to follow them if they leave Kalos or Alola or Hoenn, since they’re common in that region too...

Annika: ....

Gareth: I have to agree, we need to learn more about those-would you know about them, King?

King: Mega Stones? ... I know little, to be frank...

Gareth: ...

King: ...

Lyle: Hmmm...

Annika: B-besides... we’re still on the issue of the Trio and this Rteddy thing-even if you think we SHOULDN’T worry about them, we really should. This Rteddy thing could potentially be causing the problems that caused Legends to lash out, right? By Altering reality by opening holes in space, that’s what you and Carla saw, right K-King...?

King: That’s... right...

Carla: Hmm... true, but, we can’t focus on hunting the Trio then-let’s focus on at the very least finding a safe way to confront them.

Lyle: I can agree there-we don’t need to fight-and I’m on the same page as Gareth and Alma: there may not be many of us in Alola-but we’re going to shy away from the Trio’s punishment.

King: Right... they’re “welcome in Alola” or something similar to that, if I remember correctly, Lyle?

Lyle: Of course.

Bartholomew: Kalos won’t join in on this either.

King: Ugh-

Damaris: This is ridiculous... You four are defending a monster created by Team Machine, another monster made by Team Cipher, and a Politoed who rallied together two destructive forces that were produced to destroy-and their target is humanity! Do you understand? If we don’t deal with them, and they attack again, we’re allowing the condition of how humans view Pokemon to change-to worsen-where they fear and resent us to a point of wanting to control us more than they already entertain. We cannot ignore these monsters-especially the freaks of nature that are Vris and the Black Pikachu-

Gareth: So, why can’t we help them instead?

Damaris: What?

Gareth: Why? Why do we have to fight them? Why do we have to punish them? What’s the point? When this organization started, our focus was on humans who harmed Pokemon. And what does the Terrible Trio have as a mission? Dealing with Humanity, for the sole reason we existed-they’re just violent about it. Team Machine? Cipher? What about Team Rocket, Damaris? What about me? Am I a “monster” in your eyes?

Everyone: ....

Gareth: Experiments, torture, forced to fight one another, who knows what they did to the Black Pikachu to not only make him, but to train him... prepare him for what he is now-what amount of power he has-the control he has-the skill-it’s all hardwired into us-and here you stand, claiming ‘monsters���. The Trio are the biggest examples of why we, as the Strident Knights exist-or it was-

Damaris: Why should we care?

Gareth: ...

King: Damaris!

Carla: What is wrong with you? Were you just pretending to listen to what I’ve said? You’re not interacting with Pokemon like Gareth, like I do, like Gareth himself has experienced and what we can only imagine for the Black Pikachu-Gareth, Shadow Pokemon, Mutants-

Damaris: Are among individuals that should be wiped out.

Alma: Sheesh...

Lyle: My-my... Johto’s traditions are scary-and to think Alola took them on...

Nelda: ...

Annika: Damaris, please...

Bartholomew: ...

Gareth: ... Is that what you-

Damaris: To be truthful-knowing your standings now-

Carla: Don’t you DARE!!

Nelda: Oh please! Get off that high Ponyta you’re on, Carla-you’re not a Shadow Pokemon, not a Mutant, not whatever Gareth is-you can’t speak on their behalf-

Carla: And YOU can?

Nelda: I’m not the one threatening to keep one of MY Knights in Orre over what YOU caused! You and that “client” of yours! I wonder why he left so suddenly, huh? Scared off by what he caused? He’s the reason Yoshi is a Shadow Pokemon, isn’t he?

Carla: That’s not-

Carla: Coming from the ghost that’ll die if she even receives the tiniest of rips in her body? Yeah, I’m doing damn well FINE!! And Yoshi? He is too-better than fine-he might be staying here, permanently-

Nelda: Excuse me-

Carla: Go home to Unova and tell his mother that-if there’s anything left after it’s all burnt to ash-you lazy excuse for-

Damaris: Stop.

King: I think it’s understandable that everyone’s on edge; yes, Gareth is a “Creation” like Vris and the Black Pikachu, so what? You shouldn’t carry that kind of tone with an ally-

Carla: Seriously...?!

Nelda: What’s with you all of a sudden?!

Carla: WHAT’S WITH THE BOTH OF YOU!? Who comes here and starts saying shit like THIS!? Unlike you, I can sense emotions-even Gareth FEELS, despite what he puts out-at least somewhat-being this harsh-DAMARIS-is uncalled for, and YOU Nelda-

Nelda: What?

Carla: You’re just a failure at everything-we’re all looking to Alma as the troublemaker here, because he’s the youngest, the loudest, but his Knights operate fine! Last I checked, outside of Annika’s missing Knights-how many died between the Team Machine attack and the Victini attacks? Huh? We’ve been skirting around that subject all evening, but I’m aware-you’re throwing lives away at a losing battle and now you’re letting Pokemon and Humans die because you’re too damn lazy to do anything about it-

Nelda: WHAT MAKES YOU THINK I HAVEN’T!?! Unova is the founding land of the Strident Knights! DO you think it’s EASY?! Do you think it’s easy running that place?! We’re on fucking sacred land for crying out loud! The Swords of Justice-Yoshi’s mother-the whole damn village-all of it is important, not just to the Knights as a whole, but to King as well! You can’t hope to understand the weight on my shoulders! Your region is the calmest one there is-

Carla: You say that knowing next to nothing about what goes on here-that “Air” Alma mentioned before? That’s a Shadow Pokemon-a powerful one, stronger than the Trio for all we know-and instead of throwing lives away, I’m trying to understand them, and understand ways to HELP them, but no, no, I have to sit in this room, right now, and justify why we shouldn’t be focusing on three damn Pokemon that have been missing for nearly a decade!!

They were never a problem-Goldenrod was our fault! People and Pokemon died because of our Knights-the damn human we let in with his uncontrollable Dragonite-you know where it ended up, King? HERE! It’s dead! Buried in the Relic Forest! WHy? Because that piece of shit human YOU trusted ditched it on someone from here! This region is full of pain and death, just because it’s not exclusively over some overzealous Legend does not make your problems any larger than my own, Nelda! And I dare you to say the shit you’re thinking-do it, and I will era-

King: Enough! E-enough...

Carla: ...

Everyone: ...

King: Let’s move on-I’m sorry, Carla, Gareth...

Carla: Whatever you say, King...

King: ... Gareth...

Gareth: ...

King: Huh...?

Carla: Oh Arceus above, King-

>....

<Previous

[everlarkficexchange]

Dances, Babies, & Midwives

Written by: @mega-aulover

Prompt 61: Katniss is a Midwife in the late 50s and meets Peeta (somehow) and flirts with him. When she’s goes to a delivering mother Peeta is there and she gets mad at him because she think he is her husband/father but he isn’t. [submitted by @que-sera-sera88]

A/N: Thank you to @everlarkficexchange for allowing the fandom to really come together to share ideas and stories. To @que-sera-sera88 thank you for the prompt, I hope I did the show and the story justice. To my intrepid beta @norbertsmom you are always ready to take on a journey with me when you go through meagar scribbles. Thank you.

Rated: T - Warning Birth Described

 ** kp **

“When things change we have to find a different way. Nothing stays the same, we don’t stay the same ourselves and all of the time the world keeps on spinning faster…- Sister Evangelina, Call The Midwife”

** kp **

Katniss sat at the table with her friends Madge, Rue, and Johanna as she watched others dance. She would have preferred to be back home so she could spend the day tomorrow celebrating her sister’s birthday, but there was just no way for her to go home this year.

All of her friends, other midwives, were gossiping about the men present. Johanna whistled as she spotted someone she thought was smashing. Rolling her eyes, Katniss focused on the hem of her dress.

Unlike the other girls, Katniss was not obsessed with men. She lived a life that could only be described as nun-like. Ironically she lived in Nonnatus House a Convent as a midwife. Katniss was the only girl who didn’t want to get married or have children. The war had taught her that falling in love was a frivolous thing that often leads to heartache.

Her father was a casualty of war. Her mother had never recovered from the loss of her husband. At a young age, Katniss had to be both mother and provider for her family. Something the girls didn’t understand; many came from well-off homes. Having gone through the war, they understood hard times, but they didn’t understand how tough life was when the support system was suddenly gone. She wasn’t going to go through that again.

Life, though, had a funny way of doing things. Change often reared its ugly head when least expected.

“Oh, he’s coming this way,” Rue gushed.

“Act cool,” Johanna ordered.

Madge snorted, extending her wedding band. Madge had just left their group and married Constable Gale Hawthorne. She’d come back as a midwife part-time. Gale was soon going to join them when his shift ended. “Ladies only the two of you have to be worried.”

“Sure throw it in our faces Hawthorne,” Johanna huffed. It was all good-natured banter. “But Katniss here she has no excuse.”

Katniss blushed red, her excuse was a valid one maybe not to the girls.

“May I have this dance?” A deep, pleasant voice asked.

Katniss’ skin pebbled as her heart thumped against the confines of her chest.

Katniss looked up to see a blonde man with breathtaking blue eyes smiling at her. The music faded away. Nothing existed for Katniss besides the man in front of her.

She nodded, unable to say no to him. As soon as she placed her hand in his, she felt her entire body indicate that she was home.

** kp **

May 11, 1958,

Dear Prim;

Happy Birthday little sister. It is my fervent wish that all is well at home. I know you must be curious as to my new living quarters. It is a quaint place, as old rambling homes go, but it’s not the drafty old convent I’m used to.

Nonnatus House still continues to be in the Seam, in London’s Lower East side. Baby’s do not have a set time or date to be born. If they did I’d like to schedule them promptly between the hours of nine in the morning and three in the afternoon. But I must confess, although the business of giving birth is frightening, the look on a mother’s face when she first beholds her baby is my favorite experience.

It reminds me of hope. The kind of hope we experienced when the war was over. I remember walking through the streets looking at all of the faces of those who had served.

There were so many of them. I know you call them lost boys, and in a way they are. Lost little boys coming back home from war. Many of them trying to make a new start of it. A lot of them are shell-shocked, fatigued by the war, and the things they saw. Others are keen rascals trying to win over a pretty face with a medal or two. Some are cocky, like the Americans.

Speaking of Americans, I met one, Prim, at a bash, an American. Brash. Young. Sweet. Handsome. Johanna called him a dreamy cupcake.

His name is Peeta Mellark, and we danced cheek to cheek. If not for dear Rue pulling me away from him, I would have broken the curfew. I will never hear the end of it from Johanna now. She swears that I lost my scowl.

But it doesn’t matter, because I will never see him again. I hope you and mother are well. Enclosed is some additional help for you and mother.

Love,

Katniss Everdeen

Katniss folded the letter, as she hummed the song The Great Pretender by the Platters. She addressed the envelope in care of her sister Primrose Everdeen. She walked downstairs, where she heard the phone ringing.

Jo was waiting at the foot of the stairs along with Rue and Madge. Jo smirked. “How are your feet this morning?”

She could feel the warm, tingly feeling of a flush appearing on the apples of her cheeks. “Good enough to do my duties at the clinic today.”

“Sure,” Madge said with a laugh.

They all sat down for breakfast, but Katniss couldn’t look at any of them.

“Sister Mary Margaret, would you please pass the platter of buns.” Madge giggled.

Katniss turned even redder.

“The platter of buns are plump and delicious,” Johanna turned to her and winked, “but they were delicious last night, just ask Katniss?” Laughter erupted amongst the girls.

Katniss glowered at all of them.

“What has you girls acting like a gaggle of geese?” Sister Saethryth Evangelina asked. Of all the nuns, Sister

“Katniss met a boy,” Rue whispered, “at the mixer last night.”

Katniss was uncomfortable being spoken about, nor was she comfortable having her personal life discussed like she was on the front page of the tabloid. They were funning her because Katniss had always sworn off men. She never danced, never flirted, and never spoke about them. She had a job to do, and that was to earn money to send home to her mother and Prim. Men were off the table, until last night.

Peeta walked up to her and gave her a smile that melted her resolve. She’d never seen blue eyes like his in her life. She’d imagined blue like that only existed in the ocean. When he asked her to dance it felt right and she couldn’t say no.

“Met and attached herself at the hip,” Jo snickered and it caused more laughter.

They weren’t being rude or mean, but Katniss wasn’t used to being the center of attention. She stood abruptly and walked away. As she left the room, she could hear Sister Margaret Joan say, “Shakespeare wrote…and though she be but little, she is fierce.”

Katniss swallowed and took the letter she’d written for her sister and stuffed it in her pocket. They were, after all, impractical musings. She had better things to deal with than affairs of the heart.

She didn’t mail the letter, instead, she headed to the clinic early.

The clinic was opened twice a week, Tuesdays and Thursdays. The doctor performed check-ups on each patient on those days. The wellness checks allowed the midwife and doctor to know how well mother and child were doing.

Katniss was finished cleaning the floor when the girls came in. All but Jo looked down at the floor. Jo walked straight up to her. “I’m sorry for making you feel bad about meeting someone. It’s just none of us have ever seen you this way with a man before.”

“It doesn’t even matter. He’s an American visiting London and when he leaves, I’ll just be a girl he danced with and had a lovely time with.” Katniss cleared her throat and blinked to keep the tears from her eyes. Katniss walked away; the workday was about to start.

Johanna didn’t say anything else. She was busy during the day, attending to the ladies who came to the clinic.

“Beatrix Collins,” Ruth called out.

Katniss smiled. Rue was the youngest and newest member. She had come such a long way from when she first joined on as a midwife. Katniss was sterilizing some of the instruments. It was important everything was cleaned and sterilized. Infection was a serious agent that quickly killed patients.

Johanna and Madge were off to the side, speaking about Rue’s patient.

“I’d like to look like that if I ever have a baby.” Johanna pointed to the woman with the smart coat and shoes.

“She looks like a movie star. Do you think she’s really a blonde?” Madge asked.

“Yeah, she’s a natural blond, but she’s highlighted it.” Jo grinned.

“I wonder why she’s even here at the Clinic,” Madge said. “Her handbag is a Dior.”

“I do not know,” Sister Saethryth Evangelina said, siding up to them, “but I do know she’s in her final stages and so are a lot of the other mothers, so if you girls could stop chit-chatting and get to work.”

Both girls returned to work, but Katniss thought it odd that such an elegantly dressed woman was at the Clinic. Most of the Seam still showed the ravages of war. There was rubble everywhere, and pre-war tenements where the occupants shared one bathroom per floor or section.

It was the poorest sector of all of London. Katniss knew places like this; places in England where hunger was the constant companion of children. Even though she wasn’t from the city, she understood poverty. In the village where she was born, before the war, her home was a hovel, as were most homes during the depression. Many of the homes were abandoned as there wasn’t any electricity and the running water came from the well. They were the poorest district. All around them they had beautiful countryside and quaint farms. There was none of that in district twelve where people mined coal.

It was her mother who suggested she join the Nation Health Service and take the NHS training courses to become a nurse. She’d studied for three years before passing her exams. Her practice came with helping her mother in her home district. When a position opened up in London, Katniss decided to move. The wages she sent home helped her mother and sister move to a quaint countryside cottage that was located in a better village.

The midwives and nurses who came to the Seam did not know this level of poverty. They were often shocked at how the women survived. Johanna called them heroes and she was right, as they bravely faced life with the hearts of warriors, birthing and rearing children.

By the end of the shift all of the girls were in agreement; they each wanted a biscuit and a good cup of tea. As they left the clinic, they were in high spirits as they peddled back to the convent. When they arrived, Katniss was surprised to see a familiar blond man waiting for her.

“Katniss.”

“Peeta.” Katniss hopped off her bike. He was as good looking in the daytime as he was last night. Part of her thought she’d dreamt it all up. “What are you doing here?”

“I wanted to see you again.” He thrust flowers at her. “Here, these are for you.”

“Thank you.” Katniss took the wild bouquet in her hands. There was giggling coming from around her.

“I was hoping, I mean wondering if you wanted to go to the pictures with me.” His gaze did not stray from hers. “If you’re free tonight?”

“Oh she’s free tonight,” Johanna said.

Katniss turned to stare at her. “I can’t. I’m on a call with Rue.”

“Okay, maybe tomorrow night then?”

He looked so hopeful with his blonde curly hair parted to the side and those twin shining blue beacons that she couldn’t deny him.

Later that night she was in her room when the phone rang. “I’ll get it,” Rue said.

Katniss followed her. Rue picked up the receiver and answered, “Nonnatus House, midwife speaking.”

“Yes, of course.” she smiled at Katniss as she wrote down the information in the logbook. It was important for everyone to know where you were. “Apartment 12B, Victors Village. Beatrix Collins, I will be there shortly.”

Katniss heard the name and pulled one of the birthing packs and Rue’s kit. The Victors Village was the newest building, it was modern, many of the occupants were well off. a"Here, if you need help, do not hesitate to call.“

Rue smiled. "Okay, will do.”

Nearly an hour later the phone rang again. “Nonnatus House, midwife speaking.”

“Katniss, it’s me Rue. It’s a breech birth and I’ve never done one?” Rue’s voice trembled over the phone.

Katniss remained calm. “Rue, I will be there shortly. Try to comfort the mother as best as you can.”

“Okay.”

Katniss hung up the phone. She rushed through the house to get her kit. She ran into Sister Saethryth Evangelina.

“Where are you going in such a rush?”

“Rue has a breech birth. She hasn’t done one yet and needs assistance.”

“Go on then. I will take care of the phones while you are gone. It will keep me from listening to Sister Margaret Joan spew Shakespeare and Keats all night long.”

Katniss nodded, got her kit, and within seconds she was peddling across the Seam.

When she arrived at the Victors Village she quickly took the elevator, to the apartment on the 12th floor. Slightly out of breath, Katniss knocked on the door. “Midwife?”

The door opened.

“You!” Katniss tumbled out.

“Katniss,” Peeta said, looking pale.

Her heart dropped to the bottom of her feet. “What are you doing here?”

“I-” he looked behind him, panicked. “Are you here to help?”

The wailing of a woman could be heard from within the apartment. Katniss pushed her way into the apartment and into the bedroom.

“Katniss!” Rue said, relieved. “This is Mrs. Collins.”

“Call me, Trixie,” Mrs. Collins grunted.

“Lovely to meet you, Trixie.” Katniss hid her ire. Peeta lied to her. He told her his last name was Mellark. “I’m Katniss, and Rue and I going are going to assist you in delivering your baby. I am sure.” Katniss quickly put on her white coat, her white cap and gloves.

Trixie howled in pain. Rue’s eyes widened. “I’ve been keeping her as calm as possible.”

“Good, have you asked Mr. Collins to boil water?”

“No, I did not.” Rue opened her mouth. Her eyes went to the bedroom door, indicating she was thinking of Peeta. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay, right now we have to get the hot water boiling and extra towels.”

“Okay.” Rue left the room.

Turning around she addressed Peeta’s wife. “I need to make sure your baby is fine.” Katniss quickly listened for the baby’s heartbeat. “Your little one is doing well.” She moved to the foot of the bed to check to see how dilated Trixie was. She felt her stomach and made the same diagnosis as Rue.

“Trixie you are fully dilated, but the baby is in breech.”

“Breech,” Trixie panted.

“Yes, it means the baby is going to be born ass first.”

Trixie laughed. “Just like his father, a real pain in my ass.”

Katniss smiled. “Shall we get to work then?”

Opening the door, she found Peeta just beyond it. “Mr. Collins, I am going to need two chairs.”

Peeta nodded and within seconds he’d brought over two dining chairs.

“Katniss, I-”

“Peeta, I don’t want to make a scene in front of your wife, who is, at the moment, giving birth to your child.” Katniss took the chairs and shut the door in his face. She couldn’t believe she’d done that. Her hands shook as she turned around.

“Trixie, I need you to be at the edge of the bed.” Katniss put two chairs at the edge. “Okay, put one foot on each chair. She could see the baby’s legs, and gently she brought out one leg at a time as the mother pushed. "With the next contraction, I’m going to turn the baby, and it’ll help ease the baby out.”

The mother screamed as the baby was coming out.

“Is she okay?” Peeta rushed into the room. Katniss looked over her shoulder briefly to see Rue was right behind him.

“Rue, keep him out. Mother and child need quiet.” Katniss kept her eye on the baby until its head was out. The piercing cry was joyous. Katniss looked up and saw Peeta. “Rue, please take over. I have to get back to Nonnatus to cover the phones.”

“Would you like to see the baby?” Rue asked Trixie.

Katniss let Rue take over and quickly took off her gear, put it inside of her kit, and took off. As she peddled through the darkened streets of the Seam, unwanted tears fell from her face. When she arrived back at the convent Sister Saethryth Evangeline was sitting by the phone.

“Sister Saethryth Evangelina,” Katniss shook her shoulder. “I’m here.”

The sister gave Katniss the once over. “What’s wrong with you?”

“Nothing,” Katniss said, checking the log book.

“Nothing? Your eyes are leaking like a faucet Haymitch fixed.”

She loathed having to share, but Sae was one of the sisters who could keep a secret.

“It turns out Mrs. Collins is married to the bloke I met last night.”

“Ah, and you are sure of this because?”

“When I arrived he was there at her apartment. He looked like a nervous father.” Katniss let out a shaky breath, before confessing, “I felt like such a fool. I never asked if he was married or anything. I just danced with him without a care in the world.”

“I see.”

Straightening her shoulders, Katniss wiped her eyes with her handkerchief. “I am sorry for speaking out of turn Sister. If Sister Paylor were here, she’d have some magic phrase or comment that would make things better.”

“She might, but Katniss did you bother asking Peeta if he was indeed the father?”

She shook her head slowly.

“Think about that. Now if you will excuse me, I have to see what Sister Margaret Joan is doing, hopefully, she hasn’t attacked all of the cake.”

Katniss smiled. Sister Margaret Joan, known as Mags, was the first midwife. She helped deliver half the children in the Seam. She was the eldest of the nuns and clever when it came to acquiring cakes.

Katniss didn’t get to rest for long as she received another call. That night she helped deliver two more babies. It started a want within her to perhaps one day have a baby of her own. Katniss could just visualize the baby, one with floppy golden curls running through a meadow.

The thought caused her to smile as she pedaled home once more. She saw him sitting on the steps of Nonnatus House.

“Peeta,” Katniss said as she came to a stop. She saw that he was sleeping outside. Hunching over, she quietly called his name once more.

His long translucent lashes fluttered open. “Katniss?”

Katniss backed away, giving him space. She couldn’t help but stare at his broad shoulders. He was average height, but since she was tiny, he towered over her.

Peeta ran his hands through his hair. “Hi, I just wanted to explain last night. I’m not Mr. Collins. I can see why you made that mistake. Trixie is a friend of mine, was a nurse during the war who married my cousin, Jake Collins. There was an accident a few weeks back. I came out here to help while Jake gets better.”

Katniss listened carefully. The Sister’s advice still played on her mind. She listened to his voice and decided she could listen to his voice for a lifetime.

** kp **

July 7, 1958

Dear Prim,

My days as a midwife are numbered. Peeta has asked me to marry him. He wants to meet you and mother so that we can make arrangements for the wedding.

I know it’s only been two months, but I know that he’s the one. Prim, I’ve never met anyone who gentles my fears. When he holds my hand, or when he holds me in his arms, I cannot stop thinking of the future.

The girls mock me because they say love looks good on me. I do not understand what they mean, but I cannot help wanting to be with him. He is wonderful and when you meet him, in a weeks time I’m sure you’re going to love him.

If there is something that I’ve learned from the Sisters and from the women in the Seam is that, life is full of changes. And although not all changes are pleasant, love often makes those changes bearable and worthwhile.

Love,

Katniss Everdeen

[angclines1]

Have you seen (ANGELINE CARTER) around New York? They look a lot like (ROSAMUND PIKE) but i don’t think they’ve even realized it! Some people say they are (IMAGINATIVE AND EMPOWERING) and (ERRATIC AND SECRETIVE) but all we know for sure is they are (39), (CIS FEMALE, BISEXUAL) and work as a (HOLLYWOOD ACTRESS / DIRECTOR). I guess only time will tell but for now we’ll just call them the (ACTIVIST). // it’s me again lmaooo. i’m bringing back my girl but with a few changes! tw: homophobia

some of you might remember my girlie angeline from a while ago! this time i’ve made some changes on her

she’s from london, uk, but moved to los angeles when she was 11

her dad was an accountant and her mother worked as a flight attendant, they are since retired

she’s still got a british accent but after being in the us so long, it does have an american twang to it

she has been living in new york since she was 18

angeline is bisexual and was disowned by her parents when they found out she was engaged to a woman (samantha reis). they are incredibly homophobic and didn’t support the marriage in the slightest. angeline and sam are now divorced and that’s kind of like an “i told you so” moment from her parents which is one of the reasons why angeline hasn’t made contact with them since. she’s estranged from them completely pretty much

she has a little sister (21-25) she hasn’t seen for years because her parents didn’t want the sister to have anything to do with angeline but her little sister has since moved to ny recently and they’re gonna start to build a better relationship

she’s been acting since she was 19, it wasn’t until her late 20′s that she got her big break. she’s a household name now. super duper famous movie star. she’s been nominated for an academy award 3 times and won once

angie is getting into directing more and loves it

she’s dating her divorce lawyer rn. oops

a major feminist. she’s really outspoken about issues. regularly attends the women’s march every year, goes to anti trump protests, she’s passionate about social justice issues and uses her platform to talk about it

does a lot of humanitarian work

listen she’s a sweetheart angel but she’s such a perfectionist and very prim & proper

she’s very serious about her work and invests herself so deeply into her roles

i imagine her directing/movie style similar to sofia coppola

“i have done nothing wrong in my life, ever” - angeline ”i know this and i love you” - me to angeline

she is capable of being a mega bitch if she’s pushed to do so

i’m headcanon-ing that she is doing a remake of all about eve and she’s playing bette davis’ role... that’s my ULTIMATE kink

basically angie is my famous hollywood darling and i love her

possible connections ?

cousins (she’s english, so they would have to have some english background but they don’t have to have lived in the uk, they can be from anywhere)

fans

rebound ex

one night stand(s)

frenemy (possibly another famous person/former co-star... they play nice for the cameras but actually they don’t like each other AT ALL - maybe they had a fling and it turned nasty? idk)

neighbor(s) (she lives in the upper east side)

co-stars

young actor/actress she has taken under her wing and mentored

agent

assistant

stylist

[sophisticated-angel]

Professional

Character: Dean Winchester

Warning: None

Word Count: 1,951

Request:  Dean and Reader are on an FBI case and Dean is having a lot of trouble remaining professional around Reader

Pairing: None

Story

   His reputation precedes him. You’ve heard stories about him and the notches in his belt, how he survived Hell, traveled through time, destroyed multiple mega monsters and even became one himself. Friends tell you about his intelligence and cunning; female friends come back swooning and ranting about how dreamy he is. All in all, you hold him in high regard, so when a mutual friend suggests you work a case together, you look forward to meeting him. When you knock on the door of their motel room, it’s opened by tall man wearing a worn gray button up.

   “You (y/n)?” he asks.

   You nod. “Which one are you?”

   The man chuckles. “I’m Sam. Fair warning, you’re an attractive woman, and my brother hasn’t gotten laid in two months.”

   “I can handle it.”

   “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

   Inside the room is another man nursing a beer and reclining in a crappy dining chair. His denim jacket is rolled up to his elbows and hangs unbuttoned, and though his outfit is wrinkled and dirty, his short hair is damp from a recent shower. When he sees you, he stands and sets the bottle down.

   “You must be (y/n).” He dons a sly grin. “I must say, Garth did not do you justice because I was not prepared for all of this.”

   “So, you’re Dean.”

   “I can be anything you want. Like what you see?”

   Shrugging, you drop your duffel bag on the floor and take a seat on the nearest bed. Judging by the way Dean raises an eyebrow, you’ve probably chosen his, but he can think whatever he likes. You’re here to do a job.

   “What’ve we got?” you ask the room.

   “Uh, not much.” Sam picks up an open laptop from the other bed.

   “(y/n)?” Dean says. “Top, bottom, vertical.”

   Sam raises his voice. “Couple of weird deaths, some occult signs, but there’s other clues we’ve never seen before. Nothing fits together. Kinda been hoping you can make heads or tails of it.”

   “Super strange and extra weird. That’s my specialty.”

   “I’ll bet you’re real fun in the sheets, eh?” Dean winks at you.

   With a bit of focus, you manage to ignore Dean’s immaturity, so basically his existence, and convince everyone to go out to a diner for a bite to eat while you review the case. A pair of women wearing tightly fitted, swooping V-neck shirts and shorts no longer than their self-respect sits by the window in the restaurant, and in moments Dean has joined them. While the older brother lures the other fish in the sea, the younger one suffers from secondhand shame and helps you try to extrapolate from what little information you have. Dean’s back in a few minutes – as the waiter appears with the tray with everyone’s food, in fact – just as you and Sam have decided that a stop at the police station is the best move.

   “What’d I miss?” he asks.

   “If you’d been over here, maybe you’d know,” you snip. “And by the way, I know you’re trying to make me jealous.”

   “I wasn’t, but it sounds like I did. I’d be happy to help with that frustration.”

   “You’re focus should be on the job, not on getting into my pants.”

   “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.”

   “I’d rather be dull than sleep with you.”

   “Wow. That hurt.”

   “Good. Now finish your food so we can go.”

   He must have been caught off guard by your statement, because his immaturity takes a back seat. You think you’ve got him beat, but a man like Dean can’t be stopped by words alone. But he behaves, and you relax a little. After changing into your FBI suits, you drive to the station for a word with the police chief: a casual man who leads you to the break room and offers you donuts and coffee. Everyone but Dean declines, and once again you and Sam do most of the work. Dean participates just enough to be a convincing federal agent, but he drifts into donut land and meanders around the chief, staying in your line of sight.

   A single powdered donut is his victim, but he can’t just eat it. Instead, he slowly slips his finger through the hole in the center, smirking and looking directly at you. Then he replaces his finger with his tongue, licks all the way around, darts in and out sensuously. Donuts should not be this sensual, but you won’t ever look at a pastry the same way again. To your horror, you realize you’re a little bit turned on.

   “You alright, Agent Miller?” inquires the chief. He turns, and Dean shoves half the donut in his mouth.

   “Yeah, I’m good.” You clear your throat and smile reassuringly, but you glance at Dean and receive a wink that makes you blush with embarrassment. “Um, you were saying about Miss Paroli?”

   “New in town, so she couldn’t have made any enemies.”

   “Did she seem nervous?” Sam chimes in, “Maybe someone followed her here?”

   “Don’t think so. Then again, nobody really knows her, but people say she was odd.”

   “Odd how?”

   “Well, one of my officers was over at the trailer park on a call about a month ago, and he said her trailer was decked out with gypsy stuff. Had a sign out front for a mystic arts business. Healing, fortune-telling.”

   By the donut box, Dean begins licking powdered sugar off his fingers, and he somehow makes this as suggestive as everything else. You get distracted again, and Sam has to give you a quick pinch to bring you back down to Earth.

   Thus far, you aren’t impressed by Dean. He doesn’t live up to all the hype, all the stories you’ve heard, and you’re a little worried that he won’t be much good in a fight, not if he’s focused on you. Maybe if you slept with him he’d be able to focus better, but maybe it would encourage him to behave like this in the future. You’ll have to make it clear that you’re only interested in seeing him grow up and do his job, but you’re willing to give him one more chance.

   He blows it.

   You’re alone in the motel room with him, both of you poring through web pages and books while Sam pokes around Anna Pelori’s trailer home. You’ve changed into loungewear to combat the warm afternoon and chosen to recline on the bed, and Dean sits at the table. Every few seconds, you catch him looking your way, but he doesn’t say or do anything, so you let it slide. But then he crosses his legs, uncrosses them, fidgets in his chair, crosses them the other way, tugs on his pants . . . and does it all over again.

   “Seriously, Dean?” you sigh.

   “What?”

   “Do you want me to say it out loud?”

   “I can’t help it, okay?”

   “You could be a little less conspicuous about it!”

   “Or you could help me.”

   “Oh my God.” Slamming your computer shut, you gather it and the book you’re reading in your arms. “You’re being a child, and I am so done with it! You need to grow up, Dean!”

   Whatever response he has falls on deaf ears because you meant that. You are done with all of him. The next time someone suggests you work with the Winchesters, your ‘no’ will be a firm one.

   But Dean surprises you. Hours after you’ve given up on research for the day, he bursts through the door, eyes bright and proud, and draws an arc in the air with his hands as he announces the name of the creature he’s concluded is to blame.

   “Really?” You lift one eyebrow. “I’ve only comes across that thing once.”

   “They don’t usually pop up in the States. Heard about one in Alaska a few years ago, but not anywhere else in the country.”

   “Do we have the stuff to kill it?”

   “Give me an hour.” He steps out but sticks his head back in an instant later. “I call wielding the weapon.”

   “You’re geeking out.”

   “Yup.”

   After this, he just . . . stops. There are no more flirtations, not even a wink. Now he runs like a well-oiled machine. He prepares the weapon, shows you how to make defenses you’ve never heard of, and, finally, starts validating his reputation. In the throes of the hunt, Dean is rather magnificent. He moves with a unique grace and confidence and wields the weapon brilliantly. A few mishaps are had, mostly to do with stealth, but the monster is slain, and no one dies. Ten minutes after the fight ends, you stagger back into the motel room, your mind changed about Dean.

   “I hurt all freaking over,” you groan.

   “Most of it’s probably tension,” says Dean. And then he winks and adds, “I know a couple of stretches that are perfect for relieving tension.”

   Your mind changes back, and you shove him against a wall, suddenly, furious.

   “Would you stop?” you hiss. “I am sick of you! I didn’t come here to be hit on, and you have been an absolute child the whole time! You know, I thought you were an adult and a good hunter! You’re a damn good hunter, but you’re so damn immature! You took way too many risks tonight, and look at yourself! Son of a bitch, nobody should look this good covered in this much blood!” Chest heaving, you shut your mouth. Dean just watches you.

   “You gonna kiss me or what?”

   “Hell yes.”

   What you do next can be most accurately described as smashing your mouth against his mouth, but it’s okay. Frustration you denied is released and relieved the moment you kiss. You get into it quickly, and the following minute turns into the hottest, sloppiest make-out session you’ve ever had. Dean decides he knows your face well enough and works his way down your neck – kisses warm, wet, and eager. His hands are eager too. They play in your hair, down your sides, pull your hips close and hold you there. Yours caress his face, trace his neck, press palms in his chest and push him against the wall.

   Then he spins you around, swaps places with you so that you can decided when to move. So that’s how he likes it. You shove him bodily towards the bed, press down on his shoulders to make him sit and lie back with his head on the pillow. Straddling him, you pull of your shirt in a single motion before kissing him again from above.

   “I guess this means I win?” he murmurs.

   “Whatever you want.”

   “This is so hot.”

   “Thank you.” Another deep kiss. “My specialty is the super strange and extra weird, and you” —you smirk— “are the strangest, weirdest man I have ever met.”

   “I have never been more turned on than I am right now.”

   “Shh. It’s better if you don’t talk.”

   Everything descends into a rolling wave of passion. If he’ll have you, you’re willing to go all the way. So beautiful. Only seconds pass, however, before Sam bursts into the room and flips on the light.

   “Congrats to the both of you,” he says in a rush, “but in case you’ve forgotten, we’ve got the cops on our tail.”

   “What the hell, Sam?”

   “Can’t sleep with her in prison. Get a move on!”

   Groaning, you get off of Dean and put your shirt back on. Dean sits up, shakes his head, and gets to his feet. He rushes appropriately, shoulders both your bag and his, and stops you before you get to the door for one more kiss.

   “That’s an IOU.”

@pureawesomeness001 @27bmm @jarpadandjensenaremyheroes @super-not-naturall @gabriel-themightysugaraddict @mogaruke @mrswhozeewhatsis @hexparker @spn-dean-and-sam-winchester

[kiss-my-freckle]

6x1 & 6x2

“Life is full of lovely little ironies.” - Red

Red getting arrested in the rain. In conversation with Liz -

Red [5x17]: I’m not here hiding from American law enforcement. I could dodge those raindrops and never get wet.

Red facing a very public trial. In conversation with Ressler -

Red [5x10]: With all due respect, I didn’t kill Henry Prescott to protect you. I killed him to protect myself. The man knew the nature of my relationship with the FBI, and I couldn’t risk that information coming to light in a public trial. 

Loving secrets.

Liz: This isn’t a game. Red: It could be. If the secrets you keep are as loving as the ones Dembe keeps. Well. That is interesting. 

Jennifer: You can’t let him in. He can’t see me. 

It took Liz a while to answer the door, and I’m sure Red heard the whispering. He checks out the closet first because it's open, then peeks around the other side. 

Liz, acting stupid -

Red: Bad time? Liz: No. Red: May we? Liz: Hmm? Red: As a fugitive from justice, I prefer not to linger in public hallways.

Then pulling him away from the closet -

Dembe eyes it, so they both know someone’s in the closet. Because Jennifer stays hidden, Dembe and Red are left to assume either or - man or woman. 

I’d consider Keenler a “loving” secret if Red were to assume it. 

Remember this convo in S4?

Red: You speak Italian? Dembe: There was a girl. Red: Of course there was.

Ressler.

Ressler and Liz are on site for Dr. Koehler and The Corsican. 

6x1 -

Ressler: The ID on the dead guy turned up as fake, but we sent the prints to Interpol and we got a hit. Red: Tell me. Ressler: Not until you tell us why you gave us this case because it obviously wasn’t so we could arrest Dr. Koehler and expose his clients. Red: Hans Koehler was a friend of mine. I suspected he was being held against his will. I wanted to save his life. Sadly, I failed.

6x2 -

Cooper: Ressler, Keen, get to New York. There’s an assassin in the city, and we need to find him.

Ressler: If you’re good with it, I’m good with it. Liz: I already told you, I’m good with it. Ressler: What am I missing? See, I know you, and I know there’s no way that you’re okay with Reddington killing a guy in our custody so he wouldn’t have to identify that skeleton. No, you don’t want to tell me what’s really going on, I’m okay with it. But don’t insult me by saying you’re good with it. Liz: Thank you. Ressler: For what? For being okay with it. 

The Corsican’s escape.

Samar: Moreau, Bastien. I need you to notify security he’s on site and Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying. No, I do not have a positive ID, but you need to put the facility on lockdown and hold all passengers. Man on radio: Code three, all responders. “White male. Mid-50s. May be armed.”

Red’s arrest. 

Red: I need you to focus. Focus on what happened. How it happened. This wasn’t an accident. My luck didn’t just run out. Someone tipped them. Someone close. The cops were tipped off. Not specifically about me. That would’ve triggered a larger presence, and I would’ve noticed. Whoever did this told the cops as little as possible. Something about a “middle-aged white male carrying a concealed weapon.” Something a couple of cops could follow up on quietly, discreetly. 

Liz and Red. 

Liz: They won’t acknowledge the agreement. They’re not gonna release you. They’re gonna put you on trial.

Liz [in promo]: Cooper's been ordered not to inform the court about the task force. They're going to prosecute you.

Red: I need to find the person who betrayed me. Liz: So you can kill him?

Not “So you can kill THEM?”

But “So you can kill HIM.”

Liz [in promo]: He used you - Your decency. He knew you wouldn't lie about the immunity agreement. He knew you'd rather violate a direct order and damage your own career instead.

I suspect Red is using Cooper’s decency to smoke out who betrayed him.

Liz: He asked me to find out who tipped off the police. “It’s all that matters to him.” Not that he’s been arrested or - That he’s gonna be put on trial - And face the death penalty. “All he cares about” is finding out who betrayed him.

Red is confident he’ll win -

Red: One way or the other, I’ll be set free. Indictments and trials are obviously the hard way. The easy way is for you and your family to suddenly become grotesquely rich, buy one of those offensive mega-yachts, and travel the oceans like a nouveau Jacques Cousteau. Baldwin: Is that a bribe? Red: A statement of fact.

Holt: Let me be clear. You will never be free again. You’ll be tried, convicted, held in a federal prison until we execute you. Red: As pleasant as that sounds, I’m afraid I’ve made other arrangements. Holt: This is gonna be fun. Red: Winning always is.

Red: Forget about the prosecutor and all this. I’ve been a step ahead of them for decades. I’m confident this won’t change that.

Confident despite the politics of it. In promo -

Red: Of course they are. The political animal. In the short run, justice always loses in politics. Liz: Aren't you worried. You've been indicted for at least half a dozen capital offenses. Red: I'm confident I'll prevail.

Red informs the judge he’ll be representing himself. Go figure. 

1x2 -

Diane Fowler: His lawyers drafted this? Cooper: No. He did. Reddington represents himself in legal matters. 

Overheard conversations. 

Ressler: So we’re still doing his bidding. Cooper: I’m sorry, Agent Ressler? Ressler: Reddington. He shot an unarmed man in FBI custody just so that Keen couldn’t identify that skeleton that he’s been lugging around like his life depended on it.

Liz: Aram, what is it? Aram: He’s been arrested. Ressler: That’s great news. Aram: Great? Why would you say that? Ressler: The guy’s a killer. Aram: I know, but look. I know theoretically that I should be happy that someone who’s done what he’s done has finally been caught, but I’m not. I’m sad. Liz: Sad, about Moreau? Aram: Moreau? Ressler: You just said he was arrested. Aram: No. We haven’t found Moreau. We’re still working on that. Liz: Well, then who are you talking about? Aram: Mr. Reddington. Mr. Reddington is the one that’s been arrested. Liz: What? When? Aram: Less than an hour ago, he was uh, buying a pretzel. 30 years on the run, and a beat cop picks him up at a pretzel cart. Ressler: Where is he now? Aram: NYPD is holding him at the 27th. Liz: Well, we have to go get him out. Ressler: Police precinct, the most wanted man in America? There’s no getting him out. Liz: Of course we can. We - We, the government. We have an agreement. Ressler: Keen, he’s in the system now. Liz: Does Cooper know? Aram: He’s in with Panabaker. Ressler: She’s not gonna do anything. Liz: Is that what you know or what you want? Aram: No one wants that. Liz: For Reddington to get arrested so we don’t have to work with him anymore? Ressler: Go ahead, Keen, say it. I know it’s what you’re thinking. Aram: Thinking what? Ressler: That I called it in. Reddington’s whereabouts, that they arrested him because of me. Aram: That’s crazy. None of us would betray Mr. Reddington like that. Liz: I don’t believe you did it, but I do believe you’re relieved it happened. Ressler: Keen, all I do know is that it’s over, and nothing Cooper says is gonna change that.

It’s all that matters to Red. Finding out who betrayed him. That’s according to Liz, which I agree with. He doesn’t care at all about the trial. I don’t see Red pushing Cooper to put his career at risk. Ever. There’s no way Red would walk out of prison using his immunity agreement. The arrest was already made public. If he walked, he’d look like a rat. He’d just as well protect himself AND the Task Force. I think he’s gonna use his immunity agreement as bait to flush out who betrayed him, and I think Ressler will be his suspect because he’s already been given enough. 

If Red assumes it, a loving secret Keenler affair. 

Red: Bad time? A man he knows has feelings for Liz and will do anything for her. The woman he’s in love with, still upset she didn’t get to learn Red’s truth. Ressler’s statement in the Post Office.

Ressler: So we’re still doing his bidding. Reddington. He shot an unarmed man in FBI custody just so that Keen couldn’t identify that skeleton that he’s been lugging around like his life depended on it.

Life is full of lovely little ironies, facing a public trial. 

Red: With all due respect, I didn’t kill Henry Prescott to protect you. I killed him to protect myself. The man knew the nature of my relationship with the FBI, and I couldn’t risk that information coming to light in a public trial. 

To Red’s face after Koehler’s death. 

Red: Tell me. Ressler: Not until you tell us why you gave us this case because it obviously wasn’t so we could arrest Dr. Koehler and expose his clients. The description Samar gave on The Corsican - with Ressler in the car. Doing the same to him as they did to Red even though Albrecht was already dead.

Man on radio: Code three, all responders. “White male. Mid-50s. May be armed.” 

And Liz throwing it to a man. 

Red: I need to find the person who betrayed me. Liz: So you can kill him?

So what it looks like, is Ressler replacing Tom in providing Liz answers. 

Red: I’d say that depends.

[jonjost]

Drawing: Stephen Lack

Following the conspiracy lead of Steve Bannon and Breitbart, Donald Trump has grumbled and tweeted often about the Deep State, the purported nefarious grouping of hidden government persons lurking in the depths of the massive Federal apparatus of myriad acronymic masks.  ICE NSA FBI CIA and on through to lesser known but equally evil entities.  These are alleged to be conclaves, variously, of members of the Harvard elite, Yale’s Skull and Bones, Jewish cabalists, covens of Christian Fundamentalists, or whichever cluster-fuck you wish to designate, surely there will be a website or more devoted to reading the tea-leaves of the signals emitted from these organizational black holes and their swirling galaxies.  Right and Left wing chatterboxes selectively cherry-pick whatever political tid-bits they wish and construct fabulist narratives around them, from the assassination of JFK to that of MLK to 9/11 and on to the Boston Marathon bombing.  The existence of the internet gives wide berth for these to spawn, however false or true they might be.

Extracted from these events come tomes from scholars, Hollywood movies, novels and the rantings of Limbaugh, Hannity, Alex Jones and a host of lesser names.  There’s millions to be made from these, and those mentioned have made theirs and more.  Like America’s religious hucksters, there’s a lot of money to be made preying on the gullible and fearful, with which it seems our country is plentifully supplied.  Welcome to the world of QAnon.   It’s American as Apple Pie.

The Lakewood Mega-church, Dallas TX

For decades – well actually far longer than that, for centuries  – America has been awash with conspiracy theories, reaching back to its founding.  There were always traitors loose in the land, lluminati, the anti-christ, double-agents for foreign powers, the entire gamut of customary political war-horses, broad-brushes with which to paint your enemy. Today’s landscape is nothing new, just that for brief periods we like to pretend it ain’t so.

But, myths aside, it’s all the same old same old.  As is governance itself.

Two deep-state members, John Brennan and General Michael Hayden, former chiefs of the CIA

Conspiracy theories, to take root, need soil, and the United States government has been rich tilling land for as long as its been around.  Within long-term living memory those range from major matters, such as the concept that FDR and the government knew Pearl Harbor was coming, and let it happen.  Jump ahead half a century, and the same it true of 9/11.  In both cases there is ample evidence to suggest they are true, though the makers of American mythology adamantly insist that only a tin-foil hatter would believe such malarkey.  After all, who could believe that our own government would allow such events to occur when their job is to protect us?  Only a true nutter could believe such a thing, regardless of the massive evidence and logical reasons for such a thing to fit properly into a narrative.

And the same goes for lesser items from the assassination of JFK requiring magic bullets, and on down to such trivial things as using members of the military as guinea pigs for “scientific” experiments, or, well, hell, using whole cities like San Francisco to experiment with some new biological dispersal weapon.  Or letting St. George, Utah, knowingly be a nice down-wind recipient of nuclear bomb test radiation and then spending decades denying the cancerous downside.  In fact, the more one knows about Uncle Sam the more fertile the soil one finds for tin-foil hat thoughts.

Enter Donald, the wanna-be Queen’s tough guy sporting a giant borough-wide chip on his shoulder.  A self-made man, so he insists (that million buck starter kit from Dad don’t count), he broke into the hard-as-nails world of Manhattan real-estate and built a solid gold (well, at least gold-plated) reputation as a party-animal, womanizer, builder of garish towers, possessor of serial-wives and of serial bankruptcies.  And despite all that he wasn’t welcomed into the fold of the Manhattan elite, and here, decades later, bearing a grudge that deforms his face and body, and weighs on him like a WWF wrestler, he’s out to let them have it. Descending his golden escalator but 3 years ago, met by his adoring rent-a-crowd, he tossed his hat in the Presidential circus ring, and to wide amazement and laughter promptly vanquished the supposedly serious Republican candidates with school-yard taunts, and thereafter sent the world into shock when Hillary Clinton lost to him as well, if not in the general vote, then in the dubious Electoral College. The world has been aghast since, as The Donald charges like a raging bull, upsetting one institutionally rooted apple-cart after another, shredding the polite decorum and language of our traditional politics, and causing serious harm to the status quo.  Just like he said he would.

Well, almost.

  Having promised to “drain the swamp” The Don instead stocked the beltway with more alligator sleaze than anyone thought conceivable, stacking his Cabinet with grifters ready to dismantle their respective departments, and to feed at the Federal trough as quickly and mercilessly as possible.  Having reduced his GOP Congressional majorities to the quivering sycophants they always were, our gangster godfather trashed protocols, ripped up treaties and obsessively uprooted anything having to do with Barack Hussein Obama while loudly bellowing his utterly unmasked racism.  Supposedly serious Republicans held their silence while the Tea Party wing cheered lustily and the Don’s racist base went bananas.  Doubtless never having actually read it, the man sworn to uphold the US Constitution, did, as G W Bush had suggested, and treated it as “a goddam piece of paper.”   Toilet paper in this instance.

All of this behavior has transpired with little more than murmurs from the official opposition, the Democrats, who hide behind their minority status in the House and Senate whimpering there’s nothing they can do, their hands are tied until November, the mystical season of voting when the Great American Public is allowed to choose between corporately approved specimen A or B. And besides, they are as beholden to their corporate masters as the GOP, and should they speak too loudly the full depths of both-sides-of-the-aisle corruption would be fully exposed.   Until then the pages of YouTube and Facebook are awash with videos of virulent racists yelling and screaming on camera, police killing blacks for being black, ICE round-ups of alleged illegal aliens, children stored in ex-Walmart boxes converted to instant prisons, and other pleasantries of the present American mental landscape, the ugly id of the nation having been exposed by Trump’s tearing off of the band-aid of PC politeness imposed by the prior administration.

Faced with this rupture of politics-as-normal, the nation has contorted itself into the unimaginable:  the liberal-left now looks upon the FBI, the CIA and NSA as potential saviors, while the right, formerly the supposed champions of fiscal and moral rectitude, law & order, balanced budgets, goody-two-shoes ethics and virulent anti-Commie/Russiaphobes morphed instantaneously into Russiaphiles, haters of the deep-state combine of the FBICIANSA, and rabid pigs at the trough of corruption and racism.  And not only trickle down economics, but also trickle down ethics, in this case in the form of terminal corruption.  Hence the plague of YouTube racism and cop-killer videos.

You’re Fired!  Former FBI Chief Comey

Enter the deep rumblings of the Deep State.  Famed for having intervened in an attempted Richard Cheney machination during a breathless hospital visit to then Attorney General Ashcroft who lay seriously ill, while Cheney-Bush henchmen sought to secure his signature for a program of dubious legality, wearing his cloak as Ashcroft’s chief assistant, James Comey, life-long Republican, became a belated liberal hero, as did fellow Republican, Robert Mueller, then head of the FBI.  See this for the full story.    And now, a decade and some later, these two emerge from the deep bowels of the government yet again in tandem.  As FBI chief, appointed by Obama and retained by Donald Trump, Comey was pressed by his new boss to swear a certain kind of loyalty, mob-style. Declining, he was summarily fired, though in a manner in which in the arcane convolutions of government he was able to secure the naming of a special counsel to investigate Russian skullduggery during the 2016 election. The Special Counsel named was none other than Robert Mueller.  And not only that, but Comey also also did so in a manner which required Trump lackey Richard Sessions, Director of the Justice Department, to recuse himself from the investigation.    All this served well for Trump to loudly complain that he was being undercut and back-stabbed by the Deep State, of which Trump cohort Steven Bannon and his program Breitbart had long complained.

Drawing by Stephen Lack

The news of the day of late swirls with the constant word of criminality in high places – the current Manafort trial pealing the skin off the fancy-suited world of business and politics, with fantastical numbers, a litany of off-shore banking havens, and enough moral sleaze to last forever.  Or until the next, around-the-corner, trial to reveal still deeper depravity.   Or Avenatti’s latest lurid spill of The Don’s hushed-up sex-capades.

James Clapper, former head of the NSA

Legally, lying to a Congressional committee is a crime, whether under oath or not, punishable by up to five years in prison, or in some instances more.  James Clapper was head of the NSA,  (whom it turns out went to Annandale HS, Fairfax VA, 1956-60, same time I did, though I do not recall knowing him then, but my sister does), in testimony to Congress lied.  Caught at it, he recanted in a Clintonesque manner, parsing the exact meaning of “spying” etc.

John Brennan, Ex-Director of CIA

Mr Brennan, former director of the CIA, outspoken of late regarding Donald Trump -saying his comportment in Helsinki was “treasonous” – is himself in a problematic position, having also lied to Congress, just as did Clapper.  In his case regarding torture and such nice things.

And of course Mr Comey, fired director of the FBI, is also accused by some of lying, or at least fudging regarding leaks from his office.  All in all, a charming cluster of characters, all deeply enmeshed in governmental agencies which traffic in secrecy as a part of their function.  Naturally a good setting for conspiratorial actions.  So small wonder that thoughts of a Deep State tend to focus on this area, along with the military.

That this nexus of fellows engaged in the sordid arts of secrecy and executors of the dirty deeds of the US government should all re-emerge in unison, though this time wearing super-hero cloaks for some liberals, indeed raises a peculiar stench, the smell of something rotten deep in the bowels of America’s government: Yes, Virginia, there is a secret Deep State.

  And yes, it seeks to defend its institutional status and powers, just as do almost all bureaucratic institutional organizations.  In this case, these institutions (and 14 other “security” organizations under the umbrella of the Unites States Government), all seek to carry out their jobs as protectors of the corporate/business powers for which and on behalf of which that government exists.  And when by some quirk of circumstance, something or someone inimical to those interests occurs, it is their function to work together to challenge and defeat that intruding force.  And such, in the instance of Donald John Trump, is the case.

Were the Republican Party a healthy political party in American terms, it would have never allowed Trump to emerge as its nominee for President.  In a “healthy” state it would have vetted him, researched his background, and done whatever was necessary to assure he did not become their candidate.  But the Republican Party, like the rest of the society it is rooted in, is, exactly as is the Democrat Party, utterly corrupt, and has been so for some decades, steadily rotting away until it became a steaming fetid swamp of oligarchism marinated in All-American racism. The Democrats were equally corrupt, utterly owned by corporate powers, and utterly out-of-touch with what neo-liberal policies – their policies – had done to broad areas of the American public.

And as were and are the political parties of the USA, so too all its institutions are corrupt:  the Congress, the Courts, the Executive Branch, the 5th Estate, the corporate world, Wall Street.  Every. Damn. One. Of. Them.

So it is little wonder that along with all these pillars of American society that the Deep State is likewise corrupt.  Any decent working Deep State would have some time ago arranged a plausibly deniable accident, be it on the ground, Air Force One, or a berserk White House Guard, and Trump would already be fodder for further conspiracy theorists to figure out who done it.   But thus far, confronted with the Keystone Kops of the inept, obvious, utterly corrupted government of the most comical Don imaginable, the hard-men of the Deep State have thus far fumbled the ball, and the Trump gang, though snookered by their own glaring stupidity, is still standing.

So yes, Don, yes there is a Deep State, and it is certainly out to get you.  But it is just like you, and is inept and as flaccid as your butt is, unable to shift from the SOP of the Cold War to a world in which Tweets shift the market up and down and idiocy rules the White House, and few care if the President consorts with prostitutes and stuffs his government full with nepotism and cronyism.  After all, most of them are doing exactly the same things.

Meantime America burns.

Trump supporters, Florida

Painting by Stephen Lack

California forest fires seen from above the clouds

The Deep State and the Don(ald) Drawing: Stephen Lack Following the conspiracy lead of Steve Bannon and Breitbart, Donald Trump has grumbled and tweeted often about the…

[theconservativebrief]

Jon M. Chu is on a mission: “We can sugarcoat it all we want, but the moment you bring up an Asian-led movie, there’s one example to point to, and that’ll be us,” he told the Hollywood Reporter in an interview. “To be on the biggest stage with the biggest stakes, that’s what we asked for.” He’s talking, of course, about Crazy Rich Asians, the film adaptation of Singaporean author Kevin Kwan’s bestselling novel released this week in US theaters.

When Scarlett Johansson adorns Ghost In The Shell posters and Emma Stone plays an Asian character in Aloha, the release of a major all-Asian film feels like an antidote to the white-washing that Hollywood is notorious for. Constance Wu — who has been brave and unflinching in speaking out about race and representation in the industry  — plays the female lead.

The film won’t open until August 22 in Singapore, but Singaporeans are watching the hype unfold online, one glowing review after another. The film has an impressive 92 percent on Rotten Tomatoes. Chu has described the film as “more than just a movie, it’s a movement.”

But while it’s definitely significant that Hollywood’s finally producing an all-Asian film, the anticipation for this film demonstrates that representation can mean different things to different groups of people, and that there is a divergence between the needs and priorities of Asian Americans and Asians in Asia. As a Singaporean of Chinese descent, I feel that the film’s depiction of my home is startlingly flawed.

The film follows Chinese-American economics professor Rachel Chu, who travels with her boyfriend Nicholas Young back to his home in Singapore to attend his best friend’s wedding. There, she discovers that Nick comes from an obscenely rich family, and is plunged into a world of ridiculous extravagance and lavish parties.

Major Western productions tend to see Asia in very particular ways. We could be the “rising Asia,” all glittering skyscrapers and futuristic urban design, or the rustic, impoverished-yet-inspiring backdrop for slumdog millionaires. We are dumplings and kungfu, curry and tech support, wise gurus who talk in riddles for all your “eat, pray, love” needs. We are obscenely wealthy people throwing lavish parties.

But this is not what we are. A continent as massive as Asia can never be as simple as the stereotypes imposed upon us. Asians — a population of more than 4.4 billion people — are not a monolith, and our need for representation and empathy can’t be addressed by nonwhite casting.

The all-East Asian cast of Crazy Rich Asians is also a misrepresentation of Singapore at the most basic level, obscuring Malay, Indian, Eurasian, and more populations who make the country the culturally rich and unique place that it is.

Singapore is a tiny Southeast Asian country that many might have heard of, but not many know about. We don’t exist in the minds of people living overseas as a fully fledged, complex society, but as a caricature.

As a freelance journalist covering Singapore for foreign publications, I’ve heard the same stories over and over again, solidified into tropes that supposedly define us: wealth, anal-levels of micromanagement (“you guys ban chewing gum, right?”), the caning of American teenagers. There are people who think we’re in China, and many don’t realize we speak English as our first language.

In recent Western productions, Singapore has been the shiny city backdrop for action sequences like in Hitman: Agent 47, or the bizarre smoky, steamy pirate hangout on stilts like in Pirates of the Caribbean. A British television show digitally altered scenes actually shot in Singapore to make it look, according to them, “more like Singapore” — by which they meant doing things like changing the street signs from English to Chinese. None of this contributes to deeper understanding or appreciation of our lived experiences in Singapore; it only exoticizes.

As a Chinese Singaporean, I grew up enjoying the privileges of the dominant racial group. As of 2016, 76.1 percent of Singapore’s citizens claim Chinese ancestry; at no point in my life here have I felt under- or un-represented because of my race.

While Singapore has its fair share of colonial hang-ups — white people in Singapore enjoy a significant amount of privilege — Chinese Singaporeans can be confident that their interests will not only be served, but usually be dominant, in national affairs.

In fact, the matter of whether Singapore is “ready” for a non-Chinese prime minister is apparently still up for debate, quite like it was in the United States back in 2008, pre-Obama.

When it comes to representation, what I would like to see as a Singaporean is something that reflects my country and society in all our diversity and complexity, and helps audiences make connections between our experiences and theirs.

Crazy Rich Asians does nothing to improve the situation. It’s touted as a win for representation in the US because of its all-Asian cast, but the focus is specifically on characters and faces of East Asian descent, which plays into issues of racism and colorism that still exist, not only in the US, but in Asia. Ironically, in Singapore, Chu’s all-Asian boast is nothing more than a perpetuation of the existing Chinese dominance in mainstream media and pop culture.

The story of Crazy Rich Asians — and the racialization of “crazy rich” behavior, as if batshit insane extravagance doesn’t happen elsewhere — also does little to combat the othering of Singapore and Asia.

Reading the book was a strange experience; while I knew it was about my home, there was very little in it that I found recognizable, which is why I have little hope that the film will help anyone see Singapore as anything more than “kooky Asia,” stuffed with materialistic, flamboyant billionaires with bedazzled lifestyles.

Kwan, the author, and Chu, the filmmaker, are free to write and make whatever they like. It would be unrealistic , and undesirable,  to expect Singaporean writers to write only one way, because Singapore can mean so many things to so many people.

But touting Crazy Rich Asians as some sort of progressive win is false, especially in a context when there are already so few nuanced representations of Singapore and Asia in Western media. And when someone as lovely and woke as Constance Wu is saying that this narrative of the absurdly rich and privileged in a highly capitalist city-state is “a very important story to tell,” we see a divergence in the priorities of Asian-American people of color and Asians in Asia.

Singaporean motivations when demanding representation stem from the same place: a desire to be portrayed in all our complex, nuanced, contradictory glory; to recognize ourselves on screen, and for others to recognize us as the fully formed people and community that we are. This is important because it affects the way people perceive us, and, by extension, the way in which they connect or stand in solidarity with our struggles and challenges.

As it is, people outside Singapore have little knowledge of the curbing of civil and political rights, or of issues like inequality and poverty, which means Singaporeans working on such issues have difficulties finding solidarity, while foreign governments are happy to prioritize trade deals over human rights. Promoting an image of Singapore as a mega-rich hub of excess papers over the urgent struggles that people face on the ground.

Crazy Rich Asians doesn’t meet this need, no matter how nice it might be to see Asian faces in a Hollywood film.

This essay is adapted from an article on the Establishment.

Kirsten Han is a Singaporean freelance journalist and Editor-in-Chief of New Naratif, a platform for Southeast Asian journalism, research, art and community-building. She also curates We, The Citizens, a weekly email newsletter covering Singaporean politics, social justice and civil society.

First Person is Vox’s home for compelling, provocative narrative essays. Do you have a story to share? Read our submission guidelines, and pitch us at firstperson@vox.com.

Original Source -> Crazy Rich Asians is a win for Asian Americans. But it gets Singapore wrong.

via The Conservative Brief

[irenenorth]

New Post has been published on Irene North

New Post has been published on http://www.irenenorth.com/writings/2017/09/the-day-we-bought-into-the-fear/

The day we bought into the fear

At the World Trade Center memorial in New York City, roses of different colors are placed in a person’s name each year on their birthday.

In the 1980s and 1990s, whenever you went to the airport, your family and friends went with you to the gate. They would embarrass you with hugs and kisses before you began your journey down the gangway and into the plane.

The cockpit door was sometimes open. People could drop in on long flights and get a quick tour. I once watched the sun rise from the cockpit.

Then, on September 11, 2001, everything changed. We gave into the fear of an attack on our country.

On a bright, sunny morning when President George W. Bush told us “you’re either with us or you’re against us,” I knew our fate was sealed. In that moment, I became “against us.”

I did not agree with the invasion of Iraq or Afghanistan. There were no ties between Saadam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. Hussein was not allied with bin Laden. I told my husband, “If we go in, we’re never leaving.” I didn’t agree with the toppling of two countries. If we must find bin Laden, then do it with small teams of SEALS. Do it through investigation and working with local people and those in charge in Afghanistan. There was no reason to start an unending war.

IRRATIONAL DESIRES LEAD TO MORE ENEMIES

We weren’t prepared for a war in Iraq or Afghanistan. We didn’t have a proper exit strategy. We didn’t learn from other countries’ mistakes.

No invasion has ever succeeded in Afghanistan. The country is too mountainous. Invaders have never controlled the entire country all at once. The Soviet Union couldn’t conquer Afghanistan.

Some of the invaders in the history of Afghanistan include the Maurya Empire of ancient India, Alexander the Great of Macedon, Umar, an Arab Caliphate, Genghis Khan of Mongolia, Timur of Persia and Central Asia, the Mughal Empire of India, various Persian Empires, the British Empire, the Sikh Empire, the Soviet Union, and most recently a coalition force of NATO troops, the majority from the United States, which entered the country in the first-ever invocation of NATO’s Article 5 “an attack on one is an attack on all” following the September 11 attacks in the United States.

No matter the strategy, it has failed. Yet, in our arrogance, anger and desire for revenge for 9/11, we let fear control our actions. Politicians know how to stoke fear, and Americans no longer seem to have the critical thinking skills to know when they are being played.

Instead of our two minutes hate, we daily our daily dose of fear.

When I moved to Scottsbluff in 2007, a woman told me she was scared a terrorist was going to bomb Gering. I tried to calmly explain that it was unlikely such a thing would ever happen. She insisted it was extremely likely. Her husband told her so and he was a cop. He just got back from training on it. She believed the fear-mongering, which had been taking place daily for six years.

Two weeks before the 2017 total solar eclipse, a gentleman told me he feared a bombing might occur during the event. Alliance, and its tourist attraction Carhenge, would be a good target. If you have been following international politics and news over the past 40 years, you would know this is preposterous. But we cower in fear.

A propaganda poster in the New York City subway system.

PROFITING FROM FEAR

From the beginning, we allowed those who stood to make money to dictate our actions and emotions. People reassured themselves – the government had better intel.

We allowed untested full body scanner machines in our airports to make us feel safer. Michael Chertoff, former Department of Homeland Security director, pushed for the machines and made a lot of money at taxpayer expense.

Americans didn’t care. They wanted to feel safe. So we began participating in security theater, which has failed time after time to detect danger. Security theater placates fear.

Years later, the TSA still doesn’t do its job.

The series of tests were conducted by Homeland Security Red Teams who pose as passengers, setting out to beat the system.

According to officials briefed on the results of a recent Homeland Security Inspector General’s report, TSA agents failed 67 out of 70 tests, with Red Team members repeatedly able to get potential weapons through checkpoints.

In one test an undercover agent was stopped after setting off an alarm at a magnetometer, but TSA screeners failed to detect a fake explosive device that was taped to his back during a follow-on pat down.

BREEDING HATE

We still want security theater because it feels good. We decided fear is a god we can all believe in. Fear unites us. And fear dictates our policy overseas, which has led to more people hating us who want to kill us. We allowed the Taliban to regain footholds. We created Daesh as they stepped in to fill the hole we did not or could not fill.

The death count in Afghanistan is nearing 100,000.

The study, “Mortality in Iraq Associated with the 2003–2011 War and Occupation: Findings from a National Cluster Sample Survey by the University Collaborative Iraq Mortality Study” found and estimated 500,000 Iraqis died as a direct result of the conflict since the invasion. How many of those people may have been sympathetic to the United States? Do you think their families, if any of them are left, like America now?

How many Iraqi deaths will sate the American thirst for revenge in a country that had nothing to do with 9/11?

https://youtu.be/f_A77N5WKWM

OUR POLICIES ARE NOT ABOUT JUSTICE, BUT FEAR AND CONTROL

We didn’t go after the right people. Fifteen of the 19 hijackers were Saudi citizens. Saudi officials supported the attacks. The New York Post reported on Saturday, Sept. 9, 2017, a lawsuit against the Saudi government alleges Saudi Arabia funded a “dry run” for the 9/11 attack.

9/11 was a tragedy in which 2,996 people lost their lives. The truth is, you can never be prepared for terrorism. It’s designed to strike fear into you. When you cower instead of remaining calm and thinking rationally, you lose. And we lost a lot more than people that day. We lost the ability make our own decisions, to think for ourselves and to remind ourselves of Present Franklin D. Roosevelt’s first inaugural address.

So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is…fear itself — nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. In every dark hour of our national life a leadership of frankness and of vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory.

Instead of standing tall, we submitted to fear. For the past 16 years, we allowed that fear to control us. We fear that which is not like us. We are afraid of brown and black people. We are afraid of change. We are afraid of whatever those in power have decided we should be afraid of.

I don’t know Charles, given the last name, but it’s likely he is somehow related to me. Though I noticed his name first, I also noticed Renée’s name at the bottom.

THE SOCIETAL IMPACT OF FEAR

The impact on American society is overwhelming. We have wasted trillions of dollars on two futile wars. Security theater keeps everyone in line. Our racial and religious ties have divided us. We are destroying ourselves. Osama bin Laden said this was his ultimate goal.

We are continuing this policy in bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy. Allah willing, and nothing is too great for Allah.

We, alongside the mujahedeen, bled Russia for 10 years until it went bankrupt and was forced to withdraw in defeat

He also said al Qaeda found it “easy for us to provoke and bait this administration.”

All that we have to do is to send two mujahedeen to the furthest point east to raise a piece of cloth on which is written al Qaeda, in order to make generals race there to cause America to suffer human, economic and political losses without their achieving anything of note other than some benefits for their private corporations,” bin Laden said.

Al Qaeda spent $500,000 on the 9/11 attack. Our cost has been trillions of dollars and a slow destruction of the country.

It is true that this shows that al Qaeda has gained, but on the other hand it shows that the Bush administration has also gained, something that anyone who looks at the size of the contracts acquired by the shady Bush administration-linked mega-corporations, like Halliburton and its kind, will be convinced.

And it all shows that the real loser is you,” he said. “It is the American people and their economy.”

So the war went ahead, the death toll rose, the American economy bled, and Bush became embroiled in the swamps of Iraq that threaten his future

Though groups like Daesh are terrifying, they would not have flourished if we hadn’t destroyed an entire region of the world.

DISRESPECTING MEMORY

While we walk in fear, we also glorify those who died and disrespect them at the same time. There is nothing not brave about running into a burning building to save people. The men and women who gave their lives to save others were courageous. The people who died just going to work should not be propped up as heroes. Their deaths are tragedies, but their deaths have been shunted into the fear narrative. Their lives have been elevated and beaten like the drums of war so we feel like fighting is the only way to give their lives meaning. But their lives had meaning. Dying in a tragedy doesn’t take that away from them.

Visiting the World Trade Center Memorial is a somber occasion for many, but some take selfies or conduct impromptu fashion shoots. This woman and her friend made a variety of poses at the memorial.

As people wander the memorial in New York City, I’m reminded once again that, while they irrationally fear terrorism, they are also highly disrespectful. They walk the memorial taking selfies and making jokes. As much as I am hesitant to lift any victim onto a pedestal, I am angered when a solemn place of remembrance is made into tacky souvenirs and a “good place for a selfie” as one woman said in June 2017 when I visited the memorial.

There’s a lesson there we still haven’t learned. We’re still too interested in ourselves and our self-preservation to see the bigger picture. WE ARE ALREADY AS SAFE AS WE CAN BE

9/11 was perpetrated by villains with box cutters. And we have made flying as safe as possible without a need for war or security theater.

“Only two things have made flying safer: the reinforcement of cockpit doors, and the fact that passengers know now to resist hijackers,” security expert Bruce Schenier told The Atlantic in 2008.

Schneier said, and I agree, everything else is a waste of time any money.

We screen for guns and bombs, so the terrorists use box cutters. We confiscate box cutters and corkscrews, so they put explosives in their sneakers. We screen footwear, so they try to use liquids. We confiscate liquids, so they put PETN bombs in their underwear. We roll out full-body scanners, even though they wouldn’t have caught the Underwear Bomber, so they put a bomb in a printer cartridge. We ban printer cartridges over 16 ounces — the level of magical thinking here is amazing — and they’re going to do something else.

This is a stupid game, and we should stop playing it.

We should, but fear will probably continue to overwhelm rationality. It’s hard to say Daesh, the Taliban, al Qaeda or any other terrorist group has won the fight. But we sure did lose.