#in the more recent situation the victim was 16. as a 21 year old I can tell you there is such a huge gap in maturity even between a 21 y/o

[101warriors]

how many more high profile warriors content creators need to be exposed for grooming before the fanbase decides to finally make an attempt at preventing it. Minor and adult interactions should be lessened and heavily monitored full stop because clearly nobody is going to say shit if their friend is doing the grooming. absolutely fucking disgusting.

[kellygarlick]

Hey all, I have been reluctant to come forward about this due to how I have seen how statements like this have been processed in the diy community.

However, this  situation has been something that has been weighing heavy on top of my shoulders for quite some time, and recent attempts of interpersonally talking about this have been exhausting. 

In attempts to not resurface the previous victim’s tramau I will only be mentioning my own name and the person I am trying to hold accountable. 

I was in a toxic on and off relationship with Verity Larsen, we met in Billings, Montana while I was 19, and they were 23, while I was going to college out of state for a year.  

In the past, Verity had a situation in the diy community in Billings from 2020-2021 they had been called out publicly for. 

Verity was 21 years old, and best friends with a 16 year old, were giving them + their friends drugs and alchohol, and expressed contemplating being in a relationship with this minor once they turned 18. 

The age difference between this person and Verity was similar to our age gap, and I realized that I am only a year older than this groomed minor.

I also look and have an uncanny resemblance in terms of style to this person they groomed, which in this situation is somewhat relevant due to how groomers often gravitate toward victims that look similarly. 

Verity and I were in a long distance relationship for a couple months when I moved back to Colorado, but they wished to move to Denver.

At some point within that year I had moved to Denver. I offered to have them temporarily stay at my place until they could get back on their feet and move into their own place. 

They ended up staying for essentially a year, and it wasn’t until the relationship ended that they had moved.

They had physically abused me during the relationship as well, and claimed to not have recollection of this happening. Which I do not want to say is invalid, as trauma can make people block out memories and experiences, but this deeply tramatized me, and being met with someone who claimed to not remember it happening sent me into a cycle of doubting my reality on a day to day basis. 

A person who had witnessed the 2020-2021 situation with Verity who lives in colorado now had seen a show bill earlier last year with them on the bill, and had resurfaced the situation publically online, I don’t blame them for not wanting people to talk to them about it online because of how exhausting scene drama is. 

I was still in contact with Verity at this time, and they pulled out of the show to make a statement and out of fear of the interactions they could have had at the show if they had gone. 

After this, I felt guilt about having friendships with people who had heard about this in the scene. Especially after they had expressed to me wanting to have a community of people to confide in, they would bring this up a lot after I would come back from shows being inspired and so happy to share beautiful art with people I love, I got the impression that they were jealous of this, and I took a huge step back from everyone in my life.

I would like to apologize to those who I have stepped away from or ignored during the last year, and those who stepped away who knew about what was happening in this relationship.

I know it is difficult to see someone you care about hurt themselves by staying in a toxic relationship, and how confusing it is seeing it happen from the outside of things. 

We initially broke up a very long time ago, but it really wasn’t until we both initiated no contact that I started to act more like myself. I am sorry to those of you who I have not been fully present with, there was a lot more going on than how it had appeared on the outside. 

The relationship was tramautizing for the both of us, as extremely mentally ill people who were navigating a relationship before their own mental health battles. 

I definitely was not ready at the time for a relationship, and definitely projected things onto them due to being so mentally unwell. 

I realize a toxic relationship is usually not toxic due to just one party but both parties, and in this case I definitely made mistakes and didn’t communicate effectively with them.

I don’t believe that this person intended to take advantage of me, but they did. 

I do believe they are an age regressor which can be so psychologically damaging and dangerous, but especially in a small community space with horrible systems for accountability, full of young, naive artists who may not be able to sense when they are being taken advantage of. 

I don’t believe that seeing a therapist for general issues can resolve the behavior tied with age regression, a person must see a therapist who is specialized in this type of psychological profile to help aid them to move forward in terms of restorative justice. 

I do not believe that Verity intended to dodge responsibility, but when they made their statement about the 2020-2021 situation, they definitely glossed over the weight of their decisions, especially the part about considering a relationship with a minor. 

They also failed to realize they were continuing that cycle with me. 

I am making this statement to put this information out there online in the most unbiased way I can as someone who was directly impacted by it. 

I am not asking for anyone to take any specific actions due to this statement, or to believe anything in particular due to this statement. 

I am just putting this out here so that there is a paper trail of this cycle being documented online, and so that hopefully, if anyone in the future runs into the same behavior with this person, that harm can be reduced and avoided. 

Thank you for reading this, - Kelly Garlick .

[hopetofantasy]

Culture, parallels & meta - S3 E1

Previous season Prologue: Vlogs (1) - Vlogs (2)

°

Zaterdag 21:43

The time lapse already showing us a string of places that will be important later, like the dark alley, the Meir with Noor’s workplace, the university neighborhood, the Scheldt river where the boys hang out, ...

Perfect parallel: 

The second season starts Zoë’s POV with a (washing machine) door, whilst the third opens with a door to a party that Robbe attends.

Robbe glances back at Noor passing through the shot this episode, an action he repeats when he spots Sander in the second episode. - A very subtle hint to where his love life may lead.

The first one starts with two unknown LGBT+ girls kissing at a party, the last episode shows two known LGBT+ boys (Sobbe) kissing at their own party.

The aerial shot through the floor to introduce us to Robbe’s POV here and the aerial shot through the roof to say goodbye to him in the last episode.

Moyo saying “No one would do you” to Aaron in this episode, Aaron realizing “No one here wants to do me!” in the last.

Where’s Wally? Noor greeting Marie, accompanied by Jana and Britt. Max dancing with Keisha in the crowd.

How ‘meta’ of you: Newsflash, yes you are!

Nod to the OG: 

The deliberate messy POV: following everyone that we know already and then slowly settling on the Isak version in a tub.

Robbe saying Noor looks like ‘Natalie Portman’, which is what people said to the OG Emma when they flirted with her. Everyone, except Isak, that is.

Oop, there it is, the homophobia / heteronormativity: Moyo keeps pressuring Robbe into explaining what type of girl he likes. The boys laugh it off when he answers that ‘he doesn’t have a type’.

Lost in translation: Moyo mocks Noor’s Dutch accent, making his ‘g’ and ‘st’ sound harsher, while also adding ‘hoor’ at the end - a typical word used by the Dutch to emphasize a point.

Blink-and-y’ll-miss-it: Jens is playing with the weed bag. Keisha is one of the girls that Moyo mentions as Jens’ ex-girlfriend or ex-fling. Not only did Noor nót flush the toilet, but she didn’t used any toilet paper either!

°

Zaterdag 22:44

C is for culture: 

Noor rescuing Robbe on her scooter - In Belgium, you’re allowed to drive a moped or scooter once you’ve reached the age of 16. Nothing is needed if the vehicle doesn’t go above 25 km/h. If it stays between the range of 25-45 km/h and max. 50 cc, you need to pass a theoretical exam, 4 hours of driver’s ed and a practical exam to get the license. Anything other than that, has a whole new set of restrictions, types of driver’s licenses and minimum ages.  Noor and Robbe are, however, still breaking the law. As long as you’re not 18, you’re not allowed to have an extra passenger with you. Especially if they’re not wearing a helmet. (Plus they ignored a red light. Those rebels!)

“You do know that you always have to have it with you?” - The Belgian law states that everyone above age twelve, has to get an ID to identify themselves. Some might have had a Kids-ID already - for travel purposes - but that’s not mandatory. However, once you're fifteen years old, you’re obligated to carry your ID with you at all times.

Perfect parallel:

Luca being all jealous whilst staring at Noor and Robbe making out in S3, her glaring at Maud and Robbe every chance she got in the last season.

Robbe and Noor having fun on the scooter while screaming and Robbe filming their adventure in this episode. Robbe and Sander doing a similar thing, but on their bikes in a later episode.

Wink to other remakes: Robbe sporting a brown jacket. (Eliott, anyone?)

Surprise bitch, guess who: It’s Willem Chanterie, the on-set costume designer and social media production assistant!

Blink-and-y’ll-miss-it: Noor has a ‘Fuck Trump’ sticker on her helmet. Robbe says “Hey, it’s red” in a very clear Antwerp accent. 

°

Zaterdag 23:11

Hello from the outside: The garbage truck they sprayed, still drove around the city regularly. The art piece itself is named ‘#Genoeg mama' (= ‘#Enough mommy’). It blames the consumer society as toxic, making young people its victim.

Oopsie: Inside the graffiti den, Noor suddenly sports a tote bag with supplies, even though we never saw her wearing that in the previous shots.

Blink-and-y’ll-miss-it: Noor has black combat boots. The photographer is obviously Sander, in case you have missed that subtle clue.

°

Zondag 13:41

Lost in translation/Oop, there it is, the homophobia / heteronormativity: 

“Check die pekie’s”. The word ‘pekie’ is actually Amsterdam slang for ‘beautiful girl, girlfriend’. In recent years, more and more Dutch slang are making their way into the Flemish dialect, because of the Dutch rap songs gaining popularity with the youngsters.

“Vamos, flikkers”. The word ‘flikkers’ can mean ‘wussie’ as well as a derogatory term for ‘homosexual’. Again establishing the fact that the boys use a lot of homophobic or toxic words for each other.

Robbe’s clumsiness meter: +1, him tossing the bag behind Jens instead of into his hands.

Blink-and-y’ll-miss-it: There is a football right next to the skateboards.

°

Maandag 16:04

C is for culture: “The whole art school was talking about it” - 

Secondary school is divided in four sections: general, technical, art and vocational. Which section you choose can have effect on further education. In one of these sections, you pick what you want to study from your first to last year (‘directions’). That means that you have some courses purely focused on the direction and others that are obligated for everyone, regardless.

Art high schoolers can choose to go to work or study a specialization afterwards. Their coursework isn’t solely art based, there are general required courses too. That’s why some foreigners - including the Dutch - come to Belgium, since they’ll get a more rounded and higher level of art education than in their countries. ‘de!KUNSTHUMANIORA’ is the high school in Antwerp Noor goes to and is known for having students with unique styles.

Perfect parallel: 

Noor waiting outside the school for Robbe and him reacting somewhat confused here, Sander doing the same and having an instantly happy Robbe in a later episode.

Robbe having no problem kissing a girl ‘as a straight guy’ in front of the gates in this episode and scared for what might happen if he kissed a boy ‘as a gay guy’ later on. 

Blink-and-y’ll-miss-it: The insta caption underneath the art work says ‘An inspirational message on a Sunday! Just discovered this in Antwerp city today. Artist unknown... Can you remember when you last called on your mother?’ (That last sentence, oooofff, the symbolism!)

°

Dinsdag 14:57

C is for culture: 

“Yes, mini enterprises are so chill.” - Mini enterprises are often used as a tool for Economics in the fifth/sixth year. The goal of these is to ‘learn whilst doing it’. Like the name specifies, mini enterprises are actual miniature companies set up by a group of students. During the school year, they’ll try to work together on commercializing a product. All aspects of entrepreneurship are at play here: writing a business plan, holding meetings, doing bookkeeping, marketing the product, produce and sell it, ... If the enterprise idea is good or well executed, it might even win a national prize by the company making this education formula.

“What if he contacts child protection services” - Actually, those services doesn’t really exist in Belgium. There are, however, other youth organizations for these types of things, like JAC - Youth Advice Centre, CLB - Centre for Student Guidance and the Centre for Mental Healthcare.

Perfect parallel: The boys hyping Aaron up to walk over to Amber and talk to her - yet he fails in this episode, them doing the same and he succeeds (after some fails) in the last episode. 

Oop, there it is, the homophobia / heteronormativity: Jens saying “Damn, seems like someone is on his fucking period”, after Robbe snaps at him due to the difficult telephone call with his dad.

Lost in translation: Jens saying “Mijn kop staat er niet naar” (= “My head’s not standing there”) can actually mean different things: I’m not in the mood, it’s not the right time, I don't want to do it, my head’s all over the place, ... It depends on the context, on which interpretation would suit the situation the best. 

Blink-and-y’ll-miss-it: The girls are all fawning all over Britt’s cellphone, so there is a good chance that they’re discussing (pictures of) her boyfriend, Sander. Also, Jana’s braces are gone! 

°

Donderdag 17:13

Perfect parallel: Robbe stating that he can’t talk to his dad or he’ll fight and Zoë getting that, as she said a similar thing to an understanding Senne about her parents in S2. 

How ‘meta’ of you: Ah, yes, fandom ship names in SKAM. We applaud!

Oopsie: If you look really hard, you see that the body type and hair of Robbe’s dad, doesn’t correspond with the version waiting at the restaurant later on.

Wink to other remakes: This shot reminding you of a certain S3 trailer?  👀

Blink-and-y’ll-miss-it: The numerous references to Zoënne’s relationship in their room (relationship pics, Senne’s guitar). The paper Milan gifts to Robbe is the written permission by his parent to live with them, as is obligated by law.

°

Vrijdag 20:04

Perfect parallel: 

Senne pulling Zoë up after a kiss here, just like with their first kiss in S2.

Robbe pushing Milan away after thinking he wanted to kiss him at the party in S2, them hugging it out in after talking about it in S3.

Blink-and-y’ll-miss-it: Zoë and Milan making some healthy party snacks like cauliflower and cocktail sauce, cheese with tomatoes and salami squares. She pulls back the bottle of gin that Milan wants to steal. Senne also bought paprika and tortilla chips from Colruyt (a discount store).

°

Vrijdag 20:54

C is for culture: “Noor, Robbe’s girlfriend” - (Teen) dating culture is different in Belgium. Usually, if you have kissed, hung out, texted or just said/did something to show your mutual interest, you’d pretty much consider yourself in a relationship. It can go from 0 to 100 very quick. Unless there is, of course, an agreement that what you’re doing is no such thing. Also, nobody really ask you to be their gf/bf. It just implied or stated to their family or friends. 

Perfect parallel: 

A reluctant Robbe pushing himself to do stuff to Noor (playful dancing, kissing, riling her up) as far as putting his hands on her bra here. A totally different, excited Robbe not even thinking twice about doing these things to Sander, even licking his nipple during their reunion.

Noor pushing Robbe on the bed and climbing over him, whilst Robbe looks all sad in this episode. Him pushing Sander on the bed and being happy as Sander crawls over him during their reunion.

Oop, there it is, the homophobia / heteronormativity: Robbe tries to convince himself into liking heterosexual sex with Noor and fake laughs with his friends about having it.

Where’s Wally? Keisha laughing with Amber and later dancing with Marie.

Blink-and-y’ll-miss-it: Jens is talking to Senne. The decorations behind Milan saying ‘Welkom Robbe’ (= ‘Welcome Robbe’). Noor has a beautiful tattoo of a pin-up girl covered with butterflies on her lower arm.

[myheartrevealedocs]

Untouchable Ch 21: Elephant’s Memory (S3E16)

Warnings: murder, mentions of terrorism, mentions of drugs and addiction

Ch 20 | Ch 22

~ ~ ~

“I’m proud of you,” Spencer said, speaking up for the first time on their drive.

“You’re proud of me?” she asked, startled.

“Yes,” he argued. “Look at you! You’ve got a car now. Twenty-four years old, teaching two college classes and working for the FBI.”

“I’m more proud of you!” she shot back. “A full year sober! I can’t imagine how difficult it has been for you.”

“Thank you for coming with me.” Spencer sunk slightly in the passenger seat.

After the death of Ryan Phillips in front of the two of them, Spencer had been struggling with his cravings again. He hadn’t relapsed, of course, but he was plagued by nightmares and a lack of motivation. When he admitted this to Lydia, she’d suggested he look up some support meetings nearby. Tonight was going to be his first time attending the Beltway Clean Cops group.

“I’m more than happy to come along!”

The two of them sat in the back of the room, listening calmly to different people talk about their situations. Spencer had just gotten the courage to take the stage when Lydia got a text from Hotch.

Briefing in 30. Can’t get ahold of Reid. Please tell him.

Lydia dropped her head into her hands. Could it not wait just a few more moments? He had barely started speaking aloud and Lydia could see him trying to ignore the buzzing phone in his pocket.

“Hi. Uh… My name’s, uh, Spencer, and I’m uh… I don’t really know what I am.”

“Hello Spencer,” the crowd greeted.

“This is my- This is my first meeting,” he sputtered, his eyes locking with Lydia’s every few seconds. “I guess I, uh… I know I had a… a problem with Dilaudid, but… I stopped. My girlfriend helped me to stop about a year ago. I thought it was over, but recently I’ve really been… your literature uses the term ‘craving’. It started about a month ago. A- A suspect was murdered in front of me. A kid. And I thought that I could save that kid, but I couldn’t, and… Sorry.” He pulled out his phone, rejecting another call from their boss.  “I’ve seen a lot of that stuff before, but for some reason that kid’s face is really, uh… stuck in my brain. You know? It’s really- I can’t… And I want to forget… about him. And I just want to escape.”

Once again, he pulled his phone from his pocket and stepped away from the microphone, mumbling his apologies. Lydia got up and ran around to the side door to follow him out.

“I’m sorry,” she said as they met up and started walking to the car. “I didn’t want to interrupt you-”

“It’s fine,” he breezed. “Let’s just… get this over with.”

~ ~ ~

“Sorry we’re late,” Spencer announced as he and Lydia jogged into the conference room..

“Do I want to know what you two were up to?” Morgan teased.

Lydia was quick to cover Spencer’s secret for him. “You sound as if going to the movies is scandalous.”

“Movies, hm?” Rossi  joined. “Tell us what the movie was about.”

“Wouldn’t know. We didn’t get to finish it.”

Both boys gave the couple a look. Spencer started to shrink in his seat, but Lydia kept up her stance, not wanting them to push for anymore answers.

“I know it’s late,” Hotch interrupted. “I know we’re tired, but we’ve got two dead cops.”

“Alright.” JJ opened up the file in front of her and continued briefing the team, pointing to what looked to be a massive house fire displayed on the scene. “The resident, Rod Norris, was DOA. They’re still trying to ID the remains of the second victim, whom they believe is his 16-year-old daughter Jordan. From the condition of the remains, she would have had to have been inside the house, close to the source of the blast.”

“Clearly they used the bombing to set the officers up for an ambush,” Emily noted.

Spencer nodded. “It’s a well-established terrorist tactic. The first wave takes out civilians, the second wave takes out first responders.”

“The locals are thinking terrorism?” Morgan asked. “In West Bune, Texas?”

JJ nodded. “Not exactly a tier-one target, but DHS did issue a terror alert for the border states yesterday, just due to the timing and nature of the attacks.”

As the team argued about the chances of this being an actual terrorist attack, Lydia looked over her file. An explosive went off in Rod Norris’s house, and when two cops arrived on the scene, they were shot. Hotch probably wanted her working on identifying the explosive and seeing if there is any evidence to recover from the house.

Simple enough.

~ ~ ~

“The blast was localized here,” Lydia announced as she walked onto the scene. “The room was sealed off. There’s plastic and duct tape on the doors and windows.”

“Cordite,” Rossi added as he smelled something on the ground. “Gunpowder.”

Reid was looking through his file. “Yeah. They found a dozen canisters, it says.”

Rossi and Prentiss put their heads together, determining where Jordan and Rod were standing when the explosion happened. Lydia ran her fingers over the door frames. Whoever set this up wouldn’t need to clean up their evidence. There was no way she could recover anything out of the pile of ashes that used to be the Norris house.

“They didn’t care about the rest of the house,” Spencer said, more to Lydia than the others. “The whole thing’s designed to focus the blast on whoever came through that door.”

“If that’s true, something had to trigger the blast,” she reasoned.

Emily held up a charred box of cigarettes. “Rod Norris was a smoker.”

Lydia glanced at the floor where all the gunpowder had been set. Drop a hot cigarette on that? Kaboom.

“I’ve been working with you profilers long enough to know that no terrorist is going to watch Rod Norris long enough to know that he was going to enter through this door and be smoking a cigarette at a specific time,” Lydia replied. “This is too personal.”

~ ~ ~

The more they learned, the more the case reeked of personal problems.

Their unsub was a boy named Owen Savage. His father was one of the responding officers on the Norris scene. He’d staged the explosion to kill Jordan Norris’s dad and look like Jordan had died too. Then, when his father showed up, he shot him and his partner. They were pretty sure that Jordan wasn’t a part of the murders and was either a hostage or was completely unaware of the situation. She had been dating Owen for a long time, so it was likely she had agreed to leave with him, without checking in with her father.

Lydia had been talking with Garcia about the teens’ families when she saw Spencer storm away out of the corner of her eye. He had just… left.

Finishing up her conversation, she ran over to Hotch.

“Did you send Spencer away?”

“Have you seen how he’s been acting?” Hotch snapped.

She wasn’t surprised to hear that Spencer was moody. Leaving that meeting so suddenly was hard for him and he was still dealing with Ryan Phillips’s death. Working on another teen-involved case was probably not helping.

“Lydia, you two promised-”

“This isn’t a relationship thing!” she defended before he could say anything else. “He’s dealing with something else. The only reason I’m involved is because he told me about it. Please just…”

“Talk to him,” Hotch ordered. “His passive aggressive attitude is going to get him into trouble. The town’s already pissed we’re here.”

Lydia nodded, switching topics. “I heard that Officer Lett’s wife freaked out on you guys earlier. I’m sorry.”

“The police are under a lot of pressure to find who did this. They don’t need some angsty teen from the FBI telling them they’re stupid as well.”

She blinked. “He called someone stupid?”

“Talk to him,” Hotch repeated, ignoring her question.

“Yes, sir.”

~ ~ ~

“Has she calmed yet?” Lydia asked Emily.

They had been able to get in contact with Jordan Norris and tell her about what Owen had done, convincing her to run away from him and join them in the station, but she still didn’t fully trust them. It’d taken much persuasion and a lot of promises not to hurt Owen for her to give up where he was hiding. And now she was sobbing, half in fear, half in shame, in one of the private rooms in the station.

“No,” Emily replied, bluntly, on her way to get the girl another cup of water. “Did you hear from Hotch?”

Lydia nodded. “Owen wasn’t at the ranch. He left a note, I guess, about returning his mother’s necklace.”

Emily simply shrugged. “He can’t have gotten far. I’m sure the rest of the team will find him.”

She walked back to the grieving girl, who JJ was currently comforting, leaving Lydia alone in the bullpen of the station. That is, until Spencer came rushing in, brushing past her to get to their evidence boards.

“Spencer?” she called, already on his heels. “Why are you back?”

“They think he’s going to his mother’s grave,” he breathed, yanking a photo from the board and then looking around for Jordan.

“Isn’t he?” she demanded, seeing that the picture he had grabbed was the photo of Owen’s mother that he kept on his laptop. She was smiling, pointing to her necklace, which said ‘Hope’.

Hotch had assumed by Owen’s note that Owen was taking that necklace to his mother’s grave, as a way of ‘giving it back’ to her. But when Spencer interrupted Jordan and JJ’s conversation, throwing the photo in the young girl’s face, Lydia understood what he was thinking.

“He was gone when we got to the ranch. I want to save his life, but I need to ask you a question. This necklace-- he gave it to you?”

He spoke so fast, it was hard to differentiate between sentences, but Jordan took a second to process what he had said, then nodded. “I left it at the ranch.”

“He’s coming here,” Spencer said, already on his way out of the station.

Lydia jumped in front of him, already holding up a hand to stop him. “He’s going to do everything he can to get to Jordan.”

“I can’t let him do this, Lydia,” he hissed, trying to push past her. “It’s a suicide mission. I won’t let him die.”

“I know this is hard for you,” she told him, still maintaining eye contact to keep him in place. “But I can’t let you do this alone. Tell me the plan, and we walk out together.”

He glanced at the door, clearly anxious to leave before Owen got there. But his eyes were somewhat relieved to tell her what he was going to do. “Leave your gun. He wants to go down shooting. If we don’t have weapons, he has no reason to kill us. The only thing he wants more than death, is to apologize to Jordan so… I have to make it clear that that’s still an option.”

Lydia was already pulling her gun from its holster, setting it down on the desk beside her. “Okay. Let’s do this.”

He nodded, sternly, and unarmed, the two of them walked out of the station, side by side.

The sun was unbearable outside. The two of them could barely see Owen’s dark figure approaching down the block, but the shotgun across his chest was hard to miss. Lydia’s hands were already up, her palms facing outwards. Spencer followed suit as the boy saw them approaching and aimed his weapon in their direction.

“Reid!” Prentiss screamed, leaving the station just in time to watch them walk into danger. “Ambers!”

The two of them ignored her, Spencer stepping forward to speak. “Owen, we don’t have guns on us. My name is Spencer, this is Lydia, we’re with the FBI, and we’re here to help you.”

“Yeah?” he cried. “I need you to stay back.”

There were tires squealing behind them and Lydia finally glanced behind her to see a black SUV with Rossi, Morgan, and Hotch inside pull up behind them. As Spencer continued, they threw open the doors and positioned themselves behind them, guns at the ready.

“I know the only reason you joined the wrestling team was for your father. I know that he blamed you for what happened-”

“Stay back! Right where you are!”

“-I also know the only reason you killed Rod Norris and Kyle Borden was to protect Jordan. I know the harder you tried, the worse it got, and it felt like everyone just stood there watching you suffer, and not a single person even tried to help.”

“They didn’t,” Owen sobbed. “They didn’t.”

“I know you want to escape… and forget. Believe me when I say I know… I know exactly how that feels.”

Lydia, listened to him speak. This case with Owen was really hard for him. She knew that he was dealing with cravings, but the way he spoke to Owen made her think it was something more. She’d never imagined that highschool was easy for Spencer. He was only 12 at the time. But there was clearly something specific on his mind.

Lydia kept glancing back so that she could position herself between Owen and the rest of the team. Hotch was going to kill her later. She was certain of it. But she was convinced that they were more likely to shoot Owen than Owen was likely to shoot her or Spencer. And for Spencer’s sake, she’d do anything to keep Owen from dying.

“Owen, there’s so much more for you out there,” Lydia finally spoke up.

“No. No, I’m already dead.”

“You aren’t dead,” she promised. “If you die, you’re going to leave Jordan. And right now, she’s in the station begging us not to hurt you.”

“You don’t want to leave her like your mother left you,” Spencer agreed.

“Ok.” Owen’s head shook wildly, trying to keep the upper hand on the situation. “Bring her to me. Bring her outside.”

“I can’t bring her outside,” Spencer quickly told him. “But, if you put the gun down, I swear to god, I’ll take you to her. I promise, nobody will hurt you. You’ll say goodbye to her, and you’ll give her the necklace. Alright? So what do you say? Let’s put the gun down. Let’s go inside.”

Lydia could see the battle in Owen’s mind, so she added, “Owen, Jordan loves you so much. If not for your sake, come in peacefully for hers. She’s been through so much, don’t let her live with this on her conscience as well.”

Finally, he nodded, reaching underneath his overcoat and taking the strap of the shotgun off his shoulder. Pointing it away, he stepped forward and put the weapon softly on the ground.

Now that he was unarmed, Lydia stepped to the side and let the team see Owen, his arms already above his head.

“They have to cuff you now, Owen,” Lydia told him calmly, trying to maintain eye contact with him so he didn’t see all the FBI agents running towards him and freak out. Spencer moved the gun aside and stepped up next to her. “You did so good, Owen. I know this is scary, but just stay calm. I promise we’re taking you to Jordan right now.”

“You two okay?” Morgan asked as he grabbed Owen's arms and locked them behind his back.

Spencer nodded, patting the boy down and pulling a knife from his belt as well as his mother’s necklace. “We’re fine.”

Lydia turned and finally made eye contact with Hotch. A very, very pissed off Hotch.

~ ~ ~

The night had hit fast and the whole plane was quiet. Lydia leaned into Spencer’s shoulder, her mind drifting with everything that had happened on the case. As much as she had to be worried about, her mind kept coming back to the same point: despite how stressed he was, Spencer told her the plan. He let her come with him. And that said volumes about the trust between the two of them. She knew that. She could see it so clearly now.

The strong connection she felt to him in the moment, couldn’t even be broken when Hotch sat down across from the two of them, his face a state of unwavering seriousness.

“You two knowingly jeopardize your lives and the lives of others. I should fire you both.”

Reid bit down on his lip nervously. “You have to understand that this was entirely my idea, sir.”

“Ambers?” Hotch addressed. “Do you believe Reid deserves the blame for this?”

“No, sir.”

Despite his clear anger, Lydia knew that Hotch wasn’t going to fire them. In fact, she doubted they’d get much punishment at all. He was good at understanding the intentions of his team.

He looked at Spencer again. “You’re the smartest kid in the room, but you’re not the only one in that room. You pull something like this again, don’t expect lenience from me. The same goes for you, Lydia. Am I clear?”

Spencer nodded immediately, “Yes, sir,” with Lydia following suit.

“It won’t happen again.”

“Thank you,” Spencer added.

“What were you thinking?”

Lydia dropped her hand over her boyfriend’s and waited patiently for him to answer. She may have followed him into the line of fire, but in the end, it was his decision, which would have happened with or without her.

“I was thinking that that would have been the second time a kid died in front of me.”

“You’re keeping score.” Hotch shook his head in warning. “Just like Owen.”

“It was my turn to save one,” Spencer joked, without much of the humor.

“It doesn’t work like that.”

“It should.”

Lydia listened intently to their conversation. This was obviously a talk the Spence needed to have with his boss on his own. They both needed to address the death of Ryan Phillips.

“I know it’s painful when the person you identify with is the bad guy,” Hotch told him and Spencer’s eyes fell to his intertwined fingers with Lydia.

“What does that make me?”

“Good at the job.” For the first time that night, there seemed to be a hint of a smile on his face.

Lydia leaned back onto her boyfriend’s shoulder as the unit chief stood up, but he continued to speak to them as he stepped into the walkway of the jet.

“I know it’s none of my business, but when we land, I think you should go and catch the rest of that movie.”

Lydia almost stupidly asked him what he was referring to, forgetting all about the cover she had set up for them at the beginning of the case to excuse their tardiness.

“He has to know that was a lie,” Spencer mumbled into her hair.

“No doubt,” she agreed. “But I think he knows that whatever it was was important to the two of us. That’s all that really matters, right?”

“Right,” he whispered, tiredly drifting off against her side.

Tags: @kris-stuff, @wooya1224, @arthurmorrgans, @anotherr-fine-mess, @eddysocs

[letterstoleia]

Important Lessons Learned from Gabby and Brian

As an author and advocate for survivors of domestic violence, I’ve learned a lot about the predictable patterns of unhealthy relationships. After years of personal experiences, research, and outreach, I’ve learned to recognize the tell-tale signs of abuse. I am not a licensed therapist, social worker, police officer, or minister. So please understand I shared my thoughts as 3 a.m. musings. When a few people asked me to make the post public, I agreed, reluctantly. I had no idea this message would resonate with so many people. I've worked back through the original post to explain a bit better how I'm feeling. I realize not everyone will agree with me, and I respect all opinions and views. All I ask is that we engage in respectful discourse on all sides. Thank you all.

In recent days, the tragic events involving Gabby Petito and Brian Laundrie have given us a lot to learn. This case is still under investigation, and I can only make assumptions based on the textbook patterns of abuse I’ve witnessed too many times to count. I also recognize that multiple families are grieving, and I have tremendous empathy for everyone involved. However, many survivors will resonate with at least some of the following insights, and I’m hoping we can use this tragedy to shift the way we as a culture approach the complicated issue of domestic abuse.

Let’s examine 30 important lessons this couple teaches us:

1. Followers on social media saw a smiling, happy couple, full of love and wanderlust, setting out for a cross-country adventure while documenting all the joys of young life. In many cases, targets become very good at smiling through the pain.

2. When the public was shown body camera footage captured by Moab City Police officer Daniel Robbins, (who pulled Laundrie and Petito over after the 911 call on August 12), some viewers assumed Petito was suffering from mental illness and Laundrie, while nervous, was the steadier of the two.

3. Other viewers assumed both partners were equally at fault—the old “it takes two” myth that doesn’t really apply to most abusive situations.

4. Some people even assumed Petito was the abuser and Laundrie was the victim.

5. These three assumptions probably crossed everyone’s mind as a possibility (they did mine). Healthy minded people tend to give others the benefit of the doubt, especially when someone is being accused of a negative act. Also, we can all understand that mental illness is a difficult situation and can tax even the kindest most gentle of souls (and the people who love them). Unfortunately, in many cases, this thought pattern leads us to assume the victim is mentally ill or that the victim is to blame for an altercation.

6. “Victim blaming” can happen even in the worst cases of abuse because we don’t see the longitudinal story unfolding. What we don’t see is that the target has managed to keep things together until she reached her threshold, at which time we may see her crying, yelling, or breaking down emotionally. By exhibiting those behaviors, many might assume the target is “crazy,” and it’s natural for us to feel as if the more stable person is more trustworthy.

7. If we listen carefully to Laundrie’s conversation with the officers, he even laughs and says, “She’s crazy.” (17.09) Then he dismisses it as a joke. Of course, he’s already put this claim in the officers’ minds (and by the nonchalant way he says it, many might assume it’s not the first time he’s said these words.)

8. So while viewers (and officers) start wondering if perhaps the target is “crazy,” the abuser plays the part of the poor, patient partner who has to deal with this irrational person. In the video, Laundrie mentions Petito’s anxiety and her OCD, painting her as an unstable partner. (Please note: I’m not at all justifying any physical violence against either party. No one should intentionally harm any other person. Period.)

9. A typical abuser would be skilled at convincing people that he’s innocent, while in fact he’s been acting very differently behind closed doors, pushing his target to this point intentionally and feeding on her emotional break. Many abusers LOVE to see evidence that they’ve hurt their target. They LOVE to see their target in pain. For this reason, “breaking” the target is usually the goal from the start. In cases of abuse, it may take an abuser hours, weeks, months, or even years to break the target, but he won’t stop until he gets that reaction, and then he’ll point the finger and say, “See? She’s crazy. I’m just trying to keep her calm.” And then he’ll do it again. And again. And again.

10. As a result, some people will buy into that false narrative. Even the target can be brainwashed to doubt her own truth. Which may be one reason we see Petito making many excuses for Laundrie’s behavior and taking the blame for everything.

11. In contrast, we see Laundrie blaming Petito, insisting he never hit her and saying he was just trying to keep her calm. He’s charming. He comes across as the loving and loyal partner. He’s joking around with the officers and even gives one a fist bump in the end. All the while, his fiancée is at risk of being charged with domestic assault and possibly spending the night in jail.

12. Later, we’ll hear the 911 recording that (it seems) the responding officers were not fully informed of at the time: “I’d like to report a domestic dispute.” The 49 second audio recording continues as the caller says, “The gentleman was slapping the girl.” When the dispatcher asks him to confirm that the man was slapping the girl, the caller responds, “Yes, and then we stopped, they ran up and down the sidewalk, he proceeded to hit her, hopped in the car, and they drove off.”

13. But long before the 911 call was made public, many survivors could already see through the spin playing out on the video footage. They easily recognized the “red flags” because these cycles become the norm for victims of long-standing abuse. Many targets eventually become conditioned to believe everything the abuser does is her fault. Covering for the abuser, accepting all the blame, trying harder to make the abuser happy—this warped reality becomes the only truth a target knows.

14. Also, it seems clear that Petito doesn’t want her fiancé to be in any trouble. She’d rather pay the price and protect the man she loves. And because she probably believes he only acted this way because of her mood/behaviors/anxiety/OCD/job, she doesn’t want him to be blamed. This is also the norm in abusive relationships.

15. Many experienced and well-trained officers see right through this typical pattern. Others buy the cover-up story. And, sadly, because some officers are also abusers, some side with the abuser even when they know exactly what’s going on. Throughout the video, we get the sense that Officer Robbins senses there’s more to the story.

16. I credit the police in Petito’s situation, especially Officer Robbins. The four responding officers (two of whom were park rangers) remained calm, they separated the couple, they interviewed them individually, they split them up for the night, they consulted the domestic violence shelter … many would say they did everything right considering the information they had at the time.

17. I imagine the officers involved may be suffering from tremendous guilt and wondering if they could have prevented Petito’s death, but I want to give credit to the officers in this case. While it’s easy to look back and say maybe they should have handled things differently, knowing what we now know, I was impressed with how well they treated both Laundrie and Petito (and, sadly, I was thinking how rare it is to see that level of respect and professionalism in most cases of domestic violence, particularly in the South where I’ve been most involved with survivors’ stories.)

18. After Petito was reported missing, many people expressed shock in response to the Laundrie family’s refusal to cooperate early in the investigation. Petito reportedly lived with the Laundrie family for more than a year. Anyone can see that this family will do anything to protect their son, even at the cost of an innocent young woman who was a real part of their family and soon to be their daughter-in-law. While most of us can certainly understand parents wanting to protect their son, most would agree they crossed a moral line when his fiancée went missing.

19. But perhaps it goes deeper than that. Perhaps what we’re seeing is a system of enablers who not only allowed their son to abuse Petito (which may have been a factor in her reported anxiety) but also a system of gaslighters who may have always been shifting the truth to keep Petito confused and make her believe she was the problem.

20. It’s not a far stretch to assume Petito was caught in a system of abuse. And once a target is caught in that psychological web, it’s extremely difficult to see a way out. Reality becomes flipped.

21. It’s also worth noting that Petito and Laundrie had been involved in various levels of a relationship since their teens. This is also commonly observed in dysfunctional partnerships.

22. These immature relationships work beautifully when both partners grow together and mature emotionally. But when one wants to keep the other down, naïve, and under his control … and the other is growing, learning, and maturing … it doesn’t work.

23. We hear Petito tell the officer that Laundrie didn’t think she could succeed with her travel blog (3.25). It seems clear that he didn’t believe in her and that he was trying to make her doubt herself.

24. Throughout the conversation, he implies that he locked her out of the van because she wouldn’t calm down. But when we listen to the full video, it seems he was upset because they’d spent too much time at the coffee shop with her working on her website when he wanted to go hiking. This suggests that because she wasn’t in the van when he was ready to leave, he lost his temper.

25. In the moments that followed, the altercation became physical. Reportedly, Laundrie squeezed Petito’s face with his hand, cut her down verbally, and criticized her.

26. Some would argue that this escalating abuse typically persists until the target reacts emotionally and/or physically. If this case follows the norm, Laundrie may have been trying to break her spirit, intentionally.

27. Why? Again, if this case follows the typical situation, it would likely be because Petito’s focus wasn’t 100% on Laundrie. She had found this new job she enjoyed. She was succeeding at it, and it was allowing her to connect with other people. (Remember, she’d already left her job as a nutritionist to travel around the country with Laundrie.)

28. In a healthy relationship, the new job might be considered a positive opportunity for Petito. Especially considering Laundrie admits they have very little money (not even enough to afford a hotel room to prevent his fiancée from going to jail). But in an unhealthy relationship, the abuser wants the target all to himself. And when that doesn’t happen, he can become increasingly violent.

29. Petito now had this one little piece of her life that Laundrie couldn’t control, so if we’re looking at textbook patterns, perhaps her blog angered him. Perhaps he didn’t like all the attention she was getting on social media. Perhaps he punished her for it. And then a cycle developed. Even though she was doing nothing wrong by building a new career.

30. The next thing we know, we have a missing person, a recovered body, a young man on the run, and several families destroyed. Too much grief to measure. And the truth is, it will happen again tomorrow, and the next day, and the next day, until we learn to recognize and respond to abusive situations in healthier ways.

The overall takeaway?

When we see someone at her emotional end during a domestic dispute, we shouldn’t assume she’s crazy. We shouldn’t buy into the false narrative given by the abuser. We shouldn’t believe the cover-up story by the target who has been conditioned to carry all the blame and shame. And we shouldn’t assume they’re going to be okay.

Instead, we should all learn the difference between healthy and unhealthy relationships. We should learn to recognize the warning signs of abuse. We should engage in respectful, fact-based conversations about trauma bonds, abusive cycles, and emotional intelligence. We should be familiar with terms like gaslighting, hovering, love bombing, enabling, triangulating, and projecting. We should stop blaming targets and help them reclaim their truth. And we should stop repeating the age-old myths that keep targets trapped in these dangerous and all-too-often deadly cycles.

Finally, while I’ve used the most common scenario of male-on-female violence in this article, we should recognize that abuse crosses all barriers and can impact anyone regardless of gender, sexuality, ethnicity, nationality, religious affiliation, age, or socio-economic level. And we should stop assuming these situations will get better in time. Personally, I haven’t heard of one abusive relationship that became healthier. Not one. Not with therapy. Not with church. Not with prayer or forgiveness or complete surrender. When an abuser is determined to destroy his target, he will not stop until that target is erased from this world or stripped from her life. And in many cases, he’ll walk away without any consequences, often taking the target’s finances, home, vehicle, reputation, or even her children with him.

Please don’t let the next statistic be you or someone you love. For support, contact the Domestic Violence Hotline. From a safe phone, call 1-800-799-SAFE (7233) or text “START” to 88788.

[eldritchsurveys]

791.

1. What made you pick up the last book you started reading? >> I’m not sure why I’m back into my Dark Tower reread (which I’d originally started like a year-plus ago but then abandoned once I got to Wizard & Glass, predictably). Maybe it’s just that time. But god, are these books fucking long-winded (and not even for good reason, if you ask me). 2. Have you received any bad or troubling news lately? >> No. 3. When was the last time you were relieved about something? >> I’m not sure. 4. What about your life concerns you the most? >> The only major concern I have right now is whether my income is going to remain the same now that I’m part of a household, and since Social Security takes a dog’s age to fucking process anything, having to wait for months to find out is not helping. 5. Is there a common thing most people seem to do without trouble, but it scares you (talking on the phone, driving, interviews, etc)? When was the last time you had to do one of these kinds of things? >> I am horrible with phone conversation, I can’t drive, and I have no idea how I would perform in an interview because I’m generally unemployable enough that I haven’t had a chance to experience an interview. So those three examples are actually pretty good ones. I also have trouble with connecting with people even superficially, navigating relationship dynamics, managing my emotions without resorting to destructive impulses, dealing with the ups and downs of being an organic creature (this encompasses a lot of mundane shit that I’m sure most people don’t even think twice about), and properly managing sensory input.

6. Is a pen pal something you would enjoy? If so, what kinds of little things would you send your pen friends? >> I don’t know. I’m just not sure what-all I would have to say to a pen pal. 7. Describe a time when you were there for a friend? >> --- 8. When was the last time you went somewhere for the first time? >> January was the first time I went to Texas (aside from layovers in the DFW airport). 9. What is a situation that makes you feel especially confident? >> I’m not sure. 10. What was the subject of your most recent conversation? >> Can Calah and I were just talking through something I was going through. 11. Hypothetically and generally speaking, how would you go about breaking up with someone? Is there anything you would make sure to say, or perhaps not say? >> I don’t know, man. The last time I broke up with someone it was a pretty quick and vicious affair on both ends. I don’t know when, if ever, I will be in that situation again but I guarantee you it won’t be any time soon. 12. Are you more of a night person or a day person? What is it about the night/day that you favor? >> Day. I like to see the Sun (or at least experience the possibility of seeing the Sun). Also, I sleep at night, so it’s not like I see much of it... 13. What do you find particularly offensive? Would you say you’re easy or difficult to offend? >> I’m not sure what I find offensive, aside from, you know, bigotry. I guess that means I’m difficult to offend? I really just don’t have room in my head for most people’s bullshit, I’ve got my own bullshit to deal with. 14. Is there a belief you have that most others around you don’t have? Do you share this belief with others, or do you tend to keep it to yourself? Have you ever offended anyone with this belief? >> I don’t know if I have a belief that most others around me don’t have, particularly because there aren’t many other people around me in the first place. 15. Do you consider internet friendships as important as offline friendships, or do you view them differently? >> I think a friendship is a friendship, and the importance of said friendship is simply based on how committed the people involved are. 16. When was the last time you visited relatives or friends of the family? Is visiting family something you enjoy? >> --- 17. What did you do for the last holiday or event you celebrated? >> I don’t celebrate V-Day, but we did go out to an event simply because it looked fun (and it was). 18. If you’ve moved out from home, what was the scariest thing about it? What was/is your favorite thing about it? >> The scariest thing about it was that I ended up homeless and stayed that way for a long time. The best thing about it was that my life was finally my own. 19. Are there any fictional characters you like even though they’re “bad” or “evil?” What qualities draw you to a character? >> Well, yeah, those are the ones I usually gravitate towards. I just greatly appreciate a good villain. Also, the people in stories that have qualities that I relate to -- unresolved trauma, difficulty managing emotions, feelings of alienation and of being monstrous, coming off as aloof or impenetrable to others, an insatiable hunger for something, etc -- are often the “bad guys” of the story. Because, you know, gods forbid we be anything else. 20. What are your thoughts on “forgiving” murderers, rapists, attackers, etc? Do you think it’s even possible to forgive these people? >> I mean, the only person who is in the position to forgive or not forgive is the person who was wronged. It’s not up to me to forgive a murderer unless the person he murdered was a loved one of mine; it’s not up to me to forgive a rapist unless I was the raped, etc. If I was the victim of one of these crimes, then I guess I’d find out whether it was possible to forgive the attacker or not. 21. What was the last series you finished watching? Do you have any plans to begin another? >> Damn, what was the last series I finished watching. I’ve been in the middle of several shows for a long time. 22. What is one way in which you are different from a year ago? What is one way in which you are still the same? >> I’m not sure. Not enough time has passed for my hindsight to be able to knit a narrative out of it. 23. When was the last time you had to walk somewhere in the rain? How about the snow? >> It was raining when I took a walk this morning. Not heavily, though. It was actually kind of nice. 24. Are there any types of survey questions you dread or don’t like answering for whatever reason? What kinds of questions do you like best? >> Yeah, there are plenty of questions that I sigh when I encounter them, either because I’m tired of giving the same answer all the time or because I never have an answer for it in the first place. Or because it’s yet another “what is your favourite [x]” question. But I accept that as part of taking surveys. It’s never going to change, lol. Generally I just like questions that I don’t recall having answered fifteen times in the past week, it doesn’t even matter what the question is about. 25. If you could learn about anything without the stress of grades or cost, what kind of classes would you take? >> I mean, I can learn about anything without the stress of grades or cost. The Internet is a wonderful place and so is the library. 26. What was the last item of clothing you purchased? Do you wear it often? >> Two pairs of sweatpants from Old Navy. I will be wearing them often when the weather gets cooler. 27. Has anything made you feel nostalgic lately? >> Yeah, probably. 28. What was the last chore you completed? >> Uh... I don’t remember, but at some point I’m going to have to empty the dishwasher and vacuum. 29. Name a song you’ve listened to today? >> Skeksis by Strapping Young Lad. 30. Is there anything you’ve promised yourself you’ll never do again? >> Probably.

[anerdinallherglory]

Approaching Sun (23)

Author's Note: Hey guys! Summer is flying by and I am already having to start planning for the next school year and attend summer trainings. Keep me in your thoughts because I am hoping my second year of teaching will be much better than the first! Good news is that despite all of this, I am hoping to have another chapter coming your way before the end of summer. Anyway, I hope you enjoy this chapter as it focuses more on the heroine of the story!

P.S. This chapter is tightly adapted to the Naruto light novels. Read up on them here and here.

Previous Chapters: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22

Chapter 23: Separate Missions

When Sakura Haruno had been dismissed from the Kazekage's council room, she had immediately followed Kankuro to the Sunagakure hospital on the east side of the village. They had not been busy, but when Sakura had been kindly announced, the staff smiled in recognition and escorted her straight to the Children's hospital at her request.

Sakura saw several patients, but none of them had bodily injuries or illnesses to attend to; in their cases, it was their minds and mental well-being that Sakura was assessing. When meeting their first patient, a child named Isao, the head medics insisted on observing her interactions with the child despite the fact that she had modeled this process for them before. It was the first time the kunoichi had sat down with a child since the incident with her patient, Emiko, back in Konoha. It was still a fresh wound for Sakura, but because of that, she took her time examining the child in front of her.

"What's your name?" she asked him, pulling up and reviewing his chart which listed the child's background, symptoms of behavior, as well as his trauma record. There was only one pattern of concerning behavior: frequent night terror episodes. The trauma? The only thing listed was the death of the child's mother.

The child mumbled his name shyly in response, ducking his head, to which Sakura tried to give him a reassuring smile.

Sakura quickly identified all that had been done to rule out any physical ailments or causes that might be the source of the night terrors. A sleep study had been conducted in which heartrate, blood pressure, and breathing had been monitored. After a few more dead ends, the referral information said that the determining factor might be stress.

His mother's death was two years ago, during the Shinobi World War, in fact. Was the child still experiencing stress from her death or was it something more than that? Sakura would have to conduct a formal interview with him in order to figure out what exactly might be the stressor in this child's life.

Sakura began to ask him questions about his life, how old he was, how he was doing at school, who did he live with, where did he live. What she learned from these types of questions was that Isao was an 11 year old boy who lived with his father and seemed to be a fairly happy child despite his mother's passing. He was one of the top students in his class, had a close group of friends, and lived in a household with considerable means.

Sakura switched to the more specific questions in regard to his condition.

"Isao," Sakura smiled again at the young boy, "do you have any dreams during your night terrors?"

Isao looked up towards his hairline in thought for a quick second, but then returned her questions with a confident and mature, "Not that I recall."

Sakura recorded what she could and sent the child home with a promise to see him the following day.

After he departed, Sakura turned to the head medic—a man named Mako that Sakura had worked closely with before—who had remained standing close by and said, "I need to speak to the physician who referred him; there has to be more to this that I can use."

"Right away miss," Mako responded, leaving to retrieve the physician.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

After repeating the process with a few other children, Mako informed her that the most recent adolescent would be the last of their patients for a while. Sakura was then escorted to the greenhouse that she had once visited before so that she could find some helpful herbs for Isao to help him sleep. She also wanted to do a quick session for Mako and his team about what she was discovering with chakra-applied medicine.

When arriving, she quickly came up with a draught for Isao and recreated the burn solvent that she had invented in the leaf to treat the burn victims of Chino's human bombs. Sakura had always been fascinated with how well the Sunagakure hospital was able to recreate an environment such as the greenhouse for most medicinal plants that weren't native to the land.

As she wrote down the ingredients for both medicines, Kankuro walked in with a casual wave. "Came by to check on you. I just finished preparing your rooms. I'll show you where they are as soon as you are finished up here."

"Thank you Kankuro," she smiled politely, "I think I'll be here for quite some time still and I don't want you to have to wait up."

Offering him the same pen she used to write down the burn solvent's ingredients, Kankuro drew her a quick little map on the back of her paper. "It's just to the right of the hospital. Take a right here at the corner and it's the little inn next to it. The manager's name is Chie; she'll take care of you."

She bowed to him, holding the piece of paper gratefully. "Thanks again."

"I'll be off now, but I'll come again before the night is over. Let us know if you need anything else."

She assured him she'd see him later and suddenly felt bad that he felt like he needed to babysit her. She knew that he was just being a good host, much like Shikamaru did for Temari when she had stayed in the Leaf Village at one point, but Sakura still felt it was unnecessary.

After Kankuro's departure, Mako had quickly returned everyone to the subject at hand by exchanging a brief joke in regard to chakra-applied medicine. Catching the very end of it, Sakura explained, "With this medicine, maybe sunburns won't be so much of an issue here." She laughed along with the others and her insecurities left as Kankuro walked out the door.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Kankuro was true to his word and checked on her once more before the sun began to fall beneath the walls of Sunagakure. She waited until dark to make the small trek to her quarters and once again made sure that no one was following her before she entered the inn. Sakura could hear Sasuke's disapproving cluck already if someone else happened to make an appearance in the middle of the night because of her carelessness.

"Welcome," the elderly inn-keeper announced, quickly meeting her at the door, "I am so sorry dear, but all of our rooms are full."

"Oh," the pink-haired ninja exclaimed embarrassingly. There must have been some sort of mistake then. "You're not Chie? I must have the wrong inn," she told the woman, rubbing the back of her head as she looked down at the little hand-drawn map in her hands. "Can you help me find the correct one? Lord Gaara…"

"The Kazekage?!" the woman exclaimed, rushing forward and pulling the map from her hands. After a minute of observing it more closely, the inn-keeper cocked a head at her in second thought. "What is your name, miss?"

Feeling slightly awkward, Sakura smiled as politely as she could. Why was it that she was experiencing moments like this frequently at hotels?

"Haruno, Sakura," she answered plainly, almost telling the woman to forget it all together, instead. But the name sparked recognition in the woman's face, and her eyes grew wide as she began to apologize for her confusion.

"Yes, this way, ma'am," she gestured for Sakura to follow. The situation was explained to her as they walked, all while the woman wrung her hands nervously. "I only have one room for you and your teammate. He insisted that it was fine, but I would be more than happy to arrange for you to have another room miss."

Hadn't the lady just said that all the rooms were full? Sakura paused as she processed slowly what this woman was saying. Chie was explaining that there was only one room for the both of them. Her and Sasuke were going to be sharing a room? And he had said that it was FINE? Sakura's inner-self was both screaming and panicking.

Sure enough, the lady spoke true and Sakura arrived at the end of the very long hallway on the top floor, and surveyed the single, unoccupied, spacious room with two beds. "Again, I am so sorry for my mistake," the woman bowed, and Sakura waved her hands in polite dismissal.

After Chie left, Sakura shut the door and placed her back against it with an exhale. She wasn't so sure if she shouldn't follow the woman and ask for a separate room after all. What was Kankuro thinking giving them the same room? And then Sasuke agreeing to it? Sure, they had stayed together back in Tanigakure, but that was because there were strange ninja after them. Maybe that's why Sasuke agreed to this; maybe he thought this was still considered enemy territory.

Sakura laughed a little when she saw how far away Sasuke had separated the two beds from one another. She could still see the outline of where it had been hours before, just a few feet away from the companion bed. She only recognized it as Sasuke's because his clothing was neatly folded and put to the side of it; the lack of his shirtless-self wandering the room's corridors let Sakura know that he was currently out.

Walking to the opposite side of the dim room, Sakura glanced down at her own bed which was currently occupied by a tray of food and fresh clothes. In response, her stomach growled, and she quickly removed the tray, snagging a few Sunagakure's famous biscuits from it. Sakura was even more excited about the new set of clean clothes. When she and Sasuke had fallen through the time-space dimension after they were attacked, Sakura had left behind her small bag of belongings. This meant the only thing she currently possessed were the dirty clothes on her back.

She quickly washed and changed into them. The beige trousers were exactly her size and fit her like a glove down to her ankles. She was amazed at how great of a guess the staff must have made in order to find them. The simple white tunic fit her a little looser, draped low with sleeves that fell just above her elbows. Sakura tucked the front of the shirt into her pants to give herself more shape and smiled at this version of herself dressed in Sunagakure fashion. Although she preferred her own style of red and white, Sakura thought this was a decent change. To finish the look, Sakura tested out braiding back her damp hair to keep the Sand Village winds from tearing at it. She quickly untangled it once she was sure she had the process of the plait in memory.

Sakura sat cross-legged on her bed, half-tempted but far too shy to pull Sasuke's bed back over to its original spot and blame it on Chie. She'd give him the distance he so obviously wanted even if it went against her own heart's desires. Even when Sasuke was with her, sometimes it seemed he was still very far away.

After several late-night hours of watching the starry sky out the window beside her bed, Sakura realized suddenly that she was waiting on Sasuke to return. And at this very same moment, Sakura made a heartbreaking connection. His clothes had been left behind because Sasuke had left to continue his mission in the desert; Sasuke hadn't cared if they shared a room because he hadn't planned on staying in it.

Sakura recalled her words to Sasuke when she had confronted him back in Konoha about accompanying him on his journey: "I'm a Jonin, now. I have my own mission to fulfill along the way."

And then she also remembered what she had said to Gaara earlier that morning when he asked about her "separate" mission: "I am hoping to check in on Sunagakure's own mental health clinic, as well as share some of my own medical findings with your hospital's doctors, if I may. I would also like to assist in any way medically during our time here."

Yes, she had made it clear to both Sasuke and Gaara about having separate missions but having separate missions didn't mean that Sakura wanted to be… well, separated. Sakura reasoned with herself that this was impractical of her. How else was it supposed to work? But she still felt frustrated. Shouldn't he have at least came and told her he was leaving? Couldn't Sasuke have mentioned when he'd be back, so she wasn't waiting on him? Maybe that had always been her problem.

She fell asleep to the memory of her apartment, the smell of tea, and his monotoned voice telling her, "I want you to stop waiting for me, Sakura."

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Sasuke stood ankle-deep in sand and focused on his breathing. It was evening now, and the setting, burning sun was a halo of orange fire against his shadowy figure. He breathed in the heat. Inhaled. Exhaled. Once. Twice, and then again. In his mind's eye, Sasuke pictured Kaguya's desert dimension and pretended he was inhaling the heat of that domain instead. This would be Sasuke's first attempt to teleport to any dimension directly without going through the core dimension where he had taken Sakura. It was connected to all of the other dimensions and was the bridge to all of them. But this had been Sasuke's goal for some time: to bypass the core dimension all together and cut his chakra use in half and decrease the time he spent there recovering afterwards.

Summoning the chakra to his Rinnegan, Sasuke exhaled the heat in his lungs as he opened the black rift before him. Pain instantly began in his temples as he reached forward with his chakra to push beyond the core dimension. He searched for the familiar desert, feeding the dojutsu more chakra in hopes of reaching it. More. It needed more, and he grudgingly gave it. Come on, he growled internally, reaching deep into his reserves.

Just then, an image of white sand appeared on the other side of the spinning portal and Sasuke immediately lunged for it. The Uchiha dove and the hot air around him abruptly vanished as pain pulsed like lightning in the back of his skull and behind his Rinnegan. Sasuke dropped to his knees at the sudden loss of chakra that evaporated from him. He knelt in the red dirt of the core dimension and felt the sensation of a vacuum as he lost hold of the sand dimension.

"Damn it!" he cursed and slammed his fist into the ground as a memorable weakness came over him. He knelt his forehead into the soil and let go of the jutsu altogether. He focused on his breathing once more, this time just trying to get as much oxygen as this cursed, airless dimension would allow him to have.

Sasuke had been so close to reaching it, but just couldn't supply enough chakra. He wasn't sure if he would ever be able to amass the cost it would take in energy to do what Kaguya had been able to do so easily. Sasuke knew he shouldn't be disappointed since this was his first try at it. And besides, he had helped defeat the mother of chakra. If anyone could copy Kaguya's travel between dimensions, it would be him. Sasuke had to because the village depended on him to do so; he had to keep the future bright.

Sasuke frowned when he suddenly realized that he didn't have enough chakra left to return to his own dimension; he had used up too much trying to stretch the jutsu. He had thought this would happen, had even anticipated it and accepted it. But as Sasuke rolled onto his back and breathed heavily, looking towards where the portal had been milliseconds before, he felt disheartened. He wouldn't be going back to Suna to find Sakura tonight, then. Sasuke would have to recover here for a night or two before he could go back.

Despite having a talk with himself about Sakura's well-being on his journey here, Sasuke contemplated it again now. She would be fine. His pink-haired teammate was more than capable of taking care of herself; she didn't have to prove that to him anymore. Besides, Kankuro was looking out for her if not Gaara. She was busy with her own duties anyway. As long as she rested, she would be fine. Sasuke closed his eyes and let the sand-filled air brush against his face. She would be fine.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Sakura was not fine for several reasons. The first was that she had been running off of only a few hours of sleep. How was she supposed to get any of the rest she needed if the kunoichi spent the night wondering about Sasuke? Sakura had tossed half the night in anger and the other half in worry. She knew that Sasuke lived in this exact same situation for two years without her worrying about him. Maybe it had been the encounter with the ninja back in Tanigakure, that still had Sakura's nerves on edge. The two of them hadn't met their pursuers since, but Sakura was still concerned about the confrontation and had never discovered the motive behind their attack. The identities of the ninja still remained a mystery as well. Her major concern was the fact that they had meant to do Sasuke harm first by breaching his room while the Uchiha had been asleep in hers. They came to hers next, Sakura rationalized, only because Sasuke had been absent. Were they really after Sasuke, or was the entire occurrence completely random because they were foreign leaf shinobi? If they were after Sasuke, how long would it take for them to track him down while he was alone in the desert, awayfrom the village and away from her? These were the thoughts that resurfaced in Sakura's mind all night, and she only managed a little sleep because she ended up reminding herself that Sasuke was one of the strongest ninja in the world, and that if anyone was after him, he would easily handle the situation and deal with the enemy on his own.

The second reason why Sakura was not fine, was because they were unable to locate her patient, Isao. After his first appointment with her, Sakura had developed a medicine that would help Isao sleep more soundly throughout the night to help with his night terrors. When his appointment time came first thing in the morning, he didn't show. One of the staff members had walked down to his father's house and had not found anyone home. It was evening now, and Isao had still not made an appearance. Sakura finally settled with writing Isao's father a note explaining her wish to see the boy and having the same staff member take it and leave it at their house.

Despite not seeing Isao, Sakura's schedule was full. Everyone in the village expressed a desire to be seen by the pink-haired medic, either because they believed in her advanced abilities or because they wanted to be included in the rare event. Sakura used their curiosity against them and was able to quickly give them a full exam as well as create detailed medical records for the majority of Sunagakure's citizens.

When Kankuro came to check on her, Sakura embarrassingly assured him that she was more than fine despite the workload. She was in the middle of organizing these records when Kankuro reminded her to make time to see the sunset while she was here. She had briefly mentioned it to him when they had first arrived, and it seemed he still remembered their conversation.

"Oh!" she exclaimed. "Yes, I was able to catch glimpses of it yesterday. I imagine I'll have some time left to do so once I've finished up here."

Kankuro nodded in response and said, "You are doing so much here. Take time for yourself, too."

"Oh, I will!" she promised again as he exited the building, wondering why he was emphasizing this point to her. Sakura had too much on her plate tonight such as finish the records, go over what new information she learned from Isao's referral, as well as check on the patients that stayed overnight at the children's medic clinic. She even considered staying with them overnight since she assumed Sasuke wouldn't be back any time soon; she honestly didn't know how long her teammate would be away. A couple of days? Weeks? She prayed it wasn't so. Sakura rose her chin and faced her work confidently. If she had any hope whatsoever of one day loving this man and having him love her in return, then she had better get used to this. Sasuke Uchiha would return eventually.

[its8simplejulesblog]

Recently I Got a Really Sweet Comment About My Blog

That said that it was so positive and refreshing. Naturally, those words meant a lot to me and everything that everyone has been saying makes me so happy. And yet, I try really hard to make this as real as possible. I know that me constantly throwing optimism at you can probably seem a little fake at times so I wanted to take a moment to show you the other half of my personality that is the cynical and sarcastic side. Sometimes people are just annoying. Sometimes I would rather buzz my head than listen to what some people have to say. It’s naive to think that anyone can go through life happy about every. little. thing. So, I present to you: my pet peeves (dah da da dahhhhh) 

This is in no particular order, because I couldn’t possibly quantify my level of annoyance about certain things. If things are annoying, they’re annoying. There really is no hierarchy. Okay :) Let’s go 

1.) SNORING- Oh. My. God. I need as close to complete silence as possible when I sleep or my brain will explode. Any repetitive sound is my worst nightmare. Snoring, breathing, hitting things with a hammer, white noise, having sex, sneezing multiple times...NO. Every time my family goes on a cruise together or shares a hotel room I either have to be the first one to sleep, be tired enough to really knock out, or I force my parents to use their lil cepap machine things. I remember I went on a UD service trip and all 20 of us were sleeping in the same room (it was a huge room). There was one girl in particular who was one of the sweetest people I’ve ever met that snored like a revving monster truck every single night. There was one night where I got up, despite 19 other people in the room with me, and just quietly sobbed and called my mom at 2am because I really could. not. deal. I couldn’t. 

2.) People that talk really loud in public places that are supposed to be a little bit quiet-I’m talking about places like libraries and cafes that have a certain aesthetic. If I’m over here drinking my coffee and doing my Chinese homework I don’t want to be jolted to death by the reverberations of your screaming and talking about who you got high with at caramel apple phi- I don’t CARE. I think this kind of goes back to #1 where I need to be in a certain headspace to focus and when people intrude on that I instantly get offended haha. 

3.) People that don’t have basic hygiene- Really? Do I really have to remind a 21 year old male to constantly brush his teeth. Apparently. 

4.) People that use the wrong your and there- I don’t know if it’s just me, but there is something attractive about people that put in a basic effort. That’s really what this one is about. I’m definitely harsh on people about it, but you just look smarter if you know what the fuck is going on grammatically. I’m not even kidding this is a standard of mine for someone that I’ll date. 

5.) Having a Degrading Personality- If you have insecurities and you take them out on other people by making them feel and seem lesser you are quite frankly, the scum of the earth. I’ve said it once, and I’ll say it for the rest of my life. There is nothing cute and endearing and funny about it. You may earn a temporary reward like a laugh or a friend, but in the end you’ll get kicked in the ass. One prominent example is when one girl will say something to another girl like: “you’re not really talented, you’re just pretty.” SHUT UP. Just because you’re not as cute does not automatically mean you have any right to judge someone else it’s disgusting. There are so many ways to cope with insecurities and you just look so ugly if you bring other people into your issues. 

6.) People that say basic things like “Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk’ or “Yeehaw” or “Yeet”- This is me...I do this...but STILL 

7.) People that think not taking school seriously is cool 

8.) People that call you out when you leave them on read- Leave me alone 

9.) People that are cocky, rather than a healthy amount of confident 

10.) *Unpopular Opinion* When people crack their backs or fingers or..anything- I really cringe at this, I think it’s gross

11.) Ice in water- It can go in soda and lemonade and tea, but not water 

12.) Playing the victim- Ha. Ha. Need I say more? The world does not revolve around you. It does not cater to you. In everything you do, you make an impact. You are always held accountable for one thing or another OOOO I could go on and on. 

13.) Being hypocritical- Just say what you mean and mean what you say.

14.) Littering- Clearly the earth is a hot mess right now. The last thing she needs is your negligence. Thanks 

15.) Ignorance- I especially mean when people have no desire to learn more about a topic. Don’t even ACT like you can have a/debate/discussion with me if your argument is one sided. I feel like this is something they teach you in english/writing class in THIRD GRADE. You truly can’t contribute anything if you don’t even try to investigate from every angle. This goes for politics, social, religious, etc. 

16.) Pushovers- The more I grow into myself, the more I’m frustrated by people who can’t stand up for themselves. Of course this is situational, but I just mean in everyday, normal situations. Please GOD just have an opinion about things. 

17.) People who don’t use turn signals- I have ridiculous road rage..it’s pretty bad. If I don’t yell at at least one person while driving somewhere, check my temperature. 

18.) People that are always on their phones/laptops and never paying attention to you

19.) People that openly share their disgust with you about foods- I eat everything (except zucchini when it’s not in zoodle form), so just know that if you say “ewwww” or “gross” to something I’m eating I will without a doubt be sure to always eat it in front of you for the rest of my life. I especially like doing that with seafood. Seafood is my favorite kind of food (after Applebees) and everyone always makes a scene out of people that eat shellfish. I eat mussels like a mad italian grandma. Leave me in peace to enjoy what I likeeeee

20.) And finally, the killer: Instagram and Snapchat Bingo 

Please Stop With That ;)

-Julia 

[sandsthewriter]

27 things I’ve learned in 27 years.

Not that my short 27 years on this planet makes me some wise human being but I’ve learnt a few lessons and tidbits along the way as I stumbled my way through life as best as I could.

Thought I’d share them here.

Ps: Also, happy birthday to me! xD

1. The secret to everyday happiness is having an attitude of gratitude. 

2. Shift your mindset from an “I have to do this” mentality to an “I get to do this” mentality. I get to go to work, I get to have a busy day, etc. Don’t dress your opportunities as stress.

3. Cook at home 80% of the time. It’ll save you a shit load of money, allow you to expand your culinary skills, and give you more control of what you put inside of your body.

4. Take care of your body. We only get one body in this lifetime and it is what allows us to do everything we want to do in this life. So taking care of it should be our ultimate priority - so eat right, workout, find ways to manage your stress, and get enough sleep.

5. Everything you desire is on the other side of consistency. Overcoming fears, making plans, and moving towards goals you’ve set for yourself is all good but for you to see real results, do what is required every single day. Put in the work consistently. Discipline is the ultimate form of self-care.

6. Put in the effort to understand yourself as it is the one sure fire way to improve your life. Knowing what you need, what you fear, your strengths and weaknesses, how you study, how you react to stress...get to know all that about yourself and more. Then instead of trying to work against your innate traits, use them and work with them. 

7. Pessimism comes naturally to us. Sometimes it’s our default setting. We always have to work harder to stay positive but trust me it’s worth it. 

8. Not everything you think is true. Our minds can convince us of quite a lot of things. It can be way harsher and judgmental on you than even your worst frenemy. Out of the blue if it tells you that you are a terrible writer with no facts to back it up, question that thought and investigate if it is true or not. Conquer your thoughts so you may eventually conquer your life.

9. On that note, almost everything in life is a skill. If you put your mind to it and commit yourself to doing the required amount of work, every skill in life can be learned. Want to be a good writer, you can learn it. Want to be a better cook, you can learn that too. Want to be more organized? Woah! Guess what? You can learn it! And in this day and age, learning something new is just a click away. 

10. Mindset is everything. Everything begins and ends in your mind. There’s nothing you cannot change about your life if you put your mind to it. Within reason. If you decide you can, there’s a good chance you’d find a way to do it. Similarly, if you decide you can’t, you will guarantee that you won’t be able to do it. So approach life from a position of power, not defeat.

11. Stop complaining. Seriously. It serves no purpose and only brings more negative energy into your life. In most situations, you often have two options: change it or accept it. If you’re unhappy with something or a situation, change it. If you cannot change it, find a way to accept it and find peace with it. Worrying about it is pointless. Regretting the past cannot change it for it has already happened. Being anxious about the future is pointless for it’s still yet to come. Fretting about things beyond your control only distracts you from being present in the moment and enjoying your life.

   12. Feel what you need to feel and then let it go. Grief, anger, resentment, envy...whatever it is, do not dwell on it. Do not let it fester inside of you. 

13. Do not let how you feel rule you. Let it guide you, and guide it yourself but never let it control you. I used to allow how I felt on a particular day decide whether or not I went to school, or showed up for work, or whatever else. And in the end, I almost always ended up feeling guilty and shittier at the end of the day. It should be noted that I am not talking about mental health days that you just might need to recover from everything overwhelming you. But you should always pay close attention to whether you’re actually feeling terrible inside, or are you just feeling lazy. Sometimes reluctance is just laziness with a better excuse.

14. You’re not going to be at your 100% every single day. There will be fluctuations and happiness and sadness comes and goes. Just do your best to create your happiness. Just do your best to endure your sadness.

15. Be compassionate and patient with yourself. You’re doing the best you can. It’s the greatest form of kindness. 

    16. Don’t live pay check to pay check. Have financial goals and build up savings. Up until very recently (read 3 months ago) I used to spend my entire paycheck and go broke until the next one arrived. But hey! I am 27 freaking years old now and it’s way too late for me to be living that recklessly. Recording my expenses made me realize just how much money I used to waste on things I didn’t really need. Now that I have started making a realistic budget and actually sticking to it, I actually have more money to spend on things I really want to invest in. 

17. Debt is never worth it. Trust me, it is no fun having something like that hanging over you. Especially for a control freak like me, it was just a horrible experience. I ain’t going to say don’t ever get a Credit Card. Just spend wisely. Most of the things you think you desperately need are not always necessities.

18. Confidence starts inside of you. The one person you really need to impress, is yourself. 

19. But also...sometimes, even if you are not at your most confident self, you can still fake it till you make it. In other words, we all have bad days. We are allowed to have them. After all, we are human. We all have our struggles, and messes but it’s the way we carry them that sets us apart. Story time: one day, when I was at work, my best friend showed up on her way somewhere, and I was in my shittiest over-worn maxi dress. My hair was up in a messy bun that I usually put it up in when I just can’t be bothered to wash it and style it. I had red lipstick on, and flip flops. She took one look at me and said, “you look so beautiful and put together.” Trust me, I didn’t feel it but somehow my minimal effort looked passable enough. So learn to carry yourself well even when you don’t feel like it.

  20. In life, failing in some capacity is inevitable. So, fail with purpose and fail productively. Learn from your failures. Become better from those learnings. 21. Declutter your life. Clearing up your space of things helps to clear up your mind. Clearing up your life of people and commitments help you simplify your life. Live clutter free. Love and respect yourself enough to walk away from anything that is not right for you.

22. Not everything that weighs you down is yours to carry.  You can love people but you cannot “save” them. They have to save themselves.

23.  Appreciating someone else’s success or amazingness does not in anyway lessen yours. Lift each other up.

24. Be aware of your ego. Don’t let it ruin moments, relationships, and productivity.

25. Take responsibility for yourself, your choices, and the consequences of those choices. Blaming someone of something else is pretty much equivalent to giving your power away. So don’t be the victim of your life. Take your power, and own it.

26.  The purpose of life is to be alive and happy and just do the best you can. Don’t over-complicate it. Any of it. And definitely do not overthink it. There’s no grander purpose to life than to be alive.

27. The magic in life lies in everyday moments. Teach yourself to find the joy in everyday mundane things - the taste of coffee, a good song, laughing over nothing with a good friend...etc. Create your own kinda magic everyday.

[nodaisieswithoutrainsies]

Need Help With Mental Health and Getting out of an Abusive Situation

Okay so here’s my deal. My mom has abused me (mostly mentally, emotionally, and financially, but there’s been a decent amount of physical abuse too) since I was about 12 years old. I’m 21 now. I went away to college for a few years but due to some unforeseen circumstances I’ve had to move back home until Fall 2020. It’s just me and my mom. We don’t talk to extended family, I don’t have a father or siblings.

When I was 14 I was diagnosed with Bipolar II, Bipoar Depression, and GAD. When I was 18, ADHD was officially added in, and within the past month I’ve accepted my ASD diagnosis. I’ve been fully medicated for the past 7.5 year’s, and in outpatient therapy with the same wonderful therapist for that entire time. When I was 15 I voluntarily (it was my idea) put myself into a partial program for a month for suicidal ideation and depression and self harm. When I was 16 almost 17 I voluntarily (again, my idea) took myself to the ER to go into inpatient therapy in psychology ward at New York Presbyterian, but was only there for a week because the counsellors there all came to the agreement that I was in better shape than I knew and released me, but with a binder of coping mechanisms and into the care of that same therapist I still have. At this point in my life, I’m very self aware, I can take care of myself and my mental healthy by myself, and I’m extremely proud of the progress I’ve made to better myself as a person and take care of my mental health. My friends, my therapist, my boyfriend of 5 years (best friend of 8), and my godmother all agree and praise me for my progress.

My mother, as I said, has abused me. Getting worse and worse over the years (as I contrarily got better). When she’s in a good mood, she dotes on me and does everything for me and lavishly spends money on me and pines for my attention. None of which I ask her to do because.... When she’s in a bad mood, whether or not because of me (when the only reason it’s “because of me” is when I’m not feeling great and liked to be alone) she takes it out on me. Hits me, curses at me, threatens me, berates me, tells me I’ve made no progress and I’m crazy, that she’s a perfect mother, that nothing is wrong with her, she attacks me with specific hurtful insults (“that’s why he doesn’t really love you!”), and holds all of her good mood antics over my head. She’s called the police on me >10 times since I was 14. They always take me for an evaluation, I’m always let go saying the cops are crazy. This past Friday, she threatened and tried to kill me. Then lost her mind rocking back and forth on her knees. So I called and ambulance. Ended up in her freaking out and calling the cops on ME for originally trying to de-escalate what did in fact turn out to be a hostile situation. I got released, but not without all the nurses and paramedics tending to me, as well as the crisis counsellor setting me free, all giving me some support saying they believed me, giving me numbers of support places in the area to help adult abuse victims.

My therapist has a lot of interaction with my mom, as she gives out her cell phone, comes to my graduation parties, has had sessions with me and my mom, and has had us to her house before. Plus my mother frequently texts her and emails her insanities and false stories, accusations, and ramblings about me. So at this point, my therapist has diagnosed my mother with Narcossistic Personality Disorder, as well as Borderline Peraonality Disorder. My mom has briefly (~6 weeks) gone to another therapist, but that was years ago. She constantly denies she has mental health issues besides her depression (which she deals with by drinking excessively, self harming, and attacking me). She denies that therapy works (yet says it does for me). She’s manipulative of the people around her- spewing lies to police officers even when I’m calm, open about my bipolar/therapy/medication, and looking for help, spewing lies to her friends who never interaction with me so they don’t know anything except that apparently I’m the problem, and spewing lies to her sister, my aunt, the only family we talk to still, and her best friend/former girlfriend/my other parent of over 35 years. No one believes me except my therapist and friends and boyfriend. No cops, not people who “love me”, and obviously not her. She frequently tries to get me arrested or admitted to a hospital involuntarily. She has ~$16k of my money in her account that she keeps procrastinating giving me.

I recently opened my own bank accounts not attached to hers. I work, I go to school. I’m an aspiring Marine Geologist and I’d like to get my Masters and PhD. When I hopefully graduate May 2021, I will move to California to go to graduate school and make my own life. Away from her, never to speak to her again.

I don’t have much money, even once she does actually give me the money from her account. To finish my BS I need a total of ~$23k. My saved money was for school, not living expenses or car insurance or groceries etc. Hence why I moved home while I completed some prerequisites around where I live. I will move out if I absolutely have to, by my 4 cats are here, two of which are senile and sick. I don’t love my mom. I can’t at this point. I have PTSD or the similar diagnosis from the trauma and abuse. I keep denying family therapy because I’m not sure it’ll work if she doesn’t accent any responsibility or open her mind to realise IM not the problem. I have a car, which is not under my name and while I could switch it I can’t afford car insurance. I have my own furniture and stuff to furnish a place that I will be allowed to take with me when I leave.

At this point, family therapy is necessary to entertain her until I leave. I’m looking for advice, resources, anything any of you can give me to help me handle this and make my life good and achieve my ambitions. I’m a generally pretty happy person; I like to read, write poetry/prose/short stories/songs, go hiking and enjoy nature, hang with my friends, make new ones, love animals, volunteer at the humane society, act, sing, improv, be in theatre, sew, and give advice and love to my friends who need it. I’m an advocate for sexual assault victims (twice in my life), mental health, animals, climate change, women, LGBTQ+ community (bisexual and genderqueer!), and eventually for abuse victims once I get out of here. (And by this I mean I actively take strides to advocate for these causes, joining clubs and marches etc, not just saying that because I experience some of them). I’m not a bad person, I don’t think. I try my hardest to always improve, and I wish I was dealt a better hand (don’t we all?). I’m not asking for money, I could never. I’m asking for advice and resources and a community. Anything yall got for me I’d appreciate more than anything. Thank you for listening/reading, I know it was a lot. If you got this far or offer help, I’ll hit you up with a follow even though that won’t be enough to repay your kindness. Ugh sorry that sounded textbook. Idk. But thank you so much. I really appreciate your time and advice.

-Jessica (I’m from downstate NY by the way)

[bountyofbeads]

What It Took for a Fox News Psychiatrist to Finally Lose His License https://nyti.ms/2MbUGZu

What It Took for a Fox News Psychiatrist to Finally Lose His License

Keith Ablow was a popular fixture on the cable channel until 2017, and a high-profile therapist. He left a trail of vulnerable female patients who claim he abused them.

By Ginia Bellafante | Published Dec. 20, 2019 | New York Times | Posted December 21, 2019 |

Late in 2009, a 28-year-old woman not long out of graduate school found herself in a stressful job at a Bronx hospital and decided it would be useful to talk to someone. Searching online, she came across the name of a psychiatrist, Keith Ablow.

Dr. Ablow was familiar to her from his writing, both his journalism and the best-selling thrillers he turned out — “Denial,’’ “Projection,” “Compulsion,’’ “Murder Suicide.’’ She had read all of those, as well as “Psychopath,’’ a book about a psychiatrist who prods the interior lives of strangers only to kill them, baroquely obscuring the distinction between patient and victim.

The woman — who has asked to be identified only by her confirmation name, Monique — found Dr. Ablow just as his media star was rising. That year, Roger Ailes had hired him as a regular contributor on Fox News, where he would remain until 2017, speculating about the mental states of political figures and presiding over viewer segments like “Normal or Nuts?”

Dr. Ablow offered counseling in the conventional sense, but he also conducted life-coaching via email. Monique engaged with him this way at first, but after she answered various questions about her past, mentioning adolescent bouts of depression, she agreed to see Dr. Ablow in person. His busy schedule meant that she would have to go to his primary office, in Newburyport, Mass. He was impressive to her, and so Monique made the five-hour trip for her first visit.

Over the next year and a half, Monique saw Dr. Ablow two or three times a week, at the reduced rate of $350 an hour. During this time she found herself coming unwound.

Her anxiety about work did not recede. On the contrary, she felt increasingly addled and insecure, and problems that had been latent for a long time resurfaced. She began cutting herself, something she hadn’t done in years.

Monique came to believe that Dr. Ablow had not only failed to help her; he left her more damaged than she already was. For his part, Dr. Ablow would maintain that whatever boundaries she thought he violated — the frequent texts and emails, the intimate revelations about his own life — were in the service of her treatment, well within the standard of sound psychiatric care.

As Monique would discover, it would take years — and several other patients coming forward with their own stories of manipulation — for Dr. Ablow’s transgressions to be taken seriously.

The case represents a core challenge of psychological treatment. At a cultural moment in which all kinds of relationships are policed for abuses of power imbalance, psychotherapy takes place in seclusion: two people, alone in a room, with one holding extraordinary influence over the other, just as it has been since Freud. It remains a world with murky oversight, and if you are harmed, it is not obvious what can be done.

By the time Monique left his care, her new marriage had fallen apart and she had developed a dependency on Valium, Xanax and Adderall. She also said she had drained her savings of $30,000 to pay for the treatment.

Most alarming, she had become obsessively, insidiously reliant on Dr. Ablow’s affirmation, a circumstance she and her lawyer would later suspect he engineered.

On an unusually hot late-summer morning, in a coffee shop just north of the city, Monique recounted how she had come under Dr. Ablow’s thrall. When she finally disentangled, she filed a complaint with the disciplinary board in New York that oversees psychiatrists — a body that works secretly and can take years to respond to charges. In this case, when it finally completed its initial review of Dr. Ablow, it found no reason to sanction him.

As we spoke over several hours, Monique’s caution gave way to a fluid and emotional narrative. It was easy to imagine her on the other side of conversations that played out this way hundreds of times. She was, in fact, a therapist herself.

That she had this training compounded the embarrassment anyone in her situation would surely feel. Monique was reflexively skeptical about human motivation. As a child she had resisted authority. How had she landed here?

From the beginning, Dr. Ablow presented himself as an idealized caretaker more than a guide. “As if he said, ‘Let down your guard, let go of everything and completely fall on me, because I will give you everything you ever needed. And you need nothing but to trust me,’” she reflected.

This was intoxicating to Monique. Her childhood had been marked by her father’s volatility, her mother’s emotional absence, a difficult relationship with her brother. With Dr. Ablow, she found herself in the strange state of feeling both further weakened by her past and protected from it.

If therapy is the project of overcoming, Monique belatedly came to believe that Dr. Ablow urged her neither toward strength nor self-reliance. “He did make me feel beautiful and precious and special,’’ she said. “But very broken.’’

On May 15, Dr. Ablow’s license was suspended in Massachusetts after an investigation determined that his continued practice was a threat to the “health, safety and welfare” of the public. He is appealing the ruling.

This article is based on interviews with Monique and others, including her current therapist as well as legal and medical documents obtained by The Times. Dr. Ablow did not respond to attempts to speak with him directly, but his lawyer, Paul Cirel, issued a statement on his behalf, writing in an email that his client would not “breach the ethical/confidentiality standards of his profession” and comment further.

Earlier this year, Dr. Ablow referred to the claims Monique made in her legal complaint to the health department in New York as “groundless.” He has categorically denied all allegations of sexual misconduct against him that have come up in subsequent cases. And he has said, as he did with Monique, that to whatever extent he revealed personal information with patients, he did so in the effort to help them work through issues of psychological importance.

On Feb. 5 next year, a hearing will take place in Massachusetts that will ultimately determine the future status of Dr. Ablow’s medical license.

From the outset, Monique had inklings of doubt about Dr. Ablow, but she easily suppressed them. Her first meeting with him ended with a prescription for an antidepressant. Although she found it curious that he would administer drugs so quickly, she deferred to his approach.

The boundary between patient and doctor was permeable from the start. Dr. Ablow took Monique to a taping at Fox; he connected her with a literary agent when she wanted to write. On one occasion, she mentioned she was near his office with her dog. This was in Newburyport, where she still went for treatment on occasion, running up bills in local inns, in addition to seeing him in New York. She knew Dr. Ablow had expressed an interest in meeting her dog, and he briefly left a session with another patient to come outside and play with him, she said.

Their sessions had an improvisational, transgressive tone. According to her official complaint, Dr. Ablow twice wondered, for no apparent therapeutic purpose, whether Monique had genital piercings. At one point, when she was describing a conflict with her father, Dr. Ablow responded: “Why don’t you tell your father to come stick a gun in my face and see what happens.”

Money was an ongoing problem for Monique, and she eventually questioned why so much of her costly time in therapy was spent listening to Dr. Ablow talk about issues he confronted in his own life — that his sister was drawn to broken men, that his son did a lot of pacing.

These confidences nonetheless made Monique feel as though she held outsize status with Dr. Ablow. Which made it all the more painful for Monique when she felt dismissed by him — when he would arrive late for their sessions, she said, or text and email during them.

Any of these incidents might have given her pause, but it took what she regarded as an explicit act of cruelty to compel her to leave. Early on, Monique had told Dr. Ablow that she feared, above all, being physically trapped — imprisoned, taken somewhere and locked up.

Many months later, during a disagreement about something relatively minor, she said, Dr. Ablow suggested that he might have to hospitalize her. Hospitalizing a distraught psychiatric patient is not an unreasonable course in certain circumstances, but Monique was certain he was preying on her vulnerabilities.

“I couldn’t trust him after that,” Monique said.

When Keith Ablow was in medical school at Johns Hopkins University in the 1980s, after graduating from Brown, he hoped to become an ophthalmologist. It was a mentor at Hopkins who suggested psychiatry, recognizing someone profoundly curious about other people’s lives.

His ambition was evident early on. He wrote the first of his 16 books, “Medical School: Getting In, Staying In, Staying Human,’’ while he was still a student. A paperback edition featured a blurb from The New England Journal of Medicine.

In the mid-1990s, Dr. Ablow was interviewed for a book, “In Session: The Bond Between Women and Their Therapists.’’ The author, Deborah Lott, had met him at a gathering of clinicians and found him to be insightful on the subject of boundaries and transference. Ms. Lott thought of him “as one of the good guys,’’ she said recently, “an advocate for women.”

Before his emergence at Fox, Dr. Ablow was a familiar presence on daytime talk shows, where he delivered advice with a brash compassion. Ms. Lott had lost track of him until his television appearances. As a Fox commentator, she said, his persona was radically different from the one she remembered. (A spokeswoman for Fox confirmed that Dr. Ablow’s contract was not renewed in 2017 and had no further comment.)

On TV, Dr. Ablow’s habit of diagnosing political leaders, particularly President Obama, who he believed suffered from abandonment issues that made him a weak leader, sparked criticism from a profession that maintains a fierce distaste for this sort of conjecture.

In 2014, Jeffrey Lieberman, chair of the psychiatry department at Columbia University, publicly denounced Dr. Ablow, who in turn responded with a clever press statement: “I am apparently joined by my nemesis Dr. Jeffrey Lieberman in rejecting the position that psychiatrists ought not comment on public figures. Lieberman condemned me as a ‘narcissistic self-promoter’ — yet he has never interviewed me.”

In November of that same year, Ms. Lott received a circumspect email from a young woman who had read her book and had questions about Dr. Ablow’s involvement. It was Monique. She was wondering what Dr. Ablow was doing in a book about boundaries. “She had no ax to grind,” Ms. Lott recalled, “other than trying to make sense out of what had happened.’’

Two years earlier, in 2012, Monique had outlined all of her allegations against Dr. Ablow in a lengthy complaint she made with New York State’s Office of Professional Medical Conduct, the agency empowered to suspend and revoke psychiatric licenses.

In these documents, she claimed that Dr. Ablow had crossed multiple boundaries, overwhelming her with details about himself — that he had been attracted to his children’s babysitters, for instance, and that his marriage was unfulfilling.

He asked her to coffee frequently. He encouraged her to move in with a female friend of his in Manhattan when Monique separated from her husband, only to later tell her that the roommate he recommended was “nuts.” He mentioned to Monique that he wanted to send a former all-star running back for the New York Giants to her as a patient. He also suggested that she date him.

At one point, while she was still seeing Dr. Ablow for regular therapy, he offered her a job with his life-coaching business. She took it, counseling people remotely. For a few months, she was both his patient and his employee.

In the course of her efforts to establish her own practice, Dr. Ablow encouraged Monique to move to Newburyport, which would be cheaper than New York.

She almost went through with it.

Monique had recently married a man after a four-year engagement, yet her ambivalence about him persisted. Dr. Ablow knew all about this. In fact, when she emailed him on the eve of her wedding, he gave her confounding advice. In his reply, he implicitly encouraged her to go through with it, at the same time remarking that marriage itself was “absurd.”

On the day she planned to move and leave her husband behind, in January 2011, a tremendous storm hit the Northeast. She decided to stay in New York, where she continued to see Dr. Ablow for another six months.

Once she made the decision to leave Dr. Ablow, Monique met with a Manhattan lawyer, Audrey Bedolis, who has concentrated in psychotherapeutic malpractice since the early 1990s.

Ms. Bedolis knew that cases without accusations of sexual misconduct, clear physical abuse or some other singular, dramatic incident are typically hard to litigate; she and her client eventually abandoned plans for a lawsuit. But Ms. Bedolis believed that the sheer volume of Dr. Ablow’s boundary trespasses would surely result in disciplinary action from state authorities.

In the dynamic between Monique and Dr. Ablow, Ms. Bedolis saw something all too familiar. Though she knew only Monique’s side of the story, it seemed to her a clear case of exploitation that, while it did not involve sex, was just as devastating. “First he medicated her when she never thought she should be medicated,’’ Ms. Bedolis said. “Then he lured her in as the only person who could help her.”

For several years, Monique waited to hear something from the conduct office in New York. In October 2017, the office finally wrote to say that it had found “insufficient evidence’’ to bring any charges of misconduct against Dr. Ablow.

One week after the New York board wrote to Monique saying that it would not sanction him, it sent a separate letter to Dr. Ablow, stating that in her case, he had failed to render proper care and treatment and that he prescribed medications inappropriately. He was told to refrain from boundary violations.

But there was no punishment for this; his license to practice psychiatry in New York remained in good standing.

This spring, however, based on Monique’s claims and the testimonies of four other female patients, as well as several former employees of Dr. Ablow’s, the Massachusetts Board of Registration in Medicine ruled that Dr. Ablow practiced “in violation of law, regulations, and/or good and accepted medical practice.” As a result of that suspension, he consented to cease practice in New York, where a renewed investigation by the conduct office is underway.

Three of the women — like Monique, all young — told an investigator for the Massachusetts board that Dr. Ablow had become sexually involved with them during the course of their treatment. One of them said that he introduced her to sadomasochism and hit her with a belt during their encounters, exclaiming, “I own you.”

In a formal written response to the board, Dr. Ablow denied this, as well as the charges that he had been physically intimate with the other patients involved in the case.

In a statement issued in August, Dr. Ablow’s lawyer, Mr. Cirel, addressed the charges in a series of malpractice lawsuits brought against Dr. Ablow, which were settled out of court this year, as well as the allegations in the complaint to the state, writing: “We are pleased that the civil matters have been amicably resolved. Dr. Ablow can now focus his attention and resources on overturning the Board of Medicine’s order of temporary suspension, so that he can restore his medical license and resume helping patients into the future, as he has countless times in the past.”

Last winter, before the suits were settled, Dr. Ablow appeared on a Boston-area news show, where he addressed them and claimed to be a target of cancel culture. “A male, a public person and a Trump supporter,” Dr. Ablow said in the interview. “So am I surprised? Yeah. But shocked? No.”

In his rebuttal to the Massachusetts board, Dr. Ablow said that one of his accusers had a history of falsely accusing men of sexual misbehavior and that she had essentially confused what happened between them with the actions of a recurring character in his novels.

The documents filed in conjunction with Dr. Ablow’s suspension reveal something else as well — that in three separate instances in which his medical license came up for renewal in Massachusetts, between 2013 and 2017, he failed to notify the state that he was under investigation in New York. During the renewal process, an applicant is asked specifically if he or she is under investigation in a different state. Dr. Ablow said that he wasn’t.

After her time with Dr. Ablow, Monique was apprehensive about trusting a new therapist. Eventually she returned to the psychoanalyst she saw during her first year of graduate school, Robert Katz. Recently, she gave permission to Dr. Katz to speak about her experience with Dr. Ablow.

Monique entered treatment with him shaken by what had happened to her under Dr. Ablow’s care, he said. Dr. Katz viewed the boundary violations she described as a means of grooming her for a sexual relationship.

Of everything she brought up, Dr. Katz added, one detail stuck out most in his mind: that Dr. Ablow had suggested to Monique that she become an escort to earn the extra money she needed. (Dr. Ablow has denied ever saying this, and denied it again when another patient made the same claim.)

In recent years Monique has settled into a successful private practice (this is why she insisted on anonymity in exchange for participating in this article).

Still, even now, after all she has come to understand, she finds herself occasionally missing the connection she had with Dr. Ablow, longing again to experience how much she imagined she meant to him.

When a psychiatrist, psychologist or social worker is barred from practicing, it does not necessarily mean that they are prevented from dispensing advice, in an office, for profit. Life-coaching is a career open to almost anyone; requiring no credentials, it is largely unregulated.

After the suspension of his license, Dr. Ablow repositioned himself. The Ablow Center for Mind and Soul in Newburyport identifies Dr. Ablow on its website as someone who “practiced psychiatry for over 25 years before developing his own life-coaching, mentoring and spiritual counseling system.” Over the summer, he took courses in pastoral counseling at Liberty University, the evangelical Christian college in Lynchburg, Va.

The Ablow Center is expanding its services, including free therapy for veterans once a month. It also announced an essay contest for high-school and college students considering a career in counseling.

Beyond that, visitors to the center’s website can find regular blog posts from Dr. Ablow, like a recent entry with the headline, “Why a Depression and Anxiety Consultant Could Be the Key to Recovering.”

For anyone “still’’ feeling anxious or low, Dr. Ablow had some wisdom: “It may have nothing to do with you,” he wrote, “and everything to do with the treatments being offered to you.”

______

Ginia Bellafante has served as a reporter, critic and, since 2011, as the Big City columnist. She began her career at The Times as a fashion critic, and has also been a television critic. She previously worked at Time magazine. @GiniaNYT

[hymn2000]

Chiquitita - MCU AU fanfic - C26

Story summary: Something strange is happening. Someone from space has made their way to Earth, armed with a strange weapon. Targeting teenagers, their ray gun, when fired, turns the victim into a toddler. The Avengers set out to stop this, and find a way to reverse the effects. However, they don’t all come out of the battle unscathed.

Previous chapters: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22   23 24  25

Part of my Frostiron and Spiderson series.

Warnings/themes: de-aging, family stuff, corporal punishment (early chapters only), mental health stuff, hurt/comfort, hospital/medical stuff

Chapter 26 - Change Your Mind 

-

Tony tried to act like nothing was wrong when he was around Peter. He tried not to think about the reversal too much. He didn’t speak to Loki about it. In fact, he didn’t really speak to Loki about anything. It was easier that way.

-

Li Allen had been given an overview of the situation by Tony, so she had some idea of what to expect on her visit. As usual, she was invited up to the living room and offered a drink. Little Peter ran to her for a hug, which she happily supplied.

“It’s you again!” Peter giggled, snuggling into her.

“It’s me again!” Li said. “How are you today, Peter?”

“I’m building a castle for my dinosaurs!” he wriggled out of her arms and went and grabbed a box. “You can play with these!”

“Thank you very much, darling” Li smiled. “I love Stickle Bricks”

Peter grinned and went back to his game, stacking blocks and positioning his dinosaurs. 

“You know, for the first few years of being a social worker, every time I was taking a child to their first foster carer, I bought them Stickle Bricks” she said, opening the box. 

“Stickle Bricks are great” Tony said. “Some of those might be a bit chewed up: Peter likes biting them”

“I was the same when I was little”

“Me too” Tony said. 

“So, Peter still seems to be doing well. Has there been any problems with him since the last time we saw each other?”

“Not really. He was poorly for a few days recently, but that’s all really. He’s got some little cuts and stuff from being so rough and tumble, but nothing serious. Just little kiddie cut knees and scraped elbows” Tony said.

“He’s absolutely fine” Loki said. “Happy and healthy. No problems to speak of”

“The only problem” Tony said. “Is that we had the perfect change to be the first to reverse the effects of Kindsprengen’s gun, and Loki stopped it from happening”

“Peter was terrified when Thor pulled that gun on him” Loki said. “We went through this; there’s no reason to put him through that level of fear, even just for a few seconds. He’s happy, he’s healthy, he’s got a good life. We don’t need to zap him with that bloody reversal gun. Leave him alone”

“We can’t leave him like this! No one had the right to turn him into a toddler, and we haven’t got the right to keep him as one! He deserves to have his life back!”

“This is his life!”

“He needs to be turned back” Tony retorted. “He needs to be his old self again! He needs to be back to swimming and going to school and seeing his friends and helping in the lab and-”

“No, he doesn’t!” Loki snapped. “He’s better this way! He’s happy and healthy and he’s got nothing but good memories! He’s much better having a life of playing games and finger painting and colouring in and getting excited about the ducks at the park and the offer of a Happy Meal than-”

“He can still do all of that stuff as a teenager, if he wants to! How many times do I have to say it?: we didn’t adopt a toddler! Our son has always been our teenage son, until the accident with that flippin’ gun. He was turned into a toddler by accident. We can reverse that accident and make things right again!”

“Daddy’s are fighting...” Peter frowned.

“We’re not fighting, chick” Loki said. “Just ignore us. Daddy is being silly”

“I’m being silly? I’M being silly? Let me tell you something, Loki Stark! I-”

“Can I make a suggestion?” Li interrupted. “I think Peter might be ready for a nap at this time”

Tony checked his watch. “Probably. Peter? Peter, darling, do you wanna go for a nap?”

“Can I take my dinosaurs with me?”

“You can take two”

Peter grabbed his favourite two dinosaurs in one hand, and his rocket in the other. Tony picked him up and kissed him on the cheek.

“Let’s put you down for a nap, sweetheart”

-

Tony lay Peter down on the futon in the back room, propping a pillow up behind him. 

“There you go. Put your little dinos beside you, cuddle up with your rocket, and settle down” Tony said, tucking him up in his little fleecy blanket. “Sleep tight, bambino”

“Ok” Peter yawned. “Nap time...”

“Yeah, nap time” Tony kissed him on the forehead. “Good boy”

-

With Peter safely out of the way, Tony and Loki could talk with Li without worrying about upsetting the toddler. Li listened to what they both had to say, staying quiet, largely because Tony and Loki were arguing too furiously for her to get a word in edgeways. 

“If I can interject” Li said eventually. “This shouting is getting you nowhere. You both keep repeating the same points over and over, and I think it’s plain to see what the two of you want”

Loki and Tony shut up, breathing quite heavily. They turned their heads away from each other.

“I know this is difficult” Li said. “It’s been a strange situation right from the start. It was dreadful that Peter ended up in the firing line. It should never have happened to any of these children. They might not have been hurt, but they were still attacked. They had their lives taken away from them, albeit temporarily. But now, well, the other worlds up there have done their bit, and there’s a reversal. As of this morning, the rest of these children have all been put back to normal. Peter’s the only one who hasn’t”

“I don’t care about those other children” Loki said. “I care about Peter. I want what’s best for him”

“Oh, and this is what’s best for him?” Tony said. 

“You want what’s best for him too, Tony” Li said. “Both of you have Peter’s best interests at heart. But your ideas of what is best for him are different”

“Who do you agree with, Li?” Tony asked. “I know you’re supposed to be impartial, but we’ve known each other long enough. Just tell us what you think we should do”

“Peter never should have been turned into a teenager. However happy he is now, it doesn’t change that fact. Over the time that I’ve known Peter, he has got better, much, much better. He’s happy in his regular life. He deserves to go back to that” Li paused for a moment. “I think you need to use the reversal on him. Give him his life back”

“Thank you! See, Loki, you’re the only person who thinks we shouldn’t turn him back into a teenager. You’re outnumbered here!”

“He’s my son!” Loki snapped. “Only me and you have a say in this! I want my son to stay as he is”

“Well, I want him to go back to the way he was before this whole Kindsprengen nightmare happened! The way things should be!”

“Well I won’t let you! I’m not having you terrifying him for the sake of something barely worth doing! I’m done! Thor won’t dare come near me or my son with that bloody ray gun” Loki stood up. “Good day to you”

Tony growled in irritation as Loki stormed out. “He’s bloody impossible! What am I supposed to do?!”

“I don’t think there’s anything you can do. Loki’s not going to let anyone bring the reversal gun near Peter in a hurry” Li said. “Listen, between you and me, there’s already been talks of interviews and potentially documentaries with some of Kindsprengen’s victims now that they’re their normal ages again. Maybe keeping an eye on that would be a good idea. Loki might feel better about it if he sees what it’s like for them to be returned to their usual age”

“Maybe... But what am I supposed to do here? Just carry on like we’re not fighting over this?”

“Maybe. You don’t want to start a major conflict where little Peter is going to get caught up in the middle of it. At the end of the day, this argument is between you and Loki. Little Peter hasn’t done anything wrong, and he doesn’t know what’s going on in regards to this situation. You’ll work this out eventually. Can I ask you something?”

“If you like”

“How do you think the press would react if they knew about this?”

Tony sucked his breath. “I don’t think they’d be happy. I can’t be doing with all that kinda stuff right now. I just want my son back the way he should be. I can’t let Loki get in the way of that, no matter how much I love him”

“Give him time. He’ll have to come round at some point. He may not like it, but he’ll learn to accept it” Li said gently. “He’ll have to”

-

Tony pushed down all of his thoughts and feelings about the reversal and tried to carry on as normal. Or at least carry on how things were before the reversal was ready. 

They stayed in the house. Tony didn’t want to go out, and he distracted Peter with enough indoor activities that he didn’t whine to go out, and Loki seemed happy enough to stay in too. 

-

Two days after Li Allen’s visit, Loki went out to Tony’s garden balcony. Tony and Peter were sat by the water feature. Tony was letting Peter play with a couple of his little plastic boats on the water. Peter was enjoying playing with the boats, especially when they drifted under the stream of water and spun round in circles. 

“So this is where you got to” Loki said gently, going over and sitting down on the swinging bench.

“Well, it was quite warm inside. Peter wanted to play out here, didn’t you, honey?” 

“I like the water thingy!” Peter grinned. “I like our garden!”

“I hope you’re not getting water all over yourself” Loki said.

“Daddy said it’s ok, cos I’ve got this on!” Peter said, pointing at his dungarees. 

“I see” Loki said. “Have you had your lunch?”

Peter nodded. “We had bagels!”

“How nice”

“Has your brother been in touch?” Tony asked.

“Why do you ask?”

“You know why”

Loki sighed. “I thought we weren’t going to talk about that any more”

Tony picked up one of Peter’s rubber ducks and handed it to the toddler. Peter took it and set it down on one of his little plastic boats.

“He’s a sailor!” Peter giggled, grinning up at Tony. 

Tony smiled at him, and turned back to Loki. “Clint phoned me today”

“I see” Loki said.

“He said you’ve been talking a lot. He wants to come over later”

“I see. What did you say?”

“I said he could come over later” Tony said. “He’ll be here around four”

“Good. Well. It’s nearly two. Are you going to put Peter down for a nap?”

“Well... He’s in the middle of a game. I don’t think he’s very tired this afternoon”

Loki looked at Peter. “Peter, darling? Nap time”

“I’m not tired!” Peter pouted. “I wanna keep playing!”

“You’ll be grumpy later on if you don’t have a nap. Come along now. You don’t want to fall asleep while uncle Clint is here later, do you?”

Peter looked at Tony. “Do I have to?”

Tony sucked his breath. “Well...”

“Peter, now, please” Loki said, standing up and holding a hand out to him. 

“I don’t want to!”

“Peter, now!”

Peter whined and stood up, growling. He scowled and reluctantly held his hand up for Loki to take.

“Good boy” Loki said. “Come along, darling”

Tony sighed, but didn’t stop them from wandering off. He knelt down and took Peter’s toys out of the water feature. He set them down on the garden table, frowning slightly. He didn’t have the energy to argue with Loki right now. Clint had said they’d talked a lot over the last few months, and that they were pretty much friends by now. Maybe he’d be able to talk some sense into him. He certainly hoped so.

-

Tony accidentally fell asleep for a while. Once he woke up, he went to find Loki. He found him in the living room. Clint was with him, having a pretend tea party with Peter. 

“Oh, hey Tony” Clint said. “Good to see you”

“Good to see you too” Tony said. “Sorry, I fell asleep”

“Daddy, daddy! Wanna join my tea party?”

“Sure, kiddo” Tony said, sitting down next to Loki.

Peter poured Tony a pretend cup of tea and handed the metal cup and saucer to him.

“Thanks, darling” Tony said, taking it and pretending to take a sip. “Delicious”

Peter smiled happily and started ‘slicing’ a wooden cake - whose slices were held together with velcro - with a wooden toy knife.

“There’s been some interesting stuff on the news lately” Clint said. “About Kindsprengen’s kids”

“Yeah, we watched some interviews and read some articles” Tony said. 

“We’ve had the memory question answered anyway” Clint said. “Turns out they do retain the toddler memories. Kinda weird, right?”

“Kinda. It’s all weird, isn’t it? One of those kids said being turned back felt like fainting and coming round again”

“Yeah, I saw that. One of the others said it just felt like blinking hard”

“Do we really need to discuss this in front of Peter?” Loki said.

“He doesn’t know what’s going on” Clint said. “Hey Peter, can I get a top up?”

“Yep” Peter picked up the tin teapot. “Do you want cake?”

“Sure, if you’re offering” Clint said.

Peter put slices of the wooden cake on little plates and handed them round, humming happily to himself.

“Is he singing the original Pingu theme?” Clint asked.

“Yes, he is” Loki said. “We’ve been watching a lot of Pingu, haven’t we, chick?”

“Yep!” Peter said. “I like the seal! The fish look nice, but real fish is yuck”

Clint laughed slightly. “I guess you’re not having fish for tea tonight then?”

Peter wrinkled his nose and shook his head. “Yuck”

Tony ruffled the boys hair. “We’ll have a little think about tea”

“No, you keep choosing unhealthy meals” Loki said. “I’ll decide about tonight”

“Ok, ok, how about I choose something healthy? Could just do a pasta bake and a salad?”

“That sounds ok...” Loki said. 

“Salad is boring!” Peter said, wrinkling his nose. “I want chicken nuggets!”

“You had chicken nuggets last night!” Tony said.

“I WANT CHICKEN NUGGETS!”

“Hey, keep your voice down!” Loki said. “You’re not having chicken nuggets”

Peter sighed and shook his head, raising his tea cup to his lips and taking a pretend sip. The grown ups snickered, amused by his serious expression. He was a funny kid.

-

Once Peter was in bed, Clint could talk with Loki and Tony properly. He’d talked to both of them over the phone, but they hadn’t been too clear over what was going on. 

“So, why is Peter still a toddler?” he asked.

There was a brief silence. Tony looked at Loki. 

“What?”

“It’s your fault he’s still a toddler”

“Oh for gods sake” Loki sighed.

“It is though!” Tony turned to Clint. “Loki got in the way when Thor was about the change Peter back, and he hasn’t let us try again since”

“Thor absolutely terrified him!” Loki snapped. “He made him absolutely howl. It wasn’t fair. Besides, Peter’s fine the way he is. There’s no reason to turn him back”

“Woah, what? Loki, I know you’ve managed to enjoy having a toddler, but that’s no reason to keep him like this!” Clint said. “Don’t you have things you need to get on with, things that depend on having him turned back to normal?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about”

“This isn’t gonna be the only time you have a toddler. You could change wards at the hospital, and then there’s always the IVF baby you’re gonna have. That’ll grow into a toddler. You can’t just keep Peter as a toddler forever”

“Peter’s happy the way he is” Loki said. “He deserves the best life we can give him, and this is the best life for him, no matter what you say”

“Well, no matter what you say, he doesn’t deserve to be confined to a life of toddlerness. You’ve gotta change him back. That was the way it was always gonna be”

“I can’t do that” Loki said. “I just can’t”

“Loki, yo-”

“What do you mean, you can’t?” Clint interrupted.

“I can’t put him back the way he was. It’s not fair”

“Isn’t it?”

“Of course not! I just... The way teenage Peter is...”

“He’s ok!” Tony said. “We have to give him back his life!”

“What life?! You know what he’s like! He’s so mixed up and poorly as a teenager. You know that”

“So? He’s so much better than he used to be! We all know that! You know that, don’t you, Clint?”

“Well, yeah” Clint said. “Loki, you’ve gotta do what’s right”

“He’s my son. I just want him to be happy”

“And he can be happy! He’s happy as a teenager, he is. You need to start seeing this clearly” Tony said.

“I am seeing this clearly! Tony, you know what he’s like. You know we’ve lost count of the amount of times we’ve watched him break down. You know what it’s like to hold him in your arms and just pray, to anyone or anything, that he’ll stop crying, that something you do will calm him down. He can’t even speak, Tony. When he’s not at home, he just... freezes. He doesn’t speak at school. He can’t always speak at your parties. He’s always so nervous and scared and uncertain. He’s got PTSD too. Both of you know that! He still has nightmares so bad he wakes up screaming” Loki said, blinking hard to dry the tears in his eyes. “Clint, your kids aren’t the same as Peter. Your kids are healthy, aren’t they? They’re happy and they’re healthy. Aren’t they?”

Clint had to nod. “Yeah, they’re happy and healthy”

“What if they were like big Peter? How would you feel if they went through everything Peter’s been through? If they were as sick as him? How would that make you feel?”

“Loki, you can’t ask that kinda thing”

“How would you feel, Clint?”

Clint sighed. “I’d feel guilty that I couldn’t protect them from it. I’d be devastated to see them hurt, but I’d be there to help them through. The way you two have been with Peter”

“Imagine if your children were like big Peter” Loki said. “And then imagine something happened which made them forget it all. Imagine that all of that hurt just melted away and stopped affecting them. All of the tears, the panic attacks, the nightmares, it all just, disappeared. And you were left with a beautiful, happy, healthy child, untainted by that horrible life. You just have a happy kid. A beautifully, happy child. Having a good life. Imagine something like that happening. Can you honestly say that you would look at your fixed, happy child, and snatch it away from them in favour of giving them back their old life?”

For a while there was silence. All three men could hear their pulse pounding in their ears. The cuckoo clock sounded the hour. Clint waited until the clock went quiet again before opening his mouth.

“I remember coming round once not long after Peter lost his aunt. And he was in a really bad way. Tony, you were holding him like a baby, cradling him, and he was absolutely bawling. He was clinging to you so desperately. You could hear the pain in his cries. His hair was all sticking to his face with sweat, he was shaking, he was just... I know how sick that boy was after the accident. I know all of that. I saw bits of it, and I heard a hell of a lot more” Clint said. “But you know what else? I know how much better he’s got. He’s so much closer to what he was before that accident than we expected, and-”

“But he-”

“I’m not finished” Clint said sharply. “Just think about what he was like the night we all got together to talk about taking down Kindsprengen. Think about the night before that mission, when he was getting excited about seeing us, and sorting out that pizza order and making us laugh and helping out and stuff. He’s a happy kid. He’s been through stuff, but haven’t all of us? You two definitely have. Would you give up the life you’ve built together?”

Loki turned his head away. “We’re not talking about us”

“We kinda are. Listen, you’re a family, all three of you. You’ve been through so much together, built everything up together. You’ve done well with the toddler, everyone can see that. You’ve done well, and yeah, you’ve managed to enjoy it and look on the bright side while you were waiting for Thor and his people in space to sort the reversal. Now you’ve got the reversal... Loki?” Clint waited for Loki to look at him. “It’s time to give Peter his life back”

*

[essiefreds]

This one’s wild. 

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10, Part 11, Part 12, Part 13, Part 14, Part 15, Part 16, Part 17, Part 18,  Part 19, Part 20, Part 21, Part 22

Word Count: 3125

Tagged: @hotemotionalmess

Almost the minute you walked into headquarters the following day, after a night of restless sleep filled with dreams that you were positive had been nightmares, but that you could not describe in detail, Director Fury intercepted you. 

“What have you learned?” he asked, looking and sounding patient, although his question made you wonder if he was really willing to be so. 

“Uh… probably what you already have hundreds of files on,” you replied, wanting to step around him, but not wanting to risk it. “I just had him tell me about himself." 

"You ate dinner with him.”

“Yes,” you confirmed. “I think he’s been craving human interaction, but he hasn’t been able to form trust with anyone enough to ask them to spend time with him.” You lifted your shoulders. “I didn’t exactly give him a choice yesterday, but I think I must’ve convinced him I’m trustworthy, because he asked me to eat with him.”

Also, no one’s called it ‘had dinner with him’. Why is that? Is it because 'had dinner with him’ makes it sound like a date, or something? Maybe. No one’s comfortable with the idea of the super soldier dating when he’s barely ventured out of his apartment, apparently.

Director Fury did not relax, but he did say, “It’s a start,” so you supposed that was as close as you were going to get to approval. “What are your plans for today?" 

"I’m going to give him some breathing space,” you responded, gratefully moving around Fury as he stepped out of the way, but walked with you towards where you’d established a space for yourself in one of the many sectors of SHIELD’s headquarters. “I don’t want to overwhelm him with my presence, however accepting of it he seems to be.” You paused. “Does he have a way of getting in contact with people down on these levels?”

“Of course,” Fury said. “Why?" 

You lifted your shoulders. "I told him that whenever he wants to eat with me, he just has to let me know. I wanted to make sure that he has a way of doing that.”

Director Fury was silent for a moment as you started down a hall towards the vacant room that you’d claimed as an office. You did not have an official job title with SHIELD, other than Agent Y/LN, but since the space had not been occupied, you took it as your own. You always worked better in solitude, rather than with people all around you, talking and moving around. 

“You should discuss a direct line of contact with him, see how he feels about that,” Fury finally said as you reached the door to your office. 

“Really?”

He nodded. “Whatever gets him moving into the future. If he prefers to have contact with you whenever he wants it, and if you’re comfortable with it, of course, then we should give it to him.” He paused, studying you carefully with his one good eye, and seemingly his eye patch as well. It was kind of an unnerving feeling. “But it’s just for work purposes, obviously. We’re not trying to create a relationship, here." 

Something within you protested strongly to this, but you forced it to stay silent as you replied aloud, "Of course, sir. Strictly professional." 

"Good,” Fury said. “Send me a memo when you decide to head up there.” He turned, and walked away, leaving you to enter your office on your own. 

As soon as the door was closed, you allowed the protesting part of yourself speak its mind: Not form a relationship? What the hell is the cyclops thinking? Of course you want to form some kind of relationship with Steve! How else are you supposed to convince him that he can trust you with the task of helping him adjust? He needs a friend right now, not another SHIELD agent who is only focused on getting the job done. He needs someone who is working to help him, and not just the agency.

There were solid points in that argument. Forming bonds with people that you wanted to help had always been a large component of actually being able to assist someone. When a person felt as though you were a friend, they automatically expressed more trust in you, and were willing to tell you more, and with less hesitation. If Director Fury wanted to get Captain Rogers back into the world sooner rather than later, than it was incredibly necessary that Steve felt like you were his friend. 

And you wouldn’t mind being his friend, either. You liked him, quite a lot. He was kind, had a sense of humor, and genuinely seemed interested in you, in your life. Under completely different circumstances, you would not hesitate in trying to befriend a man like him, perhaps even going so far as to ask him on a few dates. 

But, because of the current situation, that latter part was completely impossible, and apparently, the former bit was at least a little bit unorthodox. Although you couldn’t understand why. Things pointed in SHIELD’s favor if you befriend Steve.

It meant that, once he actually did adjust to the 21st century enough to be on his own, that someone in SHIELD would still have contact with him. No doubt the agency would still keep tabs on him, but didn’t it make sense to have someone doing so in a more ethical way? 

Annoyed, you sat down at your desk, and poked at the snow globe that sat on the surface. You’d need to talk to Director Fury about it in more depth, once you actually had something to report, and could prove that you were managing to get things rolling. 

The day passed normally. You sorted through some files that had to do with other assets that SHIELD was debating sending you in on. Namely, Anthony Edward Stark. You knew Stark (how could you not), and that SHIELD had been trying to get him on board with some undisclosed project. They’d gone so far as to help Stark save his own life, even, and you knew that they were just waiting for the perfect opportunity to cash in on that favor. The downside, however, was his attitude about the whole thing. Stark hating owing anybody a favor.

According to the files that had been sent to your office a few days prior, they wanted you to try and shift that opinion. 

You didn’t think you’d be able to do that. Your work was dealing with trauma victims and war veterans, and apparently, helping ninety year old men adjust to a future they had suddenly woken up in. You could not change the minds of playboy billionaires. 

Also while camped out at your desk, you sent an order in for the most popular movies that had come out during the 1940’s, as well as a few choice films from the 1950’s that you might be able to move onto. Because of SHIELD’s vast resources, digital copies of all the movies, as well as a portable DVD player, were delivered to your office within an hour. These joined the collection of modern movies that you had brought from your apartment. You had a plan, and hopefully, it was a good one. 

At one o'clock in the afternoon, you decided that you’d stalled as much as possible, and headed upstairs to Steve’s apartment. On the way, you passed by an intern, who was ushering down the hall with a cart that looked like the one that dinner had been brought up on the night before. 

“How is Captain Rogers today?” you asked the intern, who blinked at you. 

“Uh… normal? I don’t know.”

“Great, thanks,” you said, refraining from rolling your eyes. You supposed that normal was a good word, though. 

You continued down the hall to the door, which you noticed was the only door in the hall, aside from the elevator near the other end. It was kind of startling to realize that this entire floor belonged to Steve, and yet he did not choose to venture beyond that door. There was no reason for him to, however, was there? The hallway was not decorated, had nothing to offer. 

Maybe you could change that. You’d have to think on the best way to use the space, to help with your goal of welcoming him to the 21st century. 

You knocked on the door. About a minute passed before it opened. You did not think too long on the implications of that, especially because, once the door had opened, and Steve saw it was you standing on the other side, his eyes lit up considerably, and he smiled. 

“Hi,” he greeted. 

“Hello,” you returned, smiling back. “How’s your day been so far?" 

"The same as it usually is,” he replied. His eyes drifted down to the bag you carried with both hands. “What’s in there?" 

"A surprise,” you answered. “Can I come in?" 

"Of course,” Steve said immediately, stepping out of the way of the door. A big improvement from the day before. 

You entered the apartment, and set your bag of DVDs on the sofa. Steve joined you in the main room, and looked at the bag curiously. “I hope this surprise isn’t anything too surprising -”

“Why don’t you let me show you?” you suggested, and he nodded after a moment of hesitation. You reached into the bag, and after rooting around in it for a moment, you pulled out a copy of the oldest movie that had been delivered to you. You turned around, and held it out to Steve. 

He stared at it for a moment, and then he lifted his gaze to meet yours. “Casablanca?" 

”Casablanca,“ you confirmed, holding it out further, in an effort to encourage him to take it, which he did. "Have you seen it?" 

"Of course,” he answered. “It came out in 1942." 

"Oh, good,” you said. “You can explain it to me while we watch it, then." 

"Wait, what?” he asked as you turned back to the bag, to go about setting up the portable DVD player. “I don’t - I thought you were supposed to be explaining modern things to me?" 

"Yeah, and I will,” you said to him, pulling the player and it’s power cord from the bag. “We’ll take turns. We’ll start with a movie that you’ve seen, and then I’ll show you a movie more recent, and then we’ll watch a movie that neither of us has seen. That way, we’ll be even.”

Steve did not appear to know what to think of this. He watched as you plugged in the portable DVD player, and then turned around to look for somewhere to set it up so that you’d be able to watch it together. 

“Here,” he said at last, handing you Casablanca, and going to retrieve the table from the night before. “This should work, right?” he asked, holding it up with one hand. 

“Yeah,” you agreed, pleased that he was willing to cooperate. 

He set up the table for you, and you set the DVD player down on top of it, before putting the DVD itself into it. You then turned to look at Steve. “You’ll probably have to actually sit next to me on the couch, this time,” you said, smirking. 

“If you don’t mind,” he replied, hesitantly. You responded by patting the empty cushion beside you, and after a moment, Steve moved around the couch and settled down there. He was clearly uncomfortable, at least for the first few minutes while you prepared the movie. 

By the time you’d hit play, he had relaxed, at least enough to actually lean back. 

“So… what’s the premise of this movie?” you asked him as the opening credits started to flash across the screen. 

He glanced at you. “Uh, well, basically, this guy has to protect a woman and her husband from Nazis,” he explained. 

“Why?" 

"I can’t tell you that, it’ll spoil the movie.”

“But it’s almost two hours long,” you complained. 

He chuckled. “Just watch. It’s pretty good, I think." 

"You would think so,” you sighed, but turned your attention to the DVD player nonetheless. 

Throughout the movie, you continually glanced over at him to see how he was handling watching it on such as small screen. He seemed to be enjoying himself, however, despite the difference in viewing than what he’d most likely experienced back in his time period. It was probably due to the fact that the movie was familiar to him, and that he wanted to pay attention, just in case you had any questions for him. The plot of the movie was strange, and you found yourself asking questions. Although they were about the movie, they were also check-ins, to see if Steve was still doing all right. He responded amiably and patiently to each one, which was a good sign, that it wasn’t a strain for him to watch the movie on the small screen. 

However, you decided that it was probably a good idea to maybe get a bigger one set up, at some point in the future. 

Once the movie was over, and the credits were rolling, Steve looked at you, clearly waiting for your assessment.

You had to be honest. “Uhm… I didn’t like it.”

You were relieved when Steve let out a laugh. “That doesn’t surprise me in the slightest." 

"I just - were we supposed to be rooting for that Rick guy and the girl? Because, excuse my language, but Rick was a dick." 

Steve merely laughed harder, as you continued to complain about the movie. "Like, okay, it’s obvious they had a past relationship, right, but… why? He was the worst, Steve! And like, is the movie supposed to be romantic? Because it’s not! It was really, really, bad! And the premise of the movie, of people being stuck in Morocco, waiting to try and get to Lisbon, that’s great, but why wasn’t the movie about that?" 

"It kind of was,” Steve managed through his laughter. 

“No! It was about this jackass of a man, trying to fight against this love for a woman that he had once upon a time, while also trying to make sure she and her husband can get to the United States. I don’t… I don’t get it. It pissed me off.” You shook your head. “This movie is supposed to be a staple film, and it just… it was terrible. Although I do appreciate that it was kind of an original story. Most movies nowadays are just repetitions of something that already exists. Casablanca actually made me feel something, whereas a lot of movies today don’t make me feel anything at all." 

"Profound,” Steve said once he’d finally stopped laughing, and you were tempted to hit him, but you didn’t. “So, I’m going to guess that love in modern movies isn’t portrayed that way?”

“Not at all,” you responded, and he laughed again. “And, as such!” You reached for your DVD bag, and pulled out a modern movie that was known for it’s romance. Pulling it out, you offered it to him, and he frowned to himself as he took in the cover art. 

“What’s… what is this?” he finally asked, looking at you.

“This… is a modern romance movie, that takes places in the 1940’s,” you responded, smiling at him. “And… I don’t like it, but I don’t like romance in general. And I thought it was important to follow up a romance movie from the 1940’s with a romance movie from the early 2000’s." 

"How early?” Steve asked, handing it back over so that you could put it on. 

“2004. So like, it’s not super new, which is good for you, and it’s a familiar setting, being that it takes places in your time period. Right?”

“I guess we’ll see,” Steve said, although he sounded apprehensive. 

“Also, it’s super sad,” you said, and then you pressed play. 

“Wait, it’s sad?” Steve demanded. “I don’t want to be sad!" 

"Shh,” you hushed, pointing to the screen. 

Steve fell silent as the opening credits of The Notebook began to play. 

Looking back, it probably hadn’t been the best choice, but sometimes it was better to jump square into a pool than it was to linger on the edge of it for an extended period of time. Steve did not speak the entire time, unlike you during Casablanca. Instead, he watched the movie with rapt attention, his expressions varying between many different emotions throughout the film. 

At the end, you reached over to pause the credits, and then turned to him. You were thrilled (probably because you’re evil) to see a tear running down his cheek. 

“And that, Captain Rogers, was a romance that someone can get invested in,” you told him. 

“Yeah, uhm, huh.” He said, using his hand to wipe at his face. “That was… something." 

Immediately, you could tell that something was wrong. You stood up, cautiously, not wanting to invade his space. "It… it hit home with something for you,” you said, softly, watching as he covered his face with his hands. Even as you said this, it hit you: Agent Carter. 

“Oh, shit,” you cursed, cradling your own face in your hand. “Steve, I - shit. I didn’t even think about it. I’m so sorry." 

"It isn’t your fault,” he muttered, but he did not raise his head. 

“Yes, it is, I should’ve… I shouldn’t have just jumped into it like I did. I should’ve thought out it, thought about how it might… parallel. Dammit.” You couldn’t believe how stupid you’d been. “I’m… I’m really, really sorry. I should… I should go." 

"That might be a good idea,” Steve agreed, still not looking up.

Something inside you was screaming, probably in a mixture of rage at yourself, and horror that you’d already fucked up so terribly, and on the second day. As quickly as you could, you gathered up the remnants of the movie day you’d been having, sticking the two DVD cases and the player into your bag. You then headed for the door of the apartment. That thing within you was still screaming, although its focus had turned towards Steve rather than yourself. It was insisting that you shouldn’t leave him alone. 

You paused next to the door, and glanced back at him. He still sat on the couch, his head hanging in his hands. He did not look to be moving at all, not even to breathe. 

You closed your eyes, briefly, and exited the apartment. You’d have them set up surveillance, to make sure he didn’t try anything damaging to himself, but you knew that staying in the apartment was a terrible idea.

[creideamhgradochas]

Thanks to the lovely @bucky-plums-barnes​ for taking the time to answer these! Get to know more about lovely Gen, go give her a follow and then show her some love!

These questions are from this list. You should check it out, there’s 50 questions all together and they’d be great to ask your favorite fic writer!

1) How old were you when you first starting writing fan-fiction?

I would say probably in my late teens, 15-16.

2) Do you prefer writing OC’s or reader inserts? Explain your answer.

Reader insert for sure. I think it reaches a wider audience and it’s nice to be able to do that. It’s also fun to imagine yourself in those situations while you write.

3) What is your favorite genre to write for?

I like fluff with a smidge or angst or smut.

4) If you had to delete one of your stories and never speak of it again, which would it be and why?

There’s a couple outside the Sebastian Stan fandom I would delete, maybe some old RFP I wrote once.

5) When is your preferred time to write?

Usually at night, before bed.

6) Where do you take your inspiration from?

Other people like friends and followers. Music is a big one too.

7) What’s your favorite scene that you’ve written?

Hmmm... I like the opening scene in the second chapter of a Front Line Love  and the scene where Hal explains he’s leaving in Riding in Cars with Boys 

8) Have you ever amended a story due to criticisms you’ve received after posting it?

Nope, don’t think so.

9) Who is your favorite character to write for? Why?

Bucky is my favourite, I just feel like there’s so much complexity there and I have a huge attachment to the character, so it makes it easier to write.

10) Who is your least favorite character to write for? Why?

I don’t think I actually have one!

11) How do you come up with the titles for your stories?

Sometimes it’s a song lyric, or a play on words but I like simple titles that are just one word sometimes.

12) What do you think is the best idea you’ve had for a story so far?

Front Line Love as a whole is something I’m proud of but I think any of my stories are the best idea because they ended up posted hahah I’m proud of the series that I’ve done like The Sweetest Thing, The Secret Life of Pets, Daddy Drabbles and Riding in Cars with Boys. I really like the disconnected series format, it allows me to write all the characters without the pressure of a full series.

13) Do you have any abandoned WIP’s? What made you abandon them?

God, so many. So many half-written stories in the WIP graveyard. Mostly they fall victim to lack of inspiration or time. I usually revisit them, but I don’t think any are truly abandoned.

14) Are there any stories that you’ve written that you’d really love to do a sequel to?

Front Line Love for sure but I’m torn between it being the perfect ending or a happy ending. Sometimes a happy ending just isn’t the right ending for the story.

15) Are there any stories that you wished you’d ended differently?

Once again, I do sometimes wish Front Line Love had a happy ending but besides that, I’m pretty happy with my fic endings!

16) Tell me about another writer(s) who you admire? What is it about them that you admire?

I admire so many people honestly but here’s a few that come to mind:

@bitsandbobsandstuff​ recently captured my heart with her story Safe with me. It’s one of the best pieces of writing I’ve ever read. Everyone needs to read it.

@writingruna​ writes so beautifully. Her stories are well planned out and intricate and just such an absolute delight to read. You can tell when an author puts a lot of thought in their stories and she does so. The imagery is painted so beautifully it feels like you’re right there.  Her story Where Do the Flowers Go is a must read.

@writemarvelousthings​ is so special to me and we bounce of each other likes crazy when it comes to writing. Like her name denotes, she writes marvellous things. Read her story Ride With Me you won’t regret it.

There’s plenty more people I admire, and you can see a lot of them in my fic rec tag! But most of all I admire my followers who week after week send in delightful asks for theme days that I run. They’re so creative and I adore every person.

17) Do you have a story that you look back on and cringe when you reread it?

A couple of quick drabbles that didn’t get the love that deserve when I was writing them hahah

18) Do you prefer listening to music when you’re writing or do you need silence?

I usually fixate on one song that helps with the story, otherwise I like cooking shows on in the background hahah

19) Have you ever cried whilst writing a story?

Nope, never.

20) Which part of your fics have been the hardest to write?

The middle or beginning usually hahah

21) Do you make a general outline for your stories or do you just go with the flow?

I usually have an outline in my head roughly but most of the time I go with the flow.

22) What is something you wished you’d known before you started posting fan-fiction?

To not worry so much about pleasing everyone, someone will always not like your story, but someone will also always like your story. So, be unafraid and post it.

23) Do you have a story that you feel doesn’t get as much love as you’d like?

I wrote a TJ Hammond story once with a male reader called Firsts and I always wanted that one to get more love! Though I’m so grateful for the love it’s gotten.

24) In contrast to 23 is there a story which gets lots of love which you kinda eye roll at?

No because I’m grateful for all the love.

25) Are any of your characters based on real people?

Not usually, no.

26) What’s the biggest compliment you’ve gotten?

Anytime someone tells me my writing helped through a tough time or that it made them want to write again.

27) What’s the harshest criticism you’ve gotten?

I’ve gotten some hate over the years, and I was told to not post it if it wasn’t going to have correct grammar despite it having been edited so many times to make sure.

28) Do you share your story ideas with anyone else or do you keep them close to your chest?

Usually @writemarvelousthings

29) Do people know you write fan-fiction?

One of my best friends does because we kind of grew up in it together but otherwise no one outside Tumblr.

30) What’s your favorite minor character you’ve written?

I haven’t really written any OC characters, but Steve is always fun as a minor character or Natasha.

31) What spurs you on during the writing process?

Just wanting to post it and share it to see what people think.

32) What’s your favorite trope to write?

I like to write meet cute or any good AU!  

33) Can you remember the first fic you read? What was it about?

God, I think it was about the reader being a sister to the Winchesters.

34) If you could write only angst, fluff or smut for the rest of your writing life, which would it be and why?

Probably fluff, everyone needs a little fluff in their lives.

[tkmedia]

The Likely Lads – Ashley Sexton & Tommy Jacobs

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They fought at the age of 11, been best pals ever since, but along the way Ashley Sexton and Tommy Jacobs lost their way at different times and for different reasons. Both are now 33 and fight on the same bill on Saturday night. Matt Bozeat tells their story ASHLEY SEXTON and Tommy Jacobs are the best of friends until the conversation turns to the time they fought each other. Jacobs got the decision… and Sexton disputes it.“I definitely thought it could have gone my way,” said Sexton. Jacobs’ version of events is: “Ash says it was close – but he knows he lost. He knows I beat him fair and square.”That was when they were 11-year-olds – and much has happened since then. The boxing crazy boys who fought each other at a caravan park in Dover are now 33-year-old veterans of boxing – and life. Lessons learned, both believe the best days of their careers are in front of them and are matched on manager Mo Prior’s show at the York Hall in Bethnal Green on Saturday night (July 31). Sexton hopes victory over Venezuelan puncher Antonio Guzman (21-2) in their eight-rounder will lead to a shot at super-flyweight honours, while Jacobs takes on Theophilius Tetteh (19-8-2) at 168lbs. “I grew up with Tommy,” said Sexton, “and we formed a bond. We had that fight and then won the Schoolboys together. Tommy captained the team that went to the European Championship and included Amir Khan, Luke Campbell and Joe Murray.“We were away from home at a young age and the people like Tommy and Joe became my second family. Tommy is like a brother to me and I still keep in touch with Joe and Bradley Skeete.“We still meet up for a Nando’s.”Murray went to the 2008 Olympics in Beijing and retired without winning a major pro title, while Skeete returned earlier this year, looking to add 154lbs belts to the British and Commonwealth welterweight titles he previously held.As a pro, Sexton was known as “Flash Ash”, a chirpy and confident character who showed his mettle to grind out a blood-splattered draw with Shinny Bayaar in a challenge for the British flyweight title in May, 2010. He also pushed Paul Butler hard over 10 rounds at a sweltering York Hall (after weighing in over the 8st 3lbs limit) and is known beyond hardcore fans for a knockout that Boxing News placed at No. 31 in the sport’s best one-punch finishes. YouTube views of Usman Ahmed doing his best P Diddy impression on his way to the ring to fight Sexton for the vacant English title and then being ironed out in the first by a right-hand thunderbolt top three million. “They were great times and I got sucked into the party lifestyle,” admitted Sexton. “I was going to clothes shops and not having to pay for anything and when I walked into nightclubs the DJ would say my name and people would want to talk to me. “I believed the hype. I forgot about the boxing and it was a comedown when I lost. I’m more grounded now. I don’t think I’m a rock star anymore.”He suffered an eight-round loss to Stephane Jamoye in a challenge for the European bantamweight title in March 2013 and has scarcely boxed since. “I was winning on points and then he cut me in half with a body shot,” is how Sexton remembers the most recent loss on his 17-2-2 record. “I never officially retired. I just needed to get my life in order. I realised there is life after boxing and I needed a career away from the sport. “After boxing there will always be my family and I had to get everything right for them. The firm I work for, Kelly Rail, supports me and gives me time off when I need it. I work nights so get to the gym in the morning. “There was a time when I didn’t think I could compete with the youngsters in the gym anymore, but I can still do what I did before and this time, I’m wiser and happy. I haven’t taken any punishment, there haven’t been hard spars or hard fights for five years. My body is still 26 years old. I haven’t damaged my body.” Sexton trains at the Hodbox Pro gym under Sab Leo and Julian Leivars and it was there that he prepared for his first fight for more than five years, a points win over Jose Aguilar (16-78-5) in Spain last month. “That’s the first time I’ve ever picked up my opponent from the airport, driven him to the hotel and then driven him to and from the fight!” said Sexton, who also trains juniors at the gym, including his 10-year-old son, Tiger. “He didn’t have any wheels. It was surreal. On the day of the fight he was texting me asking for more money and getting me to sort things out. Now I know what promoters go through and it’s not a lot of fun!”Sexton had Jacobs there supporting him. “The moment I told Tommy I was boxing, he said: ‘I’m there’,” remembered Sexton, who was twice outpointed by Carl Frampton as an amateur. “I told him: ‘I don’t think you’re allowed to come,’ but he was there.” Google ‘Tommy Jacobs’ and he isn’t proud of what you find. He spent six years in prison for an attack that left his victim with a fractured skull. “I made one mistake when I was young and was harshly treated,” said Jacobs. “But I made the best of a bad situation. Boxing again was my target so I was in the gym every day I was in prison and I got loads of qualifications. “I became a Level One and Two FA coach, got my PT badges and a Business Diploma.” Boxing is a sport that gives second chances – and Jacobs had to wait for his. “As soon as I came out , my thinking was: ‘I was a top amateur, so I’m going to get signed by Eddie Hearn or Frank Warren and earn tons of money,’” said the father of two. “It was a lot harder than that. I couldn’t even get in front of the Board. They just turned me down. “I boxed on other shows , but to box on Board shows was always the goal. People said: ‘Why don’t you go abroad?’ but I was still on probation. If I was caught spitting on the street they would have sent me straight back to prison. I got turned down again a couple of years ago and I thought: ‘I either give up or I wait.’ I waited for my sentence to expire. “All that mattered was getting my licence. Boxing is all I know. I cried when I got the email saying I finally got my licence. Apart from the birth of my children that is the only time I have cried in my whole life. Boxing is me. This defines me.” Boxing is Jacobs’ life again.Boxing News rang him last week when he was on his way from a sparring session at the Peacock Gym to train amateurs at Willie’s Gym in home-town Colchester, named after featherweight great Willie Pep. “I also go into schools and talk to naughty kids who are about to get kicked out of school,” he said. “I use myself as an example of what not to do. It comes better from me than it does from a teacher or policeman. They can relate to me. I’m nearer their age and I say to them: ‘I know what will happen to you, you little s***s. I know it’s not going to end well.’ “The teachers look shocked that I talk to them like that, but I talk to them in a way they understand and it gets results. I get schools ringing me all the time saying: ‘We need the Tommy treatment.’ “I underachieved as an amateur partly because I had awful parents. What I needed when I was 17 or 18 was someone to shake me and say: ‘You’re going to ruin your life. You have something here, so don’t muck it up.’ I can be the person who shakes these teenagers and says: ‘Look at me, don’t make the same mistakes I made.’” What Jacobs threw away was a bright future in boxing. Between the ages of 11 and 17, he won a clutch of national titles boxing for Harwich ABC and captained his country. “If I go to amateur shows around Essex and the South East the officials all remember me,” he said. “They all come over and talk to me. I was one of the most successful amateurs in the area for a while. “I captained England when Billy Joe Saunders was in the team and I was his main sparring partner for the Willie Monroe fight when I hadn’t even had a fight with the Board. Brendan Ingle watched me spar Billy Joe and said I reminded him of Archie Moore. He said I could still have a long career. “I’m 33 years old, but physically, I’m younger. I’m hoping I’ve got a good few years left in boxing. I believe I have five years minimum. There’s a chance I might find my level before then or my body might start giving up on me. But I know what level I can get to and I want to get there as quickly as possible. “I’ve told Mo : ‘I don’t have time to mess around. I don’t need to learn my trade against journeymen. I don’t need to be fighting Latvian road sweepers.’ I’m looking to have three fights in three months and I want to be fighting for titles by the end of the year. “I’ve had hundreds of jobs, tried hundreds of different things. I’ve been a postman, a bricklayer, you name it, I’ve tried it. They weren’t me. I’m a boxer. This is all I can do.” Read the full article

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Top 24 Best Action Anime of All Time to Watch Right Now

Best Action Anime has always been a signature of anime genre from the very starting. Even if it's not ever the primary focus as it once was, in the 1970s and 1980s, most anime displayed scenes or set plays with intense fight scenes. And I would hope that the top action anime world never went too far away. Let's take a look at a couple of action romance anime that ranks the best of all time. Don't miss Thrillist's best action anime list. 'Top Action anime' is an audit quality, so We compiled 24 best action anime, and each anime series had a few notables. Every  anime encourages dramatic change or stands out due to a brilliant plot or character.  You asked for the best anime action of all times, and we brought a list of romance action anime.

The List of Best Action with Romance Anime

24- Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress

Directed By: Tetsurō Araki Release Date: April 8, 2016 Duration: 12 Episodes Rating: IMDb (7.3/10) The "Kabane" are horrible creatures like zombies that can only be killed by piercing their iron-protected hearts. After "Ikoma's" city overran, he boarded a fortified iron train alongside some new allies searching for a safer place. The Good action anime here is its key selling point, with the continuous panning of camera angles accentuating dynamic and rapid combat. There's a flashback: "Ikoma," a professional investor, had told "Mumei" that he would transform her back into a human. Do we feel some kind of romance action anime tension between the two? They're a fine pair of fights, for sure. In the present, Ikoma" is convening with human leaders to formulate a war plan, but humans don't trust him, possibly because of his "Kabane" blood. It doesn't work for him that he's not quite himself. He sweats like crazy, and he falls to his knees. During the Industrial Age, the action romance anime occurs as the virus infects humans and transforms them into "Kabane". 23- Black Lagoon

Directed By: Sunao Katabuchi Release Date: April 8, 2006 Duration: 24 Episodes Rating: IMDb (8.3/10) The squad of the "Black Lagoon" is ragtag of mercenaries in the coin, but their relationships are tied together. When "Rokurou Okajima" (a non-assuming businessman) joins the gang and gives it the name "Rok," he turns away his life, as he flew into a world of crime, corruption, and greed. The Titan assault is terrible, but it's not exactly a horror action anime. You will discover an operation that is heavy on the scheme, creating a character and the environment, if you can stomach the gruesome, inner presence of the titans and the violent intent of how to devote their victims. Since there is possibly more action romance anime than almost any genre, Attack on Titan is indeed the best one since the virtual absence of plot shield means that no one is ever truly safe, and the consequences were genuine. Black Lagoon, the best action anime without our happy trigger Revy, who promises to push the series together, cannot be said about it. 22- Dorohedoro

Directed By: Yuichiro Hayashi Release Date: 1999 Duration: 12 Episodes Rating: IMDb (8.5/10) We find powerless people and strong magicians alike in the abandoned and unhospitable district of Hole. Kaiman is a tall, brooding figure with the head of a crocodile. But he wasn't born that way. And he's looking for the guy who took his body, his memories, and, ultimately, his identity. When this top action romance anime begins, "En", a leading mafia magician, hears a Lizardman murdering his people and sends out the indifferent Shin and his partner, the bubbly (and too muscular) Noi, into the Hole to take care of Caiman, triggering a messy conflict between the two worlds. Although the initial premise would otherwise suggest that the moral world of Dorohedoro is far from black and white, sorcerers' society appears to be one with its internal conflicts and oppressive machines. 21- Gintama

Directed By: Shinji Takamatsu Release Date: April 4, 2006 Duration: 367 Episodes Rating:  IMDb (8.6/10) Hundreds of "Gintama" episodes cover many genres. I loved it from the very beginning, but some suggest you must get to the first serious arc to appreciate the value of "Gintama's" setting and characters. "Gintoki" is a samurai who helps people with jobs here and there in Feudal Japan after an alien invasion. Comedy's an anime's hard nut to crack. The funniest series there relies on Japanese phrases that do not translate. "Gintama" is on the thin side, and witches might lose in Western audiences. The Comedy action romance anime is still legally funny, so the award of best comedy anime is taken. Part of this is from jokes that land amid the language barrier. 20- The Tower of God

Directed By: Takashi Sano Release Date: June 30, 2010 Duration: 13 Episodes Rating:  IMDb (7.9/10) The Tower of God recently completed is the first action romance anime webtoon! I'm pleased that I Choose a good one. The anime enhanced over the webtoon in every possible way, with the distinct and raw art style and an epic weight for every conflict. This electronic orchestral soundtrack. 25th Bam was a boy who knew only a dark cavern, a filthy cloth, and an inaccessible light all his life. Then the whole of his life changed when a young girl named Rachel came into him by morning. He learned from her some things about the outside world by being close friends with Rachel. Begins "Bam's" journey, a young boy who wasn't selected from the Tower but had his doors opened. They call its kind of "Irregulars" being that each time they put a foot in, it has shaken the very base of the Tower. 19- Akira

Directed By: Katsuhiro Otomo Release Date: July 16, 1988 Duration: 2h 6m Rating:  IMDb (8/10) Akira is a classic all-time Anime. Gang wars, psychokinetic conspiracies, and a government effort are situated around Neo-scenery, Tokyo's, which could ruin the city and kill most of the inhabitants. The tale is dense, so let us concentrate on the action. Akira is not just a action anime, and not just great animation, although both are great. It's a beautiful film; it stops absolutely. There is a lot of top action romance anime list, and every year more come out. Akira remains a high watermark. It is a great film, a cool story, and a beautiful, action-packed animation with tremendous attention to detail. 18- Parasyte

Directed By: Bong Joon-ho Release Date: May 30, 2019 Duration: 2h 12m Rating:  IMDb (8.5/10) But not his side, now hosting a personality. Oh, his eyes and the mouth. Okay, that's terrible, but you can still change. The horror of the body was never so freely directed into motion. This best action anime will concentrate on Izumi Shinichi, a 17-year-old who lives in Tokyo with his family. One night, an alien Parasyte that looks like a worm enters his body, burrowing on to his arm, which is named Migi. It leads to an unusual connection between the two. 17- Land of the Lustrous

Directed By: Takahiko Kyogoku Release Date: October 7, 2017 Duration: 12 Episodes Rating:  IMDb (8.4/10) It's beautiful to watch, featuring many pleasant and well-defined people who each need a demon in an eternal war with the Lunar people who are mobilizing their bodies to harvest their beauty. Some of the settings will leave your jaw between your knees, waiting for the next episode to be clicked. Crystalline creatures called Gems in the unknown future occupy a planet devastated by six meteors. Each Ornament is assigned a role to combat the Lunar people, a species that attacks them to break down their bases and utilize them as decorations. It's dynamic, brilliant and has some of the most pleasant films in best action romance anime TV history. 16- One Punch Man

Directed By: Shingo Natsume Release Date: December 4, 2015 Duration: 12 episodes and 5 special episodes Rating:  IMDb (8.8/10) The author of the original webcomics hit it with his first idea, uh, punched it out of the park. Get this all right? Just imagine a standard shounen or even super heroic comic.  Although the action anime genre is still spoofing, One Punch Man ventures in a different direction and asks the fundamental question: What if a superhero were so powerful that he could punch all of his enemies? The top action anime series begins with a regular guy called Saitama, who chooses a nonsensical training scheme to become a superhero. He overdoes it, becomes so dominant that his opponents are not in trouble, and as a result, he becomes bored (and bald). This, however, is a cool, funny and good action anime series of bonkers with lots of action - Saitama must take things seriously every once and for a while. 15- Sword of the Stranger

Directed By: Masahiro Andô Release Date: September 29, 2007 Duration: 1h 43m Rating: IMDb (7.8/10) As part of their unprecedented ability and straightforward aim, Sword of the Stranger may very well be the most thoroughly performed entry in the best action anime of all time genre. Young orphan Kotaro and his heroic dog Tobimaru encounter an unnamed swordsman whose adventures need little clarification. It seems to Sword of the Stranger, a great option to start this rundown, precisely because it is the high-octane action with some good action anime choreographed parts that keep you attached to your seat during the film. She would not mislead her narrative characters, incredible sequences of action, stunning art styles, and only the fraternal love between two main characters has a progressing past. If you love the setting of history, that's another justification to give the Stranger's Sword a chance.. 14- Hellsing Ultimate

Directed By: Geneon Release Date: February 10, 2006 Duration: 10 Episodes Rating: IMDb (8.6/10) Hellsing Ultimate incorporates anything from the Hellsing original and lifts it to the extreme. A little less than an hour, ten episodes tell you a macabre and witty tale of vampirism and survival. Very legendary, fabulous, unique, and one of the most sensitive artworks. A lot of vampire amines will occur. The varied best action anime output was understandable, as it had been subject to various animation studios. The animations from Gory were adequate to make you feel disgusted and distressed. The source was faithful, but the production of timing and plot was too quick and choppy for non-manga readers, making plot twists and character development trivial and impressionable. 13- Evangelion

Directed By: Geneon Release Date: November 17, 2012 Duration: 26 Episodes Rating: IMDb (8.6/10) Gurren Lagann brings things in a genre known for excess to another stage with a good action anime breeze, a node, and a screamed alarm. A mecha with sunglasses could turn off visitors who aren't in the giant robot-anime genre. However, what seems to be an embarrassing mess works much better than it does. Crochet, line, plunger, the high-energy opening sequence, and the first episode lead you through some well-designed scenes that are strange but brilliant and amusing best action romance anime for the same time. When each character is introduced, we learn more about the brain, nerve, and soul organizations and why they have been developed. 12- Katanagatari

Directed By: Hideo Katsumata with Others. Release Date: January 25, 2010 Duration: 12 Episodes Rating: IMDb (8.4/10) In his quest for 12 special blades, Katanagatari is the story of strategist and Martial Artist Shichika. It is also the tale of shifting times when the swords' age was forced to end with the rash of firearms in Japan's Edo-era.  The core partnership is just as intense as the realization of its key subjects, which ensures that the bread and butter of this series will keep you in some way amused as you chatter interminably. This isn't to say that this top action romance anime are not entertaining. Still, it is more aimed at fans who might be considering pivoting towards more dialog-heavy anime and, at the same time, retaining a substantial side dish of action. 11- Kill la Kill

Directed By: Hiroyuki Imaishi Release Date: October 3, 2013 Duration: 27 Episodes Rating: IMDb (7.9/10) Revenge is the game story in "Kill la Kill," starting from a basic plot but becoming more complicated and more in-depth, rather than just an anime full of best action anime and beautiful combat scenes than appears in each chapter. Ryuuko Matoi roamed the country in search of his killer after the assassination of her dad. At the renowned Honnouji Academy, she is at high school, unlike any other, with just her lead-the absent half of his innovation, Scissor Blade. The Academy, along with its influential subsidiary elite four, is ruled by the formidable and cold-hearted student council chairman Satsuki Kiryuin. Satsuki offers those in the highest unique clothing called "Goku's Uniforms," which offer the wearer extraordinary superhuman powers in the school's brutally competitive hierarchy. The hits are still entertaining with their characters and the storyline. This is a roller coaster; you will understand when you watch this anime. 10- Devilman: Crybaby

Directed By: Masaaki Yuasa Release Date: January 5, 2018 Duration: 10 Episodes Rating: IMDb (8.1/10) This is numbered as the top 10 action anime of the year, and it sounds incredible to modernize a classic anime, and it demonstrates that it can be significant. The 1972 and 1987 originals are little-known but decent classics. I recommend that you watch the sub or read the manga. Although it's all packed, blood, blah blah blah drugs, it's also emotionally full. It's about who the real demons are with a deep and dark psychological subject. Monsters killing people or people killing people. The fight between Fudo and these malformations is incredible. Although it's full of feelings, tears in your eyes sometimes don't like Naruto, One Piece, and Koe no katachi. 9- JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure

Directed By: Naokatsu Tsuda Yasuhiro Kimura Release Date: January 1, 1987 Duration: 42 Episodes Rating: IMDb (8.7/10) The events of the Joestars, which now take several decades, families, and even timelines, can practically not be summed up. This romance action anime has already seen several bizarre adventures from slaying vampires to defend a small town – and a lot to come! The charming old-school beginning; the following with maybe the most charismatic protagonist; a curious tour with an even better-known Villain, and even a small one clashes with the most inspired path to date. Every season has its attractions. But as the environments, skills, and tones change, two aspects remain the same the unforgettable positions of Hirohiko Araki and the fact that JoJo's battles quickly turn out to be a strategic game. 8- Mob Psycho 100

Directed By: Yuzuru Tachikawa Release Date: July 12, 2016 Duration: 25 Episodes Rating: IMDb (8.5/10) Read the full article