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kindness-ricochets · 3 years ago

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I’ve been seeing a lot of thoughts and hc of autistic wylan lately and you seem to also be a fan of the concept. May I ask why? Exactly? I could definitely kinda see it but wanna hear you thoughts you’re always so eloquent

Hey there anon! Sorry for the delay—I’m guessing you already found an answer to this elsewhere while I was off Tumblr for a bit, but just in case, here are my thoughts. This will be heavily personal, but… well, you can’t very well ask an autistic person about autism and expect neutrality!

Autism is different for everyone and can be difficult to pin down, so while Wylan is arguably autistic, he misses several beats that for me would have made him definitively and undeniably autistic. For example, when the bells start to ring, triggering black protocol—I work in a place with a lot of bells and am frequently caught too close to one and normally press my hands over my ears until it’s over because that sound is like shrapnel raking across my insides. All of them. Not just the ear and brain parts. Wylan doesn’t have that sort of visceral reaction, but that may just mean he doesn’t have the same sensitivities that I do, or to the same level. He also never, that I recall, eats meat—as weird as that might sound, eating meat is incredibly complicated with heightened sensitivities to taste and texture. I’m not sure how old I was when I realized it was strange to get up from the table to spit out my food because it viscerally repulsed me. So it might be that Wylan is autistic and has different experiences than I do. Those are things I would include in a story as major indicators of a character being autistic. This might also mean that his father’s way of raising him taught him to hide unusual reactions and stimming behaviors. It’s not that much of a reach to assume a man who tried to abuse the dyslexia out of his son would take the same approach to autism. (More on autism and abuse later.)

So while I’m going to lay out why I read Wylan as autistic, that’s why I think it’s valid to read him as not being autistic as well. Both are valid.

A final caveat, I am well overdue for a reread of the books, so I likely left something out or could have found better examples. Take this as a few of my reasons for a personal headcanon. Anyone who feels differently, that's fine! We can each read things our own way :)

1 - Hyperfixation: The way Wylan loves music

Most of the Crows’ backgrounds color how they see the world: Kaz’s shrewdness, Matthias’s tactical thinking and superstition, Inej’s faith and Suli wisdom, etc. That’s a sign of good character writing. But very little of Wylan’s upbringing seems to have influenced how he sees the world. It comes closest when he thinks about how his father would scorn his new friends, but we never see that scorn from Wylan.

The way a hyperfixation feels, it’s like you’ve always lived in a close parallel world, never fully been a part of the other one where it seems like everyone else lives, but suddenly there’s this bright shining piece of your soul laced through the other world. It lets you connect, it lets you exist in their realm, and you can’t help but filter everything new through that lens because it’s the brightest, most wonderful thing. (I had been between hyperfixations for a while when I started a new job; six months into that work, I read Crooked Kingdom. One of my coworkers thought I had fallen in love, it was that marked a difference.)

So, combining these: Wylan never really acts like he was part of his father’s world, and indeed is in some ways separate from the other Crows, but he parses everything through music, his hyperfixation. He sets words to music to remember them, like he does with the contract. Even his own anxiety is made sense of through music, when in his first narrated chapter, he sets it to music: what am I doing here what am I doing here…. When he’s overwhelmed, his thoughts are “a jangle of misplayed chords”. The Crows have backgrounds that influence how they react to the world, but Wylan’s hyperfixation is his means of experiencing and understanding the world.

2 - Literal thinking: Wylan responds to exact words

In this post, I went into detail on the line where Wylan suggested waking up men to kill them. Wylan is generally unsupportive of killing people—Oomen, Smeet’s clerk, his father… he advocates not-murder in each of these situations. Accepting his aversion to murder, his suggestion to wake men up and kill them seems like a genuine reaction to Jesper saying he doesn’t want to kill unconscious men. Wylan takes things literally.

This happens the most with Jesper, probably because Jesper talks to Wylan the most. Nina and Matthias don’t really register him past how he might be useful, Inej is usually quite direct, and Kaz is very deliberate when he speaks with Wylan. This really interests me because Kaz tends to vary his speech more than the others do, he adapts more to being around other people. He jokes a little with Jesper, spars with Nina, speaks more openly and more sharply with Inej, and he’s precise with Wylan. Kaz may not know what autism is, but he recognizes what’s effective with Wylan.

Another example is when Wylan is sketching the Ice Court plans and Jesper says it looks like a cake. There are plenty of valid responses here: pointing out that concentric circles look like lots of things, that it’s just a sketch, telling Jesper to stop looking over his shoulder. Instead, Wylan says that the Ice Court is sort of like a cake. That… doesn’t sound like something Wylan would normally say. He’s not addressing the whole situation, he’s addressing the specific words Jesper said.

One of the most heartbreaking examples of this (to me, anyway) is with Marya. Wylan does the same thing with his mother, when she asks if he’s there for her money and says she hasn’t got any, and his response is, “I don’t either.” We understand as readers that what Marya is communicating here is that she is so accustomed to being utterly ignored unless she is being used, and if she told Wylan that no one visited but to take advantage and she assumed he was here for the same reason, he would say it wasn’t the case. But he just responds to the immediate statement.

There are a lot of examples of this.

3 — 0% perception, 100% creativity

Wylan can identify things that don’t make sense or that he doesn’t understand, but at the beginning of the series he can’t make leaps, only ask questions. On the Ferolind, he wonders about the source of water at the Ice Court; though Kaz doesn’t say as much, he was clearly wondering, too, because he eventually figured out the underground river. There’s an interesting parallel here where, in the beginning of Crooked Kingdom, Wylan asks a question about how they’ll break into Smeet’s and Kaz tells him to use his eyes instead of running his mouth—at which point Wylan is able to figure it out. I don’t think this is because he never tried before, though, but because no one ever bothered to teach him. Kaz can be harsh but he gives harsh corrections rather than harsh rejections and Wylan learns from him.

It’s hard to understand the world for people with autism. The world is designed and run by and for people whose minds are fundamentally different from ours, whose thoughts and experiences are unlike ours. Imagine trying to learn English or Spanish or Mandarin or any other spoken language if your first language was olfactory. That’s sort of what it’s like for someone with autism to just get dropped into the world and expected to figure this out.

This can be attributed to Wylan’s upbringing, but I disagree with that because none of the others were brought up in the Barrel, either, and Wylan doesn’t understand trade or politics with any special skill. Kaz wasn’t born in the Barrel, but he managed to go from “stealing is wrong” to “wrong isn’t my concern” real quick; Colm Fahey didn’t raise his son on gambling and firefights; the Ghafas never expected their daughter to be away from the family. Only Nina has relevant training—and even that’s precious little, she left school way too early. The others figured it out; Wylan needed a bit more help. He also seems surprised by the way his father conducts business. Wylan takes things on face value—like the time he’s surprised someone would do something, simply because it’s unlawful. This is something he expresses to a group of gangsters. He’s never been taught the way of any world and these things are not intuitive to him.

But Wylan isn’t stupid.

He doesn’t know how to understand the world, but he does understand how things go together. Given a pointy diamond, a handle, and a screw, he cut through Grisha glass. He carries flashbangs and magic napalm, he recreates military hardware—Wylan understands how to make things interact for a specific result. But to me the most telling thing isn’t just that he puts together chemical pieces, it’s that he figured out Jesper controlled bullets. He saw the pieces and put them together.

Wylan can understand when things don’t make sense, but he can’t make sense of them—yet when he understands things at their basic level, he understands them without preconception, for what they are. This is a very autistic way of thinking about things, it goes back to the literalism. He can’t make the leaps of logic other people can, but he also doesn’t make the assumptions they do—“I’ve never heard of a bullet Grisha, so that’s not a thing” vs “Well Jesper’s an almost impossibly good shot and he controls metal and bullets are metal, so why not?”

4 - Broken brain/body connection

Wylan’s great at chemistry and drawing and playing flute or piano—but he’s something of a disaster other times. This is in particular contrast to the other characters, all of whom are physically adept. Meanwhile it’s a challenge for Wylan to climb a rope ladder and he spends a full paragraph trying to figure out what to do with his hands. It’s easy to say, well, he’s used to a sedentary lifestyle, but at this point he’s not. He’s worked in the tannery for months. He’s just physically awkward.

I have less to say on this point only because it’s about something I don’t fully understand myself. I don’t really understand what it would be like to have a body that just… does things? Like normal stuff? Without tics and stims. No idea. Only that Wylan’s discomfort in and seeming lack of mastery of his own body feels very relatable to me.

5 - Abuse

One of the most familiar things about Wylan is how he has been so thoroughly abused and broken down that he’s afraid to do or say much of anything. Again, this is a place his background can be an obscuring factor. Of course Wylan didn’t think to blow up the walls when the first met the parem-juiced jurda and got trapped, he’s a spoiled rich kid! Except, he also startled when Jesper said his name later. Wylan didn’t hesitate because he was spoiled, he hesitated because he had no confidence.

He also thinks Kaz would laugh at him for playing music at his mother’s grave. Now, personally, I can’t see Kaz laughing at Wylan—being indifferent, thinking it’s pointless sentimentality, shaking his head, maybe commenting sharply that they need to go if they don’t have the time. But not laughing. Kaz is a snarky, sharp-edged jerk sometimes, but he doesn’t go out of his way to criticize, he just lets people know when they inconvenience him.

Wylan has been trained to identify attention as negative by an overbearing abusive father who literally saw him as less favorable than a demon. Now, that may have been hyperbole, but Jan criticized everything he could about Wylan—art, music, emotion—and made clear that he was worthless and competent to nothing. (Jan Van Eck can suck a rotten donkey dick but that’s neither here nor there.)

A lot of people with autism experience levels of bullying that have similar impacts. Or as the kids these days are calling it: we go to school. We go to school where we are weird. Where we look weird and move weird and talk about weird things and there’s a whole little bevy of asswipes to makes sure we know it. I got teased more for playing Pokemon and sitting alone reading than the kid who pissed himself onstage at assembly. (This was before Pokemon was cool. I’m old.) And that is not unusual for autistic kids. It’s also not unusual for this to be compounded by relatives or even parents who may be trying to help but don’t understand and can make things even harder.

So we can’t read social cues and we’re taught at a vicious age that everything that comes naturally to us is wrong. Imagine trying to interact in society with that background. There is no guide and most advice from neurotypical people isn’t actually what they mean. It breaks you down.

Wylan’s anxiety isn’t definitive of autism, but isn’t something that was incredibly familiar as someone whose neurodivergent experiences created a strong level of anxiety.

6 — High Compassion, Low Social Competence

Wylan isn’t very good at making friends. In fact, none of the Crows likes him much in the beginning, and only some of them soften toward him by the end. (Matthias and Nina come to respect his skills as a chemist but neither seems to particularly like him.) But you can see throughout the books that Wylan wants to connect with them and be one of them, he just… isn’t. He’s off-beat. He’s weird. He asks questions and mimics behaviors (trying to be cool and tough like Jesper, saying “mission” like Matthias does, imitating Kaz’s scheming face) but he doesn’t quite get how to adapt.

But he still cares about people. Not just them. Everyone. He cares about the people they leave in the ditch outside the prison wagon, he cares about Hanna Smeet, he cares about Alys. He cares about the people who’ll take a hit from Kaz’s sugar caper.

Wylan’s awkward social skills have undeniable big autism energy. I posit his compassion does as well. This is simply who Wylan is, and that means being someone who cares about everyone. I have nothing to back up that this is related to autism. I can say that it’s like me. (Not to brag.) I can’t turn off the part of my brain that says everyone matters. Individuals can opt out of that compassion, but they have it by default. There’s a certain agony in feeling a pull toward and love for just about everyone and yet an inability to develop meaningful connections with them, and that keen loneliness… it just burns.

Again, it’s not definitive of autism, but it’s very similar to an autistic experience.

I said in the beginning that I didn’t think Wylan certainly had autism and I stand by that, but he is a powerfully honest reflection of many people who do. So he can be understood to have autism, and that’s part of the reason some people have that headcanon.

#six of crows #wylan van eck #autism #actually autistic

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halothenthehorns · 3 years ago

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Tell Me When To Stop

Moony carried everything he owned on his back in the shimmering sun trickling through the wispy clouds of rain soaking him through, leaving the coat a misty silver gleaming right off his hind on his way to the Black Manor.

The kissing gate was open at the ready, he rode through right up to the barn with the heavy smells of damp grass and horse thick in his nose as he guided himself inside right up to the tack room and dismounted with his usual careful ease from the saddle.

"Even their barn is opulent," Remus told his steed, giving him a grateful pat on his rump as he ruffled out his hair still plastered from his forehead. "We're in for a treat if we make the cut boy."

His horse nickered and pawed the ground impatiently as he casually tied him up one handed to an available hook and made his way into his new room.

The small cot that would be his bed rested right underneath the fresh polish now assaulting the air, some laze about had left the jar open attracting flies. Only the finest silver and gold studded brushes, lead ropes, and hoof picks glittered to his eyes as he flipped the light switch on. Bottles of shampoo and detangling were label faced out on his left and feed that cost more than he'd ever make in his life were already sorted into named buckets for the meal tonight. There was even a saddle with an actual diamond stud instead of a horn directly across from the door, the trophy to earn such a prize sitting above and stilly glinting from the source of the smell.

He'd been highly encouraged to keep his own gelding as up to brand as he was expected to manage the rest of the horses and so helped himself to a bucket and filled it with all the supplies Moony would need after his long journey, crooking it in the space of one arm and closing the jar of polish to pocket it with the other. He stepped back out and froze.

There were only four Black's on the estate, Orion had informed him, and as he'd only met the one man he at first thought it was his new boss he was warning, "careful, he bites." Then he blinked the bright daze away to see this man was too young, but had the same aristocratic features, somehow even more embellished.

The rain was coming down even harder now, having masked the jangle of his entrance in the riding boots and loose stirrups. The posh uniform clung to him, still dripping off his spurs and collar. He wore no helmet, his hair was long but well kempt in a casual bun, there was a gorgeous black mare needing her own upkeep standing beside him with no need for the rope he had thrown casually over another hook without even knotting it as his gloved hand reached for Moony's bridle.

His hand dropped away at once, thankfully, and startling blue-gray eyes met his, a lopsided smile already edging this conversation to be the most pleasant he'd had in weeks. His voice was light and teasing, but still held the thick accent of this town, "should train him not to do that then, shouldn't you?" His own damp appearance was taken in with one quick glance over and a scoff of dismissal, eyes resting where everyone's did. "That how you lost the arm?"

He took the bucket off the bend of his arm and set it down, the rest of the limb missing not given much thought so many years later. He stepped forward and offered his left hand and tried his best to even out his own poor dialect as he evasively answered, "you must be one of Mr. Black's sons. I'm Lupin, new stable hand."

"Yeah, I gathered that all on my own," he rolled his eyes and shook, his hand lingering surprisingly long as the young man kept watching him like he was waiting for the answer, or just wondering like others had already blurted out by now if those scars were everywhere.

Remus dropped his hand and went back to Moony, unbuckling his girth, feeling the eyes follow him. He could not lose this job, he must mind his manners, and what was one more lie. "No, I lost it in the war."

"You're to young," he was accused at once, causing him to stiffen in surprise and the saddle to fall to the dusty ground with a thump. Moony whinnied in concern and backed towards the mare, though Remus was quick to grab his bridle and step close to catch his eye. The horse settled and he scooped up the old, beaten, weathered bit of leather with one arm and balanced it on his hip as he casually turned back like this was old hat.

"I'm older than I look, happened my first time on the front lines," he challenged back his tale. "Stood too close to the wrong end of a cannon," he added with his own light smile now, hoping to bait the hook and let his imagination run off and leave him be. "It exploded and everything."

The sharp bark of laughter echoed up to the rafters high above and back, the strange Black flashed him a grin as he leaned over and plucked a curry comb from the bucket. "Fine, keep your secret then. I'm glad father bought that story though, we could definitely use a hand around here." Then he very pointedly looked at his missing limb and back to his eyes, just waiting to see what he'd do.

He swallowed and turned away to put his saddle up without comment. When he stepped back he quickly remembered himself this time and held his hand out for the brush, "oh I'll do that. It is my job."

"I like doing it," he continued brushing her down without missing a beat, looking up just in time to catch the surprise in his face before he could hide it. "Yeah, that's right, I'm a firm believer in the idea why have an animal if your not willing to manage the upkeep."

"Yes sir Mr. Black," he said quietly, holding his eyes now and watching his every move as he bent down following her natural curves.

"Please don't," he scoffed. "It's Sirius."

"If you say so sir," he deliberately misunderstood with his own teasing tone back, and was rewarded with that barking laugh again.

They worked in companionable silence until both horses were groomed, Sirius stealing looks at his marred face every now and then that did not lessen as the day bled into night, the sunset unseen as the pouring water only ran heavier above. He finally let his hair loose from its bun and guided his horse into her stall as Remus took Moony to an unlabeled one at the end. He turned to find Sirius still lingering and licked his lips nervously. Was he really going to stick around and demand the truth? Out to get him fired for being in his space?

Instead he got the single warning of, "think fast," and a flash of silver soaring right towards his face.

He had to take a step to the side and back to catch it, but managed the heavy flask in his palm with barely a break in eye contact. Still holding his shocked look, he unscrewed the cap with his teeth and took a long pull of the whiskey inside before tipping it back, settling it into the crook of his limb again, and screwing it back on as he inspected the engraved name. "Moody? Is this a warning of our future interactions?"

Sirius grinned again, a truly devilish look that sent a hot flash threw him. He'd just passed some sort of test, he knew, though he wasn't sure if he was grateful for it yet. "Can you keep a secret Mr. Lupin?"

"I'd dare say so," he promised as he tossed it back.

Sirius caught it held it for several moments as he stepped forward and mock whispered, "I stole it from the sheriff in town."

He burst out laughing, and Sirius smiled. His features finally melded into something soft and gentle, though there was no doubt in Remus' mind he could make any expression in the world seem high-end. "Oh, you're the trouble maker then, aren't you?"

"Someone had to be," he sniffed. "My bloody brother's being trained to run the business. Mum and Dad don't give me much grief in comparison, I've been talking about going off to the war since I could speak, it appeases them."

He unscrewed the cap slowly and took a very long drink. Remus found himself licking his lips and edging closer despite how dangerous this was getting. "I met the sheriff yesterday, he's an old war vet himself."

"Nearly everyone is after all this time," Sirius agreed, running his thumb over the still open flask until he was back in arms reach, and offering it back.

He took it and drank deeply, savoring the taste and flush of warmth even more the second time as he handed it back and asked, "I'm sure you've heard a million stories then?" It could add to his own, he told himself practically.

"I could be tempted to share them I suppose," he smiled again. "Though I'm sure you must have one or two of your own?"

Remus was toiling over how to answer that when a crack of thunder drowned out the very earth for a moment, startling to the two apart, somehow back to a normal, standard speaking distance, but he was still somehow soaking wet under the roof that dared not leak.

The drink had splashed all down his front, and covered Sirius' gloves. He threw them off in surprise to the ground without a care for the little SOB in finely stitched embroidered at the side and crushed them under his foot as he looked up and saw his state. He cursed as he realized and darted into the tack room, coming back with several clean rags that were probably silk. "Tell me when to stop," Sirius told, grabbing at his shirt, and that was all the warning he got as he was yanked into his personal space while being dabbed at.

Remus did not tell him to stop, instead watching his nimble, weather worn hands the likes of which he'd never seen on someone like him work at as his shirt that was roughly untucked and he went carefully down his front with as much care as he had for his mare. When his gentle splotching had covered his front, stopped at the edge of his shirt, and then traveled the path of one arm, across his shoulders, and ended at the empty space, Sirius finally stopped and looked up at him again. Remus could see the jagged lines in his face in those questioning eyes, his own sculpted features would never make it through war, Remus decided.

"Another time," he impulsively promised.

Sirius looked back at the dark night and then down at his watch as if only just realizing how late it had become. "I'm glad to see you've got good reflexes, with that new injury and all," he grinned again, watching Remus flush an even newer tinge of red as he realized his mistake now.

He finally slide the flask back into an inside pocket and caught Remus' eyes one last time as he walked backwards to the downpour. He turned the corner and jogged slowly back to the noble and ancient house that resembled a crypt more than ever on this night all the way to the porch, but stopped short of going inside, pulling the flask out for one last, long pull, as if trying to taste more than the whiskey inside.

#Harry Potter #fanfiction #Wolfstar #Remus Lupin #Sirius Black #AU-Muggle #One-shot

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flowerfan2 · 4 years ago

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One Night in Milwaukee - Chapter 3

David x Patrick, 10k so far, read on A03

Summary: Being stuck in the Milwaukee airport is bad enough. Then David realizes that the man who broke his heart is sitting right next to him.

Chapter 3

David says goodnight with a quick peck to Patrick’s cheek, and shuts himself in the hall bathroom, ostensibly to shower before bed. But before that he spends a while leaning his palms against the sink and taking slow, deep breaths in and out, trying to steady himself.

It’s been one of the most uncomfortable days of his life, and given his life, that’s really saying something. Within the past twenty-four hours he told Patrick he still loved him, Patrick said that he wanted them to be together, and a crowd of sleep-deprived strangers in the Milwaukee airport security line cheered as they kissed. Since then, David has felt like he has been walking a tightrope, waiting for his balance to fail him and send him crashing to the ground.

David knows that he can’t expect their relationship to snap back together like a puzzle, connected and perfect like it shines in his memory, at least not without some awkwardness along the way. And Patrick is injured and hurting, understandably not at his best. Even with all that, though, he can’t shake the feeling that something else is wrong.

He sits on the closed toilet and checks his phone. This afternoon he finally texted Alexis to tell her that he was in Florida with Patrick, which, not surprisingly, resulted in a flurry of messages. He really wants to talk to her and hear her voice, but the house isn’t that big and he doesn’t want Patrick to overhear him voice all his insecurities. Maybe he’ll call her when he goes out for a run tomorrow morning.

Alexis has apparently told his parents, who have sent both encouraging (his dad) and vaguely foreboding (his mom) well wishes. David sends back polite responses, not wanting to get into a detailed back and forth with either of them. Then he spends a few minutes sending instructions to his assistant purchaser at the motel group, and emails the director of operations to let him know that he’ll be taking a week off. It’s not as if he can’t work remotely, but he’d like to have the freedom to spend the time with Patrick, and he’s got plenty of vacation time saved up. At least taking care of this item on his mental list quiets his work-related anxiety for the time being.

Just a little while ago, sitting on the couch with Patrick, David had tried to raise the topic of exactly what they would be doing here in Clint and Marcy’s little retirement fantasy home, but Patrick had rebuffed his attempt. David doesn’t even know if Patrick has a job. Patrick only stayed in Schitt’s Creek for a few months after their break-up, and David’s pretty sure he took a consulting gig after that, but Stevie was light on the details.

As he thinks of Stevie, David’s fingers automatically find her name on his phone, and he considers filling her in, but he’s not sure how she’ll take it. His break-up with Patrick had caused a rift in his relationship with Stevie, one David has never been able to fully repair. Because of Stevie’s role in the motel group they kept working together, but they were never as close again as they used to be.

Stevie stayed in touch with Patrick, at least for a while, but they don’t talk about him. David didn’t press; he wasn’t entitled to know more. He plays out in his head Stevie’s likely reaction to the news of their reunion, and given all that he still doesn’t know about what’s going to happen, he decides not to contact her yet. He’d like to talk to Patrick about it first. He’d like to talk to Patrick about a lot of things.

David absolutely doesn’t mind spending time taking care of Patrick, like he did today. In another context, he would cherish it, being able to show the love of his life how much he cares. He knows Patrick is in pain, and not just from his wounds. It makes David physically ill to imagine what happened to him. He hopes Patrick is able to share more details with him sometime soon; he shouldn’t have to bear it alone.

David tries not to believe that Patrick’s distance today was some kind of test – he doesn’t think it was. Intentional or not, though, something is definitely off.

More than anything, David wants to reestablish their old connection. He felt it a few times, sparking across the distance like electricity, but mostly Patrick hadn’t seemed open to letting him in. They had been more in tune sitting in the darkened food court at the airport than they were on the couch this evening.

David sighs and stands up, opening the bathroom cabinets and poking around to see what kind of products the Brewers have on hand. He’s pleasantly surprised to see the Rose Apothecary label on the shampoo and conditioner, body milk and cleanser. While the newer items aren’t quite the same quality as the originals he and Patrick had first sourced (quality gave way a little bit to quantity, and price), they are still products David is proud to have his name on.

David spends a long time in the shower, which does make him feel marginally better. He towels off his hair, leaving styling to the morning, and scoots into the bedroom he’s staying in. He hasn’t unpacked yet, so he opens his suitcase up on the floor and finds clean boxer briefs. Unfortunately, the rest of his clothes really need to be laundered; he had thought he’d be back in Toronto yesterday evening, not on a spur of the moment trip to the land of sunshine and tourists.

He frowns as he pulls on a wrinkled black t-shirt and soft gray sleep pants. Regardless of what else happens tomorrow, he’s going to have to do his laundry.

The air conditioning comes on with an annoying whir, and David looks around, spotting a vent in the ceiling. The noise doesn’t bode well for getting any sleep tonight, although there’s nothing wrong with the rest of the room. While ostensibly Patrick’s, the bedroom has very few personal items in it, maybe in case the Brewers decided to rent out the house. The bureau drawers are mostly empty except for swim trunks and some sweatshirts, and the closet contains one windbreaker, two pairs of sneakers, and a vacuum cleaner.

There’s a fluffy white duvet on the bed, with a seafoam green sheet and matching pillowcases peeking out underneath. Not a very Patrick color-scheme. Marcy must have been going for some kind of Florida feel. David feels lucky the whole place isn’t covered in a Hawaiian flower print, although that would probably be more practical than white if they anticipate having strangers using their linens. The whole concept of renting out one’s home makes David cringe, although it’s no worse than living in a motel.

David climbs under the blanket and top sheet and closes his eyes. He makes himself stay there as the air conditioning cycles on and off two more times, and then gives up.

The house is quiet as David wanders around, taking a closer look at the rooms he saw earlier today. There are a few framed photographs on the desk in the office. The one of Patrick seems to be relatively recent, him and his dad outdoors. Patrick’s smiling, but he doesn’t look happy. There aren’t any of David and Patrick together, for obvious and yet still painful reasons.

David wonders what happened to all their mementos from Patrick’s apartment – the posters from Cabaret and the Apothecary’s open mic night, the ticket from the ropes course that they stuck on the refrigerator with a magnet. It would be nice to think that they are still boxed up safe somewhere, not tossed in the dumpster behind Bob’s Garage.

The open plan kitchen and living room is nice enough, and the couch is comfortable, covered in a safe tan twill with throw pillows in shades of white and blue. David draws the curtains open and looks out through the sliding glass doors to the back yard with its screened-in pool and lanai.

With a shudder, David reminds himself that the screens are to keep the alligators out. David knows this because he read it online this afternoon, waiting for Patrick to wake up from his nap. When David told Patrick he would brave the alligators for him, David imagined that this was only a theoretical danger, or perhaps one to be encountered on a wildlife tour of some kind, not one he would have to face every time he left the house to get the mail.

David messes around with the light switches by the door, and finds one that turns on a spotlight under the water in the pool. It’s pretty, lighting up the water and bathing the back yard in a gentle glow.

“It’s a little chilly for a swim,” Patrick says behind him, making him jump. The wall-to-wall carpet is thick, and apparently Patrick hasn’t lost his ability to sneak up on David.

“Oh god, sorry, did I wake you?” Maybe flashing the lights wasn’t such a smart idea.

“Nah, I couldn’t sleep anyway.” Patrick turns his face up towards David, and David is convinced that he’s going to kiss him, his heart racing in eager anticipation. But Patrick’s face shifts into sadness, and he looks away.

“Patrick?” David reaches out and touches his fingers to Patrick’s bare arm. “What’s wrong?” He doesn’t say “besides the obvious,” because he can tell that it really isn’t necessary. And he thinks Patrick wouldn’t have come out here if he wasn’t ready to talk about whatever he’s been holding back.

“I have to tell you something,” Patrick says, crossing his arms over his chest and then, noticing, deliberately uncrossing them.

“Okay…”

Patrick bites his lip. “I’m afraid to say it.”

David feels a shiver run through him. “You’re afraid?”

“Yeah.” Patrick looks defeated.

“Why?”

Patrick shakes his head and turns away from David, leaning on the back of an armchair. “Because you’ll leave. And I don’t want you to go.”

David closes his eyes and tilts his head back. “Obviously I don’t want me to go either, Patrick. That’s why I’m here.” He tugs at Patrick’s shoulder, turning him so he can see his face. “I promise I won’t go anywhere. But if you take much longer to tell me, we may well have a panic attack situation here on top of everything else, and I’d really rather not add that to today’s list of events.”

Patrick stares at him, eyes wide, and David just wants to take him in his arms and tell him everything will be all right. But it’s clear that Patrick can’t be so easily convinced, and frankly, until David knows what the hell is going on, David isn’t so sure himself.

Patrick moves to the couch, and David follows him, sitting on the coffee table and putting his hands on Patrick’s knees.

“I didn’t cheat,” Patrick says, and David frowns.

“I know that now. You said so yesterday. I believe you.”

“I didn’t cheat,” Patrick says again, “but I think Mark wanted me to. He was flirting with me, and I didn’t stop him.”

“You’re cute. People flirt with you, there’s not much you can do about it.”

Patrick looks at him briefly and then away. “I could have not flirted back.”

David digs around in his head for the right thing to say, but all of the sex-positive, trusting relationship language he comes up with sounds hollow in the context of Patrick’s guilt-laden confession.

“Well, um, harmless flirting isn’t a big deal. It’s nice to feel wanted,” he tries.

“David. It wasn’t harmless.”

“What do you mean?”

Patrick peels David’s hands off his knees and takes them in his own. “It wasn’t harmless because it hurt you. It hurt us.”

“But if I had known you didn’t mean anything by it-”

“That’s just it, you didn’t know. Because I didn’t tell you. I wouldn’t have felt so guilty about it if there was nothing wrong with it. I wouldn’t have worked so hard to hide it. At the same time we were planning our wedding, I was creating an opportunity to let another man flirt with me. I knew if you met Mark you’d suspect something. I told him to come to the store for training when I knew you’d be out visiting vendors.”

Patrick’s practically babbling now, his words tumbling out. It’s so unlike Patrick’s usual calm demeanor, it makes what he’s saying even more unsettling.

David struggles to find an angle where Patrick’s behavior is okay. He’s done it before, made excuses for partners who toed or crossed the line, but he doesn’t know how to do it with Patrick. He slowly pulls his hands out of Patrick’s and stands up, stepping backwards with a hand over his mouth.

“I’m so sorry,” Patrick says. “Please, don’t go.”

“I’m not going anywhere. Just give me a minute.” David feels ill, but he knows there has to be a way through this. His mind is spinning, but he’s not leaving, he’s not, he’s going to figure this out. “Were you planning on – doing anything with him?”

There’s a moment when David thinks Patrick is going to say yes, yes, I wanted him to kiss me, but then Patrick is in front of him, his face open and vulnerable. “No, absolutely not.”

“Were you having some kind of… naughty cheating fantasy?”

“No,” Patrick says firmly. “You remember the Ken incident. I didn’t want anyone else. Then or now.”

“And yet…”

“I know,” Patrick says, reaching out to wrap his hands gently over David’s biceps. “I can’t explain it.”

They stand there in the dark kitchen, both of them breathing heavily. Patrick slides his arms around David and pulls him in, until David’s head is resting on his shoulder. David lets Patrick hold him, comforted by his touch even now.

“I’m so sorry, David. I thought about it so many times, after you left. I convinced myself that I didn’t cheat – and I didn’t, not physically. But what I did wasn’t <i>right,</i> either. It felt wrong to me, and you picked up on that, and that’s why you thought I was cheating.”

“But what you said in the airport-” David’s voice catches, and he has to stop and suck in a breath. “You made it seem like it was all my fault.”

“That was not my proudest moment.”

David forces himself to straighten up and step away from Patrick, wrapping his arms around his own body. Patrick holds his gaze, tears streaking his cheeks. Patrick lied to him – maybe not three years ago, when David didn’t give him a chance to explain, but just last night, in the airport. <i>But he’s telling the truth now,</i> David thinks. He’s put all his cards on the table, and he’s waiting for the other shoe to drop - for David to leave. To give up on them.

But the thing is, David doesn’t want to drop the shoe. He doesn’t want this to be the end. He’s not done with Patrick – he tried that, and it was the worst decision he ever made.

Patrick isn’t just another one of David’s exes. He’s not someone who was willing to take and take from David and never give in return. David simply can’t believe that of Patrick. It’s not who he is. Patrick gave David everything.

“If when I confronted you that day, back at the store, I had let you explain,” David says carefully, “we’d essentially be right here, wouldn’t we?”

Patrick’s eyes widen, and he nods. “Well, not in Florida, but, yeah. More or less.”

“So…” David closes his eyes and lets himself feel, the pain and the hope and the love, all whirling around in his chest. “If that’s the case,” he opens his eyes and reaches for Patrick, his hands landing on his shoulders, “then we can just start from here, minus the overreacting, and figure it out.”

Patrick chokes out a wet laugh. “We can?”

“I think so. I’d like that.” David watches Patrick’s eyes as they light up.

“David, I’d really like that too.”

David leans in, cupping his hand around Patrick’s head and bringing him close for a tear-stained kiss. David’s not sure that the odds are great for them this time around, but if there’s any chance at all, David’s going to take it.

#Schitt's Creek #Schitt's Creek Fic #David x Patrick #David Rose #Patrick Brewer

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chestnutroan · 5 years ago

Note

Who is Ben? Have you talked about this character before?

Ben is my sole survivor, and my longest standing oc. I’ve posted a LOT of art of him but I’ve always put off talking about him at length but now I’m out of the rough when it comes to having the will to do anything, ill talk about him!

Frank (Benjamin) Romara was born in 2044 in Arkansas to African/Italian parents. When he was 13, he, his parents and his younger brother Gene were uprooted to Boston under absolutely no single good reason given at the time from his father. His dad died probably not a year later, and combined with the massive change of life Ben’s education went down the shitter, and he had to repeat freshman year. At the end of what should have been his sophomore year he got put in a program for “at risk youth”.

[Detail about him, about Nick Valentine and Fallout Lore etc under the cut!]

The program was basically about increasing the amount of people entering government related jobs, because due to rising contempt less and less people were going down that path, and that’s bad for a whole lot of reasons, for the government at least. When it was first conceived of, it was more of a support scheme for kids not going onto greater things, but it expanded to where it was mandatory for any teen that met the requirements to be put through the system and spat out with more allegiance to their country. Ben checked off a lot of boxes, being poor, having bad grades etc. And at first Ben didn’t really mind all that much, given his lack of direction it was comforting to know that he’d be able to find a stable job to support his family, and that was exactly what seemed to be promised to him. He hadn’t yet gained a fervent desire to see the government crumble, the only part of it he hated being cops, who brushed his dads murder off like it didn’t matter. plus, the program offered extensive healthcare (a leftover enticement from when the program was optional), and it looked like the only way he’d be able to transition.

It wasn’t long, however, before it became increasingly apparent how insidious the program really was. For one thing, he was to be put into work (or training for whatever he will be assigned) at 18, meaning he’d have to leave high school with a sophomore level education. This was, of course, by design to keep the kids entering the workforce in that same workforce. When he was 17, he took a GOAT and got given two options: enter the police force or the US army. He didn't want to do absolutely either, but he picked the former, just because it seemed like his only shot to stay with his family. By the time he was 21, he’d become a detective, and before he could ever start to work on his own soil he was transferred to Chicago due to lack of workforce there.

And all over again, he’d been plucked out of what he knew and dunked somewhere else, and worse yet, he doesn’t even have anyone he knows to help him go through it. Most of the people at his station don’t really want anything to do with him, but he gets on with his job (his efficacy depending on whether or not he thinks hes doing the right thing), and quickly becomes the new hotshot ass hole there for his attention to detail, if not his actual ability to decipher motivations and piece things together. And this caught the attention of Nick Valentine.

Nick was the original hotshot ass hole ofc, and it was owed to this that Ben, despite being to be shown the ropes, that he didn’t partner with the new guy despite being the only person there who could have helped him out. Nick was very, very good at his job, and due to his insecurities he wasn’t about to stop being the best and give people the chance to realise he doesn't get better than how effective he is at his work. I won’t get into the root of his insecurities, but he genuinely believes that he would lose all respect and that if he ever stopped being a try hard people would lose all reason to bother with him at all, and all he wants is for others reach out and be a friend to him. hes dealing with a lot of the same loneliness Ben is, but so long as he doesn't lose the facade of being a fully functional adult with a good job and a ‘loving’ wife he wont have to introspect and face who he thinks he is deep down (i.e. a man incapable of loving his wife romantically because of some personality fault he cant comprehend of how to fix as opposed to him just being gay and having a lot of internalised homophobia).

It takes Ben and Nick both reaching the point where they snap under the weight of the world they live in and the people who occupy it for them to come together. Nick ended up actually asking to take Ben on as a partner, and it took a lot of the load off of emotionally crippling work (serving a government neither of them believed in but being wholly incapable of escaping it, status quo being almost the only thing keeping them in place as opposed to trying to physically escape what they're doing together) but better yet, for nick, Ben helped bring out a side of him that wasn’t so afraid to be known by others, and he started opening up to other people at the same time as growing closer to him. (I think its important to like.not that nick doesn't wholly rely on Ben for all of his self esteem etc Ben is just a positive impact who gives him a space where nick can learn for himself that his worth doesn't depend on other peoples perception of him.) Nick realises that a lot of his negative perception/jealousy/etc of Ben when they first met was because he saw a lot of himself in him, Nick was in more or less him when he started some 5 or so years ago, and Nick helps Ben out in the way he wished someone had been there for him because he cares a hell of a lot about him and wants him to have the best chance at things.

And they grow into better people and just at the pique of things, where Nick is enjoying not being in an abusive relationship and staying with Ben while he gets back on his feet, Ben gets drafted and is trained at first to become a power armored foot soldier (standing at nearly 6′6″ he’d be a monument of fuck you to the enemy) but do to his deliberately bad aim with weapons, hes instead trained to pilot a vertibird, where hes then shipped off to anchorage. its there that he goes MIA after going against orders with his co pilot to provide medical assistance to a group of people stranded off from communication he spotted in flight earlier. Ben ended up glad later on that he and his co pilot were shot down, because for all 25 hours he was left dying in the snow, it meant that he didn't have to justify him going against orders by bringing back Chinese soldiers who’d end up a lot worse for wear than him. By the time his KIA status was revoked (they weren’t about to announce the miracle of his survival before they knew he’d survive lol) he’d already had a funeral, which Nick had attended, because I write like everything's a soap opera. but yeafksf him dying and attending his funeral left nick in a lot of grief, because he’d thought he’d have forever with Ben to go slow with him into being in a relationship and now Nick thought he’d never get that chance. and when they meet back up after it all when Ben returns it’s romantically charged to say the least.

Obviously I haven’t been sticking entirely to lore with this but the lore presented in fallout 4 is fucking bullshit so. i hesitate to call this a fix but i need to put in this disclaimer before i start spouting off. hey how about instead of nicks fiance getting iced jenny lands was actually his partner once he transferred to Boston to be with his husband to be, and she was cruelly twisted against her own intentions to try and kill nick because Eddie winter put her family in jeopardy and Eddie doing this was a coordinated attack towards them both that hes not just powerful enough to get revenge he can do it in such a way that they cant even trust the people around them. And nick got his mind juices squeezed or brain scanned whatever because of the resulting trauma of being shot by his best friend jenny. and also ‘Shaun’ is Ben and Nicks kid Max and upon learning later as a gen 2 that his son is the leader of a great source of trauma for nick hes forced to introspect in ways that have more tangible effects because his ability to decide who he is as a man ties into immediate problems And nick doesn't have to focus on revenge disguised as justice because he has a responsibility to live in the here and now.

Thank you for this ask!! I hope that was coherent enough to understand kjdsf if you have any more questions about him or anything else I talked about I’d be flattered to hear them!

#fallout #fallout 4 #fo4 #nick valentine #sole survivor #Benjamin Romara #Anonymous

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ferrethyun · 6 years ago

Text

Godfather Rivalry | Pt 1

{Requests are open!}

Summary | You are here | Next

Warnings: Guns, Death, Violence, Mentions of alcohol and a fuck ton of swearing

(Small pre-note: Even though I did computing- I actually have no idea what I’m talking about when I talk about hard drives :/ )

“I asked you once and I’ll ask you again. Where the fuck is my payment?!”

The man bound to the chair squirmed and thrashed again the rubbing rope tied around his wrists, ankles and neck. He happened to be sweating profusely and had soiled his underwear once already. You see, the person bound to the chair right now was a carrier for another gang; not even a prevalent gang, but a gang, nonetheless. Carriers for gangs tended to be teens upwards of age thirteen but this person was a new inductee meaning he had the job of giving drugs and giving payments, despite his age. This man happened to make a fatal mistake by forgetting the payment for the drug supply he was getting in the back of his car. A simple mistake really but for the sheer value of drugs the gang had ordered, payment was necessary.

As the man continued to thrash, his lungs screamed out as he pushed against the rope around his neck yet tried to speak at the same time “I-I told you! I o-o-only forgot it in my car!” He squealed, “If-If you’d just let me go and get it!” His efforts were fruitless as a knife cut a clean line down the middle of his forearm with only slight pressure.

“I fucking told you. It’s. Not. There!” The other man growled back, knife now placed under the bound man's jaw, “Do you think I’m fucking stupid?!” The tightly bound man let out whimpers and sobs of ‘no’ as he twisted his head away from the man and continued to rock the chair with his futile attempts at getting away. The metallic sound of a knife hitting a wall resounded through the room shortly followed by a scream of frustration. A large pause followed soon after; it could hardly be considered silence when it’s filled with whimpers and whines.

“MM, just leave him to die in a ditch” a feminine voice called out, “It’s clear we’re not getting the shitty money” The female couldn’t be seen in the frame but you could see the male turn to the source of the voice.

“Wow I really appreciate your advice sometimes Ink” He said, sarcasm evident, “Would be nice if it was useful sometimes”

A heaving sigh could be heard as the man brandished something in his hand. As soon as the sound of a gun cocking was heard, the man in the chair started screaming again. The screaming was cut short not too long after it started as a bullet went straight through the centre of the bound man's forehead. “Get me my fucking money” could be heard as the camera feed cut short.

“We have some news M/n” the female started again, “Jamie’s traced a signal back to the north side of Seoul. We think Bangtan tapped into your little live stream to RD”

M/n shot past the female only known as Ink and straight down the dim hallway to a door that only had HR written on the top right of the door. He slammed the door open scaring the lights out of the rooms current occupants. “What the fuck?!” A male voice screeched from the back of the room. This was met with a quick ‘Shut the fuck up Jiwoo’ from M/n as he stormed towards the only thing illuminating the room while pulling his face mask down. The computers. The screens showed a map of Seoul from an eagle eye view; a vibrant red dot stood out in the north of Seoul. The male sat in the chair next to the M/n turned to face him before he started speaking.

“It’s most likely to be Bangtan” he started, “We have every right to assume that they’ve been searching through the computer systems hard drive as well.”

“Fuck. This isn’t good” M/n replied,“Do you think they got anything important?” The hacker shook his head “Five minutes before I spotted them I changed the memory hard drive round. The only thing that’s on this one is some maps and the info for the next shipment drop.”

M/n ran a hand through his hair and gritted his teeth before taking the hard drive that sat on the desk before him “Be on the lookout for any more activity. "Do not let them know that we’re watching.” He demanded, “I think they might try something then” The dark-eyed male walked out of the room and almost stormed down the hallway, stopping outside of a door and unlocking it. Inside was a large bookcase of memory hard drives. Each sorted into a category of what they contained; the hard drive in M/ns hand already had its label so he simply slotted into its relevant place and left the room. Securing the door as he went. Thoughts stormed through his mind; he needed to get rid of the body before it started decomposing and he needed to find a way of getting around this shipment without being ambushed and overruled. M/n headed down the hall and down a staircase before coming to a front room with only two people occupying a large sofa. There was a girl with rose pink hair and a male with ash grey hair; both were watching some random movie on the TV and sat opposite ends of the sofa. Neither looked too interested in the movie, so M/n thought to interrupt by letting out a cough which drew their attention to him.

“Jisoo I need you to go and talk to Subin about this incoming shipment” He started, feeling stressed already,“We think Bangtan might try to ambush us. We need to up the game on security this time” The girl named Jisoo simply nodded and headed off down the hallway leaving the other to males alone.

“Bangtan?” The grey-nett questioned, “What could they want with us?”

M/n scoffed, rolling his eyes “You know what they want, Hyeon: our territory. Also, there’s a body in that room; I need you to drain it so we can get rid of it” Hyeon simply sighed and nodded his head, letting out a small ‘Yes sir’ as he walked past M/n and up the stairs where he had just come down from. M/n grunted a frustration flooded his system. Was everyone trying to deliberately piss him off today? He pulled out his phone and sent a quick yet threatening message of ‘You better get this money or I will personally fuck you up tonight.’ to the youngest member of their ‘gang’. He was the carrier of the group; he was in the process of finding what he specialised in and it looked to be that he’d be the medic for his foreseeable future. M/n practically threw himself on the sofa, taking half of it just for himself.

“You look like you need a drink” A teasing voice called out.

M/n lifted his head and looked at the source of the voice “Gyuhui, you always know what I need” He chuckled out.

Gyuhui scoffed and let out a small laugh “Of course I do; I wouldn’t be your right-hand man otherwise” She let a cheeky grin spread on her face, “How about we go to that club tonight?”

M/n felt goose bumps spread all over his body. Alcohol was like a drug to him and this club added to that feeling; it really was a place to let your worries wash away “Oh hell yeah~”

The group couldn’t help but let out a breath as the camera feed cut short “Did you get anything from their systems?” a voice demanded.

The man sat at the computer let out a grin that wouldn’t have been seen had the computers not illuminated his face “Hell yeah. They’ve got an incoming shipment~” His voice wavered with some kind of hidden pleasure.

“Great”

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kaniacqueen · 5 years ago

Text

Leverage International: The Diner Job Ch. 15 Blown Open

The booze was flowing and the party was getting rolling. “Alright, guys, I know it’s early, but it looks like things are getting going. Anybody getting a good foothold?” Parker asked as she ran a couple empty wine and liquor bottles to the back.

Savannah finished filling a few glasses and answered as she paced back to the kitchen to check on another round of canapes. “Eliot’s got Yavetz engaged pretty well. I’m picking up on the fact that his crew doesn’t really approve of pursuing Tazze e Ciotole. They’re more interested in restarting Blue Suns from Italy.” There was an obvious tone of disgust in her voice.

“Okay, yeah, we can work with that. Dissent and we didn’t even have to create it,” Parker mused as she opened another bottle of wine.

Eliot raised his glass to his lips and spoke as quickly and quietly as possibly as possible. “This kid Borroni that’s kind of sitting off to the side. He’s technically the lowest man on the totem pole, but he’s well liked. I think he and Yavet’s right-hand, Zetticci, have a history, grew up together some kinda way, closer than the others. If we can get him get him engaged directly...”

Parker had already caught on. “Hardison, you--”

“Already on it,” Hardison said with glee as he mixed himself a generous drink with gin and plopped down next to Borroni with a painted look of disgruntled exasperation. Parker slid into a cluster of the ladies that accompanied several of the crew but had now broken off in their own group to gossip. Enough alcohol was flowing that they could integrate themselves into the gathering rather than supervise it. Eliot leaned over, put his hand on the back of Savannah’s thigh and pulled her into his lap. If he was going to sit through this Neanderthal’s party, he was going to enjoy himself at least a little. He could see masked contempt on Yavetz’s face, and he enjoyed that too.

Liquor flowed, manipulations ensued, and dissent was cultivated, slowly but surely. It wasn't quick enough to incite a bottle-breaking brawl, but Eliot watched the faces around him get more and more irritated as they glanced between comrades and Yavetz.

Hardison had a few others roped in with Borroni, including the growing attention of Zetticci. Borroni got to his feet and made his way towards Yavetz with intent. Zetticci stopped him on his way. He didn’t appear to be interfering so much as colluding. He then got to his feet as well and stepped up to Yavetz with Borroni and a few others as well. “We decide it's time to tell you this. We do not like that you try to buy Tazze e Ciotole.” It appeared they were speaking English for the benefit of the non-fluent American owners. “Many of us grow up with Tazze e Ciotole and we do not want it to become place of business. This is place to feel at home. Most of time businesses under control of businessmen like you, they burn out quickly. People, they do not like dealing with businessmen like you. People will not come to Tazze e Ciotole if you buy it. You will ruin this town we call home.”

As Zetticci spoke, Yavetz face became redder and more bulbous. He spewed a string of vulgar Italian profanity, some of which even Eliot didn’t catch as he made obviously offensive gestures. He poked at Zetticci’s “Why you tell me now after all these years, you no like the way I do business, ah? You think I don’t care enough to take care of Tazze e Ciotole? You think is not my home too? How you can--”

Yavetz was interrupted by his date and a few of the other women getting to their feet. “So it's true. You want to take over Tazze e Ciotole? Is not just silly rumors? You want to turn home into your business, ah? What’s a matter with you, Kilmer?”

Then there was the sound of a wine bottle being forcibly broken and the last of its contents ejecting onto the floor. The four Americans stealthily stepped back to let the fight ensue for a brief period, just enough to scare Yavetz before they broke it up. As politely as possible, they cleared the “party guests” and started cleaning up. Eliot held Yavetz back, making sure he could watch his crew leave. The former boss man was visibly shaken.

“You alright, Kilmer?” Eliot asked, condescension sneaking into his tone.

“I feel I need a drink,” he answered.

Eliot looked around, shook his head, and patted the man on his shoulder. “I think there's been enough drinkin’ tonight. How about tomorrow?”

Yavetz slumped. “Perhaps you are right.”

“Do you need me to call someone for you, buddy?”

He shook his head and pulled out a phone that was a bit dated. “Thank you, friend, but no. Despite the beliefs of your guests, there are still a few out there who are loyal to me.” And with that half bit of information. Eliot decided to worry about it later and help finish cleaning up.

The cleaning finished and Eliot waved Hardison and Parker out the door, looking around for Savannah. He knew she had helped clean up, but suddenly she was nowhere to be found. He went in the kitchen with no results and circled back to the dining room before calling for her, “Savannah?”

“I'm up here,” she told him. He looked up to the source of her voice. She was a little ahead of him, lounging in the rafters. He took a few quick steps, jumped, and pulled himself into the rafters with her.

“What’s up?” he asked.

She sighed and pulled her good knee close to her chest. They say there a while in silence until she sighed and said, “Eliot, I want to be with you but I'm scared.”

He gave it a moment before asking, “Of what?”

She ran her fingers through her hair and stared at her feet. “Eliot, I have never done anything like this. Not with a man. My only experience with romance was Dani, and we were kids in a fucked up boarding school seeking solace in hell. Up until a few years ago when you drove that truck into my life, I never envisioned romance in my life. This is all so new to me. I don't know what I’m doing. And I see Parker and Hardison moving forward and taking these huge steps, and I don't know if--”

He shook his head and put his hand up as if to physically cut her off. “Savannah, we’re not Parker and Hardison. They've been together a lot longer than us, they've known each other longer, they danced around each other. We don't need to follow them. We don't need to compete with them. Our relationships are separate. I'm not going to chase you down with a ring just because Hardison proposed.”

There was a restrained sigh. “That's actually comforting. I just...I don't know. I'm still so terrified that I'm not doing right by you.”

Eliot pushed some of his hair back. “Well, I feel like you’ve been sending mixed messages. I mean, you won't keep your hands off me, but you clam up when I ask you to talk.”

Savannah’s cheeks flushed and she pressed her face against her bent knees. “I didn't want to push you away, but I didn't know how to tell you I was scared. I figured if I...was affectionate, you maybe wouldn't freak out.”

“It didn't work,” he said flatly. Then he broke and started laughing. She laughed too, then her eyes got glassy as the laughter died.

“Eliot, I was a fugitive for over a decade and this still feels like the most terrifying thing I’ve attempted. I dealt with chemical hallucinations of war and watching everyone I love die, but this, I'm unsure. I just...I worry that--”

He touched a finger to her lips and took her hand. He shook his head. “I love you,” he said deliberately, trying to emulate her ability to speak volumes with as few words as possible. Her face softened. She understood him. In some way. She brushed his hand from her face and leaned in to kiss him. She leaned a bit too hard, and her began losing his balance on the rafter. She reached for him; he reached for her. Both their free hands reached for the same beam to keep them from falling, pinkies brushing. They were safe.

#Leverage #leverage fan fiction #Leverage International #Leverage fan fic #Eliot Spencer #Alec Hardison #Parker

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eternalsshipsandfics · 6 years ago

Text

In Cold Blood: Chapter 11

Summary: The illustrious Kuran family is thrown into disarray when the crown princess disappears under suspicious circumstances. Will she ever be found?

"Do you even know who I am?" Hanabusa huffed, both hands placed threateningly on his hips. He could almost hear the guard's urge to roll his eyes.

"Yes, of course, Lord Aido. But you must understand that our orders come from a higher source than yourself." The grey haired guard, keeping a suspicious eye on Hanabusa's two companions, moved to block the dungeons entrance more thoroughly.

"Listen, she's really attached to this ear ring. It was the last thing she ever got from her mother. Can't you just help us look for it?" Yori took her cue to look to the ground sadly, one finger twisting coyly in her short hair. She hoped that she looked convincing as she glanced up at the guard from under her fringe. She squeezed some subtle tears to the surface for good measure. He shifted uncomfortably, unable to meet her watering eyes.

"I don't see what business a human has around these parts in order to lose anything here." He turned his gaze back to the other vampire.

"I don't see what business it is of yours to know why I sent her around here." The guard's eyes narrowed.

"Odd that you are sending your humans to dungeons that don't belong to you, Lord Aido."

Yori threw herself at the guard desperately, hands fisting in his shirt in order to draw his attention back to her. "He didn't send me. I'm sorry, I just got so curious. There are always so many guards around here and I just wanted to know why. I know that I shouldn't have been around here, but that ear ring really is very important to me. So please!"

She watched Yui in her peripheral vision stealthily grab the keys from the guard's belt as she spoke. How had he been caught before when he was clearly a very skilled thief, she wondered.

After a moment of deliberation (which stretched into what felt like hours), the guard sighed and relented. He was apparently unable to see a woman, even a human woman, in such distress. Yori hadn't often been in situations which called for her feminine wiles. She felt an uncharacteristic swell of pride to know that she was even able to appeal to a vampire male's protective nature.

"Fine, but you only get five minutes to look, alright?" There was a light dusting of pink across his cheeks as Yori broke into a grateful smile.

"Oh, thank you, thank you!" She hugged him tightly for a second for emphasis before she deftly slipped around him. Hanabusa gripped his arm unnecessarily tightly before he could follow her down the cold stone steps. He didn't see the young boy with his keys firmly in hand dart after her.

"Hey, there was something that I was wondering about…"

Yori didn't hear what Hanabusa was wondering about. She was already working her way along the long line of cells. She didn't feel right; every cell that she passed was empty. She had expected that with someone like Rido in charge, they would have been full to bursting. Was Zero really down here?

"Zero's so awesome that he gets the whole place to himself." Yui quipped as though he had heard Yori's thoughts.

"Yui?" The familiar voice drifted sweetly into her ear from the farthest cell. The boy broke into a run, gripping the bars in front of Zero's cell.

"I knew you were here! Yori didn't believe me."

"I did believe you. But usually these dungeons tend to have more prisoners in them." Her eyes skirted over her friend. He was remarkably healthy looking, despite his circumstances. It would make more of an impact when he was executed at full strength, she supposed.

"I'm glad you're safe, Yui." His warm gaze became quizzical when he alighted on Yori. "How did you both get past the guard?"

"We had some help."

"Help?" His enquiry was followed by the sharp squeal of the door being wrenched open as Yui successfully found the key nestled amongst its companions. He ran to his saviour, taking childish comfort in the warmth of his arms.

"Yes. Hanabusa is distracting the guard."

"You involved that vampire?" Yori knew that Zero would pick up on Hanabusa's unwavering loyalty to the monarchy in his limited interactions with him. She understood his concern.

"No need to worry. He's loyal to Lord Kaname, not Lord Rido." She gripped his hand to help him to his feet; Yui only just releasing his grip on him. "We have to go. We were only given five minutes."

"Do you think the guard won't notice that I'm with you?"

"Well, you'll come from behind him."

"Who are you and what did you do with my Yori?"

"I won't let that man kill you. Not now that I'm able to see you again." She took a step back towards the way they came, but thought better of it as she wrapped her arms around him too. If Yui was going to be able to draw some comfort from him, then she would also do so.

"And you were just telling me to hurry." He grumbled.

"I don't know what will happen once we step through those doors, but if I do never see you again…"

"Don't worry about that. You will." He wrapped his arms securely around his friend.

"He's like a cockroach." Yui piped up. The tension was instantly broken.

"Well, thank you for that, Yui. I'm sure the vampires would agree with you."

Yui reddened as he realised what he had compared his hero to. "No, no, not like that! I just meant that you're really hard to kill!"

"I know what you meant, Yui." Zero ruffled the child's hair affectionately.

"I'm sorry, I'm really sorry!"

"Now that you've insulted Zero, let's go." Yori teased, revelling in the small moment before all hell would inevitably break loose. He stuck his tongue out at her angrily in response before leading the way back.

Leaving the dank depths was much easier than entering them.

"I didn't think you were the violent type, Lord Aido." Yori chided as she stepped over the unconscious body of the guard.

"What took you so long? This was supposed to be a quick job!" He acknowledged the newly freed Zero with a nod, which he returned. "Kiryuu."

"Aido."

"I thought we were only going to seal his memory?" Yori asked.

"So I wasn't supposed to be the one to knock him out?" Zero enquired.

"I never said you were." Yori gave her friend a mischievous smile. "Why are you looking at Zero like that?"

Hanabusa jumped as though he had suffered an electric shock, before he turned his head away indignantly while crossing his arms defensively.

"I wasn't looking at him in any way!"

Everyone turned to look at Zero as he let out a grunt of surprise. He was looking at a spot over Hanabusa's shoulder.

"No need to panic, Kiryuu, I'm on your side. I can promise you that." The familiar silky voice could only belong to one man.

"Lord Kaname!" Hanabusa exclaimed, his indignity replaced with a relieved excitement. "Where have you been?"

He gave the blond a small smile. "It doesn't matter. What matters is what we do next."

Kaname cleared his throat before he continued speaking.

"Now that Kiryuu is free, we can make our move to stop my uncle. I think we can all agree that what he plans to implement will only be detrimental to us all."

"I can't imagine that he'd stop at my death." Zero commented drily. Kaname's gaze lingered on him a moment longer than it needed to.

"No. He plans to wipe out all those under you as well."

"He plans a genocide…" Yori murmured.

"What better way to tame the fearful masses?" Hanabusa added thoughtfully.

"Kiryuu, you will be instrumental in stopping him. You hold the element of surprise." Kaname removed something from around his neck and presented it to the hunter. As said hunter's eyes alighted on the small gem, he realised why he hadn't been able to sense the rightful king's presence before.

"My pendant!" Yui cried.

"How did you get this?" Zero asked, slipping the rope nimbly over his head.

"My uncle is careless with his things."

"What do you plan to do?" Yori asked curiously. Kaname ignored her question, instead turning to address Zero.

"I suggest that you keep to the shadows, Kiryuu. Once they realise that you're gone, they'll definitely be hunting you. That pendant can only help you so much."

"I think I'm perfectly capable of taking care of myself."

"That's why you got caught, I suppose."

Zero gave an angry click of his tongue before he glanced down at the unconscious guard. Kaname seemed to understand his concern.

"Don't worry about him. I will make sure that his memory is sealed."

"You do that."

"Don't talk to him like that." Hanabusa stepped in, earning a cool glare from the now-cloaked Zero.

"It doesn't matter, Aido. I'm sure Kiryuu just isn't feeling his best at the moment." Yori wondered about the meaningful look that Kaname gave Zero. He caught the hunter's eye. "You'll keep protecting Yuuki, won't you, Kiryuu?"

There had been no doubt that he would.

~Z~

Leaving the stuffy, mildew-ridden air behind him, Zero took a deep, refreshing breath. He didn't think that he'd been down there for a particularly long time, but his body reacted as though it had been deprived for weeks. He had been noticing such disconnects between his mind and his body since his initial capture months before by the pureblood king. It was almost as though he was missing several chunks of memory. He wondered if this had anything to do with his unnatural hunger; a hunger that seemed that much worse when he was around Yuuki.

Now wasn't the time to be thinking about this, however, and he didn't want to continue down that path. Now that he had his freedom back and his young charge was safe, it was time to bring about the downfall of Rido Kuran.

~Z~

Yuuki's mind had gone blank, the combination of betrayal and loss finally rendering her speechless. If she had still been aware of her surroundings in that instant, she would have quivered with disgust at the look of pure pleasure on Rido's face.

"You really did come back way too soon. It would have been so much more fun if you had come back in tears, having just discovered that your little hunter lover had been destroyed while you were away." Rido sighed in disappointment.

"You're… you're a monster…" Yuuki stated in a quiet voice, unable to meet his eyes.

"Oh, my dear sweet Yuuki…" Rido responded with sarcastic pity, his face a twisted mockery of concern. "Are you just figuring this out now? Did you really not see this coming?"

Several memories of Rido's sadism and disdain fought for dominance at his words. The only one, other than himself, that he showed any consideration for was Juuri. Now, it seemed like even that hadn't been enough.

"I thought that, despite everything, family might actually mean something to you." Her voice still had that incredulous edge to it.

"It was supposed to be Kaname first." He mused, paying no heed to Yuuki's words.

"What?"

"He was supposed to die before you. But he's very good at hide and seek, isn't he? I never was able to find him when he didn't want to be found."

"Maybe you're just a bad seeker." Yuuki quipped angrily. "It took you long enough to get to Zero!"

A wave of nausea rose in her throat. He spoke so easily of killing them. Had he planned this from the very beginning?

"Ah, but I did get to Zero. I will get to Kaname too, just a little later than I had intended. Now…" he took a menacing step towards her, his hand reaching into his coat, "be a good girl and disappear from sight."

The familiar crackle of hunter magic struck her like a bolt as Rido produced a shimmering blade. She could only take a second to wonder how he was able to hold the sword without any pain before she turned and ran.

~Z~

"How are you always so good at hiding?" Eight year old Yuuki huffed angrily. She had looked everywhere that she could think of for her older brother, but she had had to call the game quits before she saw him. He chuckled at her.

"It's easy really. You just have to know your opponent." Yuuki crossed her arms.

"But I know you!"

"You do. But you don't know how I think." Kaname tapped the side of his head for emphasis. "Once you know how someone thinks, you can hide from them indefinitely."

Yuuki's pout only grew at his explanation. She had never handled defeat with any grace. Kaname really should have known better than to act as though his young sister was at the same level of maturity as he was.

"If it makes you feel any better, Yuuki, Uncle Rido can never find me either. And he's had many more years of experience than you."

"Really?" Kaname grinned, pleased that he had found a way to calm his irate sister down.

"Yup. I learned early on how to avoid him. I can teach you if you'd like."

~Z~

Oh, how she wished that she had taken him up on his offer now. Maybe he would have told her then how little he cared about them.

For a house that had always been busily active no matter the time of day or night, it was distressingly empty now. Rido's footsteps and laughter were duelling in her ears, driving her forward as though they were physical beings.

She was certain that her head start was good enough. Using all of her strength, she upturned a sizable end table. The loud crash was music to her ears. If luck was on her side, someone would hear it and come to investigate. She then had to hope that they were on her side.

"Don't think that something like this will stop me, Yuuki~"

I don't need to stop you right now, Yuuki thought to herself, I just need to slow you down long enough.

~Z~

"Where the hell are you, Yuuki?" Her uncle's angry voice reverberated in her ears, causing her to draw her knees up to her chin in distress. She knew that what she had done was wrong, but she wasn't willing to go and face him when he sounded like that. She would go and apologise to him when he had calmed down. Her punishment was sure to be more bearable then.

"If you don't come out here right now, Yuuki, your punishment will be a thousand fold what it will be now." Her brother had taught her how to dim her aura to an almost unnoticeable level, and she had never been more grateful for that than she was now.

She let out the breath that she hadn't realised that she had been holding when the next angry call of her name was further away. She jumped when the small space she was occupying was suddenly usurped by a second presence. A hand was over her mouth before she could scream.

"Shh, Yuuki, it's just me." She was relieved to hear Kaname's quiet voice, and she relaxed her body into his. He would protect her. "So what did you do to make him so mad?"

"I broke his rose." Yuuki was referencing the precious glass rose that her mother had given to Rido as a gift in their infancy. It had slipped out of her hands onto the hard marble floor as she inspected the beautiful crafted ornament. "I didn't do it on purpose! I just wanted to see it."

"Ah, I see." She heard him suck in a breath. "You're really for it, huh?"

"No!" Yuuki whined, clinging to her brother. Her uncle had always been scary. Hearing her brother respond as though her fate was sealed was even worse.

"It's better to get this over with, Yuuki. You know he can't calm down when it comes to mother."

"I'll just stay here." Yuuki responded with a firm shake of her head. Kaname pulled her into a tight hug, which she eagerly returned. Before she knew it, he had removed her from her hiding place and brought her to her feet.

"Don't worry, I'll go with you. I'll protect you, Yuuki."

~Z~

That's right, she thought, she'd never been able to face her uncle without her older brother protecting her. Maybe if she had learnt how to deal with him on her own, she would have been better prepared for this situation.

She had lost her independence since she had returned here after that long year, allowing others to make her decisions for her. It was as though she had left her will with Zero. And now he was gone because of her. Was she really going to keep running away when she was the one who had allowed harm to come to the man she had grown to care for so deeply?

She wouldn't have much of a choice soon. She could see that she had taken a wrong turn in her panic and was only heading towards the dead end of the corridor.

She wrenched her body around. It was now or never. She used all of her weight to push back against her uncle, causing him to stumble back a few steps in surprise.

"You know what, uncle? I'm done being scared of you. I'm done running from you." She allowed the venomous cracking of the anti-vampire weapon to fuel her anger. "I've been foolishly wanting to believe in you too. But I won't let you do as you please!"

"How good of you to stop running. That will make this so much easier."

"You'll pay. For mother, father, Kaname and Zero, you'll pay! Whatever you do here, you won't get away with it. I can promise you that."

"These are such strong words from a cornered little mouse."

Despite her firm stance, Yuuki took a step back as he took one forward. She was trapped here, having run herself into a corner. Her back met hard wood and her hand scrabbled around behind her for something, anything, that she could use to distract Rido for just a second. If she could just get that sword away from him, she would be able to wrestle back some vestige of control for herself.

She had never had a very threatening throw, but her aim was true. Rido was forced to cover his head as the hard wooden frame came flying towards his face. Seizing her opportunity, she ran past him.

Or, she tried to. Rido's leg was suddenly tangled amongst hers, causing her to jerk forward into a fall. She didn't quite make it to the floor though as Rido once more wrenched her around by her arm. As her short life flashed before her eyes, she could only watch in horror as the sword came charging towards her heart.

#vampire knight #zeki #eternal zeki #radiant zeki #fanfiction #archive

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candy--heart · 7 years ago

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Black Power's Gonna Get You Sucka: Right-Wing Paranoia and the Rhetoric of Modern Racism - By Tim Wise, July 10, 2010

Prominent white conservatives are angry about racism. Forget all that talk about a post-racial society. They know better than to believe in such a thing, and they’re hopping mad. What is it that woke them up finally, after all these years of denial, during which they insisted that racism was a thing of the past? Was it the research indicating that job applicants with white sounding names have a 50 percent better chance of being called back for an interview than their counterparts with black-sounding names, even when all qualifications are the same?

No. Was it the study that found white job applicants with criminal records have a better chance of being called back for an interview than black applicants without one, even when all the qualifications are the same? No. Was it the massive nationwide study that estimated at least 1 million cases of blatant job discrimination against blacks, Latinos and Asian Americans each year, affecting roughly one-in-three job seekers of color? No. Is it the fact that black males with college degrees are almost twice as likely as their white male counterparts to be out of work? No. Is it the data indicating that Chinese-American professionals earn less than 60 percent as much as their white counterparts, even though the Chinese Americans, on average, have more education? No. Was it the study that found the lightest-skinned immigrants to the United States make as much as 15 percent more than the darkest, even when the immigrants in question have the same level of education, experience and measured productivity? No. Perhaps they finally stumbled upon the evidence suggesting millions of cases of race-based housing discrimination against people of color each year, and this is what has them so incensed? No. Or maybe their anger is due to the reports of blatant racism practiced by Wells Fargo, which was deliberately roping black borrowers (to whom they referred as "mud people") into high-cost loans, targeting them for these instruments, and even falsifying credit histories to make black applicants look like greater risks than they were, so as to justify the scam? No. Was it the study demonstrating that e-mail inquiries about rental property submitted by people with white sounding names were 60 percent more likely than those with black sounding names to get a positive response from a landlord (meaning an indication that a unit was available for rent), even when the housing had been previously advertised as available? No. Maybe they’re furious because of the way whites in the New Orleans area conspired after the flooding of the city to keep blacks from returning and being able to find housing on equitable terms, if at all? No. Or maybe it’s because of the data from the Justice Department, to the effect that blacks are far more likely than whites to have their cars and persons searched after a traffic stop, even though whites, when searched, are more than four times as likely to have drugs or other illegal contraband on us? No. Well then, perhaps it’s the recent revelations that police in New York City are blatantly profiling blacks and Latinos, stopping and frisking them in massive numbers, even though in 90 percent of all cases, the people they stop are released without any charge because they are found to have done nothing illegal? No. Is the source of their anger the data showing that although whites and blacks use and sell drugs at roughly the same rates, African Americans are anywhere from 2.8 to 5.5 times more likely than whites to be arrested for a drug offense, depending on the year? Or perhaps the state level data indicating that in nine states, blacks are arrested at more than seven timesthe rate of whites, and in Minnesota and Iowa at rates that are more than eleven timesgreater than white arrest rates for drugs? Or perhaps the additional data that blacks are more than 10 times as likely as whites to be sent to prison for drug offenses, despite relatively equivalent rates of drug crimes? Or the fact that a majority of persons admitted to prison for drug offenses are black, even though there are about six times more white users nationwide? No. Maybe they're beside themselves over the fact that millions of black men who are ex-felons and have paid their debt to society are permanently blocked from voting thanks to disenfranchisement laws that were devised for blatantly racist reasons? Surely they are upset that these laws have led to blacks being denied the right to vote after serving their time at a rate that is 7 times the national average? No. Perhaps they’re enraged by the way white police officers conspired to murder a black man in New Orleans after Katrina, and then cover up the crime, or the way other whites formed a vigilante terror squad and went hunting for black people in the aftermath of the flooding? No. Maybe it was that racist e-mail sent by the white Boston police officer to the reporter at the Boston Globe, in which he called Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates a “banana eatin’ jungle monkey?” No. Then maybe it was the story about that high ranking racist in the Chicago police force who OK’d the torture of black men to extract confessions for years? No. Then I bet they must have finally seen that story about the Philadelphia cop who refers to black folks as animals and niggers. That’s it, right? No. Could it be that they’ve read and been moved by the dozens of studies that show the cumulative health effects of racism and discrimination on people of color, and which indicatethat doctors do indeed treat patients of color differently, and worse, than their white counterparts? Or perhaps the research that finds how even black women with college degrees, decent jobs and good incomes have infant mortality rates for their children that are higher than the rates for white women who dropped out before high school? And the way that researchers believe stresses associated with racial discrimination are implicated in the worse fetal and neo-natal health of these mother's children? No. Perhaps it’s the research that shows black students being suspended and expelled from school at far higher rates than white students, even though there are no significant differences in the rates at which students of different races violate serious school rules? No. Maybe it's the research indicating that teachers set lowered expectations for children with black-sounding names, independent of observed ability, and even when compared to the child's own siblings who have less identifiably black names. These lowered expectations, based on presumptions of lowered competence and ability then result in lower performance by the stigmatized students. No. Or maybe it was that troubling story on CNN about how white children and even many children of color seem to prefer white skin, and think that children with black skin are bad, dirty, mean and ugly? No. Well then it must be the blatant stuff. Maybe they finally got around to looking at those images of Tea Party protesters and other assorted conservatives coming to rallies with signs advocating the lynching of Democratic party leaders, or portraying the President as an African witch doctor? Or maybe somebody informed them of all the times that conservative and Republican Party activists have sent around blatantly racist e-mails lately, like those portraying the white house lawn covered in watermelons, or once again with the witch doctor imagery, or likening Michelle Obama to an ape, or picturing the President as a pair of "spook eyes" against a black background? No. Maybe they're angry at Tea Party leader Mark Williams for calling the President an "Indonesian Muslim" and a "welfare thug?" I mean, that's pretty racialized rhetoric, right? No. Or maybe it was the Tea Party leader in Ohio who tweeted about how he wants to shoot Hispanic immigrants, to whom he refers as "spicks?" (sic) No. Well then surely it must have been the story about Tea Party candidate for Governor in New York who sent e-mails picturing the President dressed as a pimp and featuring a group of African tribesman performing a traditional dance, which he referred to as the "Obama Inauguration Rehearsal?" No. Perhaps what has them angry is the statement by that Arizona Congressman, to the effect that black folks were better off under slavery than they are today? No. Maybe it was because of those guys over at the popular right-wing website, FreeRepublic.com who called the President's daughter, Malia, "typical ghetto trash," and a "whore" whose mother likes to entertain her by "making monkey sounds?" No. Or perhaps they finally had enough when they heard about how Rep. Ciro Rodriguez was called a "wetback" by one of his constituents and told to go back to Mexico? No. Or maybe it was that lawmaker in South Carolina who called both President Obama and Republican Gubernatorial candidate (and Indian American) Nikki Haley, "ragheads?" No. Or perhaps they're upset about how the guy who sponsored the law in Arizona, ostensibly to catch "illegal immigrants" (a law they support), turns out to be pals with neo-Nazis? Or the fact that the organization that takes credit for writing the bill has longstanding ties to blatant racists and hate groups? No. Or maybe it was the story about how National Review columnist John Derbyshire told Harvard law students that black achievement lags behind white achievement because blacks are biologically inferior to whites? No. Well perhaps it was that story about the motorists in Prescott, Arizona who continually shouted racial slurs at artists who were painting a mural on the walls of a school, which featured children of color who go there? And certainly they must have been upset about the fact that initially the school was actually planning to lighten the subjects' skin color so as to appease locals and a right wing talk show host? No. Or maybe they're irate because of the report that employees of the Department of Homeland Security have posted blatantly racist comments about Latino immigrants on web boards? No. Surely it must be because of the evidence that uniformed American soldiers are joining up with neo-Nazi organizations and even flaunting their membership in such groups? No. It is none of this. Neither the evidence of systemic discrimination against people of color in every walk of American life, nor the repeated examples of blatant racism directed towards people of color individually moves them. But they're angry nonetheless about racism in America. They're especially angry about the tax being placed on those who use tanning salons. Because this is racist. Against white people. No, seriously. Oh, and the President criticized a white police officer for arresting a black man for a crime that, turns out, the black man didn't actually commit, according to state law. That Obama would do such a thing--namely, criticize an officer for making an unjustified arrest--means that white police officers are "under assault" from Obama, and that the President is trying to "destroy" the white officer, no doubt because he's white. Oh, and since people of color disproportionately lack health care coverage, the President's plan for expanding coverage is obviously a racist scheme to get reparations for slavery. Oh, and the President is deliberately trying to destroy the economy so as to pay back white people for slavery and hundreds of years of oppression. Oh, and two black kids beat up a white kid on a bus in Belleville, Illinois--something that is obviously due to Obama being President. Oh, and the President picked Eric Holder as Attorney General. Since Holder has said Americans have often been "cowards" when it comes to discussing race, this proves that Holder is racist against white people, even though he didn't mention white people. He said Americans, and Americans means white people. So he's a bigot. And so is Obama for picking him. Oh, and the President nominated Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court. And she's a Latina, who notes that she sees the world through the lens of her experience, and that she hopes that experience would positively inform her decision-making. And that means she's a bigot. And the fact that Obama nominated her, as well as Eric Holder, proves that he "views white men as the problem" in America, and that the only way you can get promoted by Obama is "by hating white people." Like Tim Geithner, who most definitely hates your honky ass. Oh, and the President also nominated Elena Kagan, and Kagan once worked for Justice Thurgood Marshall, and Marshall once said the Constitution as originally conceived--which, ya know, excluded blacks from citizenship--was flawed. Imagine. And this means that Marshall was anti-white, and anyone who worked for him must be too. Oh, and the Obama Justice Department dropped criminal voter intimidation charges against three members of the New Black Panther Party in Philadelphia (while obtaining an injunction against a fourth member). So this proves the Administration is allied with the Panthers, whose Philly leader proclaims that he "hates all white people," and Obama probably agrees with him, and is refusing to prosecute because he doesn't care about white folks' voting rights. In fact, the New Black Panthers are part of Obama's "army of thugs." Even though the same Philly leader of the group didn't support Obama for President, and has called Obama a "puppet" and "slavemaster." And of course, as a point of fact, the criminal charges against the other three Panthers were dropped by the Bush Department of Justice. And there have been no voters who actually claim to have been intimidated by the Panthers. And even a leading conservative Republican on the Civil Rights Commission says the incident is much ado about nothing. Oh, and since the Justice Department is considering bringing federal charges against the white officer who killed Oscar Grant--a black man--in cold blood in Oakland last year, this proves that we've returned to the 1950s, only this time it's whites who are the victims of racist oppression. Because it's oppression to bring charges against a white cop who kills someone. Naturally. Yes indeed, they all agree, Obama is a "reverse racist" who has a deep-seated hatred of white people, and who is like Hitler, and we know this because he's proposing a national service corps to help work on various community problems, and this is just like the Nazi SS, well, except for the murdering part. Or if not Hitler, then at the very least he's just like an "African colonial despot". And for sure, Obama is the reason race relations are so strained: not because of the ongoing discrimination against people of color, which the data indicates is commonplace, or because of the incendiary rhetoric coming from conservative commentators. But because of Barack Obama. Race relations could never be strained by say, for instance, having a white talk show host fantasize about murdering a black congressman with a shovel. Or by another host calling undocumented migrants from Mexico "invasive species". Or by spreading lies about how 5 million so-called "illegal aliens" were given subprime mortgages, as a way to blame the undocumented for the housing meltdown, even though there is no evidence whatsoever to support the fabricated claim. Or by alleging that ACORN (a community-based organization comprised mostly of people of color) committed massive voter fraud so as to help elect Obama, even though there is no evidence that a single illegitimate vote was cast due to ACORN's voter registration efforts, and despite the fact that when a few ACORN operatives filed phony voter registration cards, it was ACORN itself that alerted election officials to the problem Or by a prominent conservative commentator insisting that white men are experiencing the same kind of oppression that blacks faced for years, even as that commentator has previously reminisced fondly about the days of segregation. Or by another radio host and prominent conservative author blaming "multicultural" people for "destroying" the country, or calling Arab Muslims "non-humans," or fantasizing about killing people in the "civil rights business." Or by another radio host and prominent conservative author referring to the mostly black residents of New Orleans, in the wake of Katrina as "worthless parasites" and "human parasitic garbage" because of their high rates of welfare receipt. Even though, according to Census data, there were only 4600 households in all of the city receiving cash welfare at the time of the flooding, which was less than 4 percent of all black households in the city, and whose annual benefits came to only around $2800 per year. Or by walking around with a sign suggesting that President Obama intends to put white people into slavery. Or by saying that President Obama only won the election because he's black, and if he weren't black, he'd be a tour guide in Honolulu. Or by saying that the only reason Colin Powell endorsed Obama was as an act of racial bonding. Or by saying that Oprah Winfrey is also successful only because she's black. Or by blaming the economic collapse on fair lending laws and lending to minorities, even though all the evidence suggests such laws and such loans had nothing to do with the housing or larger economic crises. Or perhaps by having a right-wing talk show host announce a plan for conservatives to "take back the civil rights movement," and compare himself to Martin Luther King Jr. This, even though conservatives were almost uniformly opposed to the movement and King, and even though the talk show host's favorite authors, whose work he promotes regularly, viewed the movement as a communist conspiracy and referred to civil rights activists as animals. Or by another conservative comparing himself to Dr. King, and speaking of how much he respects King's legacy, even as he--the conservative--has said he believes private businesses should have the right to discriminate on the basis of race. No, none of those things could strain race relations, or further racism. And certainly not when compared to a tanning booth tax. While on the face of it, these kinds of right-wing inanities may seem so absurd as to hardly merit being taken seriously, it's important to step back and think about the internal logic of even the most outlandish claims. I mean, no one can honestly believe that health care reform is reparations. After all, what the hell kind of reparations is it where you have to get sick first in order to get paid? That's not a good hustle. And no one can really believe that some white kid got beat up on a bus because it's "Obama's America," as if the President had sent a text message to those black guys saying: HEY, YNOT BEAT SUM CRAKA ASS 4 ME, U DIG? But the intellectual strength of the claims is not the issue. It doesn't matter. From a political perspective, even the most insane-sounding claim about Obama's supposed hatred for white people makes sense. It's a perfect way to prime white racial fears and anxieties, to say, in effect, they're coming for your money white folks, and then your children. In a nation where the population will be half people of color within 25-30 years, and where the popular culture is now thoroughly multicultural (and thus many of the icons don't look the way they used to), and where the President doesn't fit a lot of people's conception of what such a person is supposed to look like, and where the economy is in the toilet for millions, playing upon white anxiety is the perfect recipe for political mobilization. They've said very clearly that they want their country back. And if we who oppose the right don't challenge these folks for the racists they are, or continue to shy away from making race an issue (as if it weren't already), they just might get it. Tim Wise is the author of five books and over 250 essays on race. His latest is Colorblind: The Rise of Post-Racial Politics and the Retreat from Racial Equity (San Francisco: City Lights Books, 2010).

https://www.facebook.com/notes/tim-wise/black-powers-gonna-get-you-sucka-right-wing-paranoia-and-the-rhetoric-of-modern-/405966594503/

#Tim Wise #Racism #conservatives #conservatism

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im-young-scrappy-n-hungry · 8 years ago

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Things that bug my mom about TFP

Hey guys! So my mom had some thoughts about TFP that she asked me to post here for y’all. It’s a little long though (come on, you knew I had to get my wordiness from somewhere) so I’m gonna post it word for word under the cut. I’ll let her introduce herself up here though:

Hi. I'm Nat's mom and I'm a lurker by nature. I never post anything anywhere, but I need to get some stuff off my chest about this complete clusterfuck of an episode. So I decided to guest post on her account. (Thanks, BooBoo!).

Tl;dr: John Watson- Worst. Parent. Ever

First, I want to extend my sympathies to the TJLC folks. I love Johnlock, both the deep friendship and the romance idea, but I don't feel qualified to speak as part of that community. I admire the depth of research and the investment of time, effort and emotional energy that goes into this kind of pop culture discourse, and I am very sorry that your hopes and expectations were dashed after all that the creative team behind the show did to build you up.

Secondly, others have already pointed out the truly staggering failures of logic (not to mention violations of the laws of physics), the fact that every single female character has been reduced to their lowest common denominator, i.e., defining them in relationship to a man, and the plot holes big enough to fly a Tardis through. I look forward to someone's essay on the use of the Madwoman in the Attic cliche and the gendered depictions of mental illness. I mean, really, the male serial killer last week was a famous and universally loved philanthropist whose only "tells" were a creepy affect and disgusting teeth, but the female psychopath is locked away in her jammies with no human contact except for, oh wait, five minutes alone with another psycho. Uh huh. Someone with an academic background, please write this, please?

In addition to all of that, the thing that's been eating at me for the last two days is how they gave John the award for Worst. Parent. Ever.

John and Mary never had the best basis for a marriage. TJLC has covered this very well, but I think it's plain to even the casual viewer that they can barely stand each other. Except for the wedding episode they rarely touch and almost never express genuine affection. They chose each other because they consciously wanted a normal life, to deliberately turn away from their dangerous pasts. They have a baby and a house in the 'burbs, but it ends with John grieving, again, for the life he tried to build, and as a single parent.

I can buy that John needs help taking care of Rosie right after Mary dies. He can't function, he's back in therapy, he nearly kills Sherlock and then saves Sherlock's life within a couple of days. Then we're off on our Euros adventure and the only thing we hear about his child is from Sherlock, of all people, just before the grenade explodes. He goes haring off to Alcatraz and faces death about a half dozen times over the next, what, 24 hours or so. THE SOLE SOURCE OF CARE AND SUPPORT OF AN INFANT IS NOT ALLOWED TO BEHAVE THIS WAY. In TST, he and Mary twice discuss appropriate places to take Rosie and who stays behind to find a sitter. Now he's left the baby with friends: which friends? Molly and Mrs. Hudson didn't have her, so who did? Harry, Mike Stamford? Why were there no phone calls or texts asking where to find her favorite toy/pacifier/baby food, or letting John know she's teething/won't stop crying/running a fever? Why does John offer to kill an innocent man, knowing he'll have to look his daughter in the eyes for the rest of her life knowing her Daddy's a murderer (not killer. This isn't war or self defense.) Why is he so quick to offer to die instead of Mycroft? His daughter just lost her mother and now he wants to make her an orphan? Has he updated his will since Mary died, and named a guardian? In the unlikely event he did, who do you think he chose? Probably the person most likely to put him in mortal danger in the first place: his best friend, Rosie's godfather, Sherlock. Why doesn't he point out that of the three of them, he's got the most responsibility, the most to live for? And why, after conveniently forgetting that he was shackled to the bottom of that well and climbing up the rope, aren't his first words, "who has a phone, I need to check on Rosie"?

The answer, of course, is that instead of being an actual human infant, Rosie is a plot baby: there to tie John to a wife who was all wrong for him, there to be a symbol of the life he lost when Mary died, but not to be a real baby with real 24/7 needs. Moffat has experience with plot babies; remember Melody Pond?

This could all have been avoided with a line here and there acknowledging her existence. " 'Who's got Rosie?' 'Stamford's picking her up.' "; " 'I can't murder a man and then go home to my daughter.' " " 'Rosie just lost her Mum, who'll take care of her if you shoot me?' " It wouldn't have taken much.

As a parent of former infants, I can tell you with absolute certainty that when your kids are little you think of them constantly. I don't care if you have a fabulous career, a crappy job, are a stay at home parent, or anything in between. You're never NOT thinking about them. John Watson is presented, always, even at his most depressed, down or violent, as a good person. He would be a good parent. He would not be the kind of parent who forgets his responsibilities to someone so completely dependent on him. This BUGS me.

#sherlock #bbc sherlock #sherlock s4 #tfp #john watson #rosie watson #guestpost by nat's mom #my amazing mother #nat's corner of the universe

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grimesherbert · 4 years ago

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How To Increase Height After 30 At Home Marvelous Useful Tips

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How Can A Girl Increase Her Height After 21

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#How To Increase Height After 30 At Home Marvelous Useful Tips #Grow Taller In 90 Days

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