#ive had this (or posts to this extent) in my drafts for a long time adhdjf

[vel17]

[networkunsupported]

appropos of nothing (locking eyes with the dash rn) but

1. queerbaiting may be defined purely as the hinting at same-sex relationships in media, but 'gay' and 'queer' are not necessarily interchangeable- if a relationship between two people of the same gender includes at least one queer person, then it is not queerbaiting. because there is no baiting- that is just being queer.

yes, this goes for if at least one person in that relationship is aromantic or asexual or demi or transgender or any of the above. they are queer. there is no baiting. even if there is no same-sex relationship. it's queer. end of.

2. queerbaiting takes time and effort and is deliberate on the part of the writer. a story about two men being friends is not in any way queerbaiting by its own, and neither is a story with the potential to be about a gay relationship, or the undercurrent of possibility of a gay relationship being involved. you are reading that into the text, and the text is not obliged to conform.

3. two men- two homosexual, gay men, can be in close situations together, form friendships, travel alongside one another, possess each other's bodies- whatever, and still not fall in love. there's nothing saying they have to do that.

4. honestly, if i was the writers of these stories, i'd almost be insulted. you're telling me the world of this universe, the vast, expansive world, with all its lore and its development and plot and characters and whatnot-- you're telling me the only reason you, as a reader, kept going with this piece of work is because you thought two men might kiss? maybe it's just my sensibilities talking, but... come on now.

you can see the way these characters influence each other and the world and the events of the story- and you can read what you will into it, but accept that's what it is- a reading. that's what you're supposed to do with stories like this- adapt it, take what you want from it. but don't blame the original text- or, god forbid, the author, for not exactly following your own version of events.

i'll shut my ass up about all of this now but like... cmon.

[speirslore]

band of brothers officers: dating hcs

a/n: hello! this is my first post but ive been lurking in the bob fandom for a while & i'm soooo excited to finally join... i have a bunch of other ideas and drafts i want to post soon :) this includes the officers: winters, nixon, speirs, lipton, + buck, please lmk if anyone would be interested in more of the boys! i made it vague but the reader is implied to be a part of easy company in some capacity

[dick winters]

he is a very private person and shy... like his ears go bright red at the mere mention of your name which easy company takes full advantage of

you think it's incredibly sweet

it takes a while for him to have confidence when interacting with you in the beginning... he feels inexperienced and that you couldn’t possibly be interested in him

it's a slow burn for sureee

like men getting out of the hospital that come back to the company are immediately like "so are they finally together??"

there are bets on when and where it will finally happen

luz's theory is one of you has to confess when you all jump into berlin at the end of the war... the perfect hollywood ending

it ofc doesn't happen like that; it's a slow process of building trust, it's a mix of quality time and acts of service

the quality time can be hard to come by during the war but dick is determined to check in with you: small, reassuring smiles and touches, finding each other in crowded rooms

it's very private, he doesn't want to jeopardize either of your careers or reputations, but ofc lew knows the details (but the entire company basically knows?)

and lew is good at keeping secrets.. he's the intelligence officer ofc (as he constantly reminds the two of you)

a lot of wrapping his arms around you pulling your back to his chest, resting his chin on your head or shoulder

maybe even a quick smooch

kisses as rewards for him finishing all the action reports he has to do

omg then in austria... things definitely change... and it's easier to label what you have.. dick can finally relax (to some extent), and it starts to feel like more of a normal relationship

all the men are so happy for you like he's had 20+ wingmen this entire time <3

[lewis nixon]

another one that i think is definitely slow burn... but once he finds out he's getting divorced...

even before that, lew's humor always made you feel more comfortable and at ease

he has always gravitated towards you

definitely gets clingy

lovessss sleeping with you like insists that sleep is extremely important for a solider and he sleeps sooo well with you

it's literally impossible to escape his arms when you're sleeping... leg thrown over you, arms wrapped around you

the most comfortable you've ever been fr

the ungodly amount of sexual tension before you get together... oh god.. one time the officers are all playing poker; welsh and lipton just look at each other when lew's leg kicks yours under the table or you lean against his shoulder

like oh god... not again... they're telepathically planning their escape

all the tension, stares, touches, long talks you've had reach a boiling point as lew becomes more jaded by the war and he finds out abt the divorce

you instinctively want to take care of him and you're definitely worried about him... you have a lot of convos with dick trying to figure out the best way to approach and help lew

words of affirmation are very important to him... i think his initial instinct is gift giving but that's difficult with the war.. and he doesn't feel connected to that, it's just what he's always known

if he gets too drunk, you stay up monitoring him and you really don't mind and just knowing you're there for him makes him v emotional:

like you make him feel like there's hope and a future after the war... and he's been thinking that for a long time but finally says it laying on your chest with your hand running through his hair

you help him shave which eventually ends in making out (a lot of things you guys do devolve into that)

he's your poor little meow meow but in the best possible way

[ron speirs]

ngl the attraction was strong from the start and it didn't take long for you to fall for him... by england before your first drop you both already fell hard

everyone is in disbelief that the rumor is it's YOU that he's seeing

everyone thinks you're a total angel and then... speirs.. it's just tht absolutely none of the men can imagine him being soft or romantic

wants you all to himself... is very good about making free time to be with you

unintentionally hovers

and very subconsciously touchy

has to fight himself from grabbing your hand instinctively

like he can know where your platoon is, where you're dug in but still will make rounds just to have peace of mind and know you're okay

just like all the other rumors, ron doesn't really care about clarifying his relationship with you

oh but if he ever heard a man talking disparagingly about you... just one silent stare and the soldier wouldn't even look at you again

omg def the type to carry around a collection pictures.... those are his prized possessions fr

like a pocket in his uniform just full of very pretty (and private) pictures <3

there's a few wholesome ones too.. like when the two of you had a 48 hour pass to scotland... but others (most of them) not so much

and ofc if you ever need anything... like you need a new watch? he has one for you in a few hours

he truly does love gift giving...

i also think physical touch is a huge love language for him

+ i think like pillow talk, just late night talking with you letting him rant and get everything off of his mind is so cathartic for him

and he really appreciates feeling like you understand him and you want and are willing to listen

[carwood lipton]

definitely the wholesome mom and dad couple

usually, most definitely, attached at the hip

always has a hand on the small of your back, or shoulder, arm, etc, he likes the reassurance of small touches and knowing definitively that you're next to him

i have a very self indulgent headcanon that he likes whenever you kiss and thumb over the scar on his cheek <3 makes him feel less self conscious

okay so lip takes care of everyone else but who's taking care of him?!

guys will come to you bc they know carwood will listen to you if you're the one who tells him he has to rest and take it easy

omg.. and if you're married... he's always twisting and playing with his ring just to remind him of you

has multiple letters from you stuffed in one of his uniform's pocket

he has all of the words memorized by now but just physically holding them is so comforting

quality time and acts of service are HUGE for him

and alone time can be so hard to come by... but anything he can do to make your job and tasks easier... he will do

and vice versa ofc

everyone else watching like wow .. relationship goals fr

anytime he leaves and you're split up for a few days... you always have a dramatic reunion jumping into his arms

a lot of fantasizing about your future together... because it feels so close.. but also so far away

[buck compton]

fraternization rules?? what rules?

has absolutely no shame to be at the bar playing darts, hands all over your waist

and showing you off, dancinggg

just feeling a little silly and goofy... making out at the bar

and everyone is hyping you up

i think at the beginning of the war, your relationship is newer and fun... neither of you are really thinking about something serious

i think physical touch and words of affirmation are huge for him

as the war progresses, the thought and fear of losing you grows, especially after he saw so many of his men suffer/die

and he realizes how much he cares about you...

you comfort him after bastogne... a lot and even though it can be extremely melancholy, hearing you talking about your life pre war, and your life together in the future keeps him going

insisting to him that he'll have to show you california and ucla

writing to him constantly after he's taken off the line.. giving him updates on all the men

in austria, when he returns, watching him play baseball with the boys feels absolutely perfect

[izakiisdead]

Nightmare Comfort ! (short)

I had to change the layout a little because the original artist, @/mono_progress on twitter refrains other people from using their artwork(s) :P

(btw check them out, they are so underrated TT <333 I love their art :3)

Requested by : Nobodyy

Genre : fluff (SFW)

Sam x Male!Reader

Fem/Fem aligned dni

You have always been a very busy person, you have to take care of your farm, maintain good relationships with the villagers and many more. Basically there is not one day where you didn’t sleep at 12:00 am or pass out during mining.

But this clearly didn’t stop you from eyeing on a certain blonde villager that you always pass by while you’re running errands.

He’s buddies with Sebastian,Abigail and Penny. He also lives with his parents beside Emily’s and Haley’s house.

His name is Sam.

You remembered the first day that you stepped into pelican town and your task is to meet new people in the town.

You were running around the town to find new people to introduce to until you accidentally bumped into someone, it was Sam.

The both of you introduced each other and continued with what the both of you were originally doing.

You felt your heart skipped a beat when you saw Sam for the first time.

At that moment you realized,

He was the one.

Its already Year 2 and you see yourself being held by the man of your dreams.

You snuggled closer to Sam which caught his attention. He strokes your hair, comforting you as you were on the verge of tearing up.

How did you end up in this situation? Well…

You had a nightmare.

You often have nightmares but not to this extent.

You clinged onto him tighter because the thought of it being real was too much for you.

“Deep breaths sweetie, deep breaths. Remember, that I’m always here for you okay ?” Sam assured as he kisses your temple. You felt so comforted by his touch and presence to the point where you almost caught yourself falling asleep, he didn’t mind of course. The whole purpose of him comforting you was so that you could fall asleep.

He kissed you multiple times making you smile because you're quite tickle-ish (he thinks its cute).

The both of you spent the night wrapped in eachother's arms as the night goes by.

BONUS !

You woke up feeling all fuzzy and saw your husband Sam handing you an instant pancake he made.

''What? I've never learnt how to cook, mom always did that ! but this is for my one and only farmer boy !'' he laughed as he fed you his instant pancake.

He’s such a man child.

And you love him for that

AUTHORS NOTES !

Im so so sorry for not posting for so long, ive been quite busy plus ive been keeping this in my drafts for so long TT

[ajdrawshq]

3, 9, 23 :D

u know u did smth right when i have to re-look up how to do readmores on mobile for an ask cksbxjsbn

3 - 1-3 games you've played in the past 12 months that you really enjoyed

Omori, Radiant Historia, and Octopath Traveler (in that order)!! and probably several more that im currently forgetting bc the last few months felt like years. i saw Omori on game pass n since i remembered seeing the occasional post abt it i decided to try it out and man!!!! good fucking game!!!!! i dont talk abt it often bc theres very little i can say abt it that hasnt already been said, but it means a lot to me - both the games messages and the world n characters. i even got some new mutuals out of it :3 then Radiant Historia.. i could say a million things abt this game and i Have (most of which is still in my drafts) but god i wish more ppl knew abt this thing. it has its flaws for sure but it does some stuff ive never seen in other games, or not quite the way they do it. n im super attached to the characters <3 probably one of my favorite time travel games by far. and then!!! Octopath Traveler!!!! my most recent beloved.. i did Not think id like it as much as i do but now im very not normal abt it. its such a gorgeous game both in story and the general Vibe of it all its just so <3

9 - A game you played completely blind with no prior knowledge of and enjoyed/loved

definitely octopath. i didnt know Anything going into this game other than that someone recommended it to me bc i also like radiant historia so there had to be some kinda similarity there. going into it, i wasnt sure how following 8 seperate characters and 8 seperate storylines would work nor did i think the endgame would tie them all togther that well, if at all. starting up the game wasnt the most interesting, like when ur going around collecting all 8 characters for the first time and trying to keep up with em all, BUT!! its the kinda game that gets good if u put the time and effort into it and before long i already had 100 hours in. after a while i got really attached to the main team id been using and the other 4 were just as interesting, even the ones i didnt expect to like much?? i adore all the different dynamics within this funny lil ragtag found family so much and all their individual stories.. and everything else is incredible too!! the music is SO fucking good its literally all live orchestrations (and all the musicians are credited too!!) and the boss themes and town themes and route themes are all gorgeous. the graphics are fucking ridiculous, like this game has the best water graphics ive ever seen and that is not an exaggeration in the slightest, and the snow is so so pretty, and the blur effects.. mwah. the overworld pixel art is cute and the enemy/boss pixel art is suprisingly beautiful and detailed. the level design for dungeon-esque areas made treasure hunting fun and i like having to search for hidden pathways in a game built in such a different way than im used to (tho i still have yet to find a way to certain treasure chests >:/). and the gameplay - ive never seen an rpg with set characters that is as flexible as this. u can literally build any character any way and it will be perfectly usable and that is so awesome to me. like theres definitely some optimized builds, but if u wanna make the heavy hitting physical tank guy into a magic dps machine there is nothing stopping u. and he Will kick ass. the gameplay is straight up made for u to do whatever u want with it. the whole world is entirely at ur fingertips. anyway very cute game highly recommend it <3

also worth mentioning are omori, 999, and kh3, but only to some extent bc i technically knew at least Some stuff beforehand for each game but not enough to like. Know. yknow

23 - A "wow" moment of awe

ohhh ive been wanting to talk abt this for a while now thank u for enabling me. in octopath traveler, a Big moment for me was entering the .. spoilery true ending area. ive played a lot of games by now. there are very, very few that have 1. made me genuinely worried about a side character ive met 3 times total n had little more than neutral feelings about and 2. made me feel Actual Dread upon entering an area. the vibe is incredible. first going to a place thats talked about only in tales of a recent tragedy, where there is almost no sound, no life, nothing but burnt, abandoned remains, a save point, and an entrance. and when you actually go inside.. good god. the music is haunting. just the very place is haunting - quite literally!! and the massive lore drops along the way,, man. Man. theres a fuck ton of stuff they just drop on you all at once (some ppl dont like the massive infodump style and im usually the same but i was so fucked up by it i actually absorbed it all lmao), but One Specific Reveal alone was its own wow moment and i havent fully recovered from it. and then the final fucking boss(es)???? hello?????? and the fact that within the eye you can even see (spoiler)........ oughhh. and thats not even mentioning the leadup to it all - the hints are somewhat obvious as you complete each characters ending, but they dont really tie together until you find the diaries. some are more subtle, like the previously mentioned reveal that continues to fuck me up whenever i think about it and i have yet to recover from the whole thing. yes the true endgame is ridiculous and hard as shit and everyone hates doing it. yes its one of the most awe striking moments ive ever felt in a game and i wish i could do it again without the literal suffering that comes with it. no its not even worth it but id do it. yes i am so fucking normal about this game

i also need to mention 999, aitsf, and stella glow here bc holy fuck the three of them deserve it. ive talked abt the first two at some point on their own (the safe ending........ that fucking safe ending!!!!!!!!!!) n i dont have it in me to do a whole thing on stella glow after that ^ so just. trust me on this. ill probably rant abt it at some point its really one hell of a game. oh also ffxv but specifically bc of like the first cutscene where it shows the chocobros getting ready to leave bc that was the first time since id played kh1 and kh2 thatd id seen such pretty looking graphics n characters

[cheswirls]

no more tags but everythings under a cut bc i do not wish to be acknowledged

another cool idea was the spe au where gold and silver swap lives. no notes nancy means i have no idea where tf i was going w it but i remember being super into it at the time!! gold being a runaway rocket prince (i think????? or a runaway masked child) and silver living in a house full of pkmn with a doting mother. same teams different circumstances. a spe!gsc arc rewrite god i wish i had more to go off of

i have all of those pmshi oneshots from the fk verse compiled in a single doc which makes me remember i was supposed to do a 10-20yr follow-up coinciding w the giratina event. where i think red tells silver giovanni is outta jail on immunity or some bs and tells him without saying it flat that silver's gotta be the one to take care of him. as in. put him in the dirt. so thats what he and gold go to do while their small children are stuck in the distortion world trying to appease giratina. would still love to give that a shot someday. i remember doing most of those ficlets for writing warmups in english class. in. i was 16. maybe i did some for a creative writing elective too bc i remember doing fk stuff for that that never saw the light of day (in the classroom among my peers i mean)

the amnesia au is STILL a draft somewhere among my 106 drafts on here. i started that shit my second semester of uni and vividly remember spending most of the night dming someone on here abt details bc they asked and i couldnt stop myself even tho i was pulling an all-nighter to complete an art project due that next morning. ye so def when i didnt have my priorities straight goooooood thats so painful to think abt

the pmshi soulmate au was around that time too. admittedly i should've let it set more before posting to ao3 (one of the first things on my ao3 asaaaaaaaaaa kill me) but even tho my interest was killed for that i still would like to go back to it someday. when i am out of uni nd school in general and it becomes comfortable to write using my own experiences to some extent. truly that is the reason i ever stopped - school started to suck and i didn't wanna think abt it when writing smth and i still feel the same way now. maybe will revive it after graduation (and grad school prolly) since its still interesting but i am def rewriting that shit lmao

wygtm (sumo rewrite) i am still planning to come back to. still love it. still love the post-game epilogue i drafted while in a summer course in 2019. still love the sequel idea that incorporates usum elements while also being set in the future (so mizuki+lillie are adults and have established jobs in alola and some of the brunt of the usum plot is shoved onto an unsuspecting kid to mirror how those 2 handled sumo events (ailey i think????? was the name of usum!mizuki in the demo, so i ran with it. they were 2 separate ppl) buuuuuuut ik a holdup w that will be that ill have to rewrite everything and actually decide on a personality for mizuki and also. idk i still like the name faaora i think it was french polynesian??? or smth for "hero" which was fitting. this was before the selene/elio name reveal and before i liked moon. if i redid this now i'd jus call her mizuki and have her nn be moon like i did in komadori

oh i JUST checked n the perfectworld fic was last modified (digitally) august 2019. that literally could've been accidentally pressing a key and deleting it tho im not sure. i think my first rewrite was in a notebook so maybe this is the most current version n its digital. i opened it in 2022 which im almost positive was when i did those sketches for korrina and gurkinn's granddaughters from johto. dont you just love when you make ocs for a fic in your teens and still love them years down the line.

i think the last one of note is the ranger au set in sinnoh that p much is abandoned at this point bc i've admitted to hell n back that i didnt write plot details down anywhere n its been so long ive forgotten everything. the only thing i can repurpose is all the background info i had for the sinnoh quintet and how each of them has a difficult relationship with their family and why they're out as "wandering" trainers. i've thought abt this so much bc i still love the designs i gave those 5 and all the lore i established. was gonna do a riley/roark fic last summer using my tron notes for him so maybe this summer i will. doing smth for each of them in detail would be fun since i love them sooooooo. (also i can absolutely still stuff marley/candice into her fic and actually write polartwilight for the first time ever bc i looove them)

looking @ old fic i started when i was 14/15 is so funny bc im realizing once again why i never mark fics as abandoned even if its been literal years since i've touched them. specifically i was checking docs for stuff i started and either did or didn't post to ffn.

and its like. nothing is bad??? like i can see where my outside-the-box ideal of fic writing comes from. not just fics but writing in general, i'm p sure. even if it's a total cliche plot setup, there are details on each that rly make it stand out like oh yeahhhhhh i did have this great idea once upon a time.

funny too bc was it executed well in prose??? no absolutely not i wrote like shit when i was 15. would i revive an idea one day and revise it to be less cliche or cringy while still keeping the stand-out elements??? yea maybe. i might. everything i'm currently working on that i started from 2021 up to now still holds my supreme interest, but like i'm not gonna say never.

esp since i write fic first and foremost for my own need and specifically what i like to read, it makes it impossible to consider an idea i've thought extensively about "not worth writing anymore". anyway not making this too long i jus found everything interesting to consider

[seijch]

ANNOUNCEMENT: NOT A HELLO, BUT NOT A GOODBYE EITHER

omg hi ... im like . ashamed to come back after saying brief hiatus in october and then disappearing off the face of the earth til FEBRUARY but under the cut i will be explaining myself and the following, if youre interested (and a tl;dr at the very bottom if you don’t wanna scroll thru this obnoxiously long post):

the reason(s) i was gone for so long

what i was doing during that time (its just a personal account yall can scroll past this idrc)

the status of those um . halloween requests

the future of this account

i. so . Hiatus .

i know. i know . i probably mentioned it when i made the announcement post, but my mental health likes to go on one of those rides. yknow the ones where you go like up rlly fast then down maybe and then up then DOWN .... its like that. i needed a break and every time i wanted to come back or thought about it, something would happen and i would get stuck in my own head.

a big reason for getting stuck in my head was (and i hate to admit this ... i hate to admit that i have Insecurities On The Internet) my feelings of inadequacy regarding my writing. i love to plot fics, i love concepts and characters and making little headcanons but i dont ... know if i love writing rn. and i thought for the longest time that like . whatever ill just push thru it its fine ill be fine but it kinda wasnt lmao you can kinda see it in my halloween reqs and what become of them when i get to that but i began to feel like nothing i had put out or would put out would hold up prose wise (and normally i dont feel like this im much more “idc its my life im living it” but thats not a rant for tumblr LMAO). i still feel like that -- like im better as a reader than a writer. but . You Know :-)

tl;dr: mental state go brrrrr

ii. anywhere here’s wonderwall

when i left, i was in a steadily decreasing mental and emotional state, made worse by a situation at work that really was a case of petty jealousy on my end and rlly isnt very consequential now despite how much pain and resentment it gave me when it Was a problem so i wont get into it. the tl;dr of november and december was me using work as an crutch and distraction -- i know my job, i do it well, it helped me not think about my responsibilities and obligations and inadequacies. of course, as the holiday season grew busier n busier i was scheduled so often that i moved 88 or so miles (according to my apple watch, which i ONLY wear at work since im never anywhere else outside my house) and fell into a cycle of showering n sleeping at my house before going back the next day. (theres definitely something to be said abt capitalism and “grind culture” here but once again its not the time or place snsjkdfds)

at the turn of the new year, i happened to remember a birthday card i hadnt filed away for safekeeping from a friend of mine that id been horribly out of touch with til that point. i started crying because i realized how out of touch id been in general up until that point. the month of january was great for me: i was focused, happy, and in a much better place than i had been before. the end of it brought me down focus wise and im hoping that enough time away from my distractions will refocus me bc i ... need it LMAO and though ive burned out from that level of productivity and gotten distracted again im ... trying to stay positive which i think is the most i can do 😁👍🏼

media wise, i got real into stardew valley (but burned out bc i played it extensively as a way to wind down after work), the pokemon platinum romhack renegade platinum (still havent finished it bc of school n i played it w the intent to see if i could nuzlocke it ... bitch its so hard but its so fun bc of it), briefly assassins creed: odyssey (im one of those ppl who completes an entire region before i move to the next so you can tell i burned out of that one + wouldnt have the time to properly devote to it even if i didnt), got back into genshin impact after pulling for xiao (after not touching it for like . months), and danganronpa. yes . danganronpa 😐 i Know. i stopped playing it after the second trial of the first game bc i was so hurt by the outcome and picked it up in late january only to get sucked in (thank god i had the foresight to buy the second and third games during the steam winter sale). rn im at the start of chapter 4 if anyone wants to come in my asks and um . talk to me abt danganronpa

tl;dr: I’m Into Danganronpa Now

iii. you realize halloween was three months ago right

i mentioned this in the first section, but i love to plot things. every request is plotted or at least has a solid foundation. i had fun detailing what concept i wanted to go with considering what i was given, and there were some bangers i might touch up in the future. but heres whats going to happen to the requests themselves:

there are two finished requests. one will be posted tomorrow and the other will be touched up (just bc i finished it doesnt mean its good 🧍‍♂️) and scheduled for next saturday. as for the ones i never got around to ...

i will not be finishing those requests. i hate to be That Person, but i feel like we all expected this 🧍‍♂️ what i will do is post all of my notes for each request in batches -- requests that have an @ to go with them will be mentioned in the post proper, but anon asks will be pictured. (there are some asks that came from blogs who are now deactivated but i wrote down all the prompts and remember most of those askers so ill cross that bridge when i get there) there will most likely be an excerpt or two simply bc i think i mightve written a few plot points or interactions in the form of bullet points. i rlly am sorry about doing this but i remember looking at my notion doc with all the prompts and feeling ... like i wasnt measuring up n it wasnt just to myself or to some intangible concept of “other” id constructed but it was instead to those who requested n actually WANTED to see and hear and read my writing and i ...... im gonna admit thats another big reason i avoided this site.

regardless, youll definitely get what i have (and likely more than just my bullet points and illegible handwriting).

tl;dr: im sorry. what i have in terms of plot, concept, and interaction for every request will be posted, but i cant say ill ever complete them and mean it.

iv. so what now?

well i mean . im not entirely sure how sold i am on haikyuu in the content creation department (as a creator n to a lesser extent, as a consumer). as mentioned previously, its no longer my primary focus. it doesnt mean im not into haikyuu anymore; i have a lot of love for those boys but i cant rlly say im even caught up w recent fandom activity and also havent even finished s4 pt2 LMAO thats on my to do list

and despite all that, i still want to share my plots n concepts and snippets and maybe even fics. it wont happen anytime soon. it might not even happen. but i mean . its better than me saying i wont write ever again shjdkfs but either way ill probably use this blog as a personal blog w the occasional ask game for dialogue prompts (those are always so fun i love making up aus to fit like . the most mundane prompts)

as for my works (past and any potential future), ive opened an ao3 acc here n ill be editing n possibly expanding on my old works to post there. tumblr, to me, is The x reader hub, but i figure more x reader fics on ao3 is never a bad thing.

ill be deleting/posting drafted posts to the queue since they were all meant to be queued anyway as well as (sorry again 🧍‍♂️) deleting or answering asks in the inbox. (moots if you get a notif from me saying i rbed your post from months ago ... mind your business) im very hard to get ahold of and its ... a problem. expect an overhaul of the nav n shit to reflect my new direction n also because i feel like i cant tell if my passion for carrd is shared by the majority HSDKLFS maybe its better to read my info in a normal post ykwim .......

and of course . if youve read all this n decided im no longer worth the follow, i sure as hell cant stop you. thank you for wanting to, at some point, hear what i have to say -- it means more than you think.

tl;dr: writing will be edited and reposted to ao3, this blog will be a personal blog with a hint of writing (sometimes)

the tl;dr to end all tl;drs:

im back! i wont be as active as i used to due to a lessened interest in haikyuu in general, but i have an ao3 acc now where all my past work will be edited, possibly expanded, and reposted. any future work will also find itself there. my halloween requests will be posted in batches as incomplete concepts, plots, and snippets of scenes; i wont be promising to finish any of them.

there are still fic concepts im attached to and want to finish, but i cant promise any more writing on my end. this blog will be a personal blog with maybe writing, not a writing blog with my personal thoughts all over it.

regardless if you stick around or not, its been crazy sexy cool (equal emphasis) being on haikyuu tumblr even tho i wasnt around for long ... even tho its not my main focus anymore, im still excited to see what the future might hold 🤝

love, ari 💌

[ohblackdiamond]

liner notes/unused joke summaries for kiss fics (part iv)

Despite what my general dislike of the shift key and my tendency to mock all that I love might imply, I actually overthink everything I write to a great extent. I make no claims to these explanations being in any way enjoyable, but if you wanted to know what I was thinking while writing KISS fic… now you do. Part one can be found here. Part two is here. Part three is here. 

little t&a --If Paul had boobs, they would be big and Gene would want to grab them.

>>Title from a Rolling Stones song of the same name; most of the chapter titles are from another Stones song, “The Spider and the Fly.” I started it during quarantine as a means to occupy myself and destress, and didn’t initially plan on posting it at all. Once I’d written five chapters without having posted it or mentioned it to anyone, I figured, well, I guess this might as well go somewhere, so I put it up. I had the hope that it’d give me something to strive for during the stress of lockdown, and I’d assumed that I wouldn’t ever have that much time to devote to a story again.

There were a couple of things that really inspired me. I’ve always enjoyed sexswaps as a bit of a guilty pleasure, but wanted to do a different take on them-- there’s this tendency for sexswaps to either be wacky hijinks or an excuse to write particularly brutal noncon. There’s also a tendency for the sexswapped character to almost automatically start adopting stereotypically feminine traits he didn’t have prior, with no real reason for it. I wanted to try and avoid all that as much as possible.

... There’s also another tendency for the sexswapped character never getting back to normal, and I wanted to avoid that, too. I mean, c’mon, KISS is supposed to start the Love Gun tour a month after the fic. Paul can’t exactly pull the trigger of a love taco. (Maybe gently brush it a bit...)

I had Paul already cursed for five days at the start of the fic because I thought it would make things easier and allow the plot to advance more quickly. I also felt like it would give him more autonomy-- prior to Gene showing up, he has tried (albeit in small ways) to get a handle on what’s happened to him, and while he’s hermited it up, he hasn’t given up. Autonomy in general was pretty important for me re: Paul. (Incidentally, probably one of my favorite things about this fic is that Paul’s made that poor twelve-year-old kid on his bike buy him sanitary napkins.)

I wanted to explore a couple of other things, too, mostly rock and roll’s (and KISS’ in particular) pretty heinous treatment of women. Gene and Paul argue in the eighties that groupies know the score from the beginning, and even postulates that those relationships are more “honest” than just taking a girl out to dinner. They’re not alone in this (and, of course, as married men, these days they try not to discuss those times at all); almost every band/artist from around that time period will give you the same answer. “The girls know what they’re doing.” I think many of them did know. I also think many of them came into those hotel rooms expecting a lot more than they ever received, and I think plenty of girls ended up at the very least disappointed by their encounters, if not humiliated or worse.

I don’t know if this was successful, but I also wanted to at least try to poke a few holes in celebrity/idol worship as well. Carol’s scathing comments to Paul-- “they [fans] think there’s something you’ve got that they can get at, but there’s not” pretty heavily exemplify behavior I’ve seen at conventions, fan meet-ups, etc. At the end of the day, well, there’s no point in putting them on much of a pedestal. I dunno. I’ve seen some weird crap in the name of fan worship, in and outside of RPS. Keith Richards talks about it in his book-- girls urinating on themselves out of sheer nerves/excitement just at seeing the band, etc., which, while disturbing, had to have given them a sense of being something beyond ordinary (and act accordingly, of course).

I don’t know. I like them a lot, but I can’t hero-worship these guys; they don’t live in the real world. They’re not, ultimately, relatable or accessible despite the billions of photos, the twitter posts, the meet and greets-- any more than they were 40-odd years ago. I think there can be a real danger in thinking they are. I wanted to show that, too, but again, I don’t know if it came across properly.

One of the aspects I really struggled with was getting a good handle on Paul’s innately slippery sense of identity without it overtaking the story entirely. Gene’s very stable identity was a good foil, and it helped that most of “t&a” is from his point of view, rather than Paul’s.

Another place I faltered with was Paul’s outing alone at CBGB. The first draft had the guy in the club slip quaaludes into his drink, but I really didn’t like that at all and felt it took too much control away from Paul/punished him for going out on his own. I thought it’d be more interesting if Paul deliberately took what he knew was a dangerous combination (alcohol + quaaludes) in the hopes that would make him feel better about sleeping with someone he didn’t care about.

Unfortunately, or fortunately, having him do that (and the way the scene with the guy at the club ends) also meant that I couldn’t have him hop right into bed with Gene that night, either, so that accounts for some of the delaying. I was also really wanting to make sure in general that when Gene and Paul finally did go all the way, there wasn’t any feeling of being coerced or pressured. Not that Gene would do either of those things, but I didn’t want him or Paul to be doing it out of any feeling of obligation or hurry; I wanted it to be as natural as possible, under the circumstances. And I wanted, again, Paul’s dubious sense of self and Gene’s ambiguous feelings about Paul(’s boobs) to come into play-- yes, Paul, now you, too, can take Gene on the amazing technicolor dreamdate you’ve been fantasizing about for the last seven years! Or, you know, not. Overall, there are some pacing issues and the story slows down considerably after Gene takes Paul home from CBGB, but I like to hope that most of the scenes add something.

There were a couple of secondary plotlines that got scrapped because I couldn’t get them to fit well enough with the narrative. One of them was Paul’s very troubled relationship with his sister, Julia. There’s a fair amount of references to her scattered throughout, and Paul brings her up on several occasions, generally without much provocation, and generally at mildly odd moments (at Central Park and immediately after getting drawn by Gene being the standouts). There was an initial draft of the chapter in which Ace calls Paul, where Julia’s the one calling Paul instead (after having gotten his number from their parents). I wanted to at least get the start of a reconciliation going between them. Ultimately I scrapped it because I couldn’t get it to flow with the main plot and never felt like I’d ever explored it thoroughly enough for it to be worth a detour.

The comparison between Paul and Carol is pretty blatantly obvious, even in the narrative. Paul and Gene both recognize it (Gene, initially, when he notes that Carol doesn’t seem to belong at 54 any more than Paul does), and it makes them highly uncomfortable. (Mary-Anne, Carol’s friend, also notices it-- “she [Paul] reminds me of Carol. Just pitiful.”) They’re both very shy, insecure people that have thrust themselves into a world they’re not naturally suited for (show business) in order to achieve their own ends. They’ve both put great stock in a single person who helped them (inadvertently or not) during a dark time, and are driven by those feelings, despite knowing that person is out of reach.

Physically, they’re intentionally mostly opposite (Carol’s short, with a slight build, lighter hair, blue eyes, vs. Paul being, well, Paul-- tall, fuller build, black hair, brown eyes). But narratively speaking, neither of them are described as beautiful; “cute” and “kind of pretty,” sure, but nothing past that (except when Gene says it towards the end). That was important, too, for a couple of reasons. One, I wanted to further the comparison between them; two, I wanted to at least try and dispel the idea that all groupies were glamorous; many of them were rather ordinary-looking.

Paul not being “playboy material as a girl” was very deliberate. I feel like a lot of sexswaps tend to make the guy in question end up a ridiculously hot babe, which didn’t quite jive with what I was going for (not that I wanted Paul to end up awful-looking, but...). ... He’s probably hotter than he thinks he is though; at least, Gene didn’t mind at all, and Pete thought he was pretty. I wanted him to be recognizable if one knew where to look (face, body language). I didn’t want him to end up a tiny, frail-looking waif-- given what he looks like as a dude, that didn’t make sense to me. So this meant the less perfect attributes had to stay and carry over to a female body. He ended up with big boobs because... well, honestly because if he wasn’t going to end up with a great figure overall, he might as well have great boobs. And I mean, really, his chest’s already pretty all right as-is.

I didn’t want there to be a love triangle, but I did want it obvious, at least in an offhand way, that Peter and Paul had had sex (Ace mentions it in the car with Peter, with his “how long did it take you”). I wanted to incorporate Ace and Peter to as great an extent as possible in general.

Marbas is an actual demon from The Lesser Key of Solomon, although other than the few sentences Paul reads off from that grimoire, there’s not much more information on him to be found. 

[vandorens-archive]

ten questions tag | i was tagged by: @mshelleys, @emdrabbles, @pe-ersona, @evergrcen and @septemberliterature. thank you so much, and i’m so sorry i’m getting to this so late!

everything is under the cut!

@mshelleys

i. if you could change the genre of one of your wips, what would you change it to and how would the story/characters change?

So, trahison already features a ghost and a brief stay at a manor. have i considered turning it into a full fledged horror because of that? perhaps.

ii. do you think of your characters as actors playing a part in a movie or as people in history actually doing things that effect the future?

i think of them as actors playing in one long, crazy, unpredictable play. 

iii. role swap your protagonist and antagonist but keep their personalities the same; how different would your story be?

honestly, not different at all, because when it comes to it, the subject of trahison’s antagonist (s) is pretty complex. 

iv. are any of your characters based on you, family, friends, or someone else you know?

oh, absolutely. my characters range between self inserts, to characters i wish i was more like, to characters that are essentially walking, talking, breathing love letters to the people i care about.  

v. how long have you had your main protagonist(s) of your wip(s)?

I’ve been working with marin, nate and ruby for years, long before they were even called that and were a part of a dystopian crime novel (don’t ask). antoine joined them soon after, followed a while later by beth and isadora, and miles was invented during the plotting stage. 

vi. do you prefer to write chronologically or just make a bunch of scenes and order them after they’re written?

it depends on what i’m working on and how serious i am about it, but if we’re only talking about trahison, then chronologically!

vii. imagine the problem in your wip is sorted out, how would the protagonist recount the story to their children if they asked?

with a far away look in his eyes and an uncharacteristic fondness in his voice, marin would turn to his children, and tell them how extraordinary his friends were during his university years—their zeal, their inquisitiveness, and conveniently leaving out the uncomfortable loyalty they all had towards each other, until time and life’s commands separated them. 

viii. favorite (non-spoilery) line(s) of your current wip(s)?

This small bit of description, albeit a little purple prose-y, is one that i’m very, very proud of.

“ The morning rain had made its grave in the dirt, the bittersweet smell—like exotic black tea—rising into the air. It was the night pluviophiles came to dance. If I think hard, I can still taste the ghost of the raindrops on my tongue and sense Beth’s radiating warmth beside me; its own ghost ” - trahison, chapter three

ix. if your wip was a movie, could you see it be done in the 70s, 80s, 90s, 2000s, or 2010s? why that decade in particular?

so, fun fact, i hadn’t decided when to set trahison (see: the big question mark in my plotting notebook) but i have recently made up my mind and decided to set it in the seventies! if it was a film, then i could see it being made in seventies france! very a la the dreamers.

x. are you able to just make up a story on the spot, or do you need help (plot generators or other outside influences)?

sometimes i’ll take the help of prompts or media, but otherwise i just come up with things on my own!

@emdrabbles

i. what do the names of your main characters mean? did you pick them for the meaning or another reason?

i picked the trahison characters’ names based on two things: how much it related to the character’s backstory or personality, and how pleasing it sounded out loud. here are the meanings of their names:

marin — of the sea

ruby — deep red; precious stone; behold a son

elizabeth — god is my oath

nathaniel — gift from god

antoine — priceless one; beyond praise

isadora — gift of Isis

ii. what book are you currently reading?

I’m currently reading the time machine by h.g wells!

iii. last sentence written?

“ When the end of the world comes — I’ll film it ” — copycat, or the one where i predict the future. 

iv. who are some of your faceclaims?

i usually don’t use faceclaims, but if i had to choose:

marin van doren (trahison) — timor simakov

eloi hill (psychophantia) — maxence danet fauvel

cass parker (penny lane) — monica tomas

v. gimme some worldbuilding facts!!

alright, here’s one: in the world of psychophantia, not only is the magic system and your powers controlled by your morals, but so is your social ranking, your education, and any future you may have—to an extent. 

vi. do you outline? if so, do you have a specific method?

i’m a plotter and only really work well with a solid outline, however, my outlines range from a series of messy, incoherent bullet points to meticulous scene-by-scene planning based around the three act structure. this post is my go to for plotting assistance! 

vii. favourite author?

Like every tumblr user ever, i love donna tartt and maggie stiefvater, but i’m also a huge fan of f.scott fitzgerald, agatha christie and vera caspary!

viii. what is your oldest wip?

trahison! It went through many, many changes — from changes in genre to changes in character names, and there’s still a possibility that it could change even further. 

ix. what is your favourite wip?

every wip i reblog under my #others. tag! You all are so damn talented!

x. where do you get your inspiration from?

everywhere around me! from conversations i have with people, from films and books i consume, from the music on the radio — i like that anything and everything can inspire me to create.

@pe-ersona

i. in one sentence, explain your current wip!

a group of secretive students attempt to become immortal, only to uncover the worst parts of themselves — and each other — as they do. 

ii. was writing your main interest or did you have other interests?

although writing is my main interest (see: my social media bio on every platform ever), i also like to journal, sew, cook and make videos! my interests usually do have to do with the intention of creation. 

iii. what’s your favorite genre to write? to read?

I love writing horror and mysteries. those are my favourite genres, but i also love reading a good contemporary romance!

iv. what is one goal you have for your wip this year? how’s that goal going?

to finish the first draft! so far, not so bad, though i do wish i could write more, but unfortunately, time constraints plus school restrict me from doing so. 

v. how old is your wip? or when did you start writing your wip?

trahison is nearly three years old, but i only started writing the current version of it a year ago. 

vii. what scene made you cry or laugh or both?

these lines made me laugh out loud the first time i wrote them:

“ Up the stairs stumbled Miles, my slovenly genius roommate. He grinned at the giggles and winked at the exasperated stares. 

The gall of him! 

I wanted to be him. 

He managed to find his balance enough to reach our dorm. I immediately stepped back to let him in, and to make sure I was in no association with his uncomposed state. Nate gave a disapproving look at his back as he staggered in. 

I took another step back, raised a pointed eyebrow, and closed the door ” — trahison, chapter three

vii. how many ocs does your wip have? who’s your favourite?

my main wip, trahison, has six main characters. out of the main six, my favourite has to be nathaniel. he is very much the epitome of pure, and sometimes i wonder how he ended up in the middle of such a dark plot. 

vii. you have a brand new idea for a wip, what do you do? 

brainstorm, brainstorm, brainstorm. scribble down whatever the hell pops up in my brain, attempt to link it together by a thin string of yarn, cross my fingers and hope for the best.

ix. you are having your first book-signing, where are you?

i’m in a small bookstore, nestled in a corner near the storage room. almost no one knows about this town, so the line is small but chatty, fans exchanging theories and analysing certain paragraphs. the sight of them makes me feel warm inside. 

x. you have the ability to live in any book, publishing or not, what would it be?

would it be too cliche to say the harry potter universe? other than that, other worlds i would love to be a part of is the world in my novel penny lane, or in midst of a detective story.

@evergrcen / @septemberliterature

i. how did you come up with your wip’s title? what does it mean in relation to the story?

okay, so i discovered the word ‘trahison’ after hearing my french teacher say it, and immediately knew i had to use it for something. ‘trahison’ means betrayal or treason in french, which is one of the main themes in the novel. 

ii. do you title your chapters? if so, what’s your favourite?

I don’t, but I would love to!!

iii. what’s a recent line you really like?

Not a very dramatic or noteworthy line, but here’s one from a poem i’m writing:

“ So the two of you get in the car, proceeding to have an argument with the radio ” — examples of easy solutions, or the one where the internet has no answers. 

iv. are there any writing-related quotes you really like?

“i think a lot of art is trying to make someone love you” — keaton henson

v. do you have an idea for a cover design for your story?

A black background with serif text, that’s it. It’s simple. It’s mysterious. It’s the type of vibe I want to exude. 

vi. what sort of au can you imagine your story being?

...dark academia au anyone?

just kidding. in all seriousness, though, i can see a royalty/political au for trahison, or a medieval fantasy au!

vii. which oc would be the most angry with you as the writer?

eloi. i really need to give that poor boy a break. 

viii. if you had to tell the story from a different pov, which character would you choose?

ruby! she’s the token enigma of trahison, so i think her point of view would be very interesting to see. 

ix. what would be your oc’s taste in music if they lived in our world?

OKAY let’s see:

marin — classic rock, so the who, queen, def leppard.etc

ruby — that one person who you’re pretty sure only listens to classical music, but is actually very attuned to modern day music. she would mostly listen to female singer-songwriters, so take lorde, marina, lana del rey, and other such artists. 

beth — take one look at her playlist, and you’ll see that ninety five percent of it is mitski, while the other five percent is bedroom pop. she would like very tender, calm, cry to in bed music. 

Antoine — same as marin, but add other modern day music artists with eclectic sounds, such as twenty one pilots, arctic monkeys, that sort of thing.

nathaniel — classical music, instrumentals, and film soundtracks make up his playlist. if it has sung words, he won’t listen to it. has little to no understanding of modern day music and is too scared to find out more about it.

isadora — 2000’s diva pop plays in the background of her life. rihanna is her go to whenever she gets to control the party. Don’t be surprised if ‘rich girl’ by gwen stefani starts playing in your head at the sight of her. 

x. what’s one personal goal you want to achieve by the end of the story?

finishing it with pride!

[ruinedthatfriendship]

Start Again

A/N: Okayyyyy so I was talked into posting this, and yes I am aware it is the most trashy fanfiction trope I have ever written, and I was mildly disgusted when I found this in my drafts. 2014 me was a dumbass. This was also evidently supposed to have more chapters that were never completed. I’m actually not sorry about abandoning this one, though... 

I’m sorry this exists?

It took too long. Everything just took too long. It took an ambulance too long to navigate traffic, too much time to get her out of the wrecked car. Too much time to clean up her battered face before anyone even recognized her, too long before she got a bed in the ER. Too long before one of the doctors finally realized what was really going on, shoving a couple residents out of the way with a burr hole kit.

By the time they got the pressure down in her brain, and sent her up to surgery, she’d already had one seizure from the bleeding inside her skull, and she’d crashed in the elevator, arriving to the surgical suite with a nurse still riding on the gurney doing CPR.

By the time anyone found her emergency contacts, she’d been in surgery for two hours, without any word. By the time they got to the lobby, the driver of the car that hit her had been pronounced dead.

Simon hadn’t even known she’d set his information as an emergency contact. And apparently, it wasn’t just him she hadn’t told. Like every other detail of that horrible day, he would never forget facing Dianna and Eddie in the waiting room and spreading his hands helplessly, letting them shout at him while the only thing he had to offer was that he didn’t even know. And they were wasting time splitting hairs, couldn’t they see that? It didn’t matter anymore who Demi had been spending her time with or if he was too much older or her boss or anything else, not when they didn’t know if she was going to wake up. They didn’t have time to argue in the lobby of the emergency department, he just wanted to be able to see her.

A nurse had been anxiously watching the face off, clearly trying to remain professional even though this was probably the most gossip-worthy day of her career. “Mr. Cowell, sir, uh, Miss Lovato does have an advance directive in place and--”

“She made it after she got out of treatment,” Dianna cut in tearfully. “She said it was just in case,”

The nurse gave her a polite nod to acknowledge her, and then turned back to Simon. “We need to speak with you--”

“No!” Dianna protested, squeezing her husband’s hand. “That’s my daughter, he doesn’t get a say, I’m her mother, you can say whatever you have to say in front of me.”

The nurse--her nametag read ‘Angelica’--looked at Simon, waiting. “Sir?”

“It’s fine,” he said heavily, hardly believing that any of this was real. “And it’s just Simon, please.”

Angelica nodded, glanced down briefly at the chart in her hands. “Miss Lovato named you as her medical proxy, which means that you have the power--”

“I know what a medical proxy is.” Simon interrupted, feeling shock numb his body while his heart rate increased. Demi, baby, what did you do? “It shouldn’t be me. Give it to her parents, I can’t--”

“We don’t have that power.” Angelica said apologetically. “It’s a legal document that Miss Lovato signed willingly. We can take you back to wait, she should be out of surgery soon.”

“I’m coming,” Dianna insisted. Angelica just nodded at her; she was immediate family too, they wouldn’t refuse her.

A tense elevator ride later had them sitting in hard plastic chairs in a waiting area outside of neurosurgery, the sign itself almost giving Simon a heart attack. Brain surgery, because someone crossed the median while she was driving. And she’d gone to the trouble, sometime so long ago, to put her fate into his hands.

If what Dianna had said was true, that she’d written these things just after getting out of treatment, then it would have been before they were ever together. It would have been while the extent of their relationship was annoying one another at the judges’ desk, back at the very beginning. When the most he’d ever done was hug her and pinch her nose and call her a brat, she’d looked at him and imagined a day like this and signed her life into his hands.

“It shouldn’t be me.” he mumbled again, staring at his hands in his lap. “I don’t know what she was thinking.”

“You’re right, it shouldn’t! I don’t know what you ever thought you were doing with my daughter, she’s my baby and you can’t just take advantage--”

“Dianna,” Eddie murmured, squeezing her hand. His eyes were angry too, he looked ready to strangle Simon, but they were making too much noise in the waiting room.

Demi’s surgery took six endless hours. And when the surgeon finally came out, Simon already knew. The set of his jaw and the look in his eyes wasn’t good news, he could only hope it wasn’t a death sentence.

“Is she alive?” he spat out in a low voice, fists clenched and not sure if he was ready for the answer.

The surgeon nodded shortly, sending a rush of relief through Simon that was quickly tempered by the rest of his words. “She’s still unconscious, and not anywhere close to out of danger. We’re keeping her heavily sedated for now, and you can see her, but I want to warn you, she does have a lot of tubes right now, she won’t...look like you expect.”

“I don’t care.”

“Her vitals are good, but she did sustain severe trauma to her brain. I trust I don’t need to tell you how serious that is, Mr. Cowell. She’s alive and stable, but I can’t make any promises about her recovery until she wakes up.”

“What are you saying?”

“She may have cognitive deficits. We just have to wait and see. I know that’s not what you want to hear, but I can take you to see her now.”

“What does that mean?” Eddie asked quietly, holding tightly to his wife’s hand. “What...what can we expect?”

The doctor shot him an apologetic look. “We have no way of knowing, right now. Injuries like Demi’s have had a variety of outcomes, from full cognitive function to brain death. Obviously, given that her responses to stimuli are intact, she’s in as good a place as we can hope for right now. If we were to see any negative effects when she wakes up, it would likely be fairly mild.”

Eddie seemed to relax just infinitesimally at those words, and he was first into the room after the doctor, Dianna on his heels. Simon, exhausted in every possible way, didn’t bother fighting them and followed slowly, trying to brace himself before laying eyes on her.

Nothing could have prepared him, really. She looked peacefully asleep, if not for the washed-out paleness of her skin and the unceremoniously shaved side of her head, a line of stitches crossing her scalp.

Her lips were cracked and parted around a tube in her throat, cuts and bruises and butterfly bandages littering every visible inch of her skin as she lay there, looking tiny and helpless in that hospital bed.

Dianna sobbed and lurched forward, reaching for her daughter’s hand. Demi had a grey plastic clip on one finger, and an IV running into the back of her hand, and hers stayed limp while Dianna held on.

Eddie moved to stand beside her bed as well, one gentle hand tracing her hairline and sweeping the long side of her unplanned undercut off of her forehead.

Simon just swallowed hard, temporarily frozen. Demi belonged on the stage, larger than life with her incredible voice, she belonged laughing and stumbling in high heels and bodily attacking him with the promise of getting him sick. She belonged barefoot in the kitchen with her nose wrinkled up in concentration as she tried to cook, on the floor playing with his dogs, on the couch in a heated debate about Netflix. She belonged with fire in her eyes and love and laughter on her lips, she was not meant to lie here, so fragile and broken.

He found himself moving to the other side of her bed, ignoring the glares of her parents, and tracing the word on her wrist as he reached to grab her hand. “She’s strong,”

The doctor awkwardly returned just then, telling them that Demi was technically only allowed one visitor at a time, and Dianna stayed at her bedside while Simon and Eddie went back out to the hard plastic chairs.

***

It marked the beginning of the worst week of Simon’s life. He cleared his schedule and spent it almost entirely in the hospital, as did Demi’s parents. And if she’d been awake, she’d have scolded all three of them and set the record straight. Without her, and unwilling to alienate her family while she lay unconscious, Simon just endured their anger, pushing back only when they tried to keep him away from her. But he still couldn’t really blame them.

He’d had to give his permission for them to pull her off sedation and remove her machines after the third day. Tonight would be the eighth since the accident, and Demi still hadn’t woken. Her doctors were at a loss, explaining only that sometimes the body needed more time. That she wasn’t quite in a coma, yet. Simon knew what they weren’t saying, though. Her chances of recovery went down with every day she remained in an unconscious state.

For the moment, it was his turn at her bedside, while Eddie had finally convinced Dianna to let him take her home and take a breather. Simon was sitting on the edge of her bed and looking down at her face, which only looked more sleep-like and tranquil as her bruises began to fade. He rubbed his thumb across the back of her hand, swallowing hard. “Come on, Dem,” he murmured. “If you can hear me, baby, I need you to wake up. Please,” he added in a whisper, fear threatening to choke him.

He’d lived over half his life without her, and she’d come in and rearranged everything so completely in such a short time. And now he was facing down the possibility of her leaving as suddenly as she’d come, permanently, and leaving him to live the rest of it without her. It was a bleak existence he didn’t particularly want to contemplate. One that might require some tattoos of his own to get through it. But it wasn’t going to be like that. She was going to make it through this.

Simon leaned down to press a kiss to her forehead gently, wishing he could hold her properly. She was cold and still so fragile and she smelled like the hospital and faintly like the burning metal of her accident, and he wanted nothing more than to take her home and deposit her in a warm bath, wrap her up between his sheets and hold her and never let her leave again.

But for that, she’d have to wake up.

“You’re such a brat,” he whispered, trying for humor. “Making us sit here waiting on you.”

Demi did nothing but breathe, her heart monitor beeping rhythmically in the silent room. Simon sighed, and squeezed her hand again. “Come on, Demi. You can do this. I love you, brat, just open your eyes.”

He collapsed back into the chair at her bedside, still without letting go of her hand, and bent his head over their laced fingers like he was at prayer. And he hadn’t given himself permission to cry--he didn’t cry--but there were tears falling onto her cold fingertips anyway, and when Eddie roused him later with a firm hand on his shoulder, it was with a bleak expression and red eyes.

Her father said nothing, and Simon just sighed and stood, feeling his back pop in retaliation for sleeping in that damn chair. And he was just about to let go of her hand when he felt the clip on her finger shift. It was a fool’s hope, he’d probably just bumped it with his own hand, but it was enough to glance back at her one final time.

And it was weak and uncoordinated, but her fingers moved, tightening around his hand as best they could, in a gesture no one could mistake. Simon’s heart jumped in his chest, and he turned to Eddie without ever letting go of her. “She squeezed my hand,”

And then Eddie was smiling over his shoulder with tears in his eyes, and Simon glanced down again to find her brown eyes looking up at him with such a quintessentially Demi bemused expression that he almost broke down crying again in relief.

“Hey, love,” he said softly. “You scared the hell out of me.”

Demi coughed, making a face, and looked straight past him. “Dad?”

“I’m right here, Demi.” Eddie assured her.

“Dad, my head hurts.” Demi whimpered, scrunching up her face. Simon reached over to press the call button at her bedside, earning a tentatively grateful nod from her father for it.

Demi dropped his hand quite suddenly, reaching toward Eddie, and Simon tried not to feel hurt. She was here, she was alive, she was awake. She was talking and aware, her brain wasn’t damaged, she was here. He’d take what he could get.

“I don’t understand,” she was saying weakly, looking between Eddie and Simon as quickly as she could without moving her head. “What--I…”

Her doctor and a nurse interrupted her, Dianna hot on their heels. “Baby!”

Demi’s face initially brightened, but then crumpled again in confusion. “Not you,” she was murmuring, almost to herself. She’d let go of Eddie’s hand now, too, and stared down at her own fingers, turning them over in examination almost as if she wasn’t quite sure she was real.

“How are you feeling, Demi?” the nurse was asking, an expression on his face that said he was entirely over the number of people crowding his patient.

“I’m...did I overdose?” Demi asked in a small voice, still not looking at anyone.

“No,” Simon rushed to reassure her, wishing he could be closer than where he’d ended up, almost in the doorway. “It was a car accident, darling.”

Instead of relief, Demi’s face only registered further alarm. “A car accident? Why...why was I driving? I’m sorry, Mama!” she burst out, panic in her eyes. “I didn’t mean to, I don’t know what I did, I--”

“It wasn’t your fault,” Dianna reassured her. “You’re okay, baby. The other driver was on the wrong side of the road. Not you.”

“I wasn’t supposed to leave,” Demi whispered, sounding terribly ashamed.

“Baby, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Dianna was almost crying again. “You’re okay, Demi. It’s okay!”

“Demi, is it okay if I ask you some questions now?” her doctor cut in, smiling politely. Demi nodded weakly, and Dianna reluctantly took a step back.

“Okay, can you go ahead and tell me your full name, hun?”

“Demetria Devonne Lovato,” Demi returned, still looking down at her hands like she didn’t quite know what to do with them.

“How are you feeling right now, Demi?”

Demi shrugged. “My head hurts. Everything...kind of hurts.” she tried to play it off, but Simon could see the pain in her eyes. “I guess it makes sense if I was in an accident,” she mumbled.

The doctor nodded swiftly. “We can start you on some painkillers. Something non addictive, don’t worry. Do you remember your accident at all?”

Demi shook her head, looking agitated again.

“Okay, what’s the last thing you do remember?”

She hesitated. “Um, therapy. My session in the morning. I’m guessing it’s not today anymore, though?”

“Demi,” Simon started, ignoring all of the looks suddenly shot his way. “You didn’t have therapy that morning, darling.”

Demi made a familiar irritated face, starting to wave him off in her usual fashion, before she paused, her eyes flicking over his form rapidly. “Wait a second.” she said slowly. “I know you.”

Simon’s entire body went numb at her words. “Demi?” he said hoarsely.

She snapped her fingers impatiently. “You’re...I sang for you, you didn’t stand up. American Idol. You’re the judge guy, the rude one...Sa--Si--Simon. Simon Cowell.” She looked momentarily pleased with herself, and then made a face that would have been comical in any other situation. “Why the hell are you here?”

[serveandfolly]

Be still my beating heart: My longtime partner, Brian Libby, wrote this OR Arts Watch article twinning the stories of two of my favorite artists, actor River Phoenix and musician Elliott Smith, and relating them through their time in our hometown of Portland, Oregon. The original story (link above) shows photos of some of Elliott’s Portland homes and the road with “the fucked-up face” from My Own Private Idaho, but I’ve pasted all the copy below. Hope some of my fellow River and Elliott fans enjoy this as much as I did.

River and Elliott: Remembering two troubled princes of 1990s Portland

River Phoenix and Elliott Smith brushed Portland and maybe Portland brushed them

NOVEMBER 27, 2018 // CULTURE, FILM, MUSIC // BRIAN LIBBY

There’s a name you keep repeating You’ve got nothing better to do

— Elliott Smith, “Alphabet Town”

From James Dean to Jimi Hendrix, Kurt Cobain to Heath Ledger, we have immortalized a constellation of famous artists—especially musicians and actors—who died young and, then, through a combination of their talent and the public’s grief, lived on. Robbed of the futures we imagined for them, yet frozen in time and thus never to suffer the indignities of aging or late-career artistic mediocrity, their luminosity—and our love for them—intensifies as if in proportion to the tragedy.

Portland and Oregon haven’t traditionally produced a lot of bold-type names that have endured in the international pop zeitgeist. Far from America’s entertainment capitols, this is arguably a place where talents are nurtured, not where one becomes a full-fledged star. The most high-profile artists, such as the great abstract expressionist painter Mark Rothko or Simpsons creator Matt Groening, have tended to move on and live their career-defining creative moments elsewhere. Yet even if their time here is fleeting, sometimes these artists don’t just remain culturally relevant long after their deaths but also come to represent something essential about a particular time in the city.

Last month brought reminders of two such one-time Oregonians and what they left behind. October 21 was the 15th anniversary of musician Elliott Smith’s death, at the age of 34 in 2003, while Halloween brought the 25th anniversary of actor River Phoenix’s death, at the age of 23 in 1993. They died a decade apart, but each moment of mortality came in Los Angeles, and the two sites are less than nine miles away from each other: Phoenix outside West Hollywood’s Viper Room club after an accidental overdose, and Smith by stabbing at his home in Silver Lake (a presumed suicide but never officially determined).

The coincidences don’t end there. River Phoenix and Elliott Smith were born within a year of each other: Smith in Nebraska (he was raised until age 14 in Texas) and Phoenix in Madras, Oregon (raised mostly in Florida). Each arguably made his most famous work in collaboration with director Gus Van Sant. Phoenix co-starred (along with Keanu Reeves) in Van Sant’s 1991 film My Own Private Idaho and Smith was nominated for an Academy Award for the song “Miss Misery,” on the soundtrack to Van Sant’s 1998 film Good Will Hunting. Each struggled with drug abuse, which in different ways led to each artist’s untimely death. River Phoenix and Elliott Smith presumably never met, yet each is a kind of fleeting prince of ’90s Portland, and their work acts as time capsule and talisman for the days many locals now look to longingly: a grittier, more affordable and off-the-radar city that predated Portlandia, a succession of swooning New York Times stories, and an ensuing wave of tourism and gentrification.

Like Rothko, neither stayed here for good. But also like Rothko and many of the city’s other most famous sons and daughters, Phoenix and Smith were transplants to the city who saw Portland with fresh eyes. Like rain clouds that give way to bright sunlight almost daily for much of the year, each artist’s Portland-based work is personal and often deeply melancholic, yet also joyful, lyrical and instinctual. It’s not always pretty, yet we are drawn to their work again and again.

By the time Phoenix signed on to star in My Own Private Idaho, he had long since become a star, thanks to such minor Hollywood classics as 1986’s Oregon-filmed Stand by Me and 1988’s Running on Empty, the latter of which brought him an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor. But Idaho, the third in Van Sant’s trilogy of Portland-set films (preceded by 1986’s Mala Noche and 1989’s Drugstore Cowboy), would become the role of Phoenix’s career and the standout classic in its director’s now decades-long portfolio.

While Drugstore was initially a greater critical success for Van Sant, winning Best Film and Best Director from the National Society of Film Critics in 1989, Idaho is somehow the film that endures in public imagination and as a lasting artistic achievement. Besides being a landmark of gay cinema, casting two young Hollywood heartthrobs as lovers, it also turned out to be Van Sant’s most cinematically ambitious effort.

The premise of My Own Private Idaho is audacious if not a little crazy. The film is a loose interpretation of Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part I and Part II—the story of a delinquent, debauchery-loving prince planning to shed his skin and embrace his more virtuous monarchical destiny—transposed to the realm of contemporary Portland street hustlers. As legend has it, Phoenix and Reeves spent nights on the streets of Old Town researching their roles by hanging out with the city’s young street denizens, some of whom would enjoy supporting roles in the film.

Phoenix plays a hustler named Mike with a handicap—narcolepsy drops him off to sleep in any moment of stress. We first watch him collapse in sleep by the side of a rural highway, his possessions and even his shoes stripped from him as he slumbers; then he collapses in the middle of turning a trick, carried out of a rich woman’s house by his fellow hustlers and left slumped against a tree. Reeves’s young Prince Hal figure, Scott (in this case a Portland mayor’s son), is along for the ride as part brotherly companion, part lover. Yet this quirky Shakespearean tale is also bookended by and interwoven with a larger quest, played out under the limitless skies and golden hues of the eastern Oregon landscape, as Phoenix’s Mike searches fruitlessly for his long-lost mother: to the Idaho of his youth, to Italy, and finally back to Portland.

Part of what makes My Own Private Idaho so great is how Van Sant conjures indelible cinematic moments: time-lapse footage of clouds rolling over the Oregon landscape; symbolic slow-motion shots of salmon (Mike’s spirit-animal; Phoenix even wears a salmon-colored jacket) fighting their way upstream; and even an entire house falling from the sky onto the highway. It’s dazzling cinema that makes both rural and urban Oregon its muse like perhaps no other movie. That Van Sant has gone on to make several Hollywood movies that overdose on schmaltz and are short on cinematic eye candy, and few if any great works of art (the Cannes winner Elephant and the Matt Damon/Casey Affleck vehicle Gerry perhaps being exceptions) only makes Idaho all the more special in his oeuvre. In fact, it’s as if Van Sant refuses to enter Idaho-like territory. Consider, for example, that his last film, Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far On Foot—a profile of cartoonist John Callahan starring River Phoenix’s brother, Joaquin, which is set in Portland and another story of a lonely man’s longing for his mother—was shot in Los Angeles. Suffice to say, there are no houses falling onto the highway.

At least unofficially, My Own Private Idaho owes as much to Phoenix as Van Sant—and not just as it relates to the acting. After all, River Phoenix didn’t just act in Idaho; he reportedly was able to alter the script and his character. The draft that Van Sant brought to the actors didn’t include romance between their two lead characters, but by the time production was complete, Idaho’s most touching moment was a campfire embrace wherein Mike declares his love for Reeves’s Scott. Phoenix is at his zenith here as an actor, a marvel of delicacy, communicating a blend of easy cool and endearing vulnerability.

Both Phoenix and Reeves came to the Idaho cast with something to prove: that they could be serious dramatic actors. To a large extent it worked for both. While Reeves has never been considered a master thespian, his roles in blockbuster franchises like The Matrix and even the more recent John Wick movies have cemented his place in movie history. And for Phoenix, post-Idaho there was no longer any doubt that the child actor we’d seen in Explorers and the angst-ridden teen of The Mosquito Coast (not to mention a memorable “Family Ties” guest-starring turn) had graduated to leading roles with the charisma, looks and vulnerability of a budding superstar. Would it be going too far to say he was the James Dean of his time? Maybe. But the comparison is not ludicrous.

Of course longevity was not to be for Phoenix. Within 25 months of Idaho’s release, his story ended, just like Mike’s, collapsed on the pavement—in this case on a Hollywood sidewalk rather than Highway 216, and sadly, not simply asleep for a few minutes. The brother with him that night, Joachin Phoenix, would go on to enjoy the long acting career River never got.

The year of Idaho’s release was also a turning point for Elliott Smith. In 1991 he had just returned to Portland after four years at Hampshire College in Massachusetts, and promptly formed the band Heatmiser with three musician friends. Over the ensuing years, Heatmiser would become a fixture at celebrated indie-rock clubs like the X-Ray Café and La Luna, while also recording albums like 1993’s Dead Air and 1994’s Cop and Speeder that infused punk energy with melodicism. The band was part of a broader indie rock scene that included Pond, Crackerbash, The Spinanes, The Dandy Warhols and Quasi.

After Nirvana’s breakout success, both indie and major labels began combing Portland clubs looking for the next grunge sensation. And what was grunge but punk with a little more melody and a flannel shirt? Heatmiser received enough attention that a major label, Virgin Records, eventually came calling. But by that time Smith was ready to venture out on his own, breaking up Heatmiser just as they’d made the big time. As the singer-songwriter explained in a later interview, he had grown tired of screaming all the time as a member of a loud rock band. And besides, by that time Smith was gaining notice for a series of stripped-down solo albums with little more than voice and an acoustic guitar. To the astonishment of many, they sounded less like punk or grunge and more like Simon & Garfunkel or Nick Drake. Smith’s solo debut, 1994’s Roman Candle, was released at the height of the grunge era but also just nine months before Kurt Cobain’s suicide, essentially prefiguring (and perhaps even giving birth to) the emo-core wave that would in time follow grunge.

In the four years between Roman Candle’s release and Smith’s leap to international fame with the Oscar nomination for “Miss Misery,” local audiences who had feasted on loud guitars and pounding punk rhythms filled Portland clubs for his solo acoustic shows, trading chaotic mosh pits for stillness and pin-drop quiet. Not only was there the wistful simplicity of Smith’s voice and acoustic guitar. It was also how the singer-songwriter bared his soul in his lyrics. Though some songs were inspired by others’ lives, it was clear that for the sensitive, often-depressed Smith, music was a confessional and a lifeline. Yet in his almost Lennon-McCartney like gift for melody, even his sad songs feel uplifting.

In those early Elliott Smith albums recorded here, through his 1997 masterwork Either/Or (his last for indie label Kill Rock Stars before signing with the mammoth Dreamworks and leaving Portland for New York), the singer-songwriter also painted a cinematic if melancholy picture of the city. You can almost feel the gray wintertime skies in songs like “Alameda,” as he sings:

You walk down Alameda Looking at the cracks in the sidewalk Thinking about your friends How you maintain all them in A constant state of suspense

For your own protection Over their affection Nobody broke your heart You broke your own because you can’t Finish what you start

When the Oscar nomination for “Miss Misery” came, Smith’s life changed overnight. If that new audience and international media attention meant exponentially greater album sales and the end of his penny-pinching way of life—staying in nice hotels on tour instead of sleeping in the van or on some stranger’s floor, not to mention no longer moonlighting as a drywall contractor by day—it also isolated Elliott from his community of not-so-affluent friends and musicians still sleeping on those floors. This time in his life was also accompanied by increasing drug abuse and greater depressions. Perhaps Smith new that despite overwhelmingly positive reviews for albums like XO and Figure 8 as well as a worldwide audience of admirers (he was particularly smitten when a musical hero, Elvis Costello, attended a London show), DreamWorks saw its Smith signing as essentially an investment that didn’t quite pay off because he wasn’t the megastar they envisioned.

Like Cobain, Smith also retained that nagging Gen X rocker’s worry that he’d sold out. Maybe today a young fan who falls in love with Figure 8 doesn’t care that it was recorded for DreamWorks instead of Kill Rock Stars. After all, going to a major label gave Smith a bigger palette of instruments and fellow musicians to work and record with. Yet for Smith, the decision wasn’t without impact. In “King’s Crossing,” one of Smith’s best posthumously-released songs, he sings, “The method acting that pays my bills/keeps the fat man feeding in Beverly Hills.”

Particularly in the couple of years before his 2003 death, Smith was a shell of his former self, consuming cocktails of heroin, crack and prescription drugs. At times onstage, he even had to abort songs halfway through because he couldn’t remember his own lyrics. Yet Smith was also in those final months showing signs of recovery and renewal, which enabled the superlative album he was working on when he died. Songs on the magnificent From a Basement on the Hill (including “King’s Crossing”) exhibit a layered richness of sound that goes beyond what he recorded in Portland a few years earlier. Yet it all screeched to a halt in Silver Lake—whether inevitably, as some observers maintained, or out of the blue.

Today I can’t look at certain places in Portland and Oregon without thinking of them.

For River Phoenix and My Own Private Idaho, there is the Elk statue downtown on Southwest Main Street between Chapman and Lownsdale squares, where early in the film Scott cradles a sleeping Mike in his arms. There is also the stretch of Broadway downtown near the Benson Hotel where the duo cruise the street on Scott’s motorcycle, handsomely and heroically, like cinema’s sunglasses-masked successors to The Wild One and Easy Rider. And perhaps most of all, there is a lonely stretch of Highway 216, east of the Cascades and not far from the tiny town of Tygh Valley, where River Phoenix begins and ends the movie, succumbing to narcoleptic seizure. Last year my partner and I found the coordinates online and made a pilgrimage. To get there you drive white-knuckled through a series of hairpin turns through a small Deschutes River gorge, and then suddenly you come onto a plateau where the road seems to unfold forever.

If one seeks vestiges of Elliott Smith’s Portland, it’s not just the venues where he took the stage (one of which, La Luna, is now a café of the same name), but also, if you know where to look, one of the many Southeast Portland houses where he lived and recorded. Roman Candle, for instance, was recorded in a home on Southeast Taylor Street that recently was listed for rent. (And yes, I admittedly took a tour.) Smith also lived in another Southeast Portland house, off Division Street, that prompted him to sometimes spend late nights hanging out on a bench in the rose gardens of Ladd’s Addition; the documentary Heaven Adores You includes a long shot looking down over the neighborhood. In “St. Ides Heaven,” he writes

Everything is exactly right When I walk around here drunk every night With an open container from 7-11

Division Street itself also wound up inspiring a lyric in “Punch and Judy” (on Either/Or), albeit not exactly an ideal marketing tagline:

Driving around up and down Division Street I used to like it here It just bums me out to remember

Every time I listen to “Punch and Judy,” that line makes me wonder what Smith would have made of gentrified Division Street now, with its canyon of condos and string of popular restaurants. It’s a phenomenon that has swept most close-in east side neighborhoods—precisely the formerly cheap old houses he and his friends used to inhabit.

Even so, to absorb the work of Smith (especially his early records) and Phoenix (particularly My Own Private Idaho) is to make a nostalgic return to ‘90s Portland. And yet, through the power of these works and these two princes’ immense talent, their work also transcends that time capsule. Even if their tragically early deaths don’t guarantee them true artistic immortality, the more Portland changes, the more their works resonate.

[clownkiwi]

so, after having finished the sweatbox documentary and processing everything i’ve just witnessed, i’ve come to learn something and yearn something (putting a keep reading here because this is a long post)

the creative process is actually a lot of fun!!!

for the longest while, i considered classes like math & social studies to be my favorite classes when i was in high school. but now that i’m in college, i can say without a doubt that my favorite class would have to be creative writing

i think creative writing is my favorite class to take because my senior year of high school was the one where i was the most creative. i was constantly drawing, constantly making new characters, new lore, new stories, i was so, so creative then. so many things to get inspired by, and i believe that was the time when i started work on my webcomic superlove.

and now i yearn back to those days. those were like, my most exciting days i can confidently say. i was going into my own person & identity, i was creatively fulfilled because i didnt have as many classes then (besides like creative classes), thus i had more time to work on fleshing out my characters, my stories, and even working on the first draft for the first issue. from january 2019-may 2019, i had been working on the first issue of superlove, and i couldnt have been anymore happier and fulfilled then.

of course, i lose my lil notebook which had all of my work in it, and then i started to lose the creative energy to get back into superlove. dont get me wrong, i still LOVE LOVE LOVE superlove, and hey!!! i even found it, so i could start working on it again. but also, im now too anxious to getting back into superlove because i havent worked on this webcomic, on these stories, with these characters that i loved so much in such a long time. and i thought i could get back into the groove of it with superlove mini, which were like, short comedic comics i made for my colleges newspaper. but, i kinda stopped when the pandemic hit, because i just lost all my creative juices then. and of course, im currently not part of my colleges newspaper anymore, because im pretty sure its not gonna b a thing for this semester?? or even for the next semester.

though i was happy to introduce everyone to chloe & lauren, and from what i’ve been told people do like them both, which i’m glad!!! because that’s what superlove is gonna be entirely focused on, their relationship.

but now its been so long since, i havent really had the energy to create anything new, or even the inspiration or willpower to do anything new. this year had been terrible with emotionally taxing breakups, drama that happens here and there, and of course, with the energy that 2020 radiated as well. im very lucky whenever i do pick up my pen and tablet & start & finish a new drawing on my laptop. i still have pieces on here that i’ve only started & haven’t finished yet. hell, ive had ideas that i want to put to paper, but i’ve never got the motivation to yet.

which is why i got happy & excited to work on my friends fnaf au!!! it was alot of fun coming up with great ideas, bouncing off of each others ideas, piggybacking off of our own ideas, bringing stronger ideas & characterizations to the table, its just been so much fun!!! but, because of streaming (which, ive been able to get creative with, but at a lesser extent) and school (and the anxiety thats been permeating from school), i haven’t really been able to draw anything. i think the last thing i’ve drawn outside of my sonas & art for streams would have to be like, my nightmarensona & my friends fnaf au protag

idk, ig i just miss the creative process alot and wish i could work on a creative project im interested in and confident in and wont lose energy for is all

[bipilots]

What did jeremy say about lance dying?? It was from an interview right? I think i watched it and just assumed it was a joke but Ive seen mANY people theorising around it so maybe i misinterpreted it, could you maybe link me to the interview? Or just give me your point of view? Idk i feel lowkey leftout asfshskdb (i also assumed when the bonding moment happened that lance was joking about not remembering it just to tease k eith and apparently i was wrong so yeh, interpreting signs? Not my forte)

(rolls up sleeves) okay, uh, i admit my researches on this have been pretty unhelpful. i promise i scoured the net, skimmed through a 42 minutes panel video (and don’t say i don’t love you) but the only source i could find of Jeremy Shada saying it was on this interview from Den of Geek dated April 13, 2017 teasing the release of season three. I quote directly: Jeremy Shada (Lance) is excited that all the cast members “have some great drama points.” He then goes on to joke, “I mean like, Lance dies so that was a fun moment.”(cont’d after the cut)

There seems to be no video record?? so, yeah. But I’ve seen my fair share of meta posts and theories/speculations about Lance sacrificing himself for the team and dying. There was one about Lance’s spirit being transferred to Blue, too? Or him proceeding to become an incorporeal form that helped the team like when you lose all your balloons in Mario Kart battle mode? I can’t for the life of me find the posts, but there are plenty, and this line by Jeremy surely sent the fans into a frenzy even more.A “possible foreshadowing” of this would be the fact that in the original cartoons, the blue pilot died pretty early on (precisely, in the sixth episode, but it was Sven, not Lance, and I’m talking about GoLion). Also, there’s been instances in VLD in which Lance recklessly put himself in danger to save other people, too (I don’t think I need to present sources for this, but if you need them, hmu!).

There’s also this fandom penchant of indulging in what we call “langst”, meaning “lance angst”, as Lance appears to be not only the most affected by them being away from home, but also insecure of his own worth to the extent of calling himself a seventh wheel and offering to step down his place as a paladin for the sake of the mission. ;;

Now, for my point of view: as much as these things are always casually bringing tears to my eyes whenever I think about them, I still reject the theories that Lance will die with every fiber of my being.

Not only because I would lay down my life for him, but also because of some pretty important logical points: one, Lance dying at this time in the show wouldn’t be a plot twist as much as a terrible disgrace that would ruin the balance of… well, everything. From a technical standpoint, it would be a wreckage. There’s been a recent Lion Switch, the roles of everyone have been tested and adjusted (not even fully - there’s still work to do, in my opinion), there’s a new dynamic and a new, flashy big bad in town. This new situation was pretty precarious from the start, but now the team has also just gotten Shiro back (even if he’s a dodgy one with questionable fashion sense), so they’ll have to readjust again. There’s six paladins, and five lions. And while that thought just gave me a horrible looming feeling, the plus one is actually Shiro, who was rejected by Black. It wouldn’t make sense to keep shifting things? If Lance died, team Voltron would be crushed in 0.0000000001 seconds.Don’t get me wrong, they could do it. It would be very dramatic, very messy, but it would also make things waaay too complicated. This might be me being mean (and bitter), but it would also be poor, lazy writing. If you have to kill off characters for shock value because you can’t keep people engaged with other plot points, then I don’t think your show is worth much to begin with? Although it always depends, of course.

But Nebu, you might ask, there are five more seasons ahead of us, couldn’t they do it when things are more stable, then? Well, they could. But let me get to the matter of fact point: it would be a shitty move on all fronts, especially if we’re talking about profit. Let’s not lie to ourselves, the show needs to profit. And Lance is a fan favorite. I, for sure, would consider dropping the show if Lance died. I know a couple of people who would, too. As I already said in other posts, for me it’s the characters that make the show good, not the overly complicated plot - and I bet I’m not the only one who thinks this. The characters are the foundation on which you build the rest of the structure. If you treat them like a castle of cards that can be blown off by the smallest gust of wind, you sure are building a very weak house there, buddy pal. I’m the first to appreciate a character death, when done right (in fact, most of my favorite characters in various shows/books/movies and what have you somehow died, which goes to show how lucky I am in that sense…), but in this case it would be totally not worth it. Maybe I’m narrow minded, but I can’t picture an instance in which Lance dying would add to the plot things that couldn’t be added in other, less drastic ways.

Another slamming point: we’re talking about the same show that had to bring Shiro back fast because the executives vetoed on him being gone for too long “because he had to sell toys”. This is gonna sound very merciless, but killing off a main character rarely pays off in other ways than mere dramatic value. The aftermath is not gonna be pretty. I don’t think the game’s gonna be worth the trouble. As Dos Santos himself said, “things change along the way and you just have to be able to adapt. Different people chime in. Different departments chime in. There’s a lot of moving parts. That’s kinda how that works.” Of course they’re gonna have a draft of where the show is heading to, but it’s gotta be flexible. Not only for the executives, but also for the public.I’m not saying we’d be able to influence much, but we sure make some difference, don’t we? As consumers, we have our share of power. As consumers, we’re going to be listened to, even if just a little bit. I don’t think Lance dying for good would make a lot of people happy.

In conclusion: Lance being badly injured because he keeps underestimating himself and valuing others’ lives more than his own? Sure, I can see that (as much as it pains me). But Lance just- straight up dying? Unless they’re planning on bringing him back in a very soap opera, dramatic “I was never dead but I made you believe so because it was convenient/necessary to the plot/whatever” way? I refuse to believe they would do it. I have faith, let’s say? Wavering, and questioning, but faith still.

(As for the bonding moment, who jossed my hc that Lance actually remembers it but said he doesn’t just to be petty because Keith didn’t remember him from the Garrison - which was also a lie because Keith perfectly remembers his “hopeless crush on that chatty cargo pilot” but wanted to play it cool?? Please tell them that I’m always down to fight. That headcanon gets me through the harsher winters and I won’t stand for this slander)

[anotheruserwithnoname]

Thoughts on Rogue One

Breaking from my usual deluge of Doctor Who, Whouffaldi and Jenna Coleman to put down some thoughts about the latest Star Wars film, Rogue One, which I finally saw over the holidays and which I’m starting to think of as the true Episode III.

Spoilers ahead so here’s a break for those who haven’t seen it yet (plus this might be a long-ish post).

A bit of context: I hated Episodes I-III for a number of reasons ranging from poor casting and scripts to just general awkwardness, as well as an attempt to explain away the Force with Star Trek Voyager-calibre technobabble. Viewing Revenge of the Sith is the only time I ever considered walking out of the theatre during a Star Wars movie.

So I was a bit leery when Force Awakens came along. Fortunately, it exceeded nearly every expectation and like many I fell in love with Daisy Ridley’s Rey and was saddened by Han Solo’s fate. But Rogue One had me concerned because it was a spin-off, and a prequel (and read above for my feelings on the earlier prequels). I also read an early report saying it was going to be like “Ocean’s 11 in Space” which didn’t inspire me with confidence.

Fortunately, Rogue One has proven itself to be an excellent addition to the Star Wars film universe, to the extent that I wish they’d put an episode number on it because I’d rather think of it as Episode III than the appropriately-acronymed ROTS.

It wasn’t a perfect film. Felicity Jones’ character Jyn didn’t work for me - she lacked Rey’s charisma and had no chemistry with … well, pretty much anyone, to be honest. And while I’ve spent the last 40 (eek!) years looking up to Han “shoots Greedo first” Solo as a great hero, I did feel they made Cassian too cold-blooded and it was hard to buy into his being a good guy and a pseudo-romantic lead after seeing him commit murder early in the film, despite the film acknowledging the “dark side” of the Rebellion several times in the film.(Full disclosure: I admit I wasn’t able to pay Cassian’s intro scenes full attention because some idiot in the theatre decided that was the moment he’d start playing with the light on his mobile phone and shining it at everybody. Seriously, some people have forgotten how to go to movies.)

But neither of these factors – which might have turned me off a lesser film – were “deal-breakers” for me because of one thing: I appreciated this movie. That’s different than enjoying (which I did, of course). It is rare, in my opinion, for prequels – particularly those that are inserted into a series like this one – to truly add something valuable to the canon. Episodes I-III did give us some things, like the origin of Darth Vader and some explanation as to what the Clone Wars was all about, but looking back I think most of this could have been covered off in one movie rather than being padded out to three. But Rogue One did more than just provide some backstory and fill in a few narrative blanks; it actually enhanced A New Hope without resorting to retconning by showing us why the stakes were so high in Episode IV – and it also performed much-needed character rehabilitation on Darth Vader who last we saw in Episode III was basically undergoing a grand mal temper tantrum. So this was a movie I truly appreciated.

Other things I liked: K2, of course, rocked. If there’s a major disappointment with R1 it’s that they didn’t put in a scene where K2 met C3PO. Maybe there’s a deleted scene kicking around. Cirrut and Baze were fantastic characters and I’d pay to see a prequel-of-the-prequel film fleshing them out more. I wonder how many people caught the reference to “Wills” when they were introduced - this was a concept from Lucas’ very first drafts of the first Star Wars script when  Luke was still Luke Starkiller. Nice nod to Lucas’ early world-building efforts. And though I just slated Felicity Jones’ character a bit, I had no complaints about her performance and I think she’s a worthy addition to the (growing) list of Star Wars heroines. If Jyn had lived to fight another day (and been given more time to smooth out the rough edges in the character) I wouldn’t have complained. Similarly, Diego Luna did a great job as Cassian. And we can’t forget Guy Henry, who brought Tarkin back to life and Mads Mikkelsen, playing against type as a good guy (sort of; he might have put the fatal flaw in the Death Star but his design still wiped out that city, and ultimately Alderaan (though to be fair we don’t know if he might not have tried to stop that last from happening if he’d lived).

I also loved how they used CG to allow Henry to play Grand Moff Tarkin without having to resort to obvious recasting. I’ve heard people invoke the old “uncanny valley” argument and say Tarkin, with the CG-recreated face of the late Peter Cushing, looked creepy. This was a good thing! Tarkin is supposed to be creepy. Later, when they did it again with Carrie Fisher and Leia, she was only on screen for about 5 seconds so it was fine too. I’m not in favour of resurrecting actors just for the hell of it (for example, the pointless use of Laurence Olivier’s image in Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow). But as the director said, in order to tell a story set immediately before ANH and featuring Tarkin and the Death Star, they had to do it. And it worked.

This post has gone on long enough, so I’ll close off by saying Rogue One was finally a Star Wars prequel worthy of the name. It’s just a shame it’s always going to be an outlier because it’s not part of the numbered series. Even if they did something like call it Star Wars Interlude or something or Episode III 1/2 – it deserves to be part of the main series.

[bountyofbeads]

In aftermath of Ukraine crisis, a climate of mistrust and threats

By Greg Miller and Greg Jaffe | Published December 25 at 11:27 AM EST | Washington Post | Posted December 25, 2019 |

The new Russia adviser at the White House — the third in just six months — has no meaningful background on the subject. The only expert on Ukraine has never spoken with President Trump, only been mocked by him publicly.

The U.S. Embassy in Kyiv will soon be without its highest-ranking diplomat for the second time in a year, as another ambassador departs after being undermined by the U.S. president and his personal attorney.

The CIA analyst who triggered the impeachment inquiry continues to work on issues relating to Russia and Ukraine, but when threats against him spike — often seemingly spurred by presidential tweets — he is driven to and from work by armed security officers.

Having been impeached by the House, Trump faces trial in the Senate on charges that he abused the power of his office and sought to obstruct Congress. But the jarring developments over the past three months have also exposed the extent to which the national security establishment, and the values that have traditionally guided American foreign policy, are facing an extraordinary trial of their own under Trump’s presidency.

An entire roster of public servants has been disparaged, bullied and in some cases banished for standing in Trump’s path as he sought to pressure Ukraine for political favors, or for testifying about his conduct afterward.

Many who came forward were convinced that Trump’s actions were a violation of American principles, if not the law, and they clung to a misplaced faith that matters of national security would transcend partisan politics. Instead, the impeachment saga has hardened political divisions and cast doubt on the United States’ commitment to ideals it has long professed.

This story is based on interviews with more than 20 current and former officials, most of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss their role in the administration or the impeachment inquiry.

Trump was the catalyst of his own impeachment, withholding military aid and a White House meeting from the leader of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, whom he was pressuring to pursue investigations designed to politically wound former vice president Joe Biden.

But the fallout of the impeachment battle extends far beyond Trump’s political survival in a Senate trial. Tensions, exposed by impeachment, have fed Trump’s belief that he is surrounded by disloyal subordinates and have fueled animosity among congressional Republicans toward the supposed “deep state.” Today, the idea that a cadre of nonpartisan civil servants can loyally serve presidents of either party in pursuit of shared national interests — a bedrock principle of the country’s approach to foreign policy since World War II — is under attack.

Some of the responsibility for the mounting collateral damage falls on career officials and political appointees who took jobs in the administration despite deep objections to the president’s view. These officials hoped they could steer the unconventional president, who has an affinity for autocrats and an aversion to traditional allies, toward more-conventional views and policies.

Others came to see themselves as doing damage control, taking advantage of Trump’s short attention span to advance their preferred objectives and counter what they regarded as his destructive impulses.

Their actions have fed the view among some Republicans that impeachment is not just an isolated fight about Trump’s actions toward Ukraine, but also is an extension of a broader, unfinished conflict.

“We’re fighting for the country here,” said Stephen K. Bannon, who called for the “deconstruction of the administrative state” while advising Trump in the early months of his presidency. “This all started in the transition,” Bannon said in an interview, adding that the attacks on those who “actively worked against [Trump’s] policies on Ukraine” or defied his wishes on Ukraine should serve as “a warning that if you go against the president, there is going to be a price to be paid.”

ENEMIES LIST

The impeachment-related damage is extensive.

The acting U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, William B. Taylor Jr., returned to Kyiv after his Nov. 14 testimony only to watch Trump’s lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, arrive weeks later to resume his quest for dirt on Joe Biden and his son Hunter. Giuliani’s sojourn while filming a documentary for a right-wing television network made clear to officials in Ukraine that Taylor and the U.S. Embassy had no standing with the U.S. president.

Taylor has since announced that he will step down by Jan. 2, clearing out of the Ukrainian capital on an accelerated schedule in part to spare Secretary of State Mike Pompeo — scheduled to visit Kyiv next month — from having to appear in pictures alongside a diplomat Trump branded as disloyal.

The ambassador had taken the job only after Pompeo promised him that U.S. policy would remain firmly grounded in fighting Russian aggression in eastern Ukraine, an assurance that now seems uncertain at best.

Veterans of the Foreign Service are bewildered. “These attacks — I’ve not seen anything like this since I joined the Foreign Service,” said John Heffern, a former senior State Department official who entered the department when Ronald Reagan was president. “Our work is promoting international universal values — freedom of the press and rule of law. Considering what’s happened in the United States, it undermines our ability to project that message to our foreign counterparts.”

Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, the top adviser on Ukraine at the National Security Council, has continued to work at the White House since testifying that he was so disturbed by Trump’s July 25 call with Zelensky that he reported his concerns to White House lawyers.

But Vindman — who was born in Ukraine, moved to the United States with his family at age 3 and earned a Purple Heart in the war in Iraq — has been taunted by Trump, cast as disloyal by the president’s allies and falsely accused of plotting with the whistleblower to undermine the president.

“Vindictive Vindman is the ‘whistleblower’s’ handler,” Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) said in a Nov. 22 tweet. The baseless charge was a sign of how Trump has influenced his party’s tactics and illustrated the intense pressure on Republicans to back the president.

In 2017, Blackburn chastised Trump for his fixation on score-settling and petty insults, writing on Facebook that “civility in all our interactions — both personal and digital — is not only proper but fundamental to a respectful and prosperous society.”

Fiona Hill, the former top Russia adviser at the White House, has endured obscene phone calls to her home phone, according to people familiar with the matter, and vicious assaults from far-right media. Alex Jones, the conspiracy monger who operates the Infowars website, devoted much of his Nov. 22 broadcast to smears against Hill. “I want her ass indicted,” Jones said. “I want her indicted for perjury. Today. Indict that whore.”

For Hill, the attacks were a continuation of an astonishing level of hostility she witnessed during the two years she served in the White House. Trump loyalists drafted internal “enemies” lists, co-workers were purged, and NSC security teams logged hundreds of external threats against Hill and other officials, all fueled by a steady stream of far-right smears.

Hill, a former U.S. intelligence official and co-author of a biography of Russian President Vladi­mir Putin, was little known outside foreign policy circles when she joined the White House. Within weeks of joining the administration, she faced a wave of internal and external efforts to discredit or neutralize her.

A former Republican congressman, Connie Mack IV of Florida, approached aides of Vice President Pence’s, warning that Hill was tainted by her prior work for an organization funded by George Soros. A billionaire financier and Holocaust survivor, Soros has used his fortune to fight the spread of authoritarianism and bigotry. He has also become associated with a “globalist” agenda opposed by many on the right, and his name is frequently invoked in anti-Semitic slurs.

At the time, Mack was working as a paid lobbyist for Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, an autocratic leader seeking to shut down a Soros-funded international university in Hungary. Orban was concerned that Hill might use her position at the White House to object.

In an interview, Mack insisted that he was merely trying to call officials’ attention to what he believed was a conflict of interest for Hill, not instigate her removal or incite right-wing attacks. But the attacks came anyway.

“My entire first year of my tenure at the National Security Council was filled with hateful calls, conspiracy theories, which has started again” amid impeachment, she testified in October. For months, Hill arrived at work nearly each day to find venomous messages left on her work phone by a caller from Florida. The same woman called Hill at home several times, frightening her young daughter, according to two people familiar with the matter.

For Hill, ever the Russia analyst, the ruthless nature of the harassment harked back to the Bolshevik purges of revolutionary Russia. Bannon has all but touted this connection, comparing his destructive agenda to that of Vladi­mir Lenin’s.

In 2017, Bannon and his allies compiled a list of about 50 people they wanted exiled from the National Security Council. Most of their targets drew suspicion because they had worked as civil servants in the Obama White House. Bannon’s team also scoured the targets’ social media profiles for signs of disloyalty to the Trump administration.

Officials involved in the effort said they were driven by a missionary zeal to rid the administration of any of the foreign policy elite they blamed for miring the country in costly wars and locking it into burdensome alliances that undermined Trump’s “America First” agenda.

NOTHING WRONG

Key players in those 2017 purges, and several of their targets, have resurfaced in the impeachment fight.

Among the first to confront Hill when she joined the White House that year was Derek Harvey, who went to the NSC after working for Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) on the House Intelligence Committee. On one of Hill’s first days on the job, Harvey told her he could not understand why Trump had allowed her into the fold, according to officials who witnessed the exchange.

Harvey, who was active in generating the enemies list, returned to Nunes’s staff after being ousted by then-national security adviser H.R. McMaster in July 2017. When Hill testified behind closed doors before the committee, Harvey could be seen passing notes to members, officials said. He also approached Hill at one point, telling her that the “trolls are out again.” The gesture, intended to communicate sympathy, ignored the fact that Hill and others viewed him as contributing to the poisonous climate.

Harvey declined to comment for this story.

Bannon said the whistleblower was at the top of the list he and his allies created in 2017. Former White House officials said it also included a State Department official now serving as a top aide to Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.), the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.

Another early target of Trump loyalists was Stephanie Holmes, a career State Department employee assigned to the NSC who was falsely accused of leaking details of Trump’s Oval Office conversation with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

Holmes came under such intense internal pressure that she hired a lawyer, former colleagues said. She subsequently left her NSC job to take a post that seemingly should have shielded her from the bloodletting, moving with her husband, David, also a diplomat, to the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine.

It was only because the Holmes were in Kyiv that David Holmes was in position to witness Trump’s phone call with U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland at an outdoor cafe. Holmes testified last month that he could overhear Trump asking about the investigations he wanted Ukraine to conduct into the Bidens, and that Sondland confided to Holmes afterward that the president did not “give a shit” about Ukraine.

Trump has intentionally fostered internal friction, sowing tension among subordinates as a management tactic, current and former White House officials said. But he also inadvertently hired advisers who are repelled by his crude behavior and isolationist instincts.

McMaster, former chief of staff John F. Kelly, former secretary of state Rex Tillerson and others all fought Trump on major aspects of his foreign policy — his disdain for the NATO alliance, his desire on a moment’s notice to pull U.S. troops out of war zones, and his aversion to imposing sanctions on Russia. They, in turn, often hired subordinates who were similarly scornful of Trump’s positions.

The impeachment hearings exposed how these officials coped with Trump, and at times sought to counter his agenda, if only in the context of Ukraine.

The most senior officials, such as Pompeo, and John Bolton when he was national security adviser, often relied on underlings to sound alarms or subvert Trump’s efforts to pressure Zelensky, without putting their own standing with the president at risk. Taylor, Hill and Vindman repeatedly raised objections to aspects of the shadow policy they perceived but had no meaningful power to stop it.

Former U.S. special envoy to Ukraine Kurt Volker walked a treacherous tightrope, working to secure a commitment from Ukraine to pursue the investigations to clear impediments to what he regarded as the real policy: bolstering Ukraine in its war with Russian-backed separatists.

He hid his alarm at Trump’s baseless conspiracy theories about the 2016 election and the president’s loathing for the Ukrainians. Volker saw himself as facing a choice: He could accept Trump’s view of Ukraine or try to fix it.

“I tried to fix it,” he testified. Volker’s career was derailed as a result. He resigned from his diplomatic post after his role in the Ukraine episode was exposed. He was also forced to step down as executive director of the McCain Institute, a think tank whose stated mission is to advance “character-driven leadership.”

Career diplomats and civil servants routinely suppress private views to execute policies set by presidents. The impeachment hearings forced a parade of witnesses to reveal their feelings about Trump on a stage with an international audience.

“People were forced to testify about things they believe . . . how they felt about what the president was doing,” one of the impeachment witnesses said in an interview. The stark airing of these differences “caused the president to think they are biased against him,” the official said.

Trump responded by railing against witnesses he dismissed as “Never Trumpers,” a reference to the hundreds of national security experts who came out publicaly against Trump in 2016.

In reality, none of those who testified had ever publicly opposed Trump, and many had made conscious decisions — despite misgivings — to return to government to work for him.

Some did so at considerable personal or professional cost. Hill was cautioned by friends and colleagues in the close-knit foreign policy community to reject the NSC job. One long-standing peer has refused to speak with her since learning she had gone to work for Trump, according to people familiar with the matter.

Three years into Trump’s presidency, the list of perceived enemies continues to expand, and now is composed of officials Trump or his own subordinates hired. The hostility they face comes not only from Trump loyalists — whether inside the administration or launching attacks from right-wing media sites — but a substantial swath of the Republican Party.

For decades, the GOP cast itself as the champion of the FBI, CIA, Pentagon and other national security institutions. But over the past three years, Republicans have repeatedly turned on those agencies when necessary to protect Trump’s presidency.

In their final report on the impeachment hearings, Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee focused on “unelected bureaucrats” as the true villains of the impeachment scandal. These officials made “accusations and assumptions” about the president, were “discomforted at Trump’s call,” and they “chafed at the president’s outside the beltway approach to diplomacy.”

Ultimately, they were to blame.

In the recent interview, Bannon marveled at how rapidly GOP lawmakers have lined up behind Trump against impeachment. Early in the scandal, Bannon said, it would have been difficult to find more than a few GOP members willing to back Trump’s assertion that his call with Zelensky was “perfect.” Though the core facts have never been in question, Bannon said that “because of the information put forth by the president and his advocates,” it was impossible to find a GOP member prepared to dispute Trump’s depiction.

“Today, look at House Judiciary, a hundred percent say it is a perfect call,” Bannon said. “A hundred percent say there’s nothing wrong.”

⛄🎄🎅🎄🎅🎄🎅🎄⛄

U.S. CyberCom contemplates information warfare to counter Russian interference in the 2020 election

By Ellen Nakashima | Published Dec. 25 at 3:54 PM EST | Washington Post | Posted December 25, 2019|

Military cyber officials are developing information warfare tactics that could be deployed against senior Russian officials and oligarchs if Moscow tries to interfere in the 2020 U.S. elections through hacking election systems or sowing widespread discord, according to current and former U.S. officials.

One option being explored by U.S. Cyber Command would target senior leadership and Russian elites, though likely not President Vladimir Putin, which would be considered too provocative, said the current and former officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the issue’s sensitivity. The idea would be to show that the target’s sensitive, personal data could be hit if the interference did not stop, though officials declined to be more specific.

“When the Russians put implants into an electric grid, it means they’re making a credible showing that they have the ability to hurt you if things escalate,” said Bobby Chesney, a law professor at the University of Texas at Austin. “What may be contemplated here is an individualized version of that, not unlike individually targeted economic sanctions. It’s sending credible signals to key decision-makers that they are vulnerable if they take certain adversarial actions.”

Cyber Command and officials at the Pentagon declined to comment.

The military has long used psychological operations — dropping hundreds of thousands of leaflets in Iraq, for instance, to persuade Iraqi soldiers to surrender to the U.S.-led coalition during the Gulf War. But the Internet, social media and smartphones have vastly extended the reach and precision of such tactics.

The development comes as numerous agencies within the Trump administration seek to ensure the United States is shielded against foreign efforts to disrupt the 2020 elections, even as President Trump himself has cast doubt on or belittled his own intelligence community’s finding of Russian interference in 2016.

The intelligence community last month issued a classified update — a “national intelligence estimate” — assessing that Russia’s main goal in the 2020 campaign continues to be to sow discord. “It’s always been about exacerbating fault lines in our society,” said one senior U.S. official.

In the past year, Congress and the Trump administration have eased restraints on the military’s use of cyber-operations to thwart foreign adversaries. The push is part of a move by military officials such as Gen. Paul Nakasone, who heads both CyberCom and the National Security Agency, the government’s powerful electronic surveillance arm, to weave cyber-offensive capabilities into military operations.

The 10-year-old command’s foray into influence operations reflects an evolution in thinking. “It’s a really big deal because we have not done a good job in the past of integrating traditional information warfare with cyber-operations,” Chesney said. “But as Russia has demonstrated, these two are increasingly inseparable in practice.”

While other military organizations, such as Joint Special Operations Command, also have cyber and information warfare capabilities, CyberCom is the first to turn such powers toward combating election interference.

“In 332 days, our nation is going to elect a president,” Nakasone told a defense forum earlier this month. “We can’t let up. This is something we cannot be episodic about. The defense of our nation, the defense of our elections, is something that will be every single day for as long as I can see into the future.”

The options being considered build on an operation CyberCom undertook last fall in the run-up to the midterm elections. Beginning in October 2018, CyberCom used emails, pop-ups and texts to target Russian Internet “trolls” who were seeding disinformation on U.S. social media platforms. The trolls worked for the Internet Research Agency, a private entity controlled by a Russian oligarch close to Putin. CyberCom also messaged hackers working for Russian military intelligence, indicating their identities were known and could be publicized. Although the command did not sign its messages, the Americans knew there would be no mistaking who had sent them, officials said at the time.

When the trolls persisted, CyberCom, beginning on Election Day and for at least two days afterward, knocked their servers offline, The Washington Post previously reported. The Americans also sent messages aimed at spreading confusion and discord among IRA operatives, including computer system administrators. Some personnel were so perturbed that they launched an internal investigation to root out what they thought were insiders leaking personnel information, according to U.S. officials.

The new options contemplate targeting key leaders in the security services and the military and potentially some oligarchs. The messaging would be accompanied by a limited cyber-operation that demonstrates the Americans’ access to a particular system or account and the capability to inflict a cost, said individuals familiar with the matter. The message would implicitly warn the target that if the election interference did not cease, there would be consequences.

The options do not envision any attempt to influence Russian society at large, which officials saw as having limited success given Putin’s control of the country, including much of the media.

Some see the new options as potentially effective at altering a key official’s decision-making calculus without being hugely escalatory because they do not seek to foment a popular uprising, which is Putin’s big fear, analysts note.

Another possibility involves disinformation aimed at exploiting rivalries within the Russian government and power elites. In 2016, National Security Council aides in the Obama administration developed cyber options against Russia similar to those being contemplated by CyberCom now, but “no one had an appetite for it,” a former senior official said.

“There is a night-and-day difference between 2016 and this,” said a second former U.S. official, who said that CyberCom’s thinking several years ago was much more limited and conventional.

Any operation would be reviewed by other agencies, including the State Department and CIA, and require the defense secretary’s approval. It would be aligned with other potential U.S. efforts, such as sanctions or indictments, officials said.

Cyber-operations alone are usually not sufficient to transform an adversary’s behavior. “It can serve a useful message of ‘We’re watching and be careful not to go further,’ ” said Michael Carpenter, a former senior defense policy official in the Obama administration. But generally, he said, it is likely to be more effective when used with other tools such as sanctions — especially those also backed by allies.

Cyber Command got a boost in August 2018 when Congress clarified that cyber actions that fall below the use of force — what practitioners call “the gray zone” — can be conducted as “traditional military activities” as distinct from covert action. That was a key change that meant that clandestine operations such as the IRA takedown last fall, for instance, would not get delayed by disputes about whether they were covert operations.

Also enhancing CyberCom’s flexibility was Trump’s signing the following month of a national security presidential memorandum that revised the process by which cyber-operations are vetted and approved, leaving the final decision with the defense secretary even if other agencies object.

No single office within the Defense Department oversees cyber, electronic warfare and psychological operations. So this month, Congress created a Senate-confirmed position of principal information operations adviser to coordinate strategy and policy in this area across the Pentagon and with other agencies.

Other former U.S. officials are wary of CyberCom’s move into information operations. “I’m not a big fan of the Department of Defense doing messaging operations,” said Richard Stengel, a former undersecretary of state for public diplomacy in the Obama administration. “I’m even skeptical of the State Department doing messaging operations. . . . I just don’t think that’s something we’re good at.”

Meanwhile the Marine Corps has created a position of deputy commandant for information to build information warfare capability. Army Cyber Command has integrated cyber, electronic warfare and information operations into its mission. The 16th Air Force cyber unit is doing the same.

Among the things that cyber officials are discussing are operations that expose adversaries’ malign behavior.

The United States already has experimented with such disclosures, in 2014 releasing satellite images and other sensitive intelligence that showed Moscow had trained and equipped pro-Russian rebels in Ukraine responsible for shooting down a Malaysian airliner, killing 298 civilians. Such efforts could be expanded, officials say, to educate a broader audience about the actions of adversaries.

“Basically, it’s a war of strategic narrative,” said Sean McFate, a foreign policy expert and author of “The New Rules of War.” “We need to get into that domain.”

⛄🎄🎅🎄🎅🎄🎅🎄⛄

Russian-backed Syrian offensive kills dozens, displaces tens of thousands

By Kareem Fahim and Sarah Dadouch | Published Dec. 25 at 4:36 PM EST | Washington Post | Posted Dec 25, 2019

ISTANBUL — A crushing military offensive by the Syrian government and its Russian allies in northern Syria has killed dozens of civilians and displaced more than 100,000 people in less than 10 days, humanitarian aid groups and medical officials there say.

The assault in Syria’s Idlib province is part of a push by President Bashar al-Assad to regain control of strategic highways, and ultimately the country’s last major rebel-held area. Clashes, government shelling and Russian airstrikes this month have sparked a panicked exodus that aid workers warn could lead to one of the worst humanitarian catastrophes of Syria’s eight-year civil war.

Homes in Maarat al-Numan, the largest city in Idlib’s southern countryside and the main target of the escalation, have steadily emptied as a parade of cars streams out, residents say. People are struggling to find medical care and shelter as the number fleeing airstrikes swells.

“People, I swear by God, are sleeping in open air under trees and the temperature at night is near freezing,” Shaker al-Humeido, a doctor who worked in Maarat al-Numan, said in a text message. The hospital where he worked had been emptied as fighting approached and he and his family fled north.

“I am shocked at the size of the tragedy,” he said.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned last week that “massacres” in the province had sent more than 80,000 people fleeing toward Syria’s border with Turkey, which already hosts about 4 million Syrian war refugees. But his government, which maintains military outposts in Idlib and enjoys warm relations with Russia, has failed so far to blunt the offensive.

The violence is the latest miserable trial for Idlib, a wellspring of opposition to Assad’s government that hosts hundreds of thousands of people displaced by war from other parts of Syria.

The province, with 3 million people, has borne the brunt of a Russian and Syrian air campaign that has struck hospitals and leveled homes and markets, human rights groups say. The province and surrounding areas are largely controlled by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, an extremist Islamist group that began as al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria and has tried to rebrand itself several times during the war.

Fighting over the past year has taken a disproportionate toll on children, according to UNICEF, which said in a statement Tuesday that more than 500 children were injured or killed in the first nine months of 2019. At least 65 children have been killed or injured in December alone, the group said.

Dareen Khalifa, a Syria analyst with the International Crisis Group, said Assad’s short-term goal has been to encircle and control Maarat al-Numan and the town of Saraqib, about 15 miles northeast. Then, she said, the Syrian army would push west to retake a highway linking Latakia and Aleppo as it attempted to capture Idlib in chunks.

“The problem is, the regime offensive that started in April hasn’t been very successful,” Khalifa said. “So now they are overcompensating by using devastating levels of air force. The casualties and displacement levels are catastrophic.

“If the regime continues and if the rebels don’t surrender, this will mean the worst humanitarian disaster we’ve seen in Syria.”

Naji Mustafa, a spokesman for the Turkish-backed rebel Syrian Liberation Front, said the government’s escalation “clearly aims at displacing people.

“They are targeting marketplaces, hospitals, schools; they want the entire population of Maarat al-Numan, 80,000 people, to become displaced at the borders with Turkey. This has already started to happen.

“The clashes are severe,” he said. “We have lost some areas in the past few days, but we are pushing back to recapture them. This is how it has been.”

The previous offensive, launched in April, displaced 500,000 people in Idlib, according to aid groups.

“An additional half a million people could be displaced over the coming weeks if the violence continues to escalate,” said Kelly Razzouk, the U.N. director of the International Rescue Committee. “This would be the largest displacement seen since the war started eight years ago.”

Razzouk called reports of children living under olive trees in 30-degree weather “extremely distressing.”

“We are very concerned about the rates of malnutrition,” she said. “Eleven percent of children attending health clinics that we support are suffering from acute malnutrition, and food is being rationed. Nursing mothers are having to feed their infants herbal tea because they are malnourished and can’t feed their infants.”

Syrians activists have protested the offensive outside of Russian missions around the world, including in Istanbul. There has also been growing criticism of Turkey’s government.

Mustafa Sejari, a senior official in the Turkey-backed Syrian National Army, published an open letter to Erdogan last week that highlighted the frustration.

“We understand the amount of internal and external pressure that you are under, but we, our people, our children, are getting killed,” Sejari wrote on Twitter. He asked Erdogan to take a “historic stand” by opening Turkey’s closed borders to women and children, and resuming military support to rebel forces.

Russian and Turkish officials discussed Idlib during a meeting Monday, Russia’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement. But Syrian activists say they’ve seen no visible improvements to the situation on the ground.

“A detailed exchange of views took place,” the Russians said.

Relief organizations warn they could soon be hampered in their ability to supply aid to Syrian civilians. China and Russia last week vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution that would have renewed authorization for aid shipments across Turkey and Iraq’s borders for 12 months. The authorization expires Jan. 10.

“Given the scale of the needs in northern Syria, now is not the time to scale back,” said Razzouk, of the International Rescue Committee.

Families in the countryside around Maarat al-Numan have been fleeing their homes every night, said Tarek Mustafa, a physician at the city’s central hospital. The exodus from the city continues around the clock.

Medical staff have received injured front-line fighters and civilians, but also people who had been in car accidents because they drove at night with their lights off, to avoid detection by warplanes.

His hospital was the last one functioning in the area, he said. On Sunday, it was strafed by gunfire from a helicopter, and by Monday, it had closed.

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