#much like janet from the good place data is not a man he just uses he/him pronouns

[hug-me-brutha]

Non-binary Data confirmed

[fearfulkittenwrites]

With one last breath in me (I’d die before I’d let you leave)

Word Count: 8053

Notes: Hey @river-bottom-nightmare! I hope you enjoy this! I tried my best to make it angsty but I always go overboard with the fluff on these two. I had a lot of fun writing this, so I hope you’ll have fun reading it too!

“Superboy, to your left!” Robin says.

Jon uses his laser eyes to destroy the robots, before moving back to Robin’s side, running with him for the exit.

“You have the data?” He asks.

“Who am I, Red Robin?” He shoots back, smirking as he shakes the flashdrive in front of him “Of course I have the data.”

“That was fast.”

“I am fast.” Robin says, using his batarangs to make a hole on the wall ahead of them.

“Careful,” Superboy smiles, picking him up by the armpits and flying them out of the twentieth floor “You almost sound like Flash now.”

“That’s preposterous.” Robin rolls his eyes as his feet carefully reach the ground, patting the dust out of his costume.

“Are you alright?” Jon asks, scanning his friend like his father had recently taught him to.

“I’m fine. Are you?” Damian grunts, rearranging his cape.

“Yeah, I’m okay. But I think we should go before that becomes a problem.” Jon points at the building they just left, with a reasonably sized burning hole on it’s side.

“Great point.” Robin raises an eyebrow at the mess they’ve made.

Jon picks him up by his armpits again, over Damian’s protests.

“Put me down, you wild beast!” He flails around “You’re going to dislocate my shoulders!”

“What do you suggest then? We need to get home!” Jon says. Damian thinks for a second, before sighing.

“Fine. Put me on your back.” He says, resigning to his fate.

Jon doesn’t need to land to throw him over his shoulders, going faster now that Damian was more secure. Robin blushed with the ease that he had been placed on his friends back, wrapping his arms and legs around Superboy’s torso. They still had fifteen minutes to go, so he rests his head against Jon’s back, examining the flashdrive. Jon blushes when he feels Damian’s hair ticking the back of his neck. They reach their HQ after twenty minutes of a comfortable flight. Robin doesn’t complain about the added travel time.

Damian walks to the computer, analyzing the data they had just stolen, downloading whatever seemed interesting and relevant before he could take it back to the cave for further research under his father’s critical eyes.

“Hey, Dami,” Jon calls. Damian freezes at the nickname, and tries his best to disguise it as he feels Jon’s hand on his shoulder “Do you think you have it covered? I kinda really need a shower right now.”

“Go ahead.” Damian’s voice comes out a bit higher than normal. He clears his throat “You wouldn’t be of much use for me right now anyways.”

Jon takes a deep breath and rolls his eyes.

“Whatever.” He pulls his hand back “If you need me, you know where I’ll be.”

Yes, he did. In the shower. And Damian was trying really hard not to picture him there. And he was trying really hard not to think of how nice Jon’s hair must feel when it’s wet and being shampooed. And he tries even harder not to think of how even nicer it must be to have Jon’s hands massaging his scalp for him. And he tries really hard not to think of how much he wants Jon to tangle his fingers into his hair and play with it as he drifts off to sleep. And he doesn’t even know why it is that he needs to try so hard not to think about it.

“I won’t be needing you, Kent.” Damian says “Have a nice shower. You stink.”

“Whatever.” Jon says again, rolling his eyes one more time.

 ...

 “What’s with the face, D?” Jon asks, sitting across his friend at the lunch table.

Damian takes another bite out of the sandwich Alfred had carefully crafted in the morning and frowns harder as he watches a girl sit down next to Jon, followed by her friend. He was almost sure one of them was Delilah, but it might as well be Janet. Jon is – as always – smiling, but the two girls aren’t. Understandably so. Damian didn’t exactly make an effort to be liked.

“So, which class do you have next?” Jon insists.

“Chemistry.” Damian answers.

“Oh, I hate chemistry.” Jon says, overreacting, trying to keep the conversation alive.

“I used to find it rather fascinating. Of course, that was back when I was with mother and being taught something actually useful and challenging, and not now, when I’m forced to go through this with a bunch of functional idiots that can’t even remember the formula for the air that they breathe.” Damian says.

“Huh.” Jon says, tapping the table and bouncing his leg. Damian rolls his eyes.

“Yeah.” The girl – maybe her name was Jessica – says, turning to Jon “Hey, have you seen the soccer game last night? Man, I could barely stay still!”

“Me neither!” Jon says, enthusiastically chattering on about a game Damian had neither seen or been interested in with the girls.

He tunes out the conversation until he finishes his sandwich and leaves without a word, but enough noise to catch a few eyes. Not that he cared.

“Excuse me for a second.” Jon says to the girls, before sprinting after Damian “Hey, D, wait up!” He says, placing his hand on Damian’s shoulder again, forcing him to turn. He wills himself not to blush when he faces his blue-eyed friend “What’s going on? Did something happen? You seem a little down today.”

“Nothing happened, Kent.” Damian spits out “I have a class to attend. Go back to talking about football with your friends.”

“It’s actually soccer, but-”

“Doesn’t matter.” Damian turns around “Americans” He rolls his eyes as he makes his way through the halls, leaving Jon very confused, a little worried, and a little angry.

Damian keeps rubbing and scratching his right shoulder through the day, remembering Jon’s hand forcefully spinning him on his heels. He can’t understand why he wishes it was still there.

The rest of Damian’s classes go by at an agonizingly slow pace, and when he’s finally free to go home, he once again feels a hand grabbing him on the hallways. Jon holds him by his left forearm, and Damian stares down at his friends grip in surprise. His arm is covered by his clothing, but it still feels like it’s on fire under the other’s fingers. Surprisingly, Damian finds that he doesn’t really want to pull away. He drags his eyes up, meeting his friend’s.

“Dami, did I do something? You haven’t talked to me all day.”

Damian frowns.

“You didn’t do anything, Kent.” He pulls his arm back, harsher than he needs to be “Leave me alone at once, I need to go home.”

“Oh, c’mon Damian.” Jon walks beside him. Damian wants to punch him in the face “Don’t be like that. We’ve been friends for such a long time, you can tell me anything.”

“Great. I’m telling you to leave.” Damian shoves his hands in his pockets.

“You’re so rude, Damian.” Jon says.

“Oh look, there’s Pennyworth.” Damian says, monotone and sarcastic “I would hate to keep him waiting. Goodbye.”

Damian walks faster, getting away from a huffing, frustrated Jon, while waving at Alfred. He replies with a polite nod and a small smile. When Damian gets in the car, ready to cuss up a storm on his way home, a friendly face greets him.

“Hey Dami.” Dick says, smiling, sunglasses on “So, I take it school sucked today.”

“Very much so.” Damian dares to open a small smile as he settles in next to Dick “What are you doing here?”

“Hello, missed you too, happy to see you’re safe.” Dick teases.

“Yes, sure, I’m glad you’re back from your mission, alive and in one piece.” Damian rolls his eyes “Not like I had any doubts you’d come home safe.”

“I’m here because I missed you.” Dick says, reaching out to ruffle Damian’s hair “But Bruce wouldn’t let me come alone, says there are too many bruises to be questioned, so I had to stay in the car.” Dick removed his shades to expose a nasty black eye, so swollen Damian could barely see the blue in them. He was taken aback by that, finally noticing all of the other injuries Dick hid so well; there was a healing cut close to his hairline, a splint in his left hand and a deep purple bruise poked out of his collar, probably hinting at a much bigger nightmare underneath.

“I can see why.” Damian says as Dick puts his shades back on. The boy stops for a second, thinking “Can I still hug you?”

Dick has the biggest smile on his face at that.

“Of course you can, little D.” He says, opening his arms “Just mind the hip, I think I might’ve fractured it.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.” Damian replies, already burying his face in his brother’s neck. He hadn’t realised how much he missed Dick when he was away.

“Now,” Dick starts as they separate “Wanna tell me what’s gotten you so down?”

“I’m not-” Damian gasps, outraged for a split second, putting up all of the walls he always did before he remembered this was his brother. He sighs, shoulders falling as he does so “I... Jonathan is getting on my nerves.” Damian rubs his left forearm, curling protectively over it.

“Did he hurt you?” Dick asks, reaching out for his arm.

“No, it’s not that.” Damian answers, sighing, letting his brother check under his sleeve for bruises “It’s his friends, that Denise, or Jennifer or whatever. Following him around talking about ‘soccer’.” He makes a face “And of course, since he insists on following me, I am forced to listen to that... annoying little voice, blabbering on about meaningless subjects.”

“Hm.” Dick listens with a smirk “Y’know, it sounds to me like you’re jealous.”

Damian huffs.

“That’s ridiculous.”

“Is it though?” Dick squints a bit.

“Yes.”

“You hesitated.”

“I didn’t.”

“You did.”

“I did not!”

“Yes you did.”

“Kids, please, no more yelling.” Alfred says.

Damian huffs.

“Alright, I’m sorry, I was only teasing you.” Dick says “But, um, just in case I was right, then... you do know it’s okay, right?”

“You were not right, so it doesn’t matter. Now leave me alone already.” Damian looks out the window, frowning.

“Okay, okay, I’ll back off.” Dick says, putting his hands up.

“Good.” He shoots back. There are a few minutes of silence before the kid speaks up “When will you be able to go on patrol with us again?”

Dick frowns.

“Tonight?”

And there it is, the string of curses Damian had been holding back on, bullying Dick hard enough to get him to stay at home for at least a week.

 ...

 “So... the school dance is coming.” Jon says over Damian’s shoulder.

“And you are bringing this up because?” Damian grunts, searching the room for any other crooks that could be hiding.

“Because this is boring.” Jon replies, grabbing a hidden guy by the back of his neck “And I was wondering if you’re going.” He shoves the guy to Damian, who hits him with a perfect nerve strike to keep him down for a while.

“-tt-.” Damian rolls his eyes, walking to the next room “As if I would be willingly joining those stupid peasants for an evening.” He takes down two men while Jon leans against a door frame.

“Wow, okay.” He says “Forget I asked anything.”

“Why? Are you going?” Damian scoffs.

“Yes.”

Damian looks at him in disbelief and disgust.

“Why?”

“Because it’s fun.” Jon rolls his eyes “And there are three more guys coming from the hall, I can hear their heartbeats.” Damian attacks before they reach the door “And Elise invited me. I think I might say yes.”

“What?” Damian scowls “You can’t-” He dodges a punch “A little help?” He growls at Jon, who sends a laser beam into the man’s foot “As I was saying, you can’t go.”

“Why not?”

“Because! It’s preposterous!” Damian yells, knocking down the last guy.

“Well, I don’t think so. I think it will be fun.” Jon says, making his way out of the place “And the police are near. We should be on our way.”

“I’m not allowing you.”

“You’re not the boss of me, Damian.” Jon rolls his eyes.

“You have patrol.” Damian shoots back.

“I can miss a day of patrol.” He crosses his arms “Just stay with your family for the night. Besides, hasn’t Nightwing just gotten back from a long mission overseas? Just spend more time with him, I’m sure you two miss each other a lot.”

“That’s besides the point!” Damian stomped his foot “You’re gonna leave me all alone for that... weird football girl.”

“Once again, soccer.”

“Ugh! Whatever!” Damian exclaims “I’m going home. Since you can’t take this seriously enough, I believe we should call it a night.”

“Robin, c’mon, don’t be such an ass.”

Damian clenched his jaw.

“Go back to Metropolis, Superboy. Gotham clearly doesn’t have a good enough soccer league for you.”

Damian shoots his grapple gun, letting it pull him to the top of a random building.

“Agh! You’re so frustrating sometimes!” Jon yells, shoving his hands in his hair.

After Damian sees the boy leaving, he sits on the edge of the building, feet dangling down. He picks up his comm, switching it to a private line.

“Nightwing,” He calls “Are you awake?”

It takes a while, but after a small static noise, Dick picks up. Damian sighs in relief.

“Hey.” He answers “I’m up. Is everything okay?”

“It’s... fine.” He sighs “I think...” He blushes “I think that you were right.” He looks down at his dangling feet “I think I did hesitate.”

There’s silence for a short while. Dick knows this is as close as Robin gets to crying.

“Where are you?” Dick asks “I’m picking you up.”

 ...

 Back home and under weighted blankets, Damian held on to a cup of hot cocoa Alfred had made for him while Dick ruffled his hair.

“Feeling better little D?” He asks, sitting down next to him. Damian sniffles a little.

“Not really.” He admits, staring at the steaming liquid in his green mug “I don’t understand. Why does it feel like I’m... like I’m dying?” He looks up at his older brother with watered eyes.

“I don’t know, Dames.” Dick replied gently “Maybe if you talk to me about what happened, I could help.”

Damian sighs, putting the mug down and hugging his knees.

“Her name is Elise.” Damian starts “The annoying girl I was talking about. And... he’s taking her to the school dance.” He closes his eyes for a second “I don’t understand. He’s... above her. Why would he subject himself to such a humiliating situation?”

“Why do you think he’s above her?” Dick frowns a little.

“Isn’t it obvious?”

“I think you might be forgetting that his mom is human too.” Dick replies “I don’t think he-”

“No. God no. You misunderstand me.” Damian interrupts “It’s not the human part that’s the problem. It’s the way she is. Such an annoying waste of space and matter.”

Dick tries his best to conceal his smile.

“Little D... you feel like you’re dying because you’re jealous.” Dick says. This time, Damian doesn’t protest “And it’s fine. It’s part of life.”

“But I don’t want to feel like that.” He says, hiding his face in himself.

“Unfortunately, I don’t think that’s a possibility.” Dick smiles.

“How do I make it stop?” Damian asks.

“You could try asking Jon to go with you instead.”

“Never!” He hisses back “I’m not taking part in such dreadful events.”

“Oh, c’mon, what could be the worst that could happen?” Dick responds “Some harmless fun?” He teases “Oh no! The mighty Robin is afraid of music and watered down poncho!”

“Quit it Richard.” He growls “I’m not going and that’s final.”

 ...

 “I don’t understand.” Jon says, burying his face in his hands “He’s just so... difficult.”

Clark watched attentively as his son stared at his slice of pie, waiting for him to continue speaking.

“It’s like he doesn’t want me to be happy.” He frowns “I had no clue he hated me this much.”

“He doesn’t hate you Jon.” Clark says, gentle eyes scanning his son “We both know that Damian’s family life is... complicated. He cares about you very much, but has a hard time expressing it. He never really learned how to express it.”

“Yeah, well, remind me again of why I put up with it.” He complains, shoving a bite of pie into his mouth “It’s not like it’s my responsibility to teach him how to be a decent human being.” Clark waits patiently as his son finishes chewing “I mean... it’s so unfair. Why do I have to keep on... getting hurt by his mean words and he gets to just... walk away and have fun with his siblings? He was the one being rude and now I’m the one that’s upset.”

“Uh, I’m sure Kon would love to patrol with you, if that’s the issue.” Clark tries, unsure on what to say. God, he wished Lois was home. She was the one that knew what to do in situations like these.

“Ugh, dad, no.” He presses his temples with the palm of his hands “I mean that like... I have to carry around this weight that he puts on my shoulders! And it’s not fair.” He sighed “Why did I have to fall for someone who treats me so badly?”

Clark blushes at the words, unsure on what to say. These topics always made him a bit uneasy. But there was his boy, his little miracle, teary eyed and hurt, and for once in his life, there was nothing he could do about it. He reaches out a hand to his son.

“I don’t know, son.” He starts, holding Jon’s small hand in his “We can’t really control the desires of our hearts. Especially not at your age.” He smiles.

“I wish I could.” He mumbles, letting tears fall out of his eyes.

“I know.” Clark replies “We all do.”

“It feels like the world is ending right now.” Jon sobs “Like nothing matters anymore.”

“I know.” Clark moves to sit next to his son, hugging the boy “But I promise you it’s not ending.” He gently rubbed his arms as silent tears fell from his boy’s eyes “Everything seems so much bigger when we’re young. But this bad feeling will fade away, I promise you. Just give it time.”

Jon nods, wiping his eyes with his sleeves.

“Do you think I should talk to him?” Jon asks “I could... tell him how I feel?”

“I think that could be good.” Clark swallows “But... remember who he is. Damian might not be as kind as you would if he doesn’t feel the same.”

“Yeah, I know.” Jon sighs “But it’d be nice to put something of mine on his shoulders for once.”

 ...

 The next day, Damian doesn’t go to school. Jon spends the entire day anxious, wondering why his friend was allowed to skip class. Was he sick? Was he upset? Was he sent on a mission away from home? Was he dead? Oh no. If he was dead, then how was Jon supposed to confess his love? Wait. No, this wouldn’t be the worst part of him being dead. Jesus, Jon, come on.

At night, he can’t contain himself anymore. They weren’t supposed to patrol together, but Jon suits up and flies to Gotham regardless, heart beating desperately in his chest as he lands close by the cave’s secret entrance. He walks in, hoping he’d need to ask for Robin’s whereabouts, but instead he finds him as soon as he walks in, analyzing fresh samples in the batcomputer.

“Damian?” He calls “Are you okay?”

“What are you doing here, Superboy?” Damian growls in response.

“I was worried.” Jon says “You weren’t at school today.”

“Very perceptive of you.” Damian rolls his eyes.

“I thought you were sick.” Jon crosses his arms, walking towards his friend “But clearly that isn’t the problem.”

“Stop scanning me.” Damian scowls.

“Stop being such an ass!” Jon shouts back “I’m here because I care about you, and you still say rude and mean things!”

“I didn’t ask you to come!”

“Well, but I’m here! And you could at least try to be polite!” Jon stomps his foot down.

“Did you come here to yell at me? Are you done already?” Damian asks, finally turning his entire body to face the boy, walking towards him as well.

“No! I came here to see if you needed help.” Jon replies “But you can’t help yourself, can you? You need to push away people that care about you.”

“Great. I don’t need help.” Damian replies, walking back to the computer “You’re done around here. Have a safe fly home.”

“What is wrong with you? Why are you acting like this, Damian?” Jon asks, frowning.

“Because I still feel your touch on me!” Damian shouts, turning around to face the other, ripping away his mask. There are tears gathered in his jade eyes. They break Jon’s resolve and they break Jon’s heart “Because even after you leave, your scent is burned into my nostrils and I can still feel you, everywhere!” Damian shoves his gloved hands into his hair “And for the first time in ages, I don’t know what to do, and I don’t know what this means, and I don’t know why I keep on feeling like my entire body is on fire when I’m next to you, why it feels so cold when you’re away, and why every bone in my body feels like they are breaking simultaneously when I see you next to someone that isn’t me!”

And then, the unthinkable finally happens.

Damian sobs.

He covers his mouth just in time, but the pained, loud sound still reaches Jon’s ears, and he feels it; the pain Damian just talked about, shattering every unbreakable bone in his half-kryptonian body. He watches as Robin falls to his knees in front of him, crying, crying so much it scares him. Because to this very day, Jon was certain that Robins didn't cry. Superboy had been warned of that several times.

No, Robins don’t cry.

But Damian does.

“D, I...” He reaches out a hand, crouching in front of him.

“No!” Damian yells, slapping his friends hand away “Don’t. Stay away from me! I don’t want to keep on getting hurt.”

“Dami, I don’t-”

“Don’t call me that!” Damian pushes Jon back, forcing him to stand up “Don’t call me that when you don’t mean it!”

“Please, just listen to me!”

“Leave me alone! Get away from me! Get out of here before I make you!” Damian keeps shouting out over Jon’s words.

“Damian, please-”

“Leave!” Damian reaches into his boot, pulling out a shard of kryptonite “I will not stand in your way any more, Kent.”

Jon puts his hands in front of his body, staring at him and at the green stone and he feels sick. He’s not sure if that’s on the kryptonite or if that’s on... everything else. Finally, he flies away, whispering his goodbyes and his apologies. If he cried on the way home, no one had to know. If he cried on his father’s shoulder when he got home, no one had to know. If his mom had to help him out of his costume and into bed after he calmed down, no one had to know.

And if Damian broke down and cried until his voice was hoarse and he ran out of tears, no one had to know. And if Dick rushed downstairs and held Damian’s small body against his own, no one had to know. And if his father had found them and caressed his hair and cupped his cheek with concerned eyes, no one had to know.

Because life would go on, no matter what. It had to, no matter how much pain there would be. It had to keep moving, no matter how heartbroken Jon was when he didn’t see Damian at school for the following week, only to find out he had been transferred to Gotham High. It had to, no matter how Damian’s body seemed to refuse to move on his first day in his new school. It had to. It simply had to. There were things to learn, people to protect, dances to attend, a world to save, and none of those were willing to wait on Robin or Superboy.

 ...

 “I can’t go.” Jon says “I’m sorry, but I really can’t go to the dance with you Elise.”

“What?” Elise says “The dance is tomorrow Jon! Who am I supposed to go with?”

“I’m sorry.” He says again “I know that I should’ve said something sooner, but... something came up.” He scratches the back of his head “Something that I can’t miss.”

“And what exactly is that?” She crosses her arms, upset.

“Well...” He shoves his hands in his pockets “A chance to make some things right.”

 ...

 Robin sits on the highest tower in Gotham. Nightwing sits by his side. He looks down at his own dangling feet. The dance in metropolis high was happening as they sat there. Damian couldn’t understand why he still felt a knot in his guts. He hadn’t been able to eat properly before patrol, but he also wasn’t hungry at all. He hasn’t been hungry since the night of the screaming match in the cave.

“Robin,” Nightwing speaks up “Since there’s no way he’ll ever be able to sneak up on you, I think I should tell you that Superboy is on his way here.”

“What?” He exclaims. Dick pulls him away from the edge “How do you know that? Did you invite him?”

“Yes.” He says.

“You-”

“Before you insult me, let me speak.” Nightwing interrupts him. Damian grunts, but crosses his arms and waits for an explanation “After that night, Clark came to me.” He sighs “He was worried about what happened, because it seems that Jon had been crying so much he wasn’t able to explain what happened and for a second he worried about your safety.” He joins his hands, intertwining his own fingers as he speaks “I explained the situation giving as little detail as possible. Clark told me that... he said you two needed to talk. And that he could convince Jon to come, but he’d need my help getting you to be there.”

“So you tricked me into it.”

“Would you have come if I had asked you to?”

“...No.” He grunts.

“There we have it.”

“I don’t have anything else to say to him.”

“Apparently, he has a lot he wants to say to you.” Dick massages his own gloved hand “Just hear him out, okay? I think it might at least alleviate your suffering.”

“How can you possibly know that?” Damian asks.

“Look, if I didn’t have some sort of certainty that this would help and not hurt you, I wouldn’t have agreed to this in the first place.” He sighs “Last time you two spoke, it wasn’t good. Leaving it at that is killing you inside, baby brother.” He smiles at him “Just try, okay?”

Jon lands on the rooftop as Dick finishes speaking.

“So, you didn’t go to the dance afterall.” Robin says, walking away from Nightwing and closer to Jon, arms crossed.

“Alright, there’s no easy way to say this, so here it goes.” Jon says, taking a deep breath.

Damian braces himself for the worse.

How could Dick possibly think that this would be good for him? Had he really been brought here just to be painfully rejected?

“I love you.” Jon says. Damian’s eyes widen “I have always loved you, I think. But now, I love you more than I ever have. More than as a friend.”

Damian doesn’t know how to respond.

“I...” He tries “Me too.”

“Yeah. I kinda figured that out in the bones breaking part.” Jon smiles awkwardly, rubbing the back of his neck.

“So now what?” Damian asks, looking at the ground.

“I don’t know.” Jon says “What do you want to do?”

Damian's stomach growls.

“Well, we’re in Gotham.” Jon grinned at him “I think a vegetarian Bat-burger would be nice.”

“Yes.” Damian smiles shyly “I believe so too.”

 ...

 Jon lands next to Damian, on top of a Metropolis building.

“How was school today?” He asks.

“Awful.” Robin answers, removing his gaze from the street to look at his partner “I shouldn’t have asked father to change schools. Now not only do I have to put up with annoying commoners, I also have to spend the day missing you.”

Jon blushes and giggles, looking down. Damian smiles at him.

“It’s a quiet night.” Damian says “But then again, I suppose Metropolis is a lot quieter than what I’m used to.” He examines Jon’s face “You could... do the thing again.”

“The... thing?” Jon asks, frowning.

“Yes.” Damian stares at him “Like... the sky thing.”

“Oh! Oh, that thing.”

“What else did you think of?” Damian crosses his arms, smirking.

Jon blushes violently.

“Nothing! I was just confused!”

Damian laughs.

“Yeah, alright, Superboy.” He walks forward, wrapping his arms around the other’s neck “Now do it.”

“Bossy.”

“You like it.”

“And cocky.” Jon says, wrapping his arms tightly around Damian’s waist before taking off, pulling them both up to the air.

Damian smiles, looking down at the now small city under them.

“Aren’t you ever afraid of falling?” Jon asks as he stops on the highest spot possible before the air got too thin for Damian “My mom said she was always scared to death when my dad would do this.”

Damian stares into his eyes, bright blue sapphires that seemed even more alive from up close.

“I know you won’t let me fall, beloved.” Jon swallows, reactionless for a moment. Damian allowed himself the smallest of smiles “God, I love you so much.” He cups the other’s cheeks “But I’m getting cold, so I think it’s time we go down.”

Jon chuckles.

“Can I kiss you first?”

“You can kiss me whenever.” Damian smiles, pressing their lips together “Just not in front of my team. Or my family. Or yours. Or-”

“Okay , I get it!” Jon stops him, giggling, stealing another kiss “Just when we’re alone.”

“Yeah.”

“But you’re gonna have to patrol with me more often then. Since we don’t go to school together anymore.” Jon argues.

“I thought that was a given.” Damian replies “As long as you keep doing the sky thing.”

“I’ll do it as many times as you want.” Jon nuzzles into Damian’s neck.

“Jon?”

“Yes?”

“I’m still cold.”

 ...

 Jon is cuddled up to Damian on the couch while the fireplace crackles and Alfred the cat is curled up at his feet. He is reading a book about Gotham’s economic history while Jon scrolls through his instagram feed, eventually laughing softly at some joke that pops up on the screen. Damian mindlessly plays with his hair.

“Dames?” Jon calls.

“Hm?” Damian responds, not taking his face out of his book.

“What are we?”

“What do you mean, beloved?” Damian puts his book down, gently brushing Jon’s hair back.

“What are we?” Jon sits up “We’re not friends. But we...” His words die inside his throat.

“Boyfriends?” Damian asks, raising an eyebrow. Jon’s eyes widen.

“We are?”

“I... isn’t it obvious?” Damian looks at him with concern “We go out together, we hold hands, we kiss, we cuddle... I told you I love you multiple times. Why the question? Don’t you... want to be my boyfriend?”

“No I do, it’s just...” Jon scratches the back of his neck “We never... said anything, I guess. I was afraid you didn’t want to be my boyfriend.”

Damian shoots him an exasperated look.

“I swear Jonathan, you are so confusing sometimes.” Jon rolls his eyes, looking down “But fine. I don’t have a ring on me so I hope a kiss will be a good enough substitute.”

“What are you...”

Damian gets down from the couch, kneeling in front of Jon.

“Jonathan Lane Kent,” Damian says, holding the other’s hand “Will be my boyfriend?” He gave his ring finger a feather light kiss.

Jon blushes intensely.

“Yes.”

Damian smiles, sitting back up on the couch and picking up his book again.

“No, put the book down.” Jon pouts climbing on Damians lap “I need kisses from my boyfriend.”

Damian rolls his eyes.

“You are so childish sometimes, beloved.” He sets his hands on Jon’s waist, rubbing his thumb in gentle circles. He kisses Jon regardless of his complaining, and when he pulls back, he gazes into the other’s blue eyes “How could you think that I didn’t want to be your boyfriend, you idiot?”

“I don’t know I guess... it’s just that... it’s a big deal. Right?”

Damian makes a face.

“I never thought it was.”

“I guess we just have very different views of love.” Jon whispers. Damian nods, biting his lips.

“I’ll...” He sighs “I’m sorry. I’ll try to... see things your way too.” Damian grabs Jon’s hand, staring at their intertwined fingers for a second “But you have to understand that I might let you down at times. I wasn’t raised to be a romantic. I don’t know what is normal and what isn’t in a relationship. I don’t understand the rites of passage properly. I didn’t know that the title boyfriend required a formal request. I might not know many other obvious things. I’ll try, I swear. I’ll try to learn and I’ll try to... be a good boyfriend.”

“You already are a good boyfriend, D.” Jon says softly “I’m not upset at you, I promise. I just really needed the clearance, that’s all.” He cups Damian’s cheek gently, giving his hand a light squeeze “And I’ll try to be patient. I won’t take silly things to heart and I promise to tell you when something bothers me.” He kisses the tip of Damian’s nose “And you promise to do the same?”

“Of course.” Damian smiles.

“Good. Now, I’m not done with kissing my boyfriend.” He sings out the last word, pulling giggles from Damian.

“So childish.” Damian mumbles against the other’s lips.

 ...

 Damian throws the ball as far as he can again.

“Go fetch!” He exclaims, watching as Titus clumsily runs after it, giggling as he jumps up to catch it mid-air “Good boy.” He scratches his chin when the dog brings the ball back to him.

Jon openly stares at them, grinning like a fool at the fact that he could call that boy his, forgetting that they were surrounded by their combined families for a barbecue at the Waynes’ huge garden.

“You really are as lovestruck as they come, huh?” Dick smiles, settling next to him.

“Oh, um...” Jon blushes, embarrassed.

“Don’t be embarrassed, it’s adorable.” He places a hand on the teen’s shoulder, shaking him slightly “I’m not really the overprotective type. That’s Bruce.”

“Yeah, I figured that out pretty quickly.” Jon scratches the back of his head, remembering the expression on the billionaire’s face when he heard the news of their relationship.

Dick laughs at the boy’s shy reaction.

“Don’t worry too much about him. He’s more talk than action when it comes to that.” Dick reassures him.

“Still...” Jon looks over at Bruce, who’s standing next to Clark as he handles the grill, shuddering, before redirecting his gaze to Damian, biting his lips nervously “Y’know, sometimes I struggle a lot to understand him.” He admits, and feels Dick straightening his posture by his side “Don’t get me wrong, I love him, I really do, but... he somehow over explains everything and still leaves doubts in my mind. I feel like I’m always looking at an out of focus picture, and no matter how much I try, I can’t get the image clear in my eyes.” He chews on his fingernail for a second “Does that make sense?”

“Yeah, a little.” Dick crosses his arms “I gotta say, sometimes I felt like that with him too. He’s too... reserved. Dangerously so. I had to constantly push him for little bits of information that may be crucial to my understanding of who he is as a person.” He tilts his head from side to side, considering “But in time, it got easier. Dami is... he’s not much of a talker, I guess. It’s easier to perceive him if you look at him, instead of just listening. After all, we are talking about a picture, right?” He smiles, charming and understanding.

“I guess so.” He ponders “Wait...” Jon frowns at Dick “He lets you call him that?”

“Call him what?”

“Dami.”

“Yes?” Dick raises an eyebrow “Why?”

“That one night... the fight...” Jon shakes his head lightly “He told me not to call him that when I don’t mean it.”

“Oh.” Dick smiles “Of course.” He chuckles a little.

“I... was it a bad thing?”

“No, no,” Dick smiles softly at him “It’s just that... when you pronounce it like I do, more like ‘duh-mee’ than actually ‘dami’, you’re kinda saying my blood in arabic.” Jon seems confused and scared “I heard once that in arabic, people say things like, ‘my heart’, ‘my lungs’ and stuff to their loved ones. I tried it with Damian once and...” He shrugs “So that’s probably what he meant for you not meaning it. I’m sure that he’ll be over the moon if you call him that now.”

Jon blinks at him.

“So that’s why he gets so mad at being called that?”

“I mean, if someone you’re not close with called you sweetheart, wouldn’t it feel super invasive too?” Dick shrugs.

“Yeah.” Jon chews on his bottom lip again, looking back at Damian “Dami.” He whispers under his breath, trying to say it like Dick did “Dami. Dami.”

“Yeah, like that, but maybe say that to him instead of me.” Dick taps his back as he leaves, and Jon is suddenly startled by the man, having completely forgotten that he was standing next to him.

“Dami.” He says, louder this time, running for the other teen “Dami. Dami!”

“Jon?” Damian frows, startled as his boyfriend nearly tackles him to the ground with a hug and a kiss.

“Dami. I mean it. I’ve always meant it, you dumb bird. Even when I didn’t know what it meant.”

“You’re an idiot Jonathan.” Damian smiles, cupping his cheeks “Such a huge fucking idiot.”

“Your idiot.” Jon corrects him.

“Yeah, whatever.” Damian blinks some tears away, laughing as he presses their foreheads together “God, I missed hearing you say that. I was wondering when you’d say it again.”

“I would’ve said it sooner if you had explained what it meant and why you said what you said back in the cave.” Jon says.

“Whatever.” Damian rolls his eyes “Say it again.”

“Dami.” Jon presses their lips together.

“Again.”

“Dami.” He kisses him again “Dami. Dami, Dami, Dami.”

“I love you, Jon.” He lets a tear slide down his cheek.

“I love you too, Dami.”

 ...

 “Hello!” Bruce greets the salesman with a wide smile, best dumb, kind, billionaire like grin that he can muster.

“Good afternoon, mister Wayne.” He replies politely “How may I help you?”

“We’re here to look at some promise rings?” He joins his hands “They’re for my son.” He looks over to Damian, who is sporting his typical frown paired with over-analytic eyes. Dick walks right behind him, smiling enough for both of them.

“Oh, surely. If you’d follow me, please.” He walks them to a table they can sit down at, and pulls out a bunch of rings “These are the most popular ones at the store. What do you think your girlfriend would like?”

“Boyfriend, actually.” Damian shoots back, examining the rings with a frown “And none of these will do. I don’t believe either of us would enjoy wearing a...” He twirls one of the rings between his fingers “Silver butterfly or a...” He frowns at a second one “Is that supposed to be a rose?”

“I think it’s a carnation.” Dick says.

“I-It’s a rose.” The man interrupts, smiling awkwardly “We should have more discreet options, if you give me a second.”

Damian crosses his arms and leans back on his chair.

“Little D, you should try to lighten up a little.” Dick ruffles his hair.

Damian glares at him. It would make a weaker man nervous, but Dick simply chuckles.

“It has to be perfect, Richard.” Damian answers, looking forward “I already messed up once by not doing this sooner. This time I can’t let him down. Besides,” He turns around, coming closer to his brother and whispering “He’s enough of a lovable idiot that he might wear it out on patrols so... it can’t be recognizable.”

Dick laughs at his concern.

“And what makes you think that the world will be deeply interested in Jon Lane Kent from Metropolis, to the point of checking his rings?”

“Other than the fact that his mom has a Pulitzer?” Damian grins wickedly “What do you think?”

“You’re going...?” Dick’s eyes widen “Oh my God, you’re going public with your relationship?” He smiles “Dami, that’s great!”

“Shhh. Keep your voice down. And yes, that’s great, if he agrees to it.” Damian settles back “We haven’t discussed it yet. I was hoping that the ring would help him with that decision. So it has to be perfect.”

“It will be, son.” Bruce says, smiling “We’ll find something perfect either here or somewhere else. You know that money is not a problem.”

“Yes, which just makes this even more stressful.” He shoves his face in his hands “If we were on a budget, it would already make whatever I found special. But no, you had to be a billionaire. That’s just my luck.”

“Well I’m so sorry that I have enough money to buy you a luxury car to give Jon if you want me to.” Bruce replies, amused.

“Can we do that?”

“No.”

“Can I have a luxury car?” Dick asks.

“I thought you didn’t want my money.” Bruce smirks.

Dick shrugs.

“I don’t want your money, but I think that I’m ready to start accepting gifts again.” He smiles, and the trio can’t help but laugh.

“I brought you some more discreet options.” The salesman smiles.

Damian twists his nose and scowls at every single one of the rings.

“I might as well give him the ring Timothy found in a cereal box.” He frowns, crossing his arms. The man is sweating, staining his dress shirt.

“Damian, don’t be rude.” Dick sighs, rubbing his forehead.

“I-I... I could bring you the engagement rings we have.” He swallows “But they are a bit more expensive.”

“Money is not a problem.” Bruce says, finding it difficult to keep up his happy and silly facade already.

The man comes back with boxes full of rings, having trouble to properly balance all that he’s brought down. Damian set his eyes on a pair of white gold rings.

“Let me see those, please.” He stretches out his hand in the direction of the rings.

Damian analyzes them for a second.

“If I need them in different sizes?”

“That can be arranged.”

“Can you engrave our initials inside?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then I want this one.” He says.

Dick breathes out in relief.

“Oh, thank God. Fucking finally.”

 ...

 “Beloved,” Damian says, sitting up on the couch “I need to talk to you about something.”

“What is it Dami?” Jon puts down his book, looking at him with worry.

“You know how... you always talk about going to a restaurant or something, for a change, but father’s concern for the cruel public eye of Gotham stopped us?”

“Yeah?”

“Well, I... I’ve been thinking.” He puts a hand in his pocket “I would quite like to go out with you. Take you out of the manor for once, when you come over to Gotham.” He swallows “But if we’re doing that, then it means our relationship will most likely be on every Gotham’s newspaper, and every single gossip site that bothers with the romantic endeavours of d-listers.” He looks up at Jon expectantly “Would you be okay with that?”

“Yes.” Jon says, immediately “Yes, yes a million times yes.” Jon hugs Damian.

“Alright, alright.” Damian smiles, pulling himself free “That’s good. Because our six months aniversary is coming up and I have a place where I’d love to take you, if you let me.” Jon is already nodding “But before anything else, I need you to close your eyes.”

“What?” Jon frowns “Why?”

“Close your eyes.” Damian says.

“If this is going to be like, a prank, Damian, I-”

“It’s not a prank. Just close your goddamn eyes, Jonathan.” Damian sighs.

“Okay.” Jon does as he’s told.

“Now give me your hand.”

“It’s sounding a little too much like a prank.”

“Give me your fucking hand.” Damian presses the bridge of his nose.

“Alright, alright!” Jon smiles, placing his hand on Damian’s palm.

Damian gently slides a ring into his finger.

“Oh my God.” Jon whispers, eyes still closed “Is that-”

“Yeah. You can look at it now.” Damian says, blushing “It’s white gold. If you don’t like it, I can always buy you a new one.”

“Damian this is perfect.” Jon covers his mouth with a hand while he admires his new promise ring.

“I’m glad you liked it.”

“Give me yours. Let me put it on you.” Jon demands, stretching out his hands. Damian hands him out his ring and lets him slide it into his finger, smiling “Perfect.” He whispers, bringing his hands to his lips and kissing it delicately.

Jon giggles, pulling Damian closer to his chest, getting them both to lay down as he admired their hands.

“Dami...” Jon starts, pulling him closer with one of his arms “You make me so happy.”

“You make me happy too.” He whispers back, tracing little patterns on the exposed skin on his lover’s arm “I can’t even fathom how painful and dull my life would be if I had to live without you.”

“You have to stop outdoing me with your declarations.” Jon smiles, wrapping both of his arms around Damian’s body now, nuzzling into his hair “It makes me sound stupid.”

Damian giggles.

“Well, you are a little bit stupid.”

“And you are a little bit rude.” Jon laughs too.

“Oh yeah?” Damian laughs, turning around to face him.

“Yes, very rude.” Jon pouts “So rude to me.”

“Let me make it up then.” Damian whispers, admiring the other’s face as he pushed his raven black hair out of the way.

“How are you going to do that?” Jon asks.

Damian pushes forward and gently kisses his lover.

“Yeah, that works for me.” Jon smiles.

Damian blushes and hides his face into his chest. The blue eyed teen lets him, pulling him closer and resting his chin on his head.

“I love you.” He says “I love you so much, Damian.”

“I love you too, Jon.” Damian smiles “And I’m glad you liked the ring, because if I ever catch you without it, you’re done for.” He looks up at him “I’m sure Elise is still dying to put her hands on you, and I need to make sure my territory is marked.”

“I’m not a tree and you’re not a dog.” Jon teases.

“But you’re mine.” Damian jabs a finger into his chest “And now everyone will know. Especially her. Hear me?”

“I hear you.” Jon smiles. Damian settles back down.

“Good.” He mumbles “Because who does she think she is? Is she Robin? No. Does she smell as good as me? No. Did she buy you a white gold ring? No. Is she-”

“Babe. I got it.” Jon stops him “And you don’t have to worry about her. She’s not even my type.”

“And... what is your type?” Damian frowns at him.

“Hmm...” Jon pretends to think “Dark haired, green eyed boys who smell good, punch criminals and buy me white gold promise rings.”

Damian smiles.

“Good to know, Superboy.” He buries his face in his chest again “Good to know.”

Hey! I hope you liked this! Please consider rebblogging it if you did, it helps with spreading my works and makes me super happy! Also, I gotta thank @3ambird for telling me about Dami’s name thing, hahaha! Go check out their fics, they are an amazing writer.

[ryttu3k]

Night Road quote text dump, because I've been deluging a friend with quotes and want a place to keep them all.

We're a bit like that, yeah:

They direct you to a hulking Malkavian named Severian, and the sullen giant directs you in turn to Gibberish Mike.

Fortunately, it turns out that "Gibberish" Mike is just Australian.

Practical concerns:

"That's it!" Elena says, leaning over your shoulder. "That's his yacht. Oh, and this is all about him. Very useful." She snaps a picture of the email with her phone, then the two of you get out of there before the technician returns. You head down the elevator and then back to Elena's Datsun.

You're so pleased by how well that went that that it takes you a few minutes to remember you're in Arizona.

"His yacht?" you finally ask.

Fun with bungalow ownership:

After a day of fitful dreams, you throw on your leather jacket and engineer boots and get ready for another night. You step outside to check your Integra. A neighbor parks next door in her Ford Super Duty and gives you a friendly little wave. You've been practicing this. You're ready.

"Howdy, neighbor."

"Howdy!" she responds before heading inside.

Fucking nailed it. You're one of them.

This is legitimately how I got the Messy Critical achievement:

You grab a hoe.

You rip through the underbrush with savage efficiency, staying a few steps ahead of the pushcart as Julian scans. You work in a trance, chopping and hammering. Only when you hear Julian shouting do you realize that you're holding a busted length of wood.

The head of your hoe is buried in the beautiful round black door of Prince Lettow's Rolls-Royce.

Raúlblocked:

You head to Raúl's place, but he's not there. You find a note hidden above the door that reads, "Problems in Phoenix. (Jesus Christ has returned? Stole a car?) Contact me right away for major jobs and I'll come back. Already missing you." And there's a ProtonMail address with some of the security contact codes you agreed upon earlier.

But it looks like Raúl will be occupied dealing with the Lord and His automotive crimes, and he won't be able to wander around Tucson with you.

Pattermuster doesn't get paid enough:

"Hello? What? Well, the blood can't be 'everywhere.' Surely that's an exagger—okay—okay, fine. Okay. Okay, I'll get—okay. Five minutes. What? No, Sissy Spacek. No, Sissy—you're thinking of Rosemary's Baby. No, Carrie had the prom scene. With all the pig's—yes, it was Sissy Spacek, I'm sure. That much blood? Jesus. Okay, hold—five—okay, five minutes."

Valid question:

Do they teach ax fighting at Quantico?

Julian Meyer:

"Man, it's been a while," Julian says, leaning against your door frame. "I remember the nights we spent keeping that elder asleep with offerings of blood, the days curled up together in the desert. Wasn't it romantic?"

"That never happened, Julian. You made up our relationship and tried to sell it as a novel until the old Prince of Tucson threatened to execute you." '

"Vampire romance was big at the time," Julian says with a shrug. "And I changed our names. I still don't know why no one wanted to buy it."

Dammit I thought I was done with uni:

"Awful," Dr. Caul says with a little shudder. "But now your real studies can begin."

Your real studies consist of a syllabus (thirty pages) and a trunk full of books (35,000 pages).

"Are you disappointed, Rook?" she says with a little laugh. "Were you expecting something more mystical? A bolt of cosmic enlightenment? A conversation with your Holy Guardian Angel, who would reveal the answers you seek?" She bangs the trunk as technicians get ready to load it into your car. "Get reading."

An enthusiastic boss:

You reunite with Pattermuster down in the morgue, where he's pumping his fists as a thin-blood on a gaming laptop watches with a worried expression because she can't tell if he's incredibly happy or insanely mad.

"Rook!" Pattermuster shouts, his eyes full of Blood, "you did it! You brilliant child, you did it! We're safe. Oh, thank God, we're safe." He pulls you into an embrace, then punches a brick wall because he's so happy, showering all three of you in dust.

I thought that was Finland?:

You catch all sorts of whispered gossip as you cross the rooftop garden.

"Camp Scheffler?"

"Gone. That Outlander courier had something to do with it."

"I heard the Russians helped the SI burn it down."

"That's ridiculous. There's no such thing as Russians."

Pot, kettle:

"Julian," the Eagle Prince says, "you will locate Reremouse with the equipment Vane brought. Once we find him, we will strike shortly before dawn. I have prepared a stake sufficient to pierce even his old hide."

"That easy, huh?" Julian says.

"No, but—"

"Your plan is ridiculous, convoluted, and dangerous," Julian says.

"And you have a better one?"

"Absolutely," Julian says. "We use Stonehenge to teleport him to Mesopotamia."

The must-have appliance:

He's a black outline in the glow of a single yellow bulb... and then the bats descend.

And then the bats get torn to pieces, because Pattermuster pulls his two katanas out of nothing and turns into an undead Cuisinart for a few seconds.

But aesthetic:

Leave it to a vampire to bring a sword to a gunfight.

It is pretty cool though:

"Oh my God," Julian says. "You're going to use the car engine to fling Prometheus into Reremouse's heart."

"Dammit, Julian, I am not doing this because it's fun. I am scrambling for every advantage I can because we only have one chance to stop Reremouse, and if we fail, the Second Inquisition will descend on us like wolves on a wounded deer."

"It's still cool," Julian mutters.

A e s t h e t i c:

The Camarilla looks unkindly on vampires who dress like Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, but what's the point of being dead if you can't look the part?

#JustToreadorThings:

You sleep badly and awaken to an aching and acute Hunger that crowds out other thoughts. But when you approach the Rolls-Royce, you find Lettow and Julian seated on a blanket, evidently in fine spirits. They're holding stainless steel mugs as they watch the last purple streaks fade from the western sky. There's something perfect about the composition before you: the two Kindred in their working clothes with their backs to you, the blue-black clouds, the faraway mesas framing the scene.

"I fear we've lost the Aesthete," Lettow muses. "Luka? Luka!"

It's just good sense:

A lot of keypads use 0911 as an emergency override for police and fire. That doesn't work, but a common default password causes the elevator doors to slide right open.

Change your defaults, people.

They draw the line at 31%:

Not all problems can be solved by putting a brick through a window, but at least 30 percent can.

Descriptive:

That's when your Nissan makes a sound like a bunch of typewriter keys dropped in a blender, and the whole truck lurches to a halt.

Munch munch:

"There are tags attached to all the payroll numbers," you say. "FNMA. PFC. What are they?"

"FNMA?" Antonio says. "That's Fannie Mae. The loan commission. Privatized in 1968. PFC…"

"Pavlodar Fried Chicken," Janet says. "Damn Commies."

Courier what did you do:

When you try to start your Mercedes, it vomits black smoke. That's not good. You kill the engine.

"Pop the hood," Julian says. "I'll get it up and running."

He checks the motor. There's a long pause.

"Did you melt a bunch of cheese in here or something, Vane?"

“I remember crawling out of a Nieuport 20 outside Gibraltar," Prince Lettow says. "The engine looked like that. Of course, ours had been on fire."

"Engine looks like Vane fed a bunch of sardine cans into a paper shredder," Julian says.

Almost!:

So Lettow is cute. I'm going to talk to him and see if he might be interested in a handsome young courier who almost has his own car.

Scientist life:

A beaker of cold coffee on her desk has a pencil in it; she flicks the pencil away and drains the entire beaker, then looks you in the eyes.

Domesticity:

"Wow, Vane," the Banu Haqim says, "did you finally settle down. Where's the wife and kids? Why don't you get me a beer, and we can talk about football and quote some Bible verses at each other?"

I really want to know where the fake werewolf came in:

"...so the whole fucking Cadillac is on fire, and I'm kicking and kicking, trying to get the window to break!" Dove says.

"Right, right, because —" You're trying to follow this story, and it isn't easy.

"Because I'm still handcuffed to the guy who was pretending to be a werewolf, right. And I finally kick through the window, rip half the dead fake werewolf's arm off to get free — I'm out of my fucking mind now, with all the fire — and I finally crawl out of the car."

"And get clear before it — do they blow up?"

"Escalades? I dunno, probably not," Dove says. "But anyway, I'm finally clear, so I run across the parking lot, laughing because I'm just thrilled not to have met final death chained up to that guy. And I barely have time to look up before Lettow comes screaming around the corner in a Ford Bronco with the lights off and runs me over. I was in the wrong Cadillac the whole time."

"No!"

"Two black Cadillac Escalades in the parking lot of the Marriott," Dove says. "How was I supposed to know which one — anyway, that's why I don't get to drive anymore. That's why Lettow wants assholes like you driving."

"Driving what?" you ask. "Because I need a car."

Dove shakes her ugly head. "I'll get you something. Give me a few hours to work on it, and I'll send someone to find you."

Cars are everything:

You still don't know how Julian plans to go from "divert a few funds and data streams from the Camarilla" to "transform the global information panopticon in a way that ends the Masquerade but keeps vampires safe," but he has a nicer car than last time, so he must be doing something right.

Guys please be nice to Raul:

"There appears to be a vampire hunter outside," he says, "investigating your electric vehicle."

"Send your bird to peck his eyes out," Julian says. "I'm not going outside until I find my sneakers."

Cheese?:

Over the next few minutes, you cough up a glorious wad of bullshit involving MKUltra, the Philadelphia Experiment, Star Wars (the movie), Star Wars (the Reagan-era government program), Jackson Pollack's CIA connections, the history of federal cheese, and the secret mastermind behind the seventies gas crunch.

In fairness it's a pretty rare sound:

You're way up in Limberlost, near the mall and the Walmart, when Riga settles on the roof of a Safeway. You reverse into the parking lot in case you need to get out fast and scan the cars at the pumps. It looks quiet. Then you hear a faint ringing.

The sound is musical, hypnotic. It reminds you of your childhood, and for a long time you just sit there in the driver's seat, remembering what it was like to be alive. But what is that sound? What memory from…?

Oh, right.

The pay phone next to the ice merchandiser is ringing.

It's a skill!:

Not every member of Clan Toreador joins their august ranks because of their great beauty or artistic genius. Some people end up vampires because of their extensive knowledge of Adobe After Effects.

Big Pirates of the Caribbean energy:

"I'd kind of like to give Lettow here a horse and a sword and let him tear through an entire police barracks," Julian says. "Tell me that wouldn't be fun."

"One thing I learned from Napoleon," Lettow says, "is that the most powerful cannon is useless if you cannot see your target. We know the location of one small encampment. That isn't enough to start shooting."

"You knew Napoleon?" Julian asks.

"Napoleon was my horse," Lettow says.

[davetheshady]

how time travel works in the MCU

endgame spoilers!

SO i’ve been seeing a lot of people expressing confusion about wtf was going on in endgame, and since this is, like, my jam, allow me to illustrate the MCU’s apparent theory of time travel. (this isn’t officially confirmed or anything (ETA: it kind of is!) – just me elaborating on what other fans have said as well, which appears to be internally consistent in the movie.)

Avengers: Endgame uses a different mechanism than most time travel media (which Rhodey and Scott helpfully list for us, lol): it is impossible to change the past of your personal timeline in the MCU. 

(fig. 1: a blurry and not-to-scale timeline for the MCU with data points for 1970, 2012, 2013, 2014, and Endgame)

their “time travel” is more like “time and dimension travel”: as soon as they use the quantum realm to go to an earlier date, it splits off* an identical parallel universe (or leg of the trousers of time). we simultaneously have canon and officially-licensed canon-divergence AUs. time travelers can never affect their own pasts; they can only change things in an AU for another version of themselves.

* or maybe this universe which was completely identical up to the point where they are visiting time travelers always existed and they just arrived, who knows ~wibbley wobbley~

(fig. 2: equally blurry and not-to-scale timelines plural: the MCU timeline and four AU timelines, splitting off from 1970, 2012, 2013, and 2014.)

note: i’m just guessing about the number of relevant AU timelines, because I’ve only seen the movie once. the avengers’ initial plan has teams going to NYC in 2012 during The Avengers, to Asgard in 2013 during Thor 2: Electric Boogaloo, and to the planets Morag and Vormir (sp?) in 2014 during Guardians of the Galaxy. Team 2012 messes up and tries again by going to New Jersey in 1970.

hence the Ancient One’s concern about Bruce taking the time stone: up to that point, things were on track to proceed exactly like the MCU timeline. now that’s off the table. if bruce doesn’t return the time stone, the events of doctor strange can’t happen and dormammu will destroy this 2012!AU timeline. the MCU timeline will be unaffected, but it still sucks for everyone in the 2012!AU. (i don’t think it’s necessary in each AU for events to go EXACTLY like the MCU timeline, but considering the MCU timeline consists of our heroes defeating challenges and saving the world/galaxy by the skin of their teeth, not changing too much is a good idea.)

however! there are definite changes keeping these AUs separate from the MCU timeline. 2012!AU Steve has been told by a suspicious double that Bucky is alive, and will probably get Hail HYDRA’d by Strike. it’s entirely possible that events in 2013!Asgard will happen completely differently due to Frigga’s knowledge of shit going down. And 2014!AU Thanos hops on over to the MCU timeline and attacks, ultimately resulting in the 2014!AU losing him, his followers, and Gamora.

essentially, we now know there are multiple copies of all the characters, but not clones or evil-bearded-mirror counterparts, because they share the same experiences... up to a certain point. 2014!AU Gamora is in the MCU timeline now, but she doesn’t have any of MCU Gamora’s experiences from the time of GotG to her death in Infinity War. However, she and MCU Nebula would still share their horrible childhood. If 2012!AU Loki pops up in the MCU timeline, he and MCU Thor would have had the same interactions all the way through The Avengers. (I personally find this delightful, because it’s a time travel crossover between canon-divergence AUs complete with character doubles and that’s like... all of my favorite things together.)

as for MCU Steve: he was hanging out in one of the AUs with Peggy (with whom he would have shared exactly the same version of the past in the 40s) for a whole bunch of decades. the movie vaguely implies that this really did happen in the MCU timeline by having him appear on a park bench instead of using their quantum realm tech, but this would require:

steve ‘civil war’ rogers just chilling for decades as Bucky runs around as the Winter Soldier and HYDRA infiltrates SHIELD, not to mention refraining from weighing in on countless other issues he cares deeply about

peggy ‘fight me’ carter, AN INTELLIGENCE OPERATIVE, not noticing her husband’s extreme lack of chill re 1. and cottoning on

us to forget literally the whole rest of the movie

so this, frankly, is nonsense. also, the obvious place to meet up with peggy was in his trip to 1970, but unless someone on her street had an old-ass car, they’re definitely dancing together in the 40s/50s; this means he didn’t just go back and stay, but went back to the 1970 AU, dropped off the tesseract and stole more of hank pym’s research, and then made yet another trip to the 40s/50s. 

using this AU theory, MCU Steve was only present in the MCU timeline as a Capsicle between the 40s and the 2010s and you don’t have to worry about the canonicity of Agents of Carter. Endgame-era MCU Steve went to a 1940s AU, where he and Peggy almost certainly made beautiful Nazi punching as they cleared HYDRA out of SHIELD. stuff like that would make events unspool differently than Steve was familiar with from the MCU timeline, making his knowledge of his future less and less relevant, so he wouldn’t have too much of an advantage. (as a side note, I think there’s a practical aspect to him hanging around: it means he has plenty of time to observe the consequences of the MCU Avengers interfering and make sure there’s no, like, universal catastrophes. hell yeah longitudinal studies of scientific data.) 

we already know from 2014!AU Thanos’ appearance in the MCU timeline that you don’t need to use the MCU portal to hop between timelines [ETA: whoops, i misremembered that part.] Steve knew where he was returning to, so between his MCU tech and everything he potentially could have stolen from hank pym over the years (or, you know, everything he was given by 1940!AU hank and janet van dyne, whom he could have just worked with) he had the ability to stroll back to the MCU timeline for the very end of endgame in a sufficiently dramatic fashion to troll everyone. or maybe he DID use that portal, but was the size of an ant just to be a dick. steve rogers: man out of time.

[ETA: as per this post: bruce DID detect him in the portal, so he definitely quantum leaped back instead of taking the slow path.] 

[ETA: as per the Russos themselves: “If Cap were to go back into the past and live there, he would create a branched reality. The question then becomes, how is he back in this reality to give the shield away?” source )

anyway, unlike other kinds of time travel, AU theory lacks issues like erasing your own personal history or stepping on bugs and causing fascism. but i think it DOES have some serious consequences:

- if you visit/create an AU, the people from the AU can now come and dick around in YOUR timeline (c.f. 2014!AU Thanos and the entire end of the movie). they got rid of 2014!AU Thanos, but that leaves at least three other Thanoi who they HAVEN’T defeated, plus multiple versions of every other baddie they’ve ever fought. 

- having so many similar-but-not-identical timelines clustered together might have bad long-term consequences on reality, like events bleeding through

- HOW are these AUs created and/or maintained? if there’s a finite amount of energy for them, connecting to too many might cause some to collapse

- headaches

it’s possible we will see some negative consequences in future MCU movies, if only to eliminate “time travel through the quantum realm” as a solution to every single one of their problems.  

(@autumn-drifts​ also pointed out that the MCU Avengers are doing all their time travel shenanigans after the MCU infinity stones have been destroyed, so potentially the time stone (and maybe others) play a role in PREVENTING time travel, which is why we haven’t seen it before.)

(ETA: the energy from the infinity stones Thanos destroyed had to go SOMEWHERE; maybe that’s what creates the AUs?)

speaking of the time stone: this maaaaaay have a completely different set of rules. it’s possible that using it also spawns a whole bunch of AUs, which is why the Ancient One chewed out Dr Strange about playing with it. (do you want 20 different AUs whose only difference is Dr Strange’s fucked-up apple in the magic library? because this is how you get 20 different AUs whose only difference is Dr Strange’s fucked-up apple in the magic library.)

but it’s also possible the time stone is the only thing that have an effect on your personal timeline. i don’t think we ever see it used to jump directly from one point of time to another, so who knows if it CAN. but it can definitely rewind (MCU Thanos undoing Wanda’s decision to kill Vision and stealing the mind stone in Infinity War) and/or create time loops (the end of Doctor Strange).

(fig. 3: blurry timeline of the MCU showing a whole bunch of loops in Doctor Strange from his trap, labelled “Dormammu, I’ve come to bargain”, and a single loop in Infinity War labelled “Wanda kills Vision” and “Thanos unkills Vision”)

i’ve drawn them as loops because those events definitely happen, so they’re part of a timeline that everyone(?) experiences, but they all circle back to one particular point from whence only one line of events continues. you don’t have a million different versions of Dr Strange getting creatively killed by Dormammu, you have one Dr Strange getting creatively killed by Dormammu a million times; both he and Dormammu remember all of them.

one final observation: we still haven’t seen proper time travel forward through time. we know from Infinity War that the time stone can let you look at all the potential futures and use that knowledge to aim in your chosen direction, but it can’t show you “the” future. (and as to whether that’s looking at events playing forward then rewinding back to the save point, or just scoping out all the relevant AUs, I have no idea.) Scott technically skips five years forward from the snappening to Endgame, but he was pulled there by a rat activating the tech during Endgame, as opposed to him selecting a point five years in the future and choosing to go there. (we also don’t know when Steve left his 1940!AU timeline, but he was returning to the point in the MCU immediately after he left, not going farther forward than he had already been.) so it will be interesting to see how/if time travel into THE FUTURE! happens and what delightful problems it can cause.

in conclusion:

[ty-talks-comics]

Best of Marvel: Week of August 21st, 2019

Best of this Week: Tony Stark: Iron Man #15 (Legacy #615) - Dan Slott, Jim Zub, Juanan Ramirez, Francesco Manna, Edgar Delgado and Joe Caramagna

Tony Stark may not be the man he says he is anymore.

Since the landmark 600th issue of Iron Man, Tony Stark hasn’t been entirely sure that he is actually himself and not just a strange collection of nanobots and machines strung together in the form of the billionaire tech wizard. After the horrible incident surrounding eScape, Tony Stark’s virtual reality world, leads to the deaths of a few people and millions or more in property damage, Tony has to take the stand and address what exactly happened. 

He’s grilled pretty thoroughly on what an AI is and how much was his responsibility vs. how much can be blamed on Controller, the supervillain who hacked into the supposedly secure network and caused all of this damage. Overseeing the hearing is a surprising character from another mechanical superheroes past. Senator Miles Brickman, a character that originally appeared as something of an anti-machine/anti-AI character in the pages of Machine Man’s original series, it livid and irate at Tony Stark. Showing a bit of prejudice in his questioning, he asks has Tony Stark ever made any changes to his body using technology, then follows by asking “Can you prove that you’re not some form of artificial intelligence?”

Tony initially tries to dance around the question, but upon being reminded that he’s under oath, reveals that it is actually quite possible as his body was put back together cell by cell while he was in his coma. This shocks everyone, from Rhodey to Bethany Cabe, his head of security at Stark Unlimited, and even his brother Arno Stark who is watching the hearing from his office at Baintronics, the rival technology company.

AI Tony calls for a recess after a few snarky lines as we cut to Vision and Wonder Man arriving at Avengers mansion, thinking they’ve been called to assist in Tony’s hearing. Immediately some red flags might want to be set off with the characters involved, especially when Jarvis lets them in and soon after betrays them with a large piece of metal embedded in the back of his head with a familiar design. 

Things start to heat up as Brickman produces the Tony Stark AI that was used by Riri Williams while Tony was in a coma and asks does this fully functioning, autonomous copy have legal rights and responsibilities. What makes me so uncomfortable about this scene is that it plays on the fear of the unknown.

Brickman has tried to have Machine Man destroyed in the past and even knowing that Tony Stark has saved the world in the past, he’s not willing to consider that he still has right once it’s admitted that he may not be fully human anymore. In a way it mirrors some of our own discussions as it pertains to AI and whether or not we’ll allow them autonomy once they become advanced enough for it. There’s a whole discussion for sex robots that no one is qute ready for just yet.

The Wasp, Janet van Dyne, flies through a robot protest on her way to meet Tony for lunch and catches him talking to Tony AI. Tony AI agrees to be loaded into the Iron Man suit and they all fly off when suddenly they’re met with a gross amalgamation of Vision and Wonder Man fused together. Ramirez’s art makes him look so horrifying with only half of Wonder Man’s luxurious hair and cracking skin that’s as red as Vision’s. He rushes at Tony in a rage and promises to rip the human and AI halves of him apart, displaying an anger that neither character has ever presented. 

In the middle of their fight, Jarvis appears and zaps Janet, who was knocked out of the fight during the initial rush. He places her in his pocket and leaves thereafter. Tony and WonderVision continue their fight, destroying the robot protestors in the process. Tony realizes that they only way to stop them is to use a localized EMP which will also kill Tony AI. The technological Tony isn’t fazed and just tells Tony to kiss Jan a bunch and feel vaguely bad about it later.

Unfortunately, this leaves Tony in the middle of the carnage. He’s surrounded by broken robots, likely to take the blame for all of it and realizes that Jocasta was right, he only sees everything as data. He breathes a small sigh that he’s still alive and that WonderVision didn’t take Janet… until he can’t find her. We then cut to the surprising return of The Avengers greatest enemy as his new gambit to destroy Tony Stark and spark a new machine age is in full effect.

What I liked most about this issue is that Tony’s mistakes really catch up to him in a bad way. He’s always managed to skate by the skin of his teeth when his machines have gone haywire. While Brickman was being an asshole for the trial, he made a good point in that we don’t quite know if we can trust this Tony. Given what we as the audience know thus far, he’s falling hard. Almost going back to the drink, questioning his own existence, not even having the trust of the brother that’s been by his side since his appearance in the mid 2000s (in this universe).

And that ending, finally seeing the seeds of what’s been sewn for months now starting to take form, is always fun. I had wondered what happened to this character since Infinity Wars (2018) and I can’t wait to see where exactly this story is going to go and what the repercussions of that event will be. I also can’t wait to see how exactly he’ll scar Tony and his extended family now that he’s returned. High recommend!

---------------------------------------------------

Things were looking up for Otto Octavius. He had found a nice woman and was slowly falling in love, he had mended fences with Anna-Maria in a way. After the events of War of the Realms, he was a respected and loved hero in San Francisco and then it all came crashing down.

Runner Up: The Superior Spider-Man #10 (Legacy #43) - Christos Gage, Mike Hawthorne, Wade von Grawbadger, Jordie Bellaire and Clayton Cowles

After taking the lovely Emma on a swing through the city, The Spider-Man of San Francisco goes on to visit the child he saved all the way back in issue #4 and help his new adoptive parents get custody of him. These small moments of warmness are a far cry from the maniacal nature that we were once accustomed to from Octavius. Bellaire colors most these scenes in a nice, warm orange. Giving us this feeling of joy and some happiness for Otto… at least until he’s discussing having a child with Emma and she alerts him to the news report that asks if the SF Spider-Man is really Otto Octavius. 

Things start to spiral even further as Spider-Man is interviewed and dances around the question and the Brothers Grimm acknowledge that he hired them for some temp work if they went straight, alluding to the first arc of the book. Otto is furious, Anna-Maria gives him snark and Emma tells him that he needs to face things head on, getting in front of it all. He can prove that he’s changed. Unfortunately, Anna-Maria brings up the kid as an example of someone who he’s helped and he swings to the apartment to find the foster parents angry and the child sad that he lied. Normally Otto wouldn't think twice about lying to someone or omitting information, but looking into that child's eyes as he began to cry, Otto reveals that he lied because he wanted the kid to like him and they hug. 

Soon after, Otto is called back to Horizon University where he is known as Professor Tolliver. Max Modell is waiting for him as he's received an email telling him that Tolliver is actually Otto Octavius. Surprisingly to Otto, Max already knew. Max Modell may act like a goof, but he's not considered one of the brightest minds in Marvel for no reason. He ran a DNA test to confirm soon after his emergence and gave "Tolliver" a chance to prove himself a changed man and given that he has, he's been trying to help clear his name. 

With Max's security footage and his own enhanced suit, Otto is able to determine that it was actually Spiders-Man that sent all of the incriminating data to everyone. Once Spiders-Man realizes he's caught, the thousands of spiders that make up his form reconstitute until Ock defeats him and compresses the former Peter Parker's consciousness into one Spider-Body. After some pushing, Spiders-Man reveals that it was Norman Osborn's idea. This Norman Osborn, however, is from another dimension where he's the Spider Totem and his main enemy was a Green Goblin Peter Parker, if I remember right. 

Spiders-Man also tells Otto that Norman is in his own dimension, safe from harm. During the events of Spider-Geddon, the Web of Fate was destroyed, making dimensional travel much harder for Spider people. Octavius hits a wall until Anna-Maria comes out that she's saved a bit of Terrax's energy from the first arc in the Living Brain robot, in case Otto ever reverted. This makes him sink even lower, but ultimately he understands and tries to use the power to make a portal...only Norman planned for this and over loads the machine, causing it to destroy the building almost killing everyone inside if not for Otto. 

Otto manages to save Max and Anna-Maria, but is swiftly defeated and left for dead by Norman who was there the entire time. When Otto asks why Norman is doing this, he responds in the most Norman Osborn way possible by saying, "You insulted me."

Just when Otto Octavius was finding his place in the world as a hero, forces mostly belong his control have made their move in an effort to derail him. Otto finally seems happy, even helping out a young child that he absolutely has no obligation to and starting a budding new relationship with an older woman that's just as smart as he. Things were going well, he even got a key to the city for crying out loud!

But, as fate befalls all Spiders, his terrible actions in the past are coming back to haunt him. Who's to say that Mephisto doesn't have a little bit of a hand in this as well? We can only hope things turn out well for Otto in the end, but not before Norman makes things much, much worse.

[dearlazerbunny]

Second Chances

Pairings: Kylo x Reader

Genre/Rating: Modern AU; G

Words: 2900

Summary: Requested by anon, who wanted an mean-to-the-reader-but-secretly-likes-them Kylo  let me know if you enjoy it anon and if there’s any changes you’d like made!

Sitting back from your desk, you stretch your arms above your head, barely avoiding a groan. You’d been working nonstop all day- time for a little break. You grab your coffee mug from its place of honor to the right of your computer and head to the break room, where you can smell a fresh pot brewing. Unfortunately, you pause in the doorway. Looks like someone beat you to it.

Kylo Ren, also known as the world’s biggest pain in the ass and infinite thorn in your side, is staring intently at the coffee pot waiting for it to finish dripping, completely blocking the countertop. How just like him.

“Ahem.” You clear your throat, and he turns. When he see you, his eyes immediately narrow.

“Y/L/N.”

“Ren. Would you mind moving your- sorry. Would you please consider moving your entitled self a few feet to the left so everyone can enjoy the coffee?”

“Wow, you even said please this time. Just for that- no.” He continues staring at the pot.

Why is it this man’s goal to make your life as difficult as possible? Through gritted teeth, you ask, “did you at least put those papers I requested on my desk?”

“I gave them to Janet.”

“I- specifically asked that you give them to me.”

“But I don’t like you, so. Easy decision.”

God fucking- you intentionally take a deep breath as he finally fills his cup. Calm down, Y/N. This is nothing new, just the usual back and forth. No need to get upset. That is, until he pointedly looks at you, takes the brand spanking new pot of coffee, and very deliberately pours it down the kitchen sink, casually sipping from his mug in the other hand as he does so.

“Enjoy your coffee.” He drops the pot into the sink with a clang of finality before sauntering out of the kitchen as your anger simmers into overdrive.

Stalking back to your desk, you slam your mug down and sit yourself down, rubbing your hand over your forehead to ward off a migraine. Why does he insist on being such an asshole? And why does it bother you so much? Maybe it’s because to absolutely everyone else in the office, he’s perfectly decent towards. Well, maybe not decent, but certainly not hostile. He’s always been a bit of a loner, never really making any friends or talking to anyone throughout the workday. Kind of awkward around people, if you think about it. But still, being friendless is no excuse for the amount of shit you put up with.

You retrieve your papers from Janet, which is actually a very important set of documents crucial to closing a project you were assigned months ago. Work of this magnitude meant a raise, maybe even a promotion- if you did it right. The only problem is, it meant you had to work directly with Ren’s department, and Ren himself. It was a struggle to get him to do anything for you, but apparently he eventually got the papers done.

So you thought. Looking over the first page, something seems… off. And studying it more closely, your heart sinks with every line. All of the data you requested is either complete gibberish or definitely not what was actually aggregated, and most of the graphs look like they were done by a kindergartner on Microsoft paint. Entire paragraphs are copied and pasted from random internet articles that have nothing to do with the topic at hand, and it’s all written in what looks like comic sans. Worst of all, at the end of the twenty-plus page document, is his own signature- Kylo Ren- signing off on the report.

All at once, your chest grows tight, and tears begin to well in your eyes. This project was due in two days, there was no way you’d have time to redo all this work. What had you done to deserve this? You were perfectly pleasant to everyone- until Ren started being rude, and then you could give as good as you take. But this- this was the final straw. Snippy comments were one thing, but there’s no way you’re letting some lowlife asshole jeopardize your career.

Wiping away water with one finger, careful not to smudge your makeup, you pull up your email and begin typing a manifesto that you should have started a long, long time ago.

“Ren.” You stand by his desk, rigid, but internally triumphant. “If I could please speak with you in the board room.”

“Bit busy here at the moment, sweetheart.” He isn’t, of course, just dicking around online that doesn’t look like anything work related, but you take a deep breath and plaster on your best pretty-please falsetto.

“I really need to speak with you. I’m sure your… work can wait.”

Taken aback by your tone- your voice never got nicer than a growl when talking in his general direction- he finally nods and stands, following you to the meeting room. It’s private and not scheduled to be used for another hour, which is all you need to get your point across. You even hold the wooden door open for him as he walks in.

“What is this about? I’m more important than you, I’ve got actual work to complete.”

“Oh, because scrolling through tumblr counts as work. Right,” you shoot back.

“If you brought me in here to snark at me, I’m more than happy to oblige, but I have a meeting right about now, so I’ll see you in the break room-”

You hold out a hand, effectively stopping this six foot something man in his place. “No, you don’t. I checked your schedule. Sit your ass down.”

He does so, crossing his legs with a smirk on his face. “Such language. I could have you reported for that.”

You slam his bogus report down in front of him onto the table. “Mind explaining what this is?”

He smiles. “Just the report you asked for.”

“I’m not even going to dignify that with a response. Did you know the CEO asked me personally to handle this for him?”

Suddenly, his face seems to turn a little somber. “The CEO? He-”

“Did you know.” You cut him off, tears wavering in your voice, “That this project could have meant a raise for me? Maybe even a promotion?”

“No, I- are you crying?”

Damnit. You blink them away. “No. Of course you didn’t. Because all you are is a twelve year old child who insists on pulling bully pranks on someone who doesn’t deserve it.” You tap the papers in front of him. “I reported to to HR. Expect to hear from them very, very soon.”

Now he’s paying attention. “You did what now?”

“You heard me. I reported you. I’m sick of the abuse, Ren. I’m sick of the pettiness, the anxiety, the useless arguing. And once I show them what you handed me for this project? They won’t have any choice but to believe me.”

“Y/N-”

“No, don’t you Y/N me, Ren. It’s over. You’re done.”

“I can explain.”

That stops you short. “You- you can explain? Explain what, exactly? Why you’re hell bent on making my life miserable? I might accept that after one bad joke, Ren, but not after an entire year of putting me down. If you have some sort of excuse, it better be a damn good one.”

“I- I like you.”

You stare at him. Wonder if you heard him right. No, that’s definitely what he said. Then slowly, take a seat across the table from him in one of the big leather armchairs. Your voice is dangerously calm. “You. What?”

“I like you.” He’s wide eyed, almost like he’s begging.

You laugh. You laugh so hard tears come to your eyes, but this time from sheer glee rather than frustration. You laugh so hard you’re almost out of breath and have to gasp for air. “You like me. You like me! Well, that clears up abso-fucking-lutely everything now doesn’t it?” You stand and straighten your skirt. “Get out of here. I assume you might want to start packing your desk.”

“No, Y/N, wait-” he grabs your wrist, which you wrench away.

“Don’t touch me, you creep.”

“Hear me out, then. Please. One minute.”

You sigh. Might as well give a dead man his final wish. “Fine. One minute.”

“I…. like you. I’ve liked you from the moment you’ve stepped foot in the office. And I thought I could get your attention by-”

“By what? Being horrific towards me?”

He winces. “Am I really that bad?”

“Try worse.”

“God.” He runs his hands through his hair, mussing the curls. To think when he first started here you thought he was attractive. “ I really fucked everything up, didn’t I?”

Unexpectedly, a tiny sliver of sympathy runs through you. “Even more than you could possibly imagine.” And with that, you march out of the room, head held high.

…..

Ren did indeed get fired the next day. You tried not to feel sorry for him as he slowly packed up his desk- after all, he brought this on himself. But you couldn’t help but feel the tiniest bit guilty. You didn’t know if you’d actually wanted to get him fired- having the abuse stop probably would have been enough? But no. Now you wouldn’t have to see his face everyday as a reminder of what you went through.

It’s been a month since then and you can honestly say you’ve never been happier at your job. No more constant aggravation or anger directed towards you has done wonders for your productivity, and you’ve actually started to make friends around the office. As time went on, Ren became a distant memory, and you quickly rose to one of the best workers in the office. However, on the off days, you couldn’t help but wonder if he had found another job, or if he was doing okay. Hell, even going to the coffee machine was a little too quiet for your liking now that he was gone. It was almost like you… missed him? But that couldn’t be right.

“Y/N?” You look up and see Phasma, the CEO’s assistant, standing by your desk. “If you’re not busy at the moment, Mr. Hux would like a word with you.”

Oh, damn. “No, I’m not busy. Is he ready now?”

She nods, and gestures for you to follow her. You do so, down the carpeted corridor and to the big imposing glass office that rules that floor of the office. Hux is sitting at his desk in an ever-polished suit, writing something on a notepad, but he looks up when Phasma knocks on the door. “Y/N here to see you, sir.” He waves you in and you go through the big doors and stand behind the chairs opposite his desk, unsure if it was appropriate to sit down or not.

“Please, have a seat.” You do so at the very edge, trying not to wring your hands nervously. “So, Y/N, how goes the project?”

Said project is the one that Ren almost ruined, but luckily the contractors were very understanding and let you have an extension to complete the work. “Exactly on schedule, sir. And I promise this time it will be done right.”

“Ah, yes. That is in the line of what I called you in here to talk about.” He drops his pen and steeples his fingers. “I’d like to speak with you about Ren.”

“R- Ren?” You ask, confused. “What about him, sir?”

He sighs. “I thought I might provide a bit of…context, to the situation. If you would like to hear me out, of course.” You nod, unsure of where this is going. “You see, I personally hired Ren. He and I are friends, from our college days. And as his friend, I would like to be the first to apologize for how he’s treated you.”

“Um, thank you, sir.”

He nods. “You see, Ren has always been… troubled, when faced with human interactions. He doesn’t really know how to handle people, or their emotions… or his own. In fact, it’s because of this he was having difficulty finding a job, and so I took him on as a favor. He’s smart, you see, and good at what he does. But he doesn’t know how to interact on a basic level.”

“…what are you saying?”

Hux smiles thinly. “My point is, how he interacted with you is the only way he knows how to interact with people he likes. I ad to cut off communication with him at work because if anyone saw him snarking at me, they’d wonder why I didn’t fire him immediately. But it’s just his way. He doesn’t know any other.”

“So you’re telling me when he told me he liked me, he was telling the truth. And by harassing me, he was showing me that he liked me?”

Hux raises an eyebrow. “He told you he liked you?”

“Right after I told him I was going to get him fired, yes.”

“Interesting. He’s usually a very closely guarded person. To tell you such a thing…” there’s a vague twinkle in his eye, an expression you’ve never seen on your boss’ face. “You must really be something special to him.”

“Something- forgive me if I’m having a hard time believing you.”

“I know it can be difficult to understand. All I ask is that you think on what I’ve told you.”

“I- sure. I will. Thank you.”

He nods. “You’re free to go.”

You leave the office more confused than ever.

…

That night at home, after ruminating over several glasses of wine, you had to admit part of what Hux had told you made sense. Why Ren never had many friends in the office, why he only seemed to rag on you. You almost felt like you were going soft, but you felt like you owed him some sort of apology. Maybe you had just missed the right cues and picked up on all the wrong ones. You even felt a bit sorry for him, if you were being honest.

A knock on the door takes you out of your thoughts, and you go to look through the peephole. Lo and behold, none other than Kylo Ren stands there, hands behind his back. You open it, ready to apologize before he could say anything, but are surprised by him shoving a big bundle of flowers right under your nose before you could even take a breath.

“Ren…? What are..?” You take them from his grasp and hold them out- a beautiful arrangement of assorted blooms and blossoms. “They’re lovely.”

“Do you like them?” He’s looking at you anxiously, like a child who’s expecting a scolding.

You have to smile. “Yes, I do. Do you want to come in?”

He looks surprised, but nods, following you inside. He stands quietly in the living room as you bustle to the kitchen to put the flowers in water.

“I know Hux talked to you.”

You sigh. “Yes, Kylo, he did. And-”

“Wait. What did you just say?”

“I’m- sorry?”

“Kylo. You called me Kylo.” He looks mystified, but also insanely happy. “You’ve never called me that before.”

“I guess I haven’t. Is.. that okay?”

“Oh, yeah, definitely. I was just… surprised, I guess.”

You nod. “Hux did talk to me, Kylo. But to be honest, I’d like to hear it in your own words.”

He sighs. “That’s what I was afraid of.” He sits down on the couch, running his hands through his hair. “I’m not good with… words. Or people. Or how people might think of me, when I do certain things. I’ve never liked anyone like you, Y/N. All my friends, they know me, they know how I talk, and they know to just brush it off and call me a dick when I do something stupid. But you… aren’t them. I never stopped to think that you wouldn’t know how to take it when I was being a jerk.” He takes a breath. “And I just wanted to say that I’m sorry. For everything.”

“I like you a lot, and I didn’t know how to deal with it, so I went to my default.” He looks up at you. “Hux explained to me that that probably wasn’t the best idea.”

“Well, you’re spot on about just about everything. How was I supposed to know tormenting was your way of being friendly?”

“You couldn’t have, Y/N, it’s not your fault, it’s mine. And I hope, someday… you’ll let me take you out. To show you how sorry I am, and maybe make up for all the times I made you cry.”

“How about tonight?”

His eyes widen. “T- tonight?”

“Kylo, just by explaining yourself you’ve shown me how sorry you are. And I believe you, trust me.” You take a deep breath. “So maybe we can just start over, okay? Starting tonight.”

His smile could have lit up the entire city. “I’d like that. I’d like that a lot.”

[missizzy]

Ficlet: Ava Starr, Fifteen Hours Later (Ant-Man)

Once they decided that at the very least, the Pyms and their daughter were probably dead, the first thing they did was see if anyone who might know where they’d taken the van was alive. They found a grief stricken Luis, who-eventually-gave them a rough location. But it’s well into the night by the time they’re standing on the right rooftop, and after studying the readings, Dr. Foster says, “Lang went in, but never came out. The readings from right after actually suggest he didn’t die with them, but…I think he’s lost in there, and after fifteen hours, I don’t like our odds of ever finding him.”

Ava looks down that quantum tunnel. Scott Lang got himself trapped in there because he was trying to help her. After all she did. He’s a good man. She now knows his history enough to know that, that he only fell in with Pym when he was kind of desperate. Told pretty words, probably, about being a hero, by someone able to take advantage of him, just like S.H.I.E.L.D. took advantage of her.

She makes a decision. “Can you send me in there? They would’ve brought the Wasp suit in case of an emergency, and I’m completely stabilized for at least another week, right?”

He looks at her in dismay. “Look, if we had any idea how to start looking for him, that would be one thing. But there’s no way we’re going to get him out of there before you start to go again, at least not without you getting another dose of those particles. We may have no choice but to do what we have to to save you.”

The thought of being how she’s been, living every moment in excruciating pain and terror, almost makes her balk. Not long ago, she would’ve thought the exact same thing herself. But now she persists: “If I went in there and got them, instead of us extracting them, would that cause him the same kind of damage?”

He considers it for a moment. “I don’t know. We still know very little about the quantum realm. If Janet were still here…but I’m not sure how much she’d even be able to put into words.

Though then again, he did connect with her. You might connect with him. At the very least, you could make more readings, get more data. It’s better than trying nothing, I suppose.”

Ava doesn’t tell him how terrified she is as she dons the suit, that the shrinking process will rip her apart again, maybe even without putting her back together this time. But when Dr. Foster says, “Okay, I’m sending you in,” and the world grows too big around her before flashing away, there isn’t even a twinge.

Instead she finds herself surrounded by light and color, clouds of them all around her, bright and dazzling. It’s so warm around her too, and she doesn’t think she’s actually absorbing anything, but just being here makes her feel better anyway. The Wasp suit has its gadgets for collecting data built in; Ava hears them hum as she opens up the spare container for her particles. When they’re gathered, she pauses for just another moment, just to take it all in.

“Ava?” Dr. Foster’s voice sounds strangely distant, even through the line. “Are you all right?”

“Perfectly,” she says, because she is, more than she’s been in a long time. Distantly she’s aware this isn’t nice, feeling this way when it’s only been a day since most of San Francisco and apparently half the world perished, but she can’t care. “I’ve got the particles.”

And she’ll have to come back here for more, of course, at least a few times. With better measuring equipment too, maybe.

She’s no fool; she knows this beautiful place is a dangerous one. But she can’t remember the last time she actually looked forward to something.

When Dr. Foster pulls her out, she’s smiling, so brightly that when he sees, he can’t help but smile back.

[italicwatches]

The Good Place, season 2 - Episode 05

Tomorrow…Is gonna be busy. But today, at least, I’ve got some time to work with. It’s The Good Place, season 2, episode 05! Here we GO!

-We begin at Eleanor’s place, with Chidi putting the trolley problem in front of the class. One of the classic head scratchers. You know how it works. Your trolley’s brakes fail. On the track ahead are five people. You can do nothing, and they die. You can switch to a side track, on which there’s one person, but that means making the active choice to kill that person. What do you do?

-Eleanor’s questioning is remarkably…pragmatic in her own way. She wants to know about the people, and if there’s a nasty ex, or a judgmental shopkeep. …You do not. Okay, then, gotta go for the least harm. Better to live with the guilt of choosing one death than the guilt of un-choice making for five.

-Tahani gets lost in her lifestyle stuff. But, she also picks saving the five.

-Right, good! That’s a pretty common answer. But the trolley problem is interesting because of how data changes it. Say the one is a good friend of yours, or a loved one. Or what if you’re not, yourself, on the trolley, but just a bystander who might be able to reach the track switch in time? Or even, skip the trolley itself, look to another metaphor. You’re a doctor facing five people with organ failures, and you’ve got one healthy organ donor. You could save all five…If you shot the donor in the head right now.

-And so that does make things different. The raw arithmetic is the same, but the framework changes the moral quandary. And through the whole thing, Michael’s been awfully quiet. But to him, the dilemma is clear.

-How do you kill all six? His plan is a long pole arm hung out the window. to catch the one while we catch the five. …He’s wrong, isn’t he. Yep! Now write “People = good” ten more times on the blackboard.

-Chapter 19!

-After all of that, Tahani and Jay are gonna tap out and take their free hour before they’re expected at a thing…I assume they’re gonna go bone down again.

-I WAS RIGHT

-And so after their boning down, or as Jay puts it, ‘pounding it out’, Tahani is all worried about people finding out…But Jay thinks she needs to talk about this with someone. Of course, Tahani doesn’t have anyone she can go to in this place, because the only two fellow humans are the ones she’s trying to keep from finding out… (Janet’s right there, guys. Not, like, literally, that would be weird and also I have to clarify given the character but you get my point)

-Back at Eleanor’s place, Chidi’s struggling to get this stuff to stick with Michael…And aside from his attempt to form it into a rap musical, the core thing Eleanor leaves him with is…time. You’ve got time, use it. Michael’s gonna be a slow burn, but they’ll get him there. And very no on the rap musical.

-Back to Tahani! She hits on the idea that she can talk it out with Janet. And Janet even gets out a notebook and some quite frankly adorable glasses to be a sounding board slash therapist.

-New day, new scene, Chidi’s chatting with Michael about his…Complete and utter failure to grasp the ethical questions in Les Miserables. He’s relying too heavily on his concrete knowledge of how the back-end of the whole system works, and thus not doing the real work, which is about questioning assumptions.

-Back with Tahani’s therapy sessions, where Janet hits on a core element of Tahani’s problem: She has no experience with someone like Jay…And if I may interject? Tahani’s whole deal, aside from seeking fame and fortune to get all eyes on her, is sticking firmly in well-charted waters so she can memorize those charts and look like the smartest person in the room for following them.

-Speaking of Jay, he stumbles on in and Janet decides she wants to hear his side of things. Tahani, though, cuts it off with, and I quote: “He thinks I have to control everything and he has no voice in this relationship. Right? Good. Now, where were we?”

-And then she hears herself actually say it, and…Okay. Okay, she’ll step out.

-Back with Michael and Chidi, Chidi tries to get two concepts into Michael’s head: First, these things do not have concrete answers, that is their point. Second, when it comes to grappling with and explaining human ethics? Chidi knows more than you do.

-Michael’s not buying it. He’s not liking all this theoretical stuff, and so he decides they need to have a more concrete example.

-And that’s how they’re on a speeding trolley with the very real, concrete scenario in play. Five workmen on this track, one on that one! Here’s the levers! Do what you’re gonna do, Chidi!

-Chidi ends up doing nothing and hits all five. Good lesson, Chidi. What did they learn? Come on, they weren’t real people, he’d never make you kill real people. “Oh, well that’s reassuring, because some of the parts of the fake people FLEW INTO MY MOUTH!” Chidi is not having a great day.

-And, okay, back to the classroom. And fresh restart on the trolley! So, take another run at it? PULL THE LEVER, Chidi! Also this version of the problem has the one person be Henry, of the infamous boots.

-Which slap across Chidi’s face when he’s forced to run Henry the fuck over.

-The Ethics Express comes to a stop, as Chidi’s in screaming shock and Eleanor’s trying not to let her inner Michael Bay fan out too much.

-Baaack to therapy! Jay’s problem is that, fundamentally when you boil out all the jokes about his stupidity, is “I feel like Tahani’s embarrassed that I’m not some scientist who forecloses on banks.” Speaking of Tahani, cue Tahani who’s freaking out and she needs Janet. …Janet, what about couples therapy?

-She’s game! Also her upped thumb just came off, filled with helium, and floated into the air. She might be operating a bit out of protocol here and it might be making for some glitches in the physics engine.

-Let’s see how the trolley problem is going. Chidi chose to run over five Shapespeares to save one Santa Claus. Interesting! And Eleanor’s feeling like they need to call it on this trolley problem. Michael agrees.

-How about the doctor one?

-So that’s how they all find themselves in scrubs, and these five people all need organ transplants! Eleanor’s perfectly healthy! (You are so lucky that the afterlife makes that true) Slice her open and use her parts to save these patients! Wait, wait Chidi think about this, think it through man, she’s your…No, she’s your…She’s A friend!

-And Chidi takes a hardline stance. Look, in this scenario he’s a doctor, right? Right. Hippocratic oath. First, do no harm. He is not going to violate that oath. Cool, cool. …Tell the families.

-“Doctor Chidi? My daddy needed a heart transplant. Did you save his life? He was working, then a really bad man ran him over with a trolley.”

-I literally cannot outdo that. Like, my goal with these is generally to make the jokes just as punchy, to make the drama just as tasty, to get as much of the experience of the show in as possible. But I can think of no way to do better than just straight quoting that entire line right there.

-Even Chidi has to call bullshit and Eleanor realizes Michael is just torturing them. …Okay, yeah, it’s true, sorry but it was pretty fun right? …No, Michael. No, it was not. Your entire premise for why they’re working with you is that the alternative is being tortured. You have just undermined the entire justification for why you’re here, and you are no longer welcome in this class. Get the fork out!

-Chidi stomps off furiously, and Michael is legitimately confused.

-A full hour later, Eleanor checks in with Chidi…Who has been concentrating on a table of contents to help calm his nerves. It’s not working. But Chidi has decided this was all a sham from the start…But Eleanor’s got another theory she’s working on.

-Back to therapy. Where Janet tries to get Tahani to give all the things she likes about Jay. …He’s thoughtful, and kind. Deeply un-self-aware and has no reason for his confidence, but all of that confidence means he actually goes for it in the bedroom…

-But from Jay’s boiled down perspective, he tries to be nice to Tahani, and yet she’s often not very nice to him. That’s…Not okay. And all Tahani can ask for is time. …And then Janet vomits up a frog, which is very much not the plan.

-Meanwhile, Eleanor’s gone to Michael’s office and you’re doing what she used to do. You’re lashing out when you feel like you’re not good enough. You felt dumb and small, so you took it out on the teacher.

-Bullshit!

-Okay, prove her wrong. Go make it up to him, and make it right, and prove you’re better than she was. Or stay down in the mucky muck of Shellstrop conflict tactics.

-So that’s how Michael ends up back at Eleanor’s place, having done a lot of long hard thoughts to get them each something they will deeply enjoy.

-For Tahani…A diamond the size of her god damned fist, but she’s giddy. For Eleanor, you have a secret shrimp dispenser! Ohhhh yes this is good.

-For Jay? A Pikachu balloon awwww he popped it.

-And for Chidi? It took a lot of long, hard thoughts…But he figured it out. One of Immanuel Kant’s lost notebooks, plucked right from his history. Full of thoughts, and musings, and…some crude erotic doodles. Interesting guy, Kant.

-Cool, cool.

-Chidi chucks it right in the bin.

-He’s not interested in a bribe or having his forgiveness and love bought, Michael. So what DO you want? For Michael to admit that he felt lost and small and vulnerable?!

-…Well yeah.

-So, Michael does exactly that aaaand he was totally faking it if you ask me. Also, bribe or no bribe, Eleanor’s keeping the shrimp machine.

-Cut to a month later! Tahani and Jay’s relationship has become stronger, better. …And then Janet books it because an earthquake is running hard through the whole facility!

-She appears in Michael’s office because she is going wrong. Her glitches are getting worse and she can’t stop them. She is going to put this neighborhood at total risk of utter collapse. …So that’s her day, how are you doing?

-Credits!

Well SHIT

[avengerstvshow]

Changes/Bonus Material

I decided to make a few changes and add some bonus material.

1. Throughout Season 1, the Hulk material builds as teasers and stingers.  I used a lot of deleted scenes to help to build suspense for the Hulk’s eventual reveal, using the perspective of those around Bruce without ever showing Bruce himself, to avoid dealing with the casting change.  My favorite addition was the stinger to S1E1, where we see Bruce in the arctic and his suicide attempt, along with brief glimpses of the pain and longing that have driven him there.  I also LOVE the deleted/extended scenes with General Ross; they’re beautifully written.  I think these scenes were deleted for fear of slowing the film down too much, but to me, allowing the characters to wax poetical about their world-views is so compelling that I just had to include them.

2. In S1E3, I cut the entire third act of Iron Man.  This was a very radical change, but I made it for a good reason.  Most origin stories pit the hero against a darker version of himself.  While this was very clear with Iron Monger in Iron Man 1, this trope was basically repeated with Whiplash in Iron Man 2.  Although the plot of Iron Man 2 was very crowded and did not give Whiplash his due, given how intertwined the plot lines were, and how the struggle to outsmart Whiplash is so instrumental in driving Tony to delve into his father’s past, I felt that it was more important to set him up as his first major villain.  My hope is that the confrontation with the terrorists will suffice as Iron Man’s first victory, given the series format.

3. In S1E5-6, I added a few deleted scenes.  After the Thor prologue as the teaser, I chose to begin the episode with the deleted scene of Thor & Loki talking before his coronation; I felt that it was important to establish the adult versions of these characters as brothers before the plot continued.  I also added the extended conversation between Loki & Frigga at Odin’s bedside, as well as Loki’s coronation.  The original ordering of the dialogue really seemed to flow much more smoothly, and to end it with the actual coronation moment gave Loki a bit more of a bridge from scheming brother to power-hungry tyrant.  The brief conflict in Tom Hiddleston’s performance is breathtaking.

4. In S1E7-9, I added a few Cap deleted scenes.  The first is his extended introduction to the present day.  While this scene was unfinished, and the final product isn’t perfect, I felt that the extended dialogue between Cap and Nick Fury was important, as this scene now takes place later in the series.  I also added the extended Cap sequences dealing with the present day, including much of his interactions with the waitress/saving her in the Battle of New York.  While these scenes slowed the pacing in the film, I personally felt that we could use the character development for Cap here; his struggle to adjust to modern life, while expounded upon in Winter Soldier, needed more time to really sit with the viewer, as this was the season finale.  I also loved how the waitress provided an everyman perspective and connection for the Avengers as a whole, with her “thank you” line at the end becoming a great payoff.

5. In S2E1-3, I used the brilliant “TDW: Hard Forged Edition” fan edit as my base for the Thor arc.  This edit includes masterfully integrated deleted scenes that really flesh out the characters and soften some of the edges around the writing.  A few of my favorite moments are Thor and Frigga’s brief interaction in the first act, and Thor and Jane’s interaction before her arrest in Episode 2.

However, I did add one moment myself.  This fan edit moved the prologue from the beginning of the film to Odin’s discussion of the dark elves with Thor and Jane in the library (Episode 1).  To drive home the theme of this season (dealing with demons), I reinserted an unused moment from the prologue.  After Thor reminds Odin that he was told that the Aether was destroyed, we see a quick flashback from Odin where his father says to bury it where no one will ever find it.  It’s really this decision from Thor’s grandfather that allows the Aether to reemerge during the Convergence in the first place, so I felt that it was important to clarify that moment as the original sin; Thor is now dealing with the consequences of that decision.

6. In S2E2, I added some Iron Man 3 deleted scenes involving EJ, the kid who bullies Harley.  I’m still going back and forth on this one.  I decided to include this scene for two reasons.  First, it directly compares Harley with Tony, facing their personal bullies.  Second, at the end of the extended sequence, Harley literally saves Tony’s life, giving more weight to their relationship and actual reason for Harley to say “I saved your life.”

7. In S2E3, I added in part of the alternate ending for Thor: The Dark World, found on the Infinity Saga Box Set bonus disc.  Originally, this ending included  scene with Odin on Earth and Thor taking his place as King of Asgard.  However, to keep with continuity, I selected the middle part of this scene: when Jane breaks up with Thor.  I added this conversation in for a couple of reasons.  First, the dialogue is quite good, given the journey they’ve been on in this film, and since we never got any kind of heart to heart between the couple in the theatrical cut, I felt it was needed to give their relationship arc some closure.  Second, I felt that it was important to set up Jane’s reasons for eventually actually breaking up with Thor, as it’s kind of shrugged off in Ragnarok.  Following this scene, I continued with the theatrical ending of Thor giving up the throne.  Even though it contradicts the conversation between Thor and Jane, in my head canon, Thor sees Jane’s reasons and at first, he agrees to go to Asgard.  However, when he is in front of his father, he realizes that being king isn’t who he is anymore.  He doesn’t know where his future will lead, but he chooses Jane in that moment.  To me, it seemed natural, and it adds layers to Thor’s journey at this point in the series.  The episode is then capped off with his implied return to Earth.

Also in this episode, I added the deleted scene where Maya Hansen sends the AIM data to Tony and is killed via the Extremis plant.  To be honest, I felt this scene should have been in the movie.  It gave more weight to Maya’s character arc and provided an ironic death; the very thing she worked so hard on took her life.

8. In S2E4-5, I used Bobson Dugnutt’s “WS: Defrosted Edition” as my base, adding in many of the deleted scenes from CA: Winter Soldier.  To me, these scenes fleshed out important moments for these characters that better set them up for the future.

9. In S2E6-7, I used several fan edits as sources in order to add in several deleted scenes from the film to slow down the frantic pacing and to better set up future plot points.  This includes Thor’s vision in the cave, to which I also made a subtle change to briefly include Thanos himself; this marks Thanos’ only appearance in Season 2 after the brief stinger in Season 1, and I felt it was important to establish him as a looming threat.  The power stone is also deleted from this moment, as it has not yet been introduced in the series.  I also added some moments for Bruce Banner’s vision before he goes on his rampage to tie him back to his origins in Season 1, and I cut most of Black Widow’s relationship moments with him, especially “the sun’s getting real low” stuff.  My goal was to make their relationship much more subtle and to distinguish it from Bruce’s relationship with Betty.

However, I did decide to include their interaction in the bedroom at Hawkeye’s farm.  I decided this scene was merited; in my head canon, Black Widow is shaken by her vision, so she reaches out to this other member of the team she’s slowly been connecting with in a moment of weakness/loneliness/desire.  I also really struggled because of the controversy around Black Widow’s “monster” line.  I eventually came to the conclusion that she’s referring to herself as a monster not because she can no longer have kids, but because she’s been mutilated so she can be a better killer.  To her, that’s monstrous.  While I do think the scene could have made that clearer, I really appreciated the sentiment she’s conveying here, so I chose to leave it in.  

One final change I made with BW/Hulk: I re-edited the BW rescue scene so there’s no longer a kiss/push to make Bruce transform into the Hulk.  I wanted to give Bruce as much control over his changing as possible so it was easier to track is growth since his origins and set his rage transformation from Scarlet Witch’s vision apart.  In the theatrical cut, it’s implied that BW broke trust with Bruce because she needed Hulk.  Now, Hulk decides to leave in the end because he can no longer trust Bruce; Bruce views Hulk as a monster and wants him out.  Hulk doesn’t trust Black Widow to accept him either, as she hates the monster within herself, so she’s just like Bruce.  In my head canon, when Hulk reaches out to touch Black Widow’s face on the screen, that’s Bruce, but then Hulk claims control, shuts off the screen, and sets out into space.

10. In S3E3, I added a brief deleted scene where Janet Van Dyne explains to Hank that the Quantum Realm was more complex than they imagined.  I added this because I have a feeling the Quantum Realm will continue to play a larger role in future MCU plans, so I wanted to set up its importance a bit better.

11. In S3E8, I added the alternate ending for Doctor Strange, also found on the Infinity Saga Box Set bonus disc.  Thanks to fan editor Bobson Dugnutt for his splendid reasoning in going with this ending.  Since this film is centered around Doctor Strange, it made perfect sense to me that the final scene should come full circle, playing on Doctor Strange’s love of music and his playful relationship with Wong.  To me, this is a much more character-centric ending.  I moved the the theatrical ending to S3E10 as a stinger scene to emphasize the importance of the time stone.

12. In S4E1-2, I restructured Captain Marvel just a bit so that the audience discovers more about Carol’s identity with her.  I moved most of her scenes pre-Earth to a brief flashback sequence.  I also added a deleted scene where Yon-Rogg talks to the Supreme Intelligence in his own image.  I felt that this was crucial to really SHOW, not TELL, how the Supreme Intelligence appears to the Kree.  It also really adds some much-needed depth to Yon-Rogg.

13. In S4E3-6, I pruned some of the jokes/gags in both Guardians 2 and Thor: Ragnarok, just to space out the laugh moments and allow the scenes to breathe a bit more.  I also had to edit around the “sun’s getting real low” gag, since I cut it in Season 2.

14. In S4E7, I chose to introduce the episode in the teaser with the Guardians’ perspective, when they first come upon the Asgardian shipwreck.  This was mainly because we have been following the Guardians more consistently than Thor since last seasons’ finale.

15. Finally, in S4E10, I chose to include a small portion of Black Widow’s alternate death scene, specifically, a small piece of dialogue at the beginning of their conversation.  Fact: this scene is one of many Endgame Deleted scenes that are exclusive to Disney Plus, so I had to use a number of methods to obtain HD footage.  Unfortunately, the audio isn’t amazing, but it’s the best I could get.  The reason I chose to use this opening bit of dialogue was because I felt it established very quickly the logic of Black Widow’s thinking.  I felt like the conversation would flow more naturally from intellectual reason to their love for each other.  

The reason I chose to stick with her theatrical death is because the creators chose to make that change, and I agree that maximum emotional impact is driving from character rather than plot.  I feel like even though the scene has its problems, it’s the closest we have to this beautifully tragic scene that Black Widow deserved.

[dukereviewsmovies]

Duke Reviews: Ant-Man

Hello, I'm Andrew Leduc And Welcome To Duke Reviews Where We Are Continuing Our Look At The Marvel Cinematic Universe....

Where Today We End Our Look At Phase 2 By Talking About The First Outing For The Pint Sized Avenger, Ant-Man...

This Film Is About A Recently Released Prisoner Named Scott Lang (Played By Paul Rudd) Who Gets Recruited By A Man Named Hank Pym (Played By Michael Douglas) To Become The New Ant-Man And Help Him Steal A Simiar Suit To That Of Ant-Man That His Protege, Darren Cross (Played By Corey Stoll) Is Making With The Money In His Company, Can Scott Steal The Suit For Hank Before Cross Releases It To The Public?

Let's Find Out As We Watch Ant-Man...

The Film Starts In The Year I Was Born, 1989 As A Young Hank Pym Marches Into The Offices Of The Heads Of S.H.I.E.L.D. Which Includes Peggy Carter (Played By Haley Atwell) Howard Stark (Played By The Guy That Played Him In Iron Man 2, I Don't Know His Name) And Mitchell Carson (Played By Martin Donovan) At The Under Construction Triskellion To Talk With Them About Their Attempt To Replicate His Work Without His Permission...

Despite Peggy Not Knowing Anything About This, Howard And Mitchell Believe That The Pym Particle Is Revolutionary Find And It Belongs To The World And Not Just One Man, This Leads Hank To Resign His Position At S.H.I.E.L.D. And Swear That As Long As He's Alive Nobody Will Get His Pym Particle Formula...

Wow, This Film Could Have Just As Easily Become Ant-Man: The Winter Solider With Howard Stark Just Saying That Line...

But Instead We Cut To Present Day As Scott Lang Gets Out Of Prison And Is Picked Up By His Friend And Partner, Luis (Played By Michael "I'm The Best Part Of This Damn Movie" Pena)

However, Just Because He's Good In These Movies Does Not Mean He Can Replace Ricardo Montellban As Mr. Rourke In Fantasy Island, Blumhouse!

Aside From My Bitterness Over That Movie, Luis Picks Up Scott And Immediately Tells Him About Some People He Met But Not Interested In Doing Another Heist As He's Going Straight For His Daughter, Despite Jobs Not Coming Easy For Ex-Cons...

But Knowing He Has A Masters In Electrical Engineering, He's Like How Hard Could It Be? Turns Out Pretty Hard As The Job He Can Get Is Working At Baskin-Robbins....

Yeah, But It's About To Suck More When The Corporate Heads Of B&R Discover Scott's Criminal Record And Fire Him, Despite His Manager Liking What He Did To Get Thrown In Jail...

Returning To Luis' Apartment, Scott Meets Luis' Friends Kurt And Dave, Who Like What Scott Did As Luis Tells Us That Scott Used To Work For A Company Called Vista That Were Overcharging Their Customers For Millions And He Tried To Tell The Heads Of Vista About This But He Got Fired Instead. So, Scott Hacked Into Their Security System Transferred Back The Funds To The People They Stole It From...

But Not Happy That Luis Is Telling His Life Story To These 2 Guys, Scott Asks What He Wants Which Leads Luis To Tell Him About A Job His Cousin Told Him About But Still Saying He's Out, Luis Drops It...

Meanwhile At Pym Technologies, Hank Pym Arrives To Meet With His Daughter, Hope Van Dyne (Played By Kate From Lost) And His Protege, Darren Cross, Who Makes A Big Announcement That Pym Technologies Is Working A Battlesuit Called The Yellowjacket That Is An All-Purpose Weapon Of War That's Capable Of Altering The Size Of The Wearer For The Ultimate Combat Advantage...

And Despite One Board Member Against It Because Of What Our Enemies Could Do With It, Everyone Seems On Board. Talking With Cross Afterwards, Pym Begs Him Not To Do It Because There's A Reason He Buried These Secrets, But Looking To The Future Of The Company But Not Cross Exits As He Talks With Mitchell Carson About Selling It To Him First...

Going To His Daughter's Birthday Party, Scott Gets An Uncomfortable Welcome From His Ex-Wife (Played By Judy "I'm A Bitch In Everything I'm In" Greer) And Her New Husband (Played By Bobby Cannavale) Who Tell Him To Leave Until He Gets A Job And Can Pay Child Support...

Now, No Offense I Know What Scott Did Was Illegal But In My Opinion What He Did Wasn't Bad Whatsoever, He Stopped A Company That Was Stealing Millions Of Dollars From Alot Of People, Hell, Even The Manager At Baskin-Robbins Called Him A Freaking Hero For What He Did And She Should Know That What He Did Helped Alot Of People...

But No, Instead She's Condemning Him For It And Him A Damn Criminal And For That I Say Screw You, Scott Has Every Right To See His Kid...

Meanwhile At Pym Technologies, Cross Kills The One Board Member That Went Against The Yellowjacket By Using A Gun That Turns Him Into A Miniscule Pile Of Goo...

(Sighs) Yes, Folks This Actually Happens We Have A Gun That Can Turn People Into A Pile Of Goo, What's Next An Alchemy Machine That Can Turn Dog Shit Into Gold?

And Don't Write In The Comments That That Thing Already Exists In Comic Books, I Already Know It Does It's Just The Point Of How Stupid This Is...

Taking Hope Out To Dinner, Her And Cross Talk About How Hank Pym Is A Failure As Both A Father And A Mentor, Before We Cut Back To Scott, Who Decides To Do Luis' Job After Realizing Nothing He Does Will Ever Work Out...

So, Luis Tells Him...

(Start At 0:41, End At 1:54)

So, Getting The Necessary Supplies And Coming With A Plan, They Go To The House, Dealing With The Phones Around The Area And The Alarms In The House They're Breaking Into. But When Scott Reaches The Safe, He Has A Hard Time Breaking Into It...

But With A Little Water And Nitrogen, The Safe Blows Open...

You Bet Your Ass It Rules, Bill Nye...

Going Inside, Scott Finds No Money But He Does Find What He Believes To Be A Motorcycle Suit But Is Really The Ant-Man Suit...

Grabbing The Suit And Getting Out Of What We Realize Is Now Hank Pym's House, They Consider The Heist A Failure And Move On. The Next Morning, Scott Looks At The Suit And The Helmet And Decides To Try It On...

Noticing Buttons On His Hands, Scott Shrinks For The First Time...

(Start At 1:15, End At 3:41)

Freaked Out By What Happened, Scott Returns The Suit To Pym's House Only To Be Arrested By Police, However, While In Jail, He's Visited By Hank Pym Who Says That He's His Lawyer...

Apologizing For Stealing The Suit, Hank Tells Him That He Was The One That Caused Everyone To Give Luis That Tip And That He Has 2 Choices Go To Jail For The Rest Of His Life, Or Wait In His Cell For Further Instructions...

So, Going Back To His Cell, He Waits Until Something Happens Which It Eventually Does When 2 Ants Bring In A Shrunken Ant-Man Suit Only To Make It Large So Scott Can Wear It...

(Start At 0:28, End At 2:41)

Getting Lightheaded, Scott Passes Out...

Waking Up The Next Morning In A Fresh Set Of Clothes, Scott Awakens To See Hope With A Bunch Of Tropical Bullet Ants On The Floor...

Is How A Normal Person Would Probably React...

Saying That Her Father Wants To Talk With Him Downstairs, Scott (When He Stops Being Afraid Of The Ants) Goes Downstairs To Meet With Both Hank And Hope, Who Reveals That She Had Scott Arrested By The Police...

Admitting That He's An Admirer Of Scott's And Really Liking What He Did With Vista Corp And His Vault, Hank Offers Scott A Job To Break Into Pym Technologies, Steal The Yellowjacket And Destroy All The Data After Telling Him About The Pym Particle And Darren Cross And Why It's Important To Stop Him...

Knowing That He's Good But Not That Good, Scott Suggests That They Use Ants Or Call The Avengers To Deal With It But Unfortunately, The Ants Aren't Much Without A Leader And He Doesn't Want The Avengers Involved Because Of Tony Stark And What His Father Did At S.H.I.E.L.D. To Hank Years Ago...

Dropping In On Her Father And Scott, She Tells Them That They Now Have Days As Cross Has Perfected His Formula So Hope Decides That She's Doing It As She Knows The Place Better Than Anybody And She Knows How Cross Thinks But Hank Is Absolutely Against Hope Doing This...

With Scott Asking Why He Doesn't Do This, It's Not Because He's Too Old For This Crap But Because Wearing It Has Taken It's Toll On Him, Thus Scott Is The Only Option Saying That This Is His Chance To Be The Hero His Daughter Thinks He Is...

And So, The Training Begins...

(End At 4:08)

Continuing His Lessons By Introducing Him To The Fire Ants Which He Uses To Get In And Out Of Places And Making Specialized Discs That Make Things Large And Small, Scott Faces One Problem And That's Controlling The Ants...

Running Out Of Patience In Scott's Training, Hope Decides To Leave Only For Scott To Follow Her To Her Car Where She Tells Him That She Only Became Apart Of This For A Chance At Making Peace With Dear Old Dad But She Still Thinks That He Doesn't Trust Her..

(Start At 2:06, End At 2:27)

However, Scott Manages To Convince Hope That Her Father Does Trust Her And The Reason He's Wearing The Suit And Not Her Is Because He's Expendable And Hank Would Rather Lose The Battle With Cross Than Lose Her...

Apologizing For Calling The Police On Him And Asking About His Daughter, Hope Suggests To Focus On Cassie And How Much He Wants To See Her And It Works...

So, Scott Can Now Control The Ants...

Going Back Inside, Hank Finally Opens Up To Both Hope And Scott Telling Them About How His Wife, Janet Who Was His Partner And Hope's Mom Really Died Saying That In 1987 Some Separatists Had Hijacked A Soviet Missile Silo And Launched An ICBM At The United States And The Only Way Into The Internal Mechanics Was Through Solid Titanium...

Damaging His Regulator When Attempting To Shrink Between The Molecules To Disarm The Missile, Janet Sacrificed Herself By Going Subatomic To Disarm The Missile And Save Billions Of Lives...

Saying That He Didn't Tell Her Because He Trying To Protect Her Saying That He Lost Hope's Mom But He Didn't Mean To Lose Her And So With All Forgiven With The Father-Daughter Duo, Training Resumes...

About Getting Everything Down Pat From Jumping Through Keyholes To Working With Ants, The Final Phase Of Scott's Training Commences When Hank And Hope Have Scott Steal A Prototype Signal Decoy To Counteract The Transmission Blockers In Pym Technologies From One Of Howard Stark's Old Storage Facilities Which Just So Happens To Now Be The Avengers Training Ground...

Telling Scott To Abort The Mission, He Tells Them That He Doesn't See Anyone Superpowered On The Ground So Scott Decides To Land On The Roof Only To Run Into The Falcon (Played Again By Anthony Mackie)...

(Start At 0:57, End At 3:31)

Believing That Scott Almost Jeopardized Everything, All Is Forgiven When Scott Gives Hank And Hope The Tech They Want, But Going Out To The Living Room, Hank Finds Darren Cross Waiting To Tell Him That Pym Tech Is About To Become One Of The Most Profitable Operations In The World Because Of The Yellowjacket Suit And He Wants Hank There To See His Moment Of Glory...

As Cross Leaves He Asks Hank What He Saw In Him All Those Years Ago And Why Did He Push Him Away, Hank Says He Saw Himself In Cross, A Little Too Much Of Himself Unfortunately...

Believing That Cross Is Baiting Hank, Hope Suggests Calling It Off But Knowing That There Would Be Risks, Hank Refuses. Getting A Phone Call From Cross Shortly After That, He Tells Hope To Get The Assembly Line Up And Running And States That He's Tripling Security With Full Sensors At All Entrances And Adding Air Vents With Steel Micro-Mesh...

Wondering How They're Going To Get Scott In Now, Scott Suggests Using The Water Vent If They Can Decrease It, But Knowing That Her And Hank Will Be By Cross, Scott Decides To Bring In His Own Team On The Mission, By Making Luis A Security Guard That Will Lower The Water Pressure So Scott Will Be Able To Get In, Having Kurt Hack Into The Power Supply To Kill The Laser Grid And Making Dave The Getaway Guy...

Despite Hank Not Liking This, They're All In As Hope Gets Luis' Credentials In The Pym Tech System. The Next Night, Scott Enters The Sewers Once Luis Is Inside Of Pym Tech. Eventually Lowering The Water Pressure, Scott Manages To Get Into Pym Tech With The Help Of Some Fire Ants To Which He Boards Ant-Thony Afterwards And Takes The Vents...

However When Scott's Ex-Wife's Husband Discovers That Pym Pretended To Be Scott's Lawyer, Him And His Partner Decide To Take Hank Downtown To Question Him, But Before They Can, Dave Steals The Ex-Wife's Husband's Car So Pym Can Enter...

Meanwhile Scott Uses Bullet Ants On A Guard So Luis And Hope Can Enter The Hardware Room To Place The Signal Decoy Inside Of One Of The Server Boxes...

Once Hope Leaves, Scott Moves Into Position To Get The Ants To Fry The Server Boxes So Nothing Can Be Backed Up Before Going To Formula Room To Set Charges To Blow It Up, Only Thing Left Is For Kurt To Shut Down The Security Grid So He Can Grab The Yellowjacket Suit, Which He Manages To Before Him And Dave Are Arrested By Scott's Ex-Wife's Husband...

But As All That Goes Down, Cross Takes Hank And Hope To The Yellowjacket Room Where They Meet With Mitchell Carson Who Is Revealed To Be Working With Hydra Along With Darren...

So, Yeah, When Scott Falls In...

Again Begging Cross Not To Sell To Hydra As If They Get The Weapon, They'll Use It To Spread Their Chaos Across The Globe, Cross Doesn't Care Saying That He'll Sell Them The Suit But Not The Formula...

Telling Carson's Men To Kill Hank, Hope Tries To Convince Cross That The Particle Is Messing With His Brain Chemistry And That It's Not Who He Is But Too Far Gone, Darren Decides To Kill Hank Himself But Not Before Scott Breaks Out And Deals With Carson's Men But It Doesn't Stop Cross From Shooting Hank...

With Cross And Carson Trying To Get Away, Scott Follows Them With Cross' Guards Along The Way While Hope And Hank Escape In A Gigantic Tank Keychain...

(End At 3:33)

Arrested By His Ex Wife's Husband, They Soon Hear Over The Radio Of A Disturbance At The Home Of Scott's Ex-Wife And Daughter...

Yes, It Turns Out Cross Survived Being Zapped By A Bug Zapper And Has Kidnapped Scott's Daughter, Cassie Who Thinks Cross Is A Monster...

(End At 4:34)

But Despite Killing Cross, Scott Went Subatomic But Managing To Find One Big Disc, He Places It Into The Regulator And Becomes Big Once Again, Reuniting With His Daughter...

Letting Scott Go As He Saved Cassie, He Returns To Hank's House Where Hank Asks Him To Explain What He Saw In The Subatomic Realm, But Having No Memory Of The Experience Whatsoever Hank Lets Scott Go So He Can Make Out With Hope As They Start Their Relationship...

Invited Over By His Ex-Wife And Her Husband, They Tell Scott That Any Evidence That He Escaped From Jail Was Somehow Erased So Scott's A Free Guy Now...

But Getting A Call From Luis, He Tells Scott That His Cousin Ignacio Told Him That Some Writer He Met At A Bar Where Stan Lee Is The Bartender...

Stan Lee Cameo!

A Minute There I Thought This Was Going To Be The Only MCU Movie Without A Stan Lee Cameo And (I Know Stan's Dead Now But) I Would Have Loved To See A Show Where Stan Lee Played A Bartender...

Anyway, The Writer Tells Luis' Cousin That Falcon Is Looking For Him, Ending Our Movie...

We Get A Mid-Credits Scene Where Hank Shows Hope An Advanced Prototype Wasp Suit That Both Hank And Janet Worked On Together But Now Hank Realizes That They Weren't Working On It For Janet But For Hope To Someday Follow In Her Mother's Footsteps As The Wasp...

We Get A Preview Of The Next Film, Captain America: Civil War As We See That Cap And Falcon Have Captured Bucky (But None Of That Matters Now As I'm Going To Be Talking About It in The Next Review)

Anyway, That's Ant-Man And It's Okay...

The Story's Interesting And The Characters Are Decently Written However, This Is One Time Where I'll Admit That The Villain Is Okay But Didn't Seem Like A Major Threat Unlike Some Of The Other Films In The MCU But Either Way I Say See It...

Well, With Phase 2 Behind Us Now We Move Onto Phase 3 Next Week With Captain America Civil War, Till Then, This Is Duke, Signing Off...

[gravityofforteana]

(from the article...Monday, November 21, 2011)

It has been about a week and a half since I've been able to post something here, and I apologize. Life has been crowded with certain unusually stressful family care situations, increased UFO book editing pressures, some rare book purchasing, selling the old family house, and generally being gassed. This Little People topic, also, has not lent itself to easy, off-the-top-of-the-head posting. But, one hundred of my case file encounters have now been logged, and I guess, ready or not, I'll unload them. I can't make any good sense out of this topic yet folks, so it's going to be: let it fly, and it's up to you to see if it's of any value to you.

Let's get the boring preliminaries out of the way first. As said, this material comes from my case files collected from published encounter claims over several years of "collecting". As with my UFO files, these cases were not collected systematically, but merely as I ran into them and thought them interesting. The sources are quite varied. About a quarter of this particular hundred were taken off one internet site where people write in their "fairy" claims. About a like number were taken from my "UFO" files, and picked out because they didn't ring particularly true as UFO cases. Others come from books and magazine articles. The only things that they have in common is 1). they struck me as interesting potentially-true encounters; and 2). they seemed to have a "folkloric entity" feeling to them. So, this is entirely idiosyncratic to me and as such hardly "scientific" to start.

The crude data arrays are to the left. The majority of these characters are "smalls" [1 1/2--4 1/2 feet tall]. They are the "Little People" we expect. About a quarter of these are "tinies". They are almost the only critters said to be winged. "Tinkerbells", if you will. They come almost entirely from the internet site "Fairy Encounters", which seems to attract mostly young girls who want to see fairies. I waded through a very large number of these claims some time ago, and weeded out a couple dozen which were reported by adults and seemed to have some redeeming characteristics. There were very few normal sized creatures in this list, and just one, I believe, extremely large one. Perhaps the folkloric big entities are all masquerading as Bigfoot or Nessy-like creatures. Normal-sized humanoids may be shunted off into the "apparitions" category and not make the Faerie listings. There were a few fairyish things which had no entity seen but included for other reasons. [fairy music, etc.]

The files for this hundred are almost entirely 20th-21st century, which is of some interest to me, as it may be saying that the phenomenon continues to today, regardless of being ignored. Had it been true that I had just collected material out of WY Evans-Wentz, Wirth Sikes, or even much of Janet Bord, the previous centuries would have been more widely represented.

As usual, with my language-constricted reading ability, all the citations are in english, and as a consequence, mostly US and UK, in about equal amounts. There are 16% European citations, though, mainly from UFO files. Ireland has very few cites as yet. There should be a few more of those in a second hundred if I ever get it done.

A general comment [therefore not universally true] about states of consciousness: Many cases of Faerie claims occur, as reported, at bedtime, lying down, dreamily staring at something, etc. This phenomenology [in these cases reported upon here] tend to concentrate heavily in the Tinkerbell-type tiny winged fairy reports. Reports of "small" dwarf, leprechaun, gnome, etc sized denizens of Faerie typically do NOT occur in these states of consciousness, but rather "normal" consciousness at least as far as the reports indicate. What this says about reality, I will leave up to you.

Despite my comment about states-of-consciousness and the Fairy Encounters site that I made above, there still were quite a few reports that I found interesting. In VERY truncated form, I'll describe some of them. They will be a selection picked to illustrate a wide range of possible experience. All of these were from the 1970s through to circa 2005. Almost all are from the US with as sprinkling of UK, and one Belgium and Germany. Almost all these stories were written in by the observers when they were much older.

1). Four young girls find tiny footprints in rural Colorado. They make a fairy house to encourage activity. Only a glowing silhouette is seen, and an arrangement of sticks like a person.

2). Three teenage girls were in countryside in Wales to paint landscapes. Saw slim thread with something riding on it. It was a very tiny "egg" within which was a "man" with a purple-colored dwarf's hat apparently joy-riding the "egg" as a minicraft. Two of the girls drew the same thing separately.

3). Two girls were playing in the backyard at night. A "firefly" showed up. It turned out to look like Tinkerbell and it stayed briefly, smiling, and assuring the girls not to be afraid.

4). One girl used to sit out in nature a lot, and built fairy houses. Nothing for a very long time. One day she saw a rainbow-colored glowing tiny winged creature flying around where she usually sat. It stayed there a while, the two looking at one another.

5). A girl and her brother were out to play in nearby woods. He ran off to pick apples. She just sat, not going after him, picking flowers. In one flower a flutterbye [I refuse to use the modern degradation "butterfly"] flew out and danced away. It appeared as a tiny fairy. It led her on until disappearing. There was her brother fallen from a tree and unconscious. She stopped the bleeding in his head. They rested and got back home safely.

6). Two guys decided to go fairy-hunting in a place deemed likely by others [one of the reasons that I am particularly suspicious of this one]. They go to a rural cemetery just as dusk falls. This reminds me of knuckleheads looking for trouble, but OK. There they are hiding behind cover in order not to be spotted by police when they saw a rapidly dancing 5" high person. It danced continuously for 5 minutes and disappeared. Making ready to leave, they found that somehow they were at the very opposite end of the cemetery with no recollection of having gotten there [this is the element of this that I found interesting enough to include this one]. This constituted a ten minute run to get back to where their car was. There are plenty of reasons to discard things like this, but the reporter didn't make himself sound too flattering in his tale, and the spatial slip is reminiscent of the Irish concept of the "Stray Sod".

7). A woman told of constantly finding that things were "going missing" and then reappearing later exactly where they should have been and where she had looked for them [thoroughly] . She attributed this to fairy-tricksters of some kind [never saw them] and finally began to just say "Come on you guys this isn't funny anymore!" and the item would pop up soon thereafter. "Fairy" or not, this phenomenon is all over the literature [usually buried under Poltergeist phenomena] and I have a sister who is burdened with these same sorts of temporary diversions.

8). A girl living in the English countryside regularly visited a friend and experienced the beautiful garden there. She began to sketch a flower when a flutterbye landed on it. But it wasn't a flutterbye afterall but rather a golden miniature person [female] with wings. It left the flower and flew up and posed a few inches from her face. Then it flew up and away. No one believed her, but she returned often hoping to see another, which she never did.

9). Two girls used to play in the woods when they began to tell one another that they thought they were seeing creatures out of the corners of their eyes and then retreating behind the trees when the girls would turn on them. Unlike other claims on this site, these were "smalls", and the girls compared them to "Santa's Elves" in size. While this would go on, the environment would be like a dreamy, fuzzy state, which would snap back to "hard reality" only once they got back home and inside.

10). A teenage girl [16] was walking down a country lane when she saw a flutterbye-sized tiny girl with wings singing beautifully while seated on a hedge. She flew up and beyond the hedge not to be seen again. The 21-year-old reporter never told anyone of this due to not wanting to be mocked.

11). An 11 year old girl was upstairs in her home while her parents held a party downstairs. Watching the raindrops on her window, she saw within one a tiny almost see-through female playing inside the drop. After a while, she decided to try to get her Mom to see it too, but the fairy disappeared. The reporter was 38 at the time of the telling.

12). A woman was sitting on the edge of her bed in a dimly lit room. Then time/action seemed to slow down and small half-inch diameter balls of light of different colors began manifesting. She was able to concentrate on one which was quite nearby. It was a tiny winged creature fluttering so rapidly that you could not resolve exactly its appearance, and whose motions gave it the more distant impression of being a ball-of-light. She felt that this went on for perhaps twenty seconds, but the rate of time made it seem much longer.

13). A young man was walking his girl in a "romantic" forest setting. They heard a strange language-like cry, and suddenly were no longer on their forest path. The environment was wrong, now featuring water-sounds burbling on rocks. They turned and were confronted by a beautiful normal-sized girl all dressed in green. She then turned into a green ball-of-light and flew off. They had to walk a ways to get back to the path leading to their house.

14). Four people in a temporary house [a camper] were outside watching a meteor shower, when two retired to bed. The other two, mother and daughter, stayed up with the family dog. The dog began barking at the back gate. Mother and daughter turned to see a large ball of white light about 20 feet from the gate. It disappeared while they ran in to wake up the father. They interpreted this as a fairy lightball.

15). Two boys and their dog were in the woods camping. The dog ran off. One boy followed. He heard beautiful music and looked to see two-inch tall men and women with wings doing the singing and partying. Shortly thereafter his friend arrived and watched too. Then after ten minutes of this, the dog came romping out of the woods barking. The fairies immediately disappeared. The next morning the friend described everything he had seen, but said that it happened in his dream.

16). Two young women [sisters] were home alone baking cookies. As they looked out their window, a small man looking like a "leprechaun" but not dressed in green, floated up over their neighbor's fence riding on what looked like a motorcycle. It raced across their yard and floated up over the next fence and away.

17). A young man and woman were driving in a scenic hilly area. They saw a large ball of white light, which disappeared into the woods. They got out and looked for it in vain. All they heard was some giggling. They continued their drive and there again was the light; this time in the middle of the road. He couldn't stop and went right over it. They stopped and jumped out. Looking under their truck, there was the ball of light making giggling noises. Apparently it then went safely away, as the young woman expressed her relief that the playful fairy/lightball was unharmed.

18). A young man at a time just prior to Halloween, had heard some tiny playful giggling in his garden which he couldn't locate. Then just on or right after Halloween, he and a friend saw two bluish glittering winged figures. They were nearly transparent as if made of gas. These two experiences tripped off memories of him having a childhood "imaginary playmate" whom he hadn't remembered in years. The imaginary playmate had been a fairy.

19). A girl was in her bedroom on a full Moon night staring out the window. Into the yard came a fuzzy figure made of light. It was a woman in a silvery long gown with bright golden hair and a crown. She was winged with glittering diaphanous silver. She stopped, looked at the Moon, turned into a ball of silvery light, and disappeared. The woman, in her thirties when she reported this, stated that she didn't know whether to call her encounter as being with a fairy, a ghost, or an angel.

20). A young person [sex not determinable from the report] was unable to sleep one night, and had an odd urging to get up and go outside. Once there, the urge continued and the witness was almost put to the ground without willing it. Immediately, Alice-in-Wonderland-like, the grass seemed growing tall all around [as the person shrunk]. A large group of fairy personages came talking and smiling and circling about. They then suddenly scattered away [the person had a blade of grass laid over one hand completely covering it]. Increasing to normal size, the witness wondered if it was just a dream. In that hand was grasped a small blade of grass. Once back in the bedroom, the brother said that he had watched it all from the window.

So be it to give you a largish dose of modern alleged fairy sightings. Note that there is quite a bit of scope phenomenologically here, but not far outside the expectations of a Fairylore sighting. I, as a UFO researcher, find the frequency of Ball-of-Light phenomena interesting, especially as many of these things found in UFO files don't sound very UFO-like. Also, though this is a "Fairy" website, one expects "Tinkerbells" but one also gets several larger critters. The majority of these things happen outside in woods or garden settings, or looking out one's window into a yard or garden. The changed environment cases smack of various forms of the OZ Effect in UFOlogy. Poltergeist phenomena and apparitional things seem to crop up. The Realm of Fairy, in fact, threatens to expand to potentially contain many other paranormal claims. These cases as presented also have a very powerful gender slant to them, which speaks to a strong sociological filter. Doubtless it is OK for girls to report fairies but not guys. Guys of course can make up for this by reporting Bigfoot.

[networkingdefinition]

Health Food Quotes

Official Website: Health Food Quotes

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• After examining some of the recent cases which the Postal Service has pursued, vigorous prosecution of, for example, a health food advocate. – Vin Weber • Being a vegan is pretty easy these days, as almost every town and city has health food stores and vegetarian-friendly restaurants. – Moby • Books are health food for your brain and dessert for your soul. Books are one of the few proven sources of mental exercise known to man. Reading is a workout for your mind. If your body needs thirty minutes of exercise a day, so does your thinker. – Pat Williams • Even in the old days, we’d make an effort. When I’d go out to score on Eighth Avenue, I’d get my junk and a chocolate doughnut. But I’d always also pick up one of those pita-pocket health food sandwiches. You know, something really good for me. – Steven Tyler

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jQuery(document).ready(function($) var data = action: 'polyxgo_products_search', type: 'Product', keywords: 'Food', orderby: 'rand', order: 'DESC', template: '1', limit: '24', columns: '4', viewall:'Shop All', ; jQuery.post(spyr_params.ajaxurl,data, function(response) var obj = jQuery.parseJSON(response); jQuery('#thelovesof_food').html(obj); jQuery('#thelovesof_food img.swiper-lazy:not(.swiper-lazy-loaded)' ).each(function () var img = jQuery(this); img.attr("src",img.data('src')); img.addClass( 'swiper-lazy-loaded' ); img.removeAttr('data-src'); ); ); ); • Food movement organic food stores supplies health food products and facilitate with instrumental support in organic agriculture. – Tony Benn • Half the people I look who are health food addicts look sickly to me. Let’s start taxing health food. Somebody force a burger down some of these people’s jaw because they look a little pale and wan to me. – Dennis Miller • He was chugging brown pop from a can Jack had handed him while he stuffed nacho cheese Doritos in his face. I was glad to see he looked lots better, almost completely like himself, which proves Doritos and brown pop really are health foods. – P. C. Cast • Health food makes me sick. – Calvin Trillin • Health food may be good for the conscience but Oreos taste a hell of a lot better. – Robert Redford • Health food shops can make people feel very important; it’s like a brand new religion with people trying to convert you to quinoa. – Pippa Evans • Health food would seem healthier if the people that sold it looked less unhealthy. – Dov Davidoff • Health foods make promises that only the Second Coming could fulfill. – Mason Cooley • I believe we can create a truly humane, sustainable, and health food production system without killing any animals. I imagine a revolution in veganic agriculture in which small farmers grow a variety of vegetables, fruits, grains, and legumes, all fertilized with vegetable sources. – Gene Baur • I couldn’t get away with Halloween pranks ’cause my parents owned the health food store. So, it was so easy to bust me. I was the only kid on the block egging houses with those big ‘ole brown eggs. Like, you didn’t have to be a detective to figure it out. ‘Oh, I wonder who Tofuttied my mailbox. Is it the same evil genius who filled my bird bath with Rice Dream? – Arj Barker • I had a job at a movie theater for like a year and a half and then a job at a health food store for like two years. Those were the only two jobs I ever had. – Reggie Watts • I have to say that being a vegan in 1986 or whenever was a lot different than being a vegan in 2012. You’d go to health foods stores and basically your choice was between Mung beans and nutritional yeast, and that’s about it. – Moby • I took the stool next to him, raising an eyebrow at the coffee and cruller on the counter. “Thought you weren’t into internal pollution,” I said. Lately Ranger’d been on a health food thing. “Props,” Ranger told me. “Didn’t want to look out of place.” I didn’t want to burst his fantasy bubble, but the only time Ranger wouldn’t look out of place would be standing in a lineup between Rambo and Batman. – Janet Evanovich • I used to work at a health food store. I got fired for drinking straight Bosco on the job. – Steven Wright • I worked in a health food store once. A guy asked me, ‘If I melt dry ice, can I take a bath without getting wet? – Steven Wright • In my own life, I decided to leave meat off my plate in medical school, but was a bit slow to realise that dairy products and eggs are not health foods either. – Neal Barnard • Just because you take gluten out of something doesn’t make it a health food. – Chris Mohr • Most of the human body disease such as Obesity, Cancer, Heart disease are linked with our food which we eat in our day to day life. If people are eating health food than how come there be more than 50% death from heart and cancer disease alone in a developed nation such as USA? – Subodh Gupta • Older people shouldn’t eat health food, they need all the preservatives they can get. – Robert Orben • Organic Oreos are not a health food. When Coca-Cola begins selling organic Coke, as it surely will, the company will have struck a blow for the environment perhaps, but not for our health. Most consumers automatically assume that the word “organic” is synomymous with health, but it makes no difference to your insulin metabolism if the high-fructose corn syrup in your soda is organic. – Michael Pollan • People who shop in health food stores never look healthy. – Amy Sedaris • Saw a man in Whole Foods yelling at his son, What are you doing?! You know I don’t eat bread!! Is there such a thing as health food abuse? – Bob Saget • Some breakfast food manufacturer hit upon the simple notion of emptying out the leavings of carthorse nose bags, adding a few other things like unconsumed portions of chicken layer’s mash, and the sweepings of racing stables, packing the mixture in little bags and selling them in health food shops. – Frank Muir • The FDA and much, but not all, of the orthodox medical profession are actively hostile against vitamins and minerals… They are out to get the health food industry…And they are trying to do this out of active hostility and prejudice. – William Proxmire • The forces of safety are afoot in the land. I, for one, believe it is a conspiracy – a conspiracy of Safety Nazis shouting “Sieg Health” and seeking to trammel freedom, liberty, and large noisy parties. The Safety Nazis advocate gun control, vigorous exercise, and health foods. The result can only be a disarmed, exhausted, and half-starved population ready to acquiesce to dictatorship of some kind. – P. J. O’Rourke • The magazine at the health food store said, Stop Aging! Isn’t that what death is for? Trust me, we’re all gonna stop aging. – Dana Gould • The oat is the Horatio Alger of cereals, which progressed, if not from rags to riches, at least from weed to health food. – Waverley Root • The shops in High Street still have their metal grilles down, blank-eyed and sleeping. My name is scrawled across them all. I’m outside Ajay’s newsagent’s. I’m on the expensive shutters of the health food store. I’m massive on Handie’s furniture shop, King’s Chicken Joint and the Barbecue Cafe. I thread the pavement outside the bank and all the way to Mothercare. I’ve possessed the road and am a glistening circle at the roundabout. – Jenny Downham • There are so many health food nuts out there that eat nothing but natural foods but they don’t exercise and they look terrible. – Jack LaLanne • Yes, I like Pina Coladas, and getting caught in the rain. I’m not much into health food, I am into Champagne. – Rupert Holmes

[clickbank-storefront-bestselling]

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jQuery(document).ready(function($) var data = action: 'polyxgo_products_search', type: 'Product', keywords: 'u', orderby: 'rand', order: 'DESC', template: '1', limit: '4', columns: '4', viewall:'Shop All', ; jQuery.post(spyr_params.ajaxurl,data, function(response) var obj = jQuery.parseJSON(response); jQuery('#thelovesof_u').html(obj); jQuery('#thelovesof_u img.swiper-lazy:not(.swiper-lazy-loaded)' ).each(function () var img = jQuery(this); img.attr("src",img.data('src')); img.addClass( 'swiper-lazy-loaded' ); img.removeAttr('data-src'); ); ); );

jQuery(document).ready(function($) var data = action: 'polyxgo_products_search', type: 'Product', keywords: 'y', orderby: 'rand', order: 'DESC', template: '1', limit: '4', columns: '4', viewall:'Shop All', ; jQuery.post(spyr_params.ajaxurl,data, function(response) var obj = jQuery.parseJSON(response); jQuery('#thelovesof_y').html(obj); jQuery('#thelovesof_y img.swiper-lazy:not(.swiper-lazy-loaded)' ).each(function () var img = jQuery(this); img.attr("src",img.data('src')); img.addClass( 'swiper-lazy-loaded' ); img.removeAttr('data-src'); ); ); );

[equitiesstocks]

Health Food Quotes

Official Website: Health Food Quotes

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• After examining some of the recent cases which the Postal Service has pursued, vigorous prosecution of, for example, a health food advocate. – Vin Weber • Being a vegan is pretty easy these days, as almost every town and city has health food stores and vegetarian-friendly restaurants. – Moby • Books are health food for your brain and dessert for your soul. Books are one of the few proven sources of mental exercise known to man. Reading is a workout for your mind. If your body needs thirty minutes of exercise a day, so does your thinker. – Pat Williams • Even in the old days, we’d make an effort. When I’d go out to score on Eighth Avenue, I’d get my junk and a chocolate doughnut. But I’d always also pick up one of those pita-pocket health food sandwiches. You know, something really good for me. – Steven Tyler

jQuery(document).ready(function($) var data = action: 'polyxgo_products_search', type: 'Product', keywords: 'Health+Food', orderby: 'rand', order: 'DESC', template: '1', limit: '24', columns: '4', viewall:'Shop All', ; jQuery.post(spyr_params.ajaxurl,data, function(response) var obj = jQuery.parseJSON(response); jQuery('#thelovesof_health-food').html(obj); jQuery('#thelovesof_health-food img.swiper-lazy:not(.swiper-lazy-loaded)' ).each(function () var img = jQuery(this); img.attr("src",img.data('src')); img.addClass( 'swiper-lazy-loaded' ); img.removeAttr('data-src'); ); ); );

jQuery(document).ready(function($) var data = action: 'polyxgo_products_search', type: 'Product', keywords: 'Health', orderby: 'rand', order: 'DESC', template: '1', limit: '24', columns: '4', viewall:'Shop All', ; jQuery.post(spyr_params.ajaxurl,data, function(response) var obj = jQuery.parseJSON(response); jQuery('#thelovesof_health').html(obj); jQuery('#thelovesof_health img.swiper-lazy:not(.swiper-lazy-loaded)' ).each(function () var img = jQuery(this); img.attr("src",img.data('src')); img.addClass( 'swiper-lazy-loaded' ); img.removeAttr('data-src'); ); ); );

jQuery(document).ready(function($) var data = action: 'polyxgo_products_search', type: 'Product', keywords: 'Food', orderby: 'rand', order: 'DESC', template: '1', limit: '24', columns: '4', viewall:'Shop All', ; jQuery.post(spyr_params.ajaxurl,data, function(response) var obj = jQuery.parseJSON(response); jQuery('#thelovesof_food').html(obj); jQuery('#thelovesof_food img.swiper-lazy:not(.swiper-lazy-loaded)' ).each(function () var img = jQuery(this); img.attr("src",img.data('src')); img.addClass( 'swiper-lazy-loaded' ); img.removeAttr('data-src'); ); ); ); • Food movement organic food stores supplies health food products and facilitate with instrumental support in organic agriculture. – Tony Benn • Half the people I look who are health food addicts look sickly to me. Let’s start taxing health food. Somebody force a burger down some of these people’s jaw because they look a little pale and wan to me. – Dennis Miller • He was chugging brown pop from a can Jack had handed him while he stuffed nacho cheese Doritos in his face. I was glad to see he looked lots better, almost completely like himself, which proves Doritos and brown pop really are health foods. – P. C. Cast • Health food makes me sick. – Calvin Trillin • Health food may be good for the conscience but Oreos taste a hell of a lot better. – Robert Redford • Health food shops can make people feel very important; it’s like a brand new religion with people trying to convert you to quinoa. – Pippa Evans • Health food would seem healthier if the people that sold it looked less unhealthy. – Dov Davidoff • Health foods make promises that only the Second Coming could fulfill. – Mason Cooley • I believe we can create a truly humane, sustainable, and health food production system without killing any animals. I imagine a revolution in veganic agriculture in which small farmers grow a variety of vegetables, fruits, grains, and legumes, all fertilized with vegetable sources. – Gene Baur • I couldn’t get away with Halloween pranks ’cause my parents owned the health food store. So, it was so easy to bust me. I was the only kid on the block egging houses with those big ‘ole brown eggs. Like, you didn’t have to be a detective to figure it out. ‘Oh, I wonder who Tofuttied my mailbox. Is it the same evil genius who filled my bird bath with Rice Dream? – Arj Barker • I had a job at a movie theater for like a year and a half and then a job at a health food store for like two years. Those were the only two jobs I ever had. – Reggie Watts • I have to say that being a vegan in 1986 or whenever was a lot different than being a vegan in 2012. You’d go to health foods stores and basically your choice was between Mung beans and nutritional yeast, and that’s about it. – Moby • I took the stool next to him, raising an eyebrow at the coffee and cruller on the counter. “Thought you weren’t into internal pollution,” I said. Lately Ranger’d been on a health food thing. “Props,” Ranger told me. “Didn’t want to look out of place.” I didn’t want to burst his fantasy bubble, but the only time Ranger wouldn’t look out of place would be standing in a lineup between Rambo and Batman. – Janet Evanovich • I used to work at a health food store. I got fired for drinking straight Bosco on the job. – Steven Wright • I worked in a health food store once. A guy asked me, ‘If I melt dry ice, can I take a bath without getting wet? – Steven Wright • In my own life, I decided to leave meat off my plate in medical school, but was a bit slow to realise that dairy products and eggs are not health foods either. – Neal Barnard • Just because you take gluten out of something doesn’t make it a health food. – Chris Mohr • Most of the human body disease such as Obesity, Cancer, Heart disease are linked with our food which we eat in our day to day life. If people are eating health food than how come there be more than 50% death from heart and cancer disease alone in a developed nation such as USA? – Subodh Gupta • Older people shouldn’t eat health food, they need all the preservatives they can get. – Robert Orben • Organic Oreos are not a health food. When Coca-Cola begins selling organic Coke, as it surely will, the company will have struck a blow for the environment perhaps, but not for our health. Most consumers automatically assume that the word “organic” is synomymous with health, but it makes no difference to your insulin metabolism if the high-fructose corn syrup in your soda is organic. – Michael Pollan • People who shop in health food stores never look healthy. – Amy Sedaris • Saw a man in Whole Foods yelling at his son, What are you doing?! You know I don’t eat bread!! Is there such a thing as health food abuse? – Bob Saget • Some breakfast food manufacturer hit upon the simple notion of emptying out the leavings of carthorse nose bags, adding a few other things like unconsumed portions of chicken layer’s mash, and the sweepings of racing stables, packing the mixture in little bags and selling them in health food shops. – Frank Muir • The FDA and much, but not all, of the orthodox medical profession are actively hostile against vitamins and minerals… They are out to get the health food industry…And they are trying to do this out of active hostility and prejudice. – William Proxmire • The forces of safety are afoot in the land. I, for one, believe it is a conspiracy – a conspiracy of Safety Nazis shouting “Sieg Health” and seeking to trammel freedom, liberty, and large noisy parties. The Safety Nazis advocate gun control, vigorous exercise, and health foods. The result can only be a disarmed, exhausted, and half-starved population ready to acquiesce to dictatorship of some kind. – P. J. O’Rourke • The magazine at the health food store said, Stop Aging! Isn’t that what death is for? Trust me, we’re all gonna stop aging. – Dana Gould • The oat is the Horatio Alger of cereals, which progressed, if not from rags to riches, at least from weed to health food. – Waverley Root • The shops in High Street still have their metal grilles down, blank-eyed and sleeping. My name is scrawled across them all. I’m outside Ajay’s newsagent’s. I’m on the expensive shutters of the health food store. I’m massive on Handie’s furniture shop, King’s Chicken Joint and the Barbecue Cafe. I thread the pavement outside the bank and all the way to Mothercare. I’ve possessed the road and am a glistening circle at the roundabout. – Jenny Downham • There are so many health food nuts out there that eat nothing but natural foods but they don’t exercise and they look terrible. – Jack LaLanne • Yes, I like Pina Coladas, and getting caught in the rain. I’m not much into health food, I am into Champagne. – Rupert Holmes

[clickbank-storefront-bestselling]

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[kj1966-blog]

https://www.bloomberg.com

Goldman Thinks This Fed Meeting May Not Be a Sleeper After All

Far from being a complete non-event, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. expects a slightly hawkish upgrade of language at the Federal Reserve meeting this week, slated to be Janet Yellen’s last.

“We expect the FOMC to issue a generally upbeat post-meeting statement that includes an upgrade to the balance of risks and a slightly hawkish rewording of the inflation assessment,” Goldman economists led by Jan Hatzius wrote in a note dated Saturday. “Taken together, we believe the tone of the statement will be consistent with a hike at the March meeting, barring a sharp weakening in economic conditions.”

Inflation remains below target, but measures of it have firmed recently and “we think many Committee members will view the core inflation rebound in recent months as additional evidence that last year’s shortfall largely reflected temporary, idiosyncratic factors,” the report said.

Goldman Thinks This Fed Meeting May Not Be a Sleeper After All

The economists also see the risks to the economic outlook changed to “balanced” from “roughly balanced.”

“In our view, the ‘roughly balanced’ verbiage in the December statement was already somewhat stale, particularly when viewed in the context of the minutes’ upbeat growth commentary and risk assessment,” they said. “Public remarks since that meeting bolster the case for an upgrade, and by our count, at least half of the Committee has recently referenced upside risks to growth.”

Continue reading

  The 6 Things to Watch in This Week’s Fed Meeting

The Federal Open Market Committee meeting this week is likely to reinforce the baseline expectation of three hikes this year thanks to a more upbeat outlook for the U.S. and global economies, and somewhat diminished concern about “lowflation.”

Her last meeting.  Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg

Specifically:

Rather than be deterred by the headline miss on the first estimate of fourth-quarter gross domestic product growth reported Jan. 26, Fed officials are likely to welcome the data’s relatively strong internals, particularly those regarding investment and consumption. Indeed, the latest numbers will be seen as adding to a more general string of solid economic reports, both for the U.S. and for the rest of the world.

This synchronized pickup in global growth, along with increased comfort with the inflation dynamics, will solidify the previous baseline guidance of three 25-basis-points hikes in 2018, with the first likely to take place in March. The recent depreciation of the dollar also contributes to this outlook. Indeed, compared with last year, market and Fed expectations for the annual path of rate hikes are on track for a much earlier convergence.

Although some observers and market participants may also be tempted to alter the balance of risks to the upside — that is, to expect four rather than two hikes in the event the current baseline fails to materialize — the Fed will see the two-sided risks as balanced for now.

There is unlikely to be anything new or notable about the balance-sheet reduction plan. The previously announced timeline won’t be revised or even highlighted in any major way. Meanwhile, more general exploratory discussions about frameworks and targets are likely to proceed gradually, with the aim of ensuring continued effective baseline management and exploring contingencies, resilience and reactions in the event of unanticipated adverse shocks.

With a successful steady-as-it goes monetary policy in the U.S., more attention will need to be devoted to the economic and market impact, including on U.S. interest rates and other market valuations, of the actions likely to be taken this year by the Bank of Japan and the European Central Bank in response to better-than-anticipated developments in their economies. But Fed deliberations on these matters are unlikely to be publicized in any notable fashion.

Finally, this will be Chair Janet Yellen’s last FOMC meeting, and she is likely to receive lots of accolades from her colleagues. Working collaboratively and effectively with other Fed governors and regional presidents, she has engineered an ongoing “beautiful normalization” — that is, a gradual, cautious and sequential exit from years of unconventional monetary policies that have neither disrupted markets nor derailed growth. The new Fed chair, Jerome Powell, is well placed to build on and successfully extend this achievement.

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Liam Fox Says It’s ‘Foolish’ to Challenge Embattled May

Theresa May is fighting on multiple fronts as critics inside her governing Conservative Party threaten to upend her plans for Brexit and even her premiership.

But in a key intervention Liam Fox, an ardent supporter of Brexit and her international trade secretary, had a message for Tories thinking of calling for a no-confidence vote in May’s leadership: “They would be foolish to do anything to destabilise the government and the prime minister. Nothing will change the electoral arithmetic.” Tories only have a working majority in Parliament thanks to the Democratic Unionist Party.

Liam Fox Photographer: Luke MacGregor/Bloomberg

The government has been given the task of delivering Brexit and “the prime minister has shown the resilience” to do the job,” Fox said in an interview. “Ultimately we have to get an agreement that will please different wings of the Conservative Party but most importantly that is good for the country.”

May’s party is split over how to leave the European Union as time runs out for finalizing the U.K.’s policy. Opponents of retaining EU trade rules after a divorce want her to fire Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond, who they say is trying to deny them the clean, quick break they want.

Some Conservative lawmakers complain she’s failing to show leadership, amid media reports that they are poised to try to trigger a vote of no confidence in the prime minister. Even U.S. President Donald Trump offered a critical assessment of May’s handling of Brexit, saying in an interview broadcast at the weekend he’d have taken a “tougher stand” with the EU.

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When Russian Officials ‘Nightmare’ Your Business, You Can Lose Everything—Even Your Life

If a well-connected rival wants somebody’s law practice or tech startup, there’s a fair chance he can get it. Here’s the latest twist on these assaults.

Late last year, Moscow news media reported that an armed man had taken hostages at a candy factory in the city and killed a guard. The alleged shooter turned out to be a former owner of the factory, still fighting for control of it. He told Business FM before his arrest that he was resisting a raid staged by law enforcement agents to seize the business. In court, he said he had killed the guard in self-defence. He is now in remand prison, or pre-trial detention, pending the results of an investigation.

Ruslan Telkov outside the prison where he was detained for “violating the authors’ rights of leopards” by using their skin pattern in the furniture upholstery he manufactured. Photographer: Misha Friedman for Bloomberg

His claims struck a chord in Russia, where innumerable business owners, company managers, lawyers and other professionals have spent years in detention and lost their assets, their health or even their lives to a widespread culture of prosecutorial excess.

One spent a year in prison accused of stealing the intellectual property of leopards by using their skin pattern in the furniture upholstery he made; he lost $360,000, by his count, including his business. Another, a contractor named Andrey Kleshchin, was just released from a year’s confinement in his apartment, where he was banned from using the telephone or the internet.

“But the most unbearable thing is to watch my business, which I had built over the years, being destroyed,” Kleshchin wrote in response to questions passed to him by his lawyer.

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Workers say they warned Amtrak before deadly crash

By Scott Bronstein, Drew Griffin and Collette Richards, CNN Investigates

Updated 1922 GMT (0322 HKT) January 28, 2018

Portland, Oregon (CNN)In the days before Amtrak 501 careened off the tracks last month in a deadly crash, engineers and conductors warned their supervisors that they did not feel adequately trained on the new route, according to more than a dozen sources.

Several train cars flew off an overpass, landing on Interstate 5 in the December 18 accident near DuPont, Washington, which left three dead and more than 100 injured. At the time, Amtrak 501 was making its inaugural journey of a new Seattle-to-Portland run called the Point Defiance Bypass route.

  Workers say they warned Amtrak before deadly crash

  Engineers and conductors had safety concerns, citing rushed and “totally inadequate” training which left them feeling dangerously unprepared for the new route, according to multiple sources, including several directly involved in the training. Crew members traditionally train on new routes to familiarize themselves with the signs, terrain and other physical characteristics which vary from route to route.

Some training runs were performed at night, with as many as six or more crew members stuffed into cars with just three seats, which meant some trainees rode backwards, in the dark, the sources said. Engineers felt they did not get enough practice runs at the controls and could not properly see to familiarize themselves with the route.

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  NEWS SUMMARY. 29TH JAN 2018/KUALA LUMPUR TIME/UTC/GMT +8 hours: Goldman Thinks This Fed Meeting May Not Be a Sleeper After All. … The 6 Things to Watch in This Week’s Fed Meeting. … Liam Fox Says It’s ‘Foolish’ to Challenge Embattled May. … When Russian Officials ‘Nightmare’ Your Business, You Can Lose Everything—Even Your Life. … Workers say they warned Amtrak before deadly crash Goldman Thinks This Fed Meeting May Not Be a Sleeper After All Far from being a complete non-event, Goldman Sachs Group Inc.

[silviajburke]

The Donald’s Seinfeld Tax Plan – A Big Show About Nothing

This post The Donald’s Seinfeld Tax Plan – A Big Show About Nothing appeared first on Daily Reckoning.

Someone should remind the Donald that he actually is President and that it’s high time he accomplished something. Anything.

Back on April 21st, for example, he promised that a core feature of his platform — a sweeping, pro-jobs tax reduction — would be soon unveiled.

Trump said the tax reform package will be introduced on “Wednesday or shortly thereafter,” just before his 100th day in office. While the president would not reveal details about the tax plan, he did say that the cuts will be “bigger I believe than any tax cut ever.”

Well, we’ve passed the eighteenth Wednesday since that promise. What was actually delivered back then, of course, was a one-page statement of vague principles, fond aspirations and apple pie.

So in Springfield, Missouri this week, the Donald is launched tax reform efforts again. And yet again the White House spin brigade has already made clear that it’s all about tone, not substance.

That is, he will orate about tax fairness and closing loopholes, but not name any. He will promise big rate reductions but not say how big and for whom. He will promise to liberate jobs by slashing the corporate tax rate without explaining exactly why that will result in more jobs rather than more stock buybacks. And there were no numbers about how the implied trillions of revenue lost over the next decade will be paid for.

Instead, Donald puckered himself up into a meld of Huey Long and Jack Kemp while preaching up a storm in favor of the “little guy”. A reference to the average worker who purportedly is being crushed by the Federal income tax and who gets tangled in the complexity of the IRS code without a high-priced tax lawyer alongside loophole-savvy financial advisors.

Accordingly, the Donald is going to “unrig” the tax code for these little guys, thereby keeping faith with the millions of dispossessed citizens of Flyover America who voted for him last November.

Except that narrative is essentially nonsense. This isn’t 1981. There is no raging inflation and bracket creep propelling the middle class into tax tyranny. In fact, owing to indexing and large increases in the standard deduction and personal exemption over the last 35 years, the income tax has essentially morphed into a Rich Man’s Levy.

The Donald’s song and dance about tax simplification and reduction comes right out of the well-thumbed GOP hymnal. It speaks little to the blue collar folks — in places like the western Pennsylvania steel country, industrial Ohio, the Michigan auto belt and the manufacturing towns of Wisconsin and Iowa — who on the margin accounted for his electoral college victory.

The Donald, Tax Plan Rhetoric and the Gong Show

Trump’s tax reform airball will promise to make filing with the IRS more palatable to tens of millions of citizens who, apparently, find it inconvenient to shell out $25 to file their Federal income tax return with TurboTax.

Among the 148 million income tax filers, the bottom 53 million owed zero taxes in the most recent year (2014), and the bottom half (74 million) paid an aggregate total of just $45 billion. That amounted to just $8 per week per filer.

If you take all filers with AGI (adjusted gross income) under $100,000 per year, you end up with 122 million taxpayers or 83% of the total. Upwards of 85% of this group uses the standard deduction. So they are not caught up at all in the puzzle palace of IRS code that the Donald denounces.

The 122 million taxpayers — who make ends meet on less than $100,000 of income — paid a total of just $278 billion in income taxes during 2014. That was just 6.5% of their $4.3 trillion of AGI.

To be very clear, there was still $4 trillion left in the collective pockets of these 122 million taxpayers — even after the IRS had its way with them!

Even if a Keynesian demand side tax cut was a good idea, which it isn’t, the fact is there is not much more that could be put “back in their pockets” by income tax cuts.

The truth is that the Laffer Curve has gone missing. At average tax rates of under 7%, the bulk of US wage and salary workers (83%) are not facing prohibitive disincentives to work or production.

By contrast, the top 4% or 6.2 million filers paid $802 billion in Federal income taxes. That amounted to nearly 58% of total Federal income tax payments, and resulted in an average tax rate of 24% on the group’s $3.3 trillion of AGI.

That’s not to object to putting some of that $802 billion back into the pockets of the top 4%. Many of them are small businessmen and the proverbial” job-creators” who make the economy grow, and who also file sub-chapter S business taxes. But incentivizing the job creators in this manner should not be financed on the backs of future taxpayers via borrowing. It must be paid for with spending cuts as a first resort, and less onerous taxes — such as consumption taxes or VAT (if necessary).

The Fed vs Trump’s Tax Plan

The Fed has generated such gigantic financial bubbles and caused all financial assets to become so massively overvalued that incentives for the rich are not really in short supply.

Federal Reserve Chair, Janet Yellen and the other Keynesian economists on the Fed have generated more “trickle-down” wealth and rewards than the Gipper could ever have imagined back in 1981. The $45 trillion in household wealth gains since the 2009 bottom vastly overshadows any possible benefits from lower tax rates, even at the top of the income ladder.

Even Trump’s Goldman duo of Gary Cohn and Steven Mnuchin are saying that there will be no “net cut” for the top tier of households.

If the bottom 83% don’t pay much tax in the first place, and if the top 4% who pay most of the taxes are not to be indulged for social policy/equity purposes, what’s the point of the whole income tax cut charade?

The Goldman geniuses are chasing themselves in a circle trying to cut the rates and broaden the base. But what it actually amounts to is amateurish stumbling around the K-Street corridor where every single “loophole” they propose to close is shot down.

The truth is, there are no politically viable loopholes that can be closed which will generate a dimes worth of “payfors.” There is no tax rate cut for mainly the rich that can pass the Congress if it is not to be financed by adding trillions more to a soon be $30 trillion national debt.

This tax cut charade is getting ludicrous. It’s turning into Seinfeld on the Potomac — a big, noisy show about nothing.

(Chart data is slightly different because it’s for 2013, while the above data is more current for 2014. But the extreme skew to the top is still the same).

Why the Laffer Curve Has Gone Missing

The chart below is the key to the real tax problem in America and explains why the Donald is missing his policy and political targets by a mile.

What is killing jobs and shrinking paychecks in Flyover America is the $1.2 trillion Federal payroll tax. It amounts to 15.3% of every payroll dollar up to $127,000 a year, paid 50/50 by employer and employee; and constitutes a destructive wedge on the middle and lower levels of the jobs ladder.

It raises the employers’ fully-loaded payroll cost precisely where the China Price (imported goods), the India Price (off-shored services) and the Robot Price (capital substitution) put immense competitive pressure on domestic, lower-wage jobs. As shown in the graph below, nearly 80% of all US jobs (121.0 million), which were subject to payroll tax withholding in 2014, generated pay of less than $57,000 per year, and nearly 60% (91.2 million) paid less than $35,000 per year.

Yet the payroll tax extracted $410 billion from these jobs on a combined employer/employee basis. In the case of the average $14,500 wage in the bottom quintile of earnings, for example, the employee had $1,100 extracted from his/her paycheck, while a like amount was added to the employers cost of production. At the $35,000 level at the top of the lowest quintile, the extraction was nearly $2,700 each. And for the $45,100 average wage in the second quintile, the extraction would have been $3,459 each.

Laying on thousands of dollars of payroll tax costs on already noncompetitive wage rates is an invitation for employers to go off-shore or to automate.

By driving interest rates to rock bottom, they have drastically lowered capital costs way below market clearing levels, sharply improving the “payback” economics of automation and robots. At the same time, they never cease to drive nominal wages and domestic living costs ever higher in pursuit of their destructive 2.00% inflation target.

An across the board income tax cut from the GOP faithful can’t hold a candle to the economics and politics of slashing the payroll tax, and financing the revenue loss with spending cuts and/or a tax on consumption.

For example, a four-person family earning the $35,000 level at the top of the first quintile would face a $5,355 combined payroll tax extraction, but would pay only $600 in income tax under current law. That’s because the first $29,000 of its income would not be taxable owing to the standard deduction ($12,600) and personal exemptions worth $16,000 ($4,050 each).

Cutting the income tax paid at the bottom of the job ladder can’t hold a candle to alleviating the crushing burden of payroll taxes.

Likewise, even a taxpayer at the top of the second percentile earning $57,000 (and thereby encompassing 121 million wage earners) would pay only $3,300 in income tax compared to an extraction of nearly $8,720 for payroll taxes.

Indeed, even at the $100,000 AGI level, the payroll tax extraction of $15,300 would still vastly exceed income tax liability of $9,700 for a family of four taking the standard deduction and personal exemptions.

As we said, the Donald is barking up the wrong tree on taxes. The real story is not that US taxes are way too high in the aggregate. Even if you do believe, as we do, that shrinking both the size of government and the tax burden is always he right thing to do, the fact remains that relative to the rest of the OECD (developed world) the US tax burden from all levels of government relative to GDP is quite low.

In fact, at 26% of GDP the total US tax burden is well below the 34% OECD average and far below the 40-50% levels which pertain in the socialist utopias of Europe. The real problem is that we are taxing the wrong thing. Consumption taxes account for 33% of the revenue take on average in the OECD compared to just 17% in the US.

If the Donald really wanted to address the economic pain in Flyover America he would slash or eliminate the payroll tax and replace it with a VAT.

Even the mild semblance of a VAT represented by the BAT (border adjustment tax) has already been killed by the K-Street lobbies and the GOP Senate. Making it logical to believe there is no obvious way forward for rational tax reform, either.

The entire corporate income tax is a stupid, essentially uncollectible relic of a bygone age when industrial America was riding high. In the context of the current Bubble Finance regime at the Fed and other central banks, it would result in more stock buybacks and other distributions to Wall Street. And that’s not what the Donald got elected on, either.

When it comes to the tax cuts and tax reform, we are talking pure Seinfeld: A long-running show about exactly nothing that matters.

Regards, David Stockman for The Daily Reckoning

The post The Donald’s Seinfeld Tax Plan – A Big Show About Nothing appeared first on Daily Reckoning.

[thepreseedblog]

I am just quoting some of the statements from the whole article to make for a shorter read for my readers of the future. 

1. Hassabis replied that, in fact, he was working on the most important project in the world: developing artificial super-intelligence. Musk countered that this was one reason we needed to colonize Mars—so that we’ll have a bolt-hole if A.I. goes rogue and turns on humanity. Amused, Hassabis said that A.I. would simply follow humans to Mars.

2. An unassuming but competitive 40-year-old, Hassabis is regarded as the Merlin who will likely help conjure our A.I. children. 

3. With a neural lace inside your skull you would flash data from your brain, wirelessly, to your digital devices or to virtually unlimited computing power in the cloud. “For a meaningful partial-brain interface, I think we’re roughly four or five years away.”

4. Elon Musk smiled when I mentioned to him that he comes across as something of an Ayn Rand-ian hero. “I have heard that before,” he said in his slight South African accent. “She obviously has a fairly extreme set of views, but she has some good points in there.”

5. Marc Mathieu, the chief marketing officer of Samsung USA, who has gone fly-fishing in Iceland with Musk, calls him “a cross between Steve Jobs and Jules Verne.”As they danced at their wedding reception, Justine later recalled, Musk informed her, “I am the alpha in this relationship.”

6. As he told me, “we are the first species capable of self-annihilation.”

7. 28 years away from the Rapture-like “Singularity”—the moment when the spiraling capabilities of self-improving artificial super-intelligence will far exceed human intelligence, and human beings will merge with A.I. to create the “god-like” hybrid beings of the future.

8. y, in another shock to the system, an A.I. program showed that it could bluff. Libratus, built by two Carnegie Mellon researchers, was able to crush top poker players at Texas Hold ‘Em.

9.  “Sex robots? I think those are quite likely.”

10. Last June, a researcher at DeepMind co-authored a paper outlining a way to design a “big red button” that could be used as a kill switch to stop A.I. from inflicting harm.

11. Google executives say Larry Page’s view on A.I. is shaped by his frustration about how many systems are sub-optimal—from systems that book trips to systems that price crops. He believes that A.I. will improve people’s lives and has said that, when human needs are more easily met, people will “have more time with their family or to pursue their own interests.” 

12. Some in Silicon Valley argue that Musk is interested less in saving the world than in buffing his brand, and that he is exploiting a deeply rooted conflict: the one between man and machine, and our fear that the creation will turn against us. They gripe that his epic good-versus-evil story line is about luring talent at discount rates and incubating his own A.I. software for cars and rockets. It’s certainly true that the Bay Area has always had a healthy respect for making a buck. As Sam Spade said in The Maltese Falcon, “Most things in San Francisco can be bought, or taken.”

13. Zuckerberg introduced his A.I. butler, Jarvis, right before Christmas. With the soothing voice of Morgan Freeman, it was able to help with music, lights, and even making toast. I asked the real-life Iron Man, Musk, about Zuckerberg’s Jarvis, when it was in its earliest stages. “I wouldn’t call it A.I. to have your household functions automated,” Musk said. “It’s really not A.I. to turn the lights on, set the temperature.”

14. “His wife, Talulah, told me they had late-night conversations about A.I. at home,” Vance noted. “Elon is brutally logical. The way he tackles everything is like moving chess pieces around. When he plays this scenario out in his head, it doesn’t end well for people.

15. on HBO’s Silicon Valley: “I don’t want to live in a world where someone else makes the world a better place better than we do.”

16. Zuckerberg replied. And clearly throwing shade at Musk, he continued: “Some people fear-monger about how A.I. is a huge danger, but that seems far-fetched to me and much less likely than disasters due to widespread disease, violence, etc.” 

17. “If we slow down progress in deference to unfounded concerns, we stand in the way of real gains.” He compared A.I. jitters to early fears about airplanes, noting, “We didn’t rush to put rules in place about how airplanes should work before we figured out how they’d fly in the first place.”

18. Zuckerberg can be just as dismissive. Asked in Germany whether Musk’s apocalyptic forebodings were “hysterical” or “valid,” Zuckerberg replied “hysterical.” 

19. “Do you own a house?,” Tegmark asked me. “Do you own fire insurance? The consensus in Puerto Rico was that we needed fire insurance. When we got fire and messed up with it, we invented the fire extinguisher. When we got cars and messed up, we invented the seat belt, air bag, and traffic light. But with nuclear weapons and A.I., we don’t want to learn from our mistakes. We want to plan ahead.” (Musk reminded Tegmark that a precaution as sensible as seat belts had provoked fierce opposition from the automobile industry.)

20. Meanwhile, the European Union has been looking into legal issues arising from the advent of robots and A.I.—such as whether robots have “personhood” or (as one Financial Times contributor wondered) should be considered more like slaves in Roman law.

21. Steve Wozniak has wondered publicly whether he is destined to be a family pet for robot overlords. “We started feeding our dog filet,” he told me about his own pet, over lunch with his wife, Janet, at the Original Hick’ry Pit, in Walnut Creek. “Once you start thinking you could be one, that’s how you want them treated.”

22. When I went to Peter Thiel’s elegant San Francisco office, dominated by two giant chessboards, Thiel, one of the original donors to OpenAI and a committed contrarian, said he worried that Musk’s resistance could actually be accelerating A.I. research because his end-of-the-world warnings are increasing interest in the field.

23. He went on: “There’s some sense in which the A.I. question encapsulates all of people’s hopes and fears about the computer age. I think people’s intuitions do just really break down when they’re pushed to these limits because we’ve never dealt with entities that are smarter than humans on this planet.”

24. Kurzweil has a keen interest in cats and keeps a collection of 300 cat figurines in his Northern California home. At the restaurant, he asked for almond milk but couldn’t get any. The 69-year-old eats strange health concoctions and takes 90 pills a day, eager to achieve immortality—or “indefinite extensions to the existence of our mind file”—which means merging with machines. He has such an urge to merge that he sometimes uses the word “we” when talking about super-intelligent future beings—a far cry from Musk’s more ominous “they.”

25. “That’s just not true. I’m the one who articulated the dangers,” Kurzweil said. “The promise and peril are deeply intertwined,” he continued. “Fire kept us warm and cooked our food and also burned down our houses . . . . Furthermore, there are strategies to control the peril, as there have been with biotechnology guidelines.” He summarized the three stages of the human response to new technology as Wow!, Uh-Oh, and What Other Choice Do We Have but to Move Forward? “The list of things humans can do better than computers is getting smaller and smaller,” he said. “But we create these tools to extend our long reach.” 26. Just as, two hundred million years ago, mammalian brains developed a neocortex that eventually enabled humans to “invent language and science and art and technology,” by the 2030s, Kurzweil predicts, we will be cyborgs, with nanobots the size of blood cells connecting us to synthetic neocortices in the cloud, giving us access to virtual reality and augmented reality from within our own nervous systems. “We will be funnier; we will be more musical; we will increase our wisdom,” he said, ultimately, as I understand it, producing a herd of Beethovens and Einsteins. Nanobots in our veins and arteries will cure diseases and heal our bodies from the inside.He allows that Musk’s bête noire could come true. He notes that our A.I. progeny “may be friendly and may not be” and that “if it’s not friendly, we may have to fight it.” And perhaps the only way to fight it would be “to get an A.I. on your side that’s even smarter.” 27. Russell doesn’t give a fig whether A.I. might enable more Einsteins and Beethovens. One more Ludwig doesn’t balance the risk of destroying humanity. “As if somehow intelligence was the thing that mattered and not the quality of human experience,” he said, with exasperation. “I think if we replaced ourselves with machines that as far as we know would have no conscious existence, no matter how many amazing things they invented, I think that would be the biggest possible tragedy.” Nick Bostrom has called the idea of a society of technological awesomeness with no human beings a “Disneyland without children.” 28.  ‘Well, we’ll upload ourselves into the machines, so we’ll still have consciousness but we’ll be machines.’ Which I would find, well, completely implausible.”

29. “Yann LeCun keeps saying that there’s no reason why machines would have any self-preservation instinct,” Russell said. “And it’s simply and mathematically false. I mean, it’s so obvious that a machine will have self-preservation even if you don’t program it in because if you say, ‘Fetch the coffee,’ it can’t fetch the coffee if it’s dead. So if you give it any goal whatsoever, it has a reason to preserve its own existence to achieve that goal. And if you threaten it on your way to getting coffee, it’s going to kill you because any risk to the coffee has to be countered. People have explained this to LeCun in very simple terms.”

30. Russell debunked the two most common arguments for why we shouldn’t worry: “One is: It’ll never happen, which is like saying we are driving towards the cliff but we’re bound to run out of gas before we get there. And that doesn’t seem like a good way to manage the affairs of the human race. And the other is: Not to worry—we will just build robots that collaborate with us and we’ll be in human-robot teams. Which begs the question: If your robot doesn’t agree with your objectives, how do you form a team with it?”

31. “If you want a picture of A.I. gone wrong, don’t imagine marching humanoid robots with glowing red eyes. Imagine tiny invisible synthetic bacteria made of diamond, with tiny onboard computers, hiding inside your bloodstream and everyone else’s. And then, simultaneously, they release one microgram of botulinum toxin. Everyone just falls over dead. 32. “From even the greatest of horrors irony is seldom absent.”