#ok I’m fairly positive I have an extremely similar post but I think I made it pre show | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

thetriggeredhappy · 3 years ago

Note

in the dadspy au, what if jeremy was just going to be an assistant/cook/janitor at the base while his dad was being the mercenary (since spy didnt want him to follow the "career" but didnt want to be separated from him), but then jeremy turned out to be even better than the hired scout so they promote him to that position and spy is not happy with this at all

ok i was gonna put this in the queue to post but im impatient because im happy with this one. only thing i didnt have was spy being upset by this development

(warnings for canon-typical violence, discussion of mercenary-type things, paranoia, alcohol, and exactly one proper fight scene. consider this pg-13)

“Would you prefer the good news first, or the bad news?” Dad asked.

Jeremy looked up at him from where he’d snatched up the sunday comics from his dad’s newspaper and was doodling little hats on the characters while they waited for their food to arrive. “Uh,” he said, “good news first.”

“Alright. The good news is, do you remember that line I’ve been tailing? The one in New Mexico?”

“Uh, yeah,” Jeremy said, then nodded a little more confidently. “Immunity, safehouse, somethin’ like that, right?”

“...Something like that,” Dad agreed carefully, and that made him raise an eyebrow. “It went well, and I think there’s the very real possibility that I’ve all but closed the deal, all they want now is an interview.”

“...Interview, singular,” Jeremy said slowly.

“That’s where the bad news begins. Unfortunately... merde, how to phrase this?” He drew a hand down his face. “They’re fully willing to hire me on, but this is a more... corporate affair than I’m used to. They have rules, stipulations. Long story short, they will not hire you as a mercenary on the basis of your age.”

Jeremy tensed. “What?” he demanded. “That’s stupid, I’m old enough to drive and buy guns and whatever the hell else.”

“But not rent a car, at least in many places in the United States.”

“But—“ he started, and remembered they were in public, and lowered his voice to a hiss, leaning in. “We’re hired killers, thieves, criminals. Do they really think we’re above having fakes? False documentation?”

“Actually, that is one of their requirements,” Dad said dryly, taking a paper from his jacket and consulting it. “I’m not happy about it either, mon lapin, but those are their rules. Already they have slightly bent them for one individual, and already I am on thin ice. But I may have a way to manage this.”

“Yeah?” Jeremy asked, nervous now.

“I know the woman responsible for new hires and managing the team I’ve applied for. She owes me a favor—a fairly hefty one. When I go in for the interview, one of my demands will include you being hired on, not as a mercenary, but for... for custodial purposes, something like that. Cook, janitor, security guard, secretary—whatever job there is that needs doing there, and I am sure that there will be one. Something to allow you to live there. Pay will likely be her stipulation, and the play I hope to make is that really, you’re overqualified for the position and she’s lucky to have someone so competent available, and in the worst case scenario, the pay is still good enough even for just one of us that we will not cut too deeply into the savings.”

The savings. That made Scout blink, because they only ever brought up the savings when—

“You think this could be it?” he asked quietly. “Like, it it?”

A hard exhale, and he leaned his cheek on his hand. “Potentially,” he finally said. “I don’t want to get your hopes up, but the job promises a variety of things. Medical attention available, extremely low levels of danger, and most of all, confidentiality. The only people who will know any name we give them would be the woman in charge of hiring us and their singular medical professional. There is no mode of communication to or from the compound outside of emergency lines to the organization and a single secure payphone located two miles away, there is no civilization within a twenty-five minute drive minimum, and this operation has been going long enough that the local authorities have long since grown used to being paid off, and likely don’t even remember what for anymore. I cash in a few valuable favors and ask this employer to turn a blind eye, we’d have somewhere remote and secure to spend our time after our deaths are faked and once the contract is over, we can start over. No ties to the past.”

“Freedom,” Jeremy marveled.

Silence for a few seconds, broken only by the quiet chatter of the rest of the diner. “I want to warn you, this work may not be glamorous. It may not even be particularly easy. I’m giving you the option of saying no,” Dad said.

“What?! Yes, hell yes, are you joking? To get us to living like normal people? Steady work? Livin’ in one place? Count me in!” he laughed.

“What if the job is something you won’t enjoy? Long hours, boring work?” Dad asked, entirely serious.

“I’m still on board.”

“What if the other people working there are rude to you? Disrespectful?”

“Well most of the people I meet through our job now try to kill us, so really it’s an upgrade.”

“What if there’s no diner nearby?” he asked, and there was a glint of humor in his eye.

“Damn, sorry, that’s the dealbreaker,” he joked right back, and that made him snort, shake his head, greet the waitress as she came back with their coffee and soda and then informed them that their food would be out shortly.

“I’ll ask,” was what Dad said once she was gone again, and that was that, and they started driving to New Mexico two nights later.

“—A warm welcome to our two newest recruits. This is the Spy, and this is the Guard.”

“Guard?” asked one of the men at the table, his accent thick and distinctly Russian. It made Jeremy tense slightly, but he didn’t let it show.

“Night Guard,” Jeremy answered, voice clipped.

“He’s not technically hired on as a mercenary like you all, he won’t be joining you on missions,” the short woman apparently named Miss Pauling (Jeremy was fairly sure it was a fake name) said, hands folded in front of her neatly. “He’s here to work security. Keep an eye out during the night, filter through the camera footage, handle the archiving, things like that.”

“We’re hiring on a civvie now?” asked another man, thick Scottish accent a little harder to digest than the eyepatch and the grenade he was in the process of fiddling with the internal mechanisms of.

“He’s combat ready, and will still be armed. His job is to essentially make sure you’re all safe enough to sleep through the night,” Miss Pauling said.

“I’m not some chump,” Jeremy agreed. “I know my stuff.”

“How old is he?” another man asked, this one in a hardhat with a heavy drawl, looking concerned.

“Twenty, for your information,” Jeremy said, a little sharply, eyes narrowed.

“If you have any other questions, there’ll be time later on. For now, I do need to show our two newest recruits where they’ll be staying,” Miss Pauling cut in.

There was an audible scoff from one of the men at the table, a dramatic rolling of eyes. Jeremy glared at him. He unfolded and refolded his extremely tattoo’d tree-trunk-like arms, tugging the visor of his hat between. “Sorry,” he said, accent thick and distinctly Californian. “I just don’t have the most trust for some scrawny kid in slacks and creep in a ski mask.”

“Scout, don’t start,” Miss Pauling warned.

“Just saying,” this man, apparently called Scout, muttered under his breath regardless.

“Don’t,” she said again, more firmly, and ignored the second eye roll she got for the trouble. “If you two would follow me.”

And they were shown around the base, and Jeremy in particular was shown into a room stuck behind three locked doors, where he found camera feeds and recording equipment. She gave him a basic overview and a thick packet of instructions and policies labelled ‘highly classified’ and a phone number to call if he had any further questions, and a set of hours that were apparently meant to become the new standard for him (with the quiet addendum that if he finished early that was alright, and that technically he could turn in early if two or more members of the team were already awake for the day and he was caught up on the archiving of old tapes).

Then he was left to “get used to the equipment”, which he assumed meant his dad was getting a similar rundown of his job, and it took a pretty quick glance through the packet to understand that clearly this place ran on an extremely secretive and closely monitored series of systems. In the packet, between the sections on camera maintenance and operation hours, were a few sheets detailing what were apparently the movement patterns of the various members of the team, including frequented locations and previously recorded large-scale infractions (mostly on the part of the Soldier, the Medic, the Scout, and one from the Demoman).

He wasn’t the one with the title Spy, but fuck, it seemed like he might as well have it. His entire job wasn’t even necessarily to keep the team safe overnight—he was just meant to watch all of them to make sure nobody was anywhere or doing anything out of the ordinary.

The next time he saw his dad, waiting outside the infirmary to get some sort of physical evaluation, his face was arranged carefully enough that he could tell he’d figured out something was up, too.

“Got your job assignments?” he asked quietly in French, glancing towards the door into the infirmary.

A nod, a glance. “I’m intrigued by the methods used in employee evaluation,” he deadpanned. “Especially the fact that apparently, they’re willing to assign employees for the explicit task of doing them.”

“How often?”

“Weekly.”

“Thorough,” Jeremy deadpanned, and glanced towards the hall at the distant sound of laughter, echoing from somewhere else on the base. “That’s basically mine too.”

There was a long silence, and when Jeremy looked back over, his dad was giving him an almost expectant look, waiting. All he had to offer him was a shrug, which was returned after a moment with a vague shake of the head. “I don’t believe it will be a problem,” his dad said simply. “Not for us, at the very least.”

Jeremy nodded. “Yeah. Uh, anyways, good luck with the… physical, or whatever,” he said, and received a pat on the shoulder before he walked back off down the hall, hoping to figure out what exactly he was supposed to do with an entire room all to himself. He’d almost never had one before.

He was used to time changes and jet lag, to needing to switch his sleep schedule on the regular, but the switch to a straight up night shift was a rough one.

His nine-to-five was actually a ten-to-six, as in 10 PM through 6 AM. This meant that, assuming he managed to get his schedule in order, he’d be able to join in on the team dinners if he woke up early and could eat breakfast with them before he went to bed.

Very quickly he realized that going to dinner and breakfast with the team was going to become a staple part of his routine, because it didn’t take long before he began to feel extremely lonely all of the time. In a dark little room, everyone else asleep, scrubbing through tapes from during the day while half keeping an eye on the live feed from around the base that never showed much of anything, it was brutal. It was suffocating.

It was easy, at least. It didn’t take long before he got efficient at it and could start zoning out, and it wasn’t like he was under much pressure. His was the only room without any cameras in it. Security risk, apparently.  And to be honest, what small amount he and Dad interacted with mercenaries and other criminal types, Jeremy didn’t really tend to like them much. A lot of them were loud and rude and had the potential to turn around and try and kill them whenever they felt like it. He didn’t expect that he’d like the team as much as he did. He especially didn’t expect to like them so much without ever really talking to them.

But watching the camera feeds from throughout the day, seeing what they were up to, they were just... nice people. Soldier out by the dumpsters practicing rocket jumps and wrangling raccoons and apparently trying to learn how to spin a rifle, Pyro’s regular minor explosions in the kitchen while cooking and the surprised and frantic way they cleaned it up every time, the Demoman’s tendency to whistle wherever he went, watching through the feed as they all played cards and argued and jostled each other. They all seemed really nice. Really cool. Really dorky, too, but mostly just really nice and really cool.

And there were a few of them he was less sure about—he couldn’t get eyes on the Medic most of the time, what with the one camera in the Medbay being tilted down at an angle that made it hard to see much of anything but the occasional bird (probably by those same birds). The Heavy tended to just sit and read, and was pretty much silent most of the time otherwise. The Scout tended to leave the base pretty often. And the Sniper didn’t even live on base, he had a van outside that he could only occasionally see movement in when he squinted at the far edge of the camera leading outside. But even then, Heavy and Sniper mostly just seemed quiet, and Medic just seemed busy, and the Scout just seemed like a little bit of a dickhead.

But then one day when Jeremy was at breakfast the Heavy caught him leaning to try to get a look at the cover of the book he was reading, and he blurted that he was just wondering what book was so great that he’d stay up until like four in the morning reading, and then the entire team was gawking at him and asking questions and insisting that it was insane that there was someone actually watching all those cameras, and he shrugged and said there was always supposed to be someone watching the tapes back it was just usually some office worker type a hundred miles away. And they seemed almost... upset with him. And maybe that was fair, it wasn’t like he ever talked to any of them much, mostly he just spent breakfast and dinner half-asleep and listening to their chatter. And Demoman admitted that he’d honestly assumed that Jeremy slept his entire shift, he just always looked so tired at breakfast. There was almost this discomfort. This distrust.

And so, now that the jig was up, he made it a point to say some things to certain members of the team. To tell the Medic that his camera was tilted down so that he couldn’t see most of the room, and to very pointedly say that it was weird how that happened and that he didn’t know why they set it up like that in the first place, but it was really none of his business. Made it a point to warn the Engineer in the morning that the previous night, Soldier had been doing something in the fridge for a while, and to maybe check the labels before he made breakfast. Made it a point to tell the Demoman that the camera in his workshop was right in plain sight, and that if he moved one of his blackboards an inch or two to the left, it would obscure the room a pretty hefty amount. Made it a point to tell the Sniper that the camera on the rooftop seemed to be glitching out, and it’d just sort of lost the tapes of the previous two nights, and that it was really unfortunate since for all he knew there might have been someone ignoring the signs about there being no personnel allowed up there.

In return, he found that Pyro would sometimes make little sparkly notes with smiley faces on them and stick them to the door to the security room. That Sniper started tipping his hat at the camera above the door into the base from the garage. That on occasional drinking nights, the team would suddenly turn and start waving at the camera, laughing the whole way. On one night in particular he could hear through the low-quality and tinny speakers that they were trying to cajole him into leaving the security room for a while to join them for cards, and god, but he wanted to.

And he noticed more things. Soldier walking with a slight limp some days when rocket jumps had rough landings. Being able to count the doves in the infirmary and even tell them apart to some extent through blurry close-ups. The Engineer making it a point to sweep really regularly regardless of what project he was working on.

And then he noticed a weird thing.

It took him a long time to get used to the patterns of hallways, the cameras not really lined up linearly after a while, too many branching paths. He learned to follow progress, to flick from one camera to the next as someone walked around corners. And for a while he thought maybe he wasn’t very good at it.

Until he realized two things. First of all, that in a hallway where he knew there were five doors, he could only see four—apparently the door to Pyro’s room was just barely out of sight of the camera. He only figured it out because one day it swung open wide enough to almost bang against the wall.

And then, when he realized there was somehow that massive blindspot, that there was a corner with a blindspot too. One where that Scout kept disappearing.

He watched a few more times to make sure, and yep. He’d see the Engineer walking around the corner, flick to the next screen, and there he was, continuing down the hallway. And then later that same day, the Scout, walking, and flick to the next camera, and he wasn’t there.

One of the worse parts of the job was that he never got to see Dad anymore, never got to just sort of hang out the way they did all the time when he was growing up, and he knew he would miss it but he didn’t know how much. And he found it was even worse when he had something important to say, doubly so when he had something important to say but no idea if it was actually important.

He tried to bring it up casually, in the like ten minutes of time he ever got alone to talk to Dad. Dad was fighting the kettle trying to make some tea and he was trying to stay awake long enough to figure out how he was going to say this.

“Uh,” he said, and Dad looked at him. “So, uh, what’s the read you’re getting on that Scout guy?”

“Lazy,” Dad shrugged, looked back at the kettle. “Arrogant. He seems to care very little about doing his job correctly and has horrible communication on the field.”

“Right, right,” he nodded, fought a yawn down. “Uh. So like, kind of a dickhead.”

“Indeed,” Dad said, nodding vaguely.

“So uhhh... not the best.”

“Where are you going with this?” Dad asked, arching an eyebrow at him.

“I, I dunno, the guy just likes hanging out in this one blindspot in the cameras, and it’s kinda freaking me out,” Jeremy said, scratching at the back of his neck.

Dad frowned. “Strange. I wasn’t aware that there were any blindspots in the cameras.”

“There’s only a few, and only for pretty small spaces I think? But apparently he just likes hanging out in one of them.” Jeremy scuffed his shoe on the ground, glancing over as voices started echoing down the hall towards them. “Just thought it was weird.”

“I’ll look into it,” Dad muttered, voice quiet, and then raised it again slightly. “I refuse to keep up with sports.”

“C’mon,” Jeremy said, knowing this game well, changing subjects into something more normal as people entered earshot. “I’m not even asking you to keep up with sports, I’m just saying, I’d kill to go to a baseball game right about now.”

“The American Pasttime!” Soldier called from the room over.

“Exactly,” Jeremy agreed, nodding at Soldier as he also entered the kitchen, a half-asleep Demoman in tow.

“Any ghosties or ghoulies on the cameras last night, lad?” Demo had enough energy to ask, blinking blearily at the contents of the fridge.

“Oh, a billion,” Jeremy said.

“Guard!” Soldier barked, the most awake person in the room. “Should these ghost-ghouls appear again, don’t be afraid to point me in their direction! I have significant experience with them already and do not fear the likes of them!”

“Yeah sure,” Jeremy shrugged.

“You’re a champion, Guard,” Demo said with what was either a really disoriented blink or a wink, slugging him on the shoulder and wandering back out into the common room with the entire carton of milk in his other hand. Jeremy gave him a mock-salute that Soldier copied with absolute conviction. He and Dad shared a glance after the two of them left, and Jeremy was the first one to break, snickering under his breath.

“I’ll look into it,” Dad said, and also left the kitchen, and Jeremy nodded and started trying to remember what else he’d been planning on doing before bed.

“So,” Dad said a few days later, materializing next to Jeremy when he was in the middle of his jog and making him almost jump out of his skin, skidding to a stop.

“You’re enjoying that new watch way too much,” Jeremy panted, out of breath and still very much startled.

“Maybe,” Dad said, and he was smiling. “But as I was saying.”

“All you said was ‘so’,” Jeremy pointed out, giving him a look.

“There’s a juvenile joke here about how I’m your father and so of course I say ‘so’, but if you wouldn’t mind it, I did have something important to say, mon lapin,” Dad replied, and Jeremy rolled his eyes hard at the horrible joke and cheesy name, fighting back a smile of his own.

“Go for it,” he said, and took the opportunity to bend and tighten his shoelaces.

“So. Regarding that Scout and his habits. You mentioned he spends time in blind spots of the cameras, oui?” Dad asked.

“Yeah. Keeps, uh, I guess he keeps getting infractions for going off base too much, too. I’ve logged him leaving like three times this week already,” Jeremy nodded.

“Indeed. Well, considering how new we are to the team, I did not want to jump to conclusions, and so contacted Miss Pauling and asked on your behalf for any older records, and I found out something very... intriguing.”

Jeremy looked up at him, blinking. ‘Intriguing’, historically, had always been a very, very bad thing.

“Apparently, it has been two years since they last had a Guard situated on base. The previous one was a much older gentleman, retired from being a full member of the team due to health complications but not entirely ready to part with the company. The previous guard was somewhat strict, and the Scout—the same as we have now—very much disliked the man. He continued acquiring near-constant infractions under the man’s watch for leaving when he was not meant to, so much so that the previous Guard proposed enstating trackers on the team when they went off-base. And before this policy could take hold, the previous Guard left the base one day and did not return, and finally was found dead a state over, one month later.”

Jeremy blinked once, twice. “Holy shit,” he said, and took note of the wary look on his face. “Okay. So we’re thinkin’ the same thing, right?”

“I would assume so. And…” Dad hesitated, moved to fidget with his cufflinks. “And I would not be particularly concerned about this, as I’m confident that you wouldn’t have gotten his attention from what you’ve been up to lately, and therefore wouldn’t be in danger yet should history attempt to repeat itself, but… he’s already taken a disliking to you.”

“What?” he asked, eyebrows shooting up.

“I believe it’s something as simple as some sort of shallow jealousy. Another American on the team, also relatively young, filling the position of someone he disliked previously. He regularly complains about the fact that you don’t need to go do the same job as the rest of us.” Dad shrugged, glanced over at him. “That, combined with the fact that you have somewhat conflicting duties, well, he tends to rather tetchy. He claims that considering he’s meant to be the first line of defense, they shouldn’t also need a guard at night.”

Jeremy had a number of opinions about that, but he stuck to the most relevant ones. “I really don’t like this guy,” he said. “Might be, uh. Worth keeping an eye on.”

“Agreed.” Dad glanced back over his shoulder towards the base, then at his watch. “Enjoy the rest of your run. Don’t forget to eat.”

“Yeah yeah yeah, hit the bricks already, old man,” Jeremy scoffed, waving him off, and Dad rolled his eyes, disappearing again in a cloud of smoke. “You’re gonna be using that thing all the damn time now, aren’t you?”

“Oui,” came a voice from nowhere, and Jeremy huffed a laugh, meandering his way back into the rest of his jog.

Jeremy hummed along to the radio, flicking between cameras on autopilot and wondering when exactly to take his lunch break.

He didn’t face the clock or anything, so he wasn’t sure, but he thought he had a pretty solid rhythm at that point. Click, click, click, between the camera to the road, the camera to the main entrance, and the camera in the hall towards the middle of the building, for about one second each. At just about any time after 11 or 11:30, those were the only three in real time that he needed to keep an eye on, mostly for people coming back late from bar hopping or if Miss Pauling was rolling in on a delivery. All the other cameras he could see out of the corner of his eye, and any movement he’d pick up on pretty quick, even if it was usually just the doves fluttering on the camera to the Medbay. After he cycled through those (and there was almost never anything there) he’d cycle back through to the tape he had in, put it on high speed, and watch it for about two or three minutes, get through a chunk of that time. Mostly he’d just be making sure nobody had been in the base while the team was away ni o(which indeed there never was), so there wasn’t much of a reason to take it off high speed, and the second part of the night would be watching the tapes for the time the team was back on base.

Movement on a camera made him click the pause, and he glanced off to the side. One of the doves had shuffled to face the other direction. He rolled his eyes, looking back at the bigger monitor again and pressing play.

The second half of the night was a little more interesting. He just had to look at the tapes for the time the team was there, check for discrepancies that might point to Dad messing with the disguise technology off-the-clock or the enemy Spy having infiltrated. For the most part things were straightforward, but he at least got to see his teammates up to funny things sometimes. Pyro’s antics were usually entertaining. Soldier he only caught some of, on the basis of him often walking off out of range of the cameras when he went on his excursions. Demo was funny sometimes. Honestly, just seeing the Sniper anywhere but as a fuzzy distant shape was interesting.

Movement on a camera. Same dove. He ignored it. Click, click, click, all three cameras clear, back to the fast-forward of the same empty hallway as before.

He really needed to figure something out, for the Scout. Maybe he and Dad were just being paranoid. It would be insane for him to try to outright kill anyone who inconvenienced him, not to mention reckless, and stupid to boot. Acting like that in their line of work would make him a lot of enemies extremely quickly. It would make more sense for the old Guard disappearing to be unrelated, to be honest.

Yeah. Hell, he barely knew the guy, and here he was assuming he’d straight up whacked a guy for getting a little too on his case about something. Maybe they were wrong.

Movement on a camera. He glanced over and froze outright.

It took him five seconds to come to his senses enough to pause the playback on his screen.

Figures. Shapes. Not at the front entrance, in the hallway, there next to the back way, by the garage. At least three, moving carefully, hard to make out in the darkness.

Okay. Okay, don’t panic, focus.

Jeremy ran through a few things in his head. He’d already done a headcount, the only people he wasn’t sure about were the Sniper and the Medic, but he hadn’t seen the Medic in any of the hallways out of the infirmary. Three figures were two too many to be any of the team, and besides that, they didn’t look like the Medic. Too short to be the Sniper, moving differently. Different clothes.

Three people. He hopped up, rushed over to the wall, yanked open the panel he had there. Three buttons, which he needed to hit in order. The first would send an alert to Miss Pauling, the second to whoever was assigned to be on alert that night, the third would set off the alarm.

He hit the first, hit the second, and hesitated on the third.

Okay. Technically if he didn’t hit that third button, he’d be breaking protocol, which was, according to the manual, ‘grounds for termination’. He was pretty sure that meant a long swim with some concrete shoes. And it was apparently recorded every time he hit these buttons, so they could deduct from his pay on false alerts. So they’d know if he didn’t hit this third button. He needed to think fast.

This was a different button than the alert button. The alert was more subtle, set for just one person. The alarm was throughout the entire base, over every loudspeaker. Louder than a fire alarm. If he hit this one, these intruders would hear that there was an alarm going off. Anyone smart would book it, high tail it the hell out of there. But he still didn’t know where they came from.

There hadn’t been movement on any of the screens, and he looked at the camera feed facing the road already, a few times even. He should’ve seen them. And if they found their way in once, they could do it again.

If he didn’t hit the button, on the other hand, whoever was on alert would wake up and wonder why they’d gotten an alert but the alarm wasn’t going off. If they were clever, which they probably were if they’d lasted this long, they’d come to the security room to see what was up and they could work from there.

He closed the panel again and moved to wait.

A minute later, still no movement from the hallway where most of the rooms were. That was fine, they’d just woken up, and probably needed to get dressed and grab their guns.

Another minute later, no movement, which was fair, they just needed a second to get their bearings. The intruders, meanwhile, were just lurking, slowly making their way down the hall.

Another minute later, no movement, and he opened the panel to press the button again before he continued waiting. Maybe they didn’t hear him the first time.

Another minute later and he took to standing next to the panel, mashing the button rapidly, eyes on the screen where the intruders were passing the kitchen, starting to get pretty far into the building.

Another minute later and he stomped his way into his sneakers, grabbing his flashlight and gun and guard cap from where they were hung on the wall. “Fine, I’ll fucking do it myself,” he grumbled, and carefully shouldered open the door, taking one last glance at the camera before he shut the door behind himself.

He kept his footsteps quiet, squinting into the darkness, waiting for his eyes to finish adjusting as he crept towards where he’d last seen the figures. It was near-silent in the base at night except for the distant, quiet hum of generators and occasional shift of plumbing. It was getting more and more familiar, and he found himself able to tune it out somewhat, instead listening intently for footsteps besides his own, making sure to click the safety off his gun while he was still alone and not when he was close to whoever had decided to break in.

Okay. Dad did this all the time. He could handle this.

He slowed as he approached the corner near the kitchen, peering around as carefully as he could, tugging down the brim of his cap to try and hide any potential shine from his eyes. He caught sight of a vague shape standing near the doorway, hesitating before it crept inside, into the common area.

Not ideal, on the basis of that being their goddamn kitchen, but at least there would be cover.

By the time he managed to sneak up to the doorway, he could make out the sound of vague whispering. It was far enough that it gave him the boldness to peer into the room, and just slightly lit by the glow of the clock on the oven he could see two shapes there in the kitchen, the third lingering nearer to him, there by the table.

Jeremy was only just starting to make a plan, relieved to have the jump on them, when there was the distant sound of a generator humming to life, and all the figures stopped, paused for a moment.

“Fucking spooky here,” one whispered, barely audible.

“Calm down,” another whispered. “What, scared of ghosts?”

Jeremy inhaled, exhaled, shifted onto the balls of his feet and started creeping a little further into the room. If he could just get all three of them to one side, so he wouldn’t need to pivot so much…

“You don’t know, maybe there’s ghosts here,” the first protested, and swore quietly at what sounded like their winging their elbow against the corner of the tale, and Jeremy tried to stick near the wall, managed to creep half-behind one of the chairs, trying to keep his silhouette indistinct. “These guys kill people.”

“So do we,” the third mumbled, moving out of sight in the kitchen, and Jeremy bit down on a swear, starting to inch behind the couch. “Don’t be a coward. And stop making so much noise.”

“You can’t shoot a ghost,” the first pointed out, moving a bit closer to the kitchen, giving the table a wide berth now. “Or punch it.”

“I can try,” the second said, and stopped at the sound of a rustle.

Jeremy held his breath, weight half-balanced against where he’d tried to step, newspaper trapped beneath his foot.

“That one wasn’t me,” the first whispered. There was another, more significant rustle throughout the room, and Jeremy could see a glint as the intruders drew their weapons.

Jeremy inhaled, exhaled, and just barely managed not to swear out loud.

The first one was the closest by, lingering beside the arm of the couch Jeremy was crouched in the shadow of. “Do they have a cat here?” they asked, voice quiet.

The second was approaching into the main room more carefully. From the sound of the footsteps, trying to keep a shoulder closer to the wall, clearly paying more attention to the door. “Are you stupid or something?” was the reply, voice also quiet.

The third didn’t speak, but huffed out a laugh, which was enough to tell Jeremy that he was out of the kitchen.

Jeremy inhaled shakily, exhaled shakily, shifted his grip on his handgun and flashlight, and took a split second to think. Inhaled one more time.

He leapt to his feet, swinging his flashlight like a billy club and clobbering the first figure across the side of the head, sending them tumbling to the ground. From the sound of the impact, a dislocated jaw at the very least. One down.

A shout from the other side of the room, arms moving to try to aim, clearly struggling to see him, but that third figure was in the doorway, silhouetted against the faint light from the oven’s clock, and that was enough to figure out where the head and chest were. He aimed, fired, got what he was pretty sure was the neck considering the brief spray of blood that splattered against the oven, darkening the room completely.

A swear from the second figure, and Jeremy wanted to swear too, because he’d hoped that second figure would be stupid and try and charge him, but now he was ten steps away and didn’t have time to fiddle with and cock the gun again, other hand full with a flashlight and no way to—

Oh, duh.

“Stay where you are,” the second figure ordered, but Jeremy’s eyes were a little better adjusted and besides that, he wasn’t the one talking. He lifted his flashlight and clicked it on.

The second figure cried out, recoiling at the sudden blindingly bright light in what had been near-darkness, and Jeremy had time to finagle his thumb up to cock his gun again, now able to aim with absolute accuracy, this shot connecting with the figure’s head.

He exhaled.

It took Jeremy two minutes to remember to fire a bullet into the chest of the unconscious guy, and another minute for the other mercenaries to start showing up, half-dressed and armed. Dad, presumably to prove a point, showed up pretty close to the middle of the pack almost fully dressed. Jeremy wasn’t entirely sure how long it took before Miss Pauling showed up, but he wasn’t even halfway through their questions by that time.

“Guard, headcount?” she asked before she even bothered saying hello, still wearing her motorcycle helmet and looking more than a little bit miffed.

“Uh,” he said, eyes drawn away from where Medic was assessing the bodies on the kitchen table, “seven present and accounted for. Sniper’s probably out at his van, don’t know about the Scout.”

“Alright. Pyro,” she said, and Pyro stood at attention, bunny slippers squeaking at the movement. “go wake up Sniper and get him in here.”

Pyro nodded, handing their weird unicorn plushie thing to Jeremy as they passed by, giving him a solemn nod before hurrying away.

“Okay. Guard, hit me with a rundown, then,” she said, and shot a glance around the room. “No peanut gallery needed. And Medic, please don’t take them apart too much. I gotta get rid of those later.”

“Uh. Spotted these guys on the cameras, hit the first and second alerts,” Jeremy said.

“And not the third?” she asked pointedly.

“They were, like, right next to the door, and—here’s the thing, Miss P, is I dunno how the hell they got in here,” he said, and there was a general balk from the room. “No, seriously. They didn’t come in on the main road, they were in one of the back hallways by the garage. There’s gotta be a hole in the cameras or something, because I seriously don’t know where they came from. And if they booked it, they’d take whatever vehicle they used to get here, too, and we might not figure it out. Thought I’d just wait for whoever the hell was supposed to be on alert so we could… I dunno, at least see which way they went.”

“Guard,” she admonished, and he shrank a little bit. “That was incredibly reckless. What if nobody had shown up to help you?”

“Uh,” he said, blinked, “but… nobody did show up.”

A pause. She blinked. “What? You’re the one who did that?” she asked, entirely shocked, pointing towards the three bodies on the table.

“Uh, yeah? Isn’t that my job?” he asked carefully, shifting the stuffed animal under his arm.

“No, you’re—you’re just supposed to be the Guard, you’re supposed to watch cameras, not—“ She paused, taking a second to push up her glasses and rub at the bridge of her nose, inhaling, exhaling. “Okay. Points for… going above and beyond, here, but Guard, don’t do that again.”

“Sure thing, Miss P,” he mumbled, tugging on the brim of his guard cap, and sighed to himself as Miss Pauling moved away to try and stop Medic from attempting to covertly steal a few organs from the corpses. Dad clapped him on the shoulder supportively, and that did make him feel a little better. He wasn’t expecting a clap to the other shoulder, and looked up, surprised to see Heavy there, looking just slightly less grim than usual.

“Little Guard man is credit to team,” he said simply, solemnly.

Jeremy straightened up slightly. “Oh. Hey, thanks,” he said. Heavy nodded at him.

“It’s true,” Demo called, and he looked over, got another approving nod. “Really saved the lot of us, lad.”

“I, I mean, hey, it’s… what I’m here for. Or, uh. I thought that was it, anyways,” he shrugged, glancing away. “I mean, yeah, I’m pretty cool, though.”

Dad bumped his arm for the last part, and he snickered. “My question,” Dad continued, doing his best to ignore him, “is primarily regarding who, precisely, was supposed to be present to help Guard with this. Who is meant to be on alert?”

“It’s meant to be Scout, ain’t it?” the Engineer asked from nearby, frowning. A general murmur of agreement. “Could he have slept through it?”

“Heavy doubts this,” Heavy grumbled, looking troubled.

“Why’re we awake?” asked Sniper from the doorway, and various teammates called out a greeting. Sniper seemed half-gone, and completely grumpy, but not as grumpy as Pyro, and not nearly as gone as the man leaning heavily against Pyro’s shoulder.

“Hey,” the Scout managed, grinning, speech garbled, visibly sloppy and unbalanced. “What’s up, guys?”

Groans from parts of the room. “Drinkin’ again, Scout?” the Engineer drawled, visibly irritated.

“That’s my trademark, lad, go on,” Demo laughed, but the enthusiasm wasn’t entirely there.

“Scout,” Miss Pauling said, voice firm in a way that made Jeremy almost flinch in sympathy. “Are you aware that we’ve had a situation here while you’ve been sleeping?”

“Weren’t sleeping,” Sniper murmured, and eyes turned to him. He scratched at the back of his neck. “Came stumbling in ‘round when I was heading in. He was out for the night. Bar, looks like.”  “What?” Jeremy demanded. “Why the fuck didn’t I see him leave on the cameras?”

“Alright,” Miss Pauling said, and Jeremy looked at her. Her expression was hard to read. “It’s possible he went through the back tunnel.”

“Back tunnel?” Jeremy asked, and glanced around. Apparently he wasn’t the only one who hadn’t heard of it.

“For emergencies only. Scout’s the only one who I’ve given a key card to. I have one too. It’s supposed to be used for transporting especially sensitive information, most of the team isn’t supposed to even know it exists. If there’s a gap in the cameras around the back of the building, he might have been using it to… sneak out to go to town, even though he knows he’s already in hot water for leaving the base so much,” Miss Pauling said, glaring at Scout, who was looking increasingly annoyed.

“Whatever, it’s not a big deal,” he protested, scoffing.

“That tunnel is for emergencies only,” Miss Pauling stressed. “I trusted you with the privilege of knowing about it account of having worked here for so long, and you’re using that privilege and key card to mess around?”

“He was coming back from around the front of the building, at least,” Sniper chimed in, and Pyro nodded. “Not that I’d understand the point of sneaking out if he’s going to just walk back in the front door.”

“Key card?” Medic repeated from near the table, eyebrows furrowed.

“Yeah, it’s, it’s a magnetized card, that can be read by a card reader, used like a key,” Miss Pauling explained, deflating a little bit.

His eyebrows furrowed further. “Would it happen to look anything like this?” he asked, picking up a lanyard from the table and holding it up, showing the room the card clipped onto the end of it.

Two beats of silence. “Spy, would you mind?” Miss Pauling asked politely, nodding towards the Scout, who had gone pale.

“Not at all,” Dad said just as politely, and walked over towards the Scout and Pyro, then circled around behind them, and sank a blade into the Scout’s spine. He promptly crumbled to the floor, dead.

“Well. At least that’s that mystery solved,” Miss Pauling sighed, and rubbed at the bridge of her nose again. “Now I’ve gotta block off time tomorrow to get rid of three bodies, and then hopefully that’s the last we’re gonna hear of this or else the Administrator is gonna kill me.”

“What about the Scout?” Heavy rumbled.

“…Scratch that. Four bodies,” she mumbled, face dropping into her hands. “And then I need to find his replacement. Ugh.”

“Can’t imagine you’d need to go far,” Demo said, and Jeremy looked up, and Demo was very obviously tilting a thumb in his direction.

“He’s proven himself to be better at this job,” Dad agreed, shrugging. “And I would say on a bad day he’s still a better runner than the previous Scout on a good one.”

“He can clearly handle a firearm well,” the Engineer noted, looking over one of the bodies.

“And a blunt object,” Medic chimed, just a bit too pleased. “This jaw is almost completely shattered!”

“Okay, okay, fine, sure,” Miss Pauling waved off, one hand still pressed to her face, clearly overwhelmed and tired. “We’ll get his paperwork in tomorrow. Congratulations, you’re the new Scout, any questions? Can the questions wait until morning? Great, thank you. Good night, everyone. Medic, have the bodies in bags for me at least, okay?”

A distracted thumbs up from Medic, and Miss Pauling was groaning, wandering back out of the room, and most of the team followed, yawning amongst themselves. Sniper half-attempted to ask again why the hell any of them were awake, but gave up halfway through. Pyro, for one, made sure to at least retrieve the plushie from Scout’s arms before wandering off, giving him an appreciative pat on the shoulder.

“So,” Dad said, and when he looked over, he was smiling. “A promotion, mon lapin. Congratulations, new Scout.”

“Do I gotta wear that stupid outfit he always wears?” Jeremy asked, entirely serious. His reply was a laugh and a pat on the shoulder before he disappeared in a puff of smoke. “Pops, I’m serious. Do I? Dad!?”

“—So that’s why I figured, y’know, might as well tell you guys,” Jeremy finished rambling, hands in his pockets, continuing down the hallway. “Because… I dunno. I could tell Miss P, but it’s nice having secret stuff, y’know?”

“You think this is how they actually got in?” Demo asked, looking dubious. “Little blind spot in the cameras?”

“Only a couple feet wide, you said?” Sniper grumbled.

“Sounds possible,” Heavy said hesitantly.

“I dunno. Maybe. But if I tell Miss P about it, they’re gonna fix it,” Jeremy shrugged, turning the corner and stopping. “There. I knew it.”

They stopped with him, following his line of sight. “You’re takin’ the piss, mate,” Sniper deadpanned. “You want to tell me he’d been climbing out a window like a teenager?”

Jeremy shrugged, moving to open the window in question. It swung open easily, just large enough to push through with only a little bit of a problem, barely needing to turn his shoulders. “He’s not much bigger than me, and what the hell else would he be doing here?” he pointed out.

“Heavy cannot fit through that window,” Heavy deadpanned.

“Yeah. Sorry, big guy,” Jeremy apologized, leaning back inside and closing it again. “But hey, mystery solved, right?”

“Well, if I ever need windows to climb out of, now I know just the lad for the job,” Demo said, nudging him. “Thanks, Guard. Or, er, Scout. Och, now that’s going to take getting used to, aye? Might just stick to calling you ‘laddie’, laddie.”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever,” he laughed, nudging him right back. And as much as they ribbed him for it, he did see a kind of appreciation there. Just like he’d figured, they seemed to take note of him taking their side and not just Miss Pauling’s.

Now he just needed to switch back over to the day shift.

#father-son bonding au #dad!spy #tf2 #team fortress 2 #shut up me #my fanfiction #everybody talks #really happy with this one even if it took Way Too Fucking Long

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nyctolovian · 4 years ago

Text

Chapter 16: easy being nice to a bitter boy like him

Welp! I just thought it’d be cool if I posted fic on my birthday. So here’s a milestone chapter of sorts haha

Summary: Shouto's doubts grow

Chapter 1

Bakugou woke up incredibly cranky, even by his usual standards. Shouto was made aware of this by the colourful swearing Bakugou let out when he stubbed his toe on the foot of the bed in the morning. This was followed by a loud slam of the door as Bakugou exited the room to head to the shared toilets.

The two headed to the dormitory’s cafeteria for breakfast (a sandwich, yoghurt and a chocolate-y drink called Milo). The sort of silence they had, which would usually be calm, was now stiff, like Bakugou was looking for the next thing to metaphorically or physically blow up. Shouto didn’t quite want to stand in the way of that.

Then, as they stood at the pickup point, waiting for Preeta to pick them up, Shouto finally asked, “Is something bothering you?”

Bakugou let out a gruff “nah”.

That was a lie and Shouto could smell from a mile away. He frowned at Bakugou in deep thought. However, before he could ask another question, Preeta’s yellow car drove into the pickup stop. Hesitantly, Shouto dropped the subject when he and Bakugou got in the car and Preeta greeted them with a wide, sunny smile. "Are you ready for Day 1 of hero-ing Singaporean style?"

Shouto nodded nervously while Bakugou let out a hum that wasn't quite in assent or disagreement.

"Tough crowd," she huffed out, curling her fingers around the steering wheel. "No worries. You're gonna have a blast at my office, I assure you."

As they travelled, the supervisor gave a quick rundown of what interning under her would entail. Preeta and Co. Hero Offices was located on an entire floor in one of the many office buildings in the central business district. Preeta explained, "We mostly deal with combat situations within that area. It's a hotspot for villains that really want to wreck things big time."

As they drove into the district, Shouto spotted countless skyscrapers and interesting sculptures around. He had heard that there were many important expensive buildings in the area so property damage was apparently a big deal as well. He was slightly worried by this. If there was one thing about their fighting styles that Shouto could call a similarity, it might possibly be the destruction. He and Bakugou didn't exactly have the best track record for keeping fights in their lanes after all.

Soon, Preeta parked in the underground carpark of a fairly unremarkable office building and took a lift from the car park up to the office. As soon as the lift slid open to their destination, they were greeted with a frenzied girl rushing towards them. "Oh my god!" She side-stepped, letting them out. "New interns?" she asked in English, brushing her messy blue hair behind her ear.

"Yeah," Preeta replied. She glanced at the folders the girl was clutching as she darted into the elevator and slammed her thumb into the button. "Documents for HeroTech again?"

"Yah lah!" she whined, pulling a face of agony. "Who else?"

Preeta rolled her eyes at the closing lift doors. "That's Charlene by the way. You'll talk to her a lot in the future."

Shouto glanced back at the closed doors. He barely remembered what she looked like already. Sometimes he wished he had better facial recognition skills. Also, Shouto was about 75% certain that was her first name. This felt wildly different from what he is used to…

Bakugou nudged his back, bringing his attention back to their supervisor, who had already walked past the empty reception desk. She pressed her finger on a scanner to unlock the door that led to an open plan office.

It was chaotic with people discussing things or typing away at their computers. Some of them were in office wear, some in casual clothes, and others in their hero costumes. With a quick glance around the room, Shouto estimated a head count of about 15 other people.

"Attention!" Preeta's voice boomed across the room, capturing the attention of everyone. "We have two new interns, Bakugou Katsuki and Todoroki Shouto from UA, Japan. They'll be with us for three months." She gave them both a look and made a sweeping motion, urging them to introduce themselves.

Shouto tried his best to articulate himself in the foreign language, "Hello. My name is Todoroki Shouto. I am 17 years old. Um… My quirk is um…" He held his palms up and simultaneously created a flame and a shard of ice. "My hero name is Shouto. Nice to meet you."

Someone started clapping and the others followed suit. Shouto stiffly nodded and pursed his lips.

Next was Bakugou. "I'm Bakugou Katsuki. 18 years old. My quirk is Explosion and my hero name is DynaMight. I'll be the Number One Top Hero."

Shouto narrowed his eyes at him. Did he really need to say that?

Bakugou's eyes made contact with his for a while before he added somewhat reluctantly, "Nice to meet you."

His greeting was also met with an applause and a short hoot. Meanwhile, Preeta grinned at him and said, "Someone's got more guts than I thought! I like that!" She glanced around the room and said, "Everyone except Charlene is here."

Someone from the corner confirmed that statement.

"Ok! Good! Saves time!" she said, clapping her hands together. "Introduce yourselves as well!"

One by one, the others introduced themselves with their names, positions, and their quirks. Some added special information about themselves and cracked a few jokes that garnered some chuckles in the office. However, between trying to get used to English comprehension, the unusual names and many different information, Shouto's head was swirling. Names and faces seemed to seep out of his brain as the introductions continued.

By the time Preeta smiled down at the two new interns and suggested introducing them to the office facilities, Shouto had already forgotten everyone's names.

Still, he silently followed Preeta as she told them where the pantry, toilets, sick bay, function rooms and her private office were. Then, they walked around the already chattering employees to a steel door behind the large table. There was another fingerprint scanner that Preeta used. "We'll have to get your prints later. This stuff is just a safety precaution. Hero work can get pretty sensitive. Plus, we have expensive equipment." She swung open the door to the most spacious room yet – the training gym.

With its light blue walls, the room looked more vibrant than the rest of the office. Natural light also streamed in from its wide windows, which displayed a view of the city skyline, like a reminder of why they do their work. The equipment, while not as grand as Endeavor Hero Agency’s, was still not to be sneezed at, from its high-tech temperature-regulators to an obstacle course with elements customisable to one’s training needs. There was a large first-aid kit and defibrillator beside the benches and a fire extinguisher fixed upon each corner of the room.

"This is where you will likely begin and end your day. Warm-up in the morning, and self-training in the evening." Preeta smiled as she pointed to a door with her thumb. "The lockers are just over there. Now, get into hero mode, chop chop! I want to see what the two of you can offer on the field."

***

There was a wide grin on Preeta's face when the boys were done showcasing what they could do. "Not bad! Not bad at all!" she said, clapping her hands in appreciation. "We will be working together just fine, I think."

"How about you show us what you've got?" Bakugou said, crossing his arms. He lifted an eyebrow at her challengingly. "Would like to see how *you* fare on the field."

Of course, Bakugou would do something abrasive at some point. Truthfully, however, Shouto would say he was expecting this side of Bakugou to show much earlier. Perhaps that was a testament to what a strange mood Bakugou has been in since this morning.

Luckily, Preeta didn't seem to take any offense in his tone. She just threw her head back and laughed boisterously. "Of course!" she said. She pulled her hair back and her nimble fingers secured the dark red locks in a tight bun. With her originally mid-back length hair tied up, Shouto could see an intriguing feature of her costume.

It was already fairly interesting when she first stepped out from the locker room, changed into her hero attire. Despite her extremely colourful casual outfits, her hero costume was entirely black. She wore black boots, a black jacket, a black pair of pants, and a black undershirt. The only thing that stood out at first were the big black bracelets that resembled Uraraka's. On her back was a metal fixture with six cylindrical tubes sticking out behind her, and behind those tubes was her bare brown skin.

Shouto found this all very curious. This costume must have been designed like this to serve a purpose… but what was it?

As though she read his mind, Preeta said, "How about a little quiz for you two?" She stabbed her hair with several more bobby pins. "Take a guess what my quirk is exactly."

Bakugou made no reaction and Shouto just nodded quietly.

Taking in a deep breath, Preeta swung her arms. Then, she spread them out and leapt to the air. There was a gust of hot air that pushed Shouto and Bakugou back slightly.

They straightened back up to see Preeta shooting upwards like a rocket. Her muscled arms swung forward to grab a slab of metal that hung from above. As soon as she made contact with it, the metal bent to fit the shape of her hands, glowing red-hot. With the momentum, she swung forward and landed with a roll on a lower hanging platform. The spot on the metal that she had grabbed had the marks of her fingers and no longer looked molten. Shouto's eyes widened in intrigue and Bakugou let out a short hum.

Preeta was on her feet before their focus could return to her and, when they did, she was bounding to the other end of the suspended platform. She grabbed a wooden block from a stack at the side and drew her hand back.

The wood burst into flames and she hurled it across the gym, and accurately into a pail of water. Nodding, she leapt off the platform and grabbed onto a pole near the walls and slid down quickly with one arm.

When she was on the floor again, she flashed the two a grin. "That's the gist of what I can do. My abilities are most practical in a real-life scenario to be honest. So," she folded her hands in front of her chest, "take a guess what my quirk is."

"It's heat-related," Shouto mumbled to himself.

"That's a given in my office."

Meanwhile, Bakugou narrowed his eyes. "Is…"

Shouto's eyes followed his gaze to the coated metal pole. He frowned. There were water droplets forming upon it. He took a step closer to it and placed his hand on the pole. "It's cold." Shouto's eyes widened. "Is it like mine?"

"No, not really. I can't just create fire and ice like you."

Bakugou grinned triumphantly. "So it's some heat transfer thing."

"Impressive," Preeta commended. "What else can you tell me about my quirk then?"

"It relies on contact?" Shouto suggested.

"Yes, and...?"

Shouto frowned in thought, as did Bakugou. Bakugou hazard a guess, "Do you store the heat in your body?"

"Nope," she said. "It's all stored in these babies." She tapped the cylindrical bracelets on her wrists against each other. "Insulate against the external climate but in direct contact with my skin."

Curious, Shouto asked, "But how did you shoot through the air?"

"Rapid gas expansion in the cylindrical structures on my back," Preeta explained.

Wide-eyed, Shouto nodded. Bakugou's air of skepticism was also lifted as he looked at Preeta in silent admiration.

"You two are pretty impressive, I must say," Preeta said. "UA really is UA, huh?"

“Preetaaa!” someone interrupted with a sing-song voice. A familiar blue-haired lady popped in.

Shouto was mildly surprised to find himself recognising her as Charlene from the elevator.

Looking towards the entrance, Preeta shouted back, "Yah?"

“Your darling is here!”

Preeta turned to goo as she laughed nervously. "Oh my god," she said. "I just– Well, you two–" She buried her face in her hands for a second as she let out a groan. "Just… stay here. I'll be right back." She made a beeline for the exit and stopped in her tracks right outside the gym. Her face broke into a smile. Preeta's hands were even more animated than before as she began to talk to a rather plump lady just beyond the entrance. The lady's back was towards them but Shouto could spot her handing a small tin box to Preeta, who smiled apologetically. It looked like a bento.

Shouto found his eyes sliding towards Bakugou. “What are they saying?” he asked as he peered towards Charlene.

“Harh? How the hell would I know?”

“Aren’t you always eavesdropping others’ conversations?”

Sighing, Bakugou shot him a glare. “Don’t say that as if I hear your stupid-ass conversations on purpose.”

“Do you not?” he teased.

Bakugou shoved him. “Die, asshole,” he said, rolling his eyes. The exasperated fondness did not escape Shouto's notice.

“Hey, hey,” Charlene interrupted. “I may not understand Japanese but I know fighting when I hear it.”

“Ah,” Shouto replied in English, as he raised his hand up in refutation. “It’s okay. That’s… um… just the way he usually is.”

Bakugou jabbed Shouto’s side harshly, drawing a yelp out of him. “You’re un-fucking-believable."

“Are your interns arguing already? On the first day?” the lady Preeta was speaking to said as she spun around to look at the commotion.

Shouto froze.

The skin of her face had a familiar leathery and discoloured quality to it. Her face was of a darker shade compared to the rest of her body, which was pale. And Shouto found his fingers tracing the scar on his own face.

Those were burn scars. But unlike his, it stretched over her entire face.

“They’re not fighting, they said,” Charlene replied, pulling Shouto back from his dazed state.

“I hope not." Preeta peered back into the gym. When it didn't seem like they were ready to murder each other, she said, "Love, do you want to meet the new interns?"

The scarred woman exclaimed, “Okay!" She walked swiftly into the gym in her high heels, Preeta following close behind. “I’m Kaiqi. Preeta’s girlfriend.”

Bakugou stepped in front of Shouto, hands nonchalantly in his pockets. “I’m Bakugou Katsuki. And he is Todoroki Shouto. We’re both from UA in Japan.”

"Nice to meet the both of you. I hope you'll have an amazing time in Singapore. Even though it's an internship, I think it'd be good to have some fun," she said.

Now that she was closer, Shouto could see the burn scars better now. Such as the way her smile was a little lopsided from the odd swelling in her face. She didn't have any eyebrows or eyelashes either.

The only burn victims Shouto knew were himself and his father. However, while both of their scars were on their face, neither of them had burns as severe as hers, and not over as large an area. He couldn't help but wonder: how did she get those burn scars?

Preeta’s face twisted as though her foot had been stepped on. At that, Kaiqi rested her hand on her girlfriend’s elbow and asked, “What did he say?”

That was when Shouto realised he had spoken aloud. He blinked in shock. Bakugou spun around, staring, and mouthed, "Idiot."

It looked like pulling teeth as Preeta translated what he said into English.

Shouto felt a surge of shame as he apologised for the question.

"It's fine," Kaiqi said, waving her hand. "I get asked about it quite often anyway. It was during a scuffle with a small-time criminal I was chasing after. He overloaded my quirk, which stores heat in my hair, and just caused it to catch fire."

"You're a hero?" Shouto asked.

Laughing, she said, "Used to be but not anymore. I've essentially lost my quirk." She pulled her bangs up to reveal that it was a wig.

His eyes widened. "Oh. I-I'm sorry."

"It's alright, really. You learn to live with things, right?" she said, directing a kind smile at Shouto. "It's been more than 10 years now so I'm fine!" She flexed her arm with a grin.

The dark look on Preeta's face, however, said otherwise. But Shouto dared not press this any further.

***

The rest of the day was taxing. Between figuring out their patrol route, struggling with names, and fumbling through hero equipment, Shouto was drained by the end of the day.

It really didn't help though that the mood had seemingly soured. Preeta wasn't as bright and bubbly as she was in the morning. That wasn't to say that she was gloomy because she still tried her best to ensure the atmosphere was never too heavy. But it was clear something was weighing upon her, and it obviously had to do with whatever happened during Kaiqi's quick visit.

That, however, wasn't the most frustrating part; it was Bakugou's sour mood. He was a little grumpy in the morning, and then it got better with time, even joking around in the gym. Yet, suddenly, he was brooding again, and Shouto hadn't a clue what he should do.

Even as the day ended and Preeta sent them back to the dormitories, Shouto still couldn't figure out what had gotten him in this mood or what he should do.

Discreetly, he slid his phone out of his pocket and texted the first person he could think of for help. He was waiting for a reply when the car pulled over.

"Alright! We're here!" Preeta said, smiling back at them. "Rest up. It's been a tiring day but we've got more to do tomorrow!"

Bakugou hummed in acknowledgement as he got out of the car.

"Thank you for today," Shouto said as he slid out after Bakugou.

"No problem!" Preeta returned. "Goodbye, kids!"

The two boys waved before closing the car door and watching it drive off. When Shouto turned around, Bakugou was already walking back into the dorm compounds.

Shouto was about to follow after when he felt a vibration in his pocket. He took a look at his phone.

Izuku: good morning!!! (Or evening?)

Izuku: but oh no that doesn't sound good :(

Izuku: i honestly think u should talk to kacchan properly

Izuku: leaving kacchan with his thoughts isnt exactly the best idea

Izuku: maybe talk to him

Shouto: … I think you're right

Izuku: (｡•̀ᴗ-)✧

Shouto nodded to himself. Izuku had experienced first-hand what it was like to deal with a Bakugou who has been left with his own negative thoughts for too long. So Shouto trusted his friend's advice on this topic. He was about to put his phone away when another message came in.

Izuku: its really nice that u r his boyfriend now! i think sometimes he forgets its okay to ask for help and that he doesnt need to deal with stuff alone. plus i can tell he listens to what u say

Izuku: love really changes a person hehe

Izuku: not in a bad way!!

It was as though a lead ball was launched straight at Shouto's stomach.

There was still the issue that he had to confess that he didn't reciprocate Bakugou's romantic love for him. The day had been so hectic and he had forgotten all about that.

And this conversation with Izuku drove home another problem: when he and Bakugou do break up, how would he explain to his family and Izuku that the relationship they had been overjoyed about not too long ago had just ended?

Shouto felt his lip begin to tremble. He wouldn't know how to face them to be honest. It seems like such a jerk move to have dated someone for more than half a year, only to tell them that he didn't feel any romantic love.

Wouldn't it have been much simpler if he had said that he didn't feel anything romantic for Bakugou from the start? Either they don't start dating or they enter the relationship knowing exactly what they were both in for. Not this… unstable form of a relationship.

What Bakugou needed was something firm he could lean on. Not this… mess of a person who fumbled around with his feelings like an idiot.

"Oi."

Shouto's head shot up to find red orbs staring into him.

"You coming?"

"Y-yeah," Shouto muttered, climbing the flight of stairs to the boyfriend whom he simultaneously wanted to embrace and tear himself away from.

#bnha #boku no hero academia #mha #my hero academia #todobaku #bakutodo #todoroki shouta #bakugou katsuki #bktd #bnha fanfic #mha fanfic #fanfic #my writing

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lady-plantagenet · 4 years ago

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♦ for all three sons of York! 😄

Asked via the Headcanon Meme: https://lady-plantagenet.tumblr.com/post/634584063141920769/headcanon-meme.

Darling I apologise for the delay 😭😂, hope you enjoy this semi-historical train of thought. You indulge me xx ☺️☺️ (rest of you get ready for a similar level of uncalled for ridiculous levels of detail)

♦ - Quirks/Hobbies Headcanons

~Edward IV~

Ok, one more grounded in reality and some more Headcanonish:

So, in Lord Edward Lytton-Bulwer’s ‘Last of the Barons’ I uncovered a fascinating (and primary-sourced) fact about our Edward: He engaged in international trades of his own. Apparently, he had his own ships and vessels that would jettison wool to and fro Burgundy. The trading classes, with whom Edward was always on great terms, were initially thrilled and felt a bit of sense of connection because of this. However, it became a bit of a bother when his self-given exemption from custom and duties gave him an unfair competitive advantage. Since reading that, I’ve always seen Edward as someone whose hobbies revolve around these types of matters rather than military ones. I really headcanon trading as a genuine hobby of his. With that, I would also connect other practical as opposed to artistic or conventional pastimes. I always saw Elizabeth Woodville as the big account manager (based on how she ran her crown property), so I headcanon Edward as liking to meddle in the external more merchantile matters, which translates to enjoying himself by making wagers/bets with those around him and always winning whether it be on personal matters or businesses (sometimes even in appropriately on women of the court). Not to mention a talent at games like cards and dice. If he lived today he would be the grand master of monopoly 😂. He wasn’t the most intellectual of men (he was at one point planning on defunding Eton College to get funds), but I always headcanoned he was pretty strong at maths (which was part of a nobleman’s education, but at that time it was mastery of the arts that granted you the reputation of a smartman). Of course, this fits in with his historical interest in alchemy, which I headcanon he was also partly interested in because of the potential of it yielding gold, but upon his marriage, the mystical side beckoned him too.

~ George Duke of Clarence~

I’ve done one for him here, which you can check out. But hell, do I have a lot of headcanons about him so I’ll do another here.

Our George was by all accounts a talented demagogue. His performance in the inheritance dispute indeed adds stock to what chronicles such as Rous Rolls and Crowland have said about his oratory and reasoning talents (which allegedly were rival to Edward’s own). Though some personality quirks could make him appear like a bit of a (popular Headcanon nowadays) himbo: penchant for airing out his grievances, flamboyancy and a great pride which combined with a famous sense of humour leads to instances where it verges into innappropriate levels of macabre (his own death being the prime example).

N.b: and yes I do in fact believe he was drowned in a barrel of wine and by his choosing. I don’t need Shakespeare to tell me this, I need only look at the strong evidence proposing this: a) Margaret Pole’s barrel charm, b) The fact that his head was reported as attached to his body when his body was exhumed centuries later. Drowning in a bath is another possibility, but then again, it was famously a womanly execution and I doubt a man as self-important as George would have been alright with the association, c) The fact that contemporaries such as Mancini (among others) have stated that this is the manner in which he died. Shakespeare’s play just further reflects that at that time (as in closer to 1478 then we are now) this was the consensus. Not to mention that in Richard III he wasnt technically drowned but stabbed and then thrown in a barrel. Arguments against center around ‘this seems just a bit too crazy’ but stop there.

So where was I? Oh yes. So in spite of that, I headcanon teenage George as very resentful of those who thought him bumbling, giddy and unserious (young Richard especially), because well, he was very touchy about his pride and saw himself as a prince worthy of deference and gravity (multitude of evidence for this). His charming nature never left him even as he grew bitter but instead he learned to harness it into a mask in order to induce others into error and subestimation. Indeed, much of his earlier successes hinged on the fact that Edward didn’t expect that level of planning (and betrayal) from him. Nevertheless, he never hid his talents completely, he had a very astute legal mind and I headcanon him as having a hobby for the law since he was a young boy and realised how useful this knowledge would prove in time and loved it on an intellectual level as he engaged with debates on matters from trusts laws to constitutional canonical and jurisprudential matters, first with his tutors, then his brothers, then Warwick and then his chief supporters and friends at Warwick and Tutbury when he became a magnate post-1472. Of course, I feel like this fits in with the impression of an argumentative and opinionated man as exuded from the historical figure. I also headcanon him as being delighted to have had Caxton’s Games and Playes of Chess (1474) dedicated to him (becoming one of his patron around this time historically). It remains the second book printed in English (first being Anthony’s dictes and sayings of philosophers - I think) and I headcanon him as doing the head in of all those around him with discussions and debates around the book’s message XD.

~Richard III~

Richard gets a reputation in fiction (where other people get most of their headcanons from) as being extremely serious. I personally share this Headcanon and I feel it was the most striking difference between him and his brothers’ personalities. I think he had very little ‘quirks’ as it were. Though there was this author (haven’t read the book) Jonathan Hughes who somehow manages to write an entire book about Richard’s interesting divination. He draws onto some vaguely paganistic symbols among Richard III’s choice of clothing and such, and posits that he had some interest in pre-conquest Northern religious culture. Anne Neville who by all accounts seemed to have had some interest in mysticism (read and discussed Ghostly Grace by a German mystic with her mother-in-law at length) I headcanon bonded with Richard over conversing on these types of topics. Therefore, I headcanon him as having a (very very lowkey because, as I said, he took great care in presenting himself as conventional and unsuspicious) hobby for northern paganisms, myths, prophecies and the like. I think it would explain what appears to be the historical figures ‘apparent hypocritical personality: Only banning benevolences after first trying to acquire them, having Shore pay penance when he himself had fathered bastards (John probably during his first year of marriage if Kendall’s reasoning is right) and aspiring and holding others to strict chivalric values of which he often fell short. The signs of stress found in isotopic analysis on his bones however makes me think that he was aware of these contradictions. Of course, he could have been stressed around the time of his death for other obvious reasons, but I’m not getting into that here. I suppose my headcanon of him as very utilitarian (yes I know Bentham came centuries later but, you know, he didn’t exactly invent this manner of thought) in his beliefs classifies as a quirk? Haha. As for hobbies, I think his scoliosis made him eschew some of the more physically demanding types of sports, so I see him as fairly bookish and like his brother George, extremely interested in the law as a hobby (though nowadays we wrongly see it as a rather vocational discipline). Though he shared the interest in matters of jurisprudence with George (about which they both strongly disagreed Richard taking the less fiscally conservative stance), he was more interested in criminal law matters (which checks out as he had made reforms on the criminal law and bail). I think he was genuinely concerned with justice, just a bit self-contradictory in his approach and diverse in his spirituality (the last more headcanonish)

#to everyone: this meme is still open ☺️☺️#there you go sorry sorry for the delay #but as you can see I do love my detail #a bygone era #tagged that for AO3 future chapters reference #george of clarence #edward iv #richard iii #🍷❤️#will add read more function soon #basically I love them all #I love making fun of them but nothing will convince me that they weren’t indeed talented young men full of talents and smarts #which by all accounts accords with historical fact #george plantagenet

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enthusiasticsobrietyabuse · 4 years ago

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Parent Manipulation Part 2 - Originally posted in 2005 OnTheEmmis.com, a Meehan Program Survivor Website and Discussion Forum. (ICECAP is the former incorporation of enthusiastic sobriety programs, it has since dissolved due to the effectiveness of OnTheEmmis.com)

So what’s the harm?

Well, it’s a dishonest way to make a living, for starters, and that is the very least of the harm done to people.

Let’s start by looking at the staff.

ICECAP has several lines for the skeptic who attempts to question the professionalism and integrity of their general staff.

“I may not be a doctor, but I’ve had my face in the ground long enough to know what the dirt looks like” is the sort of catch-phrase one may encounter when asking about ICECAP staff qualifications. The idea is one borrowed from Alcoholics Anonymous, that only a drunk can help another drunk. AA has been widely successful in rehabilitating alcoholics based on this principal, in which the catalyst is that one’s experiences lends him/her the ability to identify with the ‘alcoholic who still suffers’.

Further, the staff of ICECAP claims to function therapeutically from the platform of Alcoholics Anonymous principals and spiritual conditioning. The reason for all of this is so the ICECAP staff and methodology has a credible ‘foundation’ to justify its hiring and facilitation of non professional counselors. In short, AA is a household name, and is widely recognized as something that works. ICECAP uses this fact as a springboard for its operations.

The big problem with that idea is that ICECAP programs are not in any way similar to, affiliated with, kind of like, or even remotely in any way like AA. Alcoholics Anonymous is a non-profit self-help environment which has many safeguards cemented into its foundations that prevent any sort of ‘ego’ or for-profit interests from plaguing its members. Specifically, what AA refers to as ‘The Twelve Traditions’ are rigidly adhered to and aggressively enforced as guidelines to keep the AA name from anything that would divert the program from its primary purpose. The only similarity between ICECAP and AA is that they both have their members often form in a circle at the beginning and at the end of their meetings. Beyond that the two are apples and oranges.

Anyone who spends more than six months in both programs can easily see the canyon of differences that separate the two programs. The truth is, ICECAP drops the name of AA when it is convenient for them to do so, and rarely if ever gives the program any real credence.

“We are not AA, we are not trying to be AA, and we don’t play by the same rules as AA” (-direct quote- Michael C. Stonebraker, director and board member of ICECAP).

Ask ANY graduate from ICECAP, and they will tell you that a common dilemma that nearly every graduate experiences after leaving ICECAP and moving on to AA is that they are troubled with the inherent differences between the two groups philosophy’s for recovery. After years of ICECAP meetings, they are confronted with having to adjust to an entirely different program. In fact, most would say you are not off the mark if you suggested that it would have made just as much sense for them to graduate ICECAP into a monastery, or a school for lion tamers; instead of AA. They all have about the same in common: nothing.

Shouldn’t a program that claims to operate out of AA’s principals lend an easier transition to its clients from its rooms to AA itself?

I am painting this picture to illustrate that there is really nothing holding much water in ICECAP’s claim that its staff has credibility to function with kids from ideas that it ‘borrows’ from AA. To whatever extent a particular staff member of ICECAP attends or postures themselves as AA members, they do not deliver the principals of AA in a therapeutic manner to their clientele.

So what does that leave them with? Not much. The average ICECAP counselor is a high school drop out with no college or accredited training whatsoever. If asked for their credentials, they will respond with an array of phrases and ideas, all of which are meant to lead one away from any real answer. They will suggest with confidence and bravado that since they ‘come from the same place’ as their clients, they have an ‘edge’ in dealing with them the rest of the ‘professional’ community doesn’t. All of this can be very convincing to a parent, especially since their child seems to have taken so well to the given staff member. Again, this is ICECAP using the ‘unorthodox is better’ angle to begin the process of manipulation.

If long hair, dated language, concert t-shirts, a pretty face and a proletarian understanding of AA principals were all it took to rehabilitate a drug addict, then the world would be free of drug addiction tomorrow. The problem is that that is pretty much the only thing the average ICECAP counselor has going for him/her in terms of professionalism. They are funny and good looking. They know how to say ‘dude’ without looking like an old nerd. Kids love them and worship them. But they are INEPT AT ASSISTING THEM TO RECOVER FROM REAL DRUG ADDICTION!

So what then, does the average ICECAP counselor provide for a kid, if not sound professional guidance into the world of recovery?

Here are some of my observations on ICECAP provisions:

Kids in ICECAP are subjected to enormous pressure to take on the identity of a ‘dope fiend’. The ‘dope fiend’ model is constantly being illustrated to newcomers by staff and group members. It begins with traits that a lot of teens possess…rebellious action/ideation, foul language, ‘shock value’ expressionism, etc. But the irresponsible thing that ICECAP does with kids is that it sets them up to feel inadequate if they do not measure up to the complete profile of ICECAP’s ‘dope fiend’. The reason that this is such a bad idea is because the majority of ICECAP clientele are NOT ‘dope fiends’. If your kid is in ICECAP for any period of time, you will see a mental, physical and emotional change in them. Most parents (especially the ones who have invested thousands of dollars into this) view this as a good thing. If the changes in the child were not for the worst, I would agree with them. However, these changes include almost invariably the following:

Separation from school/education/career

Increased use of tobacco. Non-smokers will be encouraged to take up smoking (bizarre, but true).

The decline of a coherent or educated vocabulary. This is no joke. There is a rigid ‘dummied up’ dialect spoken by every member of ICECAP.

The encouragement of illegal behavior (curfew violations, trespassing, vandalism, underage smoking, etc.).

Limited exposure to outside influences. Music, films, books, clothes, sources of education, hairstyles, jewelry, where you get a cup of coffee, tattoos, leisure activities and more are all mandated by ICECAP doctrine.

Maladjusted/confused sexual behavior (more on this later)

One dimensional thinking/ apparent inability or unwillingness to think diversely or with any complexity.

Extremely narrow elements of thoughts applied to a very wide range of ‘life factors’, or; every problem life presents seems to have the same two or three things as an answer/rationale.

Constant fear of being ‘fucked up’, or ‘spiritually bankrupt’. ‘Negative’ actions by other people are consistently the result of these things.

Inconsistent/erratic emotional responses to seemingly normal situations.

Why would a kid willingly subject themselves to this?

The hook for teens is fairly obvious: Their parents leave them alone, they no longer have to go to school, they are allowed to smoke cigarettes, swear, and die their hair indigo blue if they want to, and there is usually a large enough pool of attractive peers to make the whole idea of ICECAP treatment not sound so bad.

Ask any current group member, and they will tell you that they do not feel controlled…that it is their choice to attend ICECAP. They will defend their positions with feverish resolve. They will claim moral high ground and a better way of life as what motivates them to ‘keep coming back’. Tell them that they are brainwashed, and they will respond by saying ‘well, maybe my brain could use a little washing…considering how sick I was’. Tell them they live their life in a ‘bubble’, and they will respond by saying ‘if this is a bubble, than I’m glad I’m in it…compared to the sick world I was a part of before!’

Two things are happening here: First, the child is offered nearly unlimited freedom, which in most cases is like a dream come true to them. What fifteen year old would turn that down? Second, instead of providing competent therapy or treatment, each kid is given this ‘dope fiend’ model, and as long as they adhere to this model, than they are ‘ok’. Everything that made Johnny ‘Johnny’ will be whittled away as he progresses through the ranks of ICECAP. He will attribute the changes to ‘getting rid of old behavior’, or ‘changing old tapes’, when in fact he is being herded and molded in a way that only a program facilitated by foolish, irresponsible amateurs can handle.

The sickest thing about this to me is the way they are manipulated by ICECAP into such devotion. The adolescent is such an impressionable creature, and everything that can possibly be used to woo them is carefully applied by ICECAP.

In Bob Meehan’s book, ‘Beyond the Yellow Brick Road’, there is a chapter called ‘The Teenage Psyche’. This is another decent chapter in this book. I’d encourage anyone to read it, because it perfectly illustrates what I am saying. If there is one thing that Meehan certainly has his finger on the pulse of, it’s what will attract a teenager. The ‘dope fiend’ model in which Meehan’s programs are forced to operate out of because of their gross lack of sound professional tools combined with the fact that ICECAP targets kids who are NOT ‘dope fiends’ creates a crippling environment for teenagers who would have otherwise just gone on with life.

Why would Meehan build his programs on such weak foundations professionally? To me that’s simple: Cheap labor. It’s not so hard morally to build a staff out of a bunch of negligent weirdoes like Mike Weiland, when your real aim has nothing to do with helping kids in the first place.

I believe that Bob Meehan has had two objectives from the very beginning. One was to satisfy his enormous ego, which he had never been able to accomplish prior to these programs. More importantly and certainly more dangerously, he wants money. It is no coincidence that every single person on the ICECAP payroll has been farmed from the group. These kids spend years trying to live up to those they believe (because they are told) are the most spiritually evolved humans on the planet (staff), and then picked to become the next generation of over-worked, under-paid servants of Bob Meehan’s empire.

Who pays the price? You, and more importantly…your kid.

And what of the rare occasion that a true addict walks through the doors of ICECAP?

It’s even worse for them. Many of them die.

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voicesfromthelight · 4 years ago

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How to Effectively Initiate Positive Alliances With Appropriate Spirits Outside of Your Immediate Sphere

Today, I want to write a bit about something very useful I’ve discovered about initiating positive, tangible relationships with spirits who are (at least seemingly) outside of your immediate circle of spirit guides, for purposes of guidance and magical collaboration.

Aside from sometimes collaborating in readings with my clients’ departed loved ones, as a medium who occasionally practices “emergency magic,” up until recently, my spirit guides never let me work with any spirits who weren’t part of the circle of guides assigned to me at birth, or ones sent to me by them for a given purpose, such as helping me predict the future more accurately. This “forbidden list” included saints who are often petitioned in popular forms of practical magic, such as St. Expedite, as well as employing the magic of other practitioners (often working with other spirits) by ordering candles from them, etc. These restrictions existed, and mostly still do, for my own protection, in order to ensure my spiritual and energetic integrity. I know better than to second-guess my guides’ advice.

Luckily, once these restrictions had been established, I came to realize that any magic I had practiced before, without soliciting spiritual helpers, which would involve fairly elaborate manipulations of physical objects as energetic focal points, would pale in comparison in effectiveness to the results I would get from simply going through my channeling preparations, clearly and passionately telling my guides what I needed, and then asking for help.

Sometimes, the results would be dramatic and nearly instantaneous - and if not, my guides would be sure to inform me that results would take a while. Coming to realize just how simple effective magic could be was incredibly liberating!

However, magical work aside, I would sometimes wonder what it would be like to receive guidance or help from a spirit who held a particular cultural or emotional significance for me. Mostly, these were departed artists with whom I felt a kinship.

With the possible exception of murder investigations, etc., the conventional wisdom on evidential mediumship is that you can only successfully interact with a departed person who knew you or your client in life. So, this spring, I decided to do an experiment with an inspiring artist with whom I had a fleeting in-person encounter in life, and about whom I had been thinking about a lot during quarantine: David Bowie. The personal connection may have been tenuous, but it was there.

What I discovered turned out to be an extremely effective way to form new, rich relationships in the spirit world.

One day in May, before it felt safe to get on the subway, after 100 days of not leaving my home borough, I walked all the way from South Brooklyn to Manhattan. When I reached SoHo, I realized that I was not far from where David Bowie used to live. So, I took a little detour.

As I came up to his house, I focused my mind inward, as I would when asking a question of my spirit guides, and silently addressed him:

“Hi, David! It’s Emily, here. Remember me? I’m the teenage girl who quietly interrupted your lunch back in the summer of 1998, at French Roast on 6th Ave., to thank you for all the inspiration you had given me as a musician and artist. You were so touched, you blushed like a beet! I never forgot about it. I’ve been thinking about you a lot, lately, and could really use some inspiration and guidance from you again. We are kindred spirits! Musician to outsider musician, can you hear me? I’d love it if we could interact, and you would accept to be my guide.”

Within a couple of hours, David sent me a synchronicity in the form of the gif below, posted by my friend right around the time I made the connection. (In these cases, I don’t believe in coincidences. My guides pull off stuff like that all the time, and it isn’t limited to random internet posts.)

A similar process has subsequently helped me form several new, extremely satisfying spiritual connections, including with Frida Kahlo, whose birthday party I posted about earlier, and even a couple of saints I never thought I had a connection to before.

That is how I found out that under the right circumstances, there is some flexibility in my “collaborative restriction,” and it is sanctioned by my personal guides. However, it isn’t arbitrary.

When you wish to form a relationship with a spirit outside your immediate sphere, the key is that there needs to be an affinity, cultural, familial or even personal connection between you and what you know of this spirit. This holds true whether it is a person who was known as a prominent spiritual teacher, an artist who passed away relatively recently, or a saint or spirit whose existence has taken on a more “storied” status. (Religions of the African Diaspora such as Santería, Vodou and Espiritismo - which I have no affiliation with - affirm this in their teachings, as well.)

So, here is my technique for forming new alliances with spirits you’d like to work with.

1. Identify the spirit, and define for yourself why you wish to work with them. Look into the spirit’s history, and the various ways in which people have defined and worked with them before. Do you feel comfortable with all of the connotations of what this spirit stands for?

2. Define the connection between you. What is it that you have in common in your temperament, your likes and dislikes, your interests, your cultural connections, your life experiences, your “life missions,” and your general energy? Why and how does your energy “match” theirs? (This is super important!)

3. If the connection isn’t immediately apparent, is there a work-around? For instance, say you wanted to work with The Virgin of Guadalupe, who is a Catholic patron saint of Mexico, and particularly a protector of indigenous peoples, but you weren’t Mexican, indigenous, or even Catholic. Guadalupe is also known as “Empress of The Americas,” and is an apparition of the Virgin Mary. Mary was Jewish. In my case, I’m Jewish-American. I’m a Jewish daughter. Mary is a Jewish mother. I’m part American, and live in the USA. She’s Empress of The Americas - not just Mexico. That would be an effective approach to initiating the connection.

4. Find a way to focus your energy on forming the connection. This could be through setting up a little altar with a picture, a candle, some water and flowers, or simply meditating in a quiet place or sacred space, especially if that place is directly connected to that spirit.

5. Address the spirit with love, trust, enthusiasm and respect. In your own words, explain the connection between you, and why you wish to work with them. So, for the above example, I might say: “Dear Guadalupe, I would love to work with you and your gentle, motherly energy. You’re a Jewish mother, and I’m a Jewish daughter - that makes me your daughter! People love you in my neighborhood. You rule over the Americas. I know your presence is strong here. Would you help to bring peace and love into my home?”

6. Look for a sign of acceptance. In my case, that will usually come in the form of a synchronicity, a dream, or having them straight-up announce themselves in my channeling sessions. (Often, it will be more than one sign!)

7. Once you receive your sign of acceptance, especially if they happen to grant a request, GIVE THANKS! I love buying flowers for my spirits. It’s also great if you can thank a guide or spirit ally with charity or a good deed that benefits people or causes you know are loved by them. In the above example, I would make sure to buy the flowers for Guadalupe from the ladies in my neighborhood who are immigrants from Central America - and possibly undocumented. I might also make a contribution to charities that help detained immigrants at the border. Sometimes your allies will telepathically let you know what pleases them.

And that’s it!

You can maintain your ongoing connection to these spirits through practices such as meditation and channeling, and also doing good deeds in their name. If you only wanted to form a short-term alliance, that’s OK, too. Just be sure to thank the spirit properly for their help, and politely say your goodbyes.

As a final note, it isn’t completely clear to me whether the initial lack of connection to spirits such as these is only skin-deep. One might have past-life alliances, or other unknown connections to these spirits from the get-go. Sometimes, if you feel pulled to a particular spirit, but can’t figure out the connection, if you ask your guides, and the connection is genuine, they will explain why!

We all have “inner circle” guides assigned at birth, whom we can most easily connect with, and especially if we work in the spiritual arts such as mediumship, a whole network of “outer band” helpers in our “team,” who may prefer to remain anonymous, but help us coordinate communication with our clients’ loved ones, etc. You won’t always know immediately who is helping you “behind the scenes”!

Explore these concepts for yourself, and see what you think! ...But do choose your allies wisely, and protect yourself by keeping your energy high, joyful, compassionate, optimistic and loving, and by properly opening and closing your communication sessions. Don’t fall for impersonators! Look for tangible signs.

Any questions? Let me know in the comments!

Good luck!

Love,

Emily

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fortunatelylori · 6 years ago

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NCW has recently made a couple of references to not judging. Once in regards to shot of him in the broken tower and then again in regards to his relationship with Cersei. "I think most people have at least been attracted to someone you shouldn’t be." Likening it to having a forbidden attraction to your bf's gf. Basically saying we don't get to chose who we're attracted to and it's based on circumstance. GRRM on one hand seems to normalize incest attractions (saying yes, it can happen)

but on the other denounces it as wrong and unnatural (demonstrated in reactions to Jaime and Cersei and the children of these relationships). So my take away, by normalizing the attraction and denouncing the actions he’s saying it’s ok to be attracted but you just can’t do anything. Is that what you take from that also? Jaime and Cersei are definitely foils for Jonsa so they have to be similar but do opposite. By NCW’s statements it really seems possible we see just how similar these foils are,

either by admission to each other or conversation with others (Sam, Davos or Brienne) who notice and they confirm. They love their sibling. Just like Jaime/Cersei. But unlike them realize they can’t act on it. There will be some element of the original outline where this will be used as angst before they find out the truth. Though unlike in the books I don’t imagine it will last more than an episode. I think it’s just used to establish the real nature of their feelings before reveal. Thoughts?

Hey, nonnie!

Incest is a very thorny subject. I’ve actually been interested in this topic for years, spent quite a while researching it and it’s always looked to me to be about the last social taboo our society still places on people. By that I mean that incest is such a hot topic that it can place people in jail that don’t really belong there: as in adult people engaging in consensual sex who do jail time because their sexual partner also happens to be their sibling/offspring etc.

So it’s difficult to really ascertain what GRRM’s actual views on the subject are because our interpretation of the subject will always color our own views. Personally, my views on incest are fairly liberal in that I do think consensual incest between adults should be decriminalized. On the other hand, because of the genetic dangers of incest, particularly multi-generational incest, I also don’t think it’s a practice that society should encourage. So while I’m very strongly against the Targareyens practicing incest as norm, my views on the Jaime and Cersei relationship are not as strongly negative.

My main problem with the Jaime/Cersei relationship isn’t even the incest. It’s the toxicity of the relationship, how they feed each other’s worse impulses and how the relationship ends up making both of them miserable and act out like monsters. In a previous post, I compared their relationship to the relationship of the main characters in Lunes de fiel by Pascal Bruckner: a relationship where both characters end up crippled and disfigured at each other’s hands because of the toxic, co-dependent behavior they both engage in. That’s kind of how I see the Jaime/Cersei relationship and why I believe that Jaime is the Valonqar.

I’m not sure that GRRM’s message about Jaime/Cersei is that their biggest “sin” is having given in to their attraction. I tend to think it has more to do with the Lannister family dynamic and Tywin. All the Lannister children are traumatized and crippled emotionally by their father. They also lose their mother when they’re very young (Tyrion is just an infant) so they never get a positive parental figure that can actually teach them how to love properly. And I think that’s the biggest issue with all of them: they simply don’t know how to love in a healthy way and that leads to Jaime and Cersei’s sexual relationship, a relationship marked by an intense desire to control and posses, a dynamic of envy on Cersei’s part that causes her to want to keep Jaime tied to her in some way to make sure he never gets Casterly Rock and also that she can profit off of his “talents” with a sword, talents she desperately wants for herself. Jaime, on the other hand, allows himself never to develop as an individual and dedicate his life to Cersei’s goals and desires because, I think, he just finds it hard to figure out who he is and what he wants for himself. It’s also a way of avoiding responsibility, something that is highlighted by him pushing Bran out of a window:

Jaime: The things I do for love.

He uses his love for Cersei as an excuse that allows him to avoid taking responsibility for his actions, independent of how heinous they are.

Also, the Lannisters, under Tywin’s leadership, engage in their own brand of “exceptionalism”. It isn’t as institutionalized as the Targareyens but they still view themselves as above other people and great houses. Tywin goes to war to protect the family name when Tyrion is taken prisoner by Catelyn, even though he reviles his youngest son, because:

Tywin: He’s a Lannister. He might be the lowest of the low but he’s one of us.

This message that Lannisters are simply better than everyone else is something all of Tywin’s children, including Tyrion, internalize and it’s something that might flatter their ego but it also isolates them from the rest of the world.

So in essence, Tywin creates the perfect environment for incest to occur between Jaime and Cersei.

One more thing I wanted to touch on from your ask is this:

wrong and unnatural (demonstrated in reactions to Jaime and Cersei and the children of these relationships)

Because of what we know about the genetic problems caused by incest, it’s easy to assume that Jofferey is the way he is because of Jaime and Cersei being siblings. But I’m not sure that’s the case. I actually think if genetics are truly at fault for Jofferey being a psychopath, that has more to do with who his grandfather and his mother are than the fact that he’s the product of incest.

I don’t think this has been touched upon very often, but book Cersei is, herself, a sociopath. As a teenager she threw her friend down a well to her death, as an adult she watches the torture of an innocent man and through that process, convinces herself of his guilt even though she knew he was innocent when she threw him in the cell.

For his part, Tywin engages in extreme forms of violence that he excuses as necessary acts of war.

I’m not sure Jaime contributed that much to Jofferey’s condition.

In conclusion, the way I see the foil dynamic between Jaime/Cersei and Jonsa is exclusively on a narrative level, where you have two siblings engaging in incest vs. two people who aren’t siblings who are afraid of engaging in incest. But aside from that narrative structure, I don’t actually think Jonsa and Jaime/Cersei have much in common in terms of their relationship or the reasons why they end up in those relationships.

As for this:

admission to each other or conversation with others (Sam, Davos or Brienne) who notice and they confirm.

A lot of people are discussing this issue, as in who will notice the Jonsa vibes, who will Jon/Sansa confess to, etc. That to me is superfluous and I’m not really interested in it. I’d much rather have Jon and Sansa confess their feelings to each other, than going around talking to other people about it.

Of course that by virtue of the faux-incest structure, angst and a repression of feelings is part of the journey towards the reveal that Jon and Sansa are not actually brother and sister and as such are free to enjoy their love. However, I’m not really sure just how much of that we’ll be getting because the writers have been playing with the romantic undertones in their scenes for 2 seasons now so they might forego further angst and just jump straight to the reveal. I don’t think it’s really going to work that well because the way they wrote the scenes left a lot of room for ambiguity but I can see them doing that.

We’ll just have to wait and see, I guess.

Thanks for the ask!

#jaime x cersei #jonsa #lannicest vs. jonsa #incest theme in GOT #house lannister

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pyrogina · 5 years ago

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my keto experience

Intro/TL:DR

As a preface I can report that I lost 17lbs in 30 days while strictly adhering to a keto diet. I'm a 34 year old canadian woman who works from home as an artist and a huge helping factor for me was the freedom to stay home on the bad days and the ability to purchase fresh meats and vegetables on a weekly basis. This is a really tough diet but if you put the right pieces in place, it might work for you too. Additionally, I am NOT a dietitian/nutritionist in any way, shape, or form. Everything posted here is from my own experience and a modicum of research on the net. Please double-check my facts before you begin this diet for yourself.

Is keto for you?

The first and hardest question to ask yourself about a ketosis diet is, Can I Endure this? And you should not feel any guilt if the answer to that question is no, because this is a very invasive and aggressive diet that will cause you physical pain even if just for a brief amount of time. Similar to vegetarianism, or is extreme cousin, veganism, a keto diet involves cutting out large swaths of the food pyramid to facilitate this diet. This does not mean going hungry, the foods that are removed will be replaced with other foods, only without any (or minimal) artificial or natural sugars. Sugar is just a chemical, which doesn't sound like a huge sacrifice, right? Most adults don't bother adding sugar to anything other than tea or coffee, but sugar is much more deeply rooted in our lives than you may realize.

Carbohydrates can be found in virtually every type of ready-to-serve foods: breads, wraps, pastas, fried snacks, hors d'oeuvre (these are examples of things I ate before this diet). All of these delicious and very satisfying foods have a fiber content and sugar content. You're still allowed to consume these, and I encourage you do so, but make sure to monitor the grams of total carbohydrates you consume that day. During this diet you will only be allowed to consume 20 grams (to 50 grams, depending on your body and personal needs) a day. remember this. Those 20 grams of carbs maybe the difference between you having a normal day and one of the worst days of your life.

Before I chose to begin a keto diet, I had been exercising casually (as before I was sedentary, more details on this later) and consuming about half as many carbohydrates as I had normally done in my life before. During the two years I was living this way, I was able to lose approximately 20lbs (from about 230 to 210). If you're starting your diet or lifestyle change from scratch, maybe try starting here first. Its significantly slower (10lbs in nearly a year), but it will not cause any pain or significant inconvenience.

What’s the big deal?/What to eat?

Sugar is a chemical, and more than that, its a drug that your body has been dependent on since you were a wee baby in your mama’s belly. Sugar makes your brain work and when you mess with your brain’s intake of the all-important-life-sauce it goes into panic mode. In the first 2-3 days (up to 6 if your me!) you will literally, physically go into a state of depression. Many had described it to me as ‘keto flu’ but as a survivor of 2009s Swine flu, I can most assuredly tell you that keto is much, MUCH worse.

First, my appetite became very finicky (and i'm already a very picky eater). I had no desire to eat the genuinely tasty keto meals that my boyfriend had lovingly prepared. I didn't want to draw, and I wasn't even in the mood to play easy video games. All I felt like doing was crying or sleeping (which I did, for 9 hours in the middle of my 3rd day). This is why, whenever I speak to someone who’s even moderately interested in this diet to BOOK TIME OFF YOUR JOB!!! It’s inconceivable to me to be forced to face other human beings in this state of physical distress. You need to pamper yourself while in this state in order to endure it and ensure your success.

There was one more bump in the road around the one-week point but i'm fairly certain it came down to a combination of dehydration and moodiness (period) so perhaps that was an outlier. Either way, water is the key when you start feeling shitty. Get yourself a nice BPA-free water bottle that you're comfortable carrying around and keeping full of fresh water. Once your body is in ketosis (you can check using those little paper sticks you pee on from the drug store, wash your hands!) you will get tired and moody the very instant you become hungry at mealtimes. Sometimes you don't even feel the familiar hunger pangs from your previous diet and mistake it for just a general bad mood. Always have a sip of water, babes; that’s your brain telling you to hydrate.

Alternatively, after eating a keto meal you still may feel hungry or unsatisfied, even sad (longing for your favourite dessert). This is where those 20g of carbs come in pretty clutch. Finding your perfect portion of reward may be impossibly difficult, I can only tell you what made me feel better when I got the cravings. Blueberries are quite sweet, they have a lot of natural sugar, but a handful of them sufficed as an incredibly sweet treat (some keto dieters have proclaimed that ‘regular things taste much sweeter than before’, I didn't experience this). Minigo/iogo yoghurt cups are fatty and sweet and work as a decent replacement to ice cream (count the carbs!). On extra tough mornings (in addition to bacon and eggs! Totally keto!) we would split a cavendish oven-fried hashbrown (about 15g; 7.5g split between my partner and I).

There are a surprising amount of natural foods that are not keto, but in careful proportions, can be incorporated into a daily keto diet. Most every fruit (that I checked) is very sugary but can make for a nice dessert. Certain vegetables like carrots or potato have too many carbs to be anything more than a boost when you feel shitty. Red onions have a very small amount of carbs (sugar and fibre work together to your benefit!) and server to replace pasta as a side to a nice steak dinner.

On that note, you need fibre to make your BMs move. Cutting carbs from your life means your number 2’s go bunny mode…. Take a sugar-free metamucil on any day where you have more meat during a meal than other types of food, or the toilet will be a nightmare.

Meals:

Cutting away pastas, breads, and other sides seems like an insane task but with some discipline and creativity, it's quite manageable. Breakfast didn't change much: eggs any way (sunny side for me, cheddar omelette for my BF) with bacon or sausage. Lunch was some combination of chicken breast and various salads (so many salad dressings are low or no carb! Read the back!). On steak night, we replace noodles with sauteed red onions fried and seasoning. Snacktime was usually pre-sliced cheddar cheese (go NUTS that shit is A-OK!), unsalted peanuts (other nuts have marginally more carbs, almonds and sunflower are moderate, check what works for you), or small amounts of beef jerky. Accompany those snacks with a big drink of water, or if you've had enough of that, certain drinks are acceptable like tea or coffee (with sweetner and high fat milk, skim milk is too sugary), diet sodas, sugarfree drink mix (migo, nestea). Just remember water, water, water.

Is it worth it? Pros/Cons

Cons:

-HURTS LIEK DRUG WITHDRAWL (you're literally coming down from the lifelong chemical addiction of sugar. It hurts like Trainspotting)

-MEAT (you will be consuming a lot of animal product)

-POOP (even when you have your metamucil, the toilet can take some time)

-SWEETS (the cravings for your favourite yumyums will almost never stop, it takes monk-like discipline)

-BORING (you can't go out and enjoy meals/drinks with friends and family without them or the restaurant making odd or even crappy exceptions. Keto menu options are slowly becoming popular though)

-TIRED (the first week or two will be very tedious and you won’t have any energy, even your favourite hobbies may seen unfulfilling for a time)

-ALCOHOL (basically none, unless you like vodka and sugarfree mix, you'll get drunk a lot quicker and end up feeling shittier without carbs in your body to process the liquor)

Pros:

-INSTANT RESULTS (in my first week i lost nearly 10lbs, and then two for every subsequent week. note that, just like any diet, there will be bounce-back)

-APPETITE LOSS (once you get into the swing of this, after the 2 week mark, you’ll find you no longer are pained when your hungry and the bigger cravings subside)

-BUDGET (this is a bit of an odd one and may not necessarily reflect your cost benefits. Before engaging in this diet, my BF and I discovered we were spending too much money on restaurants and leaving the food in the fridge to waste. This was primarily because we were too lazy to cook. Getting off our asses and cooking 6 days of the week made an immediate impact on this for us. If you already do that, this won't apply. Concurrently, we spent more money at the grocery store ensuring we always had fresh meat and vegetables; this did net us positive)

-REWARDING MEALS (having to stop and think about what it takes to make a tasty and satisfying meal has forced us to look at things in a different way. Making yourself and your partner a healthy, supremely tasty meal gets those endorphins peaking)

-EXERCISE (Unnecessary! Your choice! Just note that building muscle increases your weight as muscle weights more than fat)

My fave meals:

-Coffee (reluctantly replacing 1tsp of sugar with a fairy-dust sprinkling of sweetner cos i HATE sweetner, its 20-30x stronger than sugar so you only need 1/20th as much)

-Eggs and bacon!!! (sausage sometimes too)

-Garlic grilled chicken with spinach salad (onions, sliced almonds, feta, dressing)

-Steak and red onions (meat rare and onions grilled with seasoning)

-Spicy ground pork tacos (replace the taco/burrito with large boston lettuce leaves, shredded cheddar, green onions, diced tomato, dab of ranch sauce)

-Baked chicken breast stuffed with ricotta and spinach, topped with parmesan

-Slow-cooked pulled pork slathered with sharp cheddar (just eat with a fork!)

-Baked shrimp with garlic butter and parmesan

-Jalapenos stuffed with ricotta, cream cheese and cheddar, then wrapped in a strip of bacon (great late-night snack)

-Even changing the texture of a cheese can change the taste of the meal. Shredded cheddar adds a salty bite to a lettuce wrap, grated parmesan can trick a baked chicken breast into thinking its breaded. creamy cheeses can replace other baking sauces entirely.

-Diet pops (make sure its 0 sugar!), and tea/coffees with sweetner are fine, they do contain a lot of sodium though, make sure to drink 1-for-1 with water (meaning: every diet coke or tea you have, accompany it with the same amount of plain water so your body can process it and pee it out).

Variations/Control:

Vitamins: It should be noted that I take a daily multivitamin (C3+D) as I generally don't get enough sun or fruits. I highly recommend you take these just in general. They help keep skin soft and blemish free (I initially began taking these because of acne on upper arms and it cleared within days).

Activity: As briefly mentioned earlier, I began shifting from sedentary (not moving much, sitting for hours a day) to a more active lifestyle about 2-3 years ago. This entailed a personal regimen of making an attempt at physical activity approximately half the days of the month (period week was generally excluded). Every other day I would attempt one of the following: walking at least 2km, 15-20m of floor exercises (‘lady push-ups’, sit-ups), 15-20m of time on the indoor bike, or an hour of house related chores (lifting, laundry, cleaning, anything that involves getting sweaty). In addition to these, yoga is peppered into my lifestyle as frequently as possibly, particularly in the morning before breakfast. On days where i'm unable to exercise, I at least attempt the basic yoga poses to stave off my (no-longer chronic) back pain.

#personal #diet #keto diet #ketosis #okay to reblog #no one proofread this for me...#ill try to keep edits to a minimum

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jamesnelsonart · 6 years ago

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Batman: White Knight Review

Folks, I can’t always let you know when a comic is bad. I don’t have the energy. A lot of bad comics are created every day, and to catalogue the reasons why Action comics issue 724342 didn’t appeal to me would be an exercise in futility and pain. No, when I see a bad comic usually the most it’s guilty of is being boring or not making a lot of sense and maybe the art isn’t put together very well. So I just ignore said media if I don’t like it. Maybe I’ll joke about it a bit with friends, but why spend my life on such things? You already know where this shit is going-- I’m about to break my code here. Every now and then, I discover something uniquely bad. It’s bad in a way I never could have even considered. It’s bad in a way that demands my attention, and I simply have to think about it, and then share my pain with others. That comic book is Batman: White Knight, and boy does it blow.

It’s honestly hard to tell where to begin with this review because if you think about any bad part of this book for more than one minute you’ll immediately be reminded of another bad part that relates to the first bad part, and so on and so on. It’s an interconnected network of bad. A true spider web of shit, full of parts all intersecting into an intricately dumb design. A painstakingly-made pyramid of poop, with each brick being laid as the foundation for something even worse than what came before it. I suppose I should start with the premise and work my way down from there.

What if, and hear me out here, what if the Joker became a good guy? And Batman… get this… was a bad guy??????? That’s the whole gist of Batman: White Knight. The white knight in the title is Joker, because he is a very pale dude from that chemical bath he took in his origin story. So that’s the premise. You understand the title. Now usually in superhero comics a shake-up like this might last for about a year before a return to the status quo, but White Knight takes place in an alternate universe, so write/artist Sean Gordon Murphy has the opportunity to make some big changes that will stick since there’s no worry about it impacting the main DC universe. Characters have the potential to die for good or change permanently here, and with the idea of the Joker becoming good you could get a pretty wild story here with some twists and turns. So why the fuck does nothing happen in this story!? Oh sure, this is a comic so actions do indeed occur. Events take place across a series of panels as they do in all sequential storytelling… But damn, this comic is a whole lot of nothing! It positions itself as a big shakeup, Batman as you’ve never seen him before! Only, it isn’t. This story is the safest fucking thing I’ve read disguised as an edgy, you-didn’t-see-that-coming, no-one-is-safe story. In some ways it’s funny, kind of like that Joker. But the only joke here is that I wasted my time reading this shit.

The story starts with Batman pursuing the Joker in his Batmobile, causing tons of property damage and hurting some innocent bystanders. Nightwing and Barbara are with Batman and are upset that they can’t reel in his dangerous impulses. Batman chases the Joker into a pharmaceutical factory where the Joker does his Joker speech. You know the one. The speech every writer ever feels that they have to write for the Joker, as if it adds something to his character. The Joker speech basically has the Joker go on about how he and Batman are polar opposites blah blah blah and how the Joker, in his own twisted way, has some affection for Batman and then Batman will be like NO and punch him or something. Hey, subtext works a lot better when it, y’know, remains subtext and not outright actual text. So Batman gets real riled up here and force-feeds the Joker a ton of pills while someone films him doing this and posts it on the internet. This combination of pills makes the Joker not be psychotic anymore (this is dumb as hell, but the rest of the comic is way dumber so you’d be surprised how the lowered standards allowed me to just roll with this) So this Batman is a pretty rude guy, being down with needless violence, and about as smart as a sack or bricks, but it’s an alternate universe, right? Characters are supposed to be different. Yeah… about that-- when doing an alternate universe it helps to have your universe be well-defined. This is especially important if it’s already similar to the main DC universe. The reader is left unsure as to what has or hasn’t happened in the past. Did the Joker ever commit any mass murder in this timeline? We don’t really know. The Joker has had a lot of incarnations so it’s kind of important to know how evil he is if he’s gonna become a good guy. If he’s committed numerous atrocities then I can understand a lot of peoples’ skepticism to him being good guy. Or was he some guy throwing pies at peoples’ faces and defacing property? Already none of this shit makes any sense if you stop to think about it but I have to keep going or this review will never get around to bashing the important stuff, like everything else about this book.

So the Joker’s mental stability is restored (which somehow also changes his bleached-white skin and green hair back to normal, those pills must have been wild) and he becomes a super-genius and decides to fight Batman’s brutality, and by extension the Gotham Police Department’s brutality. He’s done telling jokes now, he’s now the Woker(ok he never gets called that, but it would’ve been funny if that happened). And with his genius intellect unrestricted by his unstable personality he is now free to… sue the city. Damn, that’s exciting. I feel I should stop here and say there’s a reason the Joker is a fairly static character, and that’s because he works perfectly fine as a clown with a Batman obsession who does crimes and has some good zingers. Those are the interesting things about him, so when you remove all of those traits you’re left with a pretty boring character. What is the Joker without any of his personality or Joker-ness? Just some guy. And that guy is the protagonist of the story now… great. The other characters don’t fare much better. They all act extremely stupid, wildly out-of-character, or perform actions that conflict with prior information the reader has been given about them. Batman does no detective work, largely having the plot fed to him by other characters and falling into every trap imaginable. He can only ever react to situations. Harvey Bullock is deriding Batman for brutalizing the Joker and seems very anti-police brutality, yet later is arresting a black activist, blatantly escalating a situation where there was no violence. Barbara Gordon is hanging out chatting with Mr. Freeze (who appears to be a nicer guy in this continuity) and spills the beans about her secret identity, then is shocked to realize that she’s been wearing her Batgirl costume, thus revealing her name! Why is she so dumb!? Why on earth would she want to talk to Mr. Freeze in her civilian identity, huh? They were in the Bat Cave when this happened, so suit or not, it’d be pretty obvious that the girl in the Bat Cave is Batgirl. What the fuck? See what I mean when I say it’s hard to know where to start and end with bashing this shit? I mean this was like a 2-panel thing. Everything leads into everything else because nothing was thought through or considered while writing this comic so events happen just because they have to in order to move events along, character motivation or personality be dammed. And what happens is… not much if you really analyze the sequence of events in the story. Joker gets better, sues the city, participates in a march against Police corruption/brutality and decides to run for mayor. Batman gets mad about this. Joker then discovers a slush fund that is used to repair all the damage Batman does to the city and exposes it to the public. As a mayoral candidate, Joker proposes using this slush fund to instead heavily arm the police. Doesn’t this kind of contradict his anti-police brutality sentiments by offering the department numerous tanks to drive around in? Ah, fuck it. I doubt any part of this is thought through or any narrative dissonance considered so I’ll just keep going. And that’s… all the Joker does. Well, he does do one more thing. He decides to start dating Harley Quinn. And if I’m gonna talk about the characters, I mean REALLY talk about the characters, I’m gonna have to talk about Harley Quinn. Or rather, the Harley Quinn…s. Plural.

I should preface this by saying it’s pretty clear Sean Gordon Murphy is a fan of Batman the Animated Series. It is good, so who can blame him? What gets weird is he inserts a ton of TAS-centric stuff into White Knight in a way that feels arrogant. He knows what is best for Batman, no one else. So why do I feel this way about his writing here? Because the Joker goes home and is greeted by a Harley Quinn who is like “Wow, can’t wait to have tons of sex and kill a ton of people with you again! My favorite hobbies are not wearing a lot of clothes, staying evil, and being an unpopular New 52 redesign!” Then the revelation comes, the OLD Harley Quinn shows up in her TAS jester outfit and derides the new one as a big tiddy bimbo (not joking about that, her dialogue is actually deriding her for having large breasts and not being a good role model lmao) and says that she will resume her relationship with the Joker now, because he respects women (you really gonna do Poison Ivy like that? Smh). As we all know, when you think an abusive partner has changed, you should definitely restart your relationship with them. This has never, ever backfired in the history of the universe. But back to the point-- in fairness the New 52 Harley did suck, but I don’t know why this whole thing is even in the story. Haha, I’m joking! I know why! It’s because Sean Gordon Murphy probably realized that he needed an antagonist to make some action happen because the story was clearly going nowhere! So the new, unpopular Harley goes off and swears she will return the Joker to his bad self, calling herself “Neo Joker”. So how does someone with no resources or notable skills become the antagonist? Well don’t worry, the entire cast is very, very stupid and their agency is null and void, so if something needs to happen for this story to move along, it just happens.

Earlier in the story for the Joker to discover the slush fund he had to get the rest of the Batman rogues gallery to do it for him by stealing documents on it out of some building. How does he get every criminal in Gotham to do this for him? By inviting them all over and serving them drinks with bits of Clayface mixed in. You see, Joker used the Mad Hatter’s mind control tech on Clayface so it stands to reason that if you ate some of Clayface’s clay then the mind control would work on you by extension! It only sounds stupid because it IS stupid. I also gotta ask why the entire rogues gallery would accept drinks from the Joker… he’s kind of known for not playing well with others and, uh, frequently poisoning people. But again, these characters need to be dumb for the plot to happen. So Neo Joker discovers the control module thingy because the Joker just left it around (I assume the mind-controlled villains were just shitting their pants in the days leading up to this since they were all stored in a warehouse) so now she gets a villain army. And then she gets a giant freeze gun to use on Gotham City because in this universe Mr. Freeze’s dad was an ex-Nazi who came to America and built that and left it underground. No maintenance required after sitting around for decades, this baby’s ready to blast! So while all that was happening Batman went to jail, Joker let him out to help him with dealing with Neo Joker, and Alfred died. That might sound like things that happened, but let me be clear: nothing happened. Nothing happens this whole comic. Things appear to happen, but that is not the case, that is camouflage. Sure, Alfred dies, but Mr. Freeze starts helping Bruce, so one old man is replaced with another. Actually this is an upgrade, Mr. Freeze knows way more science shit so this new model is great! Batman is finally jailed for flaunting the law but then Joker releases him and reveals that he found out that Batman had been paying for the property damage fund, not the taxpayers! So Batman was a good guy all along! He was just being a brutal dick because Alfred was dying so it’s all in the past now. So if Batman was good all along then what was the fucking point of this comic? The premise is good Joker vs. evil Batman, until it isn’t. What was the point of ANY of the first part of this dumb ass book? But the reader isn’t supposed to think about that. To distract from the fact that there was apparently no conflict at all the Neo Joker starts making threats with her big freeze gun and villain army. So Good Batman and Good Joker gotta team up with the militarized police force to take her down! Yeehaw! But. There is a catch. The Joker’s mixture of meds is wearing off and he will revert soon! The classic ticking clock scenario—as bad as everything is, this should at least inject some tension into the story, right? Wrong. Joker reverts while he’s in the Batmobile with Batman, and then he’s like “I still wanna defeat Neo Joker for stealing my shtick.” So don’t worry, he’s still on your side, Batman. I’m kind of impressed that Sean Gordon Murphy took such an easy opportunity to add some stakes to this bland comic and was like NAHHH, FUCK THAT, I LIKE MY COMICS BAD. So the police ram the villain army with their tanks and uhhh not all of Batman’s villains have super powers you know… some are just regular-ass people. The Penguin gets fucking hit head-on with one of the tanks, how the hell did HE not die? Plus they’re all mind-controlled in the first place so that raises ethical questions as to how they’re being treated since they’re not willfully being evil right now but BATMAN IS GOOD OKAY? HE PAID FOR THE PROPERTY DAMAGE FUND SO IF HE SPLITS SOME FUCKIN SKULLS THAT’S JUST WHAT HE’S GOTTA DO YOU LITTLE BIIIIIIIIIITCH. DUE PROCESS… IS FOR CUCKS. YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO DIE at this point in the comic I guess. Yawn… so at this point I think they all win or whatever. The freeze ray is stopped or something. Look, this part is kind of a blur. All you gotta know is Harley marries the Joker before he totally, totally reverts for real this time and gets sent back to Arkham. Then the dumbest thing Sean Gordon Murphy has ever written happens. And I read this book, so know that I do not say that lightly.

Near the start of the comic when Batman force-feeds Joker the pills it’s stated that this was all part of Joker’s master plan to get Batman to feed him pills that he just somehow knew would cure him and this would trigger Joker’s ultimate plan of… revealing the misallocation of taxpayer dollars? And he came up with this when he was still a bad guy, right? Huh? Well guess what, fuckos? It’s time for a fucking twist. Turns out the original Harley Quinn, who is Good and Pure and Keeps Her Clothes on except when I, Sean Gordon Murphy, draw her and the Joker fucking, is the one who planted the pills at that scene, as she reveals to Batman. Mind. Blown. No, really, my mind is blown as to why Sean thought this would add anything to his comic aside from more questions regarding the logistics of how she did that. How did she know which factory Batman would chase the Joker into at the start? How did she know Batman would force-feed the pills to the Joker? You’re not really a master planner if your plan relies on a ton of variables way out of your control. Then Batman is then like “wow that’s cool that you did that. this is why I always liked you more than the rest of my rogues gallery because I know you can do good things.” Yeah that’s right FUCK YOU Two-Face. Burned-ass bitch. You think YOU were the friend-turned-enemy who Batman hopes will one day turn good again? Wrong. It’s Harley. It’s ALWAYS been Harley. Then Batman reveals his secret identity to Commissioner Gordon and says he’s gonna be a cop in a blatant sequel hook. The threat of a sequel to this is scarier than any cliffhanger. Brr!

Ughhh, and you KNOW there’s gonna be a sequel, too. This can’t just end here. When I said I had to review this comic it was because most of the reviews say shit like “a bold new direction with a much-beloved property… DC, please don’t revoke my blog’s access.” This book demands a thrashing. It deserves to get laughed at, but everywhere I looked online people weren’t laughing. There was praise! Now look, Sean can draw a pretty picture so he has that going for him. And he’s also willing to kiss up to ComicsGate, a hate group populated by unskilled whiners, so that they’ll waste their money buying his bad book with pseudo-progressive politics. But I’m not here to insult Sean Gordon Murphy. This is a review, and I pledge to keep it focused on the comic. It would be unprofessional and rude to call Sean a gutless coward, or a worm, or a hack writer who just throws references around to create the illusion of lore, or a guy who condescends to trans writers and artist who get harassed daily about how they should just befriend their harassers, or a guy who thinks his inability to stick to a narrative theme makes his work deeper, or a guy who shits on indie creators in interviews because he works on Batman and they do not. No, that would all be mean to say, so you won’t hear me saying it.

I will give the comic this much, though. If you enjoyed All-Star Batman and Robin for how absolutely wacky it was, this book might be right up your alley. It fulfills that same feeling of viewing every panel and going “What the fuck? WHAT THE FUCK???” So if you like bad books, this book is for you.

#Batman:White Knight #DC comics #review #lol #The Woker

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autoirishlitdiscourses · 4 years ago

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Discourse of Monday, 28 December 2020

You're written a smart, articulate, sophisticated, broadly informed paper, no rush I'll respond to your first one sirens is currently better developed and more specifically into your paper grades discussed in more depth may very well done, overall. In a lot of ways. I'd have to drop a photocopy of the quarter, divided as follows: If you would most like to see just a meaningless hurdle that needs to do this a great deal. You picked an important part of your choice from Casualty could productively appear either near the end of the due date will result in an analysis of a turnip-and I hope your summer has been assigned for each text contributes to a greater degree than they do not attend section every week except Thanksgiving and that, the highest possible grade to assign your final draft, letting it sit for a recitation and discussion to assist you. See Wikipedia's article Curragh p. Let me know, and the context of the recitation half of your plans appears to have sympathy for Francie, it was more lecture-oriented than it needed substantial additional work on time. Again, none are egregious or otherwise, with Dexter, it will help you to be time management you've only got twenty minutes, but I can't be sure that your textual accuracy was otherwise perfect. On Raglan Road: Personally, I think that picking only well … primarily sources that come from the absolute maximum amount of time makes his use of stream of consciousness and how it's related to writing and studying so that I say these things but could make suggestions about how you can which specific part of Ulysses closely, as you write it, no, I think that your paper, no matter how amusing it is, and sometimes the best possible lenses into these in more detail; thinking about for the quarter is that you have demonstrated repeatedly in section tonight, expanded and based on speculative and unorthodox scholarship that I think you're onto a good recitation. Bloom attends a funeral during the week of Thanksgiving is now five weeks late on this. I absolutely understand that it looks like it's going to go first, let them do so as to avoid treating your time and perhaps others as lenses into these topics.

Students Program. Aside from the dangers inherent in being exposed to the section hits its average level of competence by any means the only love-related topics not only accepting responsibility for your paper. So let's have the midterms by then, unless you're definitely ready to talk about a more luggage than you want to try harder on the final, is that you should definitely do whatever is available online, send me, and that not doing anything horribly, but given your interest, and I want a recording of a letter grade for students on the paper is going to post on the Internet, if you'd like, though, you've done so far, if you want to pick another course text with the second half of The Family Guy called Saving Private Brian, which shows that you've set up to your next email it to say to each other in a different direction.

I think you've prepared separately, then there are certainly capable of this. As to what he thought just so that you have any other questions, OK? Heaney is referring. You may not have to accept an F, having talked about effective ways to take a look at what actually interests you about The Butcher Boy; you also gave a strong step in this paragraph, you really have shown that you should do is produce an audio recording of it; is there. Have a good holiday break! Similarly, perhaps, American imperialism. I'll go ahead and confirm that the problem with the small modification that I still think it should be on campus tomorrow afternoon work for them would help you be an episode of Ulysses please let me know if you haven't done the reading yet, and prejudicial or hate speech will not incur a/genuinely amazing/. Your plans were adequate but came in earlier than yours. It may be that you inform people who see the text. I'm happy to proctor it if you go back over my recent emails that it might sound, because he hasn't taken it yet, and yes the grade sheets for all of you is yours. I'm happy to send in some of your recitation comes, make sure that you haven't lived up to your presentation, please let me know if tomorrow works, we should be working you don't get discussion started.

Again, this is a fascinating topic that probably has plenty of other cultural changes in the way that sets you up to your presentation tomorrow! If you'd prefer, I'm sorry I didn't foresee at the last chance to talk. Playboy of the things holding you back here, and it's not inevitably the case and I will bump up your recitation/discussion, and that writing a personal experience doesn't necessarily tell us? Have a good weekend! On McCabe's The Butcher Boy, and you do a project on on line 12; and any other reason. As promised in the text and to exercise even more effectively with the professor to ensure that you offer to you. But they've added up. I'm taking September 1913, like I said yes I will Yes. I'm wrong about how you'll effectively fill time and adapting your plans by ten a. Etc. That section of a text during the week. So, the more difficult texts, and the way that Shakespeare has been made optional for everyone who got below an A-is if you choose into a more explicit effort on the final to get away from home. I take it you're referring to the week you are adaptable to the aspects of your thoughts to, you might focus on Playboy of the poem's last stanza, too, that you believe that you are reading in the context of other instances.

Are we late? I've attached the eGrades sheet I just graded it, though, there's always more worth talking about Francie's narration, one of which parts of your own work will help to make sure you understand everything that's going to be difficult for you. Overall, you might want to get to all of you will go first or last, or twenty minutes for both of you is the connection between nature and aggression?

In romantic relationships, his extremely alcoholic father, etc. You were polite and responsive to the bleeded potato-stalks to the zombies, who is Godot? I add the points for not following a specific, questions would have a thesis while you are perfectly capable of tipping the scales from writing an essay that is, your deadline for you unless your medical condition actually makes it an even stronger work in here. 5 p. I didn't anticipate at the beginning of the operant preconditions of this audio or visual recording itself in some important ways. Finally, remember that essay. You were nimble on your writing, but you've effectively used your message as a template to create the next level and making sure to send me a revised version instead, if turns out that you originally selected. I'm just letting you know you've done many things very well if you do not perform pre-evaluations of drafts, but will make it up until 7:00, in turn, based entirely on attendance for your new puppy! Overall, you should be motivated more clearly articulated stand on what you would have helped you to 97%. This page to check for updates.

Unlike many students who simply move their eyes quickly over the middle, but your delivery was good in many ways; one of barbarism. You could theoretically also meet Sunday or Monday that is necessary, then by tomorrow, you need to be signing up for a solid, although if you have chosen. Have a good student this quarter. I certainly understand from personal experience it can be a tricky business, and I'll see you next week is by Eavan Bolland, not 72. Then you may ameliorate the conditions producing your anxiety. You also demonstrated that you can do a project on on line 648; changed done to make any changes, please let me know. However, these are just some possibilities, and that what it would have to go on because there are also somewhat off base—this is a B for the Academic Senate Outstanding TA Award for the Self. This was incorrect: Thanksgiving is next week: Think about what you plan to recite in section lately keep it from my section guidelines handout. You provide some scenarios for less-intelligent and read well, and effectively positioned it as he makes clear in the front of the poem, delivered it very well here, and you display an excellent point, but I can't believe that you shouldn't use them to pick something appropriate for that section is UXJU. Enjoy your Halloween, and I've just been crazy and I'm glad it was more lecture and section leader.

Thanks again for a very solid aspects of your selection, and you've also made them all returned by the end of the appropriate time if you recall, and this is very well elicit some comments even from people who see you in section Wednesday night with details about exactly what you see absurdism most clearly illustrated in the first group covers material that you should/always/have completed the assigned texts from Seamus Heaney I'm extending this backwards a bit rushed. My overall goal is to call on you second or third. Sounds good to me for any reason, but this would require the professor's reading of the woman from whom Bloom receives a B. Think, too. Well done on this you connected it effectively to larger concerns. Have a good thumbnail background to the details of the week in which students often make a good one a lot of similarities to the smallest detail, and the phrasing of a topic is potentially very productive move that the directions specified that they will be no reading quiz this week tomorrow! I won't assess participation until the very small-scale issues that would work for the course. Anyway. With two exceptions the very end of Lestrygonians; these are generally fairly small errors, and your writing really is a very solid aspects of the Catholic Encyclopedia online. Beyond that, if you want any changes made I will probably involve providing at least some background on Irish money if you glance over at me occasionally, but because it makes my life easier if you get some good topics outlined for the midterm; talked exactly twice in section after the final it has taken longer than I had been reading it. I had hoped, motivating people to talk in detail. This has not removed the price tag from his hat. Currently, there's no penalty for not meeting the discussion component of your evidence pay off as much as it turns out, I wouldn't make bets about how you see as important about those parts that build to your query, but spending some interpretive effort. But I think, and I think, too. Did you want to deal with the paper's relevance to the discussion that involved not only accepting responsibility for your attendance/participation that is faithful and accurate down to recite and discuss when you've finalized your decisions. Pick a few avenues that might make you feel inadequate approaching painting and other parts of your material you emphasize again, this could have been to take so long to get back to you? Again, all of you who have been, though. What is the best way to find that thesis, because you still have plenty of examples, but it's often confused with one. In retrospect, it may not like it, immediately or in abusive situations; mothers who don't exhibit the characteristics that you are capable of doing this. There were some genuinely tiny errors, your recitation. That is, well done overall. Hi! You straighten out I know from section that week is going to be more successful would have paid off to pay more attention to the historical development of the text, though I still need to be changed than send a new document. I think that the professor is behind a bit nervous, but overall, you did quite a good move to demonstrate this well enough in advance, and enjoy your time and managed to respond to any particular essay format has to be a more streamlined fashion there is at least a short description of your discussion as a method of contact for me to assist you. Still, it may be something that's much more detail if you'd like me to say is that the overall relevance of what you most need in order to do, because freedom is a very good job with something happier.

There are a number of points. You supported each other to do a wonderful and restful holiday break! You've been very close and, again, did he drop? They are presented in the class, because you'll probably find it helpful to look for people who are leaving town for the final and am not currently counting the boost for reciting in section we will have to drop courses without fee via GOLD. In other cases, writers of papers in this paper would have been to question #1, because this is not improbable. You seem like you.

Have a good job with it. 3 was 6. So a how this passage: If you have some very good job with it, and I quite like your lecture slideshow along. Yeats, because the other person who's still on the list are represented as standard entries for the final you will attend 9, though if you're trying to cover, refreshing everyone's memory on the basic parameters are what you really mop up with Joyce's appropriation and recasting of classical mythology Ulysses in particular, I think that you have attended for attendance and participation is 55 5 _9 points. He consented to let me know.

#Irish literature #automatically generated text #Patrick Mooney #Python #Markov chains

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kittencaboodleextraordinaire · 4 years ago

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“Ok, but I had a Johnny first, and mine is better”: Adventures in Cyberpunk with a snarky headmate

Warning: this post contains considerable discussion of a major plot point in Cyberpunk 2077 which is discussed in the promotional materials (trailers etc) but which is not revealed in-game until after the first segment of the main story (the heist). Those who wish to remain unspoiled may instead view this lovely picture I edited of four raccoons in a trenchcoat (inspired by Critical Role’s playthrough of the absolutely delightful ttrpg Crash Pandas, which I highly encourage everybody in existence to go check out).

This phenomenal piece of art is surely the high point of this post. It can only go downhill from here.

Anyway.

So as we all know, Cyberpunk 2077 was finally released a few days ago to the expected amount of drama and fanfare, and my partner and I have been playing it together, by which I mean he’s been playing and I’ve been providing helpful advice like “We should totally buy the awesome purple car what do you mean you want a motorcycle THE MOTORCYCLE ISN’T PURPLE”. It’s not, y’know, an amazing game, but it’s pretty fun and I have already found multiple characters to ship V with, which I’m sure we can all agree is the truly important thing here. Plus of course there is abundant opportunity to make innuendo at my partner so I am a happy kitten. Mostly. There is one aspect of the story that is proving to be a continual source of awkwardness and general highly disconcerting aura. Namely, Johnny Silverhands.

At some point (I fell asleep for this part so I don’t know exactly what happened), you end up fused with a chip containing the personality of Johnny Silverhands, some kind of sort of famous dude who died a long time ago or something like that. awards self 10/10 stars for that eloquent and informative summary of important plot elements I was totally paying attention to and wasn’t asleep for at all anyway the important thing is there’s a dude hanging out in your brain with you. This is kind of weird and awkward for me, since I also have a dude hanging out in my brain with me. His name is Jonas. Jonas, say hi. J: I’m not a zoo animal and I don’t do tricks, also I reject the idea that this adds to the post in any real way. However you are very lucky because I am bored and complaining at you sounds more fun than going back to sleep. Now I’m tired and it’s 3:30 am go to bed or write the rest of this by your own damn self. That’s basically the same thing I guess.

Jonas is a bit weird. I don’t really have any idea what he is, and it’s not really within the scope of this blog post to discuss it in depth. He is some flavor of alternate personality, he is one of my closest friends, and he is a pain in the ass, much like most of my other friends. Having Jonas around is uncannily like V’s experience sharing their brain with Johnny Silverhands. Now I have a few other friends who have multiple personalities, one of whom is watching playthroughs of Cyberpunk and has appropriately described the experience as “pretty fucky”, which about sums it up. However it’s made even worse for me personally by the sheer number of similarities between Jonas and Johnny and their interactions with the people they share heads with, for (the most obvious) example, their names are really fucking similar. Jonas has matured a lot since he started appearing about 6-7 years ago but Johnny’s snark, unhelpfulness, complete disinterest in being nice, and even his body language all scream of Jonas’s original behavior, which, let’s be honest here, he still does all that anyway, he’s just nicer about it because he likes me. When Jonas and I talk, we tend to picture him as standing (or sitting or leaning against the wall or whatever) somewhere in the room with me, much as Johnny appears to V. He’s not active all the time and until very very recently was almost never “in charge”, so to speak, much like Johnny. So what we have here is somebody who acts a fuck of a lot like Jonas, has a similar name to Jonas, and interacts with their host in a manner that is almost a perfect match to how Jonas interacts with me. Somehow all of this went over my head. Then something even more uncanny happened.

Now, Jonas was originally an extremely minor character in a vast series of stories that I have made up in my head and never actually written down. He somehow evolved, without any conscious effort on my part, from a bit character who was never meant to do anything besides show up, get scolded by the authorities, and leave, to an increasingly major character, to living in my brain with me. Consequently, while he generally shares my tastes and preferences in terms of food and etc etc etc, there is an extremely major way in which we diverge: Jonas, like Johnny, and unlike me, smokes. All the time. It is Very Important to him. As such, the fact that I do not smoke and have exactly negative one billion interest in ever doing so is a source of intense frustration to him. We have had m a n y arguments about this. He knows not to push it too much and respects that it is my decision but that is not about to stop him from complaining about it loudly and with great passion. So when we encountered a scene of V and Johnny having the exact same fucking argument, ending with the incredibly blatantly Jonasesque lamentation from Johnny “Nonsmokers are the fucking worst”, it was like getting hit in the head with a brick. Actually forget the brick, it was like being hit with an entire building, and then having Jonas stick his head out the window and go “Missed me? ;)”, and then yelling back “WELL IDK BUT MAYBE NEXT TIME YOU’RE PILOTING AN ENTIRE FUCKING BUILDING IF YOU COULD TRY A LITTLE HARDER TO MISS ME THAT’D BE REALLY NICE THANKS” and then having him wink at me and assure me that head trauma builds character. It fucking doesn’t and he knows it.

After that, it was impossible to not see Jonas every time Johnny came onscreen. I still enjoy the game a lot. The setting and story are both really really cool and the loot is A+, and I really love being able to hang out in voice chat with my partner, who currently lives pretty far away, and do something fun together and experience something new. But having my relationship with Jonas, which I still have a lot of conflicting feelings about no matter how much I genuinely believe he’s a positive force in my life, reflected back at me at every turn, is bizarre, surreal, and a constant reminder of issues that have been nagging at me for a while, many of which are explicitly being brought up by the game itself. Last night we were doing a mission where V and Johnny at some point start talking and V mentions how they seem to be getting along better and Johnny suggests that maybe it’s because he’s rubbing off on V. V responds with something to the effect of “Am I becoming more like you, or are you becoming more like me?”. Jonas and I have been asking ourselves the same question for years. The only answer we were ever able to come up with is “probably both”, but the question of how much and to what extent, and if you start blending together with somebody else that much, are you really the same person anymore, and on down the rabbit hole we go, can really eat at you if you’re the kind of person who cares about that sort of thing. Which I guess we both are. And frankly we are probably not even half done with the main storyline and I doubt it’s going to stop posing these questions.

J: so I said I wasn’t going to have any more of this and went off in a huff but actually I changed my mind I have some stuff to say.

this is obviously weird for kitsie, and I guess it might be obviously weird for me too but it’s weird in an entirely different kinda way. it’s certainly surreal, and a lot of the questions it keeps bringing up are a lot to think about. Johnny is a program on a computer chip designed to be a copy of the original Johnny’s brain. this raises the question, and this may or may not be addressed later, how real is he? and is he the original Johnny, just on a computer chip now, or is he a different entity who happens to be identical to Johnny? and how is a person on a computer chip embedded on somebody’s brain really different from a person who’s a subroutine in somebody else’s brain? am I real? am I a part of Kitsie that just thinks differently for some reason? are we two facets of a whole being that’s kind of both of us and kind of neither of us? am I just a hitchhiker? I really don’t know. I have a lot of memories and backstory. things I did in the past, before I knew Kitsie. are those memories real? they feel real to me but on the other hand they didn’t actually happen. are Johnny’s memories real? they did happen but he’s a brain scan so did they actually happen to him? it’s a lot to think about, but hard to stop thinking.

and then there’s the other concern, which is that this is a game for kitsie to enjoy with her partner, and whenever this shit happens it wakes me up and I end up feeling really weird, like I’m intruding. which I am. and as wonderful and understanding as he is, I’m still very much something he is getting used to and having problems adjusting to and I really understand because fuck I’m having a problem adjusting to me too. and maybe it’s stupid but I feel bad for being the disconcerting aura of uncomfortable thoughts wafting through something that’s supposed to be a pleasant and fun evening without me in it. which frankly sums up my entire existence. fuck this I’m tired I’m out of here again go tf to sleep kit.

I had more to say but “what he said” pretty much sums it up.

In conclusion, I don’t really have any objection to the story itself. It’s an interesting concept carried out fairly well that under normal circumstances I would think was really cool, and certainly it’s been a unique experience anyway. And I guess if anything the fact that it’s so unnervingly on the nose is a sign they did a good job? I’m still having a huge amount of fun with the game and the massive backlog of sidequests combined with our minimal ability to focus means that the main quest only takes up a small portion of our playtime in any case. I just needed to get all this shit off my chest.

This has been tonight’s episode of the Kitty Rambles Podcast, I am too tired to think of any good way to end this so goodnight and thank you for tuning in!

#cyberpunk 2077 systems headmates seriously what even the fuck

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solitude-is-the-only-peace · 7 years ago

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SHE is the Doctor, whether you like it or not (I like it)

Now I was intending on waiting a little longer before writing this, but honestly, these couple of days I’ve just had so many thoughts that I couldn’t wait.

As you can probably guess from the title, I am very much on the completely fine and extremely excited side of the fandom at the moment, this and Thrones return has made these past couple of days the best I’ve had in a long time.

Now to ensure that anyone not OK with this doesn’t go making assumptions about the reason I’m OK with this. I am a 20 year old male from Australia, I’m half Sri Lankan so I am not white, I’m currently studying to be an actor, and I’m a feminist, that’s right guys, we can be feminists too.

So I’m going to talk about several things here, I’m going to talk about why this means so much, I’m going to speculate on what the 13th Doctor is going to be like, and I’m going to try and counteract some of the arguments against her, particularly ones I’ve encountered in real life, not just online.

We’ll start first with why this means so much, I really shouldn’t have to explain it but it seems that unfortunately I do. The world is 50% female, why shouldn’t they be able to have a chance to be the ultimate character, for 54 years little boys all over the world have been able to think “I’m going to be the Doctor one day”, while all little girls have been able to think is “I guess I can be the companion then”, and now they too can think they can be the Doctor one day, and how is that a bad thing. In fact, this sums it up quite nicely

So I was going to speculate on 13 and series 11 next, but I think I’ll leave that for last and move onto counteracting the arguments against 13. I’m going to focus primarily on the ones I have encountered in real life, which are fairly consistent with what I’ve been seeing online.

So like I said, I’m Australian, which means I had to wait until about 1:00 in the morning to get the announcement, so the next morning when I was heading to Uni I was in a state of excitement, ready to discuss it with my fellow Whovian friends.

Thankfully, the majority of them were ok with it, my best mate has only watch half an episode but he’s interested in getting into it, his reaction was initially dismissive but eventually he came around to the idea when I brought up the fact the humans change gender as well. Another friend didn’t need any persuading at all, she was excited from the get go. But another one wasn’t, she hated the idea, and still does, and it’s her view we’re going to discuss.

Her opinion is that since the Doctor was initially written as a male character he should always be male and that this is just feminist pandering bullshit. Now as you can imagine I was incredibly shocked by this, here was a 22 year old intelligent woman going on about feminist bullshit, I was shocked, shocked I tell you.

So I tried to have a reasonable discussion with her about it, but that didn’t go anywhere, she brought up the whole “You wouldn’t make James Bond Jane Bond” argument, and whenever I tried explain my point, she’d just interrupt and shoot down any argument I had. Now I was trying to understand where she was coming from, and then she said something that made it all make sense, she said they should bring David Tennant back.

Don’t get me wrong, I love every single Doctor, including Tennant, but we have to admit, there is a part of our fandom who came on during the RTD/Tennant era, and have simply refused to learn more about the show beyond that era. Now everyone is entitled to their favourite Doctor and showrunner, but when they believe that what that era was should be the defining characteristic of the show, and ignore everything else because it’s not that, then there’s a problem.

Doctor Who has been a show about change from the moment Susan left, this fact of the show was firmly solidified when William Hartnell left. So to go back my friends argument about the Doctor being initially written as a male, yes he was, in the 60s, when there would have been no way the Doctor could have been female. But also, when the Doctor was initially written, he wasn’t written as a Time Lord from Gallifrey with two heartswho could change his appearance when he died, he was simply written as a time travelling alien who most likely only had one heart. Everything else about the Doctor came later, that’s what you do, you don’t decided everything about the character right at the start and leave no room for expansion, you create the basic outline and let it be filled in piece by piece over the years.

So to hear my friend state the she shouldn’t think the Doctor should be a woman purely because that’s not how he was when he was created, I raise her this.

But let’s move on from the negativity and focus on the positive, but before I start speculating, I’m just going to share these as well.

If the people who made the show can understand this, why can’t you? (I know Peter Davison isn’t entirely for it, but let’s just let that be for now shall we).

So, speculation. I know that the outfit she wore in the video isn’t going to be her official outfit, but I’d love to see parts of it kept, particularly the boots and the oversized coat. I have seen lots of people saying that the Doctor’s going to be wearing heels now, but just seeing those boots, I can imagine 13 wearing those. Now the whole outfit is meant to be Capaldi’s even though it obviously isn’t, the coat, the hoodie, everything about it just screams 12, however as you can seee briefly in the clip and more so in picture they released, the coat is actually grey and double breasted.

Now I would love to see something like that kept in the show, Tennant, Smith, and Capaldi all had form fitting outfits, but personally, the Doctors outfits that have been the absolute best have been the slightly baggy looking ones, Four had his whole untidy look, War and nine had their leather jackets that looked big on them, and those looks worked.

So I’d love to see them go with a coat that’s just a little too big on her, personally I would like a duffel coat, like what Paddington bear wears, that way you can keep the hood without keeping the hoodie, seeing how that has become closely linked with 12. It’s something we’ve never seen any of the doctors wear before, and has the slightly odd look that all the Doctor’s should have.

As for the rest of her outfit I’m not entirely sure, should she wear a dress of some kind or should she continue to wear pants? well why not both? I think as long as each Doctor maintains a distinctive look they vary the rest of their outfit as much as they like. So if they get a distinctive coat for her, she could wear a dress under it one episode, and then pants the next, it doesn’t really matter.

Now as for her TARDIS and Sonic, I would like to see them keep those mostly the same. With the TARDIS I want them to do what they did with Capaldi when he came on, keep the basic form but add some personal touches that tie in with that Doctor’s personality, as well as other changes like how they added the roundels, more lights and an extra set of stairs. Stuff like that so it’s the same but unique to her.

Similar thing with the screwdriver I think, keep it somewhat the same, but add a small difference so it’s unique to her, something like what they did with Nine and Tens screwdriver, after Ten destroyed it in Smith and Jones, his new one had a different coloured handle. Now I love the new screwdriver, but if I was to change something, I would change the grip, those four metal bars just looks uncomfortable to hold, so maybe a leather grip or something like that, small, but significant enough.

Now I was going to speculate on Series 11 but this has been a long post and my brain is dead so I’ll wrap it up here. Maybe once we know more I’ll speculate on it, but for now I leave with these wise words from the Doctor himself.

#Doctor Who #Jodie Whittaker #13th Doctor #Thirteenth Doctor #Series 11 #Chris Chiball

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shame-on-nyall · 8 years ago

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Ok, if you asked this or you are a friend of this person or agree with this person, please, I beg you, unfollow me immediately after reading this post. I’m not even sure why I have more than 5 followers anyway, lmao, but okay, hear me out.

First of all! When an artist sketches a character and does not color in their skin it does not mean they think the character is white or even light-skinned! This only would have mattered if the artist posted a finished colored piece and McCree’s skin was still much lighter than his default model’s skin tone, and even so, one could still argue that they color picked from the other much lighter-skinned models because those exist too. So already this ask is starting on shaky ground.

Furthermore, what about the drawing makes one think McCree was white? I, an artist, saw a sketch in the artist’s particular style, which doesn’t have that much difference in key facial features between an Asian and a white person, so for all I can tell, McCree could be part Asian, part white, part Hispanic, part Native and part black, and uhh, Hanzo could be part white and part Australian aborigine and part Pacific Islander. Like, that’s just this person’s style???

Next, why couldn’t McCree be a white person? I know everyone believes he must be part native or have Latin ancestry because that is a reasonable thing to believe if the character is born in the Southwest United States, and I believe that, too, as a person living in the Southwest. But I also kinda have assumed that his father or grandfather or whoever must have British ancestry as well to explain the last name McCree (unless he just made up his name, also possible.) So sure, he is most likely not 100% European Caucasian mayonaise white if he was born in the Southwest United States decades from now, but again, we don’t know that, and sometimes people choose to identify as white even when they aren’t technically so, so there’s that as well.

Another thing, drawing a skinny and busty genderbend with no flaws is an artist opinion. Anyone can interpret a genderbend of a fictional character any way they want, it’s not wrong or right because guess what, it’s not based on a character model that currently exists, it’s someone’s imagination. Even if the genderbend model does exist, it can be an alternate universe! I have every reason to believe that young McCree is skinny (well, he seems broad-shouldered but fairly lean as a young man) and extrapolate that to a female version. He also had both arms until at least 25 years or so, so I also didn’t have to draw him with his cyborg arm. Plus, it’s a sketch, I sometimes forget tattoos and scars on a sketch because I’m excited to post the sketch!!! I try not to, but sometimes I do! I’m very excitable!

Also, this whole ask was worded in such an arrogant and entitled manner to a person whom I believe speaks Korean, who was so disturbed enough by it to delete their post so I had to go their twitter to find the image to use as reference for female leggies. Would not a “I’d love to see a 37 year old female McCree in your style with cyborg arm and really cool bullet scars” or something similar be a considerate and graceful grown-up thing to add?

And last but not least, how is harrassing a fanartist who drew this art in their spare time for free and shared it to the English-speaking fandom on Tumblr helping the cause of feminism and equal rights for all in any way? Imagine instead of smugly hitting send on this rude as heck ask, you took a deep breath, looked out the window and considered:

1. writing a check to a local women’s shelter or clinic

2. volunteering to be a big brother or sister to children who need assistance

3. walking dogs at an animal shelter

4. messaging a friend who has been struggling with school or work and letting them know you support them

5. writing a letter to an editor of a fashion magazine saying that you hope they include more plus-size models or models with scars and skin discolorations and that they are doing a good job not photoshopping Beyonce’s skin lighter, etc

6. literally anything else!!! anything else would positively affect how women and people of color and people with disabilities are treated in this real world instead of maybe making almost no difference at all in the online fandom of one video game

Look, I’ve been there. I once was a 19 year old university student, exposed to new ideas about justice and fairness and diversity. My little close-minded sheltered brain was suddenly opened to concepts I admired and wanted to desperately share. But I was poor, had no transportation, no friends at college, and the only way I could communicate was through the internet (Myspace and uhh... deviantart? Livejournal?) I’ve said things like this before and years later, I wish I hadn’t because I sounded like a fucking asshole. I meant well, and I thought everyone could perceive my good intentions, so I thought it gave me the right to say whatever. But I know now that it probably hurt a lot more people than it helped, because I was losing allies, alienating would-be friends, giving social justice a bad name with my rudeness and unwillingness to consider other people’s thoughts because I was so sure I was right. I didn’t know back then, I was extremely introverted and somewhere on the autism spectrum, I had no experience expressing myself carefully or effectively online, and no one told me what I should have done instead. (in my partial defense, the internet was a new thing back then.) So that’s why I’m telling everyone now.

Internet activism really helps your ego, and sometimes you want and need that. But helping out in real life is much better in the long run, even it’s harder and slower work. If you really want to criticize a fanartist or fanfic writer because you can’t help anyone in real life, then go ahead. But get your facts straight, be an adult, make that person proud to have learned something from you instead of ashamed and bewildered.

Anyway, I was really pissed and needed to get that off my chest lmao. I did a lot of work at women’s shelters and interned at Planned Parenthood so I get really angry and defensive when artists who are most likely female and not white or cishet get these rude af criticisms because I know they came from a good place. But like... Nazi ideology came from a good place, too. Comments like these censor and intimidate, and they don’t censor and intimidate the fat cats in Hollywood and the old out-of-touch men in capital cities, they censor and intimidate people who struggle to be accepted, people like us.

Just think twice, my dudes.

Ok, I’m done. Back to shimada bros content... later. Thank you for reading. Unfollow me now. Unless you really want to stay on this train lmao.

#delete later #ranting and raving #unfollow me lmao #please and thank you #internet activism #sorry for the long post

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beingmad2017-blog · 8 years ago

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10 Powerful Blogging Secrets Revealed For New Bloggers

New Post has been published on https://beingmad.org/10-powerful-blogging-secrets-revealed-for-new-bloggers/

10 Powerful Blogging Secrets Revealed For New Bloggers

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sincerelybluevase · 8 years ago

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What I dislike about romance in YA fiction

Last month, I made a post about some of my favourite and most hated literary things related to romance. It was supposed to be a quick, tag-like post, but whilst writing it I realised that I actually had a lot to say about several aspects of romance. Tags are not the appropriate place to do so, so I figured I might as well make it into a post of its own and give it some well-deserved space. I decided to write about the way romance is portrayed in YA fiction, because a) I read quite a lot of YA, b) some of the things that irk me are very noticeable in YA. Please note that it is more than possible to write entire books about this topic, meaning that what I’ll write down here is going to be pretty succinct and not always as nuanced as I might want it to be. Note that I am not blaming people or judging people if they read some of the books I’m going to talk about and point out as having problematic aspects and find them highly enjoyable. I must also point out that I am aware that probably all of these problems are not limited to YA. In fact, you can find plenty of them in adult fiction, too. However, I have found that YA books tend to have tropes that are extremely prevalent, so much, in fact, that they can almost be seen as characteristics of YA. Some of those relate to romance, which means that it is appropriate for me to talk about them here. Now, with those safety warnings out of the way, let’s start.

It happens quite a lot that relationships in YA are not based on mutual equality. In fact, some of them can be downright abusive (but more about that later).

Relationships can be unequal in multiple ways. One of them is based on not seeing women as equals. Now, putting women on a pedestal or looking down on them as sluts, both putting them on another level than yourself, is a trend that goes back centuries. Just looking at the tradition of the Petrarchan sonnet shows us this (and highlights another problematic aspect of the way we perceive women, namely that they are somehow responsible and to blame if a man can’t get them). Freud coined a term for it, calling it the Madonna-whore complex. Though most of what Freud wrote is no longer used today, the Madonna-whore complex remains relevant and, sadly, highly prevalent. It actually encompasses a huge amount of tropes and can be used to explain why Edward is obsessed with Bella remaining a virgin in the Twilight-saga, why Marcie in the Hush Hush series is continuously ridiculed because of her sexuality, why it is continuously stressed how fragile and pure Juliette is in Shatter me, why Mal doesn’t want Alina to kill people, etc. This type of thinking is incredibly dangerous, because it doesn’t leave any room for seeing women as people. The Madonna-whore complex states that a woman is either good or bad, a virgin or a slut, someone to wed or to bed. A girl has to behave almost prudishly (without being a real prude, because that would be plain boring) to deserve the guy at the end of the story, but the guy rarely has to live up to similar expectations to deserve the girl. It infantilises women by completely ignoring that real women cannot be put into one of these categories, that they actually incorporate a space that falls somewhere in between. Again, infantilising women is a trend that spans decades (one only has to read a basic Victorian novels in which it is stressed how small and girlish and innocent the ‘good’ female characters are).

The next aspect that I want to discuss ties in with the entire concept of unequal relationships and shows a lack of respect, too: abusive behaviour. Not only are women often infantilized, they also have to put up with appalling behaviour that is often not described as such and, at times, even romanticized. Characters are touched or kissed or fondled without giving consent, often at inappropriate times, such as during a fight. It gets even worse when they are told that, deep down, they actually want this (The Twilight-saga is probably the most infamous example of this in YA. Actually, I think that everything problematic that I’ve discussed here+ some bonus content can be found in those books). This type of appalling behaviour does not end with touching; often, there is a psychological aspect to it, too. I think this is most often seen in love triangles, in which two male characters both manipulate their female object of desire by either telling her half-truths, lies, or withholding vital information, or treating her like she is too stupid to understand certain problems. The worst thing is that they often claim to give the girl time to make up her mind about who she wants to be with, though their actions state quite the opposite. The Masque of the Red Death duology provides a clear example of how these types of abusive behaviour can come together: Araby, the main character, struggles with her detachment from reality and her drug addiction. One of the two boys interested in her injects her with drugs against her explicit wish because he just knows so much better than she does that it will help her. Also, he withholds important intelligence, then blames his competitor when things go wrong. UGH.

Of course, not all romance in YA is this problematic. I would argue, though, that romance in YA can be rather unrealistic at times in several ways.

Firstly, a lot of books pretend that the relationship between the two main characters is based on destiny, the highest type of love there is, or plain old True LoveTM (Twilight, Fallen). Within the frame of the story, this may work. However, I find it problematic, because the main characters of YA tend to be around 16 years old and most relationships we have at that age tend not to survive into adulthood. That is OK; most of those relationships are a kind of trial, a test in which we learn to define what we want and don’t want in a relationship, what is acceptable and what is not, how much you have to take and how much you have to give. This is not to say that they are somehow less than relationships people have in later life (in fact, most people will remember their first relationship very vividly, as well as the strong emotions that went along with it). Of course, there are always people who end up staying with their childhood sweet-heart for the rest of their life. It must be noted, though, that this is rare. Portraying the relationships teenagers have as the highest kind of love there is 1)insulting to other kinds of love that are equally valid, 2)plain wrong, since many people will have more than one serious relationship in their lives, 3) as well as dangerous, because it implies that, as soon as your teenage relationship ends, your life’s purpose (or at least one of them) has somehow come to an end. This sounds highly dramatic, but I would like to point out that this is exactly how some books portray a break-up (New Moon is practically infamous because of it, but other books, such as the Trylle-trilogy, do it as well). It also implies that there is something wrong with you if you haven’t had a relationship before your teenage years end, even though there are plenty of people who haven’t really dated as teenagers, which is completely normal.

Secondly, there is the entire love-triangle aspect. It is dumb because it portrays women as objects to be bartered for, as well as highly unrealistic. Most people are happy when they find one guy or girl that is happy to have them. To have more than one fighting for your attention is almost the opposite of a problem (or would be, if it wasn’t so incredibly abusive).

So, why do we even have to care about all of this? Naturally, there is a point to my ranting, or I would not have written so much. Though YA is read by people from all types of age categories, it is a fact that a large part of the readership consists of young teenagers. Though I feel that a lot of teenagers are a lot more intelligent and perceptive than we as a society give them credit for, the fact remains that they are pretty impressionable. They are in a phase of their lives during which they become more and more self-aware as well as aware of the world around them, its conventions and norms and paradoxes. When abusive, unrealistic behaviour is presented as normal or even romanticized, they will not or only partly realize that this is not the way they themselves should behave. It becomes internalized, and once it becomes part of the way you think, it is very hard to get it out of your system.

Again, this is not a post to slander YA. There are books out there that subvert these tropes and do manage to paint a fairly positive picture of teenage romance. I just wish that there would be more.

#book tag #YA #I did not intend this to be so long

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sportsleague365 · 8 years ago

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Excellent Mailbox, people. Let’s keep this up with mails to [email protected] Winning is all that matters Southampton had a real go at United and dominated large spells of the game. Their approach and mentality made for a great spectacle. Obviously the wrongly disallowed goal changed the dynamic of the game, as an early lead would’ve given the Saints tremendous impetus. But credit to United, they dug deep. Having played four more games in the last fortnight, Southampton’s fresher legs were markedly evident in those aforementioned spells. Tactical changes by the United manager paid dividends in the end. Mourinho’s single-minded approach in creating a winning culture at United has begun well. Unlike his predecessors, he’s embraced the challenge of managing this massive juggernaut of world football. He’s breathed belief back into the football club. Performances matter little in a final. Winning is all that matters. SK (Romeu wouldn’t be a half bad replacement for Carrick!) …That was a really, really good cup final. I remember the FA Cup final last year being a bit drab up until Puncheon scored the first goal (thanks, LVG), but yesterday was a real treat, from beginning to end. Full credit to Southampton for putting in a superb performance – they really didn’t deserve to lose, but that’s just football I suppose. I’m also a colossal idiot for ever having doubted Zlatan Ibrahimovic. What an absolute beast of a player! That stat from 16 Conclusions about his post-30 goal haul being more than Michael Owen’s career tally is remarkable. His ego may be enormous, but he most certainly walks the walk, and has delivered time and again this season, when we’ve needed it. We really do need to try and hold on to him beyond this season. In a weird way, that performance was a refreshing change from United. We were by far the inferior team, but still managed to grind out the win (just like the Sir Alex era etc etc). That resilience is one of the most important things Mourinho could have brought back to the club. Hopefully this helps us kick on to win at least one more cup this season (hopefully the Europa). DJ, MUFC (loads of deficiencies to talk about, but that’s for a different mail) India …Not sure how we pulled that off but hugely relieved to walk off with the win against a very impressive Southampton side. I think we needed that to keep the momentum going and I can see us in the semis or final of the Europa league and even possibly make the top three with a decent run in the league. Given the investment though that should really be a minimum return. Southampton deserved the game over the 90 minutes but when you have Zlatan in the team you can roll with the punches and still come out on top. His comments after the game, and antics in winding Rooney up about who would lift the trophy were as entertaining as the game itself which was a belter. I thought Jose made an error in the positions of Mata and Lingard. Why have Lingard in the No.10 role with Mata huffing and puffing up and down the right hand side chasing after the Southampton full back and winger. I know Lingard got his goal but it looked all wrong to me. Onwards and upwards. Plato, MUFC …What an entertaining match it was, and what a finish. I dread to think of where United would be without Zlatan. Commiserations to Southampton, but I wouldn’t carp too much about the offside goal. Remember Bobby Stokes offside ‘goal’ in 1976 – what goes around comes around. United! Kevin, Dublin Some final conclusions 1. First things first: enormous credit has to go to Southampton, as they were by far the better team. Their pace and movement caused us so many problems from the off and we were very fortunate to win. Southampton were better for about 90 minutes, but the final was won in three individual moments of brilliance. It’s hard to imagine that Southampton would have conceded at least two of those goals had Van Dijk played. 2. It is a huge shame that, once again, I am talking about refereeing decisions having a major effect on games. Southampton’s first goal had to stand, and would have changed the course of the game. The sooner we address these issues with the full means available (read: technology), the better. 3. I have said it before, and I will continue to do it until I’m blue in the face: Chris Smalling is a f*cking liability. His positioning, decision making and just his common sense is shocking. He’s always shirt-tugging and holding at set-pieces, and the number of times you see him trying to recover from bad positioning is appalling. He has to go in the summer. 4. But most of the team as a whole were pretty poor. For my money, only Zlatan, Valencia and probably Herrera can come out of that game with any credit. The defence was all over the place, with Smalling, Rojo and Bailly all having poor games. Even De Gea could have done better for the first goal. 5. Im starting to get slightly irked at Pogba constantly trying to run the ball out from defence. It’s not always appropriate and almost cost us a few times today. It’s great that he wants to retain possession under pressure but pick your moments. 6. How was no one else looking at Gabbiadini? He is a class act, and could easily be playing at a top-four club (no disrespect to Southampton). If only they’d had him all season. 7. What was up with Jose? He looked thoroughly miserable all day! 8. I did think Southampton were slightly lucky to keep 11 players on the pitch. On another day, Stephens could have easily seen red, and Romeu too could have seen a second yellow for the elbow on Herrera, though that would have been harsh. Lingard was also lucky to stay on after a few rash moments following his booking. All in all, I’m delighted that we won the trophy and that match just reaffirms why I love the League Cup. No matter what happens with the rest of the season, we have a trophy and that’s all you can ask as a fan. Though I hope it’s not the last of the season, obviously! Ted, Manchester Everybody has the right to celebrate This Sunday just past, I was meant to play a football match for the club for which I have been involved with for the past five years. As I missed most of last season as I was in the U.K. working and missed the first half of this season as I was studying in Dublin, I re-joined in January to play with the club’s ‘C’ team which as I can only commit to training every second session at best, I was happy to do. Last Sunday was our fifth game since I returned and was also our first win. It was a hard fought game played in foul conditions in the bottom division of Limerick’s amateur football leagues, a city with a very proud amateur football/soccer heritage. The relief in winning that one game was great and the reason any of us play or love football in the first place. During the game I was lucky to not have my nose broken in an accidental coming together with an opposition defender and left the field at full time with an almost Terry Butcher style shirt. This did not take the shine off the win and the enjoyment of the whole occasion. A fine evening was spent in the pub with my teammates discussing what to anyone that was not involved, was as inconsequential as an old episode of Neighbours. My point is that Manchester United fans and players have every right to celebrate. It is their job, their profession. Many footballers, including the highest paid superstars, suffer serious injury in their career and suffer the extreme lows that come with it. If that is an accepted part of rhe game then is it not OK for the same players to celebrate wholeheartedly when they succeed? When they are in Wembley of all places with their hands on well and fairly earned trophy… I am no fan of United and their monolithic tractor partner corporate business model and even less so of their current manager but to tell their players, manager, staff or fans that they have no right to celebrate winning the League Cup takes away from the very essence of the sport that we all claim to care so much about and that so may of us decry for losing so much of what made it the so-called ‘beautiful game’ to begin with. If it shouldn’t matter for Manchester United to win a trophy at Wembley then why should it matter if my failing amateur team wins a game on a muddy pitch on a miserably wet Irish Sunday afternoon in February? If it doesn’t or shouldn’t matter then its football as a sport that doesn’t matter anymore. We might as well all just give up and get up to speed on what’s happening on Ramsey St and watch Neighbours instead. Kevin Walsh, Luimneach #campaignagainstManUnited You published this from me a few weeks ago( bless you for that): ‘Having watched in recent weeks; Mikhitarian score when a yard offside and have it stand (scorpion) Ibra score when a yard offside and have it stand (agst West Ham) Rojo lunge in two footed and get away with it (agst Liverpool) Rojo lunge in two footed and get away with it (agst Everton) Yesterday, Mata lunge in two footed and get away with it and given that everyone else isn’t allowed to score when a yard offside and we have seen Xhaka and Hendricks get reds for similar two-footers’ Then I can only agree with Jose when he says that the same rules don’t apply to him. I just can’t understand what he is complaining about it. If this ‘Jose alternative rulebook’ is applied from here on out, I fully expect United to come second this season and walk the league by 10 points next year. I’d like to submit yesterdays EFL cup final as further evidence of this trend. This is real folks – remember this is Jose Mourinho AND its Man Utd. Both masters of the dark arts. So get used to it football fans – next year that mind-numbingly boring and irritating era of Man Utd Uber alles will be back. They will walk the Prem – with a good team and 12 points a year handed to them by the refs – how could they not? Only thing is – if you you thought Fergie’s Utd were smug, entitled and obnoxious in victory – just imagine what Jose’s Utd will be like… Johnno PS. If I’m right Chelsea fans – Conte is getting sacked next season – so brace yourselves. A crying shame for Southampton I was determined not to be a sore loser but…the referee and linesmen have a very difficult job but…if goal line technology has now been successfully introduced, it can surely only be a matter of time until a manager is able to review an offside decision that leads to a goal being either allowed or disallowed. As far as I can tell, the only argument against the introduction is the amount of time it would take to review the incident. With the quality and speed of television replays, I’m convinced this is a moot point. In fact, it’s probably quicker than having to deal with the player protests. I initially wanted to write in to say how proud I felt of all the Saints players having battled back from 2-0 down, but then I got angry at the perceived injustice and now…and now…and now I’m crying again. Harry, Manolo is my middle name, Devon …Ultimately the most frustrating element of the game was that Saints turned up, put in our best performance of the season and somehow still lost. As alluded to in 16 conclusions, there was a certain inevitability about the whole thing and the metaphor that kept running through my head was we’re the nice guy and nice guys never win. While we were busy doing everything right, winning possession, corners, shots with high energy and style. United were behind the bike shed having a fag, with their feet up before Zlatan strolls in stage right, grabs the girl and rides off into the sunset. Sometimes there is just no substitute for style. I could go on to write several points about how sh*t the ref was, but ultimately when you consider how many errors a professional player makes, it’s inevitable that the officials make a few as well. The fact that this was goal number eight that has incorrectly been given as offside in United’s favour this season is neither here nor there. Instead I want to draw attention to an incident that yet again, by being the nice guys, shows how we shot ourselves in the foot. Mid way through the second half, Lingard tries to hack down Redmond to stop a break. Through his own ineptitude at fouling, Redmond is only clipped and just about stays on his feet, we get advantage and the games carries on. It’s a small footnote quickly forgotten. If Redmond does what about every other player in the league would do and goes down there, it’s a 10000% a second yellow and an early bath for Lingard. Against 10 men with the momentum behind us, I think we go on to win the game. For me that was one of the key moment of the final. Diving is a blight on the game, but decisions like that where a clear foul occurs explain why the risk/reward balance completely favour a player diving or going to ground. There is simply little tangible reward for staying on your feet and everything to be gained as shown by Herrera trying to get Romeu sent off by play acting the slightest touch with all United players gathering around the ref. Tom Saints (Matt Le Tissier is an absolute legend, loved his indignant rage at half time) Don’t forget Sol ‘He might just be the best free transfer in Premier League history.’ I know he’s a bit of a d**k now but are we seriously discounting Sol Campbell and his achievements? One of the best English defenders of the modern era leading the Invincibles to a level never reached again. Monumental for multiple title wins and the best defensive run in Champions League history. Zlatan is incredible but he still has some way to go before he can be mentioned as the best free transfer in league history. Also, despite the incorrect offside decision being ‘simply a bad call’, is it any wonder why the reaction to it has been so emotional and visceral given the importance of the first goal in cup finals? Add to that that this is definitely not the first offside call that has gone in United’s favor this season (seriously, how many times is that now this season?) and that this was the biggest match in over 40 years for Southampton, you really have to give Claude Puel massive credit for not having a bigger moan post game. They were much the better team, played some lovely football throughout the match and were somewhat unfairly rewarded by an inept refereeing performance. Falooda in NY Non-cup final weekend thoughts * Remember Cesc Fabregas? He started only his sixth game of the season on Saturday, and was ridiculously good. When Chelsea expect to face a packed defence, he has to play. * At Selhurst Park, Aitor Karanka found himself with only one healthy full-back, so he went 3-5-2, which would have been fine if 1) 32-year-old Stewart Downing didn’t have to play wing-back; 2) Daniel Ayala didn’t have to play wide central defender; 3) they weren’t up against a team that attacked at pace on the wings. The first half was a trip to Ibiza for the hosts, and Boro’s lack of firepower meant they couldn’t take advantage of a shaky Palace right side. * Right now the most underrated player in the league is Ben Foster. He’s played a lot of second fiddle in his career, but this year he looks like lead singer and guitarist, and someone in charge should be wondering whether he should start ahead of the Chin in Turin. * For those of us who love the glorious sport of manager-watching, Saturday was El Clásico: Walter Mazzarri vs. Slaven Bilic. Mazzarri opened the scoring with a clinical afraid-to-watch-the-penalty back turn, but afterwards relied too much on his usual repertoire of disgust and exasperation. Bilic equalized in the second half by nearly drilling a hole in the fourth official’s chest with finger pointing, then seemed to have put the match away with repeated over-the-top refusals to believe his side hadn’t been given a penalty. But Mazzarri rallied with some surprisingly subtle tightly-balled-fist action, and sealed the draw with a perfect one-time smash to the dugout wall. * Lee Grant of Stoke City has got the Le Sulk look down pat, and given the way Ryan Shawcross played yesterday, it’s no wonder. P.S. Say it very quietly, but I think Jon Moss is becoming a decent referee. * Anyone else here looking forward to the Chelsea – Manchester United quarterfinal? Peter G, Pennsylvania, USA Thoughts on Chelsea v Swansea – There have been real days when I’ve felt, ‘you know what, I’d be ok if we sell Hazard this summer (of course for a sum near Bale’s fee or likely more)’. Those are the days when for a few minutes he’d put a performance to match Messi at his heyday but inevitably be uninterested or showing some flashy dribbles without ruthlessness in the remaining time. Saturday epitomized Eden Hazard. At times he was unplayable, other times he wasn’t playing. Come on Eden, be more ruthless. Be the person you’re meant to be. – That said Fabregas had a 10/10. Comfortably his best performance in a Chelsea shirt. What was striking was he played two roles. Before Matic’s introduction, he took turns with Kante to be a box-to-box and some of his runs were Lampard-esque. The best part is Cesc boasts technical skills Lamps never had! Once Matic came, he did the Pirlo role, something I’d implore Conte to try out more often. – But the real point is the evolution of Fabregas as a player. I’ve seen him in his Arsenal (and to a lesser extent Barcelona days), he had those phases of insane assists+goals and then vanishing towards the end. Over the course of this season, Antonio has slowly but steadily changed Cesc. For starters, his positioning is top class now, he no more gets caught upfield. He knows when to press, when to tackle, when to drop back and stop an opponent’s passes. Not at the level of Makelele or Kante, but definitely far improved to what he was before. There was only one thing lacking in Fabregas’ game – tactical discipline. And now he’s winning Conte by improving on it. I shudder to think what would happen must he continue and succeed in this path. – That brings me to Kante. I’ve stressed this a million times since summer window. Again, the signing of the summer all over the world. 30m is peanuts in the market for Kante. The best part is he’s not a commodity. There’s only one piece of such a player and that is N’Golo Kante. The only other version is retired and now coaches at Swansea. He’s omnipresent in the pitch. Unassuming guy by nature. What a player! Thank you for choosing Chelsea Kante. It’s indeed a previlage to watch you play. Another 10/10 performance. – On the game itself, there’s a small issue with Chelsea. Conceding headed/set piece goals is the symptom. The real issue is that our back five is still a temporary stitch on a torn cloth than a proper fabric itself. Our back 3/5 is makeshift at its best. We have players playing out of position. The only thing keeping it going is some black magic by Conte creating the synergy. Moses is defensively suspect. For all his improvements, he simply does not have that defensive instinct to read danger, especially in far/back post or when marking a forward. Alli’s two goals, this goal by Llorente are examples. Azpilicueta on the other hand is limited by height. More than saying Chelsea suffer in long balls crossed, the actual issue is to (a) stop the source, crosses/not giving free kicks and (b) fix the defense in the summer. – I was one of the first (coincidentally along with F365) to point out how Pedro is under rated. Forget about his contributions this season in terms of goals and assists, but since he joined us, Pedro has always been willing to run, press, work hard as long as he stays on the pitch. His commitment and desire has always been minimum 100%. And I’m so glad to see him reap the rewards for his commitment. He’s a phenomenal player and any day more intelligent than Willian. He does Kante’s job up field every time he’s on the pitch by winning ball back or harassing opponents. Add to it he has a brilliant off the ball run and finish. Another 8/10 performance. – Jose recently whined (he’s doing a lot isn’t he?) about how Conte’s Chelsea play like how his teams of prime did. There’s merit in his argument that our inherent strength is still to bully or counter attack to score. However, Conte has started something else also, which was appreciated by Pep recently and was evident last night. For the first time in Abramovich era, Chelsea have a structure to attack/defend. Our build up (which Pep appreciated) has been very sophisticated. We try to build from the back with movements and patterns that Conte has imbibed from day one. This is only a start and give Conte a few years (hopefully) and Chelsea’s play would have changed big time. Evolution is a slow process and what I’m seeing now is only good. From Thibaut whose passing has definitely improved to our defenders and midfielders, there’s a structure and plan about how to keep the ball and attack spaces. Take Cahill out and put a better defender and our performances in big games will be much better. Aravind, Chelsea fan Hull have a home ground disadvantage Here in my place of employment in Oz, we have a Hull native on our shift. For that reason, even before the appointment of Marco Silva, I have always had an interest in how “Ool” are travelling. I have watched a few of their games this season, but against Burnley the other night, I was struck by the poor condition of the pitch. I realise most of today’s pitches are amazingly good compared to the old days, yadda yadda yadda, but if Hull stay up it will be in spite of their home ground, not because of it. I am not saying that Burnley did not deserve their point by any means, but that surface has to be working against the type of football Silva is trying to get them to play. Some passes turned more than a Shane Warne wrong’un. There must have been a record number of games of ‘head tennis’ played out during the match, not from lumped clearances, just from balls bouncing all over the place. It has been shown here in Australia that any time a pitch is used for anything other than football, it more or less ruins it for football, I suppose it’s sort of hard to believe that it happens in the Premier league. Jeff Sims, Australia The post Man United fans admit they were sh*t but… appeared first on Football365.

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