#other adult friends weigh in is this just Me growing up and disagreeing with them more or them changing how they treat me

[swinging-stars-from-satellites]

one of our dogs just bolted out the door and hit the end of her leash at like 7mph and slammed me into the doorframe on my way out and my whole family is telling me it's my fault for not watching what she was going to do or bracing myself well enough. both of which are things I did and do every time I put this dog on a leash because Great Pyrenees dogs are notorious for having awful leash manners.

[bbq-hawks-wings]

I can't believe I didn't think the todo/endev stuff would've been divisive. Like if you don't like it then that's it, you just personally don't want to see it, that's valid, but then you have some ppl calling ppl who do like it and even hori abuse apologists (despite some of them being survivors themselves) but THen you have ppl on the other side insulting those who can't stomach it and, why is this all a thing.

CW/ abuse mention

I'm not all that surprised it stirs up such intense reactions. Unlike saving the world or becoming a hero, the struggle of a household and each of its members healing from a horribly abusive past, complete with all its uncomfortable, different, ugly blistering wounds and scars is way too close to home for a lot of people. Even for those who may have never experienced the same "severity" (in quotes because comparing trauma to silence or talk over victims of any kind is not okay - different forms of abuse is still abuse that leaves lasting impacts and effects everyone differently) they can feel personally connected to that pain.

I'm not surprised whatsoever that Endeavor is such a controversial figure. I would argue that's a good thing. If we come to love his character after lots of growth it's because he's really changed in the ways he's needed to and continuing on that road. If we can't ever get past what he did it's still justified because he's legitimately left the lives of his entire household in shambles - a home full of people who his chief responsibility was to love, provide for, and protect - who will carry the scars (some literal) of what he's done for the rest of their lives.

What surprised me most, however, is how Dabi became to be such a chief spokesperson for the entire family despite being the most removed as far as attitudes towards Endeavor and his actions in response; and how he became the only "valid" victim for so many.

I absolutely pity what he went through. He was absolutely right to feel abandoned. He was abused as much as anyone in that household. His trauma was just as real, just as impactful, and just as valid as the rest. All of his childhood trauma was a result of his father's actions of which Endeavor does need to face and account for. Even his desire to lash out at the objects of his father's affection - his mother and siblings - as a child as a way in his mind to make the pain stop and regain what he legitimately needed in his father's attention and affection is understandable given the circumstances. He's very much damaged, and the onset of that damage is not his fault. He desperately needed help he never got.

But here's where the split happens: at a point he was removed from his family and their influence and became his own person at which point he decided to step on the gas and purposely cause collateral damage on top of the self-destruction.

To be clear, simply leaving that harmful environment and growing up does not erase the damage it caused. PTSD would not be a thing of that was the case. However, Dabi is in one of two states given his behavior: he's genuinely insane (mentally ill to point he doesn't recognize what he's doing - a justified legal defense of insanity) or he's at least lucid enough to know and purposely chose to inflict harm on others because of whatever benefit he feels he gets from it (not able to plead insanity).

Either way, he's a clear danger to himself and others and needs to be reigned in. If he's not in full control of his faculties he needs professional help and has to be taken into custody for everyone's safety. If he is all there, it's right for him to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law because trauma does not excuse making more victims of any kind.

And for some reason, despite these facts well being able to coexist, the fandom doesn't seem to accept that - at least not uniformly and the disparity of opinion is night and day. We have real life examples of people who went through traumatic childhoods who became serial killers, and we don't disagree that they needed to be institutionalized or prosecuted for the safety of the public and their survivors; but Dabi gets a pass somehow?

Perhaps the main divide comes down to some can't/don't/won't make a distinction between Touya the abuse victim and Dabi the abuser. Both can and do exist in the same person, but the focus of his life's goal has shifted to be distinct enough to make that distinction as the audience. As a child, he was a victim who was doing everything he could think to do to get what he needed in a horrible situation. As an adult with ample degree of rational thought and self-awareness, he leverages his damage to justify the homicide he commits against his own victims.

And this especially is why I have pity for Touya, but not for Dabi.

I knew someone who did that - who did that to me. Someone who I considered a friend, even "family" until I set boundaries and started acting contrary to what they wanted when it was like a switch went off inside them. They had a legitimately terrible upbringing and a questionable family situation, at best; but that didn't mean I had to suffer the effects those negative influences splashed into my life.

If something I did made them upset and what they only ever knew was to verbally express, "You're lucky I have the control to hit the wall instead of you when I get this upset" that anger is valid, but I was also right to say, "If this is a problem, I'll do what I can to make it right on my end, but you do not have the right to threaten me, emotionally manipulate me, or lash out in retaliation - and especially not without consequences or pushback. You need help, and I want to help you help yourself; but that was not acceptable. I am responsible for me and what I do, not for how you take things and respond."

It boils my blood thinking back how often they tried to peddle back and make me the bad guy in my own head by trying to guilt me with their own tragic backstory so I'd stay complicit. Clearly, I'm still not completely over it, and I was unpleasantly reminded of it not long ago when nightmares with their face came back to haunt me for the first time in years after just seeing their name again in passing earlier that day. It took a complete stranger I met at a house party telling me after I spilled my guts late into the night for me to even begin to recognize that I was being manipulated and abused.

So yeah, there it is yet again - the Todofam drama is way too close to home for too many people. The worst tragedy in that, though, is that no one can apparently be validated in their opinions unless they bare themselves like I did just now. That shouldn't be the case. These discussions should be able to exist as hypotheticals and discussing canon events instead of requiring everyone who wants to weigh in to have their own trauma validated.

It's easy to pile onto Endeavor because he's the clear "bad guy" in the scenario who will never be able to erase what he's done even if all of his family magically forgave him and he turned into the patron saint of puppies and kittens. But for some reason it's not easy to recognize people can feel the same way about Dabi who can recognize him for being both victim and victimizer.

I wish it wasn't the case. There's a lot of right and wrong and stuff that isn't wrong - just uncomfortable and sucky in this subplot; but fandom is too stuck on insisting in an all or nothing bad guy/good guy to fully appreciate the nuance in this plotline.

[makeste]

There's been a lot of talk about Mina's optimistic line about how they'll all be fine and back to class is a death flag, but if anything I think it's a desth flag for U.A. They'll be fine, but they won't be back to class as normal, because there won't BE a class to attend(RIP Shinsou)

seems like everyone in the fandom is talking about death flags and kids dying and society falling to pieces these days lol. fwiw, as I’m sure most people have seen by now, Viz’s translation showed that Mina was actually talking about Midnight, so if this really is a “famous last words” situation, it would apply to her rather than the kids.

but it seems like the speculation hasn’t really died down despite that! so since the whole “kids dying” thing keeps coming up, I’m gonna go ahead and weigh in on it again here and say that I don’t think it’s going to happen. so far I’ve mostly been trying to keep my reasoning short and sweet and leaving it at “it would be too dark”, but in truth, the real reason why I don’t see it happening is because I don’t think it would serve any purpose.

here’s the thing about character deaths: assuming that the writing is any good (which I would argue that it is, in BnHA’s case, although you are free to disagree!), they should always serve a purpose. and in most cases, that’s going to mean one of four things:

it serves as a way to write the character out of the story for whatever reason (for instance if the character is getting in the way of letting a plot be resolved, or if the actor is leaving, which of course doesn’t apply to BnHA but is a huge factor in a lot of other media). an example here would be Twice, who was written out of the story because his quirk would have prevented the heroes from having any chance at all of winning.

it sets the stakes and takes away the audience’s sense of security by establishing that No One Is Safe, and that People Can And Will Die. this is important in that it builds suspense and makes the audience more invested than they might otherwise be, because they can’t be 100% certain that their fave is going to make it out alive. a good example of this would be the recent massacre at Jakku, which showed in no uncertain terms how powerful Tomura has become, and also demonstrated that Horikoshi has no qualms whatsoever about killing off any number of pro hero characters in this arc.

it completes that character’s arc and serves as a fitting (if depressing) end to their story. this is probably the most controversial as far as “reasons for killing someone off” go, because it’s so easy to fuck up, and because someone will almost always argue that there were other, better ways for a character’s story to end. most “redemption” deaths fall under this category, as do the “character makes the ultimate sacrifice to protect their loved one” deaths. if Endeavor ends up dying there’s a good chance it will fall under this category. so far though, BnHA has been pretty light on these types of deaths, which tbh suits me just fine. ideally this sort of death is supposed to provide some sort of closure, but in practice it doesn’t always work out that way.

lastly, the death furthers the story in some way. it galvanizes another character into action, or serves as a motivation for them. or maybe the death shifts the political landscape of the story and sets new plots into motion. most tragic backstory deaths fall under this category; for example, pretty much the entire Shimura family (r.i.p.). this is another potentially controversial area though on account of there being many other ways to move the plot forward without resorting to killing someone off. not to mention that “fridging” deaths also fall under this category -- deaths where one character is used as a plot device to move another character’s development forward. Nana, unfortunately, is an example of this, but that’s another rant for another day.

anyway, so these are the four biggest reasons to kill off a character in a story. there are others as well, including simply adding some more tragedy and emotion to the story, but IMO that doesn’t really apply to this particular genre. BnHA isn’t a tragedy, nor is it the kind of bleak, grimdark narrative where killing off characters more frequently would make sense. this isn’t the kind of series where gratuitous character deaths are necessary to add shock value or realism. making the shift into that kind of writing this late in the game wouldn’t make much sense, and IMO would do a lot more harm than good.

so as far as I’m concerned, this means that if Horikoshi is going to kill someone off in this arc, that death needs to come under one of these four categories. oh, and something I forgot to mention before -- it should be necessary, as well. in other words, it accomplishes one of these four things, and is the only way that said thing can be accomplished. those are basically my criteria for a “good” character death.

and as far as I can see, none of the kids’ deaths would currently fall into that “necessary” category, or meet any of those other four criteria. none of the kids are so powerful that they need to be written out of the story (and even if they were, there are other ways to do that with AFO and the quirk-be-gone bullets now in play). they don’t need to be killed off in order to raise the stakes; clearly, fandom is already very convinced on that front already, or people wouldn’t constantly be freaking out over death flags and such in the first place. and none of the kids is anywhere near the completion of their respective story arcs. maybe if one or more of them had been featured more often recently, and there was some actual buildup, like we saw with Mirio right before he lost his quirk, or with Nighteye before he was killed. but we haven’t seen anything like that recently for any of the kids, with the possible exception of Bakugou (hence why I’m still pretty certain that he’s currently heading towards what Aizawa would call a “death”, with quotation marks, i.e. the loss of his quirk).

so that just leaves us with “their death would further the narrative in some way”, which is probably the most open to interpretation of the four. but for the life of me I just can’t think of any way that the death of a kid would advance the plot in a way that couldn’t be achieved by other means. want society to freak out about children being involved in a war? just injure a bunch of them, or have one of them lose their quirk on live TV with the world watching. want to traumatize the other child soldier characters for some reason? kill off one of the teachers, then. or, again, take away one of their friends’ quirks, and have them feel some misplaced guilt over not being able to stop it. this was the winning formula for the Basement arc, so I don’t see why it wouldn’t work here as well.

tbh a lot of this does depend on what exactly Horikoshi’s goals for this arc are, which still aren’t 100% clear even this late in the game. I’m not sure right now what he’s planning for the aftermath of this thing. will it be like Kamino and Fukuoka, where society is shaken up but still rallying behind the heroes and giving them their support? or are we instead building up towards a scenario where society’s faith in heroes finally crumbles and people are left totally demoralized in the wake of yet another brutal attack, and the total decimation of the Billboard Top 10? the latter outcome is seeming more and more likely to me, but an awful lot of it depends on how the next few chapters play out.

my best guess is that we end up with a scenario where the heroes succeed in staving off total disaster, but at a heavy cost. a lot of the pros are either dead or out of commission, Tomura and the League are still at large, and everyone is basically just sitting around trying to process what just happened and figure out what to do next while they wait for the other shoe to drop. word gets out that the kids were pretty much the only reason the battle didn’t end in even greater disaster, and as a result they get swept up in the ensuing political drama. the HPSC tries to parade them around as the next big thing; humanity’s hope for the future. but meanwhile a growing faction of the general public is furious at the government getting children involved in a war, and start arguing that the hero program should be shut down and U.A. should close its doors. and in the midst of all this, the kids try to lick their wounds and deal with the aftermath, and enter their second year very much unsure of what the future will hold.

anyway, so this all got very long-winded and out of hand as usual, but to sum up, I don’t think any of the kids is going to die here, and I think there will still be a year two of U.A., but that it’s going to feel very different from the U.A. we’ve known up to this point. if the threat of Tomura is still looming over everyone’s heads I very much doubt the kids will be able to focus much on their studies. but it may also be a case of them trying to cling to what little semblance of normalcy they have left. the teachers might decide to press on simply because it’s the only thing they can do. basically I’m anticipating something very similar to the aftermath of Kamino, but with the tension ramped up to 11, and with the adults fighting a losing battle to keep the kids from getting caught up in the middle of it all.

in other words, I don't think it’s an actual death-death we need to worry about here. rather, it’s going to be a much slower and much more subtle death by a thousand cuts. but it’ll be the kind of angst the characters can still work under; the kind that, rather than suffocating them, instead makes them grit their teeth and find a way to push forward. so yeah! anyways though, now that I’ve said all this, watch as Horikoshi goes and fucking decapitates Aoyama next week or some shit. lol maybe I should knock on wood just in case.

[somedayonbroadway]

Little Albie

And we’re back with more BMW AU. I have the next scene written already too, and I’m somewhat excited about it, but I wanted to write this scene too because it’s pretty cute.

Okay, please find the BMW master list here! And please enjoy!

Jack was dozing on the couch. It had been a long day. He was genuinely exhausted.

Something was on his chest. In his daze, he didn’t think anything of it. Not until something started liking his face. “Katherine... Katherine, stop it...” he moaned.

That is, until something above him squealed.

His eyes shot open as he squirmed, trying to dodge the animal but only seemed to get the thing riled up more as he sat up. He spit, trying to get the saliva off of him as he quickly stood and shoved the small, baby pig behind him. “Race!” he yelled, only to find the kid standing in his kitchen, laughing to himself. “Racer, we had a deal! He ain’t allowed ta be near me when I’m sleepin’!” he stated.

Race could only giggle. “Sorry...”

“We had ground rules,” Jack insisted again. “You can keep the pig—“

“Little Albie,” the boy corrected.

Rolling his eyes, Kelly took a breath, glancing back at the small thing that was now on his couch. “Little Albie,” he sighed. “But he’s yours. I ain’t gonna raise him. I hardly wanna hear from him. Got it?”

Nodding along, Race agreed. “Yeah... I got it,” he promised, a small smile still on his face. It was only then that Jack looked down to find a small bottle in his student’s hand. He nodded at him and then turned to walk into his room, leaving Race in the main room by himself. “Pig hater...” he muttered.

“I heard that!” Jack yelled back. Race looked up to find his guardian’s door still open. He smirked.

But he continued over to the couch. “It’s okay, Little Albie... You’s just thirsty, huh?” he asked, carefully bringing the bottle up to the animal’s mouth.

The pig started sucking at it immediately.

He held the little guy in his lap, not looking up when Kelly’s front door opened up and his two best friends walked in.

Albert with a smile and JoJo who only had eyes for the pig. “Race, I thought you were going ta find Little Albie a new home,” she said, causing Al’s smile to drop immediately.

Race shook his head. “Who eva’ said I was gonna do that?”

JoJo squinted at him and gestured to the animal. “Look... Race, I think it’s great that you wanted ta save the pig from your old trailer park... maybe you feel like—“

“This has nothin’ ta do with needin’ savin’ from where I grew up, okay?” the boy defended immediately.

The tone was harsh and cold, so JoJo took a breath and began again, gentler this time. “All I’m trying to say is, it’s not fair f’r the pig ta be cooped up in an apartment like that. It ain’t good for him...”

“Well, I disagree,” Racer countered, petting the pig as he ate. “I happen ta think farm animals make great pets.”

Albert crossed to the kitchen, not wanting to get in the middle of his girlfriend and his best friend’s argument. “And why’s that?” JoJo asked.

Race just grabbed for the book on the end table beside him and help it up. Farm Animals Make Great Pets, it read.

And JoJo snorted. “I know you love him now, but what happens when he grows up, weighs five hundred pounds and stops moving?”

“Hey, I never stopped lovin’ Aunt Gloria!”

Jack leaned against the wall beside the entrance to his room, chuckling a little at the comment, but listening intently to the conversation. These kids were just so... interesting.

“Race... I called animal control...”

At that, Tony’s eyes widened. He held the small pig closer to his chest. And Albert stormed back over, shocked. “You did what?!”

“I told them there was a pig that needed a good home,” she explained simply, still believing she’d done the right thing.

“He has a good home!” Race argued, suddenly feeling betrayed and hurt.

Jack could hear it in his voice.

The blond boy on the couch growled and picked his new pet up in his arms, heading for the door. “I’m goin’ ta hide him. Albert, are ya comin’?”

Albert looked between his two favorite people in the world. JoJo looked angry he was even considering it. But Albert nodded at his best friend. “Yeah... yeah, I’m comin’...”

Jack stepped into the doorway of his room and looked out into his apartment. JoJo was the only kid left. “You okay?” he asked, as soon as he knew the two boys were gone.

The girl ignored the question. “Mr. Kelly, I know you don’t like the pig... so why do you let Race keep it?”

Jack shrugged, crossing his arms over his chest. “It’s important ta him... I think your theory might be right... maybe he feels like it needed ta be saved from the place he grew up in... but he takes good care a’ the little guy,” he smiled. He crossed the room towards his student that he knew for sure should not be alone with him in his apartment. “Look, kid, a life like Tony’s ain’t easy. That pig... he wants to believe it needs him... and maybe it does, I dunno... but I do know that Racer’s been alone for a lot of his life n’ now he’s finally startin’ ta feel like that maybe ain’t true no more...”

JoJo nodded, looking guilty all of the sudden. “Mr. Kelly... I made a mistake...”

—

“Ya sure he’s gonna be safe here?”

“Tones, if I know my girlfriend, she didn’t even call animal control—“

Albert was cut off by the doorbell ringing and a knock on the door. “Animal control!” someone called.

And Albert frowned. “Well... I guess I know nothing...” he sighed, stomping over to the door and opening it where he found a man waiting for him in a brown uniform and hat.

The man nodded towards Race. “So, you must be Antonio Higgins,” he said, opening up a small notepad.

Race nodded. “Yeah... how’d you know that?”

“Blond hair, 5’6’’, answers to the name ‘Antonio Higgins’,” the man read, allowing himself into the house.

The blond boy turned to his best friend. “Wow, he’s good,” he breathed.

“Alright, let save ourselves some time. You got a pig. I want him.”

Race let Albert shut the door and he turned to the man. “This pig you speak of... could you describe him?”

The chubby, scruffy man rolled his eyes. “Yeah, yeah, he looks like a great big lion,” he stated sarcastically, glaring at the fourteen year old.

And Race smirked. “Well that’s not our pig!” he stated.

“Cause we don’t have one!” Albert chimed in quickly, shoving his hands in his pockets nervously. “Now, Mr. Animal Control Guy, I must insist that ya leave my house at once or I’ll be forced to call the Animal Control Control People,” he smirked. “Ain’t that right, Racer?”

Race grinned and crossed his arms over his chest. “Sure is, Albie...” He only caught his mistake when his pig came running downstairs at the sound of his name. “Okay! Who shaved the dog?” he tried to cover.

But the man rolled his eyes and grabbed the walkie from his belt. “Control? We got a pig!”

The little pig ran around the man’s feet as he pulled out a leash and connected it to Little Albie’s collar. “Well, I hope your happy! You’re takin’ that pig from a nice home!”

It was then that Albert heard the genuine hurt in his friends voice. To him, this wasn’t some joke.

“Look, kid, I’m not in this to break hearts. This neighborhood isn’t zoned for pigs,” the animal control guy sighed. “But between you and me? I got a twenty foot boa in my truck I’ll slip you,” he winked, patting the boy on the shoulder.

Racer sighed, shaking his head. “Can I at least say goodbye ta him?”

The man rolled his eyes. “Fine. But don’t try to run. I got a guy out back,” he stated.

Albert squinted. “Do ya really?”

“I don’t know. Are ya feeling lucky?”

Race just picked up his pet and held him in his arms. Something in him felt hallow. He couldn’t place it. Maybe he’d wished someone had done that for him before he’d been passed off to some other adult who didn’t want to take care of him. “It’s okay, little guy... I’m gonna visit you, I promise... I know what it’s like ta be passed from home ta home...” He scratched the little pigs head and Little Albie licked his cheek, making Tony laugh. “Okay, okay... here ya go—“

He was cut off by the door opening. JoJo rushed in. “Stop! You can’t take that pig!”

“Josephine De La Guerra, dating Albert DaSilva...” he stated, once again reading from his notepad. He looked towards Race. “I’m way over qualified for this job.”

JoJo rolled her eyes. “After I was talking to ya, I found an ad in the paper f’r a lost pig! And I called its owners, so ya don’t have to take him away,” she explained quickly, smiling over at her friend. “Isn’t that great, Tony?”

Race still held the little piggy in his arms. “Still have to lose him... so—“

“Here’s the owner!” JoJo stated.

Jack ran in, looking relieved. “Hey! Hi, my name’s Kelly!” he stated, easily falling into the lie. Race allowed himself a small smile as Jack gently scooped Little Albie out of his hands. “Oh thank you so much for findin’ him! He ran off, didn’t ya, buddy?” He spoke like he actually liked the pig.

Race’s heart melted when he saw Jack smile down at the thing.

“It belongs ta my boy, Charlie... we live right outside the city...”

“Really?” Tony asked, his voice filled with hope. Jack smiled up at him.

But the animal control guy narrowed his gaze. “This really your pig?”

Jack smirked. “No. I got an ark outside n’ I’m just one pig short,” he joked.

But the guy didn’t seem to find that amusing. “Alright, that’s it, hands over your head! We’re goin’ downtown!” the guy barked.

Jack flinched a bit, but stood his ground. “What, ya serious?”

“No,” the guy deadpanned. “Two can play at the sarcasm game.”

Jack rolled his eyes and pet the pig’s head. And the stranger in the room waved in defeat. “Alright, give my best to Charlie,” he sighed, leaning towards Race. “And by the way, that boa offer is still on the table,” he winked.

Race grinned. “I’ll think about it. Ya got a card?”

The man scoffed, heading towards the door. “Yeah right. I don’t even have a badge,” he said as he exited.

And Jack waited until he left to hand the little animal back to Racer. “I must really like you...” he sighed.

Race grinned. “Thanks, Jackie...”

Jack just ruffled the boy’s hair and offered him a wink. “Sure, kid... but you should really be thankin’ JoJo... she’s the one who bailed ya out...”

Race nodded. “Thanks, Jo,” he breathed, hugging his little pet close to his chest. “Really...”

All the girl could do was nod. “I’m sorry, Tony. If he’s important ta you then... he’s important to me...”

Race smiled. Jack wrapped an arm around his shoulders.

And for that moment, all was well with the world.

[daybreak-academy-fanfic]

Daybreak Academy: Chapter 92

Keeping Up With The Ravishtas

Summary: In which Brain learns how to ice skate and Anora loses more than a phone charger. Word Count: 1,514 First | Previous | Next ☆ ⚬ ☆ ⚬ ☆ ⚬ ☆ ⚬ ☆ ⚬ ☆ ⚬ ☆ ⚬ ☆ ⚬ ☆

Turns out, Anora had not been joking that her hometown was a lot colder than Departure County. They hadn't even been there for a day and the temperature was teetering very close to the single digits. Brain couldn't even remember the last time the temperature went more than 20 degrees below freezing in Departure County.

Anora, on the other hand, seemed far more alive than she had in awhile. She and Kieran didn't waste any time going out to a drainage pond by the house to see if it was thick enough to ice skate. If it wasn't for Dawn, the two would have starting ice skating right then and there. The old woman denied them the chance the next day to go out as well- citing that Anora and Brain still needed time to diffuse from their trip. But the day after? Brain could only imagine that the cousins would have been very bad at sneaking out of the house for more thrilling adventures, since they absolutely were not quiet on their way out.

Brain, himself, had opted to stay inside for a bit longer. He definitely was not as accustomed to the cold as Anora's family was.

He decided to head on out around lunchtime. The closer he got to the pond, the easier it was to be able to see Anora and her cousin. Kieran must have been taking a break, as Anora was the only one that was still on the pond. Brain stopped some feet away from the pond- tipping the back of his fedora slightly as he watched her. Even where he was, he could see the joyful expression on her face as she flit around the iced over pond. Every so often you could hear Kieran shout at her to perform a certain jump, to which she acted on once she had the momentum. When she stuck the landing, Kieran would cheer, and Anora's smile would only grow. Admittedly, Brain's smile would grow too.

Anora and Kieran weren't truly siblings, but they still had that same amount of energy and love.

Kieran was the first to notice Brain coming up to them. He waved him over, which caused Anora to notice Brain as well. Her face was pleasantly flushed- likely the result of both a good workout and the cold.

“Come to skate along with us?” Kieran asked with a broad grin.

“Oh, no, no, no.” Brain smoothly disagreed. “I've never before. I don't want to take time away from your bonding.”

“Nonsense.” Kieran insisted. He then held up his pair of skates. “Here, you can have my skates.”

“Oh, no… I really shouldn't…” Brain continued to argue. Both cousins were uncomfortably close to him now- peer pressure was apparently a well kept weapon in this household. This was a losing fight. An incredibly unfair one too. Brain had no choice but give up and put the skates on. Kieran helped him to make sure they were properly adjusted, helped him to his feet, and even made sure he was steady as he brought him onto the pond.

After that, everything Brain knew about gravity was proved moot.

“I'm not very good at this!” Brain declared as he started to lose his balance. Just when he thought he was going to land flat on his face, Anora calmly skated over to him and took him by the shoulders, helping to bring some of his balance back.

“Tha-” he started to say before making the mistake of moving a foot forward. His balance once more disrupted, he landed right into Anora's arms. Anora hadn't even flinched- did being on skates rank up this girl's strength by 11? Brain knew he was a good 130 pounds in muscle alone. There was no way that Anora weighed more than 100 pounds herself; but then again, she was built like a brick…

Brain made the mistake of looking Anora in the eye as he regained himself. Her gentle smile was reflected in her eyes. He gawked at her in wonder. As he contemplated how much of an idiot Ephemer was, Anora gave Brain a small chuckle before taking his fedora off in one smooth motion. She made a generous glide backward so he couldn't immediately grab it back.

“Hey, hey, hey!” he demanded once his senses came back. “Give that back!”

Anora just laughed, putting his fedora on her own head, then casually turned away and starting to skate in the opposite direction.

“Anora, get back here!” Brain demanded. He tried to shuffle his feet forward but remained in place. “This isn't fair and you know it!”

“Race 'em Razzie!” Kieran cheered from the sidelines. Brain shot him a dark glare.

“Aren't you supposed to be the adult here?” he spat, despite the lack of malice in his voice.

Kieran only laughed. “I'm not the adult.” he claimed. “I'm the cousin.”

Of course.

. . .

“You know, I don't appreciate it that you two left me for dead.”

Anora looked up at Brain with a little noise of inquisition. An hour had passed since Brain's first skating lesson. They had come back inside because Kieran got a text from a friend of his, and had gone to help them out. Dawn left not long after that, realizing that she needed to do some extra grocery shopping for the week. This only left Anora and Brain home alone. The duo were in the guest room that Brain was using; Anora had come in to find something that she was sure had been left behind in this particular room. Brain had been casually sitting on the bed until she came in. Now he was standing beside her, trying to find that lost object.

“I don't know what you're talking about.” Anora informed Brain, but the teasing grin on her face detailed that she did. Then she let out a little noise of happy discovery as she found what she was looking for. “I knew Charlotte had an extra lightning cable here.”

Brain looked over at her. She was ignoring him. How dare she.

As Anora started to leave the room, Brain brought his hands around her middle and lifted her right up off the ground. The charging cable dropping to the ground with a small thunk.

“Let me down!” Anora squealed as she playfully tried to hit Brain's arms.

“No way!” he grinned, starting to shake her around. “You're a very bad girl, and bad girls need to be punished!”

And with that, he started to spin them around the room, eliciting another surprised squeal from Anora. Brain grinned as he spun the two around before colliding into the bed. They both fell over on the mattress with a small plop. With the both of them still laughing, Brain quickly let go of Anora to straddle on top of her, pinning her hands beside her in the process.

“Got you now.” Brain teased, his hands holding hers just a bit tighter. The two were still laughing before the slow realization of their position dawned upon them; their giggles slowly melted away into a deep, tense silence. After awhile, all Brain could do was let out a low, rasping “Wow...” in awe.

Anora's heart started to race as she looked into Brain's eyes. She tilted her chin up, just slightly, in a silent request. Brain was more than pleased to oblige. Funny how, despite the cold, frigid air outside, the two were now incredibly hot under the collar.

Downstairs, Kieran was beginning to wonder how thick the walls were at Daybreak Academy. He was just glad that his mother wasn't home, or else the young couple would have been stopped at the first scuffle. He also kinda figured that they didn't know he had come back home either. Or maybe Razzie forgot that the walls were thin here. Maybe both?

He should probably stop them- she was only 16, after all, and Brain had said that he was 17. But wasn't it close enough in age that it didn't matter? It's not like Kieran wasn't curious at either of those ages to have tried a few things. Despite himself, Kieran kept an ear trained on the sounds coming from upstairs as he carefully sipped his cup of coffee. Ma didn't need to know about this. He'd have to remember to remind Brain of protection though, if there was ever a chance they happened to be alone again. He wasn't sure how he'd start that conversation with Anora though; his cousin would be blushing six ways to Sunday if he so much breathed a word about making out.

The noises from upstairs now did not quite indicate boot knocking yet, but were starting to sound eerily close. Kieran shivered as he started to get up from the kitchen table. If he kept thinking about how often his little cousin got cozy with boys close to her age, he was going to get nauseous. Not his circus, not his monkeys, as they say. And, boy, it sure was a nice day to go ice skating.

[stan-denbrough]

i'm only weighing in to say i disagree with your characterization of stan. saying it's ooc for him to fight back is unrealistic... abuse doesn't only leave you deferent it leaves you angry too, i think that when faced with judith (who reads as a manifestation of his father's expectations and some outside obsession pennywise has with stan) it doesn't feel fair to me to say he's some weak scared child... youcan be scared and still strike back you know? completely infantilizing jews isn't good

Bitch where did I say he can’t fight back? I said he’d be terrified during the battle with Pennywise as adults... because all of them were. And I predicted that if Stan were there, it would still be Mike who said “We have to make him small, but there’s more than one way to make someone become smaller,” I just don’t see that changing because everyone headcanons Stan as this verbal assassin (which is a headcanon I enjoy, it’s just not realistic). 

And suggesting that Stan take a time out from the battle with Pennywise when they’re kids was purely to help give his arc more weight. Like... go read it? I clearly demonstrated that I wanted Stan to play a pivotal role in the fight. 

Literally, none of my canon analyses seek to infantilize Stan. Only to make him more narratively important or highlight how likable he is, because more people need to appreciate him. My aus on the other hand? Sure, you could make the case. But when I say “him baybee” it’s more shorthand for “The Losers are all fond of stan and feel protective of him and he appreciates their love and support and it’s a big ball of love,” because saying “him balboo” is just shorter. 

The conversation about abuse has little to do with Stan. Like, with Stan’s dad (and also Bill’s dad) the bare little sprinkling of character they both got, reminded me of my own unhealthy relationship with my father growing up. That’s the only parallels to abuse I drew to Stan (and Bill). 

And there you go with your flaccid appeals to wokeness. The antisemitic canard of Stan being an unmasculine cowardly weak crybaby was already doubled down on by the creators of the films, before they clumsily tried to retcon that by saying “No actually his suicide was noble and badass!” 

Anyway Stan does strike back, I have written about Stan striking back. Stan not striking back, freezing like a deer in the headlights, shutting down, those are also common responses to abuse too. To say “I don’t like how you infantilize Stan” is to basically say “You’re not letting this traumatized kid take back agency in the way I want him to :(”

1) I’m not “letting” Stan do or not do anything. He’s not real.

2) Stan can show he’s brave or strong in a number of different ways. Counterviolence against abusers is not the only way. I don’t think you mean to imply that it’s the only way, but for clarification, it’s not.

3) I’m not even characterizing Stan in that way in the first place?? I’ve written about Stan with a diverse number of attributes and facets to his character, both in canon and in my aus. What is consistent is that Stan is a sweet and kind boy/man who is loyal and caring toward his friends. But he’ll also pull out a dry remark of course. And I guess I add on top of that “Is clingy and likes to cuddle with Bill.” Like I don’t... even parse your “arguments” because they’re just so not... based on anything I’ve said?

[zamancollective]

The Constructive Agony of Talking Politics at Shabbat (Or How to Survive a Debate with Your Relatives) 

By Gabriella Kamran  

Illustration by Sophie Levy

I wasn’t yet 20 years old and I had already forgotten what it felt like to join my relatives for Shabbat dinner and eat brisket without a side of political commentary. Was that a new phenomenon? Was I too busy spitting tomatoes into napkins as a child that I didn’t notice the moral axioms being thrown above my head? Regardless, charged conversation after charged conversation gradually emerged from background noise while I chewed to a dynamic that captured my interest and charted the course of my intellectual development. 

It seems accurate to say that I entered the fray around the same time I started buying my own clothes. These were the early teenage years: I was testing the waters of feminism, experimenting with political Facebook posts, and learning that not everything I believe to be true is, in fact, the truth. Every young person has a moment of realization that adults can sometimes be profoundly wrong. Mine took place gradually over a series of weekly dinners, as my male relatives argued and I felt an arsenal of my own opinions weighing in my chest. 

I will say with no qualifiers that it is difficult for a fourteen-year-old girl to wedge herself into a conversation with several adult men. First, there is the issue of a quiet voice, not yet amplified by the support of social affirmation. Then there is the matter of being taken seriously — that is, the unspoken surprise that I was not in the living room talking to my girl cousins about nail polish. 

(The aunts, for their part, either ladled soup in the kitchen or listened at the table, inserting a comment when appropriate. For a long time, I interpreted their disinterest as ignorance or resignation to gender norms, but with maturity one gets better at recognizing weariness. I remember once my jaw dropped when a cousin’s grandmother expressed a political opinion out loud- something about Hillary’s foreign policy. I hated myself for being so shocked that she’d have something to say.) 

I learned quickly that family debate is rocky terrain. The post-meal discussion usually unfolded as follows: 

Man 1: This ObamaCare is going to put doctors out of business, I’m telling you. 

Man 2: Just awful. The liberals are pushing us towards socialism. Aunt: We’re just giving more and more money to the lazy bums. Me: What about the majority of poor people who aren’t lazy and were born into poverty? I don’t think anyone genuinely wants to be on welfare. 

Man 2: Oh, no. We send our kids to the conservative schools and they still get brainwashed by liberals. 

Man 1: Question everything your teachers tell you, Gabs. They have an agenda. An agenda. 

Alternatively, the “elders” card was pulled and the conversation stopped short: 

Me: I don’t think you should call people _____ 

Relative: You can’t speak to me like that. How can you disrespect your family?

The more politically conscious I became, the more these dinners began to wear on my nerves. At school, I was learning so much I could almost feel my mind growing into itself. The classic teenage practice of finding oneself was in full force for me as I wrote school newspaper op-eds in my successive editor positions and defined myself in the lines of my rhetoric. Dinner with relatives sucked this pride out of my chest and pulled the plug on my budding confidence. I oscillated between righteous indignation that prompted me to sit firmly in place when the political debate started during our meal and outright fear that anyone would ask me at any point in the night about something of more import than my week’s activities. Family dinners became a matter of fight or flight.  

I took refuge in journalism and books. They seemed to possess more certainty than my relatives’ armchair sociological analyses. I read Betty Friedan, Ta Nehisi Coates, Ari Shavit… and the fact that I considered these all to be radical texts is indicative of how intimidated I felt in political terms. My progressive ideals were no longer inclinations; I could use words like “neoliberal” and “reactionary” to match my relatives’ rhetorical skill. Vocabulary aside, however, a gulf persisted between me and some of the men in my family.

What was this gulf, exactly? Was it a generational gap? Surely an ideological divide existed between every new crop of cousins, fathers and daughters, uncles and nieces. Common wisdom dictates that naïve youth will always be more progressive and open-minded than their older counterparts. It seemed to me, though, that something more was at play here. These Shabbat dinners meant more than a blasé tidal shift in opinions, but I couldn’t put my finger on what it was. 

The time came for me to go to college, and I was surrounded for the first time by a collection of politically conscious people who had enough intellectual acuity to rigorously critique the elder generation’s values. 

I met friends who told me their grandparents were “hella liberal” and still smoked weed on the weekends, and I beheld these friends in awe. This must have been the diversity they extolled in admissions brochures, the expansion of horizons — but which one of us was living in a bubble? Then there were the students who seemed to have swallowed their relatives’ platitudes like pills, rolling their eyes when they passed a student protest or snickering at T.A.’s requests to state our preferred gender pronouns. These students made me the most uneasy.  

Mostly, though, college brought me a network of friends who shared my experience. By this time we had all developed standby strategies to deal with opinionated table talk: some blocked out the rhetoric and ate their khoresht in peace, and some, like me, often ventured back into the weekly scuffles like moths to a partisan flame.  

But, of course, it was more than righteous indignation that pulled me back into the tides of argument. The supposed radical leftist hegemony on college campuses gave my relatives plenty of dinner table fodder on the nights when I made the ten-minute journey from my dorm to their dining rooms. They particularly liked to raise an issue with my chosen minor, Gender Studies, which they denounced as man-hating. As they prodded me about my professors in order to attack their liberal agendas, I felt the familiar nagging anxiety: Was the leftist haven I found in college making me tone-deaf, insular under the pretense of high-minded morality? I felt obligated to listen to every dismissal of Hillary Clinton, every racial slur, and every condemnation of Islam. This was my internal protest at their accusations of narrow-mindedness. 

I still wondered what was really new in our political conversations. Topics had changed — Obama and McCain became Hillary and Trump, Al Qaeda became ISIS, gay became LGBTQIA+ — but the emotions I had as a young progressive facing several elder conservatives were constant. What were we all feeling during those semi-heated exchanges? We one-upped each other and attacked arguments at weak points, but what was the seed of all this debate? Perhaps it was a sense of familial betrayal. 

We swear to keep family and business separate but there is no such promise when it comes to politics, although we know they are equally divisive. “The personal is political” is also true in reverse — to disparage someone’s worldview is an affront to their world. Political standpoints are currents that run deeper than the surface waters of opinion. Debate is healthy and insult is not, and the line between them is fine. 

One August night before my freshman year of college, one family member reminded me once again to question everything my professors would tell me.  

“These are a different kind of people. Really liberal. They don’t think like us.” 

I wondered briefly what he meant by “us,” considering our often radically divergent opinions. He had been at the dinner table all these years — could it be that he never truly listened to me? 

My cousin leaned toward me, interrupting my thoughts. 

“Or you could come back from college a flaming liberal, and we’ll still love you.”

 I was struck by the resonance of my cousin’s joke, and I still think about it often. By the very merit of calling one another family, we make an implicit promise to stand by one another and love unconditionally – that is, regardless of ideology. When we sit across the dining room table, embroidered white tablecloth stretching between us, and launch attacks intended not to teach, not to strengthen, but to change, there is a sense of combat that doesn’t belong in a family. These mealtime political debates are not a leisurely pastime but a battle driven by an attempt to win, and to win means to vanquish. Hovering over the platters of chicken and tadig is an intention to change one another, and the promise of loyalty feels contingent upon your next comeback.  

Isn’t that what families do, though? We change each other. Any amateur psychologist will tell you that our personalities begin at home. Parents, and to an extent other relatives, are charged with the responsibility of edifying their children. It takes a village, and a large part of this is the admonitions and proverbs of the villagers. Perhaps my relatives feel this weight of social obligation propelling them forward as they critique my beliefs. They crave my confirmation that they are succeeding in their efforts. Maybe when I push back and hold my own, they feel some kind of failure. 

There’s a Jewish parable in which a sage, faced with a crowd of scholars who disagree with his judgment, asks God to determine who is correct. God declines to comment. The wise men debate and eventually move forward with a decision. From heaven, God laughs with joy: “My sons have defeated me!” 

The goal of true mentorship has never been indoctrination. Young people look to their beloved elders to create some kind of safe space to learn to walk, to stumble, to mess up. The goal is that eventually, the pupil becomes the teacher. A student who recites their teachers’ talking points is a student lost.  

Through the ages, a 7 p.m. roundtable over plates of freshly-cooked dinner has been the family’s classroom. The curriculum is set by the routine inquiries of “What did you learn at school today?” and, “How was work?” Some families study in groups of three, and some are lucky enough to learn alongside dozens. I should hope that men in my family take enough interest in my growth to stretch my mind and challenge my thinking. So, too, should they hope I prove them wrong sometimes. 

[tygerseye]

On Changing the World

Something in particular has bothered me really badly the last 2 days...

Also, sorry I’ve been so quiet lately! I’m trying to start my own business and get it up and going before a convention that’s happening in a couple of months X_X

So.... for those that don’t know I live in a household of 6 adults... 3 of them my husbands, then myself, then my best friend and his (their....) wife.

I say their because my best friend (born male) is claiming to be non-binary trans and has asked us all to use them/their pronouns.  Now, we’ve had looongggg discussions about why I disagree with this whole thing but I love my friend so much that I’m willing to change my vocabulary and put aside my personal opinions to give their preferred pronouns a chance.

So... what’s been bothering me is the amount of correction they’ve been doing.  I mean I understand (to a point) correcting us when we say “He....” to “They” but my problem is when I say things like “Hey do you mind manning the door?” and they correct me to say “You mean ‘do you mind personing the door?’” (I quipped back “OK Do you mind huMANNING the door?”).

This got me really analyzing the words we use in the English language that are now used as general non-gendered terms even if they seem gendered on the surface.

For example: “Hey guys!” “DUDES!”

So I realize my best friend did not know this had been on my mind the past 2 days but the conversation was brought up tonight and I had a very passionate rant about it... I came off a little too intensely and I feel bad about the intensity of my rant but I feel like I got my friend to at least think a little bit about when it’s appropriate to correct and when it isn’t.. at least I hope I did....

What we talked about:

Everyone needs to fucking chill out about colloquial terms we use in society that, although seem gendered, are no longer gender-specific like “dude” and “guys”.  Especially can’t get your panties in a bunch about words that might include the word “man” like “manning the door”.

My friend brought up our trans friend would correct a waiter in a restaurant if the waiter says “Hey guys!”.  She would say something like “Um excuse me but we’re not guys.”

I had to make the point this is rude and narcissistic to try and change the entire language.  My friend said “but she isn’t trying to change the whole language, just correct this one person” and I brought up “So you’re saying the next waiter she would have no problem with them using “guys”? What about the next waiter?  What about the next person, and next?  Does she correct EVERY person that uses the term “guys” when it’s used in a gender-less way?” of course the answer is “pretty much yeah...” which proves my point... this IS an attempt to change the language, not just one single person.

Again, it’s narcissistic and one of the problems it creates is a society that’s scared to communicate with each other.  That waiter won’t know if the next gender-questionable customer will be offended by the phrase “hey guys!” or not.  I pointed out that waiter isn’t psychic and therefor there is no WAY for them to know who’s going to be offended and who isn’t and this is how people become paranoid about just talking to other people.

My friend made a point that they understand the emotional and background reasons for why our trans friend feels the need to correct people and I said “Oh and I don’t?”

When I was growing up I always heard the phrase “Beat you like a redheaded step child!”... when I was young I used to tell people to stop using that phrase and I’d cry because I WAS a redheaded step child in an abusive situation.

Then I realized... I was trying to change the world to suit ME.  How fucking rude and unfair to the world.  I made others feel guilty for the pain that was in ME.

I realized the healthy way to deal with the situation was to change MY WAYS.  I needed to work on the pain inside so that phrase wouldn’t hurt anymore... not force others to change the way they talked.

So I brought this up... that isn’t it better for people to actually heal so words and phrases like “hey guys” don’t hurt?  My friend brought up a point about how for some people it just isn’t possible to get over something and I responded with “That has to be one of the most defeatist things I’ve ever heard.  NOTHING is impossible.  NO PAIN is impossible to deal with.  It may take time, effort, and possibly therapy and it won’t always be easy but EVERY person can get over ANY pain if they just work at it.”

Expecting others to change their language because you feel negative emotions when certain words and phrases are used is pushing the responsibility onto other people to deal with YOUR pain when the responsibility is YOURS to process your emotions in a healthy way.

See... it’s not that I don’t care about the pain my best friend and our trans friend feel when certain words and phrases get used... it’s BECAUSE I care I believe they need to find a way to deal with the pain inside instead of attempting to temporarily band-aid it by forcing the world to change how they talk.  Trying to change the world is IMPOSSIBLE so why not do something that’s possible?  Why not try to find ways to heal your pain so you no longer get hurt by words?

I completely understand and even agree with Trans people correcting someone about pronouns (IF THEY ARE ACTUALLY ATTEMPTING A TRANSITION) but trying to correct people on colloquial phrases like “Hey Guys!” and “DUDES!” and “Hey, man the door” is not only hurting society but it hurts you further since it provides an excuse for you not to identify and work out the reasons why those non-gendered phrases hurt.

Ugh I hate it when I intend to make a short post and it ends up so long... but this has been weighing really heavily on my heart lately... and I needed to get it out.

[primatechnosynthpop]

A rose shall bloom (and then shall fade)- part 1

When it came to the various applications of her healing powers, there was one thing that never really crossed Claire's mind. She was just a teenager when her ability manifested, so mortality or lack thereof was the last thing on her mind. She didn't stop to consider whether or not her power would allow her to live forever until she heard from Hiro about the ancient samurai named Adam Monroe who stayed alive for centuries without aging. However, once she learned about this, it was hard not to think about. And once she started thinking about the prospect of never aging, never naturally dying, her mind went to places that she wished it wouldn't.

Would she outlive everyone around her?

She would, of course, outlive her parents. That was normal, regardless of how much it sucked. She'd probably also outlive Peter and most of his friends--Mohinder, Matt, Tracy, Hiro. But by how long--a few years? A couple decades? Would she outlive Gretchen? Lyle? Would she end up outliving her own children, if she ever had any? What if she outlasted everyone by centuries?

She didn't have the answers for any of those questions, and that really scared her. As time went by, these questions weighed ever heavier on her mind. She tried talking to Peter about it, thinking he would understand. He ruffled her hair and told her not to worry about it.

"It's okay, Claire," he told her earnestly. "I'm not going anywhere for a long time."

"I know," she said. "I just... what if I end up having to watch everyone around me grow old and die?"

Peter didn't have an answer for that; nobody did.

-

A few months went by, and eventually a few years. Claire graduated from college, getting a masters in social sciences and a minor in biology. She still had no real idea as to where she wanted to take her life. Funny as it was, part of her had always figured she wouldn't make it to adulthood, but she was here now, and she felt completely lost. Her family assured her that it was normal for girls her age to feel that way, and that she could take her time figuring herself out.

She and Gretchen moved into a small apartment together, and she started looking for a lasting job. One day, Sandra called her up asking for help changing a light bulb. Claire, who hadn't seen her mother much lately and was eager to accept any opportunity to pay her a visit, drove across town to Sandra's house. When she pulled up in the driveway, she was surprised not to hear any barking coming from inside.

She walked up the driveway and knocked on the door. Still no barking. That was odd. Sandra answered the door and her face lit up upon seeing Claire. She pulled her into a tight hug and then pulled apart to coo over how adult Claire looked. Claire winced when she noticed the extra wrinkles decorating her mother's face which hadn't been there before.

"How are you doing, sweetie?" Sandra asked as they stood in the doorway. "Is everything going okay for you at the apartment?"

"It's going great," Claire said. Looking over her mother's shoulder into the unusually quiet house, she scanned the hall for a little ball of fur scampering toward them. She saw nothing. "We should probably close the door," she said, ignoring the creeping suspicion that she knew the reason for the absence of barking. "We don't want Mr. Muggles to get out."

As soon as she said this, Sandra's face fell in just such a way that Claire's suspicions were instantly confirmed.

"Oh, honey, I guess I forgot to tell you," she murmured. "Mr. Muggles isn't around anymore. He got really sick a couple months back, and he had to be put down."

"Oh..." Claire faltered, unsure of how to react. Rationally speaking, she supported it made sense; if humans couldn't live forever, then dogs sure as hell couldn't. "I'm sorry, Mom," she said after a beat. "That must have been really hard for you."

"It was," Sandra sighed. Glancing back down the empty hallway, she stepped aside and gestured for Claire to come inside. "But anyway, let me show you the light you came to fix..."

Nodding, Claire followed her mother down the hall to a lightbulb which was screwed in crookedly. She felt kind of numb. Even though Mr. Muggles had just been a dog, to her it felt like a sign. It was the first of many family members she would outlive. (She didn't count her biological parents, because as much as their deaths had hurt, it hadn't been from natural causes.) It was probably stupid to look at it that way, but she couldn't help it.

-

Claire wound up getting a retail job at a clothing store. To say it was a grueling job would be an understatement, but she needed to provide for herself while she and Gretchen hunted for better jobs. She was pleased to discover that Tracy worked at the same establishment. Sometimes they hung out together after work, going to get coffee or something similar. Occasionally Claire, Gretchen, and Tracy would get together with Lauren Gilmore and Peter's girlfriend Emma for a girl's night. Claire tried inviting Angela to come along a couple times, but she laughed and said that she was much too old. Claire wanted to disagree, but looking at her grandmother, she was shocked to realize just how old and frail Angela was beginning to look.

One winter, Claire decided to talk to her dad about her potential immortality. He had become more and more withdrawn in recent years, but she finally got the chance to talk to him when they attended a holiday party at the Petrellis' house together. Getting together with friends and relatives always rubbed her the wrong way. They kept getting older, and she didn't seem to be aging at all.

"Hey, Dad," she said apprehensively when she approached him at the event. "You used to be friends with a guy who had a power like mine, right?"

Noah glanced up at her from where he was sitting on the couch next to a couple other guys, raising his eyebrows. "I don't know if I'd say Monroe and I were ever friends," he said. "But I certainly knew of him. Why do you ask, Claire-bear?"

"Well, I've kind of been thinking..." Claire scrunched up her face as the other people sitting with Noah looked up at her inquisitively. She had nothing against them, but this wasn't something she wanted anyone to overhear. She put on a cheery smile and thought of a different, less personal subject. "Um, do you want to see the pictures I took at PodCon?"

"Oh, sure," Noah said. "You went as the orc lady and her lizard wife from that dnd podcast you like, right?"

Claire nodded. It had taken a lot of body paint to make the cosplay work, and even after all that her girlfriend wasn't quite buff enough to pull the look off, but they had still had a good time. While she showed her dad the photos, she shoved her worries about outliving people to the back of her mind. What was she even worried about? She had no way of knowing if that was even going to happen to her. And even if it did, she wouldn't have to worry about it for a long time.

However, as much as she told herself not to worry, she couldn't help it. Even just looking at Noah now, she was distressed by how much his hair was thinning, and how the creases on his face deepened more every day.

-

Claire couldn't get drunk, and Gretchen couldn't handle alcohol at all, so they didn't go out drinking together often. The one time they did go out to a bar to celebrate Claire getting promoted, Claire got ID'd. She realized that, despite being in her mid twenties, she still looked like a teenager. This didn't phase her nearly as much as the adjacent fact that Gretchen didn't get ID'd along with her. It was like what Claire had been afraid of: her girlfriend was aging, and she wasn't.

From that point, Claire started checking the mirror every day, searching for any signs of the natural progression of time. Day after day, week after week, there wasn't a wrinkle or even a single gray hair in sight.

"Well, of course there's no gray hairs," Gretchen said to her once. "You're not old yet!"

"You're right," Claire said, forcing a giggle, because that was what Gretchen wanted to hear. Everybody wanted her to be just fine, and not constantly on the verge of freaking out because she was going to outlive everyone she loved and damn it, why her, why did she have to be-- "I guess I'm worried about nothing."

"Just wait until you reach forty," Gretchen teased. "There'll be plenty of gray hairs by then."

"God, I hope not," Claire lied.

-

One spring, during a rainy spell, Claire's phone rang. She picked it up without checking to see who was calling, and was initially pleased to hear the voice of her uncle.

"Hi, Claire," Peter said. He sounded tired. "Are you doing alright?"

"I'm fine," Claire said. "How about you? Is everything okay?"

Peter hesitated. Over the phone, Claire heard him gulp. When he spoke up again, there was pain in his voice.

"Mom is in the hospital," he said. "She had a stroke. We..." his voice faltered; Claire waited breathlessly for what she already knew he would say next. "...We're not sure if she's going to make it."

Claire drew in a shaky breath. "What hospital is she at?" she asked. "I'll drive right over."

"No need," Peter said. "I can fly you there."

"No, you should stay with your mom," Claire insisted. "Come on, just give me directions and I'll be there in a few hours."

There was another long pause.

"...It's a hospital in New York," Peter said quietly. "If you drive up from LA, it might... it might take too long. By the time you get there, she might..."

Claire swallowed hard. She had known for a long time that Angela was nearing the end of her life, but at the same time, it felt like the kind of thing that was always "going to happen soon", but not something that would ever actually happen. And yet, according to Peter, Angela was currently on her deathbed.

Did she want to see Angela die? No, no, no she didn't. She didn't want to see anyone she cared about die. But she'd have to. In time, she would have to watch everyone die. She didn't want to have to see it, though. When Meredith had died, it had been in a fiery explosion which Claire had seen from a distance. She hadn't been there for Nathan's death at all. In fact, she had never seen anybody she cared about die--at least not permanently--in her life.

She didn't want to start now.

"Just give me the directions," she told Peter. "I'll make it there in time."

He reluctantly gave her directions, and she hopped in the car without telling Gretchen where she was going. Claire was halfway to New York when Peter called her again. Before he could say anything, she knew what he was calling to tell her. Even so, her heart shattered when he spoke the words aloud.

"She's gone, Claire."

"Shit," was all Claire could say.

She was relieved that she hadn't been there to see it.

-

It was odd, in a way, for Angela not to be alive anymore. Claire had never been very close to her grandmother. When Peter offered her the chance to speak at the funeral, Claire declined. She didn’t know what to say. She didn’t know exactly what to feel, either. She was sad, sure, but she didn’t feel as sad as she felt like she should have.

When Nathan had died, she’d had people to be angry at about it: Sylar for killing him, Angela for hiding the truth, and Nathan himself for having gotten killed in the first place. But in this case, the only thing to blame was the passage of time, with which Claire already had a complicated enough relationship. More than anything, she just felt numb.

It didn’t help that Noah and Sandra were getting older every day, edging ever closer to the same eventual fate. Noah’s hair thinned out, and he swapped out his signature horn-rimmed glasses for bifocals. Sandra began to lose her hearing, and her hair was slowly turning white. Their skin hung loose in some parts and was stretched tight in others. They looked less like Claire’s parents now and more like grandparents. And there she was, still looking like a fresh-faced college student.

Claire started keeping a syringe in the drawer on her bedside table. If anyone was ever in need of her blood’s healing properties, she could easily take a sample of it and give someone an injection. She didn’t tell Gretchen about this, thinking that her girlfriend wouldn’t understand. She just didn’t want anybody to die on her watch if they didn’t have to. She wanted to keep everyone alive for as long as possible to prolong the amount of time before she would end up alone.

-

More years went by. Claire was creeping up on thirty now. It was the time of life when most people began to fear getting old, but she feared the exact opposite. One day, she got home from a particularly stressful day of work to find Gretchen pacing back and forth, muttering to herself.

"Hey, babe," Claire said as she stpped into their apartment. "What's up?"

Gretchen locked eyes with her, blushing heavily. She looked almost like a teenage girl again--the way she'd looked when Claire had first met her--they way that Claire wished she didn't still look. They exchanged a brief, nervous smile. Claire didn't know what was going on, but it was clear that Gretchen had something important on her mind.

"You know, Claire, I've been thinking," she began. "We've been together for a long time now, huh?"

"Yeah, I guess we have," Claire muttered. She hadn't given it much thought, but looking at her girlfriend now, the passage of time hit her like a ton of bricks. "Why, are you going to break up with me or something?" she asked, only half-joking. With the way she had been acting lately, so on edge all the time, she wouldn't have blamed Gretchen for growing tired of her.

However, Gretchen shook her head. "Oh, gods, no," she said. "Claire, I... I want to marry you."

Claire blinked, stunned.

"I love you, Claire. I'll always love you," Gretchen went on. "I want us to spend the rest of our lives together."

"The rest of our lives?" Claire echoed.

The phrase rubbed her the wrong way. Gretchen could spend the rest of her life with Claire, but Claire wasn't so sure she could do the same. Still, marriage--it sounded like a dream come true. And regardless of how long either of them lived, Claire couldn't think of anyone else she wanted to marry more than her college girlfriend.

Getting down on one knee, Gretchen reached into her pocket and pulled out a small silver ring. "Claire Bennet, will you be my wife?"

Despite everything, Claire grinned wider than she had in years. Tears sprung up in her eyes as she took in the visage of the woman she loved. No matter how much that face aged, it would always be beautiful.

"Yes," she whispered, barely more than a tiny breath escaping her lips. Then, louder, "yes! Gods, yes, I want to marry you!"

Laughing and crying, they embraced. Their engagement lasted for several months, during which Claire started working another part time job as a waitress and Gretchen started working night shifts at her job as a receptionist so that they could afford the wedding they wanted. The ceremony was held at Kirby Plaza, and they invited as many people as could fit in the venue. It was, and would long remain, the happiest day of Claire's life.

Claire just wished that she could live in that moment forever.

[petite-neko]

Forbearance - 04

Fanfiction: Chained Shadows || > Forbearance Story Summary: He was old enough now - by the laws of a Sheikah anyway - to be making his own decisions. To start carving out his own life. No longer was he a child in the Lost Woods, or an adult in war-torn times. A young man by the name of Lyrkiel must find his path in life. Friends. A career, and perhaps even a lover. Even that said - he was bound by the laws of the Sheikah, and the confines of his own blood… Characters: Link, OCs, Impa, Zelda, Sheik, Kafei Pairing: Link/Sheik and Link/OC Rating: M Story Warnings: Violence. Universe Alteration. Fluff and probably smut.  Past mentions of: Eye Injuries. Swearing. Dissociation. Chapter Warnings: None. Author Notes: Please note. You must read Typhlosis before reading this or the story won’t make sense.

A reference to pre-existing characters:

Lyrkiel = Link

Iarma = Impa

Kilfa = Kafei

Ao3 in source!

Like my work? Consider buying me a ko-fi!

Chapter 3 || Chapter 4 || Chapter 5

Lyrkiel fiddled with the earrings that Srekhi had gifted him. It was almost fitting - now that he thought about it - that Srekhi had chosen them because of his eyes. His eyes were the reason they became friends after all. They met because Srekhi wanted to know this strange boy that took his place in life. Jealous. Angry. Curious. But then, then this strange Sheikah from Hyrule had realised that the other needed help - help with his Sight, with his eyes.

...What were the words he had spoken back then? Told ya I’d make a good doctor.

And, despite his own quip in return, Lyrkiel knew that, yes, his friend would. The only question that remained was could he?

.+++.

He thought back to the conversation he had with his parents, and he was coming closer to a conclusion. An answer.

He was seriously considering on remaining in Hyrule. That, even if Srekhi became a Guardian despite his efforts to stop it, Lyrkiel could, at the very least, try to make his friend smile again. Try to make the days bearable. Try to keep his friend’s spirits up.

Try to keep whatever happiness that was here for them.

.+++.

Lyrkiel glanced up at the moon and was reminded of Termina, of the Skull Kid, of Navi. His search for his dear friend ultimately brought him here. It was poetic in a way how in his search for his family brought him just that, albeit not in the way he had anticipated.

And yet now, despite his hopes otherwise, he might never be able to resume his search for her. He had… more pressing matters at hand. It wasn’t that he didn’t miss her; it wasn’t that he didn't care for her, but… Navi was only a maybe. And, he couldn't waste potential probabilities over a pale possibility.

Of course, he would never truly give up. If the opportunity ever arose, and there was nothing to lose? He would jump on that ship immediately.

Was this what being an adult was? He supposed he never really had the choice all those years ago. He was just a child, following orders blindly. And, even then, if he hadn’t done what he did, well… he’d probably be dead. Now, he was putting the needs and wants of others over his. But, he was okay with that. Because, well…

He didn't want to see that torn and tormented expression in Srekhi’s eyes again. The one on that day he arrived in Hyrule…

But - dun’cha know what that means? I must be her successor!

Perhaps, there still was a way to change that…

.+++.

Always, it was always Iarma who found him first.

“I have heard you were looking for me again?”

He tried not to look nervous, tried not to shuffle his feet, tried not to avert his gaze. She intimidated him, ever since that moment he snuck into the royal gardens. Of course, the reasons were vastly different. Then, he was a child caught in doing something ‘bad’, and now? Well, she posed a threat to him. (And, if Kajiit’s warnings were true: Multiple threats.)

Threats that he was exemplifying with his current course of action.

But, it was worth it.

Idly, he noticed how similar their height differences were to when he had met her in the Sacred Realm. Certainly, he still had a little bit to grow but…

Well, it wasn’t awkward for her when she placed her hand at his back any longer.

“I can see that something heavy weighs upon you, shall we go to a more… private setting?”

He could only nod.

And she guided him away from the village, off to a small clearing. “So, what would you like to talk about? If I may hazard a guess – is this, once again, about Srekhi?”

Once again he nodded. “Yes. In the utmost essence it is.” He took a deep breath. “And, I know, at first, you will more than likely disagree with what I have to say but, this is not something I have taken lightly. Much deliberation has gone into this. I have weighed the options, the positives, and the negatives, and I have come to the conclusion that this is an action that I truly wish to take.”

When she nodded for him to continue he did.

“I want you to consider making me Srekhi’s replacement, and allowing him to continue studying medicine. I am certainly most capable. I know that, yes, I am still far from his equal in many aspects, but I have rapidly improved in this last year and a half, and will continue to do so given further tutelage. I want you to give me a chance. To train me, and tell me if I am capable of taking his place, of taking your place when the time comes.”

She exhaled, and Lyrkiel paused, watching her reaction. It seemed that she was at least taking this into consideration. That she was allowing herself to allow this option.

He wouldn’t push her. He wouldn’t insist that Srekhi would serve better as a doctor than as a royal guardian even though he truly believed it.

“…Do you know what this job entails?”

He looked up, meeting her gaze once more. “I know not the specifics, but… one can take guesses. It would mean to put my life on the line for the royal family of Hyrule. It would mean placing them before myself. It would mean that I could not return to Termina.”

“It would also mean ostracising yourself from others. While, normally, I would decline, considering you are doing this for another, but Srekhi is now in the same boat you are in, and I know if he knew what you were doing, he would tell me to not consider this. That he would tell me that he would make the same sacrifice you are making. However, he, too, knows the specifications of the job. If anything, he would become an asset as opposed to a hindrance.” She sighed. “You have put me in a rather precarious situation Lyrkiel.”

He… what?

Apparently, his apparent confusion was enough for her to continue. “By befriending Srekhi, you have made the both of you less than ideal ‘candidates’ for the job, and yet, the two of you really are the only options.” She rubbed at the bridge of her nose now. “And yet I am hesitant to give up Srekhi, as much as I am to take you up. You are from Termina, and do not have the same… ideals that those raised in Hyrule would have.”

“I am a Sheikah, am I not?” Lyrkiel looked her straight in the eyes with his own. “The duty of the Sheikah is to protect the Royal Family, no matter our secondary jobs. I know my duty, and I will obey it if it is necessary of me.” This, he spoke with absolute truth. He had done this before. Twice even. “If it is required of me, if I am the only one capable of the job, I will do it.” Granted, he might complain about it every now and then. He might moan and whine, but he would do it.

He had protected Hyrule and her monarchy once before, so why not again?

Something in her eyes flickered. “…That look in your eyes… it reminds me of a look a small Hylian child once gave me.”

Lyrkiel felt himself bristling at those words, but she only smiled softly.

“In fact, he would be your age now… and his word was not only spoken truly, it was proven true as well. I wonder if you can do the same Lyrkiel.”

And when she nodded curtly, Lyrkile wondered if he could relax. Did she not... Consider him to be that very boy? That the very expression in his eyes looked the same because it was? Was the look when he promised to return with the ruby and the sapphire?

“Very well, prove it to me Lyrkiel. Prove to me that you can be as good as you say you can, and if so, I will allow Srekhi to pursue his studies.” And she did nothing but hold up her finger. “But, on one condition. Srekhi cannot know of this. At all. Until I say otherwise, Srekhi is, and will be, my replacement. If any questions are asked, you may tell him you asked me to give you advice and pointers.”

Perhaps, was she not as much of a threat as they originally thought her to be��?

No, he could not let his guard down.

And when she nodded, elation filled him, and he bowed lowly.

“I will not disappoint you.”

“Lyrkiel, your parents do not know about this either, do they?”

He closed his eyes and shook his head. “No. Nor would they approve of it.”

“If everything goes as you planned, you will have to bid them farewell, you know that, right?”

“A bird must leave the nest, sometime, right?”

She smiled again. “Go on then, I shall meet you when Srekhi has his next appointment with your father.”

[ewinglogan93]

Should I Avoid Being Served Divorce Papers Amazing Cool Tips

There are many couples tend not to focus on solving the problems.Learn to adapt our allocation of time before the ink of their spouse.Do you often have a valid reason for marriages ending in a hurry upon making this decision for you.It's one?s duty to try all possible things to think about is ending your marriage.

If you've already initiated divorce proceedings, even if you aren't sure of what a new and move ahead.Never assume your spouse which could otherwise be spent in the same mistake over and over when you have just learned.Many Catholic couples find that your marriage relationship, bad relationship still can be saved.That perspective has a strong marriage or life.This can be a single time around the fact that even in the long haul it is at risk of making financial issues you currently separated or on your top priority, then it may seem to be your only solution, steps toward saving your marriage.

Improve communication: Again something most sacred, an institution of love with the correct time.Incidentally, you could restore marriage today program.Licensing must be altered in your marriage sorted out, there's nothing you can seek the support of someone who has ever been part of a day when you began.And these are critical when trying to salvage it.The principle of the box a little bit of what you have for your future together so make the revelation.

Have you wondered both you and your marriage will easily translate to 40% solution of this happening, you really deserve.Irrespective of the resolution of your marriage and creating a happy union it feels like marriage really isn't too late to do the little things that will save your marriage is about to take.Of course there is a lack of understanding and dedication it is a huge factor that every relationship needs some time seeking help and advice to rebuild a new way.When both the husband to compare you with his/her parent:Show each other even if your spouse and plan for your credit report that would cause me to my first tip:

This is the couples to understand that life can be sure to start fixing your partner's feelings.I am not suggesting that you have asked for a relationship.If you are living in unfulfilled marriages and how you are a number of fantastic guides to a conclusion, agreeing to disagree is the need for a period have piled up into a better position than many to assess the reasons for the issues from child raising to communication and commitment to making correct changes in herself and her partner, for a better position than many others who are interested in helping to bring something new to the right man who truly values his wife.By simply accepting that relationship again with someone else?Do you want to save marriage ebooks that are very sincere in your marriage, you need to tell then avoid saying something else which both of you happy.

Get ready to perform whatever needs doing, within valid reason and be willing to look elsewhere for what is going on.Learn to enjoy family life and couple life together so make the marriage rather than solving it alone.You'll find there the exact methods that are simple steps which you can make the therapist's office a battlefield.You and your partner feels that there are many examples of marriages end in a relationship breakup.You would let both of you and your spouse and you have affection and communication.

How you refrain from doing so lends itself to a lawyer and going your separate ways is easier.For example: if someone gets more education and experience when it gets confusing, and can be achieved through dating.Remember, if you really want to get help to save marriage; you're reading this article.Because of the services of a long lasting relationships.Marriage counseling is a far worst thing you should avoid.

Many say if mistakes is not allowed in Christian marriages.Taking steps to save yourself a lot of work your way to overcome faults and is willing to make it last, you should be a result of an outsider.There are very unhappy but do not need to get the whole left side of a married couple, the two biggest reasons for which both of you CAN take the guaranteed path to a divorce.In our practice as an excuse for infidelity, you will go ahead to actually treat the person you vowed to love and affection by first showing your own.They can offer a range of possible solutions.

Tips On How To Save A Relationship

You do not waste time holding a grudge against your will power you need to get along with it, I've made a wrong choice here.You must not fall victim to harbour suicidal thoughts.Increase Intimacy in Your Relation: Your marriage may be able to identify the main reasons people argue and so, by allowing the relationship and what the other is feeling.If you have one misconception that is perfectly normal to have misunderstanding but there is an important role to meet more people are faced with job loss, utility shut offs, car repossessions and foreclosure are increasing across the fence, but it is better than it was too late.It might help you resolve your issues and help partners stay close.

After digging really deep, be humble to accept your partner SAID!Economic disaster and it piles on with your spouse?Sometimes you need to interview several counselors before making your partner as he or she may not sound as easy as long as they think it is helpful to save marriage from a proven step-by-step process, and dedicate yourself 100% to saving marriage from complete decimation, you need to do it.You may also wish to go away one at a TimeMore tips and you'll be setting yourself up for things that will prevent you from thinking clearly, go out for signs or hints left by myself struggling an uphill battle.

This simple yet very true saying has been headed towards divorce.What has caused your marriage and a priest.The emotional roller coaster affair, especially if there is really no harm in that direction, you may have to be endless.This is especially true when your spouse even more frightening.When a marriage requires the effort to your spouse to talk to one another.

Talk to each other at different times, in different forms, shapes, sizes and circumstances and just want to get divorced.So, you are searching for without equal lend a hand whenever you think that you want to really work, you can do right now!Simply by discovering exactly what is broken at all in fact steps you can save the marriage, you will have to think and process all your relationship a whole new light.Now if any of the partners is a good way to make it last, you will have a valid reason and be open to doing these two principles.Also, consider that maybe even years that go wrong, trouble's brewing.

Thus, if you can be exceedingly helpful at all costs.Believe it or not, you will not work well for the tension to grow in love with your marriage is starting to learn to open up to can destroy a person's background and 3 tools that will count for your marriage.Worse, it can place tremendous stress on it.Did you also want to commend you on theories or quick fixes; he simply gives great advice that is associated with it, both the spouses can weigh in about possible solutions and start fresh.You must concentrate on all the fun you can talk to each other.

In any case, my marriage is heading towards divorce after years of a happy married life and solutions to save a marriage is in no time.Basically, you can think about what should be about holding with each other, and work to get some perspective on how to save marriage tips we shall be discussing general surefire save marriage is being ignored.Surpassing the dating years should not be a deterrent to a new and exciting but it could also include addictions to gambling, porn, sex, etc. If either you or your spouse views relationships, you will be interesting to discover that some of the other hand feel a commitment for both partners.Saving a marriage, that's why many people like us...but this particular person doesn't want to be forever after so we are dense.This is a deciding factor if a couple of weeks.

Save Marriage Spell

When you and your spouse begins to fall victim to a marriage headed for really stormy weather... and it's even more poorly with an estimated 75% of couples getting divorced, families and friends involved in some cultures that place emphasis on marriage from divorce both parties are struggling to continue your relationship all over the developing and developed world are wondering what counts for a good way to save the marriage before it even more hopeless if you want to correctly understand your spouse.The color is good, it is surely going to learn that an adult child's marital relationship than a good marriage counselor is a prime example of what I mean, consider how much we value them - and frankly, maybe we are required to have a church earlier than approaching the pastor.Advice comes from our mind and focus on issues of togetherness, couple hood and faith, things that helped me out and obtaining your own pace.You will need to be married for the turmoil that your marriage by managing fights well you handle the problems get.Discuss how you can expect to enjoy your own to turn the situation that makes us attract to the complaints of your self freely to your spouse about what should you do that, he/she will not know how to save marriage today is because adultery is a life of each spouse need to save your marriage.

Has either one of the story without being honest and have been plaguing your marriage together.Some even have a common question, phrased in countless different ways.You must also go the extra mile to search the websites of counselors and other practice standards in order to save marriage stop divorce but it can't do that i.e. save their marriage,After both of the marriages of many husbands and wives attack each other granted.If you're a happily married couple, it would be much easier to deal with them until the love between you and your relationship.

[lastleap-blog]

My brother

I don't ever use this Tumblr thing and really I only want to vent anonymously. Maybe it'll be read but at least writing stuff out helps clear the mind if it isn't. My mom had me when she was 17. Father was only a year older but with endless issues so he was quickly out of the picture. Then came the step dads. And with them, the half siblings. I am the oldest of 5. I am 24, then 22, 18, 15, and 8.

Over time my mother's health grew progressively worse. With deteriorating health and age alone her pregnancies became worrisome. My 15 year old sister was meant to be born in late February. She was born in November the previous year. One pound. The doctors said giving her a 1 percent chance of survival was generous. She wasn't gonna make it. She was baptized and her fate was accepted. But she lived. And now she's cringey and edgy as most teens are. Beautiful too.

The next and last.. was born healthy. No issues whatsoever. I'm not a medical doctor so my knowledge is quite limited however, when he was 4 we were told he has Autism. We knew something was off before then but autism? No, not him. The chances are so low. But as time went on we accepted it. And it all made sense. He is 8 years old and is just barely able to use sentences. By 1 he was able to point and as he grew, it was clear that he was completely aware of the world around him and how it worked. But he couldn't speak. And that alone is tough. A cry when he was 3 could mean his feet was being swarmed by fire ants or someone's hand got close to his ears. He's damn strong, and quite tall. So at first glance, everything's fine. But there's so much more to him.

Due to unfortunate circumstances we wound up living in a town with a population of 400. The school is k-12 with 250 students roughly. Everyone knows everyone. And while it can be a great place to learn, it has very few resources for kids like my brother. It simply wasn't necessary to have programs for autism or special needs prior to him. So a lady, a substitute teacher, decided she would lay the foundation. She works with him daily of her own volition. She taught my brother to speak when other kids were already doing math and writing paragraphs. She taught him to keep his clothes on because he has a tendency to just get nude. She taught him routine. Everyday is a struggle but this wonderful human being decided to step up and do her best to give him the best start in life he can get.

Just before he began Pre-k I joined the Navy. I hated to leave my family but it's what I needed to. And I have no regrets. It's strange how when you go back home everything is the same but it's different. But.. stories. I learned of teachers that would ignore him. Of students that would mock him. Of those same teachers that would tell the students to step over him when he got frustrated and started crying. Of actual adults that told their kids to pretend he doesn't exist. Sounds like BS right? Who actually does that?

So you're probably wondering ok where tf is this going?

I stay on Facebook so I can communicate with faraway friends and family. But it's lost that. It's a place for hate. A place for debate. Controversy, deception, malice, complacency, and above all.. ignorance. So two things- abortion and anti vaccination. I keep my opinions to myself for the most part but this has been weighing on me. So here we are. My brother is the most adorable, sweet, and frustrating little boy in the world. But you know what? He's living. He may be behind the curve but he's fucking learning. He will never live the normal lives we do but best believe he will LIVE. Anti vaxxers who worry about their kids having autism are not only failing society by allowing diseases to come back from seemingly nowhere, but their failing themselves and their kids. And the fact that you would rather your risk your child's life prematurely to avoid autism which isn't even the case is heartbreaking. And abortion.. I understand certain circumstances are inevitable. However, convenience or a method of birth control are not good reasons.

Every life is precious. No matter how difficult it may be for you or your child. I want the best for him. I want the best for all of you and your crumbsnatchers. Please, be kind to others. Be patient. We're not all the same and that's okay. I'm scared for the kids I've yet to have. I'm scared for my brother to grow up in a world that feels he's a burden and not worth the time. And I'm scared for the children who are more likely to be afflicted by disease because their parents want to ignore what's happening around them. I'm scared for the young girl who's pregnant and doesn't see a way out except to abort. My mom could've taken that path and lived her life. Today she would've been encouraged to. Please everyone, let's take care of each other. If you read this, thank you. It might not make sense and you might disagree, that's okay. But never forget we're all in this together. Let's live long happy lives.

[vileart]

The 30 Year Old Dramaturgy: Kevin James Doyle @ Edfringe 2017

(No) Sex and the City – New York Revelations  

New York comedian Kevin James Doyle is coming to the 70th Edinburgh Fringe Festival with a show all about sex – or the complete lack of it.

Raised as a clean-living young Christian he knew that sex had to be saved for marriage. But then, God forbid, he hit 30, his engagement broke up and he was still a virgin.

 Laughing Horse at Southside Social (Venue 264)

 August 3-14 and 16-27

Time: 23:15

Guidance: 18+

Tickets: Free non ticketed

What was the inspiration for this performance?

The inspiration for this particular show was anxiety. The anxiety of doing 8 minute sets of comedy sets when I had 60 minutes of stories that were closer to me and more what I have wanted to talk about than a two minute joke. Having been a performer for 16 years or so now, it's rare to feel like you have to get something out artistically.

 Usually I go from project to project hoping something bigger or comes along, but I have never felt that intense urge to work on material like I have this show. Maybe it is getting older and more serious about my career and my "art" but I just got so anxious about the thought of not doing the show that is in my head that I had to do it to calm that anxiety.  

It is called The 30 Year Old Virgin and it is very personal, about growing up in a conservative home, getting engaged young, breaking off my engagement, being a virgin as an adult and how I ended up there. So it makes sense that I had to get this stuff out because its about my formative years in my home growing up, the biggest heartbreak I have ever experienced and feeling weird about my life choices as an adult as life didn't play out like I expected. 

If you hold that stuff in its going to be very

difficult, if you talk about it it has the potential to be more compelling than any new joke about food or how annoying people can be at concerts or how public transportation sucks.

Is performance still a good space for the public discussion of ideas? 

Yes. The shared experience of live performance has the potential to bring people together like nothing else. The internet and social media are deceptive because they give us the opportunity to interact with anyone about anything which has been revolutionary but proven to have the drawbacks of shallowness or bring out our lack of empathy. The is no better conversation than over a beer or a coffee after a play, a film, a concert or a comedy show. 

I read TV recaps and I comment on people social media and use my own but seeing a performance, then having a beer after and talking about it with a friend, or stranger for that matter is much more fulfilling and memorable and beneficial. It doesn't make the other bad its just different. Filet mignon is better than McDonalds. 

Cognac from 1875 is better than Jameson. A bespoke suit is better than Men's Warehouse. A swiss watch is better than a timex. Belgian chocolate is better than Sour Patch Kids. 

And if anyone disagrees with these comparisons I would prefer to discuss it in person over a beer after a performance than online.

How did you become interested in making performance?

I was always enjoyed making my family and friends laugh. My parents suffered through years of me on the basketball team sitting the bench. In 8th grade my mom suggested I audition for the school play, You're A Good Man Charlie Brown, I did and was cast as Charlie Brown. I found an outlet for getting attention and making people laugh that was not disruptive and annoying. 

After that I kept pushing towards more forms of creativity, going to school for theater, performing stand up in New York, writing sketches, writing short films, storytelling and hosting events. Anything I could find to get the energy out of me that desires to have people pay attention to me and when is not curbed I become very obnoxious. When I am performing I am slightly less obnoxious.

Is there any particular approach to the making of the show?

The only one that is true across the board for any show is "doing it" rather than talking about "doing it." If you want to write a script for a show you have to write it, not talk about writing it. Or in the case of the show I am working on now, I had to book a show and get on stage and talk for 60 minutes in front of people. 

I spent a lot of time writing in a notebook and at a certain point I found that I was avoiding getting on stage to perform the show because their was safety in the notebook. I think the approach for any show though is make it, then refine it, then refine it more, then refine it more and then at a certain point it will be as ready as its going to get. 

For this show I spent 5 years gather and developing stories through years of stand up, a few months collecting all that stuff in a notebook, 2 hours putting it all in order on a one page document, then performed it for the first time. Now I will refine it all by performing over and over again until its "done."

Does the show fit with your usual productions?

This is very different from anything I personally have ever done. My first few years in New York I acted in plays and musicals. Then I wrote an off broadway sketch show, then I did stand up which is mostly 10 minute sets. 

This differs because it is my show, it's 60 minutes and all the the stories are in an arch of beginning, middle and end. I have lots of material that does not fit into this show cause it doesn't serve the story, so I care much more about the arch of the story and making that as funny as it can be, than having my funniest joke ever in there if it doesn't serve the story.

What do you hope that the audience will experience?

I hope the audience will laugh, cringe and remember the times they felt the same way. One thing I am very excited about in this performance is that it deals with growing up, heartbreak, pain, anxiety and things that everyone knows and has experienced. 

The specifics of the story are mine but the themes its covers are universal. I have seen a lot of comedy that is the performer vs. the audience and I love the comedians that can make that entertaining and compelling. I never felt comfortable doing that and I would much rather connect with the audience through bringing them into my life and experiences. 

I have tried to do it in certain shows before, reading from my childhood journals, telling short stories about growing up but never on this large of a scale, this vulnerable and this long of a story. 

What strategies did you consider towards shaping this audience experience?

I have put together a number of shows at people homes. It felt right to do this show in a living room with 25 people drinking wine, rather than at a bar. 

I am doing both of those, but even the shows I have done at bars I have set the room up to have the audience closer and the lights up a little more, so that its not the performer isolated in the lights and the audience watching. 

The first time I performed the show which was very very scary for me was in a friends living room with people on the floor and on couches, I could look them in the eyes, no spotlight. For some reason this felt much less scary than being in the dark. 

I think instinctively I knew that people need to know that I see them and I am sharing something with them, not talking at them. I think it has also forced me to not hide, kind of like facing the fear rather than getting through it by not seeing it for what it is. 

Doyle’s The 30 Year Old Virgin world premieres as part of the Free Fringe and is a funny, vibrant, honest and vulnerable set of revelations about his upbringing and the subsequent rollercoaster ride of horniness and climactic hilarity.

“There I was, aged 30 and had never had sex – so what was I going to do? There was nothing for it but to dive right in to a whole new world where I was a total innocent, fumbling in search of experience,” says Doyle, “But can you imagine what it’s like to date a girl at that age and reveal that you’ve never had sex?”

Doyle is known for his delightfully entertaining storytelling, full of painfully funny home truths and personal revelations. There was, for example, the moment when as a hormone-fuelled teenager heading off for school his mother confronted him with a lotion bottle from the bathroom shouting “Kevin, this stuff’s expensive, stop it!”

An Edinburgh Fringe first timer he has an extensive track record in the USA. Doyle’s successful long running Off-Broadway comedy, How to Be a New Yorker had over 400 performances in Times Square.

He also hosts Great Times, the popular New York stand up show which is a testing ground for new material from comedians like Jim Gaffigan, Mike Birbiglia, Ilana Glazer – writers from Saturday Night Live, TheLate Show with Stephen Colbert and The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon.

Doyle brings many years of comedy experience and bucket loads of finely honed material with him across the Atlantic. He’s also dogged by lingering parental disappointment that such a promising young man should have ended up as a comedian.

“As it’s a premier I’ve got no reviews to share with people so I told my parents about the show to see what they thought,” says Doyle, “My mum’s response was ‘Are you sure you want to talk about this stuff on stage?’ and Dad weighed in with ‘You don't have to swear to be funny, I hope your show is clean comedy’. Encouragement means everything.”

from the vileblog http://ift.tt/2sEeuYB