#pushing the agenda that no one knows Ives really exists

[weewoow-20706030]

Tim: ok. See you all later.

Dick: where are you going???

Tim: I'm going to visit Ives.

Bruce : have fun 😊

Tim: see ya.

Everyone: ....

Jason: so we all agree Ives doesn't really exist right?

Everyone: *noises of agreement*

Dick: I think it's my fault. I told him he should be making friends his age and then he told me about Ives. Someone he had never brought up before but apparently they had been friends for years. And when I asked why I never met him he said Ives had cancer... Just- so casually...

Steph: yeah. I think he is real. I just think he is a fish. And Everytime he dies Tim gets one that looks the exact same and names it Ives.

Jason: no loving parent would ever name their child Ives. No offense Dick.

Dick: ??? What does this have to do with me? We're talking about Tim?

Damian: I believe it is delusion from too many head injuries.

Bruce: Come on. I think Tim is completely capable of making friends.... And I think it's sweet that he still fosters the creativity to have an imaginary one.

[goodqueenaly]

I fell into a rabbit hole of your metas and it's great stuff! But while reading your bits over the Southern Bloc I couldnt help notice something. In Dance(ithink) Barbrey Dustin speaks to Theon about her distrusts for the maesters and insuates that Rickard's Southron ambitions were groomed by the maester of that time. I doubt that GRRM wrote that for no reason, and in the your work I don't see any mention of the Maesters 1/2

(tbh I really wouldn't be surprised if we don't get to see anything substantial on the Maester conspiracy because of time and pacing in two books thanks to GrRm great scheduling bbtp) but do you think the Maesters have any important part on the Southron Bloc plans? Because if so, what would have been their greater goal?

P.S. and another thing! Rickard Starks ambition level is unusual in most of the historical Starks throughout the Targaryen dynasty. Two sons and a daughter connected to land beyond the Neck? I know you mentioned why Rickard would benefit from these relationships, but why did he think of this in The first place? Why did he think it was better to go against the Targaryens when they hadn't bothered with the North much at that point?

P.S. pt2: I really think it was the Maesters that low-key were pushing, for something, and they really needed to cinch Rickard in. Except that Dragons and magic no longer seem to exist, so why continue to erode the Targaryens away(their anti Martell agenda checks out, at least) even if Aegon IV had done what he wanted to do it's not like the Maesters would suffer or benefit either? Sorry, I accidently put myself in the rabbit hole. It's dark here. Bye

The short answer is that I really don't believe in any maester conspiracy explanation for the (as yet theorized) southron ambitions power bloc. I think that there are (again, potential) explanations for why Rickard Stark (and, by extension, Jon Arryn and Hoster Tully) acted as they did which are not dependent on, or even really explained by, a united conspiracy of maesters puppeteering various paramount lords. I am not saying there has never been any greater schemes among maesters ever, only that I believe this specific group of marital and fostering alliances was the product of the aristocratic men involved rather than their maesters.

Number one, I think Barbrey Dustin's comments regarding maesters should be taken with a heavy grain of salt. I don't mean that Barbrey is stupid, far from it, but rather that Barbrey is a woman with very specific grievances and very specific sources of blame for those grievances. Because Barbrey believes that she loved Brandon and that Brandon loved her, she needs a way to explain the failure of her romantic desires that does not blame either herself or Rickard and Brandon Stark (since, after all, Barbrey's goal was to become a Stark herself). This is, after all, the same Barbrey who asserts that Brandon never wanted to marry Catelyn, despite the fact that Brandon fought a duel with (and nearly killed) the person who challenged him for Catelyn's hand and explicitly affirmed his commitment to Catelyn, to Catelyn, before he left for King's Landing. Accordingly, villainizing Rickard's old maester (who was both a foreigner - that is, not a northerner - and a bastard, with all the accompanying prejudice there) and Catelyn Tully (another foreigner to the North) allows Barbrey to create a narrative in which she, Brandon, and Rickard did no wrong and naturally (to her) untrustworthy people can serve as scapegoats instead. Barbrey is a smart and canny woman, but she is as much subject to bias and prejudice as any other character, and given those very apparent biases I am reluctant to simply accept what Barbrey says about maesters as true.

Now, could there be a secondary reason the author included this perspective from Barbrey? Just as the story Godric Borrell tells of the fisherman's daughter and the story Edric Dayne tells of Wylla the wet nurse are both (almost certainly) objectively wrong accounts which nevertheless support the true proposition that there is a greater mystery to be revealed about Jon Snow's mother, so perhaps Barbrey Dustin's antipathy toward maesters is wrongly justified but intended to catch readers' attention to a more general point. Perhaps the author wants to suggest here that there is something a bit underhanded happening with some maesters, just not politically - that is, that individual historical maesters probably helped finish off the Targaryen dragons, and that few modern maesters recognize the potency (and danger) of magic (an attitude which will be immediately, and fatally, undone when Euron shows up to take over Oldtown).

I think it is also important to contextualize Rickard in his time and place. Certainly, it was the case that few (although some) Starks had married outside the North, at least so far as we have the Stark family tree - which, by the way, was as much true for a family like the Lannisters (whose marriages from Damon Lannister through the present day were almost exclusively with other Westerlands Houses), and probably as much true for families like the Tullys and Arryns as well - but it was also very unusual, indeed virtually unique, for all the senior commanders of Westeros to meet in a single space to war against a foreign invading army, which is exactly what happened during the War of the Ninepenny Kings - a war in which RIckard almost certainly served as Warden of the North. This was the perfect opportunity for Rickard to meet his fellow Warden Jon Arryn, as well as senior Riverlands commanders Hoster and Brynden Tully - and if they may not have finalized their entire geopolitical strategy and ambition in that moment (which would have been impossible to do anyway, given that Robert Baratheon, the Stark boys, and the Tully girls did not then exist), they certainly had the chance to discuss their opinions on the current state of the kingdom and build the foundations of their allegiance and mutual regard for one another.

And indeed, it's specifically not the case that the Targaryens "hadn't really bothered with the North much at that point" - quite the opposite, I think Targaryen action and inaction toward the North may have been a major source of grievance that motivated Rickard's participation in this alliance bloc. Remember that when the North needed help during the reign of Aerys I - when Dagon Greyjoy decided to make the west coast of Westeros his playground for pillaging and reaving - the Iron Throne specifically, consciously did nothing. That purposeful inaction directly betrayed part of the feudal promise enshrined when the Targaryen kingdom was formed: in return for the homage and and military service promised by the Iron Throne’s vassals, the Iron Throne agreed to protect those vassal families when they could not protect themselves - when, in fact, the realm itself was threatened. If the Iron Throne had probably (through Maekar) eventually intervened to solve the Dagon problem, Rickard’s great-grandfather Beron and his sons had learned the hard way that the Iron Throne’s commitment to its protective obligations was at best dependent on the personality of the monarch on the throne (and/or the monarch’s chief advisor). That’s not a lesson that I think Rickard - who was ruling barely half a century later - would necessarily have forgotten, or not considered in his political decisions and ambitions. If the Iron Throne ignored its individual vassals' plight without compunction, perhaps the way to make the dynasty listen - to ensure the Dagon problem could not happen again, in other words - was to unite as a bloc with other great Houses, the better to force the dynasty's notice.

Nor might the Starks have appreciated the opposite end of the Targaryens’ exercise of royal power - that is, under Aegon V, whose stated goal as king was to curtail lordly power by "grant[ing] rights and protections to the commons that they had never known before". It is unclear as yet how the Starks felt about Aegon V's program of reforms, yet it is certainly the case that unidentified other lords deeply resented the king's actions, even going so far as to describe him as "a bloodyhanded tyrant intent on depriving us of our gods-given rights and liberties". Indeed, this had not been the first time the Targaryens had intervened in the North to remove traditional privileges of the Starks and their vassals, since under Jaehaerys I the crown had both forced Winterfell to donate lands of its vassals to the Night's Watch and removed the right to the first night (across the continent, to be sure, but even Barth specifically noted at the time that "some lords [would] surely grumble at this [i.e. the end to the first night], especially in the North"); moreover, at least the first of those royal decisions seems to have caused deep resentment among some of the Starks. It's possible, therefore, that Rickard (who may have come into his lordship toward the end of Aegon's reign) agreed that the crown could not simply (metaphorically speaking) stomp into the North and start making demands on those rights which Aegon I had long ago promised to protect.

All of this, I think, may have culminated in an expression of frustration when the various Westerosi commanders met during the War of the Ninepenny Kings. If the Iron Throne had failed to uphold its end of the feudal bargain, in the eyes of these lords, it was now nevertheless demanding that its vassals still provide theirs - fighting for the crown at the summons of the king, to keep the king on the Iron Throne against the ambitions of a foreign challenger. For the first time, the Targaryen dynasty had left a major war entirely to the execution of its vassals, expecting that those families whose ancestors had bent the knee to the Targaryens would lead the charge against the Blackfyre forces (while the sickly king retired in the capital and his young heir served as a mere squire). Why, men like Rickard, Jon, Hoster, and Brynden might have wondered, were they giving their blood and sweat - and the blood and sweat of their vassals in turn - for a dynasty which had decided that the feudal bargain meant little or nothing when it came to the Targaryens' responsibilities? If once the answer had been dragons, that answer was no longer true over a century after the death of the last dragon; I think the Starks, Tullys, and Arryns may have realized that, with the balance of power irrevocably (or so they thought) shifted, now was the time to ally together, the better to rewrite the feudal playbook in a way which better recognized their power and authority.

Conversely, and to the point you made, I do not see any reason why the maesters (assuming all maesters would even act for a single purpose, which I think is simply wrong) would have any desire to encourage these specific marriage and fostering arrangements. Even if we start with the idea that "the Maesters ... were pushing, pushing, for something, and they really needed to cinch Rickard in", what exactly was the end goal here? As you yourself note, it could not have been the extinction of the dragons (which had not existed for almost 150 years by this point), and there seems to have been no animosity on a political level between the Citadel and the Targaryen dynasty, certainly not by this time (indeed, the Citadel's representative enjoyed a place at the right hand of the monarch, as Grand Maester).

[mybiasisexo]

I got into EXO in 2020, so I was really excited last year when Exist came out and let me tell you, solo stabs fighting over line distribution almost had me ignoring social media for a month to cleanse myself. It was wild, the audacity and entitlement they had to get mad over their fave not having enough lines while they don't even like EXO had me rolling my eyes on the daily. These same stans got mad at EXO L's for not supporting their faves enough in their solo activities, which my reasoning was why help you when you actively work against the group and want their downfall. They are in full force now just reveling in it all and all SM Ent had to do was push a false narrative and they just ran with it to push their solo agendas. It's sad, because EXO have said time and time again that they love and respect each other and want to continue together for a long time and solo stans deliberately ignore that and with no actual proof insist that that's not true.

firstly, getting into exo in 2020 is craaaazy like wow. glad you were able to make it here lol. a baby exol thru and thru 👏

ok now to the main point. exos been having to prove their loyalty p much since debut which is so strange like i never understood. esp since all these years they have proven/shown that they put exo above anything else and that they have so much love for one another!

i genuinely never realized solo stans existed until v recently. i had no idea it was this bad. i blame...well, covid and new fans that dont really have a connection with the group, bc the boys have been doing mostly solo stuff since enlistment era. so i get it. it took me a long time to come to terms with it, but its a part of the fandom ive finally acknowledged, mostly because theyre so LOUD!!!!

its some ugly work and i know the boys are just as tired of their shit as we are 😔

but also THEIR MOTTO IS LITERALLY WE ARE ONE WTF DO YALL THINK THAT MEANNNS???????? HELLOOOOOOO

[liquidstar]

Out of curiosity, what would you say Emilia’s main character flaws are? As in, her vices and failures of character.

i feel like her biggest and most obvious one is her self-sacrificing nature. it's one of the first things we learn about her, she always puts others before herself to her own deteriorate. stopping to help strangers when her entire future as the potential leader of the country is on the line and trying to justify it to herself. subaru himself says that anyone who lives like that will end up wasting their life. and as an extension of this shes also really bad at asking for help, in frozen bonds it takes her almost dying to finally call out puck's name which was largely her arc, but she only really learned to depend on one person (well, spirit) and still doesnt take well to being helped. during her big fight with subaru one of her biggest gripes was that he got hurt for her sake, but she NEVER asked him to do that. the thing is subaru was being an asshole and she had every right to be mad at him, but she had NO reason to blame herself for anything either.

and this also all ties back to her insecurity, her lack of faith in herself. like i said she bonds with puck after frozen bonds, but after he disappears in arc 4 she doesn't know what to do with herself. she needed that support and ends up learning on subaru for it in a way thats detrimental to her (almost going in the opposite direction). despite the fact that she WANTS to shoulder everything by herself... she cant. shes not that strong willed, no one is. the shit shes gone through is too much and she basically has to have one person to be her rock. but thats part of what arc 4 is for her anyway, learning to stand by herself but also accept love from others.

she doesnt trust her own abilities much but combined with that she also seems to have a fear of being useless- of being weak and unable to handle it all. she HAS to handle it all to prove herself as a worthy human being, since her existence itself is usually treated as a sin. she has to prove she's good. look at her! shes doing good! shes taking the trial! shes helping people! please dont think shes bad! please dont think shes a witch! shes just a normal girl! shes useful! she can do it! until she cant. if she buckles under the pressure she would run and hide or latch heavily onto One Person (fortuna, puck, subaru, whatever. someone. anyone.) theres a limit to how much a person can take.

she also tends to assume the worst in herself. she wants to prove that shes good and all but shes also kind of her worst critic. she picks apart her own motivation (to thaw the ice of elior forest and unfreeze all the elves) and she sees that as SELFISH. despite everything i said about how self sacrificing she is she sees herself as a selfish person! because in her eyes /wanting/ something is bad. having your own motivations is bad and selfish. as if the other royal selection candidates dont all have personal agendas (anastasia wants money. priscilla wants power. felt wants chaos. crusch wants order.)

and all this combined, she also greatly struggles to accept the love of other people. she doesnt realize how much puck loves her until the end of frozen bonds, until then she literally though he would just leave her some day. she straight up does not understand why subaru loves her so much and finds it confusing and jarring, at least at first. she cant love herself so she doesnt understand why others do. eventually she does learn to accept love though, and a little detail ive always liked is that when subaru tells her "i love you" she doesnt say it back but she does say "thank you" because it still gets through and still means something, and she can take her time if she ever wants to say it back. when emilia "breaks" and starts depending on him heavily the fact that she says it back is DISTURBING to him because it makes him realize how far she was pushed.

basically emilia is a deeply traumatized individual who has no faith in herself, so she tries to make up for it by carrying as much as she can on her own. when that fails she needs someone to learn on heavily and can grow dependent on them. but she has a hard time accepting that people love her because she cant love herself.

[yae-35]

Ive had these two neverafter ocs for a while but I never really planned on sharing them because despite having watched all episodes intently until now I am just a Girl with Half the Facts and idk how I could fit one of my ocs into the story in a technical/magical sense. Especially my second OC bc she has that Main Character energy peppered into her story and idk if Neverafter's rules can be aligned with her story

Theyre basically a duo of kids around ylfa and pinocchio's ages. The older one (who's probably like, a few years older than ylfa, around the 15-16 yr age range) is the youngest of the twelve dancing princesses who ran away from her controlling, emotionally-gray, father. She harbors extreme resentment against him and her brother-in-law for banning them from entering and essentially destroying the one true place she and her sisters had felt joy. Ofc in their eyes, they are protecting these girls, they're just going about it in such a Horrible Bad way... They feel guilty, but they're not in regret, y'know? Overall, it's a messy situation, and I feel like out of the two of the kids, she's more susceptible to the princesses' agenda, and it's one of those situations where Destiny's Children need to convince her to be on their side or else the princesses will swoop in.

My second OC is an iteration of the ugly duckling who doubles as the secret love child of Odette and Odile, a little younger than Pinocchio. So it goes like this: in the multitude of versions of the Swan Lake that exists, there's a version where Odette and Odile were enemies until they were Awakened. They became friends, then something more, until one day one of them lays an egg. Odile is a sorcerer's daughter, and I feel like she knows that this egg is a symbol of her and Odette's love for each other, and this symbol is an error to their story. She also knows that in this particular world, there are forces that will try to elimate any and every error to the best of its possibilities, like cells in a body that attack any invaders that could compromise the body's health. It's either 1) Odile managed to gain or has always had access to power as great as Baba Yaga's (or the Stepmother's) and managed to pushed this egg into a story where its deemed as an element to be allowed existence not unlike Pinocchio being shazam'd into another random Pinnochio's husk? 2) Odile knows the Baba Yaga, and the offer of such a power made to the Stepmother wasn't the first of its kind made by the Baba Yaga, Odile is just more... err??? let's say level-headed when it comes to using said power. That or the Baba Yaga only gave her a sliver of that power, just enough to push that "tumor" of an egg into a more accomodating host/story. The "duckling"'s whole schtick or arc is that she's tired of her worth being tied to her appearance and/or the anticipation of her appearance, but it's expressed in the way that only a 7-ish year old can.

They are a party of two, and the dancing princess is basically the guardian of the "duckling". Their own mission is to basically stay put in this world, and maybe find the duckling's parents. The duckling herself is ambivalent to finding her parents, but the dancing princess has been having visions of two women, in black and white tutus, calling out in the woods for the duckling's name ever since she took the duckling under her wing.

Idk what happens after I just know that Odette and Odile are like the wlw version of Henry and Timothy and they're looking to adopt this angsty teen with parental hurt.

They're both precious to me because I too have daddy issues, and if you know me and my blog, I love everything wlw and I have a soft spot for kids (CHIRP FEATHERFOWL YOU AND YOUR FAMILY WILL ALWAYS HAVE A PLACE IN MY HEART) I also really dig the vibes and themes of "we are the children this system was supposed to protect, but didn't" that Neverafter has going on because it just SPEAKS to me

[silentstaresfanficandfanart]

wow i learned a lot about pregnancy from this post thank you guys so much for the educational info! thats really scary stuff! (though i already planned not to have kids)

also on that random note: i dont nessisarily vibe with all the views (on religion) in the post without any nuance, more specifically in particular those opinions related to my god but this isint really aimed at the poster above me but more so those who think its the only thing christians believe and id like to share my opinion on that matter...because im uncomfortable with my god who i love being used to hurt my fellow people capable of giving birth or who have otherwise been affected by these things(after all i know these beliefs are part of why its so hard to get birth control and other important medical treatments) and i dont want other Christians like me to see this post and feel guilty and think god might not love them if they had to do something to survive and are scared he wont love them anymore, i know the catholic rules can be really strict, though im nondenominational so i dont really know a LOT about catholics, but i hope me saying this will bring my fellow siblings in christ

(and those who arent anymore because they thankfully chose to leave to protect themselves when they were in a group of christians who were abusive who i hope dearly heal and recover and can find as much happiness in life as possible and heal well from it...also to clarify this isint being said with any extra underlying meaning of 'and find your way back to christ' that is soley your choice as a human being and no one should pressure you into a belief system, god gave us the freedom to chose if we were going to chose him or not and no human being has the right to tell you what religion you should follow or what you should believe, a nonconsensual relationship or one involving abuse and suffering isint what god wants for us, and if you arent christian, then well, you dont care what god thinks and thats chill cause obvi your religious beliefs should be the priority here not mine i just want you to know your choice is fully respected here and are as equally valid as mine are and i want your freedom to chose to be protected just as mine is - i just wanted to clarify that, because im autistic and i know sometimes people imbed extra meanings in things and i dont want anyone to mistake that here- i really truly only mean the best there are no hidden agendas or meanings in my words, i mean them truly and from the heart and only with love and im so so so sorry if at any point they dont come across that way-) some comfort if theyre worried- and those who have been wrongfully hurt and suffered religious abuse some comfort knowing that that is NOT the only viewpoint that is valid and you arent a bad person and im so, so so sorry if anyone has ever attacked you like that if some part of you is suffering from pain related to this situation)

(sorry for the weird pink text and italicising i was trying to make it clear where that big section ended and we returned to the main point of what i was saying- sorry- im kind of tired and i may be being kind of confusing rn, but tldr: its not actually really a disagreeing with the previous poster thing but more of a "just to clarify because i know this is a huge problem and it breaks my heart, this isint the only viewpoint on things in my religion and i want everyone to feel safe and loved regardless of their choices and needs medically, and maybe idk, bring some comfort to people who have been unfairly exposed to religious abuse...im tired of the only narrative existing being one of hate, thats not what we're supposed to be about and i hope maybe by sharing my opinions i can help un-normalize the idea that the only valid opinions are those of the loudest extremists, as ive noticed that usually those of us with nuanced and usually chill opinions just dont usually have the level of anger toward the world that would push us to actually get our opinions noticed-)

sorry i got so rambly, ive just seen a lot of christian hate casual and downright blatant lately, and i figure a lot of that comes from people like me trying not to bother people, im trying to be louder, i dont want my only representation to come from those who are trying to hurt people i love, i hope i can be an okay example, i know im not a great one, but im trying :( im sorry if this is annoying too, it probably is at least to some degree, for that, im sorry. I cant speak for all christians, but please know that neither can those with louder voices speak for me, so i have to share my opinions, even if theyre only mine and clumsily offered. thank you for again for making this incredibly informative post, its so so important and i hope maybe i can even use some of this info to help my poor wonderful mom who i love so much who went through all this to give me life, who struggles with lingering health problems from the process of granting me this chance to experience to enjoy the gift of life , i didint know there were things that could be done for certain things she struggles with, i wont clarify which things due to it being her own private medical information, but i will say i think it will help her and it may help others, i really hope it does, thank you for helping us : ) posts like this can save lives and change them, and most importantly share important information everyone should know, whether or not they can give birth or have any desire to, my mom was always very honest with me about these things but i doubt she even knows a lot of this!

man do we need better sex education in schools... (im just saying people sure would be more careful and WAY better informed if it was taught like this, and hopefully, more aware of the importance of birth control and condoms...) how can you even truly consent to sex without knowing these things... thank you for sharing your knowledge you guys :( i wish it wasnt necessary. we shouldn't be learning these things from tumblr...

the thing is like. i get that it's scary and makes people who do desire to get pregnant uncomfortable when we talk about the brutality and violence of pregnancy and the damage that pregnancy can do to your body

but you deserve to give informed consent to that process.

the lies around pregnancy - that it's inherently safe, that it doesn't do you permanent damage, that it's only extremely rare for people to die of pregnancy complications, etc like

all of these are lies constructed so that more people will get pregnant w/o knowing all that

there needs to be more talk about the impact of miscarriages and how common they are, how different abortion processes are and how accessible they are

but also like. talking about how pregnancy fucks your body up should not be taboo

this is a process that permanently changes most people's bodies, and that's even if the pregnancy doesn't do them like. severe illness or injury

and i just think everybody should have a right to KNOW that

bc to live in a society that intentionally obscures and hides facts about a completely optional and dangerous process does so for a reason, and that reason is based in a very sinister ideology that does not value bodily autonomy or informed consent

[jemej3m]

Date Night

one of my fave headcanons that andreil go on weekly not-dates, because they’re definitely not a thing. 

Neil didn’t really understand the shallow forms of entertainment that were provided around campus until he found himself participating in them with Andrew. 

Movies, picnics, markets. It was, as Andrew tended to reiterate, incredibly fickle. Sometimes Neil felt like an idiot attempting the games and activities, especially considering Andrew usually opted out to watch. But sometimes it made Andrew crack that tiny, tiny smile, and Neil couldn’t deny that his embarrassment was worth it.

It was the reason they both upgraded to smart-phones, so that Andrew could film Neil falling onto his ass (ice-skating), or almost knocking over a kid by flinging his arm the wrong way (bowling), or slipping over in a mud puddle (an evening walk in the summer rain). Now they both had an app called Snapchat, where their messages were various saved videos of Neil doing stupid shit. 

Neil looked up from where he had sunk into the beanbag at the jangle of Andrew’s keys. His - boyfriend? No, not boyfriend - was glaring at the back of Kevin’s head, silently daring him to say something. 

Kevin looked at Neil. “You’re wasting precious time.” 

All he said was “Sue me.”, clambering onto his feet. He snatched a grey hoodie - Andrew’s - and put on socks before stuffing his feet into black boots - also Andrew’s. He was not impressed at the sight of what Neil was wearing, pushing him out the door and slamming it behind them. 

“What’s the date-night agenda for this week?” Neil jeered, knowing it would rile him up.

“I hate you.” Andrew said calmly, chucking the keys at Neil as they reached the bottom of the Tower’s stairs. “Drive.”

Neil did as he was told. And if their fingers were linked over the gearstick for the entirety of the half-hour drive, neither of them mentioned it. 

Andrew, a man of simplicity, had always liked the crisp fall weather. South Carolina’s fall was nothing like California’s, where the heat laid over your skin like heavy-weighted hands. Andrew liked the contrast between the cool breeze and the warmth of Neil’s hand as they walked from the car to the carnival grounds: He liked Neil in his sweater and his boots. He’d liked Neil in his car, too, though that was an old satisfaction now. 

There was a particular scar that Andrew always brushed his thumb over: his fist knuckle, where a half-formed circle raised up from the skin. The dash-board lighter hadn’t created a whole circle, instead, a crescent shape. He would circle it, then cross it, then circle it again. He wondered if Neil noticed it.

He probably had: For someone who had remained so insistently oblivious, he was sure as hell perceptive now. Maybe when he understood something, he broke it down into tiny, manageable pieces so that he could continue to interpret it. 

“Hey.” Neil hadn’t mentioned where they were, or what they were doing. Instead, he was letting his eyes flit from one brightly lit stall to another. They’d arrived at the ticket booth. “Cash?” 

Andrew let go of Neil’s hand to take out his wallet, which was where Neil kept most of his crap, too. God, Andrew would have murdered Neil himself if he’d been on the run with the fucker. He was so annoying, keeping every receipt and business card to dispose of properly, later. Even if he no longer had to hide a paper trail, his old habits kept up with him. 

Two adult tickets. Andrew ignored the weird glances: Neil, who was growing used to the reactions to his scars, ignored them too. They walked into the grounds, and found themselves silently overwhelmed. 

“I was never allowed to go to one of these as a kid.” Neil admitted. 

“Of course not. Your entire existence is tragic.” 

“Drama queen.” Neil muttered, tugging on Andrew’s sleeve and carefully avoiding his armbands. Always so fucking careful. Andrew hated him for it. 

“I’ve only been to one.” Truth for truth. Conversation rolled off Andrew’s tongue easily now. Everything was easier with Neil. Not easy, but - easier. “I snuck it. Got cotton candy with two dollars I’d stolen from my foster mother. Got kicked out because it was actually three dollars, and I’d used a piece of printed money.” 

“Tragic.” Neil grinned.

Andrew made Neil buy him a candied apple for that. There was a small ferris wheel, which they avoided. Neil refused to go apple bobbing unless they both did it, so Andrew dunked Neil’s head in when they lined up to start. Neil still won anyway. 

He also won at darts: Go figure. Andrew forced him to get the enormous teddy-bear, almost as big as he was, and to carry it around for the rest of the evening. 

When they both retired with some cotton candy at the edge of the field, they leant the stupid teddy-bear against a tree. Andrew leaned into it, and then Neil leaned into Andrew. He did try some of the cotton candy but hated it - of course - so he resigned to looking up as Andrew finished it off. For minutes he would stare at Andrew, and then avert his gaze to the sky, before having it gravitate back towards Andrew. 

“What.” Andrew said flatly, wiping sticky fingers on Neil’s ratty jeans. 

“You can’t think all of this is that stupid, if you continue to do it.” Neil accused, reaching up over Andrew’s head to pull at tufts of the teddy-bear. 

Andrew did think it was stupid; Over-priced, commercialised games to keep people entertained, like carrot-on-a-stick for pigs. But Neil made it tolerable. Being with someone had never been a tangible prospect for Andrew, and yet here he was, under the stars at a fall festival, leaning on a giant teddy-bear that Neil had won for him. Contemplating how he was supposed to hide it from Nicky, who would squeal and fuss. Stroking his fingers through Neil’s red curls. 

“Maybe I’m just making up for lost time.” 

That was true, too. All these things he’d watched others experience and own as he grew up. Now he was an adult, he could do them all. It just wasn’t as enticing when everyone his age had grown out of it, having experienced these things at the appropriate age. 

“Me too.” Neil said. 

Well. Almost everyone. But really, was Neil even human? Andrew was still unconvinced he wasn’t a figment of his imagination. 

Andrew shoved him off, under the guise that his leg was going numb. They jostled one-another all the way back to the car, working together to shove the bear into the boot. 

Andrew drove and let Neil sleep on the way back, drooling all over his leather seats. Like he’d said before; Would have killed the fucker if he’d had to live on the run with him. 

Andrew kept his focus on the road. 

“Say nothing to no one.” Neil heard Andrew threaten, stifling his laughter with the back of his hand. They were at Wymack’s, having been unable to think of another way to conceal the bear at the Tower. Andrew reappeared outside their coach’s apartment a moment later and Neil heard Wymack grumble as he slammed his door shut, grabbing Andrew’s hand. 

“Roof?” Neil asked. 

“Tired.” Andrew said. They resorted to the Tower, where they would sit by the window on Neil’s desk together. With Kevin going to night-practise with Matt and various other Foxes, they’d have the dorm to themselves for a little while, and could smoke inside. 

Seated and comfortable, they had a good view of Palmetto’s campus. Andrew breathed smoke into Neil’s mouth, who then ghosted his lips down Andrew’s neck. 

“Thanks for tonight.” Neil whispered. 

“Whatever.” And if either of them heard the strain in Andrew’s voice that betrayed his nonchalance, neither mentioned it.

ooft its been awhile since ive written just a basic andreil one shot, rather than au’s.  

fyi, none of my shit is proofread. it’s the internet, not my final thesis. 

[ad1thi]

IM PISSED OFF

(avengers: endgame spoilers ahead)

okay so i was talking to a friend about avenger: endgame and he was saying that tony’s death was the only logical way for his arc to end because his whole shtick was saving the world

and like through the conversation i realised

that the film could’ve ended w carol??

stay with me here

first of all

tony’s arc is about redemption

tony stark has never been the overbearing i must save the world nobility types

(at least, i never saw him like that)

tony stark doesn’t save the world out of some misguided virtuousness, he saves the world because he’s made to witness first hand what goes wrong tony stark doesn’t solve problems unless they’re directly in front of him

this is because (again, just personal opinion), tony was raised to be wilfully blind to problematic aspects of his life and company visa vie obadiah; which translates into his real life perception

in a much earlier post of mine, i noted this headline from im1 that said “tony stark wants to save the world”, which is very important because tony has always been about defending humanity; but he never really changes the method by which he does it until he’s faced with the abject consequences of them

remember, he was raised to be wilfully ignorant of problematic aspects of his life

so young tony stark believes he’s saving american troops by building bigger and better guns; then afghanistan happens- and he attempts to redeems himself by shutting down the weapons industry and becoming iron man

he thinks he’s saving the world by being iron man, then new york happens and he attempts to redeems himself by joining the avengers; following a chain of command and conceding seniority 

he thinks he can save the world by being a part of the avengers; then ultron happens and he attempts to redeems himself by admitting that he needs to retire, that his world view isn’t necessarily everyone’s world view

this arc is extrapolated in civil war, when he attempts to redeem his mistake of assuming that he knows all by pushing for oversight via the accords

the avengers break up, scattered across the globe, and tony attempts to redeem himself by operating as “earth’s best defender”

the black order comes to earth before tony is prepared to protect it, and he attempts to redeem himself by taking the fight away from earth

he loses peter parker, and he attempts to redeem himself by figuring out time travel and bringing him back

tony stark was raised to be wilfully ignorant of problematic aspects of his life

unless something happens that forces him to recognise that his world view is skewed; he operates under the assumption that it’s correct

that is why he’s earth best defender

because he is constantly working on improving himself for the good of humanity

tony stark’s arc was never about saving the world, it was about redemption

so how does dying factor in??

the long story short is, it doesn’t

following this line of thought; tony stark redeemed himself the minute he got into his car and went to the Avengers Compound instead of sitting on his couch with his wife and kid

dying to save the universe just logically doesn’t make sense because there’s nothing left for him to redeem; he’s done it

he saved the universe

he’s fighting the best he can

so why tony??

--

right so now that ive explained why tony doesn’t make sense

let me explain how i got to carol

--

now, i understand and am very aware that captain marvel as a film only exists because kevin feige and co were trying to capitalise on the feminism agenda, and it was a response to DC’s Wonder Woman

but

but

but

one of the most important take aways from Carol’s origin story; is that, much like Wendy BItchimoff, she gets her powers from an infinity stone

she gets her powers when her body somehow survives the blowback of the Tesseract

and marvel did this great job of selling the idea that captain marvel was strategically released because she was this major player in endgame

which, if we run by that thread, it can be logically argued that carol is one of the few people who can survive the impact of the snap (in my head the list is thor, carol and bruce) since we already know that she has insurmountable powers that come from her surviving an infinity stone attack when she was just human

except, despite all the flourish around carol’s big role- she has about 5 minutes of screen time

which okay, i get it, the film was centered around the original 6 avengers

but thats no reason that carol couldn’t have made the snap when she had the gauntlet

at the very beginning of the film she’s the one who makes the logical leap that if the stones could be used to snap people out of existence, they can be used to snap people back into existence

so why can’t she make the logical leap that they can be used to snap thanos’ army out of existence??

if she’d used the stones; there’s no reason why tony (who would’ve been alive) couldn’t have rebuilt the quantum machine to put all the stones back to their original place (since Hank Pym is now alive and can make Pym Particles)

so why not Carol??

in terms of story, it fits

in terms of marketing, it fits

its a logical and succinct conclusion that doesn’t arbitrarily change any character arc

it a very logical assumption that strange saved tony because he was the only one who could work out time travel, and that carol was introduced because she needed to make the snap

--

and like i said earlier, tony’s arc is about redemption

given how long he’s been in the superhero business and how many times he’s almost died saving the world (its 7 times i counted); nobody would argue that it was OOC for him to step down and let the new age of superheroes take on all other threats; since the threat that’s been haunting him for 6 years had been vanquished- in no small way because of him

we literally see him retire/step down no less than 3 times in this cinematic universe; its very par for the course at this point

tony stark stepping down to try the family life is a really normal thing

so

why not?

why subject us to all that pain and suffering when there was another perfectly good solution that fit just as well??

IM PISSED OFF

[angel-of-reckoning]

Thoughts on The Gardener of Gratitude, its themes and its concepts

Now that The Gardener of Gratitude is complete, I want to just kind of muse on what went into it and expand upon my thoughts about various things.

If you have not read the entire story including the epilogue, there will be spoilers in this post, so please be mindful of that.

When I decided to remake The Gardener of Gratitude and began writing up the details of its characters and plot, I had certain ideas in mind right away.

One thing that was particularly important going in was completely reconceiving Fernando VIII’s character. Instead of being the unrepetantly, cartoonishly evil character he was before, I wanted to reinvent him as a sympathetic villain who embodied the “good villains are the ones who see themselves as the hero of their story” idea. In the earliest drafts of the remake’s concepts, he was still angered by Rosalita becoming the heir to the throne over him and was obsessed with defending the kingdom from outsiders. This evolved over further development to become just one part of Fernando’s backstory, indicating that he was upset over being passed over for the throne because of his belief that only he could protect La Ciudad Dorada from external threats. Ultimately, it became what you see in the story - he is unable to cope with Rosalita being chosen because it ruined his idea of where he belonged, and his discovery that an outsider - Sutter - gained the gift of the Fountain of Life while he never would focused his anger on the idea of outsiders taking what belonged to the Doradans in his mind.

Coupling into that is another theme I wanted to include, which is the danger of falling into extremism. This isn’t something that really requires an explanation to understand the subtleties of; it’s obvious how Fernando’s descent into madness and the way his actions tore both his family and Matt/Amanda’s apart. Surprisingly, though, there’s a more subtle sort of extremism Rosalita fell into. When Fernando finally snapped and murdered their parents, Rosalita fled the kingdom to escape him framing her, but once she connected with Matt’s group she was able to put her own plan into place - complete the trials of the Three Pillars as fast as possible so she could take the throne, reasoning that once she did so, her occupying the position he sought would force him to relent in his quest. She learned otherwise over the course of the adventure, but by the point she got the chance to put that into effect, it was already too late.

However, there is another theme that links Fernando, Rosalita and Shaymin together in that they all made a similar mistake. All three are preoccupied to various degrees with clinging on to elements of the past that they need to move on from. Fernando is the most plain of the three. He wishes to preserve an idealized version of what he has been taught the kingdom should be. This is the end result of his obsessive research into Doradan history, which has led him to see peace as the product of a stagnant, unchanging society. Rosalita, on the other hand, wants to hold on to their shared innocence and close bond from when they were children. Ironically, this drives her to fail to notice Fernando’s descent into madness until it’s too late; had she been more able to place herself into his shoes while she was being prepared for the throne, she might have been able to help him reach a better fate. That said, it is probably up to the individual reader to decide if that would actually be the case. I don’t have a position either way on if it would really unfold like that.

Perhaps most interesting is how Shaymin made this mistake. In fact, everything that went wrong is arguably, in the end, all Shaymin’s fault. Despite being a Pokémon that feeds off of gratitude, Shaymin didn’t trust the Doradan people to continue expressing gratitude for their peace and prosperity after the civil war, so it helped cover up the truth of the conflict for centuries. It, too, wanted to keep the kingdom preserved in a state of stagnation in the name of peace, but pulled all of the rulers after Fernando IV first conceived this plan into it as well. This led to Fernando VII and Sophia concealing the truth from their children, which in turn led to Fernando VIII becoming obsessed with keeping things as they were, and finally to him rebelling. When he discovered Sutter’s role in the kingdom’s succession ritual and that Sutter drank from the Fountain of Life, he could not reconcile those facts with his deeply ingrained beliefs and snapped, murdering Sutter, his parents and ultimately carrying out his campaign as depicted in the story proper. Had Shaymin trusted the people enough to push back when Fernando IV proposed lying about the cause of the first civil war, there would have been none of the extreme secrecy that caused this chain of tragic events. If nothing else, Shaymin needed to understand that the state the kingdom was in prior to the war could not come back. The innocence was lost, and the only way forward was to incorporate the reality of the war into La Ciudad Dorada’s collective identity and move on into the new future.

Loss of innocence is another theme that comes up, mainly when it comes to Rosalita and her relationship to Fernando and their parents. Like how La Ciudad Dorada could never be the same after the civil war changed everything, there could be no turning back after Rosalita being named crown princess upended the dynamic between the two of them. They could never again be the children who played games pretending to be the king and the king’s knight, which they’d managed to preserve right up until that moment. Had things worked out for the best, they would have been able to put together a similar dynamic with the roles reversed. But once that decision was made, Fernando fell into despair over the loss of the life he both knew and expected, while Rosalita believed in vain that she could convince him to go back to what they had. He couldn’t cope with the loss of their innocent life, and it took until the moments leading up to her coronation for Rosalita to realize that innocence would not come back.

Yet another theme, and one that expands beyond the royal family, is the search for a place where one belongs. It’s a theme that even continues beyond The Gardener of Gratitude into The Angel of Reckoning, coming to be embodied by the searches Matt, Nekou and Olivia are on, but it is prominently featured in The Gardener of Gratitude as well. It forms a core component of Fernando’s motivation; as mentioned above, he fell into despair and lashed out because there was no way he could reconcile what he believed with what he learned. It gave him the impression that he was unwanted and unneeded, that his birth was a curse due to the lie that twins caused the first civil war. His despair over this is what caused him to take the actions he took prior to and during the story; he truly felt he had no right to exist and couldn’t see any light at the end of the tunnel, any chance that he mattered. He felt compelled to seek out a validation of his existence through any means necessary, and it ultimately caused him to become blind to reality and, in the end, lose everything including his life. Rosalita, on the other hand, knew where she belonged but had trouble coming to terms with what it would mean for her life. Noel and Leon are driven by searching for a peaceful existance by escaping their life of crime through one big score. Perhaps most notably aside from Fernando, Eleanor is very upfront about her feelings of not feeling at home anywhere. She is a native of a large metropolis (Orsay City in Kalos) but that isn’t the kind of person she is, so she doesn’t have a place she feels comfortable in. Had she lived, she would have moved to La Ciudad Dorada. But as things stand, she sacrificed herself because she truly felt like she belonged in La Ciudad Dorada, with the people she met there. To her, the act of self-sacrifice she carried out was the ultimate act of love for the place she felt like she belonged in.

Now, shifting gears, Cassy’s role in it this time. In the original version of the story, Cassy was an active antagonist secretly collaborating with Fernando throughout the plot in order to take the Griseous Orb for Polaris, although she was still using their multi-layered infiltration of Team Galactic as a cover. While those basic ideas are still there, I wanted to reconceive large strokes of her role as part of a more significant reinvention of her character in the greater Operation GEAR project. The fact that she is the one who wrote the letter threatening La Ciudad Dorada and thus provoked Fernando into action may make her seem like, to put it in trope terms, the Greater Scope Villain of The Gardener of Gratitude. I guess in some views, that could be seen as true, but that’s not really the way I want it to be personally. I see her more as still being a protagonist, but of an entirely different story than the one the other protagonists are pursuing, one that has more of an agenda behind it. She may have written the letter, but none of what she did was a plan she came up with; indeed, if anyone is a Greater Scope Villain for the remake, it’s Finansielle. The final scene of Chapter 9 is intended to emphasize this, but in case my intentions did not come across as clearly as I hoped, let me explain it: Cassy is, as she does in The Angel of Reckoning as well, working on an operation with Mercury as her handler. The plan was devised by Finansielle using her consultation with the as-yet-unnamed “Oracle” Polaris holds, who gave her details on exactly how everything in La Ciudad Dorada would play out. It was Finansielle who ordered Cassy to compose the threat, knowing that threatening La Ciudad Dorada would lead to all the events that occurred and ultimately allow Cassy to take the Griseous Orb for Polaris. In a sense, and this is something I want to further emphasize in The Angel of Reckoning, Cassy is herself a victim caught up in Finansielle and Father’s machinations, allowing herself to be manipulated by them because she believes - or needs to believe - that their endgame will let her go where she wants to go. That’s something for The Angel of Reckoning, though, as I said.

Well, I might as well wrap this up. I hope I was able to give you an insight into how I worked on the story!

[theonewiththefanfics]

Numb (Part 6)

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 7

Part 8

Part 9

Part 10- END

Epilogue

Pairing: Bucky x Reader

Warnings: swearing; things get revealed (suspense, y’all)

Genre: angst

Word count: 2161

Loki walked around the compound aimlessly as sleep evaded him once more. His mind was preoccupied with the same thoughts that everybody else's were- Y/N. The man’s green eyes looked out over the twinkling lights of New York City. The same city he had tried to take over less than a decade ago, but now he saw it from a different perspective. Without the horrible influence and control of Thanos, he opened up to the belief, that humans weren’t worthless, that they were capable of amazing things, that they could create miracles from nothing. And Y/N was proof of it.    They had met coincidentally. He and Thor had come back to Earth in search of their father as the raven-haired man’s scheme had been revealed. As they stood on the side-walk of the destroyed old people's home, Y/N had practically tackled his brother to the ground.    “What are you doing here?”    Thor’s smile was as wide as ever. “Looking for our father,” he threw Loki a glance and he could only roll his eyes at the unspoken comment.    “Cool, listen,” and she had started to ramble about something the second prince of Asgard had no idea. But her movements, her excitement about whatever it was they were discussing enthralled the man. He found himself gazing at her features, taking the woman in, how relaxed her form was not only around the God of Thunder but around the God of Lies and Mischief as well.    “Don’t wanna keep you too long, so,” she had mock-bowed and grinned as she stood up. “Good luck on your quest!”     Now the most prominent memory of the once bubbly girl was her lifeless body as Steve tried to revive her. How Y/N’s face had drained from colour and when Tony shined a light in her eyes- the glazed over, non-seeing Y/E/C orbs.    His steps were quiet, completely silent as he searched for solitude and his thoughts had brought him to the where he was sure no one would disturb him- the medical wing. It was like Loki’s own body, his very being wanted to be near Y/N. And he did. If anybody asked him what he wished for right now without even a second to spare he would say that he wanted for the woman to open her eyes and grace him with her smile.

   She had accepted him without a question, treating him like she treated all the other Avengers, making them become immediate friends. Y/N wasn’t afraid to push his buttons, to tease him and make him step out of his comfort zone. He loved her like she was his family. And they were- incredibly dysfunctional and in a desperate need of therapy, lots of it, but family. He’d do anything for the Avengers now, and he was sure they’d do anything for him. With mild exceptions, but what else would you expect.    Loki stood there, outside of her hospital room. She was just laying on the bed, head turned to the side a bit and one arm slung over her stomach. He had his own keycard, of course, but somehow the god felt like he would be interrupting. On his way over he’d heard Bucky’s quiet voice as he had carried that boy- Dominic- back to his room. Surprise had taken over Loki as he was completely sure the ex-assassin wouldn’t leave Y/N’s side even if the world was set on fire. Not until she awoke.    He didn’t like them, Katrina and Dominic. Being the god of lies he was able to distinguish when anybody was being untruthful, but something didn’t sit right with him. Loki could barely read the Romanian woman, making him compare her to Natasha and her training. She wasn’t HYDRA nor was she from the Red Room, Stark having done intense background checks, but whatever her agenda was, he was not about to let her harm Y/N.    The card reader beeped silently and with a non-existent hiss, the glass door opened. Slowly he stepped inside, allowing it to swing closed, letting the outside world die out. The breathing machine worked with a non-stop rhythm, pumping air into Y/N’s lungs and helping her exhale. Little drips splatted in the IV bag as the liquid made its way into her body, keeping her nourished and alive. There was a certain buzz in the air, for a normal human it would be undetectable, but Loki felt it. Glancing around he saw nothing that could emit it, but then it clicked, it was Y/N herself, the electricity coursing through her veins, as she got stronger and the powers revived. If you looked hard enough a faint colour of periwinkle could be seen running up her bicep. He smiled at it, knowing that she would never give up, being the stubborn person that she was.    The god sat down in the leather armchair, Bucky’s body-warmth still lingering. He grasped her palm, the one that rested beside her. Loki knew his own were cold, borderline freezing, but Y/N had never once flinched when he touched her, so there was no fear that he’d cause her any harm.    “I’m sorry he hurt you,” his smooth voice floated through the air, “I’m sorry any of them hurt you. If I had had any knowledge of what was happening I would have punched Bucky to Valhalla and then asked Hela to stick his ass up on a spike. And that Katrina… I…” he sighed and looked at Y/N’s closed eyes, “I don’t like her. Not one bit. So I’ll figure out what is going on with that. I don’t trust her, she isn’t clean. I don’t think it was a coinc-“ but Loki’s sentence was cut short as he heard soft footsteps coming his way. If it were Bucky’s the man wouldn’t bother with moving, but by the lightness of them, he knew they weren’t.    Like a mirage, Loki’s powers surrounded him in a green shimmer before he teleported out of the room. But not too far away. Which was a good thing too, because the person walking towards where Y/N slept was none other than the intruder herself.    Katrina’s hair was let down, the ends of it almost touching the curve of her back, but what made Loki even more interested, not just the sheer fact that she was going to see Y/N, was how she was moving. Her blue eyes swiftly moving over every inch of the hallway, feet carrying her on the very tiptoes and a hand clutched to her chest as if she was hiding something.    When she swiped a white rectangle against the tiny black machine adjacent to the door, he knew that indeed Katrina was. Because nobody apart from the Avengers could acquire the keys and nobody apart from the staff were allowed inside.    Loki camouflaged in the shadows, becoming a blurry mess of black and grey. He watched her, sitting there, her lips moving as she talked to Y/N. The man cursed himself for not staying in the room and spying in on her, but what was done was done. He had no chance of teleporting without his powers giving him away. But one wrong move and the dagger he had conjured in his palm would slip right through Katrina’s neck.

   The Romanian woman padded along the tower as quietly as possible. She knew that Dominic wasn’t in his bed, having checked it a few minutes ago, but when Bucky’s soft voice had come from the room, gently lulling the boy to sleep, she rushed past him and to the elevator. Her heart pounded as it took her up where the med-bay was.    Katrina knew, that if she asked, no one would allow her near Y/N, but she needed to see her. Now that she had swiped Sam’s card, there was no way out, so with short breaths, the brown haired girl moved along the hallway.    She knew she didn’t have much time, with Bucky practically having not left Y/N’s side. Double checking if the air was clear she found the woman instantly. Katrina hovered the card over the reader and when the lock clicked she swiftly went inside.    The Avenger laid motionless, her facial features relaxed and unmoving. There was an armchair right next to the bed and she took the place, her nose inhaling what was undoubtedly Bucky’s aftershave and something else, something she’d never smelt before. Like from another planet.    Katrina chuckled, looking at Y/N again. “I really don’t know where to start, so I guess I’ll start here- I’m sorry that this happened to you. But I would be lying if I didn’t admit that a part of me wishes that you don’t make it. Wishes that you had stayed in that building. It’s horrible, I know. I have no clue what kind of a person it makes me, but I’m not going to sit here and tell you lies.”    “From the moment I came here I knew things would be complicated. I hadn’t seen Bucky in a long time and I knew he had moved on. Fuck, you have no idea how many times I saw his face on the TV where they talked about him being an Avenger and a hero. It made me smile, made me happy. And I know you feel the same. I couldn’t be more ecstatic that he got those horrible words out of his head, that he is now a free man and can start a life. But there was a part of me that became bitter.”    “Mostly for the fact that he seemed to have forgotten me. To have forgotten Dominic. We spent almost two years together. We were married. Yes, I know it wasn’t real, but… could you blame me if I said that I wanted it to be? That my thoughts were plagued by him every night? How would it be to kiss him, to hug him, to love him? And have him love you back?”    “He did his job. Without a doubt. Up until the Vienna showdown, Bucky protected us with everything he had. I don’t blame him for running, not one bit. After Zemo had been ratted out as the true mastermind of the terror act, I hoped for days that he would come back. But there was a part that knew, he wouldn’t. I also knew he wouldn’t leave us defenceless.” She laughed again. “If there is one thing Bucky doesn’t do is leave the job half done.”    “I scoured our home for any clue as to what to do now and found a map of his old safe-houses. There was my name written on a letter attached to it and I knew he had thought of when things went sour. That was the moment I realised I was completely in love with him.”    “Dominic and I ran for a while, only staying in one place for a few weeks, months if there was no other way, but we left as soon as possible. But thing got a lot more dangerous, so we came to America. And then I remembered he was an Avenger. I thought to myself- where safer could it be than with the  Earth’s Mightiest Heroes? With Bucky?”    “Getting to New York was tough, especially with my ex’s goons on our trail, but we managed. We got here. Yet what I found broke my heart. I thought he’d be happy to see me, to see Dominic, to know that we were alive. But all I saw was how he looked at you. How I wanted to be looked at. You didn’t pay any attention to him though, so I felt a bit better. Maybe things could work out between us.”    “But now I know what I fool I was to think that way,” Katrina clasped her hands together. “So I came here to tell you this one thing that has been eating me away since you all left for that mission- I will fight for him and his love. And I hate you. If it wasn’t for you and your dumb heroic act Bucky wouldn’t be beating himself up for what happened. You don’t deserve to love him, you don’t deserve to even be friends with him, with how you have treated him. I fight for the people I love because it’s the only thing I have. So you best believe me when I say this- you either let go of life and let me be there for him or a storm is coming your way, Y/N.”    Katrina felt like a boulder had fallen off her chest and she stood up. Before she exited, she glanced back at the still girl.    “I hope you understand where I’m coming from. After all, you wanted to save your family and so do I.”    The door clicked closed once again and the first thing Y/N saw when her eyes slowly fluttered open was dark hair billowing with the motion of someone walking away.

Tags (crossed out wouldn’t take): @thunderous-flower @who-cares-rn @lumelgy @projectxhappiness @callmebucky-doll @palaiasaurus64 @coal000 @killuaenthusiast @courtneychicken @sophiealiice @raquelbc2003 @watch-out-for-thorns @potentially-kinetic @thatonegirljessy99 @proxinge @bbkenna @buckysclub @ulired @fangirlofeverythingbasically @mrsalh32611 @horrorx570ximagines @the-nargles-made-me-do-it @ronnierockin @werecookielove @vannavinci @pandawolfunicorn @angelwingsbringmusic @murydedeus03 @lost-and-wandering-alone @bookwarm85 @itsholland-tomholland @thatcluelessone @salty-buchanan  @disneychic8 @uwu-sebastianstan @deputyduckbutt @lusite14 @klmpun @severuined @lovely-geek @andrialynnsantana @vodkasindream @fadingculturemuffin @lynnskata @killjoynotes @vogueworthy-barnes @honeymufins @damnbuvky @the-marvelous-mcu @mystic-aly @starkxpotts @all-fandomthings @upremeoverlordletters @silent-world-of-a-deaf-boi @mrscevans @shliic @starks-girl @daysiminsideout @xi-i-i-whatsyouremergency @bluebell725 @susmita121 @jamesbuckybananabarnes @mcu-potter-pirate @xxchloegrayxx @teapartydreams @balanced-ram @catthefearless @tokoyamisstuff @alphadareme @minniesugakookie @dustycelt @nephalem67 @sophiatomlinson23 @hellboundblogger @the-witch-of-plum-hollow @culinarycrystals @taylorsbread @slender--spirit @imagine-this-motherfucker @1v-kayla @winters-beauty @capandbuck @chingaderastillidie @csigeoblue @lordemjay @akacalciumhood @foureyedsiopao @savemesteeb @waves-and-sunflowers @alitav99 @phoenix-whiskey-tears @yayaobrien75 @imnotcoolmasterrr @anxietyrosee @yafriendlyfangirl @supernaturalbaesduh @breezy1415 @pizzarollpatrol @crazy--me @thatawkwardlittlefangirl @sea040561 @staryeyedgirl @deathbyarabbit @s-c-a-r-e-d-po-t-t-e-r @dean-the-trickster

A/N: yayy, productivity!

Ok, so I am getting somewhere with figuring out how many parts there are going to be and it looks like 10 or more. Right now it’s at 10, but as I am writing I usually add or take things away, so we’ll see :)

P.S. please tell me what you think :)

P.S.S. if you wanna be tagged or have any requests, drop a message :)

P.S.S.S. please don’t repost without credit :))

[lightshielded]

jarvan iv’s new lore / the good, the bad and the oh?

i just wanted to make a more official post on the changes or expansions in his new bio and my own opinions on them and why i think they’re good or bad or if they’re confusing. i will be posting a like thing to the forums in hopes of getting some answers from riot.

THE GOOD !

JARVAN III ! riot has added further information about jarvan the third, the current king of demacia. it’s really nice to actually have some official information on the man who rules the entirety of demacia rather than having to infer things from a mix of slight mentions in character bios and old lore. we know he is a smart ruler, one with a strong political mind allowing him to prevent infighting between political houses. we now know him to a loving, if a bit absent father, and a devoted husband and is truly trying to do right by his son. man even seemed unfazed by his son bringing home a half dragon when the entire demacian court was questioning the wisdom of letting the prince have a dragon on his personal guard. i don’t know man, they’ve made jarvan iii chill and i like him.

XIN ZHAO EXISTS ! this is more existence xin has seen in years and look i know it’s a brief ass mention in jarvan’s lore on how y’know he is actually doing his job of the seneschal of demacia and the lightshield family’s steward and just looking after a young jarvan but damn. yes. give xin lore and give jarvan the personal relationships which should have been established before and did exist back in the old - old lore.

EXTRA DETAILS ! i do like the small extra details given to events in this new biography. for instance, before he warred in the areas to the south, now we know the true names of these areas and where he fought and that these were also the same lands jarvan i lost his head to sion fighting in. we know a little more about his childhood and his education and why things were the way they were. just nice little details which gives his early bits of lore some interesting bits and bobs.

THIS LINE ! ‘ and the king beginning to feel the weight of his years, the prince must ensure he is prepared to one day inherit the throne, and be crowned King Jarvan IV of Demacia. ’ this line right here. this makes me feel things, that is all. just damn, king jarvan iv of demacia. now ain’t that a mood.

THE BAD !

LADY CATHERINE ! now, jarvan’s mother was only once mentioned back in the journals of justice and i honestly thought riot had forgotten about her. yet, i still joked with the release of sylas that they do not touch her. and, you know what, they really shouldn’t have. i am happy she got mention but i hate that she was revived into lore purely for the trope of killing off female characters as some kind of poor excuse for development and angst in male character’s lives. like yes, demacia is low technology and anti - magic so childbirth is probably a dangerous thing which results in a great many more deaths than in the modern day, but it was wholly unnecessary for jarvan’s older lore did not require it so it was a detail cheaply used and unwarranted. 

NO CAPTURE ! jarvan’s narrative across all lores from the oldest to the one just prior to now have included him spending time in noxian custody due to a mistake on his part and him feeling the need for self - improvement and redemption. this has been his hallmark for many years and provided strong reason for character development by curbing his pride and his rash behaviour, showing his strong empathy for his fellow man and how that is both boon as well as cause cause him to make blind errors. each of these lores has provided us with a sheltered character pulled into a world far more gritty than he was living in, struggling, failing but rebuilding himself into a stronger person. yet here, jarvan barely fails. his ‘ downfall ’ moment is simply that his battalion gets splintered off after scores of victories which spread them too thin. that’s right, he won too much, got cocky and kept pressing forward. while it mentions he was troubled by what he saw there was no blind dash ignoring of orders cause he couldn’t let the murderers of his people walk free. nah, now it’s more an ego complex following a pledge to bring stability to the region and possibly regrouping when you hear the gates of mourning fell is not on the agenda when doing that. so instead, he is splintered off and he and some survivors wouldn’t surrender and escaped into the forests where they were hunted down and jarvan finally took an arrow to the knee side. here it catches up with the older lore and he lies dying in a fallen tree till our dragon friend comes to save him after mistaking him for food ( i hope they don’t remove that line from her lore when it gets updated i love it ). not to mention it removes his torture by noxus and i have no idea how swain’s line works anymore or how sion even exists.

NO VILLAGE ! so jarvan gets saved and brought to castle wrenwall which is where he combated yvva in older lore and not the small demacian village. this further changes jarvan’s narrative as they know who he is. the garrison commander instantly knows jarvan is the prince and thanks shyvana for saving her. her being a part of demacia no longer becomes because they saw her saving some random demacian and helping him and so having demacian like values and so inviting her to stay because she is a good person. it instead becomes well you saved the prince we are indebted to you. it also loses the charm of shyvana helping out in a village and the prince having to learn to live as a normal person since he is pretending to be so. it also squishes the timeline some but i’ll cover that in the next bit . . .

JARVAN’S SELFISH ! jarvan’s motivation to help shyvana is completely changed. i doubt this was intentional but the wording is very off. before: shyvana tries to leave because she knows the dragon attacks that have started happening are her fault. jarvan stops her, learns of her past and then pledges to help her because she is his friend and he owes his life to her. his own doesn’t matter, he will help her or die trying. now: the very recount heavy style of the rewriting of this new lore implies he sees yvva coming in the distance and he sees her as an opportunity to redeem himself, not help shyvana. in fact, in this new lore they barely interact. jarvan has no reason to care for her since he is still injured when yvva appears so they haven’t spent long together. like when i said the timeline is squashed i mean from several months down to maybe a couple weeks. there is no need for this reduction and all it does is hurt jarvan and shyvana’s friendship and turn jarvan into someone who cares more for his ego than his friend. what happened to learning about charity, huh?

GAREN BARELY EXISTS ! do i need to say more, jarvan’s old lore told much of their friendship and how garen’s efforts saved him but thats now deleted from the timeline and all jarvan is left with is a mention that they were friends, an almost copy paste from garen’s older lore which mentions he admires his fortitude and that now he is shield - captain so jarvan needs to shape up. it just doesn’t feel connected or personal. how am i meant to see that two people are friends if all you say is, yeah, they’re friends. how about some show not tell?

TOO MANY OTHER PEOPLE / REALLY RUSHED ! now i’m sure you’ll be surprised since i said i was happy to see stuff on jarvan iii and xin ( cause i am ) the issue is the writers are working under a kind of word limit system so while i love reading about other champions and characters, devoting several paragraphs of jarvan’s limited amount to other characters and info which is interesting but doesn’t push his story too much feels a little cheap. this rushed pace they then had to write with acts to flatten his character. things that were written once in beautiful detail are now reduced to recounted fact that lack the emotion of what the previous did. ie: CURRENT: ‘ He was devastated. He had failed his family, his kingdom, and his brothers-in-arms. ’ OLDER: ‘ As Jarvan was dragged further from Demacia during his weeks of captivity, he was ashamed that the rashness of his decision to pursue the Noxians had led to needless Demacian deaths. Crushed by the loss, he came to believe he no longer deserved to live in Demacia, let alone inherit its throne. ‘ even just this little bit on his emotions post failure. before it goes into how he stews in his grief for weeks. his shame. his loss. he no longer feels like he can be called demacian. now he is just devastated because he failed.

THE OH ?

JARVAN’S STANCE ON MAGIC IS KNOWN ? people know shyvana is a dragon now. all the nobles in attendance know. jarvan’s father knows. his friend who hates mages probably knows. literally anyone who can hear court or military gossip knows. how is this man left to do his shit when everyone knows that jarvan has a dragon on his personal guard ? this is the prince of a magic fearing nation, a nation who has in recent times made their laws significantly stricter. HOW IS HE JUST AROUND? DOES LUX KNOW THIS? DOES SYLAS KNOW ANY OF THIS? HOW IS SHYVANA NOT LOCKED UP WITH THE NEW STRICTER LAWS ??????????

IS THE KING / QUEEN STILL ELECTED ? a big part of jarvan’s character previously was that he had to toe around his nation’s views because his actions could easily be seen as treasonous or wrong and prevent him from being elected king when his father relinquishes the throne. but now it just mentions he is the heir and he is to inherit it, which it was mentioned in the other lore that he would inherit it ( or rather it was mentioned he didn’t feel like he could since it was mentioned when he was depressed ) so i don’t know if they have scrapped this part of demacian lore or if it just wasn’t mentioned. i have no idea.

[thelifetimechannel]

[idolizerp]

[ LOADING INFORMATION ON OLYMPUS’ LEAD RAP, SUB VOCAL JUNE…. ]

DETAILS

CURRENT AGE: 26 DEBUT AGE: 18 SKILL POINTS: 10 VOCAL | 07 DANCE | 10 RAP | 13 PERFORMANCE

INTERVIEW

Somewhere between scribbles of organic formulas and sloppy syllables of chemistry notes the words ‘’chain reaction’’ were written in midst of yellow highlighter. Had Junhai opened his notes, the road he’d gone through would have made much more sense. The simplicity of lacking in a skill crucial for his environment – the Korean language – had Midas media giving the boy on the edge of debut orders in the delicate form of advice. If you don’t know how to say it, don’t talk at all. Such simple words helped him make a conscious decision of sinking his teeth into his tongue, no matter how much it wanted to cut loose. It formed a whole delusion around the young man right from the start of his career. Unapologetically held eye-contact with ones hovering at the tip of his nose, foot gently swinging on top of the other, shoulders back and a tilted smile pulling up the corners of stained lips mixed well with overall soft features into a mirage of a foreign prince or at the very least – a well-mannered diplomat. Staying relatively quiet until pushed to talk did him justice, short and sweet answers to questions received the perfect amount of minimum to keep Olympians happy.

“You seem soft,” was an implication Junhai often received in fansigns in various shapes and forms. For a moment the answer was replaced with the idol leaning forward, nimble fingers catching the lukewarm digits of a fan and placing their palm right on top of his neatly styled hair. “Am I?” An unnecessary plead of confirmation and a simultaneous offer of freedom for the fan. Bait witch was always taken whether it was a loving pet or a slightly uncomfortable attempt to collect DNA samples for possible cloning in the future, a collection of similar occurrences easily found and compiled in fan videos along with titles of ‘ June poking fans’ cheeks’ and ‘ June making fans blush for five minutes straight’.

There was no spite for Junhai to act the way he had in front of the masses of fans of Olympus. No hidden agenda, other than compensation for a lack of words he desperately wanted to say but was forbidden to. That’s how idols act, right? Well, no, as interviewers questioned his intentions for the sake of variety, to which the young man could only respond that he loved Olympians very much – the only politically correct response in the idol chaos.

Lack of words spoken could have been his greatest strength, hadn’t it been his greatest weakness, leaving him defenseless. ‘If it’s not scripted, you don’t say it’ was an imposed motto, his overall considerate and diplomatic nature chained up and drowned for at least eight years in front of the masses. The inappropriate level of fanservice he caught up to too late to take back gathered loyal fans along with stable saesangs, because of whom June was swept into situations he later couldn’t explain himself for due to the image that had been created – the too accessible prince who can be shared by all. It’s not like he would ever refuse it, only we are in his heart, he loves us too much, they claimed who he was right to June’s face, the ten year contract a heavy weight, making him nod his head and taste blood in his mouth. The man became property in the socialist society of the ones that claimed to be their fans as he kept on smiling warmly at his friends behind closed doors “I’m fine, really. Let’s talk about you.“

BIOGRAPHY

i. Junhai’s father wholeheartedly believed that the reason his son was average is due to the blood that ran in their offspring’s veins. One couldn’t expect someone related to middle ground to become spectacular – June didn‘t have the genes for that, having born into a family of two middle children with boring lives they chose to carry in Guangzhou, China.

Whether it was a placebo effect or not, Junhai was simply average at everything he’d ever chosen to do. He tried soccer, but he only became a professional bench boy. Wood warmer, they called him, as he wasn’t fast enough or sharp enough to join other players on the field. Fencing was thrilling. At least for those who managed to skillfully hit targets and gather points. Not Junhai, unfortunately. He came across drawing, yet no matter how many pencils he used up, there was always someone around him who shaded better and drew better proportions by the rule of the thumb. He was never a top student either, ‘Li Junhai’ always resting somewhere in the middle of a long list after class evaluations. Popularity didn’t mold with him, too, eyes often shifting to his athletic friends or the publicly notorious outcasts he exchanged small talk with. Attention was never on him, it slipped past the boy and lurked around the manifestation of a bare minimum of a personality. It was was almost beyond belief how Junhai had passed the Midas Media audition with a score above average, believing that maybe he had finally found something he wasn’t just ’alright’ at.

ii. “At this point you’re either good, or they will make you good, kid,” was something he heard once he stepped onto the foreign land. Yet, the first year in Korea was a blur of syllables and noises the thirteen year old desperately tried to make sense of as his tongue twisted and turned in failed attempts to communicate with those around him. It was a proper inconvenience to his roommate, who ended up nursing a preteen with the intellectual capacity of a toddler. Or so it seemed, as any reminder of a practice or invitation to a meal was greeted with a pair of knitted eyebrows and Cantonese mutters, while hours dedicated to sleep were disturbed by the foreigner trying to read his Hangul schedule into a translator.

Time was powerful – lesson learned after a proper amount of time and double the amount of effort. Words directed at him didn’t sound like white noise. Hangul wasn’t just scribbles. Messages came through without any interruption. It evolved into Junhai repeating the sentences directed at him in an attempt to form variations in his head which were later verbalized as he tried to communicate like a functioning human should. It was hilarious, the way he spoke without knowing proper words or diction, the base of his sentences formed only by an overall structural understanding. Scissors became sharp cut sticks and toothpicks were sharp mini wood sticks. The sweet combination of mispronunciation along with a relatively limited vocabulary won over some snickers around the company. Had he known the good-nature of the laugh he drew, maybe his stomach would have stopped sinking whenever people expected words coming out of his mouth.

iii. Understanding the language unlocked a new level of comfort and security. The small room he lived in didn’t seem so alien, the streets weren’t that bewildering and the features his eyes stuck upon weren’t uninviting anymore. The mundane life of a trainee caught up to the teenager quicker than one would expect. Yet, no complains or hints of exhaustion were ever heard from the boy. On the contrary, Junhai reached out for ‘above average’ right when making sense of his own schedule and duties allowed him to put his all into training. But overtime could not save a boy of an unclear focus.

“What am I?”

No one ever told Junhai what they were planning for him, training hours marked no certain direction either. You hit that note? Good. You learned that choreography? Good. Your tongue didn’t twist while rapping? Good. Yet, in comparison to others around him, he lacked a spotlight skill and no one had any intention of giving him one. Therefore, his training felt loose and messy. While he did give his whole to train the modest amount of talent he had naturally, lack of a clear path distributed his energy in a way that didn’t allow Junhai to reach the level of skill he wanted. “You’re good. Not great, not special or spectacular. Just good.”

An alright vocalist, an alright rapper, a decent dancer. That was it, he was just.. Good. Not a step over, not a step below.

iv. For someone labeled as average, Junhai wasn’t sure why it was that he belonged in the lineup for Olympus. Charms that he might have had were useless due to how exchangeable he felt, many stronger contenders left lining up behind his back. It only came to him later, that he was just as much interchangeable and that’s why he was wanted. To be the middle ground that fills in the gaps - lines that were too unimportant to belong to main members of the group. A member can sing it better? June, do an ad-lib. Another member can rap better? June, take the background vocal. From multiple well-tailored lines in the subunit he debuted in his position switched to a few bars and maybe some lines if the producer felt generous. Never more, just enough to fill in spaces.

Junhai felt like he was a background member, not important enough to take much lead, not unimportant enough to be kept in the shadows. His members were talent and he was.. There. The feeling of low importance molded the barely existing relationship with the Olympus members. He never held it against them either. It’s my problem, he told himself, I can’t offer much. Therefore, decisions in which the members took part in slipped past his ears and if not the few fans he gathered offering himself to them due by stares and dimpled smiles, maybe no one would really notice if he had been dropped.

v. He really didn’t like being quiet, barely shutting up behind closed doors. His friends could only laugh about it, of course you have a lot to say after bottling your voice up. Yet, the ten year contract hung heavy on his neck like a chain. A bobble-head, well controlled by Midas media. One that got used to the slow attempted homicide of his own character. He wasn’t even that mad anymore, relying on charms and foreign mysteries to keep himself afloat in midst of the talented group. So much that people following Junhai start to seem mundane. There weren’t any ways to object the generous public figure he himself created. They followed him on stage, they followed him abroad, snuck into bathrooms and left presents at his doorstep. And when a number of Olympus fans kept themselves in tact, there was no getting away from the ones that didn’t. After all, he was public property even at the point when forceful pull of an open-hearted fan managed to dislocate his shoulder.

Olympus’ Junhai minor injury practicing; Olympus wrap up ‘Tell me’ promotions as five.

Minor. Did all minor injuries take more than a few months to heal? Midas knows best.

vi. Sometimes his modestly sized friend group worried about the lack of a fitting reaction for being mistreated. June never got mad, never cried or showed signs of distress about it. A dimple appeared on his cheek whenever questioned, as he beamed brightly at his company. “It’s my job, I’m used to it. No big deal.”

Junhai never lied to his friends. Unless the topic was his career.

vii. Guangzhou missed him, or so his mother told him whenever he Skype-called his family whom he hadn’t visited in years. How were his friends doing? That one’s married, that one became a surgeon, the other one has three children already. What he’d done in eight years? Really didn’t feel like much. He became an average member of a boy group in Korea with some lines and screen time. Somewhat liked, somewhat disliked. Needed, but not to the point of survival.

“I don’t think I will continue,” he admits time and time again into the glossy faces of his parents on the screen. “When the contract ends, I mean. We have over two years, the members will likely be planning their military service. And I’m not good enough to be a soloist.” It’s nice to talk in Cantonese again, he notes to himself. “I don’t think I belong here.”

As his mother kept howling into the microphone, he could hear his father murmur the same truth he’s been telling right from the start - mediocre people can’t escape their genetics.

[killingamericanhighereducation]

The Dirty, Rotten, Crooked, Broken, Student Loan System and The Immoral Bankers, Brokers, Collectors, and Corrupt Politicians Who Make Billions Off of It While the Courts Garnish Wages and Destroy Lives

Why when I pay the 850.00 or 1100.00 per month payments, the principle amount seems to not move and has gone up. I have been working on this debt since 1996. Got off of welfare as college was the way out....or so I thought. When I retire, I will be living on the streets. I tried. I failed. I raised my kids and they have student loans too as we thought that was the only way to get out of poverty. Never again will I encourage a young person to attend college in the US. Not a good idea. I have a nursing degree, my son has an IT degree and my daughter a business degree. But we barely get by. No home purchases, no car and no giving to economy. What is wrong with this picture? Lisa Powers  December 20, 2019 Manchester   (https://studentdebtcrisis.org/read-student-debt-stories/)

The Killing of American Higher Education - PART ONE

Introduction

The U.S. spends almost double that of anywhere else in the world on higher education and that's before the interest charges are shackled upon the students. Nine million Americans are either in default, deferment or forbearance on their student loans with a million more each year. These students are Democrats, Republicans, African American, Caucasians, Latinx, Asian, Native American, young, old, married, divorced, LGBTQ, fathers, mothers...every single demographic that exists. It's not a political party issue - it's blatant criminal activity by our elected officials, their collection agencies and the Department of Education. They have created a life-long debt sentence for these students for their own profit at the cost of our country's future.

This paper will include politicians and politics but is not pro Democratic Party or Pro Republican Party. The reality of today is that most politicians are arrogant, self-serving assholes and all have damaged our country in pursuit of their own wealth building agendas (this is also not new).

The student loan debt crisis didn't just appear. The warning sirens have been blaring for over a decade with the causes of it going further back than that. The subprime mortgage crisis was also seen years before but again, the people that could have changed it, the politicians, chose to do nothing until it was too late and then they bailed out the firms to the tune of $30 trillion. That same year Goldman Sachs paid out record bonuses to the very people who caused it. Why was this allowed and why is the student loan debt allowed? Because nasty, rotten, bankers, brokers, collection agencies, politicians and billionaires are making a great deal of money off of the dreams and misfortunes of students and the mismanagement of higher education (again allowed). Shame on them all. A pox on them all. There are solutions beyond the news bites and campaign rhetoric but solutions don’t pay as well.

Forced to compete in the higher education war for a job. Now I'm crushed with the weight of student loan payments and no end to the payoff. I've been forced to withdraw from contributing to my retirement fund so that I can make the enormous monthly payments. On a 50k loan, I'll (if I don't expire first) will have paid over 250k for this loan. By the way, my annual income will never match the debt I've accrued in order to compete for a professional hire career! I think it's important to note that community colleges had not yet molded programs to support a full-time employee who would be taking full-time credit hours. This forced many adult college bound students into the private college sector. These colleges continue to price-gauge adult students with inflated credit hour costs, books, and fees. My best option would be to quit working all together! I'll never see the light of day, so why bother making a good living? I support student debt forgiveness! Jennifer  November 25, 2019 Columbus (https://studentdebtcrisis.org/read-student-debt-stories/)

The student loan debt crisis is not new. It wasn’t like a tornado that pops up with the warning sirens giving only minutes of notice before it destroys everything in its path. It has been in the making since the 1970s and touched down on land over a decade ago. It was seen then – sirens blaring and it was projected to get worse. The narrative never changed - do not ignore this or very bad things will happen – and it has. Our elected officials didn’t just ignore it but instead they have actively, albeit quietly, ensured the system remained broken and has supported the loan “servicing” agencies in pushing their boots harder on the necks of borrowers for their own profits.These numbers, including our $1.7 trillion student loan debt figures are always increasing so this is a snapshot of the first quarter of 2019 –

Federal loan borrowers in repayment: 18.6 million.

Federal loan borrowers with loans in deferment: 3.4 million.

Federal loan borrowers with loans in forbearance: 2.7 million.

Federal loan borrowers with loans in default: 5.2 million.

11.3 million American citizens cannot make their payments. Twenty-five percent of all borrowers will go into default and that’s where the true ugly begins. At this point interest begins to quickly pile on and can double, triple, quadruple…more from the original loan amount.

Once in default, the loan is sent to collections - this is also the point where the power finance players make their money. With the blessing of congress and the courts, wages are garnished, social security payments are garnished, tax refunds are taken in full, you are no longer eligible for deferments or forbearance, and your credit is ruined. This can also cost you your job, or prevent you from future employment. This will last until the loan is paid back or until death (except private student loans where they can come after the estate).

How we reached this point can be very confusing (intentionally designed) so I’m going to attempt to deconstruct the main areas that facilitated the fraud and the areas that keep it going and growing. All of these issues have been previously reported by numerous journalists but have not always tied the relationships together of higher education, politicians (all branches of the federal government), collection/servicing agencies, financial institutions, billionaires and how they worked and continue to work together to commit such a monumental deception on the American public.

There are many rabbit holes that they want you to get lost in so I’ll address some of those right now. This piece will not explain all the differences between all the various student loans available today – understanding that like a financial aid officer at a college doesn’t change the corruption. It will not explain in-depth how all the financial tools work involved in this industry – understanding that like a broker doesn’t change the corruption. It will not explain the various loan repayment programs and faulty formulas used by the collection/servicing agencies – understanding these like the Department of Education will not change the corruption. It cannot cover every institution that has operated fraudulently nor all the dirty, immoral, unethical people involved…but I’ll give it the old college try.  

Beware phony advocates for reform that appear to speak on your behalf with partial fixes but do so just to ensure there are no real changes to the system that would result in any financial losses for themselves and the masters they serve. The predatory student loan industry exists because our elected officials are either corrupt themselves, don’t take the time to truly understand all the complex aspects of the abuse and fraud in the system (they choose to listen to the industry’s own lobbyists instead of their own constituents), or are just plain morons. Regardless, all kill American higher education.

The American student loan system – government loansharking enforced with judicial muscle. The mafia never had it so good.

No Good Deed Goes Unexploited

It is important to understand the history of how we arrived at our current crisis, because as I said it’s not new, it didn’t just happen last year. It was not only allowed but designed, fed, and encouraged to be the devious monster that exists today. This is not the complete history but what is needed to bring us to today.

1944. The GI Bill was established to reward veterans who served their country during WWII to catch up with those Americans who remained in college during this time. Prior to this, many of these people would never have been able to afford to go to college before or after their service. This is really the first involvement we see of the federal government assisting citizens who didn’t have the wealth to attend college on their own. There were advocates that wanted this extended beyond veterans to allow more Americans to benefit from higher education but the majority members of congress felt that since they never received that, no one else should either. No free rides was the mantra.

1958. The “Red Menace” swept the country and with Russia’s launch of Sputnik, Congress would sponsor low-interest loans under national security. It’s of interest to also note that the National Defense Education Act also included debt cancellation for those students who became teachers. There was still no support for need or academic based undergraduate funding.

I wanted to go to school to help people, and my master’s degree allows me to do that every day. But with over $75,000 in debt, partially due to ever-accruing interest, it feels like I’ll never get ahead and will struggle with this my entire life. I know God will take care of me; I just don’t know how. Emily August  May 23, 2019 Detroit (https://studentdebtcrisis.org/read-student-debt-stories/)

1965. President Johnson and the 89th Congress enacted the Higher Education Act. Title IV was the first true federal government commitment to providing college opportunity to students in need. This included the Guaranteed Student Loan (GSL) and College Work-Study Programs which also applied to middle-income families. Because the cost of education was somewhat affordable then, any loans to the middle class would have been a small percentage of the program. Enrollments increased and student aid appropriations took the lion’s share of compared to other domestic social programs. 1972. This was a big year in higher education. The reauthorization of the HEA laid the foundation for today’s student loan system including establishing the term “postsecondary” to recognize that not everyone needed a four-year bachelor’s degree but did need further education of some sort. This would allow financial aid for those students attending community colleges, trade schools, vocational schools and students attending part-time. The reauthorization also included:

Pell Grants began here as a way students could directly receive federal aid beyond the campus-based programs.

Private schools were now allowed to participate fully in receiving these monies.

State Incentive Grants which provided matching dollars to help states expand their need-based grants.

Hidden quietly in the darkest corners of Title IV where mold feeds and vermin defecate, they established the Student Loan Marketing Association, aka Sallie Mae, as a publicly chartered corporation to increase funding to guaranteed student loans (GSL).

This was to be a new era in the building of our country. We were the world leaders in almost everything during this time and the importance of education was critical to our country’s growth and future prosperity. It was supposed to be a good thing.

The Old Sons Of Bitches

In the early 1970s, while the protests of the Vietnam War were still in full swing on college campuses throughout the country, legislators became paranoid that these long-haired, lazy, hippie, pinkos would use the bankruptcy system to get out of paying the federal government back for their student loans (this was the early 70s and our government was completely controlled by wealthy, white men who did think like this). This fear had nothing to do with reality and there was no evidence to support this position. At that time their main target was those pursuing medical and law degrees that were higher priced. Keep in mind that the degree costs were a small fraction compared to today’s tuition.

In 1973 the Congressional Commission on the Bankruptcy Laws of the United States issued a report which included that student loan debt cannot be discharged for five years after graduation. Three years later the Education Amendments of 1976, Section 439A, was adopted even though the Government Accounting Office (GAO) reported less than 1% of student loans had gone to bankruptcy. Now, no student loans could be discharged in bankruptcy until five years after graduation, or unless the borrower could prove repayment imposed “undue hardship” (which was never defined by the law makers). While this passed it did have more than a few critics. Michigan Congressman, James O’Hara stated that establishing this “... treats educational loans precisely as the law now treats loans incurred by fraud, felony, and alimony-dodging. No other legitimately contracted consumer loan … is subjected to the assumption of criminality which this provision applies to every educational loan.”

In 1978, with the passage of the Bankruptcy Reform Act, the exception to bankruptcy discharge of student loans was moved from the Higher Education Act to the U.S. Bankruptcy Code at 11 USC 523(a)(8). While Congress sought to reverse the earlier exception, the Senate’s version prevailed maintaining the inability to discharge student loans for five years and adding that it applied to loans back by the government and nonprofit institutions of higher education.

In 1979, Congress wanted to address the problem of lack of participation by lenders (although this wasn’t known to be a problem by anyone) so they quietly passed an amendment giving banks a higher rate of return on student loan by linking them changes in Treasury bill rates. Prior to this the government set a cap on what lenders would make. With banks making more money, the student loan industry was born.

Just because the corrupt say it’s legal, doesn’t mean it’s still not corrupt.

The Noose Tightens

1986-92. Loan volume shot up again after the 1986 and 1992 Higher Education Act (HEA) reauthorizations.  In 1990 the Crime Control Act extended the period before student loans could be discharged in bankruptcy from five years to seven years and then a year later the statute of limitations on defaulted loans, six years, was totally eliminated by the Higher Education Technical Amendments. There was a failed push to increase Pell Grants to reduce the reliance on loans and instead Congress raised the borrowing limits of students and created a new unsubsidized loan for the middle-class that was no longer based on financial need. This meant anyone could now take on a

We are being held captive in an 8% pay back on our kids Parent Plus loans. We have tried to re-fi them, and nobody will touch it. This has made our monthly bills higher than our income! It should be illegal to offer these loans without qualifying, and to keep us locked in this excessively high interest rate! Laura MacCormack  May 9, 2019 Green Creek (https://studentdebtcrisis.org/read-student-debt-stories/)

student loan regardless of their income or parents’ income. Smelling more money could be made off of the well-meaning, caring, loving parents they also uncapped the Parent Loan (PLUS) program. Now parents could borrow, on behalf of their children, the full amount of their children’s’ educational costs. Because of these changes, enrollment took off and in a short two year period the amount borrowed increased over $10 billion.The Student Loan Reform Act of 1993 revised how loans are serviced, financed and allowed for more students to take out more loans. This also established an income-based repayment plan stretching out to a home mortgage length of 25 years. The Department of Education responded by creating more than 70 complex rule-making packages further complicating the regulatory process for students, schools and the government itself.

By 1998 the Higher Education Amendments, Section 971 eliminated the seven year period required before a student loan could be discharged in bankruptcy. There had been no debates or hearings on this prior to President Clinton signing the bill into law. This meant there was no longer a statute of limitations nor could student loans even be considered for bankruptcy – ever, unless the ambiguous, indeterminate, undefined “undue hardship” provision could be proven.

In 2005 the final nail was hammered into the hands of student borrowers by Congress with the passage of the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act. This meant all federal and private educational loans were excepted from bankruptcy discharge unless the undefined “undue hardship” could be proven (note – you have a better chance of being hit by lighting, which would probably be a welcome relief to my student loan borrowers, than having a judge dismiss a student loan in bankruptcy).

The politicians, with help from their financial keepers, knew by now that money, lots and lots of money, could be made off of student borrowers. By increasing funding to everyone, by ensuring every kind of nonprofit and private educational institution was eligible to receive federal and private loans, by supporting the skyrocketing costs of higher education, by removing the only tool that could provide some kind of market correction (bankruptcy), and by placing student loan debt in the financial markets (SLABS) which allowed those on the inside to make billions of dollars, they had successfully created the most devious, destructive system ever in the history of the United States.

I am 31 years old, divorced single mom of 2 with $134,000 + in student loan debt, much thanks to the interest. One loan I borrowed was for $5000, which I have paid roughly $5000 back, but still owe over $7000. So a $5000 loan turned into a $12000 loan after they tacked on interest. The remaining loans I have are private and federal. I can't afford to purchase a home. I can't afford to save towards my retirement. And there is absolutely nothing that I can do but to continue to pay the interest only payments to make it more affordable for me a month, but it will cost me 1,000s of dollars of additional interest to the life of my loans. Life happens, and the fact that we are punished with high interest that balloons our loans to an unrealistic amount is, without the ability to file bankruptcy or have the option to pause our loan payments without ramifications is wrong. Christie  May 1, 2019 Frisco (https://studentdebtcrisis.org/read-student-debt-stories/)

What was originally meant to help those of us with the least financial means attend higher education, breaking the cycle of poverty, was now viewed and constructed by those in power as a money making machine. Success of higher education forever forward was measured by the amount of campaign contributions from this new “industry.” Citizens were cut and bled and the feeding frenzy began.

[thelambsofiscariot]

ooc: Been a weird few days with too much to do and a lot of unwelcome personal news. So, I’m gonna get a few thoughts out before my nap, so it’ll be a nice and calm nap. This isn’t a rant post, or even an annoyed post, so much as an “eh it’s whatever but I’d still rather not deal with it pls” post. The “you” in this post is just people in general... this isn’t a vague, or a call-out. But I’ve had these things happen way too often in real life, and seen small signs of it online, and want to nip my dislikes in the bud before they happen with the people I love interacting with.

i. don’t assume that my characters’ personalities or stories just change at your beck and call because you want it.

Don’t, unless we properly discuss it. It’s fine to say “I want [insert plotline]. I want your character to do this and that” but then you start assuming I’m gonna follow along just as you say. You could present it in a nicer way, or maybe ask me if that’s okay. I dunno. “This is how your character will act towards mine”... well, now he doesn’t want to interact at all.

ii. effort is returned where it is given. Gimme something to work with, man.

That should be obvious. If I see you getting William Faulker with someone else while I get a few words, it’s a turn-off. I’ve given you stuff to react to... so why haven’t you, while you’re vividly describing what your character alone is doing and saying and feeling? I kind of start feeling there’s a very specific agenda there.

iii. “read my rules.” but you clearly haven’t read mine.

... so if you’re going to disregard my rules, then your rules don’t exist to me, either. In fact, I probably won’t look forward to interaction with you from that moment on, anyway. Salty? Maybe, but “READ MY RULES FIRST” being plastered on your profile, while you didn’t glance at mine, means that you’re being mildly disrespectful. Don’t you think?

iv. ask and you shall receive... but probably only if you say it politely.

I already said I get miffed when someone assumes that I’m going to do as they like, without so much as an “okay!” from me. I would just like to point out the importance of the approach itself, though. When you approach me for an RP, know that I’m not a thread-and-interaction-shop. In this case, “the customer is always right” does not apply. This is a thing we both do for fun, a hobby... and with both partners mutually agreeing on doing something that both will enjoy. When you ask someone to do something that you want, you ought to be pleasant. Likewise, if I am bringing up a plot point that I want to play out, I will ideally try to be respectful and polite about it, and compromise if needed.

v. that goes with group interactions, whether IC or OOC, too.

Like, if the flow of a conversation or in character RP is going that you’re going to interrupt, smoothly join it and try to get along with what’s currently going on. Chances are people are already going at it, and you saying completely off would be breaking a comfortable flow. Try politely following along with something relevant, and accommodations for what you want to do or talk about will likely come along with more much pleasantness than if you’d just broken the convo or RP up.

vi. do not even begin to try to imply that you > another person in my life. do not try to make me pick anything or anyone. both in interpersonal matters, as well as RP-wise.

Sure, you may see me as having biases. But who doesn’t? But it becomes so damn unfair when you try to force me to pick sides or friends, or demand that I treat you better than I treat another person. Your self-elevation is irritating. This goes with threads and such as well. “Reply to my thread before theirs.” ... well, you’ve made me lose interest.

vii. please don’t just talk at me.

I understand that sometimes a person’s gotta get something out, and I’m happy to listen... if it’s a two way street. But it’s hard when it all comes back to you, then you again... and you once again. I usually tell people if this is going on, but sometimes I’m pushed to the point of disinterest before I even realise it. And when I do see it, I’d rather just go “okay” and bugger off rather than try to salvage something I’ve lost interest in. When someone talks, I like to try to give at least a sign that I’ve absorbed what they said and have some feedback. Unfortunately, I go by the old adage of “an eye for an eye.” As your efforts lessen, so do mine.

viii. ... that being said, don’t talk at others, either.

I get it can be hard to keep up with things sometimes. But in a personal small group DM (regardless if for RP or OOC stuff), it’s not hard to notice the message that came just two messages above the one you’re currently typing. If someone seems distressed, or something, or something bad has happened, by God - say something? Maybe? No one likes to be ignored. You don’t, either, just try not being heard. I know I can be guilty of it, but I’m trying to fix my attitude as well. You want to be paid attention to, but maybe someone else needs a bit of encouragement or acknowledgement at times.

ix. know when you’re overstepping boundaries.

Not saying that you should always be thinking “Am I doing something wrong??” It shouldn’t spike up into anxiety, but I really wish people would be aware of their surroundings more. Like, if someone seems as if they’ve tapered off into disinterest after a while - or if, God forbid, you get that reaction from more than just one person. It might be worth checking with people, via DM or PM or otherwise.

x. for god’s sake, I’m trying to have fun.

Like, yeah. I understand the importance of treating all RP equally, but I also have limited time and I use RP as a side thing where I can enjoy myself on off days and during breaks. I also don’t live online, surprisingly (I know I’m on a lot lol shut up), so I’m not always available for conversation or this thread or that thread. In the end, I’m just tryna have a good time fam. I don’t need condescension or being talked at or being told I’m gonna do this and that when I don’t want to. Just tryna chill here.

... but yeah no vaguing and shit. I’m just tryna chill while my life gets hectic, and I see the very beginning signs of some stuff going on. Anyway time for nap

[pricebullington]

Joshua Dildine Interview

The Joshua Dildine Interview is finally here. We take a deep dive into the duality of his work, the friction and synthesis between instinct and intellect. 

Cave paintings made of poop, sci-fi and spirituality along with the otherworldliness permeating through his oeuvre, are all explored as I probe to get a better understanding of what drives his mysterious, yet familiar, compositions. Read along to see how these seemingly paradoxical elements come together, as past, present and future merge.

Joshua Dildine, Life Well Lit, 2012

PB: Hey Joshua, thank you for taking the time to do this. Your work is so viscerally powerful I feel like words almost become redundant, but in any case I've had a strong urge to talk to you to learn more about the dimensions you open up. One of the things that struck me when watching some of the interviews you've done, is how down to earth and level-headed your approach seems to be, in contrast to your works, which strikes me as being almost out of this world in terms of space and language. More often than not, I find the opposite to be true in a lot of artists, where the lucid descriptions of the work fall flat in comparison to the external reality of forms. In that sense I found it quite refreshing to see your humble approach, and it made me even more curious about your philosophy and how you approach art in a general sense.

It seems as though you came across your style, for lack of a better term, as we know it today in 2011. And I was wondering how your personal perception of it have changed and evolved in the past 6 years? I know it's a broad question, so feel free to highlight what you find most interesting and, or, surprising in the course of this development.

JD: I am really a pretty down-to-earth guy, despite what my paintings may say about me. Ive always been interested in creating atmosphere and depth in abstract painting. My personal perception has changed quite a bit ever since I started painting over photos in 2011. I started doing it as a somewhat sarcastic response to some criticism I had to my work prior to the photos; something about the work was not personal enough. So in a humorous effort to make it personal, I painted over a photo of my face. I continued to do this and started pulling from other family photos. I realized that there was an inherit power that the images had over me, as well the people that I was painting over. For example, when I pulled my parents engagement photo off the wall and painted over it, my mom was pissed. She initially didn’t realize that I’d scanned the original and reprinted it to paint over the copy, and even then was slightly disturbed by the act. There was a connection there that was more powerful that just a painted ground to work over. Another thing I realized at this time, was scribbling out the faces of my parents was not easy. In other words, my personal attachment to the subjects made it hard to scribble their image out. So in the earlier work, my intention was to deny the power of the image and use it as a visual armature from which to create my paintings.

As I continued to work through this process, the idea remained as an undertone, but not the main idea that pushed the work forward. I started to focus on the visual language that the photographs contained (depth of field, light source, lens flair, motion blur, color deterioration, color, atmosphere). I was using photographic means, and still do, to answer questions of abstraction (borrowing that idea from David Reed). In contrast, I set out to answer photographic questions through abstract means. I started embellishing elements of the photographs that would confuse the space. I was reading a lot of sci-fi, Orson Scott Card at the time, and had “antigravity” on the brain. Gravity has more power in photography than abstract painting, so in a way to deny those "powers" as well, I would switch the orientation to provide influence to the composition.

The word "defacement" got old and outdated pretty fast. I was no longer interested in that conversation. The gestures themselves could change the way we perceive the intention behind the act of painting over someone. If I took a thin brush, pen, or pencil and "scribbled" out the faces in fast lines, it reads aggressive and hostile. If I have a thick blob looking gesture it is a lighter color, done slowly, intentionally, it’s a less hostile read.

Joshua Dildine, Rediscover Delicious Harmony, 2011

PB: The dangers of being pigeonholed is like a mine field when establishing your work, I guess, so it seems like a good idea to proactively avoid the traps that reveal themselves early on. Can you elaborate a bit on how you steered the evolution of your work in that regard?

JD: The way I view the power that images have changes with each image I choose. I couldn't say that to a white canvas. Using photographs as a ground has a multi-faceted advantage for me; there is an emotional response to the act, then there is the strictly visual challenge of being presented with questions to answer with paint. And now, there is a possessive point of pride that the subjects of the photographs have with the paintings. As if they were portraits. My siblings refer to a painting as their own, when it has an image of them underneath. “How many of Matt, or Taylor, or so-and-so are in this show?”, might be a conversation we have leading up to an exhibition.

At this point, I have been reevaluating what I've been doing and have discovered another aspect to interacting with the photos I had not expected. Over a year and half ago we moved to my hometown to take over my grandparents’ house. The act of moving into a house that you have a historical connection with, changing it and making it your own, in some ways is the same thing I have been doing to the photos. There were boxes and boxes of old family photos and slides when we moved in from generations beyond my memory, as well as some relics of furniture and trinkets. Using these to work from connects me to the people that owned them, but the fact that I’m living in the space provides little differentiation between my life and the work. I am constantly re-evaluating what makes my work so personal, and drawing from that.

Joshua Dildine, Be First More Often, 2012

PB: I think it's very interesting that you discovered your style in such a serendipitous fashion, and then stuck with it and let it evolve from there on it's own terms. It can be quite hard to comprehend that it all happened on a lark, in a way, and yet now manifest itself in such a powerful and fully fledged way. I'm guessing the only way it could happen like that was because you were open to it, and then when you found it, you stuck with it because you recognized it's potential. For which I applaud you, by the way, because I think your work is brilliant.

Compliments aside, the reason I point this out, is because your work strikes me as being intuitive in many respects, as opposed to calculated, in the sense of you trusting your instincts and going with the flow. I remember seeing an interview you did, where you talked about how your son made some moves on one of your paintings one day while you were out of the studio, but instead of discarding it, you embraced it. I found that anecdote beautiful, but also telling in regards to your process. I think that's a delightful way to approach art, because it allows you to go beyond your own understanding and play with the chaos and randomness of the world in a constructive way. 

On that note I'd like to know more about your process, I imagine it can be a bit of a jigsaw puzzle to balance family life with your work as an artist sometimes. How does a perfect day in the studio look like to you? How do you approach the work, and what's your setup like?

JD: My work is a fine balance between spontaneity, intuition, structure, chaos/destruction, and reconstruction. My process is so wrapped up into the way I live my life; This goes back to how I want to keep the work as personal as possible. As a parent, you rely on spontaneity and intuition. For example, if you are getting ready to leave the house, and you realize that your toddler thought it was a good time to make cave paintings in his bedroom... with poop, you have to change plans, be spontaneous, clean it up, be late to where ever you are going, discipline, laugh, learn, and live on. I had the best intentions to leave the house, we eventually left the house, but our destination changed. Connecting poop murals back to my painting: I can have an agenda, I can have set parameters for where I want each piece to go. I am always open to a change of destination. Additionally, I do not think it is about using the photos as a constraint or a restriction on spontaneity. It is more like a play between structure and intuitive choice. The two ideas each have a place in my work, they both exist.  As a parent I've learned that situations like these can be multi facetted. Poop murals by a toddler is inappropriate but it can also be funny. They are both allowed to exist in this space. Intuition and structure are allowed to exist in the same space and do so beautifully. Each has influenced the other. The photos have changed and improved the way I paint abstraction just as, I hope, the paintings have improved the space of the photos.

With that said, a "perfect" day in the studio, is when the lawn is mowed, chores are done, bills are paid, all the studio prep-work has been done, and I have zero distractions. The day will start with a cup of coffee, end with a glass of wine. Sure this sounds like a "unicorn" of studio days and completely unrealistic now that I write it out . A great day doesn't have to be a perfect day. I have a lot of great days in the studio. Often those "great" days are realized in hindsight. The distractions from the kids, spontaneous lunch dates with my wife, my pin-striper neighbor stopping by and having painting discussions that are unrelated to art. But, great days must start with a cup of coffee and end with a glass of wine.

Joshua’s studio, Installation view.

PB: I love it, and thank you for bringing back the nuance, as I realize now how limited the question I posed was. What I mean here, is that I posed it as an "either, or" when in fact, as you point out, it's more of a synthesis between instinct and intellect. Wine and coffee. 

I think it would be reckless of me not to get into the aesthetics of your work, now that we're talking. Your work is obviously coming from a very personal place, but when I look at it, it's more of a mystery, like a David Lynch movie. The look of the photographs you use as "backgrounds" send my mind back to film camera's from the 70s, while the strokes you use in the foreground, and the color combinations seems almost futuristic, or at least highly contemporary. It seems you're building on artists like Albert Ohlen and Gerhard Richter in terms of the handling of paint and layering in many ways. Can you talk a little bit about your influences in this area, and what the aesthetics of art means to you in terms of your own work?

JD: My inspiration changes all the time. I try to pull from visual resources that are personal, honest, and current to my state in life. I avidly study current and historic art as well as amateur and commercial artists. The Aesthetics of my pieces predominately respond, and are a departure from, the photographs. Photos from the 80’s with 70’s décor make for interesting color combinations to work with but I love that you picked up David Lynch. I was reading a lot of Frank Herbert and Orson Scott Card, and binge watching seasons of Dr. Who, back when I first started to work on the photographs. So naturally, I responded to that interest. I love the language used to illustrate alternative worlds and alternative space, basically any ideas that take you out of this world. 

I think what I find fascinating in science fiction are the familiar themes and vocabulary, that we know, jumbled and placed in a setting that makes us experience something new and unfamiliar. I view my work in a similar way. The painted gesture, to an abstract painting, acts very much like words in a story. Each mark represents different vocabulary. For that reason I am drawn to Albert Oehlen’s work. His work is very “articulate”, there is so much variety in the mark making. I attempt to make my works articulate; there are a lot of different styles of marks through-out each piece, and the result is an altered visual plane of the photograph and painting. Within my paintings, space will expand and collapse, and mass will solidify and vaporize. The way that people move paint fascinates me, and I often look in uncommon places, like seeing a spray paint artist make a space scene using just spray paint with magazine clippings as brushes. I learn a lot from my pin-striping neighbor who approaches painting from a very different perspective. Ultimately, I am a collector of photographs and a collector of visual vocabulary.

Joshua Dildine, False May Minds, 2015

PB: That’s a great approach, because I think there’s a strong trap-like tendency within contemporary art, because of the rich history of art, to become insular and self-referential. The postmodern Ouroboros. I’m always more interested in the way life itself informs art, like poop murals, pin-striping neighbors, or that time Salvador Dali was sitting at a dinner table, watching a camembert cheese dissolve, which he then connected to Einsteins theory of relativity, and then proceeded to create his iconic painting The Persistence of Memory, portraying melting watches.

In my own work I often portray gold, which is one of the heaviest metals, floating in dreamlike spaces. That antigravitational friction, is something that is quite common in music and dreams. The idea of moving on another wavelength, in another dimension is something that speaks to me on a deep level, because of the transcendentalism it conjures up, and it seems that’s where our interest overlap. Just to tap this vein a little further before we wrap up this interview, I was wondering why you are attracted to this otherworldliness?

The reason I ask is because I’m very curious about the duality in your work of the personal (photography) and the interdimensionality inherent to the forms you introduce through your application of paint on the metaphorical / philosophical level.

JD: Thanks! That is a great question. You are the first to really tap in on that interdimensionality, but, it is definitely there. The sublime is not a new concept to be explored in art.  Many abstract painters in particular, recognize that there is something going on beyond them, in those moments lost in painting. The act of painting, for me, as controlled as I can be, has always been somewhat spiritual. I feel like I tap into something that is just out of my reach. Pairing this with the springboard of photographs adds a grounded element that really speaks to the past as a frozen moment in time. Painting feels like a movement outward, toward the future while the act of painting is very present. I am a Christian and I am a contemporary artist. These two identities don’t always seem to blend well in the world that I grew up in and I have, for a long time, wrestled to keep them somewhat separate. Yet, this parallel keeps popping up in my work. Perhaps that duality, inadvertently parallels the painting and photography elements in the work, and the success of the piece depends on the interaction of these two identities.

I am constantly reminded that I am apart of something much bigger than myself. Using photographs, like I said, is a powerful link to a sense of history and legacy. When I use old family photographs I feel a connection with the people in them and the spaces they inhabited. Just the other day, I was looking at old colored slide of my great grandfather, and I noticed that he had the same colored walls and the same type of stains, that could only be caused by a toddler, on those walls. It was profound to see the likeness in our facial features, but even more profound to see those stains on those walls. Yes, that is something subtle and abstract, but there is beauty in spending the time to observe and witness this.

I feel this link strongly as I am living in and remodeling my grandfather’s home. It feels like painting over photos at times, changing the space little bits at a time and thinking of what they might have when the original elements of the home where put in or changed along the way.

Since becoming a father, I have felt more connected to the future, how to foster the potential my children have to leave a positive impact. This is a different kind of legacy. These dualities of past, present and future as well as a physical grounding paired against that otherworldly sublime are the beautiful subtleties of life that I cannot help but see make their way into the work that I do. Not in a contrived way, but in a natural outpouring of reflected life.

Joshua Dildine, The Games We Play, 2013

PB: I think that's a perfect way to end the interview Joshua, thank you so much for taking the time, as well as opening up. It's been a great pleasure learning more about the deeper levels of your practice. 

What are the best ways for me and the readers to stay updated on your work? And do you have any upcoming shows we need to know about?

JD: Thanks Price, It was my pleasure. I appreciated your read into the work that was so intuitive and probing to truly try to understand it at a deeper level. 

Joshuadildine@gmail.com and joshuadildine.com are the best ways to get a hold of, and keep track of me.