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vrishchikawrites · 3 years ago

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About YZY leaving YMJ/JFM with her kids Post-WWX Arrival

Dear Dee, feel free to delete or ignore this or post it, whatever floats your boat. This just stuck in my head after those posts and I had to blurt it all to someone. Thanks for taking the time to read my word vomit.

So I had to do this instead of an ask because it got long and I wasn't sure how many asks it'd need or how short I could cut it down without losing parts of the argument. And then other things came up as I was writing and, well. Well..... >_>;;;;

But you know, after that post/ask you had about YZY fics saying 'Fuck U' to YMJ/JFM & leaving both with her kids, I had a sarcastic 'yeah right' attitude about it. Mainly due to a lot of negation emotions to such an abusive (and delusional) bitch, partly due to how she wouldn't do that since it doesn't seem to be something her sort of character would consider either because she'd think of it as 'losing' (losing what, IDK, it's why I consider her type of person crazy) or she legit wouldn't think about such a viable action.

But then later, in the shower, I seriously went 'Wait, she can't fucking do that' and it wouldn't be about how MXTX uses her as a part of the narrative but entirely about the/their culture in the novel; the actions that have and would be taken in response; and her entire toxic personality as well.

1) We already know that the sects and the cultivation world in general is sexist, elitist and so Capital T 'Traditional' to the point that it's starting to petrify and any deviancy from this is an exception rather than the norm. YZY might be a madame of a great sect (for what that's worth considering how shit of a madame she's been and the titles she's chosen for herself) but she's still a woman even with her high rank and the things she's personally accomplished.

Even if she was in her rights to leave a 'bad' marriage, she'd be the one who'd get scolded more instead of JFM by her natal family, her former husband's family and by their entire society at large even if she had a few singular supporters. Because That's Not How Things Are Done in their society and I do believe that such a thing was rare even when it was accepted method by the upper echelons. Especially since it would have to be done by more than YZY simply deciding that She Wants Out and just- goes and Gets Out. With no serious allegations that would allow her to divorce or separate from YMJ/JFM without the input from her family, JFM's family and, I think, possibly some measure of compensation as well. And no, having or bringing in a 'bastard child' is not a serious enough offence for such a humongous decision. I think something more along the lines of treason or crimes against multiple, high-ranking parties would be more along the lines. Maybe.

And even if she does this, she'd be considered 'Used Goods' (such a terrible comment) and there'd be no other good/proper marriage prospects for a divorced woman with children let alone a woman like YZY with her entire abrasive personality and attitude put off even easy-going JFM.

(If she'd been widowed then it'd be more forgiven but I consider that a Real Bad End since, IMO, it would lead to the sudden and inevitable decline of YMJ either via mass exodus of disciples and/or residents of LP; being merged with another sect due to it's unstable leadership; or create an internal political war 'cause I bet you anything that the YMJ Elders/relatives (if they have any) Would Not Want YZY in charge of YMJ when she's already proven herself such a shit betrothed let alone madame.)

2) Speaking of families, while YMJ/JFM/LP as a whole might be glad to see YZY's back, I don't think her natal sect, MSY, will be glad to see her come storming back after all the effort they put into getting that particular marriage alliance with YMJ. And if she brings her children with her? Oh man, oh boy- mother or not, that could be considered as kidnapping or line theft (is that a thing?) especially if YZY is also seriously considering divorce proceedings and raising them as Yu and not Jiang. That could give leave to, for anyone more unforgiving and maybe JFM if he's pushed enough, disown both JYL and JWY from the Jiangs through no fault of their own (though I'm sure YZY would make it so as well as blame JFM for her own decisions and mistakes).

Therefore, any inheritance or benefits they might gain for being legitimised children of a great sect are forfeited. JYL will likely lose that betrothal with JZX because JGS will drop it like a hot potato and JWY won't be a sect heir because YZY literally decided to remove that by deciding to raise JWY as a Yu, no matter their blood relation to JFM. They leave him, they leave YMJ and everything attached with it. Which is if YMJ/JFM doesn't demand MSY to give back their heir/ess and to punish YZY for her actions. Or send all three of them back for the appropriate reactions/decisions.

Their society would demand no less in reaction because, to them, it would seem like YZY had gone mad and JFM would look weak (or weaker) and imply that YMJ is vulnerable and exploitable if JFM doesn't do something in response to her actions. That's not even getting into what the other smaller sects may try to do in an attempt to curry favour with YMJ or what LLJ or QSW would try in order to destroy or diminish YMJ. And whether JFM chooses to demand his children back or not, it may not change the fact that this may give him reason enough to choose a nephew or niece to be the new sect heir especially if, even after getting rid of YZY's poisonous influence, JWY grows up to be his mother's child more than his father's or even his own person.

Either way, such a thing would bring great backlash on YZY, and MSY as well as the collateral. No one would want to give face to her or her children because it would bring up some very uncomfortable questions and scenarios to the other sects- specifically, what would happen if the female members of their clans/sets decided to follow the footsteps of YZY and leave with their children and heirs. Especially if they use it as an excuse to leave for their own comfort and whims and not some legitimate wrongs and dangers. That would create some more restrictions on women thanks to YZY

3) And lastly, if any one of those idiot YZY stans think that she'd ever give up the status of being a madame of a great sect they'd be as crazy or crazier than her. YZY is all about status and power and face. Specifically, her status, power and face and how people in her reach reflect her or 'insult' her. She is a selfish, terrible, abusive and toxic person and can only see people in regards to how they would benefit her and the elevation of her and in no other way. Especially her family. They cannot be their own person, they can only be an extension of her and gods forbid they go against her.

We can see this in how she treats the people she supposedly loves. JFM? Arguments day in, day out along with accusations and slander of cheating, having one(1) supposed 'bastard' and being 'in love' with CSSR. Which all seems sus as hell. And that's when she's actually there and not out 'night hunting'. Even her 'training' seems to border on unhelpful rather then helpful if my vague recollections of juniors fainting from exhaustion can be relied upon (please call me out if they're not or find proof).

JYL? Berated by not being 'strong' but not helped at all to be 'strong'. It doesn't help that YZY seems to believe in the same standards strength in their society- that is, of martial masculine strength which does not and should not apply to JYL who has been said to be sickly. Which means h should have been learning a different way of cultivation/fighting anyway. If that was something she wanted and had been offered in the first place- which I doubt. That isn't even getting into her repeated generational trauma mess of a betrothal which was decided only by those 'sworn sisters', accepted by her as a way out of her terrible home life and puts her squarely within reach of JGS who we know to be a womaniser, rapist, predator and a possible ephebophile considering we don't know the exact age of his youngest 'conquest' or the age of MZY's mother when they met which could be anywhere from 14 to 21.

JWY? Gods, so much meta on him and his(non-) relationships with his parents that I don't think I can contribute more to it. It's been all said and done. Unless people want me to stir the pot by saying that, maybe, just maybe, YZY resents JWY as much as she 'loves' him.Either because he's her son and yet never manages to 'accomplish as much' as WWX or because he's a boy and therefore, more benefits and allowances than a girl/woman- more than anything that YZY ever got without either a fight or screaming at someone about. *shrug*

So, in conclusion to this sudden an unexpected essay that I wrote(I'm so sorry about that, I thought it would be shorter -.-;;;;), YZY leaving YMJ/JFM with her kids? Impossible. Not without some sort of personality transplant or a complete AU. She's too prideful, too bitter, too angry, too everything negative and little positive. She's a resentful product of the values and restraints of her society taken to the extreme negative with a willingness to inflict her pain on others to an abusive degree. But she's also too obsessed and reliant on those same values and restraints to keep up the image of her status. So her? Giving those up? You'd be more likely to see WRH as a doting grandfather than that.

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Dee - All of this is true and yes YZY leaving YMJ is highly unlikely. While there will be consequences if she decides to leave, she does canonically lives separately from her husband. They seem to be in a situation where they are married but living separately, which was a common way to end a marriage (at least in spirit) back then. She essentially had all the perks of being Madam Jiang but fulfilled none of the responsibilities.

Afaik, her training the Jiang disciples is a donghua thing? I may be wrong but I recall she spent most of her time nighthunting.

As for taking her children along with her- that's completely impossible. At that point, children were the property of the father. She could leave but she would've never been allowed to take JC.

#submission

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polysyndetonaddictsupportgroup · 3 years ago

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For the character prompts: Jon, of course! And, if you’d like another, Danny :)

Jon:

general opinion: actual love of my life

hotness level: hot jon rights, i'm making a new category for him, hot in a feral, unhinged sort of way, i will die on this hill

hogwarts house: ravenclaw through and through

best quality: he! is full! of love! this man makes my heart hurt. he tries so hard to hang onto his humanity and he makes these awful, clumsy, human decisions which, at the end of the day, ends up being driven by the fact that he just. loves people. he was heartbroken over sasha when he discovered the not!them. he killed elias citing the friends he had lost. the hunters had a knife to his throat and he still was defending gerry's memory. he tried to save jordan kennedy in the only way he could. he loves in such a clumsy, human way and i love that for him. Alternative best quality: he's a total bitch and that's great

worst quality: the boy can't think two steps ahead to save his life. literally. he has almost died several times because he can't plan worth shit.

ship them with: martin, i love them together, but i also ship him with gerry? they shared exactly one (1) episode together but they had a fantastic dynamic in it and they both legitimately treated the other with respect as a person? which is just so huge for characters that were systematically abused and used? they're both people who are isolated and used and still trying to be good. it also just has a huge ships-in-the-night aspect to it. gerry was working with gertrude when jon was at the institute. they just missed each other. and maybe, if it hadn't, they could have had someone legitimately in their corner for once

brotp them with: tim. they! were! friends! I relistened to season 2 a few months ago and tim shows such genuine concern for jon towards the beginning, before it gets messed up. and in season 1, jon trusts him to look into the oliver banks statement when he was worried it was a prank from the other two. we see so little of their early friendship but they seemed to legitimately care for each other?

needs to stay away from: elias bouchard. jimmy magma. that man. my favorite part of nhthcth comments are all of the death threats elias gets. it's great.

misc. thoughts: he's just such a tragic character and he was human until the end. he was deeply flawed and i love that because it made him so human? he wasn't your typical hero protagonist. he was just. some guy. trying his best. and in the end, he didn't win. i love that. like, the real tragedy of jonathan sims is that he was human and failed in human ways, and losing his humanity was what people accused him of most.

Danny:

general opinion: actual love of my life

hotness level: absolutely off the charts hotness, he gets a new category too, this is not me saying this this is god's truth, canonically he is obscenely hot

hogwarts house: gryffindor, my only character inspiration for him was himbo and all the boy wants to do is explore exceedingly dangerous places, the boy is just here for a good and potentially fatal time

best quality: he's very straightforward in what he wants? i'm speaking specifically of him from nhthcth, i don't have much to work with when it comes to canon danny, but like, he doesn't get caught up in a balancing risk and reward like most people. he's going straight for the gold and not getting caught up in logistics. like, he's not willing to play the sacrifice game. tim is. tim is willing to say, i'll sacrifice myself to this job because it gives danny better odds. danny would have said tough shit, we're going to succeed on the shitty odds because that's the one that actually saves us all, fuck off bouchard. like, he would die for the people he loves but he's not going to crucify himself or anyone else early. he's very solid in what he wants and what he's willing to do to get there but he's very hard to play because he's going to go the distance even if it's risky

worst quality: he will not. fucking. back down. ever. which can be a good quality in some things but it can be a really really bad quality in others. he's stubborn as shit and willing to go to ridiculous lengths to realize what he wants and sometimes that leads him to be way more reckless than is necessarily good for himself or for his greater team. he's also kind of bad with nuance? like, with jon, jon's a good person to him. he does good things with his powers. jon is good and what he does is good. simple as that. which means he fails to grasp the sheer cost of the powers and how they're legit bad to use. like, this isn't one of those things where the power is a tool and all that matters is how you use it. the power is feeding an evil god and if you use it, you're choosing to torture the person on the receiving end every single night for the rest of their lives. and yeah, jon's using it against bad people, but the act itself is bad. doesn't necessarily mean jon picked wrong when he decided to do it that way, but it does mean that jon picked something bad.

ship them with: nhthcth danny is actually aroace and has no prospects in my mind

brotp them with: jon. i love him and jon as friends. danny legitmately does not want to use jon, which is something nhthcth jon needs so badly. danny really just thinks he's a cool guy he'd like to get to know and he'd treat jon like a person, not someone who can help him get what he wants. even tim is guilty of that, to an extent. jon is tim's way of saving his brother. for danny, jon is a huge part of keeping him alive, yeah, but he doesn't want jon in his life because it's helping him. he thinks jon is a great person to have in his life because he's the sort of guy who would risk his life for a stranger. also, he's an absolute riot, holy shit, keep saying those words you crazy magic man

needs to stay away from: Grimaldi, the clown wants to peel him like an orange

misc. thoughts: kind of heart, dumb of ass. force of chaos. love is stored in the danny.

#nhthcth #tma #ask game #danny stoker #jon sims

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colethewolf · 4 years ago

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So, apparently Derek and Stiles were supposed to be an actual couple before Davis pussied out and didn’t do it for...hetero reasons? So in essence, they kept writing them as a couple without being an actual couple and threw them together with women they had no chemistry with (Malia, Braeden in Lydia’s case no romantic chemistry) or forced it by paralleling the shit put of it to the point of creating clones (of Stiles and Derek) with vaginas (Paige and Jennifer, Slightly Malia and Cora respectively).

I don’t know why, it’s been so long since it’s been over but finding out that this is a legitimate thing apparently, I don’t know, I haven’t seen the sources but everybody is saying that apparently it came out that they were meant to be a couple before it was nixed, just makes me incredibly angry.

To be perfectly honest I wasn’t huge in this ship or shipping in general however I enjoyed sterek. My thing with Sterek was that I was excited by the fact that there were these two guys with chemistry that bickered and worked well together and respected one another and the best part they were not Hollywood stereotypical. I mean by Hollywood stereotypical is that they weren’t overly sexualized together, they were not overtly either too macho masculine or super feminine. They were strong, intelligent, flawed, messy but good men who respected and seemed to really love eachother without being paraded. The huge draw also and the biggest point was that there were these two side characters with chemistry where you saw it was going to happen and that was pretty exciting for a lot of people.

My brother got me into the show because he was so excited about it. When it didn’t happen he was bummed out, he was angry because of the baiting because he and many other people believed it, even I felt used and I’m not a part of the LGBTQ+ community, but even I assumed and hope that it would happen because at least one couple seemed to genuinely like and respect and care and love each other. It just didn’t happen. Just quasi-promises in the form of scenes were they were written as a couple without the romanticism, thrown into relationships with women they had no chemistry way, the type of non-chemistry that seemed as dry as the Sahara desert on both sides (Or in Hoechlin’s case a case of the weird crazy obsessive stalker pawing at him making the scenes with Derek and braeden that much more uncomfortable because even acting he was uncomfortable and she was drooling at the prospect of getting up on him.)

If I find the link with the actual sources I’ll send them to you in a message because I think it would be pretty interesting to read. I think it’s legit, I mean I assume that it was probably something that they were planning but I never thought that there would be a legitimate sources where they say yes this was supposed to happen but it did not because dumb reasons. And I think it’s real because I’m hearing it everywhere, I’m hearing it loudly, and the anger and the rage that I’m hearing it reminds me of when the ban began way back and the Sterek fandom was initiated betrayed by PTB and Davis after all of the legwork the Stereks did to make the show popular, viewed and honestly the reason it was profitable at all.

You’re probably not interested in hearing any of this but legitimately yours was the only blog that I could think of that would hear this and give a legitimate opinion because you’ve been vocal about it and in a wonderfully honest way with your thoughts. Like I said I’m not a part of the community, I am not someone who ships anything. But I did start to ship them because it seemed naturally written, the chemistry was electric, they worked well together, and anyone with eyes and the ability to hear and understand what they’re seeing could see that the writers wrote them as being very much in love with eachother.

I apologize about the length.

Yes, I’ve talked about this before. I’ve spoken to sources before about what happened and unfortunately there will always remain unknown pieces of information about it. I don’t think we’ll ever get a full picture and detailed timeline of genuine fact.

But we can piece together the things that we saw and experience without knowing the full details about behind the scenes. For instance, Jeff Davis frequently acknowledged Sterek as a slash-ship. He admitted to intentionally writing Derek and Stiles scenes together and called them one of the greatest pairings in the show. He also frequently admitted to printing out Sterek fanart and posting them around the studio and writers room.

We also know that he intentionally hinted at Stiles being bisexual. He admitted it. He also frequently baited at the prospect of Stiles and Derek possibly developing into a slow-build romantic relationship. We also know that Jeff was fully aware of the Sterek vs. Derek/Jennifer parallels as he, himself, hinted at them being intentionally set in place during season 3A.

Onto things that weren’t confirmed by Jeff Davis, it was obvious that Stiles/Malia and Derek/Braeden were attempts to no-homo the characters as it was not a coincidence that both characters (who had remained single for seasons 1-3B) decided to both get put into separate heterosexual relationships at the same time, whilst also being purposely kept apart in scenes filmed.

The reality is that even if Jeff Davis wasn’t singlehandedly responsible for how Sterek was treated in the show, the fandom’s anger was directed at him. And it wasn’t directed solely at him just because. It was because Jeff, himself, frequently announced via. twitter & tumblr that he did NOT receive pushback from MTV executives.

In fact, Jeff bragged about how the show was his show and that he was able to write whatever he wanted without higher-ups telling him no. It was Jeff who bragged about the show being progressive in terms of queer representation. Regardless of whether or not Jeff had 100% full control over the show and the stories, we don’t know. But Jeff set himself up as the main enemy on his own accord.

I don’t think the fury Jeff received towards him would have been so strong had Jeff not been so cocky as to preach in the faces of the fans. He liked being the one in charge and then subsequently got pissy when fans turned against him and him alone. I think it was a big lesson learned.

Personally, I think Sterek was the show. It brought so much status and power to the show, but when they tried so hard to remove every trace of Sterek, that’s when the show crashed and burned. It’s no coincidence that season 3B received 2+ million views per new episode, only for that viewership to immediately tank when Season 4 came around.....the season where Stiles/Malia and Derek/Braeden. And following that, the views only continued to drop harder and harder.

Had Sterek gone canon, I think the show would have been regarded as a major game changer for television. Instead, I think shows like Shadowhunters, How To Get Away With Murder, & The Magicians really helped bring new standards for queer representation in television. Teen Wolf could have had that, but they fumbled their opportunity with messiness behind the scenes.

That’s what I think about it. But if you do find those sources, I’d love to hear what they’re saying to see if they match up with anything we already know.

#Anonymous

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phroyd · 4 years ago

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This is how the most colossal and fragile ego on the planet deals with losing the US election: he does not deal with it at all.

My uncle’s speech late on election night wasn’t just entirely mendacious from beginning to end. It was also deeply dangerous. It’s one thing for random Republicans to call a legitimate election into question, but this was the head of the government. The consequences of that action should not be underestimated.

This is what Donald’s going to do: he’s not going to concede, although who cares. What’s worse is he’s not going to engage in the normal activities that guarantee a peaceful transition. All he’s got now is breaking stuff, and he’s going to do that with a vengeance. I’ve always known how cruel he can be. Shortly after the 2016 election, when I’d see him being particularly cruel, I would think about how he treated my father [Fred Trump Jr, Donald’s older brother, who died of alcoholism at 43]. He took away our family health insurance after his father, my grandfather, died – this was when my nephew needed round-the-clock nursing care, which we then couldn’t afford. That is the kind of man he is.

After January, things look bleak for Donald. He has $400m of debt coming. Why would his lenders pay him any slack?

He’ll be having meltdowns upon meltdowns right now. He has never been in a situation like this before. What’s interesting is that Donald has never won anything legitimately in his entire life, but because he has been so enabled by people along the way, he has never lost anything either. He’s the kind of person who thinks that even if you steal and cheat to win, you deserve to win.

But there is some poetic justice here because he has been cheating for months. Now his tactics are coming back to bite him. He told Republicans not to vote by mail and they didn’t, but the result is he has been experiencing this slow drip-drip of disaster over the past few days. Oh, you have these huge margins! Now your margins are shrinking. Oh, Joe Biden’s ahead. Now his margins are growing. It must have been like slow torture, but he set up this failure for himself.

The fact that the Republicans have done better than expected in Congress and the Senate will have made him extraordinarily angry. It means that people were voting against Donald Trump in this election, but not necessarily against this party. That will have added so much salt to his narcissistic wounds.

Also, his supporters are going away. From what I understand, the thing that really ruined his election night was Fox News – his safe zone – calling Arizona days earlier than everyone else. That burst his bubble. Then Twitter was flagging all his posts and deleting them, and other more legitimate news outlets were cutting away from his speeches. But this begs the question: why weren’t they doing this a month ago, or even four years ago, before the last election? It’s good this is happening now because maybe the next two-and-half months won’t be the nightmare we expect, but it’s too late.

I worry about what Donald’s going to do in that time to lash out. He will go as far as he can to delegitimise the new administration, then he’ll pass pardons that will demoralise us, and sign a flurry of executive orders. Remember, he will also still be in charge of the US response to the pandemic. There could be a million Americans dead by then under his watch.

After January, things look bleak for Donald. He has more than $400m of debt coming in the next four years. Why at this point would his lenders cut him any slack? He has never paid anyone back. His businesses are in the tank. He has destroyed his brand.

He is going to be a factor in courtrooms in New York City more than he’s going to be a factor in politics, I think. His secretary of defence has already submitted his resignation, and I think there will be more of that. The Republicans might need him for the January run-offs in Georgia, but he could be considered a liability. If he’s acting like a crazy person, senators are going to keep their distance. People will move away from him if there’s nothing in it for them any more.

It’s not like he has any friends, anyway. It’s grim for him. Donald Jr, Ivanka and Eric also know their relationship with their father is both conditional and transactional. I have been saying since 2016 that I was going to have to change my name. I think they’re going to have to change theirs.

As for saying he’ll run in 2024, that’s just a face-saving exercise. It’s a way of distracting him from the fact that he’s probably going to prison. But the worst thing Donald’s looking at isn’t financial difficulties or the prospect of jail. It’s becoming irrelevant. I don’t think he would ever recover from that.

Mary Trump is a psychologist and author of Too Much and Never Enough

Phroyd

#donald trump #us elections 2020 #us news #world news #fox news

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natsubeatsrock · 3 years ago

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The Rewrite of Fairy Tail: Bonus (What If? #11)

What if Lisanna was part of the Strongest Team?

Let me be very clear from the jump. I'm not doing this for real. Of course, this is a fun hypothetical, as most of the ideas I consider in this series are. (A few get weirdly darker than I'd like them to be.) I'm not doing this as a plan to actually supplant Lucy's place in the series. (Lucy barely factors into my plans for this.)

At the same time, I was excited to come up with this idea for the rewrite. As yet another immediately dismissable idea, I can't act as though the prospect isn't tempting. Part of that might be that I'm the only one who'd seriously consider doing something like this. But hopefully, this isn't a terribly insane idea. (Especially compared to others I've had in this series.)

Now, I can guess where many would think I'd start: the end of Edolas. Once Lisanna returns from the guild, she would come to join the team similar to Wendy and Carla only an arc before in the manga. To be honest, that might be a decent time to start their partnership. After all, that's the time she re-enters the narrative in the original timeline.

But, I can do a bit better.

In the anime, Elfman remembers that Natsu was teased about joining the Strauss kids on the mission that would result in Lisanna leaving. One thing he seems to regret is not taking Natsu with them as a way to potentially take care of the situation. Obviously, he doesn't go with them and the rest is history.

But what if he did?

In this scenario, they actually decide to let Natsu join them on the mission. With the extra help, they're able to finish the mission without Elfman needing to perform a full Take-Over of the beast. As that doesn't happen, Lisanna isn't pushed into the situation that is responsible for her being pushed into a potential state of going to Edolas.

To be clear, in this scenario, Lisanna never goes to Edolas. Obviously, this results in a lot of different changes. The big thing this means that the Strauss siblings start to see the efficacy of Natsu as a partner in their missions and they decide he ought to work with them on more missions. The seeds for the Strongest Team are planted before the original series officially started.

So what of Gray and Erza as members of the Strongest Team? After all, their partnership with Natsu was what prompted the statement of them as the Strongest Team from Mira in the first place. While I could see this team potentially rivaling that makeup, I think that Natsu working with the Strausses may lead to an end to the beef between Mirajane and Erza. With that ended, it's not unlikely that Gray and Erza would start working with Elfman and Mirajane.

Oh, you thought that only Lisanna was joining the Strongest Team? If I want to have one of the Strauss kids join the Strongest Team, especially under these circumstances, I'm having all of them join. If all three of them can work, I imagine they'd want to be part of a group together. As for Lucy and Wendy, they would still join the group, as I imagine the story beats that would still lead them to join Fairy Tail, and ultimately the Strongest Team wouldn't be compromised by this setup.

In this situation, the Strongest Team would likely look less like its canon iteration where everyone goes on all the missions together. It would likely look closer to my loose affiliation between team members. Given the question driving this scenario, the big difference is that there is a legitimate alliance recognized by the guild among all the parties involved. However, it wouldn't be so tight to not allow for the Strausses to go on a mission separate from others, even as I've argued already happens in canon with several characters in the Strongest Team.

The fun thing about this scenario is that, even as it starts with Lisanna as a member of the Strongest Team, we end up with a situation that creates a lot of other interesting scenarios. We have a great way to further relationships that fans are very much interested in, like Natsu and Lisanna's or Erza and Mirajane's. Though, I'm honestly most interested in how this would affect the relationship between Lucy and Lisanna. With this setup, you could write them as best friends or heated love rivals depending on how much you're influenced by Mashima's France interview.

Of course, there's another aspect to this I have to bring up. This is another way to deal with Lisanna's lack of impact post-Edolas. Instead of having her stop living, make it so she never goes to Edolas. You can't act like that isn't an interesting alternative. Even if she wouldn't end up being a part of Natsu's main team, this makes up for the lack of logic behind her return.

Well, only kind of.

See, the idea that Lisanna went to Edolas because of the accident is speculation. It's not unreasonable to think that everything goes well on the mission, with or without Natsu's help, and Lisanna still ends up going to Edolas. Even if that was the logic, as much as I love the guy, it's hard to say that having Natsu would actually make the difference between Lisanna being safe and her not being safe. Considering how little either version of the mission presents us with how things devolved, it's hard to say what difference Natsu being there would actually make.

What's crazy is that these aren't the big reasons why I'm only considering this here. If I were to try hard enough, I could probably come up with explanations as to why everything works the way it would have to work for Natsu to join the mission, keep Lisanna safe, and have Lisanna remain on Earthland. Worst case scenario, I just handwave the explanations entirely by skipping straight to some later date where Natsu's doing things with the Strauss kids regularly because he helped them on that mission.

The real issue I'd have is dealing with the characters after this. If I went through with this, I would have to reimagine nearly every single character involved in this situation. The only characters who would be the same are Lucy and Wendy. They joined the guild after the mission and were mostly ignorant of it until Edolas. The Strauss kids ended up being how we recognize them in canon largely because of what happened on that mission.

Based on Part 16

#the rewrite of fairy tail #lisanna strass #what if 11 #fairy tail month: seven of these?#i'm tired and thirsty #queuing this #will likely also be tired and thirsty #when it posts

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watermelonselfship · 3 years ago

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Self Ship Dialogue Prompt #2!

Requested by @abandonedhearts ! The second one is in another post!

Prompt: “I love you, but please stop whatever it is that you’re doing.”

Click. Click click. Click. Click click click.

Raymond looked up from where he was reading, cozy in a pillow pile on the corner of his bed. His first, and irrational, instinct was that he was under attack somehow, but a quick glance around proved that definitely wrong. Barney would have looked up from his spot reading at the desk, his senses more sharp than Raymond's.

Probably someone walking down the hallway, he figured, and went back to reading.

Click. Click. Click click click.

This time, as Raymond's train of thought was interrupted, he didn't look up, instead trying to see if the sound was coming closer or farther down the hallway.

Click. Click. Click.

It wasn't actually moving, Raymond realized, and furrowed his brow. Now he wasn't going to be able to get back to his book at all with this sound driving him crazy. It was going off in sporadic intervals, random rhythms, and not in a large enough frequency for him to pinpoint it right away. Most infuriatingly of all, Barney didn't seem to notice the sound at all.

That's when it, well, clicked. Barney didn't notice the sound because he was making the sound.

"Hey babe," Raymond called, sitting up a bit from his cozy pillow corner. "“I love you, but please stop whatever it is that you’re doing.”

Barney stopped mid-click and looked back at Raymond, confused. "I'm reading?" That's when Raymond noticed the pen in Barney's left hand.

"Yeah babe no, that's fine," Raymond clarified, and pointed at the pen, "You've been clicking that pen the whole time while you were doing it.

Barney looked, a little surprized at the pen in his hand. "Oh huh, my bad." He set the pen down, out of his reach, and went back to reading.

"Thanks babe, I love you!" Raymond chimed, turning back to his book.

That lasted about five minutes.

Tap. Tap tap. Tap. Tap.

Raymond paused, and listened for the sound to repeat itself, then sighed.

"Barn."

"Huh?" Barney asked, turning again.

"Do you know you're tapping?"

"Tapping?"

Raymond sat up, and crawled to the edge of the bed closest to Barney. "Yeah love you're tapping. Do you even notice?"

Barney gave a half hearted shrug. "I mean, I think I kind of did, but I didn't think I was bein' too loud. Sorry." He sounded pretty guilty, and looked a little stress. That worried Raymond, and he took his boyfriend's hand in his.

"Hey, hey what's wrong?"

"It's not that big a deal," Barney tried deflecting, but Raymond's gaze said he was going to push if he didn't elaborate. "I just uh. It feels real bad not to do something with my hands? When I'm reading. I get real stressed out, like I've got an energy stuck in me that I gotta let out. But I don't wanna bother you any, so..." He trailed off.

"So," Raymond began, "You're stimming? If that's the case babe I can help you find something that works for both of us."

Barney tipped his head slightly. "What's stimming?"

Raymond had to blink a few times to process the question. How in the absolute hell had Barney spent all his time with him, Alyx and Gordon and not figured out what stimming was.

"It's like..." Raymond began, trying to find the best words to explain it. "You know how when Alyx has two band-aids on her hands, she'll rub 'em together over and over? Or how Gordon will do that thing where he takes a string in his mouth and pulls it, then like, plucks it like a harp? Or taps his knuckles on the side of his head when frustrated? Or like, you know when I get real excited I flap my hands real fast, sometimes my whole arms?"

Barney nodded, and smiled. "Yeah, it's real cute when you do that."

Raymond stuck his tongue out bashfully for a second, then continued. "It's all types of stimming. It's a sensory-seeking thing, really common in neurodivergent people, but I think neurotypicals do it too? But if you're doing it because it sounds good, or feels nice to do, and it feels real bad if you don't, that's probably stimming."

Barney paused for a second, thinking. "Does ADHD count as neurodivergent?"

"...Yeah, absolutely Barn. Like, one of the big two that people tend to think of when they think about neurodivergency, though they're for SURE not the only ones. The other one's autism- that's me and Gordon, probably Alyx too but I don't know if she's said so or not so I don't wanna assume. I just know that me and Gordon have talked about it before, so I know for sure with him."

Barney nodded slowly, as if some pieces were clicking into place. "Have I ever told you about the time I went to college?"

Raymond also started putting together the pieces, and grinned. "Yeah, you said you suddenly couldn't manage anything going on and had to drop out your second year. Are you about to tell me you got a diagnosis."

Barney laughed, and grinned bashfully. "Yeah, I sure am! I didn't know that was part of the whole deal! They weren't very clear.... An' I never bothered doin' the research because all of it was in these. Impossible to read huge blocks of text with a bunch of technical bullshit, and it always talked about kids?"

Raymond rolled his eyes dramatically, not at Barney but the situation, and nodded sympathetically. "Yeah, a lot of texts like that are really... just inaccessible to the people who need 'em most! It's crazy frustrating, and I don't have the focus problem. God, Barney this legitimately explains so much about you right now, I love you so much."

Barney went red and chuckled softly. "It that noticeable?" He asked, a bit insecure suddenly.

"Only if you know what you're looking for," Raymond admitted. "I sort of have a special interest in mental health stuff, specifically neurodiversity, remember? And I know you real well, and it like... explains so much. I cant believe this never came up before!"

"Well," Barney admitted, rubbing the back of his neck, "I didn't think it mattered any. I was good at my job and I've managed, so why bring it up? Didn't wanna trouble anyone with it..."

Raymond shook his head. "It's not trouble babe, I promise!" he insisted. "Just like Gordon being nonspeaking isn't trouble, any symptoms you've got going aren't going to be any trouble."

Barney shrugged. "Guess I don't know what my symptoms are? It's been so long since I read anything about it, an like I said, it was really too dense for me to work through..."

Raymond nodded. "That's fine babe! Step one, for sure, you stim, and thinking about it I can think of other examples, but the clicking tonight for sure. Step two, what I'll do is see if I've got any books on ADHD, especially in adults, and I'll run through it and help you get some info." He was beaming, doing his slightly excited wiggles at the prospect of helping his boyfriend along with something that related directly to his special interest.

"I'd like that," Barney replied with a smile, then shrugged halfheartedly. "Sorry for bugging you with the stimming thing though."

Raymond shook his head again, emphatically. "No babe! It's not the fact you stim that was bugging me, it was that it was getting distracting for sensory reasons. But that just means I gotta find you like, one of those buttons that you can push but its quiet? But still gives the satisfying give. Like a remote! Or some other way to stim. You shouldn't suppress that sort of thing, yknow? It's normal, and also good for you."

Barney thought for a moment, before marking his place in his book and closing it. "Thanks, Ray," he replied with a grin. "You're so damn good to me."

Raymond stuck his tongue out again and chuckled. "You're good to me first."

"Nah, that's you. Can we cuddle a bit?"

Raymond grinned. "Absolutely, so yes."

Over the next few days, Raymond found Barney starting to cautiously stim more openly, and while he didn't directly address it, he could tell that Gordon and Alyx were excited by the prospect in turn. The group took turns showing their favorite sensory seeking behavior, and gradually Barney settled into a comfortable routine of a few core stims, even if he didn't always display them as publically as the rest.

After a while, Raymond started falling asleep to a soft click click click.

#self ship ask game #self ship writing #canon x oc #writing promt #my writing #Good Books Good Beer #a little long I think and dialogue heavy but MAN #it is time for that good neurodivergent heacanons in MY fucking chilis

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larsmaischak · 4 years ago

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The Mind of the Covid Deniers

Don't dismiss open-up protests as "crazy fringe"

May 13 2020

We should resist the temptation of dismissing the open-up protesters, whose violent side has been on display in Fresno this week in the assault on a police officer and the harassment of a Democratic member of the City Council, as a misguided or even misinformed fringe cause. That does not mean that we should go looking for the kernel of truth or the morsel of legitimate civic concern in the open-up protests. Quite the contrary. We should recognize these protests as part of a global fascist movement as dangerous as any virus.

While there has been some recognition by the media that the "open-up" protests are funded by the usual suspects in the network of far-right propaganda sources and organizations, there is still a strong willingness to discuss the motivations of the protesters in terms of the "legitimate concerns of citizens."

It is important to recognize that whatever legitimate concerns are cited by the protesters, the underlying causes of the protests are to be found in far-right, ultimately fascist, ideology. Certainly, the organizers of the protests have been actively attempting to nudge their followers towards main-stream messaging about economic hardship and individual liberties. And yet, what is on the protesters' minds is quite distinct from these concerns that might be regarded as legitimate, if perhaps a bit misguided.

A closer look at messages worn on the protesters' sleeves demonstrates this point. Consider placards and t-shirts, but also social media comments. The virus is "made in China," one shirt worn by a prospective patron of the north-west Fresno Waffle House proclaimed. This echoes the conspiracy theory claiming the virus was manufactured in a lab in Wuhan, either escaping accidentally, or set loose deliberately. In some accounts, development of the virus was funded by Bill Gates, as part of a scheme to impose a lockdown on America, damage the country's economy, and harm Trump, politically.

It is easy to dismiss this as a "crazy, fringe opinion," and certainly liberals have been busy explaining away every sign of fascist ideology in the past ten years as just that - a marginal phenomenon, best ignored. This dismissal is blind to the widespread dissemination of this and other conspiracy theories. They may originate on the fringes. But as soon as they prove their appeal among a small sub-set of the Republican base, they graduate quickly to mass appeal on YouTube, Fox, and other sources that convey legitimacy and purchase. Next thing, yesterday's "fringe" theory becomes the main subject of a Trump twitter fit. Tomorrow, it becomes the basis of national policy.

The three main views represented among the open-up activist can be classified thus:

There is no virus, just media fear-mongering motivated by a wish to harm America, which is to say, Trump.

There is a virus, but it is no more harmful than the flu. Liberals just want to lock you up at home, as a dry run for their eco-socialist dictatorship, aka the Green New Deal.

There is a virus, and it is extremely dangerous. It was manufactured in China, possibly with Bill Gates's money, in order to bring down America, and thereby harm Trump's chances of reelection.

Just because these theories cannot all be true, won't keep Trumpists from believing and repeating them, all at once. The consistency is not in the specific claims, but in the premise: Whatever is going on here, somewhere, someone with a lot of money, power, and malicious intent is doing this to harm Trump. And whatever harms Trump, harms me, that is to say, it harms America.

A glance at the daily digest of news items from realclearpolitics.com, where headlines from a broad field of far-right media outlets get play, shows the promiscuous pluralism of propaganda on the far right:

There's the Falun Gong-associated "Epoch Times", whose German-language edition has been busy promoting the neo-Nazi AfD Party, hammering home the Republican talking point about the Chinese Communist Party. This effort has been augmented by a professionally produced, well-financed video ad campaign on YouTube.

There's the smear of Democratic governors (Cuomo killed all the old people in nursing homes) and the praise of Trump (he has been calmly in charge, keeping us safe in spite of the haters), as if the playbook of the Hungarian fascist leader, Victor Orban, had been literally translated into English. If ever an opposition politician is elected mayor anywhere in Hungary, count on a deluge of articles in government media revealing his love of pedophelia, immigration, bestiality, and atheism. If not for Orban to keep us safe from these vile demonic creatures, where would Hungary be!

There's the gratuitous skepticism amplified to discredit science, and the ad hominem attacks on those who apply science in public policy. Fauci is an agent of Bill Gates and the Chinese, the charts were all wrong (and Trump had it right, all along), the whistleblowers were silenced by an overbearing expertocracy. This attack on science connects seamlessly to the established tropes of anti-vaccination paranoia and climate-change denial.

All these angles on the theme of conspiracy reflect the agenda and bias of their financers and backers. There's the foreign fascists with an axe to grind with the Communist Party of China, there's the rich right-wing Republican donors who just want to hold on to power in November, and there's the specific sub-set of these donors who make their money with fossil fuel and related industries, like real-estate and the urban-sprawl business in general. There's the opportunistic YouTubers and local politicians (hi, Gary Bredefeld!) who are auditioning for a more well-paid gig. Maybe a slot on Fox, or at least a radio program of your own?

For the common follower, the appeal is a mix of generic fascist tropes. There's the heroic posturing and sense of victimization by unseen, malicious powers. There's the strength-through-joy display of health and vigor, paired with disdain for the weak, expressed in slogans like "I refuse to let your fear take my freedom." There's xeno- as well as Sinophobia. And yet, this global fascist movement is a beautiful caleidoscope of diversity. Chinese, Hungarian, Hindu, German, Arab and American can all agree that the Jews are to blame. Or some other international cabal, if you're not ready to go there, quite yet. But ultimately, it will be the Jew again, that is for sure.

So whatever this movement represents, fringe it ain't. It floats comfortably down the broad mainstream of global fascism, in pleasure crafts decked out with all the amenities the funding from Uihlein, Mercer, Koch, deVos and all the others will purchase, and propelled along by the same stream of capital in search of valorization.

From the helm of the party boat to piloting the ship of state as part of the Trump administration, far-right groups and individuals move freely back and forth. Either way, they're in the Republican Party's organizational orbit, and the designation "fringe" becomes less and less plausible.

It is incumbent on those who wish to keep Americans safe from global contagion to take seriously the danger. Not merely the danger from the virus, but also the danger from the longer-running contagion of global fascism, with its many local and sub-cultural mutations. Fresno surely is a hot-spot of the latter.

#Fresno #fascism #Covid-19 #Virus denial #anti-vaxxers #conspiracy theory #Republican Party #Trump #anti-lockdown protests

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amplesalty · 4 years ago

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A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge (1985) & Scream, Queen! My Nightmare on Elm Street (2019)

One, two, Freddy’s coming for you...

I feel like I’ve mentioned Nightmare 2 a few times on here but it never had it’s own dedicated entry so I’ve had a rewatch of it on my mind for a while now. That was only hastened when I recently learned of ‘Scream, Queen!’, a documentary cantered around Mark Patton who plays the lead character Jesse in 2.

Amongst the less than favourable reviews Nightmare 2 has, it also has the reputation of the ‘gayest horror movie ever’ which lead to the typecasting of Patton and him walking away from his acting career. It’s not something I was immediately aware of on my initial viewing of it, certainly there are a lot of moments that with that in mind stand out upon rewatching and a few that are less than subtle, such as Jesse going to a gay bar in the middle of the night only to run into his gym teacher. Some of it seems a little too much like people trying to read into things that aren’t there, like it seems people point out an early scene where Jesse gets into a tussle with one of his classmates Grady during a softball game. Grady rips Jesse’s trousers and they have a bit of a roll around on the grass before being separated. There are doubtless hundreds of examples of kids getting into fights like that across TV and cinematic history that people wouldn’t point out as examples of homoeroticism. But when you couple that with moments like a later scene where Jesse runs away from his girlfriend as they’re about to have sex, only to seek solitude with Grady and they have this exchange:

“There’s something inside of me. And last night it made me go into my sister’s room. And tonight with Lisa in the cabana, it started happening again.” “I think you are seriously losing it, bro.” “I’m scared, Grady. Something is trying to get inside my body.” “Yeah, and she’s female, and she’s waiting for you in the cabana. And you wanna sleep with me.”

You can perhaps see why people might start drawing conclusions from other scenes.

That ‘something’ is Freddy who is seemingly manifesting himself through Jesse into the real world. Up until that point though, the lines have been very blurry as to whether or not Freddy is actually back or whether Jesse is just going crazy, caught up in the wild stories of this vengeful killer from beyond the grave and becoming some sort of copycat.

It’s that part of the movie that I really like, this gray area where you’re not sure exactly what’s happening. It’s something the Nightmare series is able to explore with its switching between the normal and dream worlds but it’s taken to another level here, rather than just use that to build suspense as to whether a character is in danger due to Freddy being present in the dream world, you can see Jesse descending into this madness and are left to wonder whether or not he’s the one actually the one committing these murders.

Things can be a little disorientating at times due to the editing which I’m not sure is intentional or due to them making cuts. I think there’s a couple of occasions where things will pick up in the morning with Jesse wearing one set of clothes, then jumping to lunch time at school or in the evening back home where he’s wearing different clothes, inplying a day or more has passed. I suppose it does add to the atmosphere in a way but it also comes off a bit weird to me.

The movie is pretty much entirely in the real world so it lacks the creative and unique kills that often arise when people slip into slumber and into Freddy’s realm. But it does feature a scene where Freddy finally emerges into the real world and terrorises a high school party. You don’t really get that widespread sense of panic elsewhere in the series, there’s often that sort of low level of ongoing dread once the group of kids realise what’s happening and fear the next time they fall asleep but Freddy often kills people when they’re alone so it’s a change to see dozens of kids trying to escape, trampiling each other as they try and break through a gate or climb a wall. Apparently Wes Craven didn’t like this scene as it made Freddy look silly by having him surrounded by a bunch of muscular jocks. I find that a little strange though since, yeah Freddy might not be the most imposing figure size wise but his body is pretty much one giant, oozing sore complete with knives for fingers so I’m pretty sure he’s going to come out on top in terms of intimidation. Not to mention all the supernatural shit he’s seemingly conjuring like turning the pool into a boiling pot and summoning up pillars of fire.

I feel like this is where things take a sharp downturn, having the manifestation of Freddy emerge kinda removes all doubt and also takes Jesse out of the movie until the very end. It just feels a little anti climatic to have this big final battle suddenly fought by Jesse’s girlfriend who falls back on the trope of ‘I know you’re still in there, I love you!’ as she implores Jesse to fight back and finally overcome Freddy. So much for that gay subtext if it’s hetro love that finally saves the day.

Going into this rewatch, I had this built up very highly in my head which I don’t think it was able to live up to. Possibly because this years Invisible Man has surpassed it in my head as the really good example of that ambigious horror I like so much. Like Elisabeth Moss in that film, Patton has a real good look to him here in getting across the anxiety that Jesse is going through.

And to draw comparison to another Universal horror, there’s something of a Jekyll and Hyde or Wolfman to Jesse, the way he worries about this transformation that he’s going through and about the thing inside him coming out. During that scene at Grady’s place, Freddy emerges from Jesse’s body almost like a butterfly breaking free of it’s cacoon. Maybe that’s what everyone is talking about when it comes to the gay themes, that sense of discovery taking place amongst young adults and the angst surrounding whether or not they really want to reveal their true selves to a world that, as we’re unfortunately discovering more and more these days, still isn’t ready to accept everyone even nearly 40 years after this movie came out.

So for the documentary – Scream, Queen is an appropriate name for more than just the play on the ‘scream queen’ moniker given to notable horror movie actresses like Jamie Lee Curtis, and the obvious double meaning with it being focused around Patton’s sexuality. There’s quite a few instances of him delivering screams during Nightmare 2 which is a little unusual for a male character in a horror movie, not least a lead like he was. Plus it’s a little unusual for a male to be the lead at all, ‘last girl’ and all that, especially in the Nightmare franchise, all the other ones I’ve seen so far are female led.

They talk about the negative reputation the movie has and highlight a lot of internet comments about the sexual themes, a lot of slurs in there and comments like ‘Jesse screams like a girl’. Well wouldn’t you if some burn victim grabbed you in your house, ran knived fingers across your face and then ripped the top of his head off to expose his brain? I don’t doubt for a second that there are scores of people out there who would write this off due to this, I would hope that those are just a minority and if people don’t like it that they have legitimate reasons for that.

It’s a very eye opening story because even after learning about all this ‘gay subtext’ surrounding the movie and Patton’s departure from acting, I hadn’t really thought about the wider reasons behind that. Like, you hear about him being typecast and you just think that he doesn’t want to be pigeon holed into just playing one type of character or that it was hard to find work in those roles because not many of them existed. But it’s much deeper and more disturbing than that, delving into the emergence of the disease into the wider public knowledge during the 1980’s and the panic surrounding that. They show archived headlines and TV clips, with one member of the public being interviewed on the news saying “what they’re doing is abnormal...they’re not fit, they’re not human beings”. It’s painted as a bit of a witchhunt, with tabloids trying to out any closeted Hollywood stars and Patton tells a story of being duped into divulging information on his own boyfriends illness. With blood tests implemented for any prospective actors and him being advised to look and act a certain way to be more palatable to casters, he’s being asked to deny who he truly is.

For as much as the movie looks at the darker period of his formative years and him walking away from Hollywood, it’s encouraging to see his re-emergence into the public eye and embracing the fandom surrounding the movie, taking part in conventions and screenings that shun the negativity and instead see the role as empowering, encouraging people going through similar situations and being something of a role model.

The film culminates in a sit down talk between Patton and Nightmare 2’s writer David Chaskin who he feels has thrown him under the bus whenever talk of the ‘gay subtext’ has come up, having long denied any such thing before slowly changing his story and claiming that it was the casting that ruined the movie. Just before this there is footage of Patton and Jack Sholder at a convention where Sholder comes across as a little condescending. He’s basically telling Patton that directing his ire at Chaskin is misplaced and that he should drop the whole thing given it’s been 30 years. There’s an element of truth to that but I think it’s understandable that Patton would feel that way, especially when he points out that it’s only recently that Chaskin has taken ownership of the subtext now that we’re living in a more understanding time where it’s perhaps viewed as a brave move to introduce this kind of element. It’s going to be hard to look past someone enabling more vitriol by pinning problems on you.

The talk between Chaskin and Patton is a little awkward and it comes across like they’re there for different purposes, Chaskin trying to lighten the mood periodically where Patton keeps a serious tone, challenging Chaskin on some of the comments he’s made.

There’s one in particular where Chaskin suggests that the movie could be played at conversion camps....yikes.

Patton openly saying beforehand that he’s looking for an apology but I don’t know if he exactly got that. Chaskin says he hopes Patton can forgive him and that there are previous comments he made that he regrets but it comes across a little laboured. Maybe there was more said whilst the cameras weren’t rolling or maybe Patton is just accepting what little he can get from the experience in order to bring some closure to the whole thing.

#A Nightmare on Elm Street #A Nightmare on Elm Street 2 #Freddy's Revenge #Scream Queen #My Nightmare on Elm Street

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wiseabsol · 5 years ago

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WA Reviews “Dominion” by Aurelia le, Chapter 11: The Chase

Link: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/6383825/11/Dominion

Summary: For the Fire Nation royal siblings, love has always warred with hate. But neither the outward accomplishment of peace nor Azula’s defeat have brought the respite Zuko expected. Will his sister’s plans answer this, or only destroy them both?

Content Warnings: This story contains discussions and depictions of child abuse, emotional abuse, physical abuse, sexual abuse, and incest. This story also explores the idea that Zuko’s redemption arc (and his unlearning of abuse) is not as complete as the show suggested, and that Azula is not a sociopath (with the story having a lot of sympathy for her). If that doesn’t sound like your cup of tea, I would strongly recommend steering clear of this story and my reviews of it.

Note: Because these were originally posted as chapter reviews/commentaries, I will often be talking to the author in them (though sometimes I will also snarkily address the characters). While I’ve also tried not to spoil later events in the story in these reviews, I would strongly recommend reading through chapter 28 before reading these, just to be safe.

Now on to chapter 11!

CHAPTER 11: THE CHASE

Alright, so on to chapter eleven, “The Chase.” I think I know why I stalled on this one, besides life getting in the way: there’s a game in this chapter, in which the readers are challenged to find all of the trope names that Aurelia has snuck into Sokka’s POV sections. And, despite being one of the betas for this story (which renders the reward for finding all of the tropes meaningless), I still want to win. So let’s put on ATLA’s soundtrack and get cracking!

We start with the Gaang arriving at the Royal Palace. Toph still has a crush on Sokka, which both Sokka and Suki are aware of. He describes Katara and Aang as “Sickening Sweethearts” for the first trope. I like that Aang has a “gusty” laugh here—it’s a nice pun. Aang is in such a good mood and I’m like, “Oh buddy, you just wait, the angst is imminent.” Sokka thinks that it’s been two weeks since they last visited, which might be a hyperbole on his part, but if so, boy have things changed quickly.

“Little lump of baby fat who was heir to the Burning Throne” is a great description, though I have my doubts that Lu Ten is going to sit on that throne, given that there’s a chance that he’s a non-bender (which, along with the sexism that has made it so that they’ve never had a woman ruler before, is something the Fire Nation will need to get over at some point, since it could be seen as a fantasy equivalent to ableism).

“Having gotten to know Zuko a little better since then, he concluded it would probably actually suck to be royalty.” Yes and no, Sokka. Definitely don’t doubt how sweet—okay, to interject for a second, “Leaves on the Vine” just came on and it hurts my heart—but anyway, Sokka, don’t doubt how sweet being royal is. There is a reason that people fight for that title. Being a responsible ruler, on the other hand—one who works their butt off to serve the people—yeah, that can be rough, because you need to go to those meetings and listen to those complaints. Doing so is, hopefully, also rewarding to the soul, but in Zuko’s case…hard to say. I think he prefers to be directly involved in making things better, rather than being in a managerial position. I think I’ve mentioned before how he should have been sent on rebuilding and reparations missions, with someone like Iroh doing the governance side of things…though putting Iroh in charge might have been scandalous after the Siege of Ba Sing Se. There were no good choices there.

“Missing Mom” for the second trope. “He found himself wondering if dysfunction was some kind of prerequisite for royal families.” No, though I can’t imagine that the pressures of living in the public eye, making decisions that affect an entire land and its people, and trying to build a legacy helps. Doing that for a few years is probably fine, but not for your entire life.

Sokka makes an amusing fish pun in this section. “First Love,” “Manly Tears,” and “Vengeful Spirit” for the third, fourth, and fifth tropes.

The Gaang arrives at the throne room, where Zuko and Iroh are arguing. Zuko mentions something about selling Azula to someone, which must be the Earth Kingdom, since he had a tense conversation with them last chapter. Zuko is in a foul mood, snapping at his friends as they walk in.

“Visual Pun” and “Clean Cut” for a sixth and seventh trope. The Gaang and Zuko then start talking, with Katara quickly catching on to the fact that Zuko was in a fight with Azula. Zuko explains that Azula slashed his face with a pin, and almost mentions that he and Azula slept together, before cutting himself off and blushing. Sokka notices the blush and is confused by it.

“Aang breezed up to him”—I see your pun, Aurelia.

Toph asks where Mai is, and Zuko tells them that Mai and Lu Ten are staying with Mai’s family. You know what, totally fair, Mai. I’d want space too. Zuko goes over Azula’s escape and mentions that they fought, and Sokka points out that Zuko should have been able to track her afterwards, since he’s a “Scarily Competent Tracker” (for an eighth trope). Zuko lies and says that Azula knocked him out, which Toph notices.

“I’m kinda starting to doubt her resolve,” Sokka says about Azula killing Zuko. This is both funny and sad, because, well, Azula and Zuko are siblings. No one should have to worry about one of them legitimately wanting to kill the other, even in the games of thrones. It doesn’t even occur to Sokka that Azula might care for Zuko. And why would it? As far as he knows, she tried to kill Zuko during their Agni Kai, and before that sounded excited about the prospect of becoming an only child.

Sokka is annoyed that things aren’t adding up in this conversation, and Zuko bursts out that he doesn’t know why Azula does the things that she does, which is another lie. Toph catches on to that one, too, but isn’t sure what it means. What’s notable here, though, is that Zuko is so used to calling Azula crazy that he says this as an outburst, even though he knows better. It’s a kneejerk reaction for him.

Zuko tells them that the Earth Kingdom is planning to execute Azula if they catch her, which offends Aang, since the tribunal agreed that life in prison would be Azula’s maximum sentence. Zuko explains that the politics around her case got dirty, shocker. Aang matured a lot during the show, but in some ways, he’s still rather naive.

“‘I gave them everything they ever asked!’ Zuko raged helplessly, glaring at the black stone floor. ‘Why can’t they just give me my sister?’”—This is sweet, though I think that Azula would be offended by the idea of anyone giving her to someone else.

“Mismatched Eyes” for a ninth trope. Toph tells Zuko that he’s just going to have to find a way around the Earth Kingdom’s sentence, which Iroh and Zuko agree with her on. Zuko mentions that they’re having their lawyers look into the court case, and then turns on Suki, asking how Azula got slapped with a torture charge.

Sokka says that Zuko is out of line for accusing Suki here, but honestly? Getting slapped with a torture charge is huge, especially when there’s no evidence that the accused did it. It’s slanderous and I’m not surprised that Zuko is reacting poorly to it. The implication here is that Suki’s comrades lied about the torture out of spite, or, if they were tortured, that it wasn’t on Azula’s orders. The Fire Nation absolutely did torture people, namely the Southern Water Tribe’s benders…but so did the Earth Kingdom, since they psychologically tortured and brainwashed their own civilians in Ba Sing Se. One crime doesn’t negate the other—they both need to be held accountable for their actions—but there is definitely some hypocrisy here from the Earth Kingdom.

Suki seems to think that her comrades were tortured, or at least she didn’t want them to “lie on [Azula’s] behalf.” But Suki, do you know for a fact that it happened? Obviously, I think that you should believe your comrades, since it’s better to believe the victims than not. But if it happened, who tortured them? Has the person who gave those orders been brought to justice? Because letting Azula be scapegoated for someone else’s crimes isn’t justice, it’s vindictiveness, and it means that somewhere out there, an actual torturer went free.

“Ridiculous accusations”—no, Sokka, this is a fair accusation, and it’s something that should have been brought to Zuko’s attention during the court case, or at least to the attention of Azula’s lawyers. They have the right to know what their client is being accused of and the evidence against them. That is, in fact, how the law is supposed to work. Mind you, I’m speaking of modern law practices, but it seems like their law practices are analogous.

Sokka says that Azula getting beheaded would be a favor for everyone, and Zuko snaps. He lunges at him—Sokka gets his boomerang out—and Iroh steps between them. Iroh scolds Zuko for being so aggressive with his friends, which is fair. He’s lashing out a lot during this conversation. Zuko then breaks down, with Suki and Katara hugging him in response. Toph sighs in a “Surrounded by Idiots” way for a tenth trope.

Sokka feels guilty over making Zuko cry. “He guessed that even if she was a crazy bitch, she was his sister, too. Of course that was what Zuko would think of, when it looked like she was going to die. Zuko had got this way when she starved herself too, Sokka recalled, and thought that he should have remember that sooner.”—Yeah, no kidding, Sokka. A little empathy and tact would have served you much better in this conversation.

Sokka apologizes shortly after this and Zuko apologizes in return. Katara promises that they’ll always help Zuko, and I wonder if that would still be true if they knew that he’d raped Azula (which he definitely did, even if he didn’t realize it at the time, since Azula wasn’t able to consent).

Sokka “wondered idly why [Katara] couldn’t forgive him that quickly when he said something tactless.” While Sokka assumes that it’s because Zuko is crying, I’m pretty sure that it’s because Katara has an unacknowledged crush on Zuko, so she’s more inclined to cut him some slack.

“It would be like Toph shoe-shopping. No one would buy it.”—This is very funny.

“Sokka reflected again on the idiocy of investing this much time, emotion, and debate into someone as damaged and dangerous as Zuko’s psycho little sister.”—I see what you’re doing here, Aurelia.

Sokka asks what they should do if Azula tries to kill them, and Zuko says, “She’s crazy. And scared, and alone.” And on the one hand, that’s true, but on the other hand, he shouldn’t be infantilizing her.

“‘Please just—remember that, if she does anything too desperate, or,’ he practically choked on his words, ‘says anything too desperate.’” This is a bad look for Zuko, since he is, essentially, trying to give himself a cushion against any accusations that Azula levels at him. He is trying to plant a seed of doubt so they’re less inclined to believe her about the rape. But I think that this will backfire on him, because he’s priming them to pay attention to what she says instead. The cold truth is, if he hadn’t done this, I don’t think they would have believed her. They’d think she was trying to slander him, because A.) They like and respect him and want to believe that he’s fully redeemed and would never do such a thing, B.) They believe that she’s a lying villain who wants to take him down, and C.) Many people don’t believe sexual assault victims anyway, regardless of the evidence they have to support their claims. But now he’s drawing arrows to her accusations, and a few of them will probably remember that, and how weird he was acting during this conversation. They’ll wonder why he said that they should dismiss what she says, which would have normally been a given for them.

The conversation wraps up as the Gaang goes to their rooms, and Zuko and Iroh continue to talk offscreen. We shift over to Azula’s POV. She’s riding an ostrich horse past an abandoned mill. She’s being rather nasty to her mount, using her fire whip to make it do what she wants. It seems like she hasn’t grown out of being cruel to animals yet (though I just re-watched the introduction to June in ATLA, and she liberally uses her whip on her mount, so I’m not sure that this is an uncommon treatment of animals in this world, just distasteful).

Azula didn’t stop to grab provisions, which is a surprising mistake, coming from her. Granted, she had to escape quickly in the last chapter, and was probably scattered from a fresh dose of trauma. She fantasizes about eating Rai’s potato and leek stew, rather than some of her favorite foods from the palace. To be fair, if that was my most recent, tasty meal, I’d probably be doing the same. But also, I think the kindness of that meal has probably gotten under Azula’s skin.

“She had been discovered. She knew how that would end. So why did she stay? She had asked herself that a dozen times since the cook betrayed her, and now thought she knew. Not for Rai’s company, certainly. Azula ought to have her traitor’s tongue out just for the presumption she showed.”—Okay, Hot Stuff, have you ever actually ordered for someone to have their tongue taken out, or are you just repeating something nasty Ozai that threatened to do? Because I’m betting it’s the latter. Also, I bet you stayed because you liked being shown some basic human kindness.

“No, worse still, it was to eat food that didn’t taste the same every day, and lay her head on a pillow at night, and take a bath—an actual bath—without unwelcome supervision…”—You mean the things that every human being should have? Especially the unsupervised baths part? I understand why Azula was watched, since she might have tried to hurt herself if she was left alone in the asylum, but still, that’s terrible.

“If she let such base considerations drive her, she would be no better than her hedonist uncle. Far better she had been betrayed now and so incompetently, then continue that way. It was that kind of complacency that would get her captured, or killed.”—Oh good, you’re going to deny yourself basic human comforts to get the job done, that’s healthy for you, Azula. You want to know who I bet never did something remotely similar to that? Ozai. I bet he’s always slept with a pillow and always had a cook on hand and was always able to bath in private. Good lord, child.

“Her father was counting on her. Her country was counting on her. She could not make these kind of mistakes.”—That’s a lot of pressure to put on yourself, my dear. Sadly, I think that the Fire Nation might have forgotten about her, since no one tried to break her out.

Azula unloads her mount of supplies and sends it running in another direction—with more fire whips, shame on her (though is she hurting it or just scaring it? That isn’t clear)—to leave a false trail for anyone who might be pursuing her. She then thinks, “It was too bad about losing the ostrich horse though, especially after Mother gave her so much grief—" So she’s still seeing Ursa. To be specific, Ursa was chiding her about stealing the ostrich horse. There are a couple of things of note about this. One is that Azula is committing the same crime that Zuko did in the show, and will probably get more flack for it. The other is that the voice of her mother, in this moment, seems to be her conscience—meaning that Azula feels guilty about stealing.

“They never did anything for me either . . . So what do you imagine I owe them?”—Azula shuts down her guilt by saying something that sounds suspiciously like something Ozai would say. That because someone wasn’t kind to her, that gives her the right to be cruel to them. Which…really isn’t how you should treat people.

“She didn’t talk to it. Wasn’t that her rule?”—Does that help you, Azula?

“How could she expect to rule anyone when she couldn’t even rule herself….”—Another thing that I’m certain Ozai said to her at some point.

“She had a mission. Everything else was immaterial. This was her one chance. No room for mistakes. No room for distractions. She had to focus. She had to get better. She would not be as effective as she could be, until she was whole again.”—Again, that’s a lot of pressure to put on yourself, Azula. Sadly, you might be right, though. The Earth Kingdom isn’t going to give you a second chance to find your mother. They don’t even want to give you this one.

Azula then burns down the mill and escapes by boat, hopefully widening the distance between herself and those searching for her.

Back to the Gaang! Toph and Aang are practicing earthbending, while Sokka preps the war balloon and inwardly gripes about them not helping. Aang and Katara are searching for Azula on Team Appa, while Suki, Sokka, and Toph are on Team War Balloon (which has been dyed black for the occasion).

Sokka makes a basket case pun about the balloon as he and Suki argue over how he treated Zuko the previous day. Suki points out that he missed the fact that Mai left Zuko, which Katara is peeved about. Katara, you don’t know and don’t want to know the full story there, trust me. Suki agrees with me. Katara reveals that she tried to talk to Mai, which Suki is horrified about, because good lord is it none of Katara’s business. Tact does not run in this family.

Zuko comes charging in, upset by this. Zuko and Katara argue, and Suki, hilariously, “looked to Sokka in clear disbelief that this much tactlessness could be contained in one family.” I knew that Suki and I were on the same page.

“Since when does she need to cool off? She shows all the emotion of an ice cube.”—Hey, Katara? This is super rude. Just because you don’t like Mai and are lowkey jealous of her relationship with Zuko does not give you the right to insult her.

“‘She had every reason!’ Zuko hotly defended, and implicated himself by saying so.”—Whoops, Zuko. Good job. “I brought you here to find my sister, not play marriage councilor! So why don’t you just stay out of problems that don’t concern you?”—Ho boy, so he shouldn’t have said this as hotly as he did, but he’s also not wrong? Focus on the problem that he’s asked for help with, Katara. His marital problems are none of your concern.

Katara responds equally hotly to this, but she’s in the wrong here, even if it will probably take her some time to realize that. What she’s most upset about is Zuko acting like he summoned them to his side, rather than them coming because they’re friends, and like…I can see why that would be insulting, but you also just tried to interfere with his marriage, Katara. I think you messed up worse in this fight.

Katara and Aang head out, or in Katara’s case, storms out. Team War Balloon leaves soon afterwards, with Sokka thinking that he’d rather deal with Flaky Aang over Angry Jerk any day, which is fair. Zuko and Katara were both poorly behaved here.

“He guessed they’d all be happier once Azula was back in her straightjacket. But first he had to make it happen. Right. No problem.”—I doubt that you’re going to make it happen, Sokka, and I think that you doubt it too.

And that’s the end of chapter eleven! Next up is chapter twelve, “The Seal,” which is my favorite chapter in this fic so far. I’m excited! As always, thank you for the read, Aurelia.

Sincerely,

WiseAbsol

#WiseAbsol #Dominion by Aurelia le #Fanfiction #Review #Azula #avatar: the last airbender

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thesportssoundoff · 5 years ago

Text

“The BMF in MSG on pseudo PPV” UFC 244 Preview

Joey

October 28th, 2019

The UFC's first two showcases in MSG were based entirely around putting on insane title fights that flexed the UFC's superior depth as an organization. Conor/Alvarez in a battle of champions with two title fights and a host of big names (Edgar, Stephens, Romero, Tate, Weidman) underneath it followed up by GSP/Bisping with Dillashaw/Garbrandt and Rose Najamunas/Joanna underneath it. 2018 signified a change as big fight after big fight fell through and the UFC was left just aiming to put on a crazy deep card with high levels of violent potential on it. It succeeded on that but the card felt a step behind the other shows. This one feels more like a return to old with hints of the more modern formula sprinkled in. There's no Conor and no Khabib, there's no big title fight, there's no real fight of divisional significance either. What there is a big main event pitting two big stars against one another with a fake belt on the line (but aren't they all really if we're being honest) with an undercard that doesn't showcase the UFC's depth and isn't loaded with big superstars but has a litany of really fun action fights on tap. Nate Diaz vs Jorge Masvidal for the BMF title feels like the UFC doing the rare thing; giving the fans what they want while also giving themselves what they need. Under that you have just a rush of really freaking good action fights that maybe won't matter in a year from now but combine to create a very appealing way to spend a Saturday night, Let's talk about it.

Fights: 12

Debuts:

Fight Changes/Injury Cancellations: 2 (Colby Covington vs Kamaru Usman CANCELLED/Krzysztof Jotko OUT, Brad Tavares IN vs Edmen Shahbazyan)

Headliners (fighters who have either main evented or co-main evented shows in the UFC): 11 (Jorge Masvidal, Nate Diaz, Stephen Thompson, Kelvin Gastelum, Darren Till, Blagoy Ivanov, Derrick Lewis, Kevin Lee, Corey Anderson, Brad Tavares, Andrei Arlovski)

Fighters On Losing Streaks in the UFC: 4 (Stephen Thompson, Derrick Lewis, Kevin Lee, Darren Till)

Fighters On Winning Streaks in the UFC: 14 (Jorge Masvidal, Jair Rozenstruik, Vicente Luque, Corey Anderson, Johnny Walker, Blagoy Ivanov, Johnny Walker, Jennifer Maia, Chance Rencountre, Hakeem Dawodu,Edmen Shahbazyan, Shane Burgos, Mawkan Amirkhani, Gregor Gillespie)

Main Card Record Since Jan 1st 2017 (in the UFC): 31-17

Nate Diaz- 1-0 Jorge Masvidal- 3-2 Darren Till- 4-2 Kelvin Gastelum- 2-2-1 Stephen Thompson- 1-3 Vicente Luque- 6-1 Derrick Lewis- 4-3 Blagoy Ivanov- 2-1 Kevin Lee- 3-3 Gregor Gillespie- 5-0

Fights By Weight Class (yearly number here):

Welterweight- 3 (67) Heavyweight- 2 (36) Middleweight- 2 (42) Featherweight- 2 (55) Light Heavyweight- 1 (40) Lightweight- 1 (70) Women’s Flyweight- 1 (32)

Women’s Strawweight- (28) Bantamweight- (53) Flyweight- (15) Women’s Featherweight- (8) Women’s Bantamweight- (18)

2019 Number Tracker

Debuting Fighters (38-59-1)-

Short Notice Fighters (29-36)- Brad Tavares

Second Fight (56-35)-

Cage Corrosion (Fighters who have not fought within a year of the date of the fight) (22-38-1)-

Undefeated Fighters (40-37-2)- Gregor Gillespie, Edmen Shahbazyan

Fighters with at least four fights in the UFC with 0 wins over competition still in the organization (12-9)-

Weight Class Jumpers (Fighters competing outside of the weight class of their last fight even if they’re returning BACK to their “normal weight class”) (29-23)- Darren Till, Kevin Lee

Twelve Precious Ponderings

1- Anyone else we still had buyrates to pour over for this one? Imagine being able to comp this to the Conor/Nate fights or Conor/Khabib or the bigger Jones fights to see where these two really rank in terms of buyrates.

2- So what's the end result when this is over? Are we going to pretend the BMF thing is real? Are we going to retire it? Is this like when the WBC has some new title made for Floyd's next big fight then he just keeps it in his attic in his 50 room mansion? I'm just perplexed what the long term plan is for this title that allegedly costs thousands to make.

3- One of the more interesting things about this fight is that Masvidal;s pretty much changed how he fights going up in weight. I don't know if it was just more confidence in himself without nixing off 15 lbs or if he made a concession that he needed to change to adapt to his weight class but he went from not having a stoppage via strikes at LW for six years to stopping 5 of his 6 WW wins. Nate Diaz is notoriously durable but he's also been hurt in the past at 170 lbs and I think Masvidal's pop is legitimate up at WW. Conversely we've seen Masvidal dropped by guys like Till and Larkin only to rise up and get right back to doing what he does. I'm curious if Masvidal will come out fighting Nate like he has every other welterweight or if this turns into a cautiously fun fight where nobody really gets a serious edge and it's a respect filled slodge down the stretch.

4- How does Conor wiggle himself into the main event conversation before all's said and done.

5- What could Darren Till and his camp possibly see in Kelvin Gastelum that this is the fight they wanted for his debut?

6- Derrick Lewis is undefeated against big Eastern European dudes. Just want to keep that in the conversation.

7- Speaking of weird matchups that don't make any sense on paper, Kevin Lee opted to drop back down to 155 lbs and his first fight is Gregor Gillespie. This after we just saw two straight fights where Lee struggled to get off the fence against grapplers with more strength and a better understanding of control than he does. Now to his credit, Lee beat Michael Chiesa who is similar but I'd argue Chiesa is more of a big slug muk type LW whereas Gillespie is a fluid mover with quick enough pop in his hands to survive fights at range if need be. I don't know if Lee made the right call here unless he's got a secret escape route vs Gillespie. It is fair to point out that Gregor Gillespie has never faced a guy with Kevin Lee's overall skillset but if this turns into a battle of wills and cardio, I gotta bet on Gillespie.

8- They're not the sexiest of names on a card like this but both of these featherweight fights are great fun. Hakeem Dawodu vs Julio Arce is a great striking contest where you have two hittable featherweights sort of trying to scrap their way out of the bottom half of the ranks going at it. Arce has the better resume but Dawodu has crazy upside and promise. Arce tends to fight his opponent's fight so chances are this is going to be a pretty fun back and forth all kickboxing affair. Makwan Amirkhani vs Shane Burgos should be a hilarious striker vs grappler fight as Burgos is one of the best featherweights at controlling range and pace while Amirkhani probably beats every featherweight who he can get to the ground (minus Arnold Allen who JUST edged out a decision). Amirkhani's hands haven't taken the next step the way a lot of folks expected but beyond that, he's a lot of fun. Burgos is one of the many dudes who adopted Conor McGregor's stalk and strike style and I'd imagine it's going to be pretty tense in the latter rounds to see Burgos chasing with this being a takedown vs knockdown style chess match. Good fights on the prelims.

9- Andrei Arlovski vs Jair Rozenstruik is going to be a happenin'. There's a good chance Rozenstruik is going to be racing Ciryl Gane for most impressive UFC newcomer down the stretch.

10- Corey Anderson is the guy the UFC doesn't ever want to give a title shot to because nobody would possibly care about Anderson vs Jones. Johnny Walker is in a small circle of fun LHWs who the UFC believes will be big pieces of their puzzle once Shogun, Glover and company clear out the middle of the division. This is a very strange yet kinda appealing risky fight from the UFC.

11- Brad Tavares grinded and scrapped his way up the UFC rankings to get one main event slot and now he's back on the prelims testing prospects. Life is tough in UFC land. They also clearly think he's cooked because they're handing him over to the Ronda promoted prospect who has two first round finishes in three UFC fights.

12- Is the winner of Jennifer Maia vs Kaitlyn Chookagian the #1 contender?

#MMA #UFC #Diaz #Masvidal #Till #Gastelum #Lewis #Black Beast #Ivanov #Thompson #Luque

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leisurelypanda · 6 years ago

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i'm so mean to bucky but i honestly just need something with shrunkyclunks and bucky being mugged and then getting protective care later from steve, i'm evil i know sorry haha

You want angst? Okay! >:D

https://archiveofourown.org/works/18376730

Being Captain America’s boyfriend was never guaranteed to be easy. Despite the fact that both the Avengers’ public relations team, Tony Stark’s personal team, and all of Bucky’s friends had all told him not to google himself after their relationship became public, Bucky hadn’t been able to resist the temptation. It was everything that he could have predicted and more.

There were strong supporters and vocal detractors. Some people thirst tweeted him, others thirst tweeted Steve (which wasn’t new), and some thirst tweeted both of them. That part was fine, if a little… invasive. Other people claimed that Steve could do better. Bucky ignored those, because honestly, who cared? Steve thought he was sexy (a fact that still made Bucky feel a little giddy) and that was all that mattered.

The main issue was the religious nuts who had a collective aneurysm, as though the fact that Captain America was fucking a guy was a personal attack. Steve ignored them, but he was a little more experienced ignoring such people. Bucky was honestly a bit worried. There had been more than one conservative speaker who claimed that Bucky was an agent of the Devil who had corrupted the moral symbol of America, and by extension, the entire country as a whole.

If it had been something normal and simple such as, “The gays cause floods, wildfires, and tornados,” that would’ve been fine. Those made Bucky chuckle. Claiming that he personally was a danger and threat and seeing people agree with it so easily was a little more disturbing.

After about a month of that, Bucky started a total social media blackout. They were right, it wasn’t worth the worry. Steve started training him in combat skills, too. “You never know when you’ll need to defend yourself,” he said. Bucky laughed it off more to deflect from the fact that he was actually kinda worried.

About a month into his social media blackout, Bucky was minding his own business while walking towards his apartment. The Tower was nice, but it wasn’t Brooklyn and Bucky really did like having his own space. It wasn’t anything fancy, but for a guy who was working on a cupcake shop, it was everything he needed it to be: comfortable, warm, and within his ability to pay.

Brooklyn was beautiful. The fact that Bucky had grown up there made him biased, but also right. He loved how it seemed both old and new. Steve sometimes talked about how it used to look like, what people used to do there. He’d drawn pictures of tall buildings that were piles of shacks more than anything connected by rows of laundry hung out over the streets to dry.

It was amazing, both from an artistic sense and from a historical one. Now, Brooklyn was a place full of youth and vigor. It seemed full of art and possibilities and sometimes Bucky caught Steve’s eyes glaze over, as if he was imagining what life might’ve been like in this Brooklyn instead of the one he grew up in. Maybe he would’ve had a future instead of bleak prospects and a weak body.

Bucky turned the corner and continued walking towards his apartment like he always did. As he passed by the alley between a bar and a pizza joint, he was grabbed from behind. His yell was muffled as he was slammed against the brick wall behind him. The back of his head throbbed in pain.

“What the? Who the hell are you?!” he demanded. It came out more as a groan than a yell like he’d hoped for.

“Are you Bucky Barnes?” one of them asked. There were three of them. They each wore black ski masks like some cheesy movie trope, but at the moment, Bucky was actually legitimately terrified.

“Who wants to know?” Bucky replied. They looked at each other before one of them checked his back pockets until they found his wallet.

“It’s him,” they reported.

“Well then, Bucky,” the first mugger said. “We’re here to save the soul of Captain America.”

An icy sliver of dread passed through Bucky’s stomach as he caught the sliver of a knife while someone else produced a gun. His brief amount of combat training with Steve kicked in and he bashed his head against the nose of the mugger who held him against the wall. Bucky grabbed the blade that the mugger dropped and dropped into a defensive posture.

They couldn’t have all brought knives like normal psychopaths, could they? Bucky thought.

He attacked and managed to disarm the second one before he decided to make a run for it rather than try to fight his way out. As he was making his getaway, though, he heard a shot followed by the sudden stabbing of a gunshot strike like lightning in his leg. He didn’t have time. He dashed into the bar. He went straight into the bar, his leg throbbing in protest with every step.

“Call an ambulance,” Bucky said through clenched teeth. The bartender nodded and picked up the phone. Bucky barely registered what he said as he tried desperately to keep pressure on a wound he couldn’t see. When the bartender was done, he came around the bar with a rag and a length of twine.

“They’re on their way,” he said. “Where is it?”

“Thigh,” Bucky breathed. “Back. Can’t see.”

The bartender rolled him over on his side and pressed the rag to the wound. Bucky cried out in pain as the bartender secured the cloth to his leg with quick and brutal precision.

“What’s your name, son?” the bartender asked. “I’m Steven Goldberg.”

“Bu-Bucky Barnes,” he said. “Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me yet,” the bartender said. “The ambulance will be here soon. Tell me about yourself.”

“I—I make cupcakes,” he said. “Barnes’ Artisanal Bakery.”

“You just make cupcakes at your bakery?” Steven asked. Bucky chuckled and shook his head.

“No, they’re just… my specialty,” he said. “Make bread, too. Lots of challah. Grandma’s recipe.”

“You Jewish?” Steven asked. Bucky nodded. “Me, too. Great-grandma was saved by Captain America during the Holocaust. Named my granddad Steve after him. My ma named me after him.”

Bucky smiled. “He’s my… boyfriend,” Bucky said. “Ma was so proud… when she heard. Said it made up for… me eating bacon.”

Steven laughed at that. Bucky chuckled a bit at that, too. Then he closed his eyes. Steven shook him lightly.

“Stay with me, Bucky!” he said sternly. “Come on, tell me about your favorite cupcake recipe. How did you meet Steve Rogers?”

“Catered a… party… at the tower,” Bucky said. “Just tired…”

“Hey, hey, stay awake!” Steven said. He slapped Bucky’s face lightly. “The ambulance is almost here, gotta stay awake.”

Everything went dark.

Bucky heard people. He heard voices, but they were speaking like he was underwater or something. He couldn’t make anything out. Someone sounded stressed. It might’ve been Steve. He couldn’t tell. He wished they would be quiet. He was still so tired.

He became aware of some terrible, searing pain. It didn’t feel anything like the bullet. The bullet felt just fine in comparison to this, like he’d been hit with a stick. He felt like he was burning from the inside out. He might have screamed, maybe it was someone else. After a while, he passed out again.

When he next came to, he heard beeping by his bedside. He groaned softly and the next thing he knew, someone was holding his hand tightly.

“Buck?” someone said. It was Steve. Bucky grinned knowing that Steve was with him. “Come on, Bucky wake up for me, please.”

“Stevie,” Bucky replied. It was little more than a murmur. His voice was hoarse and his throat hurt like hell. It wasn’t a dream, then. He had screamed, but he didn’t know why.

“Oh, thank God,” Steve sighed with relief. “Can you open your eyes?”

Bucky slowly opened them. He looked up into a face that was both strange and familiar. It was Steve, his Steve, but he’d grown a beard at some point. That was weird. Steve never had facial hair. He definitely hadn’t had one the last time Bucky saw him. He looked amazing, though.

“Nice beard,” Bucky said. Steve grinned and laughed with relief. “Am I in a hospital?”

“Yeah, yeah you are,” Steve replied. He looked down with concern at Bucky’s face. “How… do you feel?”

Bucky thought for a moment. He felt… fine. Better than fine, actually. He wasn’t in any pain at all. After a gunshot wound, he figured he’d at least be a bit tender afterwards or have a lot of pain. Even his head felt clear, rather having than the dull throb and foggy senses that might have accompanied a concussion.

“What happened?” Bucky asked.

“You were attacked,” Steve said. His face was resolute, but Bucky could see the guilt and sadness underneath. The guy who called the ambulance said that he didn’t know who did it.

“I don’t, either,” Bucky said. “They just said they were trying to save your soul.”

Steve grimaced. “Anyway, after you were out of danger, you went into shock,” he said. “The doctors said that you had a mild concussion and you’d lost a lot of blood despite what Mr. Goldberg did.”

“He was named after ya, ya know,” Bucky said. “Said his great-grandma was saved by you during the Holocaust.”

“Really?” Steve said. “He didn’t say anything like that to me. I saved a lot of people from the camps whenever I found them.”

“Here I thought my folks were the only Jews who were crazy for ya,” Bucky said. “Clearly all of us love you. You should convert.”

Steve laughed at that. “Sure, Buck. I’ll get right on it,” he said. “Do you feel… strange, at all?”

Bucky frowned at him. “What do you mean, ‘strange’?” he asked.

Steve shrugged and Bucky could see his face blush a bit. “I don’t know… different,” he replied.

Bucky stared at him. “I have an inexplicable urge to run a marathon,” he said. “Does that count as strange?”

“Uh, it might.”

“Steve,” Bucky said sternly. “What did you do?”

Steve looked down sheepishly. “You lost a lot of blood,” Steve replied. “The paramedics didn’t have enough of your blood type, AB negative. Said it was pretty rare. I… offered mine. I apparently have the universal donor or something.”

Bucky blinked. “Okay,” he said. “What does that have to do with me feeling weirdly energetic?”

Steve ducked his head. “The… docs think that I might’ve passed on the serum to you.”

It took a minute for that little tidbit to seep in. Bucky smiled slowly, then all at once.

“They do?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Steve said. “The surgery to get the bullet out was just a few hours ago. They had difficulty keeping you sedated because of the change, actually.”

“How much blood did you give me?” Bucky asked.

“Enough, apparently,” Steve said sheepishly. “They want to monitor you, see if I really did pass everything on.”

“Fuck that!” Bucky cried. He took out the IV and jumped to his feet. He looked down at his body. What had once been skinny arms on a broad frame was now lined with thick muscle. The next thing he did was lift up his hospital gown and check his dick. He barely recognized it. His flaccid length was about as long as he’d used to be while hard. “Damn, look at that! Holy shit!”

“Buck, please, we’re in public,” Steve said with a blush.

“We’re alone in here,” Bucky said with a mischievous grin. “Pull the blinds, maybe we can get a quickie in before the doctor gets here.”

“Buck, I’m serious,” Steve said sternly.

“So am I!” Bucky replied. “It’s not every day you wake up in a brand new body. Come on, help me break this baby in.”

Steve’s blush grew. “Later, I promise,” he said.

Bucky stared at him before he dropped his gown. His dick, which had been working its way to hardness softened.

“Okay,” he said. “Later.”

The doctors cleared Bucky to leave as soon as they saw he was up and about. His ma cried from relief when she arrived and found him. Bucky hugged her tightly and realized that he probably had to be gentle when she groaned a bit more easily than he remembered. His very next thought was that he was gonna get her back for all the years of oppressively bone-crushing hugs she always gave him.

He went back with Steve to the tower where they proceeded to… do absolutely nothing. They didn’t go down to the gym or fuck or even watch tv. Steve just had Bucky sit down on the couch while he did everything. He brought Bucky the biggest sandwiches Bucky had ever seen, he put Bucky’s shoes away for him, he cleaned every visible surface of his apartment twice, he got Bucky everything he wanted, and was even waiting outside when Bucky emerged from the bathroom.

“Steve, come on, I’m fine,” Bucky said. He took Steve’s hand. “Come on, let’s do something fun if we have to stay here.”

“No, Bucky,” Steve said. He jerked his hand out of Bucky’s like it was burned and… Bucky definitely felt that. He scowled at Steve.

“Fine,” he growled. He walked around Steve towards the front door.

“Where are you going?” Steve demanded.

“Home,” Bucky said as he shoved his feet into his shoes. “I’ve got things to do.”

The sound the door made when he slammed it made him feel a little bit satisfied.

It wasn’t until late that evening when Bucky’s phone rang. He looked down at Steve’s number. He was still mad, though, so he let it go to voicemail.

In the hours that he’d been home, he’d cleaned up everything. There was a lot, considering that Bucky tended to not have time to clean things between running a bakery and dating a superhero. His newfound strength and energy, though, proved convenient. He picked up the couch with ease to clean under it and even the bed seemed light to him.

It didn’t seem to matter, though. Steve, for whatever reason, didn’t seem to think that Bucky’s new abilities were all that interesting. He’d backed away from his touch and even turned away when Bucky had tried to kiss him earlier.

What if he doesn’t like the way I look, now? Bucky thought. It made the icy feeling in his gut grow. He curled in on himself, picking his feet up and wrapping his arms around his ankles. It was true, he had been shorter and skinnier than Steve when they met, but surely Steve hadn’t just liked him for his body… right?

The thought wouldn’t leave, though. Bucky eventually ended up falling asleep on the couch with nothing but an old afghan.

His alarm went off the same time it did every morning. Bucky groaned as he pressed snooze. He was gonna take the day off. He’d use the excuse that he’d been shot to defend it if anyone asked. Yesterday had been stressful, after all, in more ways than one.

He did, however, look at Steve’s contact on his phone. His phone said that he had a message from him. There wasn’t anything else, though. It wasn’t like him to ignore Bucky like this, though. Finally, Bucky decided to press the voicemail notification.

Hey, Buck, the message began. I’m sorry for what happened to ya today. Sorry that… you got hurt because of me. If we weren’t together, this wouldn’t ever have happened.

There was a pause in the message and Bucky’s heart stopped. “Steve, don’t you fucking dare,” he grumbled.

I hate that you got hurt because of me, Buck. I couldn’t live with myself if it happened again. I… I think it’s best that we go our separate ways, now.

Bucky couldn’t breathe. His eyes filled with tears and he clutched his shirt over his heart. “No, Steve, stop!”

So… I guess this is goodbye, Buck. I hope you live a good life… End of message. To delete this message—

Bucky hung up. His mind swirled with a tempest of emotions. Grief, shock, denial, rage, hate, and the sharp, bitter sting of rejection all fought for dominance. Bucky fell to his knees on the floor. He looked back down at his phone only to see that he’d crushed it in his hand. He banged his other hand on the coffee table and it cracked.

“Dammit!” he shouted. He got up, still seething with anger as he washed his hand under the sink. Thankfully, no glass had gotten in the cut across his palm, but he still bandaged it up. He would probably be completely fine after a few hours.

The thought of that made him think of Steve, though. Steve did this, made him this way. His body was new and different and strange. He’d broken his phone and his coffee table already. He couldn’t afford to replace them either! And now… now there was no one around to teach him how to adjust.

His legs buckled and he fell to his knees in a corner of the kitchen. He sobbed. Yesterday he’d been mugged, shot, and woken up a different person. Today, he was more alone than he’d ever felt at any other time in his life.

He didn’t know how long he stayed like that. He cried until he couldn’t breathe and kept crying. It was the stupidest, dumbest, most Steve-like reason to break up. Protecting him… asshole.

When he looked up and cleaned himself off, he could hear a din of voices at his door. He walked over as quietly as he could and looked through the hole on his door. They had cameras and mics and Bucky groaned softly. This was the last thing he needed.

He turned around and started packing a bag. The first thing he’d need was to get to the tower. There was no fucking way he was letting Steve just break up with him over this. He took everything he was likely to need and packed it into a backpack before he snuck out the fire escape.

For some reason, there were no paparazzi at the bottom of the fire escape. Whether that was because they were leery about going into a strange alley or because they didn’t know about it, Bucky didn’t care. He jumped down from the bottom level and grinned triumphantly when his body only felt slightly uncomfortable at the landing. He’d need to work on that.

He marched towards the street and hailed a cab, which admittedly took him a few minutes, but it arrived before the press realized that he’d duped them.

“Avengers Tower,” he said as he climbed into the back seat.

The drive was as slow as he expected, honestly. Traffic was always bad in New York, but what mattered was that he wasn’t around a bunch of people that he could bump into and inadvertently send hurtling into oncoming traffic or onto the third rail at the subway or something.

Nearly an hour and a half later, Bucky arrived and paid the driver. He tried not to wince at how much it cost to get him there, but he didn’t care at the moment. He was totally getting Steve to pay for this shit.

Unfortunately, the press were here, too. As soon as he got out of the cab, they swarmed him like a school of piranha.

“Bucky Barnes, is it true that Captain America broke up with you?!”

“Mr. Barnes, can you confirm that you were kidnapped yesterday?!”

“Do the events that happened yesterday have anything to do with your new appearance?!”

“Was your whole relationship with Captain America a plot to steal the serum?!”

Bucky growled, but otherwise ignored them as he marched inside. Security guards let him through and held the reporters back. He sighed as he stepped inside.

“I guess you’re here to see Steve?” came a voice. Bucky turned to see Tony leaning on the front counter.

“What happened?” Bucky asked.

“You don’t know? You’re the one who became the world’s second super soldier,” Tony said. “Honestly, I’m surprised it took this long for people to try this. Steve having O negative blood and the serum being in it, it doesn’t exactly shock me that giving someone else his blood would pass the serum along.”

“I know about that,” Bucky said. “But everything else, no. I, uh, broke my phone.”

Tony glanced down at his hands and nodded knowingly. “I’ll hook you up with a Stark phone,” he said. “Had to make some that Steve could use after he kept breaking normal ones.”

“Thanks,” Bucky said. “So what’s happened?”

“It was about as dramatic an announcement as I’ve ever seen,” Tony said. “Steve told some press yesterday when they came here asking what happened and told them the two of you were no longer a thing. Next thing anyone knew, the Internet exploded. You’ve got fangirls crying about their OTP breaking up and everything.”

“Great,” Bucky said.

“So did you?” Tony asked.

“He left a message on my phone,” Bucky growled.

“Wait… he did?” Tony demanded, his eyes going wide. “That’s a dick move.”

“Yeah, so let me know where he is because he and I are gonna have words,” Bucky growled.

“He’s in the gym,” Tony said as Bucky got into the elevator. “Going to town on some punching bags, I’ll bet. I’ll take care of the press. Give him a good ole’ one two for me, all right?”

Bucky grinned savagely. “Sure thing.”

His heart was hammering in his chest and his body thrummed with nervous energy as the elevator moved. When it dinged and the doors opened, the only thing Bucky could hear was the sound of punching echoing through the room. He followed it until he saw Steve. In spite of the anger and sadness and hurt he felt, he took a moment to admire Steve’s form. Only a moment, though. He walked up until he was behind Steve.

“Hey, punk,” he said. Steve whipped around and before he could say anything, Bucky gave him a right hook, which nailed him square in the jaw. Steve stumbled back and Bucky grinned with satisfaction, knowing that he’d caught Steve off-guard.

“Bucky?! What—” Bucky interrupted him with a left punch, which Steve blocked easily. “Stop!”

“Stop?!” Bucky demanded. “Where do you get off telling me to stop?!”

He lunged at Steve and they tumbled to the floor. Bucky might not have any knowledge of fighting, but he was strong, strong enough that he was able to make Steve fight for his victory. He punched and kicked and shoved and even bit Steve before he ended up on the floor of the gym with his arms pinned above his head and Steve kneeling over him.

“Fuck you,” Bucky growled. “You’re a damn asshole, punk.”

Steve’s gaze softened. “I’m sorry.”

“I don’t want your damned apology!” Bucky yelled. “I want an explanation! I feel like I deserve that much!”

Steve sighed. “I know you’re angry—”

“No shit.”

“I just couldn’t stand to see you get hurt again!” Steve shouted. “You got hurt because of me! I did the only thing I could think of that could protect you!”

“You’re not protecting me,” Bucky said. Steve blinked above him. Bucky closed his eyes and willed himself not to cry. “You’re not protecting me.”

“Buck, what’s going on?” Steve asked.

“Everything, you fucking moron!” Bucky cried. “I broke my fucking phone, I broke my table, I twisted some ladder rails on my way out the door trying to avoid the paparazzi, I had to stop myself from slamming a cab door closed cause I can’t afford to break more shit. I can’t clock people for getting in my face cause I don’t wanna hurt anyone.

“You did this to me, you asshole. You saved my life and made me a super soldier and you’re the only one who knows what this shit is like and now you’re calling it quits? You’re abandoning me!”

Bucky realized that he had tears streaming down his face and sucked in a breath. “Shit,” he hissed.

“Bucky… I’m so sorry,” Steve said. He leaned down and wrapped his arms around Bucky’s body. Bucky burrowed his face in Steve’s chest and sobbed.

“I’m still mad at you,” Bucky said between sobs.

“I know,” Steve said. “You have every right to be. I regretted it the moment I hung up, but when I woke up, I couldn’t get ahold of you.”

“Why? Why did you do it?” Bucky asked.

“I was scared, baby,” Steve murmured. “I thought that the only thing I could do to keep you safe was break up because I couldn’t think of the fact that you could’ve died because I love you.”

Bucky closed his eyes and fisted a hand in Steve’s sweaty shirt. He sniffed and breathed in the scent of Steve’s musk. Even now, he found that he loved the smell and sight of Steve all sweaty.

“Damn fine way of showing it,” Bucky muttered. Steve shifted down until his face was hovering over Bucky’s. He kissed him tenderly. Bucky growled, though, and kissed him back with more fire and force. He flipped them over and Steve gasped as Bucky stared down at him. Bucky smirked triumphantly. “Huh, so that’s what it feels like.”

“You like the view?” Steve asked. Bucky chuckled and placed his hands on Steve’s shirt.

“It could be improved,” he said. He pulled and the shirt ripped to shreds with no more effort than if it were paper. Bucky looked down at Steve’s chest in satisfaction and not a small amount of pride. He kissed Steve hard, thrusting his tongue into Steve’s mouth and biting his lower lip hard enough to make it bleed. Steve groaned beneath him but Bucky kept him pinned to the floor.

“You’re mine,” Bucky growled. “And I’m yours. ‘Til the end of the line, ya fucking punk.”

Steve nodded. “‘Til the end of the line,” he agreed.

Bucky kissed him again before he rolled Steve onto his stomach. He rubbed his aching cock over the cleft of Steve’s ass. He was fucking huge, now. It was like one of those online fake porn ads that promised miracle pills to make your dick get bigger, except it was Steve’s blood that did it. His jeans were uncomfortably tight around his member and Bucky quickly shucked them to the floor and tossed them aside. As soon as they were off, he reached down and ripped Steve’s khakis off along the seam.

“Jesus, Buck, I gotta walk around when this is over,” Steve groaned.

“Shut up,” Bucky said. “You broke up with me. A few ripped clothes is the least you deserve.”

He grabbed a packet of lube from Steve’s inside pocket (because the man always had a plan, even after he dumped his boyfriend, apparently) and slicked up two of his fingers. He pressed one to Steve’s hole and pushed in. Steve hissed at the intrusion, but didn’t say anything. Bucky kept pressing in until the digit was fully seated inside him.

Bucky fucked him with that finger until Steve felt loose enough for another and pushed it in alongside the first. Steve moaned and pressed his face into the floor beneath him as he pushed back on Bucky’s hand.

“Buck,” Steve said.

“Yeah?”

“A little down and to the left,” Steve said. Bucky bent his fingers as requested and Steve moaned loudly as he rubbed over Steve’s prostate. Bucky added a third finger and stretched him with impatience. He wanted to fuck Steve and this was honestly taking a while.

“Buck, I’m ready, fuck me,” Steve moaned. Bucky didn’t argue. He tore open another lube packet and coated his now considerably large cock with lube. He had been somewhat surprised to find that in addition to becoming stronger, his foreskin had grown back. And it felt. AMAZING. The head of his dick was so much more sensitive. He pressed the head to Steve’s hole and moaned just at the feeling. He pushed in.

“Oh God, oh fuck,” Bucky groaned. “Fuck, this is amazing.”

Steve chuckled beneath him. “Go slow,” he moaned. “Gotta give me time to adjust, baby.”

“Shut up, I’m trying to enjoy this,” Bucky replied.

“Enjoying your first time topping, baby?” Steve asked.

“The foreskin helps,” Bucky said. He inched further inside Steve and groaned as Steve’s hot, tight hole squeezed around him. “Seriously, first I eat bacon, now I have a foreskin. I might as well be a Gentile now.”

Steve laughed at that. “I’m a corrupting influence, it seems,” he said.

“You have to convert, now,” Bucky said. “Gotta make up for leading me astray.”

“Okay, Buck,” Steve chuckled.

When Bucky finally bottomed out, it felt amazing. Steve’s ass clenched around his whole length. It was the second most amazing thing Bucky had ever felt, the first being Steve’s cock in him. He’d always be a slut for Steve’s cock. This was a very, very close second, though.

He began to roll his hips against Steve’s slowly. He moaned at the feeling, at Steve’s walls wrapped tight around him. Steve groaned and pushed back against Bucky, matching his shallow thrusts. Bucky reached down and gripped Steve’s hips as he began to pull out more. He thrust hard into Steve’s heat and Steve whined.

“God, you feel so fuckin’ good,” Bucky growled. He pushed Steve’s chest down and started fucking him into the floor. Steve moaned and writhed beneath him. “You like that? You like havin’ a man who can keep up with ya? Who can go all day with you and not feel tired?”

Steve moaned and nodded beneath him. Bucky quickened his pace. There was no finesse or grace in it. He was angry and hurt and Steve was the one who did it. He threw his head back and groaned as he began to slam into Steve’s ass. Steve whimpered and moaned beneath him and Bucky grinned with savage satisfaction.

“You should’ve known better,” Bucky growled. “Should’ve warned me. Should’ve helped me, ya punk.”

Steve groaned and nodded. “Harder, harder, Buck,” he moaned. “Give me all you got.”

Bucky groaned and fucked faster. His body moved like lightning streaking across the sky, faster and more powerful than it had ever been in his life. His hands were like iron around Steve’s hips, nails digging into his skin and drawing bits of blood. Still, Bucky went faster, harder. He wanted Steve to hurt, to feel everything he’d done to Bucky. Steve just groaned beneath him and took everything Bucky gave him.

“Fuck, Bucky, I’m gonna come,” Steve moaned. “Gonna come, keep going!”

Bucky did. He slammed into Steve’s prostate with every thrust and without mercy. A moment later, Steve’s ass was squeezing around him like a vice and Steve shouted as he came. Bucky felt his body writhe beneath him, shaking as he came onto the floor beneath them. A second later, he slammed his cock into Steve’s ass as deep as it would go and he came too, his come bursting from him. He came more than he ever had in his life. Every drop of it shot into Steve’s waiting ass.

When he was spent, he slumped with exhaustion. His cock slipped from Steve’s ass and he collapsed on the floor breathing like he’d just run 20 miles. He breathed deep, the sweetness of the air filling his burning lungs. Steve got up and laid down next to him.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “You were right, I abandoned you. I’m sorry for being afraid.”

Bucky nodded and held back more tears. “Just… promise me that if you ever want to break up with me in the future, you’ll do it person.”

“I didn’t want to break up with you,” Steve murmured. “Before yesterday, I…I thought that we would be together forever, actually. I never want anybody else, baby.”

“If you ask me to marry you naked on a gym floor, I swear to God I will walk the fuck out of here,” Bucky said. Steve laughed softly.

“Don’t worry,” he said.

“Good, cause I got standards. I want a real nice proposal, all romantic and shit,” Bucky said.

“Just so we’re clear,” Steve said. “You’re okay with me proposing at some later, undisclosed date.”

Bucky smiled against Steve’s chest. “Yeah, I’m really okay with that,” he said. “I love you.”

“I love you, too, baby,” Steve murmured. “You mind if we get up and put some clothes on?”

Bucky smiled mischievously. “Yes to the first,” he replied. “But no to the second. I really wanna see how long I can go, now.”

Steve’s eyes darkened and he kissed Bucky with heat and passion. Bucky moaned and yielded to him like putty in his hands. Steve knew exactly how to get him going.

“You got it,” Steve said.

#lemons #stucky #steve rogers x bucky barnes #shrunkyclunks #marvel #avengers #asks #anonymous #fanfic #my work

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bethhxrmon · 6 years ago

Text

All I Ask of You Pt. 29

“Turn my head with thoughts of summertime” - “All I Ask of You” from The Phantom of the Opera

Pairing: Peter Parker x Female OC

Word Count: 2.7k

Warnings: Light angst, nightmares

Summary: The summer shenanigans are starting!

A/N: This chapter was kinda difficult to get out this week, I’m out of town so I’m posting from a hotel. So I hope y’all enjoy! As always, the masterlist is in my bio

It still took most of the night for Annie to get to bed, though she had spent most of it talking to Peter. The guy was so stubborn and refused to leave her alone until he was positive that she was okay. Which, what had she expected? After several months of knowing him, Annie had never known him to just drop something.

What she hadn’t expected was for Tony to walk right into the house, yelling for everyone to get up. Why in the world did they have to get up so early? They had the entire summer ahead of them.

“Come on, you need to get up,” Tony said, knocking on her door.

Annie groaned, “Why?”

“Because I made breakfast,” he replied.

Annie sighed, “Can’t you make it later?”

“It is later,” he stated, “It’s after nine.”

“That’s not later!” Annie exclaimed.

“Just get out of bed,” he said, and Annie could almost hear him rolling his eyes.

Annie took a few minutes, but she eventually made it out of her room. While she was the last one out, she was also willing to bet she was the one who had gotten the least amount of sleep. She had been awake until four in the morning. Though it beat waking up in the middle of the night.

Once she was out in the kitchen, Harper handed Annie a cup full of coffee, “You look dead.”

“It’s because I didn’t sleep much,” Annie replied, taking the cup and taking a drink of the bitter liquid.

Peter frowned, “I don’t know how you can drink that stuff plain.”

“Because this isn’t the first time she’s gone weeks with low sleep,” Harper responded, sitting down, “I’m telling you, ya gotta get tested for manic depression.”

Annie shrugged, “I’ll do that once I turn eighteen. That’s the only time they’ll be able to do anything about it.”

“Why are we saying she has manic depression?” asked Tony.

“Oh, because I go through weeks where I just go completely crazy and productive and get no sleep, but I throw myself into everything. And then I just crash for a few weeks and can’t get myself to do much. I don’t really know why, but I have a few theories,” she explained.

Pepper frowned, “Maybe you couldn’t get diagnosed, but you could at least find better ways to deal with it.”

“Yeah, but I don’t wanna give up my identity or anything. The last thing I need is for my parents to find out. Plus I only have, like, two more years before I move out. It’ll all work itself out,” she said, taking another drink.

Tony shook his head, “That’s beside the point. I’m gonna start training you guys today, though, you both need to work together more.”

“But Mr. Stark, we’re already working together,” Peter pointed out.

Annie sighed, “Yeah, but half the time I couldn’t stand you and the other half of the time we weren’t really working together. It was really just me and my chronic dumbassery.”

“She’s kind of right. If you’re gonna team up, which you need to do if anything’s gonna work out with this whole Carnival business. You have to be coordinated,” Tony said, taking a bite of pancakes.

Peter nodded slowly, “Okay, but how do we even know what to do about Carnival? My webbing didn’t even stop the guy.”

“Because he mimics powers. Remember how I basically blasted off your webbing when we fought that one time? He can do the exact same thing,” she replied.

“Wait, you guys fought? I thought you were all in love with each other?” Tony asked, looking between them.

Harper shrugged, “It took a hot minute. And then another few hot minutes.”

“Oh yeah, I remember that day! Peter was flipping out about it and talking about how he needed to come up with something that couldn’t be destroyed by her. And then the whole musical thing happened and I guess we all forgot about it,” Ned said.

Annie set her cup down, “Okay, I got it! The real key here is getting webbing that I can’t break. Except, I don’t know how to do that. I don’t even really know everything that I can do.”

“Which is why we need to do this. We’ll train you against all Pete’s web settings,” Tony decided.

Annie grimaced, “There’s not a better way of doing things?”

“Think of it as an experiment. We’ll come up with some things for you too, don’t worry,” Tony assured her.

“And what am I doing for the suit?” Harper asked.

Pepper shrugged, “You should probably work on a sketch.”

“I literally have so many. This has been my brainchild for years now. I’ve always wanted to make a kickass suit because there are so many variations,” Harper replied, grinning.

“Well, then work on picking one, and Ned, you’re gonna help them for right now,” Pepper replied, “I’ll help you guys if you need anything.”

After breakfast, Annie finally took the time to get out of pajamas and into her regular leggings, shirt, and combat boots. She was not looking forward to getting trapped in webbing all day, but she knew that was the only thing that any of them could think of.

Plus she felt like it would make up for all the times she had been somewhat of a jerk to Peter. Not to mention it was still time with him. Though, she really did also want to make up for lost time with Harper. It had been months since she had seen her best friend and it was still so refreshing to finally see them again.

Although, Annie also knew that Harper was going to be enjoying themself with finally getting a chance to work on a legitimate suit. It was going to be a long summer, but it felt like it was going to be her one chance to figure out everything that was going on.

Well, at least, she felt like her prospects were good until she got covered in webbing for the umpteeth time. And, while she was perfectly capable of blasting off all the combinations, it was beginning to get tiring.

Annie sighed, “Can I just say that I can’t get out of this one? Then could we maybe have me do something else aside from being a test dummy.”

“Do you have any better ideas?” Tony asked.

“I mean, are these all from the same web fluid?” she countered.

Peter paused, “I mean, yeah, why wouldn’t I… oh.”

“Yeah, the same chemicals would still have the same effect. So… we’ve been doing nothing for the last two hours. And I’m exhausted,” Annie said, crossing her arms.

Peter sighed, “Okay, but what would you not be able to break out of?”

“I don’t know… maybe it’s not about what I could break out of but more so what wouldn’t react well to being blasted,” she suggested, “I mean, I’m not a science nerd by any means, but I think that would maybe make sense.”

“Actually, that’s a great idea. Except, I’m not sure how we would test it. We don’t want to hurt you… but I think we’re on a better track,” Tony agreed.

Annie sighed, “But maybe that’s the only way.”

“No, it’s not. We’ll figure something out, but I’m not hurting you, got it?” Peter responded.

It was clear that even after everything that was said the night before, not much had been fixed. Sure, they both cared about each other, and Annie didn’t exactly want to get hurt, but she wanted to fix what was going on. If that meant that she was possibly going to get hurt in the process, she felt like it would be worth it in the end.

However, it seemed that she was the only person who thought that. Even Tony ended up siding with Peter. It didn’t matter what she ended up saying, both of them insisted that there would have to be a different way to test what she could and couldn’t handle without doing anything to her.

“You’re not a science project!” Peter exclaimed, pacing around the living area.

Annie scoffed, “Tell that to the laboratory in Brazil!”

“You’re not there. You’re here. And I’m not about to do anything that could get you hurt. You wouldn’t do anything to hurt me, so why would you make me do that?” he asked.

“Because there’s nothing else we can do. And most of this was my fault anyways, I mean, how could it not be?”

“Okay, so, you screw up once-”

“Several times”

“And you expect me to… punish you for something you didn’t mean to do? I can’t do that. I’m not about to just let you go out and hurt yourself.”

“Peter, this is about more than that. You wouldn’t be hurting me. You wouldn’t have to do it like that. You’re thinking of the worst case scenario.”

“Yeah? Then what’re you thinking?”

“If I have a new suit, and it wouldn’t be susceptible to whatever we come up with, then I’d be fine. We could test it out, no one gets hurt.”

“And you think that would happen?”

“Trust me, I know Harper, they’re brilliant. And it can get worked out, okay?”

“You’re not just saying that?”

“Who’s not just saying what?” Harper asked, looking between the both of them.

Ned stood in the doorway, “I think they were fighting.”

“What? Nah, we’re good, we’re fine,” Peter claimed.

Annie rolled her eyes, “We were fighting, but now we’re fine.”

“Okay, well, Ned and I finally picked a really cool design. And, actually, he’s really good at drawing. You should see some of his ideas,” Harper said, sitting on the couch and opening up a sketchbook.

Ned shrugged, “I mean, it’s okay, it was just some ideas for a suit for you Peter… I mean, I just got kinda bored.”

“Shut up, you’re really good,” Harper said, showing Annie and Peter the pictures, “See? He’s great!”

After finally making it through the day, Annie had no trouble getting into her bed. If anything, she made it there earlier than any of the others. There was something about having to constantly use her powers that left her feeling completely drained.

She ended up passing out on her bed, not having any issue with feeling exhausted enough to sleep. Everyone in the small cabin ended up falling asleep not too long after. The way their makeshift camp was going, it felt like they were all going to go back to New York completely exhausted.

While Annie was asleep, she quickly started to toss and turn. All she could smell and taste was smoke. It choked her from the inside and she couldn’t breathe. Her lungs constricted and she felt the flames starting to get onto her.

She tried to move, to scream, to do something, but she couldn’t get anything to happen. It was like she was stuck in the spot she was in. And she wasn’t sure if she was listening right, but Annie could have sworn she heard Tina screaming.

Why couldn’t she get herself to just move a little bit? She needed to start moving before she stopped breathing.

Then, she finally got the chance to move herself forward a little, but the moment she did, everything below her collapsed. Annie could see everything around her being covered with large flames as she fell.

Annie woke with a start, almost ready to scream. It was only then that she finally felt like she could breathe again. That didn’t fix the wave of nausea that overcame her as she started to breathe faster and faster.

All she could hear was the ever increasing rate of her heart. There was bile coming up her throat, and she rushed out of her room to get to the bathroom. She vomited into the toilet, and she felt tears stinging the back of her eyes. As badly as she wanted to cry out, she didn’t want to wake anyone up. This was something that she needed to get through by herself. Except, she had no idea how she was supposed to do that. She couldn’t get her breathing to slow down, and her hands shook so badly that she was almost unable to flush the toilet.

She couldn’t hold still enough to rinse the taste out of her mouth. There had to be something that she could do. Maybe some tea would help.

Nightmares weren’t uncommon after everything that had happened, but she couldn’t remember the last time one of them felt so real. Like she was actually dying.

Since making tea was the only idea she could think of, Annie made her way to the kitchen, holding onto the walls to make sure she wouldn’t fall over. How could she not get herself to do some of the most basic things? Maybe, if she just kept forcing herself to try and do something for once, she would calm down.

Except, the more she kept trying to force herself, the more she kept shaking. Annie looked through the cabinets. Surely there was some kind of tea in one of them. It took looking through the cabinets and knocking some of the thing off the shelves before she found something that she was pretty sure was tea. Only, tears kept clouding her vision and she could barely see what she was doing because every time she blinked, she felt more and more tears falling down her face.

Then, she went to get the tea kettle and once she let go of the counter, her legs started to buckle. Annie felt a sob come from her as she hit the cold floor. Maybe if she just pushed herself up she could keep going. The thing was, she didn’t want to get up. She couldn’t bring herself to stand up.

“Hey, Annie?”

She looked up to see Peter, his eyes wide. He sat next to her and he slowly wrapped an arm around her.

“Hey, are you alright?” he asked, turning her face to meet his.

Annie shook her head, sobbing. She was quick to cling to him and buried her face into his chest. It still felt like she could just barely breathe.

“I-I-I-I c-ca-can’t breathe,” she stuttered between short gasps.

Peter frowned, holding her close, “It’s okay, you need to slow down before you pass out, okay? You’re okay, nothing’s happening right now.”

“B-b-b-but th-the fi-fire.”

“What fire? Oh… no, there’s no fire here, you’re safe, alright? I’ve got you, I’m holding you. And I’m gonna help you get up, okay? Do you want me to carry you?” Peter asked, keeping his voice soft and low.

Annie nodded, wrapping her arms around his neck. Peter then picked her up, taking her over to where the couch was. He set her down and sat next to her and ran his hands through her hair as she cried, helping her to stop hyperventilating.

“I-I know it wasn’t real… but, dammit, it was so real. I-I-I couldn’t move and then the building collapsed from under me,” she started, shaking her head, avoiding looking at Peter.

“It’s okay, I um… I heard the toilet flush… a-and I kinda couldn’t sleep again, and I heard you crying… Annie, you need to do something about this.”

“This isn’t the type of thing that happens, though. This isn’t normal.”

“Which is why you need to do something, maybe you could talk to Mr. Stark or something.”

“Or, crazy idea, I can just fix this myself. I-it won’t happen again.”

“If you don’t tell someone, I will.”

“Peter you-”

“This may not be something that happens, but I know you need some type of help. I don’t want you to get hurt and I don’t like seeing you like this.”

Annie took a deep breath and nodded, “Okay, fine, I’ll talk about it tomorrow.”

“Good,” Peter said, pressing a kiss to her forehead.

Neither of them said very much after that. As much as Annie still didn’t want to tell anyone about what was going on, she knew Peter was right. What was more, she knew the others would have said the same thing.

Peter was the first one to start nodding off again, quickly waking up again, “Maybe we should get back to sleep.”

“Do you think we could maybe just stay here?” Annie asked.

He nodded, “Yeah, sure.”

They positioned themselves so they were both lying on the couch, holding each other. Annie’s head rested on his chest, laying there for some time before she finally went back to sleep.

Taglist: @flushings-here / @parkerpuffwrites / @gaypanda / @twilightparker / @buzzinglee / @jakcsfrosts / @ijustdontknowsometimes / @moonstruckholland / @lcy-thot / @lionsfandomsandbearsohmy / @dolphinsarecuteandstuff (ask if you’d like to be added!)

#peter parker #peter parker imagine #peter parker x reader #peter parker x you #peter parker x oc #spider-man #spider-man x oc #spider-man x reader #spider-man: homecoming #spider-man: far from home #mcu #marvel #mcu fanfic #all i ask of you fic #writblr

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piatersisub1975-blog · 6 years ago

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You can request a list of reputable attorneys from your state Bar, or in some states the senior centers will host elder lawyers through the Senior Law Project. They generally come to the senior center and offer 30 minute council on these exact matters and can get your family pointed in the right direction. Also, some Independent Retirement communities offer classes or seminars for their residents hosted by elder law attorneys that may be open to the public. I was behind him and said, "No, you have pump three and I have pump four." Now I have been told that I have a very shy and soft voice and he and his girlfriend buying hot dogs didn hear me. So he paid for my gas which was six dollars more than mine. When I told the attendant that I was the one at pump four he looked like he ate a lemon, but he had me pay for pump three (his gas). Back in the you could just make sports movies. Like, what is the deeper message ofRookie of the Year? Watch out if you a kid and you get in a freak accident where you develop the ability to throw a 103 mph fastball, because it might cause you to grow up too fast? OrMajor League II?It fine to trust your slugger belief in the Voodoo occult? Back in the people would make sports movies that were just cool or funny ideas about sports. No longer.. I just posted an edit on my original comment, but I hope it didn seem like I was angry at you. I know you weren trying to be offensive. Talking about this type of thing can be hard since it not really a common conversation to have and can be really nuanced. Then it behoves me to tell your fortune; or so far as I may. When your mother was gone, and your father (the worthy, Christian man) began to sicken for his end, he gave me in charge a certain letter, which he said was your inheritance. 'So soon,' says he, 'as I am gone, and the house is redd up and the gear disposed of' (all which, Davie, hath been done), 'give my boy this letter into his hand, and start him off to the house of Shaws, not far from Cramond. Over time, let them know that large groups and meeting new people are difficult for you to handle. But flat out telling someone that the 영암출장안마 prospect of meeting their close friends makes you extremely uncomfortable, just because they said they an extrovert, and before that would even be a reality, is a pretty good sized red flag. Now they probably thinking, would you make a scene if they brought their friends around? Would you get mad if they wanted to hang out with friends, with or without you? And then telling this person to break it off over the phone, despite not being in a relationship with them? That a bit crazy, to put it mildly. The bacteria and chemicals are fine. We get bacteria spikes during heavy rain events because of sewer overflows, but those are washed downstream after a day or so. Our river is very clean, especially compared to 25 years ago before Metro Water instituted their pretreatment program. For sure, creepy dudes are legitimately awful and as much as they like to act oblivious, I feel like they set out to flirt with women when they're at work so they feel trapped in customer service mode and can't tell 영암출장안마 them to fuck off. A few guys got nasty surprises at my last retail job because I was low key hella self destructive at the time and managers kept quitting with zero notice so I knew that I was basically unfireable since I was only one of two managers showing up for their shifts so I straight up started telling them to fuck off and get the hell out of the store. My adrenaline was pumping the whole time because I wasn't sure if they'd come back and try to murder me or something but thank god they never came back.

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secret-diary-of-an-fa · 6 years ago

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AHS: Cult Revisited (Spoiler Warning: It Sucked Then and It Sucks Now)

SOME CONTEXT: Since I discuss the politics of AHS: Cult in the following article, new readers should probably know that my own politics are leftist and generally liberal. As such, it’s worth bearing in mind that part of my annoyance with the series does stem from the fact that most of its liberal, left-leaning characters are inadvertently written as total bell-ends. Most of my annoyance, however, comes from the issues I’m about to discuss.

SPOILER WARNING: Lots of spoilers ahead.

I’ve been re-watching American Horror Story: Cult, despite the fact that it’s the absolutely worst season of the anthology series, because some family members wanted to see it and I wanted to sit in and crow about where it all went wrong. And you know what? I’d forgotten how deceptively good the first half of the series actually is. It’s funny, unsettling and camp in that way that only AHS can be, and it contains lots of satisfying moments where absolute bell-ends get punched in the fact or killed with gym equipment. When I reviewed it about a year ago, I kind of forgot that there was the root-system of a decent TV show buried under all the crap. Y’see, the thing about AHS: Cult is that it’s only a shitshow in retrospect. After you’ve chewed your way through the increasingly dumb and unsatisfying second half of the series, you reach a conclusion that renders 99% of what you’ve just seen completely pointless: a whole lot of sound and fury signifying fuck-all.

The core of the problem is Kai, the blue-haired cult-leader supervillain and psychotic clown enthusiast who serves as the series’ antagonist. The motivations that he pretends to have in the first half of the series are way more interesting than the real motives that he’s revealed to have in later episodes. You see, early-episodes Kai is deliciously complicated an apolitical. He doesn’t celebrate Trump’s election to president because he thinks a Cheetos-hued former gameshow host will actually make a good president, but because his presence in the White House will spread fear and chaos that Kai can use to his own ends. He’s like a less slapstick-y version of the Joker, revelling in chaos and collective national misery and only allying himself to one side or the other so far as it promotes those things. In some places, his ideology seems downright and actively non-partisan. There’s a bit where he talks to a downtrodden and much shat-upon news reporter about her anger as a black woman in Trump’s America and legitimates her rage- which feels like “wanting to be the last person alive on Earth- because then you got to watch every other motherfucker die first”. He recruits a buff gay guy by killing his homophobic boss. On the other hand, he also gets a disenfranchised prospective Trump-voter on side by reminding him how he’s been told he’s obsolete and irrelevant because he’s a working class white male. In the early series, Kai’s ideology doesn’t seem to have much to do with left and right: his message is more along the lines of ‘modern America is a worthless shithole that fucks everybody over, regardless of politics or demographic, so let’s burn the whole thing to the ground and put me in charge’. It’s genuinely compelling to watch... and then the second half of the series happens and it turns out Kai was basically lying about all this complex motivation. He’s actually just a misogynist who wants to hurt women. Well, fuck. And there was me thinking we were getting an interesting and nuanced character who walked the line between villain and sympathetic protagonist. Nope- apparently he’s just a jerk. That’s a pretty accurate portrayal of the way sociopathic cult leaders work in real life, but it’s not very narratively compelling.

Here’s the trouble. I know plenty of jerks in real life. I don’t find them fascinating. I don’t think they make interesting viewing. They’re not good TV: they’re just fucking morons in need of a good, hard slap. I get what AHS: Cult is doing- it’s making the point that cult leaders and far-right, regressive politicians can seem more complex and compelling than they really are in order to get what they want before they reveal their true colours. It’s an allegorical warning against charismatic, evil, morally-bankrupt politicians like Trump. And that’s a fine point to make, in an online article or a short story or... well, basically any media that doesn’t have to keep me entertained for 10-12 hour-long episodes. AHS: Cult chose to make a point instead of making a consistently good, watchable TV show. And that’s a problem.

Of course, Kai’s increasingly tedious and stupid character isn’t the only problem. AHS: Cult wants to be all feminist and get you to root for its oppressed, trod-up women. Which would be great, if its female characters weren’t mostly loathsome dipshits. There’s Ivy, who deliberately gaslights her lesbian wife and drives her mad. There’s Meadow, who more or less embodies the concept of vapid self-absorption, seems to start improving as a character, and then commits suicide before she can become genuinely sympathetic. There’s the reporter who starts off sympathetic but who ends up egging Kai on to greater feats of cruelty and chaos (when she finally turns against him, it’s not because she has a moral epiphany, it’s because he decides to consolidate power rather than go with her plan of causing as much random destruction as possible). Oh, and then Valerie Solanis and her ‘SCUM’ cult turns up and starts butchering men (and any woman who doesn’t hate them to a sufficient degree) while spouting grandiose horseshit. In fairness, the grandiose horseshit comes from her book, ‘The SCUM manifesto’, which is a real thing that actually exists... but bringing it up just serves to make Kai’s eventual adversaries seem as crazy as he is, just when the narrative needs them to seem like a heroic alternative. How so? Well, it was written by a literal schizophrenic just before she tried and failed to assassinate Andy Warhol.

After episode seven, AHS: Cult is increasingly framed as a struggle between Kai’s far-right misogynist cult and his former supporters’ self-justifying revenge-oriented cult-within-a-cult of revenge. Who are apparently preferable because... reasons maybe? Well, at least they’re not out for world domination and don’t give their recruits names like ‘Speed Ball’, which is something.

The final issue is Ally. Poor Ally. She starts off as a slightly pathetic, slightly pampered but basically decent person. She’s a left-wing liberal and broadly on the side of good, even if her many phobias do prevent her from getting her shit together. After wife Ivy steals their son from her using Kai’s cult, Ally goes through a pretty good character arc and learns to conquer her fears in order to save her son from Ivy’s increasingly unhinged grip. She’s basically the show’s happy ending waiting to happen... and then, in the very last fucking scene, she dons a green hooded robe and takes up the mantle of the leader of the deranged SCUM cult. Because of course she does. Because we couldn’t just have one likeable, uncorrupted character, could we? She reacts to the traumas she has survived by recreating a secret organisation that already demonstrated its impotence in changing the world and will definitely cause more trauma for other people down the line. For some reason, the show seems to think this is some kind of victory.

AHS: Cult has a lot of good ideas and interesting characters, which is why the first half of the series is so compelling. Unfortunately, it squanders them one by one, until we’re left with a left with a bunch of petty, simple-minded jerkoffs playing tug-of-war for the nebulous, symbolic prize of cultural dominance. Maybe that’s an accurate portrayal of our echo-chamber-fuelled, divisive, crude political landscape. Tragically, I fear that it is. But it isn’t good TV.

#Secret Diary of a Fat Admirer #AHS: Cult is rubbish

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rkchungha · 6 years ago

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✧ ☆⋆MGA SEASON 4 - #4040⋆☆ ✧

(ROUND 3)

✧ trouble maker - trouble maker

✧ outfit

✧ hair & makeup

✧ featuring: TEAM C(hungha) @rkars @longguork @rkjeon @danielxrk

chungha didn’t know how to feel after hearing her team members. to be honest she was feeling kind of neutral about her members thus far. then again, she wasn’t quite sure where everyone stood in relation to one another. she just knew that of the bunch, daniel was amongst the lowest in ranks as he was almost sent home last episode. if anything, he was the one to focus on.

jeon jeongguk. he was the boy that sat to her left every episode from now on. his performances had impressed her. he was a dancer and he knew how to connect his dance to the music. he was one of those that made viewers feel. if they were being ranks on their strongest skill alone, chungha figures jeongguk is one of the stronger ones. when he danced, she was kind of left in awe. if jeongguk wasn’t anything but one of the top spot she’d be surprised.

when they first introduce themselves to one another in the nova building, she shares how she felt about his performances. “i think you put a lot of emotion into your dancing. it captures attention.” which would be a plus for their group considering all of them were singers, for the most part. “i’m glad we ended up on the team together.”

they needed a little diversity on their team. dancing was fine and all but they needed to be strong in every skill. youngjae and yongguk, from her memory, sang. she remember yongguk’s because he played a ukele and she remembered thinking how adorable it was. but she wasn’t so sure if either of them danced. when they finally got around to asking each other what to do, she’ll learn but a part of her was worried that the answer would be no.

daniel was the one she hasn’t paid attention to. not because he wasn’t talented or anything but because he seemed to have a trend with his performances: he sang and played guitar. that worried her immensely. daniel seemed to stick to his guitar like it was his protector. something told her that he didn’t have much else to bring to the table if someone snatched his instruments away.

sadly, she was right.

before they got started, chungha made sure to pull daniel aside. her intentions were to make sure he was okay and to make sure his head was in the game. it could be a blow to the ego to be on the bottom of the invisible ranks that they were unaware of yet. at least there wasn’t an actual numerical ranking system. if he was on the bottom by a lot, the blow might’ve been greater -- and if he barely made it through the skin of his teeth, it may have been even more discouraging. there was a certain funk that would hang over someone after someone like that. daniel wasn’t the strongest competitor in the mgas. the last thing she needed was an emotional handicap holding him back as well.

after the quick catch-up with daniel, it was time to know her other members a bit better. it included proper introductions and what people were good at. for the most part, she had at least a vague idea with what everyone’s strongest skill was (after the episodes have aired, of course) but secondary and tertiary skills (if any) were unknown for now. they needed to lay it out on the table to at least begin to brain storm where they stood in terms of possible songs they could do.

there was clear panic on her face hearing that no one else seemed to be decent enough in dancing. her face blanched at the prospect of having to deliver a mediocre performance because her group’s skill sets didn’t match. instead of immediately panicking, they settled down to figure this out. she was the first to say that they should do a routine that isn’t difficult with choreography but just as eye catching. “everything will be okay as long as we can capture the attention of not only the viewers and the audience but the panel as well. it doesn’t have to be a crazy and impressive number. as long as we show that we have competence and can manage that along with stage presence, i think we’ll do okay.”

o.k by b1a4

she’s never heard the song before but she figures she shouldn’t count it out. “can i see the video?” she asks, mildly interested in the option. she’s not sure where they’re going to go with this but as the video plays, her disgust is clear on her face. “i don’t like this song,” she says honestly. “i think it’s cute and very catchy but i don’t think this is mga performance material at all. i feel as though we could pick another, much stronger song and still accommodate to people who can’t dance as well.” of course she wasn’t going to veto it altogether. she even added, “but if you guys like it and feel comfortable with doing it, i’m down for it.”

thankfully no one else was really too attached to the song. she may have cried if they went along with it. her relief is clear (they dodged a bullet) but they couldn’t spend so much time just flipping through songs. someone suggests troublemaker. “we’d have to tweak the choreography.” youngjae and jeongguk both suggested ideas where jeongguk starts off the song and the other start as backup and then they rotate who dances centre with chungha. it sounded like a solid idea.

before diving into the performance, they needed a leader. in the midst of verbally rationalising who would make sense as leader (asking ages, what experience everyone had, etc.), chungha was quick to voice her opinion. “before we choose, i do not want to be the leader just because i’m the eldest.” surely she’d have the natural inclination to guide the others simply because she was older but she would prefer there being a legitimate reason as to why she was chosen (if she was chosen). and as yongguk so clearly shared with his nomination of chungha, she was the eldest and deserved the respect. she’d rather it be because they were impressed by her performances thus far or because she was the only one of the pack to have actually done this before.

a part of her was unsure with being leader. it’s not as if she didn’t know what to do. she knew exactly what she’d have to do as leader but it also meant she’d assume most of the responsibility if anyone falters. it becomes less of “oh so-and-so you messed up here” and more of “ah, kim chungha, why did you let your term fall into shambles?” it was selfish but she wasn’t sure if she wanted to assume that kind of responsibility in this kind of competition. it could potentially reflect negatively. she’s sure those opinionated netizens would have a ball if she failed.

to her surprise, she ends up elected leader despite her minor opposition. jeongguk looked awfully disappointed at the fact. daniel had raised a point that he felt weird listening to jeongguk as leader when they were the same age. chungha understood, considering jeongguk was a little younger than she was and it would be weird to listen to someone younger than you. chungha steals away to go to jeongguk’s side. “hey,” she nudges him softly. “i thought you had leader potential. that’s why i voted for you.” she wonders who the other vote was if the other three voted for her. “don’t take it as a personal loss. and besides,” she smiles at him, “i could use some help getting this group ready.”

getting ready takes a majority of the week. come the time for recording and performing, she’s only mildly nervous. it’s not even for the sake of her own singing and dancing -- that she’s long since grown used to after the years of training. it’s all worry with how her team would look as a unit. while she performs, she couldn’t let any expression pass on her face (not even a grimace) that would clue that someone fucked up or someone sounded off key.

chungha had also resented the initial performance of trouble maker and made a few tweaks of her own. mostly more dances on her end so while she’s off to the side, she does something similar to what the boys do: she sensually dances. save for the dance break the boys have without her; that she’s completely off stage for. she also tweaked the background dance for the rest of the boys at the end because it required partners. so she created her own simple steps for them to follow in the back while she and youngjae closed out the song.

the space they’re in until they wait for performances is nice. they sit together as a unit and chungha offers small commentary while they watch to the groups that impress her. out of the two teams proceeded them, chungha is more worried about team b. the boys was an excellent song to do. she would have kicked herself about the missed opportunity if it weren’t for the fact that her team weren’t dancers anyways and probably would have done much worse with that choreography. it was bad enough that the others struggled with troublemaker which was more of a charisma performance than an actual dance anyways.

something she kept in mind (and told the other boys) was to play it up. amp up the charisma and the sexiness. cop an extra feel, accentuate movements with a wink or a kiss. the song was all about charisma which was why there was a lack of harder dancing. chungha even took her own advice during her performance and played up her role as hot arm candy, swaying her hips or moving in a way that drew attention.

she made sure her voice was clear. stronger, in the very least, than the actual artist during her own stage performance in the song. it may have been the classics round but she sure as hell made sure not to sound like she was a classic. she projected her voice so she was clearly heard in the harmony of the chorus every time. it was a very male dominant song. it was sad how this was a duo but the man took up most of the attention the entire song. so with her parts where she was the focus of attention, she makes damn sure she does them well.

her voice isn’t as soft as the original troublemaker female. so her words are far less breathy when she raps and sings. she’s always had a strong vocal presence. it makes it that much easier for her to dance and sing without sounding pitchy. for herself, the song was in a range that was doable. it was almost easy because she sang in the same few notes the entire length of the song (save for the end).

towards the end of the song, just before the dance break, she mirrors the moves jeongguk does as she sings. it was much better than just standing there and singing when she was capable of dancing and holding her pitch. walking off to the side she was able to view the product of her teaching the team and how well they handled the break before she needed to come back in. she will say they were a charismatic group. it worked in their favour. and youngjae bodied those adlibs. she was actually proud.

while youngjae took the foreground to dance at the end of the sound, she danced as well in the back. it was her own freestyle. nothing crazy, just something similar to youngjae until he came up to her in the end. he grabbed her face. chungha picked up her left hand (the one opposite and hidden from the stage and cameras) to hold his face and place two fingers between their lips. they ended the song “kissing”, just like the performers did back then. breaking away she smiled, quickly hugging youngjae before bouncing off stage to the rest of the group.

“after this we should get dinner. to celebrate for a great performance no matter how we rank,” she tells them on the way back to the viewing room. “i’m really proud of all of you -- and daniel! you did so great!” just managing to pull it together was a huge relief. what they started with versus what they ended with was a feat; an accomplishment that deserved to be celebrated even if one of them ended up going home.

and, as a good leader should, she even promised to pay for them all.

#solo.#rkmga4 #rkmga4classics #rkars #rkjeon #longguork #danielxrk #word count: 2134 #(( i'm sorry bianca ))#(( i gave u a bunch of moments tho ur welcome ))

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