#the crushing weight of debt that is murdering a generation

[aaron-golden]

Hellevator Seasons 1&2

Anyone that remembers the days of Living Myth Magazine remembers how much I like the Twisted Twins. Jen and Sylvia Soska are directors, activists, writers – creatives of the best sort who work through horror because horror is one of the least watched genres and one of the best to talk about social issues and the political landscape. Don't believe me?

They nailed modern nihilism and absurdity with Dead Hooker in a Trunk, spoke about body dysmorphia, gender and personal identity, and the monsters society makes of the intelligent young in American Mary, and re-invented the slasher concept with See No Evil 2. They rescued a mediocre script with some inspired direction and performances with Vendetta, and the amount of public good works they do for feminism and blood drives cannot be understated.

So, before we begin: they're good people, the best sort of monsters you could want to meet or support. They have crafted a persona around themselves, though, and some unsung genius at the Game Show Network decided to play off of that and the end result is a game show called Hellevator.

Hellevator is a horror-themed game show hosted by the Twisted Twins, where contestants walk into an old converted slaughterhouse in the middle of the night and ride an elevator while the Twins do their level best to terrify, trick, and taunt. The Twins will urge a single contestant to leave the elevator to go off alone into the dark to complete challenges for money, but our poor terrified guests have to get to the challenges before the fun really begins.

The challenges are all based on urban myths that the Twins elaborate on, giving us small details that breathe life into the terrifying tales their poor victims have to live through. You can see their panic, the overwhelming crushing fear that infects them and robs them of the ability to think clearly. Sure, they can talk to their friends who are (arguably) still safe in the Hellevator, but how good can their help be when they're just as scared?

I'm not sure how much say the Twins have in putting the whole thing together but you can tell they're having a blast. There's an obvious sadistic glee that comes with terrifying someone so badly they can't think straight and both seasons do a masterful job of playing with suspense and isolation. Jen and Sylvia give us a constant string of sass and sarcasm, insights and insults that often reduce their players to whimpering panic. It's beautiful.

The first season has teams of three going against original horror stories, doing their part to defeat monsters that range from cannibal butchers to murderous nurses. The only way to defeat the monster is to overcome the challenges they've left in their wake, the puzzle rooms and games that play on terror and disgust. When someone fails a challenge they vanish, never to be seen again, and there's a couple of episodes where only a single person manages to escape the slaughterhouse and make it to safety.

Even in the outros, where our survivors talk about their experience and often vow to never do anything like this again, the ones that went missing are absent and not discussed – it's obvious, though, that the Twins have kept them. The Twins own them now, having introduced them to an unguessed hell that would shatter the minds of those looking to understand it.

An unlucky few manage to survive the challenges and make it through to a special hell the Twins call the Labyrinth, an obstacle course specially made for each story that pushes those that enter it to the limit. It also gives our heroes a chance to end the evil they've been facing over the course of the episode, though very few of them manage that feat; instead, the evil has been slowed but not stopped. It will rise to claim more victims, and the helplessness of the survivors will haunt them for the rest of their lives.

The second season changes things up a bit – we get teams of four, and the Twins immediately take someone and lock them away in the Inferno Run. When anyone fails to meet a challenge, they, too, are locked away in the Inferno Run, where they can do little more than suffer and wait for rescue. The best use of this device is when some poor fool actually calls the Twins out during their introduction, so the Twins show up and take her away. The message is clear: you do not mock the Twisted Twins, for they will introduce you to a nightmare world from which there is no waking.

Stories in the second season are tied to the seven deadly sins, and the Inferno Run features puzzles based on those sins. It's the same puzzles every time, which isn't as fun as the Labyrinth, but there's a tension here that's different than what was there in the first season. See, in the Inferno Room, our heroes can save those people they lost along the way, but they still have to have enough time to run back to the Hellevator after untying their friends.

Hellevator's Inferno Run asks what's more important: life or money? Interestingly, the Inferno Run also gives us our first full-party kill, and we get to see what sort of hell the Twins have prepared for those left in their power... but we can also tie those lost souls back to the social issues the twins speak of in their movies.

Without spoilers, the ones that lose are those that have grown up with an understanding that their lives have little meaning and that money is the only thing that might save them – when they lose their lives to greed, it's because they know they have nothing to go back to, nothing to escape to. Without the money they are competing for, their lives will be short and painful. The Hellevator is their only way out.

And so, the Twins reflect the horror of the society we live in, just as they always have.

Both seasons of Hellevator are available on Netflix, with episodes averaging about forty minutes. There's no word on whether or not we'll get a third season as yet, but watching and rating the show will help make that decision. Watch the show. Love the show. The Twins are worth it. 

You can find the Twisted Twins by clicking here, talk to them on twitter by clicking here, and find them on facebook by clicking here. Oh, they’re also on youtube, so follow them there, too. 

Your humble reviewer has written a book that also has some horror and survival in it, because one writes what one knows. That means vision quests, Sumerian gods, ancient conspiracies, and a trinity of female protagonists worthy of the Twins. You can click here for more information, or click here to buy the book from Amazon.        

[nightingaelic]

Fallout new vegas companions taking the courier's place in lonesome road (+ cut companions if that's cool with u) (thanks!!)

The problem with trying to adapt Lonesome Road to another character's experience is that so much of its story hinges on the courier's missing past and the former Frumentarius' struggle to make them understand what happened, why it caused a shockwave across multiple lives, locations and generations, and whether to avenge or let go of the harm that was unknowingly done to the Divide. So if you bring the companions into the mix instead of Courier Six, you either have a long-running story of mistaken identity (a hilarious concept, Ulysses being absolutely positive that the companion is the one who wrecked his dream home while they have no idea who this angry, verbose man is), or a drastically different history for the companions themselves. I say let's give that second option a shot, it seems fun and headcanon-y.

Arcade Gannon: While I don't think Arcade would be directly responsible for the destruction of the Divide, I think he would pale at hearing Ulysses' message searching for Enclave agents and would set out to confront the angry courier on behalf of his hidden family. The Enclave remnants are already hunted by the NCR and the Brotherhood of Steel, and the last thing they need is to be chased out of yet another home over something they didn't personally do. He'd accept ED-E's help wholeheartedly and consider turning back every time he ran into marked men or tunnelers, but his own resolve to save his loved ones would urge him to persevere. I think his determination would intrigue Ulysses, enough to engage the young research scientist in conversation if he arrived at the end of the road in one piece, and the courier might even let go of his vendetta if Arcade revealed that he was doing this out of the goodness of his heart rather than a sense of duty. Arcade would cancel the nuke launch, but would seriously consider blowing up the Legion.

Craig Boone: We know the NCR and Legion were fighting over the Divide before the ICBMs leveled the area. But what if that was by design, rather than by accident? Maybe Boone has more skeletons in his closet than just Bitter Springs, and he was part of a strike team that used old Enclave technology to surprise the Legion forces and seal off an access route, a decision based on math and made by men who had never met the people of Hopeville and Ashton that they sentenced to death. It's yet another weight on the sniper's conscience, and yet another debt he feels obligated to pay, so when Ulysses' call goes out, he answers. The usual dangers of the Divide wouldn't slow him down, but the turbulent weather would irritate him to no end. Upon arrival at the temple, Boone wouldn't mince words because he already knows he's guilty of the charge and he knows Ulysses used to walk for the Legion. If he survived the encounter, Boone would take the opportunity to rain the same destruction down on Caesar's troops.

Lily Bowen: There are about 119 years of Lily's life as a super mutant that are unaccounted-for, and we know she suffers from schizophrenia like many other nightkin. Perhaps it was Lily who discovered the Enclave package and unwittingly left it in the home of America's missiles: Perhaps it was Leo. I'm inclined to think it was Leo, who was probably searching for a cache of Stealth Boys in the old military installations across the desert, and who simply didn't care when a new hole in the earth opened up behind him. Lily, on the other hand, cares deeply, and would set out after Ulysses in the interest of making amends where she could. More so than any other companion, I think Lily would be disturbed by the tunnelers and would go out of her way to crush them wherever they popped up. The marked men would earn her sympathy and she would do her best to knock them out without killing them. After doing the same to Ulysses, Lily would cancel the launch and weep over the subsequent loss of ED-E. She would likely bring the little eyebot back to the Mojave and search for a way to fix it.

Raul Alfonso Tejada: We already know that Raul goes to extreme lengths to avenge the people he cares about, so it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to mix his backstory into the story of the Divide. Following the murder of Claudia in Tucson/Two Sun, Raul chased Dirty Dave and his brothers across Arizona and into the town of Ashton before killing them. Unbeknownst to him, Dirty Dave had a package with him that could speak to the nuclear missile silos hidden in the Divide, and the earth crumbled behind the vaquero as he made his way back home. Though he'd heard of the devastation, Raul didn't put two and two together until Ulysses sent out his summons, and because he didn't have anything planned that week, the old mechanic decided to answer the call. He would put up with Ulysses' messages like a good sport until he encountered the man in the temple, where he would refuse to fight until the two talked things out like civil people. I think Ulysses would be surprised at the revelation that the ghoul he had cast as a villain was following his own quest for vengeance and unaware of the package, and would come away somewhat amused by the situation. They would most likely team up to fight off the marked men, and Raul would cancel the launch and take a wrench to the machines to prevent any more "misunderstandings."

Rose of Sharon Cassidy: Let's say one of Cass' caravans delivered a package back in the day. Let's say that package accidentally buried the caravan crew and an entire community along with it. Let's say Cass knows, and that's one of the reasons she drinks. While Courier Six walks the Divide out of curiosity about their missing past, I think Cass would do it as a form of penance in and of itself, with a little desire for self-destruction thrown into the mix. The journey would start out as a bender fueled by self-loathing and the fanciful notion of giving her missing caravan a proper funeral, and by the time Cass runs out of whiskey she's already halfway through the Cave of the Abaddon and punching holes through the tunnelers with her shotgun. She would largely ignore Ulysses' cryptic messages and holotapes, but she'd grow fond of the little eyebot that took a shine to her and would tear after it once the mysterious courier repossessed it. Following the final battle, Cass would cancel the launch, but only at the very last second, just to revel in the fleeting feeling of control.

Veronica Santangelo: I just can't see Veronica knowingly or unknowingly waking up a nuclear arsenal with a careless application of tech, but I can totally see her stumbling upon the aftermath of something her old mentor is responsible for. Father Elijah already has a tenuous grasp on the consequences of his own actions, and we know that the prototype tech that controls the Divide's weather is a Big MT project. Maybe Elijah paid Hopeville a visit to check it out and took his investigation a little too far when he discovered the nukes. This would explain Ulysses' directions to the old man to find the Sierra Madre, sealing his doom inside the casino. But where does that leave Ulysses? Along comes Veronica, following her mentor's trail of destruction, and the courier can't help but guide her along the path, show her the meaning of the wreckage and the danger of pre-war technology when left to the discretion of those with old-world values, like the Brotherhood. Along that line, I think Ulysses would try to test her like he does Courier Six, and would schedule a launch to see what she does. Veronica would cancel the launch and resolve to never tell her brothers and sisters in Steel about the secrets of the Divide. She might dump some water on the consoles for good measure. More importantly, I think she might finally realize that the unchanging family she clings to can only die out, or go down the same path that Elijah did.

ED-E: Given that ED-E is a robot, I think Ulysses would be hell-bent on finding whoever sent the little guy rather than consider that the eyebot saw a package with Enclave markings on it, picked it up of its own accord, and deposited it wherever it next encountered old American symbols. Through its communication with the other eyebots in the Divide, I think ED-E would get the picture about the courier's quest for the responsible party and play dumb for as long as possible. The other ED-E would help conceal the mistake to save its new friend, but Ulysses isn't stupid and would eventually figure it out. But how do you effectively punish a robot? Maybe he would set the nukes to target the Divide again, to send any remaining eyebots to the scrapyard for good, but it's a long shot. If he did, ED-E would cancel the launch, but would join its override system capabilities to its counterpart's and use the combined decryption power to ensure that both eyebots make it through the ordeal unharmed.

Rex: This good boy would never even consider entering the Divide. Seriously, what dog in their right mind would go in there? What cyberdog? No thank you. Still, the idea of a dog being responsible for the nukes and Ulysses continuing to hold a grudge is beyond funny. Maybe Rex was part of a mission for the Legion when he still belonged to Caesar, part of the group that leveled the Divide on behalf of the Bull. Maybe that's why Antony says he was "lost in battle," and maybe he's the only surviving member of that squad. I don't see why Ulysses would hang around the Divide waiting for the dog to look upon the hell he'd wrought, and he would more than likely seek the canine out himself as soon as he heard about the King's new pet. From there, the story turns into Courier Six investigating an assassination attempt on a goddamned dog, and the events of Lonesome Road play out pretty much the same way they were written - plus plenty of asides about how Ulysses is going to way too much effort over a creature that can't comprehend what nukes are.

Benny Gecko: Few people know that Yes Man was actually one of two securitrons that Benny managed to incapacitate and reprogram, and while the head of the Chairmen hid his favorite in the Tops for safekeeping, he sent the other out into the world for some recon and experimentation. Imagine his surprise when Yes Man was able to remotely hack into a nuclear missile silo and wipe out a budding trade community. And who would've thought that test run was going to come back to bite him in the ass, right after he was sprung from the Legion camp? I think Benny would do everything in his power to avoid entering the Divide, but I also think Ulysses would have little patience for him and would actively force the disgraced city boy into walking the Courier's Mile by blocking any other path out of the Mojave. Benny would form an attachment to ED-E, similar to Yes Man, but would complain the whole way and confront his tormenter with little remorse. He would also nuke both the NCR and the Legion if he came away alive, probably with some snarky one-liner about "letting the chips fall where they may."

Vulpes Inculta: Vulpes already has a few scorched-earth badges on his Pioneer Scouts belt (Nipton, Camp Searchlight, etc.), so eliminating the Divide is just another tactic in the grand strategy playing out between the Bull and the Bear. All he needed to do was leave a certain package in town, and the problem basically solved itself. Unfortunately, that deserter of his wasn't buried under the wreckage, and now Caesar has ordered him to assassinate the renegade. The fool keeps announcing his whereabouts every few hours or so, making tracking an easy task, but by the third time he feels eyes on the back of his neck and turns to find nothing there, Vulpes can't help but wonder whether the student has surpassed the teacher. The final showdown of Frumentarii would be something for the ages, a clash of philosophies and loyalties with plenty of verbal sparring between the bullets. If he survived the encounter with Ulysses, Vulpes would definitely nuke the NCR.

Ulysses: This cut companion can't very well face off against himself, can he? Unless... he was the courier who accidentally brought the Enclave detonator that sealed the Divide's doom. Given the weight of this grief, I think Ulysses would similarly force himself to walk the length of the Divide, take in the utter destruction that his own actions had wrought, and reflect on the meaning of one man changing the course of history. When it came down to the final room, the final decision, our disillusioned courier would activate the launch as a way of testing himself, testing his own resolve. Like Cass, he would stare at the machines shuddering to life around him until the very last moment, before shutting the system down for good, smiling under his breathing mask and walking away forever.

Victor: The robot cowboy doesn't really know what the angry man on the eyebot keeps talking about. He certainly doesn't remember delivering a package to a place called Hopeville or Ashton. Why would he? Mr. House is very good about covering his tracks, particularly when it comes to eliminating business rivals. Really, it could have been any old securitron. Nevertheless, Victor rolls merrily along in search of the courier who summoned his master, letting his own optics passively take in the devastated wasteland left behind by bombs that launched 200 years too late. Because of his robotic nature, I think it'd be a lot easier for Ulysses to get the drop on Victor and disable him at the temple, then wait until House sent another envoy or came himself. House would probably lose interest as soon as he got his data, which I don't think would stall Ulysses much: Once he figured out the Strip's owner isn't coming, he'd find some way to get inside the Lucky 38. If, however, Victor prevailed in the final struggle, he would nuke both the NCR and the Legion on behalf of Mr. House.

[blarrghe]

kind of a meh banner, but I made one for this Dorianders modern au I've been playing in lately. If you like fluff, angst, and murder mysteries, this might be the writing-prompt-generated story for you! I'm aiming for mystery show vibes and a lot of mutual idiot pining. You can also send me writing prompts to help shape the story!

WHAT IF WE WERE....

Pairing: Dorian x Anders Content warnings: alcohol and drug use, character death, medical drama/sickness/occasional gore

Summary:

Anders is a resident at a hospital in Minrathous, struggling with his medical school debts, the grueling hours of his job, a haunting whisper in his soul that never rests, and a debilitating crush on his new friend, Dorian.

Dorian is a newly appointed Magister in the Tevinter Magisterium, struggling with the expectations of his station, the recent death of his father, the weight of guilt and grief which came with it, and an absolute need of a hug.

[allthelovelywriting]

Stay

This was part of @rdrsecretcupid2020's Valentine Day event. I had the pleasure of writing a Valentine's Day gift for @eaglepatronus​. 

Pairing: Arthur Morgan/Charles Smith 

Rating: General Audiences

Words: 2603

Summary: Arthur has always been loyal to Dutch, the alpha who was kind enough to take an omega like him in. That loyalty has never faltered, until a quiet morning's conversation with Charles, his alpha.

[ cross-posted to ao3 ]

The sun rose carefully over the horizon. The warm beams kissed the trees of the forest, morning finally come, but Arthur had been awake for hours. He can’t remember the last time he slept, let alone rested.  

The small clearing he finds himself in isn’t much, just a reliable hunting spot. But to Arthur, it was something more. It was a place where there weren’t overwhelming scents of alphas and betas. Here, he could just be, without having to worry about any of that.  

With a good amount of game strapped to his horse, perhaps far more than he needed, Arthur knew he should be getting back to camp. Someone always needed something—Dutch always needed something—and the sooner he got going, the sooner he could be out again, on another job.  

And yet, he couldn’t make himself move.  

Why?  

Well, Arthur shifted against the log he sat in front, he knew why. Was it selfish, to just want a bit more time to himself? He thought it over as his pen moved along his journal pages. Switching from an entry about the latest job he’d done for Dutch, to an unfinished depiction of the clearing in front of him. Yeah, it probably was.  

Guilt settles in his chest, a weighted, heavy feeling. He knows he has to get up soon, there really isn’t any other choice, and he hates that he’s even hesitating. Everyone at camp needs him to keep working, and here he is, wasting time. Even if Dutch is forever chasing that “one last heist”, he needs Arthur to be by his side. And yet, here he sits, miles away.  

The uneasiness these thoughts have brought forward is calmed somewhat when a breeze blows through the area. A scent—familiar and full—is brought to him.  

It’s a mixture of the bold smell of the forest trees they’d go hunting in; the fresh smell of grass in the camps they rested in; the smell of lemon bar soap, ever so slightly; but most of all, it's the heady smell of an alpha. His alpha. Charles.  

He rides his horse into the clearing in the same calm, self-assured manner he does most things. That feeling is contagious, and Arthur lets himself rest a bit more, breathe a bit easier.  

“Arthur,” Charles nods to him. He gets off his horse and walks over. Doesn’t make Arthur come to him; treats him like an equal, and goes to his mate himself. Even that, such a simple gesture, is one he’s starved of and makes his heart lift.  

“Charles,” he greets back, and he can’t stop the smile that appears on his lips. Like a schoolboy with a crush, and yet, when Charles sits next to him, close enough so their shoulders brush, arms against one another, but choosing his left side so Arthur can continue to draw if he wants, he can’t find it in himself to stop the grin.  

Arthur puts his journal away; gives his alpha his full attention. Charles smiles, easily, right back at him: “Been a while since I’ve seen you in camp.”  

Arthur nods. He tried to come back to camp more often, not wanting to worry his alpha, but at the same time, Dutch always had something else for him to do. The moments he got to himself were few and far between, and the moments between him and his mater were fewer and further. It seemed they only got this: the times when Charles would come looking for him, on Dutch's request.  

“Been huntin’,” he says, in lieu of an apology. He fails to mention the people he’s gone after recently, beating them for their debt money. Or the stagecoach robbery that ended worse off than he’d have liked, with a bad brawl with two alphas.  

Charles knows all this, of course. Even if he weren’t Arthur’s alpha, the scent of an omega that had been in a bad scrap is unmistakable. And he’s covered in two other alpha’s scents, overlaying that of his bond. Charles must smell it, be aching to scent him again and reclaim his body, but he holds off. He knows that Arthur tries to please everyone in his life, and fears the ire that comes from lack of doing so. He needs to take things at his own pace, so Charles lets him. Doesn’t push when Arthur gives no further explanation.  

“Caught a lot,” he says, nodding to Arthur’s horse. The whitetail on the back, the few rabbits on this side, and what looks some kind of bird on the other side isn’t bad at all.  

Arthur perks up at the praise, “I’ve got more in my satchel, too.”  

“So you’ve been eating then?” Charles questions, his tone light, even though he knows the answer. He reaches for his own bag, passing over a piece of jerky.  

“Been busy, s’all.” Arthur eats the food, gladly. It’s almost serene, sitting in the rising sun’s light, Charles by his side.  

They sit in silence for a little, enough for the sky to bleed more orange than blue. Charles turns to Arthur, and he didn’t even have to ask before Arthur is barring his neck, showing his bond mark, and silently asking for him to scent him. He wastes no time in making Arthur smell like his once more, kisses and a few bites placed on his neck for good measure.  

It calms the omega, making him feel better than he had since... Well, since he had left camp, and Charles, about a week ago. It’s almost enough to make doze off, but—  

“Have you been sleeping?”  

Arthur bites back a sigh. He knew his mate would ask this, because it’s so obvious he hasn’t. This morning was the first that he’d not been constantly moving since he left camp.  

“Been busy,” he says again, voice sounding smaller than he meant it to. “Dutch needed me.”

That causes Charles to pull away, and makes Arthur wish he hadn’t said anything.  

“Arthur,” Charles says, concerned, but Arthur can’t help but feel like he’s about to get scolded. It’s a topic they’ve never really breached. Few arguments rose between them, but this was surely to be a point of contention.

“Charles,” he replies in kind. The comfortable silence is gone, and now he really wishes he hadn’t said anything. As much as it pains him to talk back to his alpha, his lover, his best friend, he feels he has to. Has to justify the countless hours spent running from county to county, risking himself. “I’ve got to be loyal to him.”

The past months haven’t been kind. Hell, it’s been rough since Blackwater, maybe even before, but these past few months especially have been rough for the gang. Now isn't the time to be slacking, or selfishly thinking about one's self. If a few bumps and bruises, scrapes and cuts, are what it takes to keep everyone alive, then that's what he'll do. It's the least he can do, for Dutch.

“After everything that’s happened, we got to stay together,” Arthur finds himself saying. “Just trust in him.”  

Dutch’s words feel odd in his mouth, and he doesn’t like being a parrot, but there’s little else he can do. Justifying Dutch’s actions to himself has become increasingly hard, and in front of his mate, nearly impossible. Still, he feels like he has to try. It's the least he can do.

“Loyalty can’t be one-sided.” Charles allows his hand to meet Arthur’s, fingers intertwining to ground both of them. The touch is one of the few they're allowed in camp; it's quick and doesn't take time away from the seemingly countless chores. So it's familiar; welcome. Still, even Charles can't shield him from the harsh reality of his past.

There had been a time when Dutch would have told him to jump, and he'd ask how high; told him to steal, and he’d ask how much; told to murder, and he would only have asked how many. The omega muscle that was eager to please; to show his worth. To the gang, but more so to the alpha that risked so much to take him in.

Dutch had bet the safety of the gang, and even his respect as an alpha, to have the first member of his gang, besides the women, be an omega. And Arthur couldn't ever let him down. He'd given him a place to live, food, advice, a family, so what if maybe he had to fight to keep his trust? Sure, maybe he wasn't as accommodating as Charles, didn't meet him halfway for everything, and sometimes he questioned Arthur's loyalty, but that just means that Arthur wasn't showing his loyalty enough, wasn't it?

It wasn't with Charles. It was always fifty-fifty. A split; a compromise. The give and take of equals, even if he was an omega. Is that why their loyalty feels different? Unbreakable? With Dutch, it seems he has to fight to keep his trust. Never with Charles; he gave willingly.  

“You can’t be the only one making sacrifices,” Charles continues. Arthur looks away. Wishes he still had his journal out, something to distract him.  

“He took us in,” he urges. With Charles, it was different; an alpha’s chances are always better than an omega’s. Especially if that omega is a scrappy orphan, son of a known, hated alpha. If Dutch and Hosea hadn’t taken him, he’d be dead now, simple as that.

“I know why you’re loyal, Arthur,” Charles soothes, too understanding for his own good. The solid timber of his voice is just as calming as his scent, and has the omega, unwillingly, turning back to him. “But that doesn’t have to be all there is.”

His words take a moment to settle in Arthur’s mind, but when they do, they have the effect of cold water rushing over him. He whips his eyes to Charles’, and tries to hide the sinking feeling of dread in his heart, at least enough to keep his voice steady. “What? You want to leave the gang?”  

It doesn’t work.  

But he doesn’t really care. Doesn’t care if he sounds like a desperate little omega, because that’s his alpha talking about leaving him. The bond mark on his neck burns, and he wonders if it was just temporary, fleeting, a placeholder. 

“Not alone, no.” A warm hand comes to rest on the mark, thumb running over it in smooth circles. The tension that had built up quickly fades just as fast and is all but disappeared with a kiss.  

“The gang’s family,” he insists. “Can’t just leave them behind.”  

A future with Charles is something he’s barely dared to hope for, but the thought of it coming at the price of leaving John, Hosea, even little Jack? It sets an uneasy feeling in him.  

Charles nods. This isn’t something he’s going to convince Arthur of today, so he steps back. Gives Arthur the chance to go about it at his own pace, set his own boundaries. It means more than he’ll ever know.  

The silence that overtakes them is calm once more, met with the sun higher in the sky than either of them would have liked. The sure, steady breathing of his mate is almost enough to let him doze off.

But he can't. Their conversation weighs over him. And though the silence is nice, he can’t help but try and justify;

“Someone has to do it.”  

“It doesn’t have to be you,” is Charles’ easy reply. “At least not alone.”  

He says it simply, like it’s obvious. Offers his help as if he wasn’t the first person to do so. That stirs emotions Arthur isn’t sure he likes, something that far too akin to butterflies, and much prefers to lean against the strong shoulder next to him. Maybe if he weren’t so tired, hadn’t been able to rest for so long, he would have cared more, but he doesn’t.  

“It’s always been this way.” Arthur says it with a sigh, something even he wasn’t expecting. He’d always been resigned to his role, even happy to do it the first few years after Dutch let him go out on his own.  

“It doesn’t have to be.”

Arthur huffs at that, something like a laugh. How is it so easy for him to be so sincere, so caring? Like... like he truly does believe he’s worth it.  

“I’m not a good man,” he states, quietly. It’s a fact. While none in the gang are exactly saints, he’s far worse, especially compared to the man next to him. The alpha that’s always been patient with him, met all his walls with compassion, never pushed too far, always respected his boundaries. His alpha.

Charles seems to consider this for a bit. It’s no secret that he doesn’t agree and that he’s tried in vain to convince Arthur otherwise. It's one of the few things they argue about, and neither of them wants that now. Charles has talked at length about how good he thinks Arthur is, and Arthur has denied it in turn.

He doesn’t start again, avoiding the argument and instead saying, “That doesn’t mean you’re not deserving.”  

Deserving? Of what?  

Charles wraps his arm around Arthur, holding him close.

Of this, he answers silently.  

He hates how safe it makes him feel. How vulnerable he felt before, in retrospect. Hates the fact that tears had threatened to spill over, at such a simple gesture. He's so starved for this intimate kind of attention, and he never wants it to stop, and he hates that too. He hates the feeling that rises in his chest most of all: something so close to love it scares him.

“He needs me,” is Arthur’s final attempt at rebuttal. With his eyes closed, voice heavy with sleep as he rest against his mate, the argument must sound so weak, so hollow.  But he has to try, because he doesn't like being this tired, even though he really doesn't have a choice.

Still, Charles refutes it: “I need you.” His arm stays in place around Arthur’s shoulders as the other comes to rest on his hand. Arthur watches as his calloused fingers intertwine, solidifying the moment.  

“Healthy.” A quick poke to his too thin stomach makes him smile. He pauses before continuing, a breeze sweeps through the trees.  

“Safe.” His voice is as steady as ever, and it holds some resolve. Neither of them knows what will come, but right now is all that matters. Being together.  

“Alive.” There’s a hint of desperation in Charles’ voice, and it’s enough to have Arthur sitting up, despite how his weary body protests, and capturing his lips in a long-overdue kiss. Mouths pressing together, perhaps too harshly for what is supposed to be a caring gesture, but it’s what Arthur needs to ground him.  To calm his the whirlwind of emotions he'll blame on tiredness and his long time away from his alpha.

“I don’t know what to do," he finally whispers when they break apart, in between panting breaths.  

“Stay,” Charles says. Asks. Not commanding, not forcing. Allowing Arthur to make his own decision. Allow him to breathe, clear his head. He gives Arthur a choice; a chance at stability, a chance to inhale the Alpha’s scent for just a moment longer.  

So he does.  

There was never really a choice.  

Arthur’s head comes to rest against Charles’ shoulder. Inhales deeply, taking in the scent of the alpha, much more calm than his own; grounding. Neither of them says anything. The silence stretches on, and Arthur, finally, rests.

[fiinalgiirls]

GENERAL INFORMATION.

FULL NAME - genevieve sloane channing NICKNAMES - neve GENDER / PRONOUNS - she/her DATE OF BIRTH - february 12, 1988 PLACE OF BIRTH - portland, oregon CITIZENSHIP / ETHNICITY - united states american; irish, scottish, welsh RELIGION - atheist / agnostic SOCIOECONOMIC STATUS / POLITICAL AFFILIATION - grew up very low socioeconomic status in ne portland, before the gentrification, but is now considered middle class due to her nurse’s salary. she’s liberal. MARITAL STATUS - single ( previously engaged ). SEXUAL & ROMANTIC ORIENTATION - bisexual, leaning more towards an attraction to men. EDUCATION / OCCUPATION - bachelor’s of science in nursing; emergency nurse LANGUAGES - english, spanish, and a few small phrases pertaining to medical emergencies in vietnamese and russian.

FAMILY INFORMATION.

PARENTS - doug and paula channing, both deceased. SIBLINGS - none OFFSPRING - none PETS / OTHER - robocop ( a black and white siberian husky ). i’d also like her to get a cat at some point ! give me this plot point !! NOTABLE EXTENDED FAMILY - none

PHYSICAL INFORMATION.

FACECLAIM - adelaide kane HAIR COLOR / EYE COLOR - brown / brown HEIGHT / BUILD - 5′3″ / slight, athletic TATTOOS / PIERCINGS - nostril piercing, small tattoo on anterior right forearm. DISTINGUISHABLE FEATURES - a scar above her left ear that goes into her hairline approximately three inches, bold, full brows. freckles. usually has bruised knees.

MEDICAL INFORMATION.

MEDICAL HISTORY - laceration to left temporoparietal area, sprained ankle, fractured collar bone, well-controlled asthma. KNOWN ALLERGIES - penicillin, watermelon VISUAL IMPAIRMENT / HEARING IMPAIRMENT - nearsighted, but usually uses contacts; tinnitus. NICOTINE USE / DRUG USE / ALCOHOL USE - occasional alcohol use, former smoker ( has had an errant cigarette on occasion ), drug use as a teenager.

PERSONALITY.

TRAITS - compassionate, resilient, tenacious ; self-righteous, cynical, aloof TROPES - nerves of steel, canine companion, good is not soft, deadpan snarker. TEMPERAMENT - melancholic ALIGNMENT - chaotic good CELTIC TREE ZODIAC - rowan, the thinker MBTI - infj HOGWARTS HOUSE - ravenclaw VICE / VIRTUE - pride ; liberality LIKES / DISLIKES: animals, reading, running and weight lifting, not having to share her popcorn, take-out, breakfast for dinner, leather / denim jackets, white sneakers, fresh cut flowers, solitude, people who think about others,  /  medical dramas, arrogance, science deniers, bok choy, people who talk to her at the gym or when she has headphones on, movie remakes, passive aggression. QUOTE:  ❝take a body, dump it, drive. take a body, maybe your own, and dump it gently. all your dead, unfinished selves and dump them gently. take only what you need. ❞

FAVORITES.

FOOD - curry. DRINK - coffee. PIZZA TOPPING - pineapple ( yes, she’s that bitch ), but with olives, mushrooms, tomatoes, and tabasco. COLOR - earth tones, grey, black and white. MUSIC - synth, hip hop, indie. BOOKS - horror, true crime, historical philosophy of science and medicine. MOVIES - the thing, nightbreed, notorious CURSE WORD - fuck, goddamn it. SCENTS - lavender, vanilla, chocolate.

BIOGRAPHY,

trigger/content warnings: murder, death, graphic violence, mental health, postpartum depression, suicide, cancer, drug mention, parent death, medical, euthanasia mention, stalking, guns

THE FOG CREEPS IN ; GIRLHOOD IS A GRAVEYARD

genevieve channing is born on a cold, grey february sometime around midnight to douglas and paula channing while the heavy oregon fog kisses the modest concrete jungle of portland oregon like a phantom. paula gives her a big name, telling the nurses with heady confidence that she’ll be famous one day, and it’s the biggest gift she ever gives her. baby genevieve is in her arms so often, she hardly touches a cradle, but it’s not long until douglas feels an uneasiness creeping in.

paula is bohemian silk skirts and crushed velvet. she grows restless being trapped in the plain, modest home in northeast. she is a woman that is easy to fall in love with—not meant to sit at home idly with a collicy baby, where she finds herself in tears more than ever. douglas returns from work to find baby genevieve screaming unattended in her crib while paula cries in the backyard with an ashtray full of cigarettes. she tells him she’s worried she’ll crash the car one day on the way to the grocery store with them both inside. douglas digs his teeth into his bottom lip and tries not to cry. he squeezes her hand and tells her she needs to go to therapy. what he really wants to tell her is that their baby needs her. he leaves paula outside and spends the afternoon tidying the house with genevieve swaddled against his chest. it’s a warm feeling.

it’s not long after that paula starts disappearing for periods of time and douglas learns she can’t be trusted to watch after the baby on her own. when she calls from downtown in tears, hyperverbal and desperate, he picks her up in his old chevy truck and brings her home. she agrees to see a doctor and for awhile, they figure out how to live again. some days are even as sweet as the rhubarb pies she starts to make again.

there are only two ways neve later remembers her mother, and the first is lovely–paula is picnics and shakespeare in the parks. she’s dried roses in the window and salmon tacos with mango salsa. she is whirlwind adventures and laughter. she teaches neve to make wishes on stray eyelashes, blowing them into the wind like dandelion seeds. on the good days, paula’s eyes are filled with stars. on the bad days, they are left black as the night sky while she cries the constellations down her cheeks. occasionally, she is cruel. mostly, she is absent.

by the third grade, neve expects this. douglas has never been much of a cook–save hamburger patties with canned green beans and a baked potato. she cooks their dinners from recipes she learns from her grandmas and helps around the house. most nights she’s home alone until the grumbling sound of the chevy breaks through the dark and signals her father’s return. eventually, she stops missing her mother from the everyday–it’s only when the other kids talk about their moms that she feels the pang of loss and wonders where she is. some nights neve finds herself sitting in her bedroom window pulling out eyelashes just to have something left to wish on. some of paula’s friends overdose on heroin or get murdered in the nights when neve is sleeping; she stays up late and hopes that her vigil will keep a distant mother safe.

there aren’t many trees on their street–unlike some of the other neighborhoods. the big weeping birch in their backyard that drives her father crazy as he rakes leaves every fall is neve’s pride and joy. there is comfort in the shade its branches cast every summer. at night it makes her lonely as it blocks the silhouette of the waxing moon. on lazy summer days when her father leaves for work, neve sits with her back curved against its rough trunk and reads the day away.

on a cool april afternoon, just after preparing a plate of cherry poptarts with a thin layer of butter on top of the frosting ( much to her father’s chagrin ), neve ventures out to the modest yard to sit under her tree. the familiar crushed blue velvet of her mother’s favorite dress catches her off guard and she drops her breakfast onto the unkempt lawn as her mind makes sense of the unnatural height of its hem as paula swings–marking the time of neve’s pounding heartbeat. the butter solidifies as it cools in the dirt, the heel of neve’s hand-me-down airwalk sneakers mashing her breakfast. the cherry filling sticks to the sole like bubblegum; she’ll never eat them again, but she can’t help but recall that her mom always preferred the maple and brown sugar.

THE ODDS ARE STACKED AGAINST HER ; A GIRL LEARNS TO COUNT CARDS

portland in the eighties and nineties is less portlandia and more drugstore cowboy. a lot of kids from other neighborhoods don’t go downtown. the ones that do have an air of palpable grit. neve takes the max, rides her skateboard in the dark. douglas has cautioned her a hundred thousand times, but paula’s death has instilled such a great fear of losing his daughter that he lets her get away with more than he knows he probably should. he fears paula’s ghost will someday possess her and she’ll wander off into the ether. most days he insists that the only parts of paula he sees in his cherished daughter are the good ones–neve holds onto the corporeal world with claws. it’s only on the worst nights–paula’s specter cooling the sheets of his bed in the dark–that he wakes up with the fear his daughter is gone.

douglas’s new wife, rosie, does her best to pit them against one another, but sometimes–she’s not so bad, neve thinks. it’s nice to have a mother figure in the house again even if she falls short most days. sometimes she thinks that maybe they could learn to love each other. if nothing else, she’s sure she owes a bit of gratitude to the woman; the nights of her father’s haunting sobs have become fewer and farther between. it isn’t until douglas begins receiving late notices on utilities that he begins to grow suspicious. rosie is quick to throw neve under the bus–a young girl like that? she’s probably stealing their money to spend on drugs and CDs at sam goody. douglas has never bet on anyone like he bets on his daughter; rosie’s gambling debts are news to them both.

the fallout of the relationship leaves douglas and neve in dire financial straits. the father is heartbroken–another love lost, he blames himself for always choosing the wrong lady luck. despite their financial ruin, left in rosie’s wake, douglas has a hard time getting out of bed most days and blows through what little sick time he has available to him. school takes a back burner and neve barely attends it at all–favoring her time on finding work ( legitimate and illegitimate ) to help keep their small family afloat. she attends class when it’s profitable and waits tables or washes dishes when she can. it’s still not enough.

a few kids turn neve onto small crimes to turn a profit. they ride the max to the suburbs and crash parties–stealing pills out of medicine cabinets and turning them over for profit. calculus wasn’t worth a good goddamn, but distribution teaches skills. it’s hard not to get caught up in petty thefts and the occasional break-ins. neve and her friends find it easy to justify in the spirit of class war. a pin on her denim jacket reads ‘eat the rich’ and it doesn’t sound so bad. portland is a cannibal and it eats its children.

neve is a cat with nine lives and despite her friends being caught by the long arm of the law or the stronger arm of revenge, she evades detection. even such cats live with a fear of death, and as consequence catches up to members of the small circle she runs with, neve knows she is living on borrowed time. sooner or later, she knows, her luck will run bone dry.

SPRING RETURNS TO PORTLAND ; THE FROST CLINGS TO FRAGILE BONES

neve dropping out of high school is a wake up call for douglas. he sees farther than she does and knows that she deserves a better life than the one he’s scrounged together for her. most days, he blames himself for a life that could have been; some kids like her wore neatly pressed dresses and folded over lace socks on picture day. some kids had piano lessons and summer camps. there’s a lot of insight in hindsight, but neve staunchly opposes his masochistic remorse and becomes determined to prove him wrong. it takes her a couple years of working to figure out what she wants to do–a girl baptised in her mother’s blood is born with the kind of heart that takes on too much. she is meant for saving lives and carrying the world on her shoulders like atlas himself.

it takes time, but as douglas gets their house in order and starts working again. neve is able to start up at portland community college. she takes up a work study job and works a steady flow of odd jobs on the side to support herself. lady luck shines her fortune on the pair for the first time in forever to make up for the steady losses they’ve sustained over the years. life isn’t lavender and gardenias, but somehow waking up becomes little and less painful each day. some days neve wakes up and forgets that she can’t breathe. most days she spends her gratitude in the heap of debt the world owes her–waiting for the other shoe to drop.

the rebirth of their family is a hearty soil; both channings flourish as if made anew. the dew drops that cling to garden spider webs in their window signal the looming anniversary of a mother’s misty breath and neve learns not to fall apart. douglas works hard to do right by her and make up for the years of never knowing what to do and waffling between what is best and what is desirable. he is a man that longs for dreams–feet barely brushing the earth like her mother’s did on that day–but he is learning to make dreams work too. his dreams take root around his daughter once more; he builds them around her and builds her up with them.

the highschool dropout graduates her community college adn bridge program and she can hardly believe it when she’s accepted to ohsu for her bsn. there are no college diplomas with the channing name hanging on walls with peeling wallpaper or tucked away in trunks with paula’s things. douglas has saved his money for months to get her the right graduation gift and neve laughs, downplaying that it’s not a real graduation, but still walks in the ceremony at his insistence.

she returns home to the small party of friends she’ll start to grow apart from when she gets tired of the jeers about how she thinks she’s ‘too good for them’ now. neighborhoods like hers don’t always love to watch you grow if it means you’ll leave them. they’ll still blow up her phone for medical advice, but the invitations dry up like the drought of portland natives in southeast. for now, it’s a pleasant barbecue. the highlight of the evening comes in the small bundle of inky fur that douglas proudly produces after neve’s second burger. peering out from his strong arms are the brown eyes of a young siberian husky. douglas begs her to name the pup murphy over robocop, but loses easily–a hearty chuckle on his lips. they are bonded instantly–girl and dog–robocop becomes neve’s second most stalwart companion next to her father.

nursing school is hard, but it’s not impossible and it is full of new kinds of joys. she makes new friends and they eat lunch from the thai foodcart—nestled within the pod of south waterfront—and lay on the quad drinking smoothies and complaining about the next pharmacology exam. nose in a book and a drink in her hand at happy hour down at cha cha cha !, neve attracts the attention of pa student shane stone. he knows a nursing school classmate of hers from high school and is quickly incorporated to their study groups with a couple of his friends. he is tall with dark hair and kind eyes and just the sort of person a girl dreams of falling in love with. he spends little time worrying about things like rent and bus passes. it’s not even the end of the semester before study dates evolve into movie dates. there’s an entire world between them, but somehow the pair build a bridge.

DEATH RATTLES AND DYING BREATH ; THE GIRL’S OTHER SHOE DROPS

as neve focuses on school, douglas seems to be making steps to keep himself around longer. they go for long walks with robocop around the neighborhood. southeast portland is becoming a different neighborhood and the cost of living is high. restaurants crop up with around the block waits and family friends are forced to move to grayer pastures. it seems, to the channings, that it’s the end of an era. with neve spending most of her time at shane’s apartment on south waterfront, douglas’ weight loss is hardly noticed–everyone assumes it is merely the byproduct of increased activity. it isn’t until his stature becomes gaunt that neve starts to worry.

shane holds neve close when she finally breaks down–sneaking into the single bathroom of the clinic to let her fall apart the way he knows she can’t do in the open. like a wild animal, the girl he loves hides herself away when she feels death’s acrid breath on her neck. he doesn’t know what loss is and he certainly can’t relate to what she’s been through. douglas’ diagnosis is like watching the noose tighten around her mother’s neck all over again. her throat is dry like she’s choking on the fibers of that same rope; the world has a foggy edge—hollow like street lights illuminating an empty suburban neighborhood on a clear, dark night. everything is wooden; everything feels like a dollhouse.

it’s hard to keep up on her studies, but somehow neve muscles through. shane gives up his idyllic apartment and moves into their modest southeast home to help out. he makes a lighthearted joke about finally being a real portlander and moving so near the trendy, revitalized mississippi neighborhood and neve drops and breaks her coffee mug on the unfinished wood floor of the kitchen. it’s just another reminder that he doesn’t belong in her world any more than she does in his. it doesn’t sting as bad as the ink on his mother’s checks that she cashes to keep her father comfortable on his deathbed while she learns to be a better caretaker. life ebbs and flows, but douglas’ drains away until she hardly recognizes the sinewy, pale hands that hold hers so strongly for a man that can’t sit up by himself any longer. she curses her mother once more for leaving and twice for never having been there in the first place.

death isn’t slow or peaceful like the woman from her father’s church will lie about at the funeral. his death rattle lasts for hours and the bellows of his chest quake with weary breath. part of her wishes that the hospice nurse had started an iv on him and a sick, hidden part of her wishes it because a sweet dose of morphine would’ve ended it all sooner for him. she wonders silently if that would do more to ease his pain or hers? he hasn’t been conscious in two days. shane sits with her at the side of his bed with rapt attention and as his breathing slows, neve crawls into the hospice bed next to him. the next several months are a blur and a father misses his only daughter’s graduation. neve is barely present there herself.

shane insists that she’s not an orphan–his parents fly in from denver and treat her like one of their own. it guilts her that she can’t help but resent them for the simple virtue of living while her own father is reduced to a cold dust. she wears his ashes around her neck in a pendant from the funeral home and spreads the rest in every beautiful place she can find. some of them spill into her purse during a hike with robo and shane and she breaks down in tears. there are so many small things that make her sick or numb. a multitude of tiny memories that weigh as much as planets; isn’t dust what helped create the milky way? even around the stone family she feels alone. maybe especially around the stones.

HACKLES RAISED, A GIRL LEARNS THE DANGERS OF BEING FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE

the emergency department attracts all kinds of people in myriad dire straits. people come in at the end of their ropes–infections ignored too long, stabbings and shootings, a broken bone from slipping off the slide, and sometimes when they feel like they can’t live any longer. evan does not fit into any of these categories when he comes in. among the myriad failings of the medical system, lack of access and use of primary care is one of the larger contributions to higher emergency department volumes and evan is another data point in a sea of statistics. he comes back to neve’s room with a sly grin plastered on his face and states that he’s new to the area and can’t get into a new primary care for a few months. his daily asthma inhaler is out and he needs to renew the prescription and get a referral to a clinic.

there’s nothing on the surface that identifies this man as a threat. he’s almost charming and he’s nontoxic appearing–a nice easy patient in a sea of sick people is sometimes a great relief. they make some small talk and it’s the usual stuff she chats about with patients: ‘where’re you from?’ ‘where did you go to school?’ he expresses an interest in nursing and she recommends the program she attended at the hospital she now works. there’s almost a tension there, and when he makes a casual comment about the tan line on her finger she tells him that she doesn’t wear her engagement ring at work because it can tear the gloves. that’s only half right. maybe he can sense the rest of the truth; she’ll wonder that later when she pieces together every scrap of something she can use to blame it on herself.

he sends her a message on facebook, which makes her lips curl downwards in uncertainty. even that isn’t entirely alarming. it opens up reminding her that he’s knew to the area, and that he’s interested in the nursing program she went to. it’s a surprise, but he makes mention of a girlfriend’s wifi and he even asks how shane is doing. he loves her dog and mentions wanting one himself. sure, it’s a little weird–unconventional–but neve has always been interested in helping others find nursing and agrees to meet him for coffee to discuss the program. when they meet, she sees the mistake inherit in it before she even opens the cafe door. he’s disheveled and hyperverbal when he speaks to her and she can barely get a word in edge wise. between the gift he’s brought her and the intensity of his stare, she wonders how she could have read him so wrong. it’s then that he drops the bomb that makes her stomach sink into the trench it detonates in–will they take him in the nursing program with a record? she doesn’t ask, but he provides the details anyway. death threats to some girl he barely knew that wouldn’t leave him alone, he paints the canvas well, but she can read between the lines. evan stevens is dangerous and his lethal eye is trained on her.

she makes an excuse to leave–the first of many excuses, the illusion of being unavailable, unattainable. it’s the advice she’s given to women before, but never had to follow. those words offered to women in distress seem so trite now, so hollow. there is so much fear in cutting ties slowly–the strategic approach to keep an impulsive person like that from escalating. she wishes she could take those clinical offerings of textbook wisdom back from those women and hold their hands. she wonders how many of them still live. he starts blowing up her phone constantly. he comments on all her social media. all day and all night. if she doesn’t respond, he threatens suicide. some days he asks if she’s working and says he brought her lunch. if she says she’s sick, he asks for her address to bring her tom yum takeout from the restaurant she’s posted about on instagram. everything makes her sick now.

A FINAL GIRL IS FORGED ALONE ; THERE IS NO SUBVERTING FATE

god, it’s hard to speak about. she can’t even let the words reach her tongue, lips and teeth to birth them. they shrivel and die in her throat, festering there until she swallows them and they rest in her stomach like great stones. she wonders if evan will cut her stomach open like a wolf and find the rocks there. that’s not how the story goes; she tells herself so many versions as she lies awake in the dark afraid to sleep.

when she finally tells her friends–a smattering of girls and guys from nursing school, the er, and her neighborhood–the response is like the knife she dreams about in her gut. she shows some of the girls at her work his picture, worried that he’ll come in asking about her. she’s chided by these friends, “he’s actually pretty cute, florence nightingale” they joke. “it must be flattering to have the attention.” even shane suspected that there’s some indulgence on her part. that maybe she likes trying to fix people who are broken so much that she gets some sick reward from the experience. he doesn’t speak the words, but neve is fluent in shane stone. he says it in his eyes, the downcurve of his lips, the tense way he sighs when her phone dings over and over again during date nights.

on a cold night in december, neve works on meal prepping alone in the kitchen. evan has been out of town helping his mother remodel her kitchen and neve feels like she can finally breathe in the space he’s left behind. turning on the wireless speaker, she tries to pair her phone to play music as loud as the thin walls of her father’s modest northeast portland home will allow and instead hears, in the cold, robotic voice ‘pairing with neve’s iphone and evan’s iphone.’ robocop doesn’t even lift his head in suspicion the whole night. she calls 911, but they find neither hide nor hair of him. in the morning, neve nails the windows shut and buys a gun–a smith & wesson .357 snub nose revolver. the weight of it is heavy in her hands and she buys a membership to a gun range, calling into work and practicing until shane returns. she doesn’t tell him about the gun and she stops telling him how bad things have gotten with evan. the click of his tongue and disapproval in his eyes is more dooming than a death sentence and she can’t bear to bring further disappointment. neve channing is a strong woman–a smart woman. things like this don’t happen to women like her.

somehow, evan is everywhere and he knows all her secret places as if he exists as an extension of her. maybe he even believes he is–sending her voice messages about how they’re connected. they are the same; they are foils of one another. he send her a picture of his ouroboros tattoo from a new number after she finally blocks him. ‘we are the same.’ he is an all-consuming, devouring force, but she is not a serpent’s tail. he is moloch–besmeared with blood, the great, horrid king–but she is not a child and she will not be sacrificed for sins she has not committed. he has not right and there’s only one way she can see this ending as the days grow longer. like life itself begins, this too will end in blood.

LOVE IS A HARD KNIFE ; A GIRL CAN’T STOMACH AMBROSIA

there is a consequence to every action and every inaction. every little thing she chooses not to tell shane fester and boils. the late nights at work and the new passcode on her phone seem more to shane like cheating than a worsening of some creep’s obsession. she hasn’t even mentioned evan to him since the trees started blooming again. when he elects to cheer her up and bring her lunch during a shift she traded so she could practice at the gun range, his suspicions deepen and while she sleeps that morning, he rifles through her work bag and finds alongside her locked cell phone the cold steel of a secret that he cannot abide by.

it’s not his fault either and she means that from the bottom of her heart. every kindness from the stones feels like another debt and neve can’t help but let the resentment fester in the tasteful diamond on her finger. when she looks upon his face now all she can see is death and it’s the world’s cruelest joke, because she’s the one with cemetery dirt underneath her fingernails. she can’t tell which of the two of them she resents more and they both deserve lives where ghosts stay buried and the dead don’t whisper malcontent in her ears while she struggles to fall asleep. nightmares are her own warm milk; she’s sick of the cold metal of a gun as she moves it from her night stand to her purse each morning. she’s tired of being made to feel like she had a stake in any of this.

it’s not the kindest way to leave a man, but she’s not sure she’s ready to face him again after all that’s happened. she leaves her house keys with her cousin paloma and packs up shane’s stuff. paloma has just started nursing school and can use neve’s father’s old house to sublet. the rent’s free and she’s always been gentle hearted. neve can’t think of anyone better to care for her father’s old house. with dear john letters to both shane and the hospital, neve takes robocop and enough of her things to fit into her subaru forester. it’s not goodbye. it’s never goodbye, she thinks as she hugs paloma on the modest porch. it still feels so permanent, but neve tells herself that big decisions always do. she yearns to discover who she is outside of grief and fear and love. a daughter cannot bloom in her parents’ shadows and she is suffocating underneath the gentle love of the mourning glory.

on the road without a real plan–because if she doesn’t know where she’s going, then neither does evan–neve signs on for a travel nursing company. the first assignment she considers is salem hospital an hour south and it’s a great department, but it’s too close to home. he’ll find her there easily. st. charles in bend isn’t far enough away either. it doesn’t feel like enough of a difference and none of them do until she’s cruising down the interstate through blythe, california and she sees a listing for a level one trauma center in tuscon, arizona. it feels like it could be the right place to burn and be born again.

A GIRL AND HER DOG; SOMETIMES PEACE IS ITS OWN KIND OF PRISON

the cool steel of the snub nose .357 revolver lies buried beneath her registration and owner’s manual in the glove compartment. she wonders briefly as she pulls out her sunglasses and slips a salty french fry into her mouth. the car stereo fades in and out along the southbound highway, switching between some smooth-talking radio host and the tinny crooning of buddy holly. it makes her think of her father, and she blinks back tears–plugging in her iphone to switch to a tune that doesn’t bring back such painful memories. robocop whines in the backseat and neve discovers that her maps aren’t loading any longer, the gps unable to locate their vehicle.

there’s no sense in pulling over and pulling out the map of arizona she purchased from a disinterested teen in the first gas station she’d come across in the state. there’s only two days before the job starts and, according to her recruiter, they’d already moved the orientation up a day, cutting her time to adjust to her new ( temporary ) place before work in half. taking a long drink of coffee–now as cold as her french fries–she blinks hard to keep awake and just when she thinks she’ll have to pull over and sleep in her car huddled close to robocop’s warm, furry body.

neve passes a hospital on the outskirts of town–lit up all pretty against the dark desert sky. it looks nice enough and the longer she drives, the more she considers that her recruiter might’ve told her they were full up in tuscon. maybe that was why they moved the date up for orientation afterall. in the dark august night, most of the businesses are closed and the lights in the mobile home park neve passes are off. the first place she sees open is bj’s food mart and she stops to get a fresh cup of coffee and stretch her legs. she learns inside that amen county is always hiring and leaves with a smile on her lips.

neve has spent nine peaceful months in boot hill. the gun no longer lives shoved into the bottom of her work bag or nestled into the glove compartment of her subaru. now it spends its days in solitude in the coffin-like drawer of her bedside table. evan will never find this place, she is almost sure of it. he might be looking for her, but he’s not looking for boot hill. some evenings on her long strolls to work, she smiles and closes her eyes–listening to the soothing sounds of the town.

soon enough, neve is sure there really was no travel assignment to reach. or, if there had been, she can’t remember where it’s at. instead, she takes some time to enjoy the small town and the anonymity she feels there. she’s not even living out of the silk bonnet hotel anymore. she hadn’t seen boot hill on any map during her road trip and, if that’s universal, her past can’t find her without a destination to set its sights on. there is more than great comfort in that. by the end of her first month, she can’t imagine living anywhere else.

the emergency department is not the bustling trauma center she was used to, but there is an appeal to the autonomy rural medicine offers an experienced nurse. hell, in some places the doctors only come in if you call them. neve can’t exactly remember the application and interview process anymore. it seems like there are so many things that have become mysteries and she can’t find herself caring enough to investigate them long enough to follow an actual lead. it seems like she’s always worked there–an instantaneous sensation of home. she couldn’t even leave if she wanted to.

[demonslayvr]

VERSES RUNDOWN.

'fore blazing home came atumbling  ;  there was a family of four  (  childhood v. )

PRE GAMES  /  NOVEL’S  /  MANGA’s.   pretty clear  --  this is any interaction that has been plotted or otherwise during dante’s childhood til the fire.  by default he’s going to be about 6 - 8 years of age with the latter age at least a couple months before the fire.  

quite indeterminate yet the bang of a gun and the slash of a sword still remain a constant ( undetermined v  )

PRETTY OBVIOUS.   i haven’t made a decision where shit goes yet thus its undetermined.  will change during thread once we plot more on it or i figure something out myself.

not everything has a simple ending.  crashing demons is easy but other things ? that can be tough  (  multifandom v  )

GENERAL CROSSOVER / MULTIVERSE v.   pretty generic verse for when either dante himself or another character   outside   of the devil may cry canon gets tossed comes inside it.  i’ll probably branch off if and whenever i make verses for  in - fandom specific  threads when i build something for each one of them but this is it for now.  sometimes this verse tag will accompany another one  ;  which just means whichever verse he’s in and what you should follow development wise is connected. basically just a multi - fandom tag for crossover threads,  lads.   

die trash man  ;  take your sword and SHOVE IT  ( crack  )

GENERAL CRACK.   as the package says it’s just a verse / tag for crack whenever it happens.  sometimes it may 

a flash to a past that holds bitter air.  pain was a story here.  you wish not to go back   ( post dmc5 / alternate interaction v )

ALTERNATE INTERACTIONS.   pretty much like with the multifandom verse tag this one is simply going to go with   any   other version of himself dante interacts with.  might get latched onto with another verse tag just for my own sanity but  . .  yep.

low feelings  ;  simply moving along to find dangers and distractions ( devil may cry one v. ) 

SET JUST BEFORE,  DURING OR AFTER DMC1 AND BEFORE FOUR.  pretty much as the previous sentence says lads.  he’s an angstee boy but not as angsty as his two self i guess lmao.  but yeah,  this verse is a huge back track in terms of development and how he is in the verse   below  this one.

bang bang bang kiss of the gun & blade ; where are we?  (  post dmc5 - main )

POST DMCV.   follows the full OG dmcv canon til end  -  depending on interaction this could mean that any vergil written with and dante are in hell still doing whatever the fuck they please   or   after the fact and home and going on with their lives.  or trying  ;  considering vergil is back in his life and alive.  this is also the   DEFAULT   verse of the blog.

there's a fire in your veins that speaks your losses yet you continue to bend in remembrance (  atla / lok v.  )

SHUNNED.   known for killing his twin brother,  his very name and even more so in taking jobs to pay the bills   --  jobs that more so upset the delicate balance between the human and spirit realms.  

dante sparda   comes from the fire nation  -- his father a previous high general in the army  ; one that tried to broker peace in a time where it was unheard of while the fire nation ruled. his father met eva when he was traveling the earth nation and secretly begun a relationship with her.  their love was beautiful,  eventually in as much secret as possible eva bore two young boys:  vergil and dante sparda.

happiness was not to last however as wind was caught of the affair and the children,  leaving eva and the young sons to go on the run with sparda defending their escape.  the name sparda was drug through the mud as the man was never heard from again after that night. unknown what became of him as deflected firebending set the house ablaze.

short years pass,  spending it on the run from those who want to end the chapter of embarrassment  --  but it finally catches up.  one evening eva comes running,  telling her boys to go  --  to run and hide.  forget their names but stay at each other’s side.  the twins do as told and don’t look back  ;   the last time they see her.  however in their escape they end up separated,  captured by soldiers of the fire nation.  dante’s anger and despair of losing his entire family causes him to lose control  ;  lashing out on the soldiers that caught him and running away

“ you must change your name  ;  forget your past and start a new life as someone else.  “

that he does.  he changes his name and disappears,  alone.  fast forwarding a couple years he’s a spirit hunter  ;  taking jobs that rid   “  evil spirits  “  that cause issue or problem for anyone that pays a good amount.  a mercenary that cuts down those who’ve wronged the wrong person  ;  non and bender’s alike.  his father’s sword,  rebellion,  at his back to assist and create a dancing display of fire just as much as his bending.  he’s a difficult one to get close to but once you cool him off   (   haha )  he’s a loyal friend and ally.  

with the war over at the end of the series he’s more vocal of who he is  --  even though he was  previously   but with some of the fire nation’s  “ norms  “  kind of relaxing from fire - lord zuko’s rule   . .  he’s his father’s son.  his mother’s son.

lok  verses are basically  . .  kinda the same.  except i guess he’s older   . .  ??

pay off the debt to save your skin  ;  something within broke and former gentle soul crushed under weight ( dmc 2.0 v )

CANON DIVERGENT.  dante snapped,   perhaps it was inevitable  -  perhaps losing too many people tore what little the cambian could handle to pieces and the person that emerged from it was more a threat than he was before.  after the events of devil may cry 1 after realizing that he had  ( supposedly   )  killed his brother there was something in him that couldn’t handle it and everything begun to crumble.

in this timeline something in him changed, and while it wasn’t immediate  –  little things when he would have been understanding over a situation didn’t sit as they should.  but it happened quickly.  with trish’s betrayal he didn’t help her,  allowing her to get crushed by the tumbling rocks  ;  simply standing there and watch it happen.  its drawn out,  with him coming over to crouch beside her as she struggled to heal.  in his allowance bore cruelty,  snarling that she should have known better to betray him  –  mundus shouldn’t have done what he did and expect him to now not try and go after him.

he,  as he does in the normal timeline,  states that while she looks like his mother that she has no soul,  no fire and for that she’s just a puppet.  he shoots her more than once,  killing her   –   the last time he sheds a tear.  he reaches mundus,  who commends him for his actions yet the hybrid isn’t having it.  the fight with mundus goes about the same but with dante  killing him   for ultimately forcing him to murder his brother,  being the one who set the orders to   burn down   his home  –  twice   –  and turn his life upside down.

he goes through the portal mundus opened to  try   and escape and ultimately assumes himself as the  new king  of the underworld.  he still runs his business since even though he’s king there will always be factions that don’t   like it   due to his bastard blood and he’s more than happy to snuff it out.

his attitude is   mostly   intact   (  though this is said   loosely   since he’s less talkative and jovial   )   though now it’s unsettling at times since his jokes and humor can be a bit morbid  – let alone how his aura feels.  its dangerous and uncomfortable to be around  ;  his care for humans as a whole is almost non - existent except for a small inkling for lady.  

BIG NOTE:  THIS TIMELINE IS SET AFTER DEVIL MAY CRY ONE,  KIND OF   SKIPS FOUR    (    though it   IS   likely nero still exists but dante doesn’t care much about it  or know   )    SLIGHTLY INVOLVES TWO    ( aka:  dante gets annoyed that some idiot human is making helicopters messed up with demonic juju and wants to become king.  so he kills arius  )  AND INVOLVES   SOME CONTENT   OF FIVE.  

to enact your revenge most had been taken  ;  body & mind broken so it could begin   (  witcher v  )

———–   destiny.  you hear it more than you’d like to admit.  destiny is what brought your parents together  ;   one monster and the other a witch.  two were born,  twins and raised in care by the witch til fate came to pass and ripped the three of you left apart.  in trying to halt destiny the father,  sparda,  had done his best to hold it off  ;  disappearing one afternoon when the boys had been young   ——–   so long ago.  his hope ??   that staying away would bring a kinder reality and future.

fire and blood,  a mother doing best to protect her children was found disemboweled on the floor within the crumbled castle foundations.  the youngest child was told to hide,  hide away and if the mother didn’t resurface   . .  to run.  she didn’t,  but the youngest fought his way out of the castle   —-  skills of his mother surfacing with an aptitude for beast slaying in the same scope.  his father’s sword,  created by hellish and beastly means was his and aptly used to start a revenge   —  to   KILL   demons in his mothers name.  and in his brothers   —   as both were believed to have perished in the attack.

in a short time and with training the young hybrid killed demons for a price   ;   eventually catching the eye of a witcher.  the nature of the hybrid himself and the skills he held were of interest   —   brought to kaer morhen to be trained as a witcher.  almost losing himself in the process yet he endured,  it further altering his physiology that was already different with the hybrid nature he had.

with the trials and effective torture to   be   a witcher an astounding success he buried into the extensive training to pursue the beast that slayed his family while also being a monsterslayer for hire.  

———–   destiny.  you hear it more than you’d like to admit.   destiny and fate has brought you here.  brought you a thought lost ache in your heart for the family lost all to avenge them and   kill   the beast that killed   them.   you feign your disinterest,  your lack of care but there is much of it in soul.   destiny   is a cruel mistress,  son of sparda.  yet perhaps she may gift you the   KINDNESS   to provide retribution if you are to   live   long enough.

Notes 1:    with his father’s blood and how he is part beast,  his body temperature is more abnormally hot than normal  –  able to reach just below lava temperatures without it seeming to create any problems for him.   Notes 2:   his magic is mostly fire based,  secondly offensive  (   akin to geralt’s in show how it can push things back,  etc  ).  with the fire being used to distract he’s referenced to a dragon at times which he ignores. Notes 3:   dante’s still trans because i say so   ;   while magic used to be used to help him pass he’s since has procedure through coin to get effectively top surgery  —  the scars easy to pass off due to his occupation.  bottom surgery hasn’t been attempted but with becoming a witcher,  like the rest,  he’s infertile. Notes 4.    he’s   school of the wolf   because i said so,  wolves are cool and it has geralt so sue me  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

you wished you could forget ; everything else seems to blur but not him. not the brother you lost. (  IT v.  )

AFTER THE FIRE  you found yourself in foster care with your brother in tow. foster turned into adoption with the family that adopted the two siblings ended up bringing the two of them too derry,  maine.  immediately the youngest sibling knew something was off about the town  ;  the atmosphere unsettling but kept it to himself,  not wanting to blow the change he had with his brother at having a new life.  (   he and vergil are still cambion’s,  but their power is,  like,  kinda not as Large as it is normally.  still half demons tho folks.   )

the youngest had trouble settling in a new town,  smaller than the last  –   economically  (  as he and his twin were upper class before this )   and town size in general with more seeming conservative values.  he was lucky to find himself in a slightly liberal and understanding household as he was a transgender kid who no one knew any less of. something he was more careful to keep to himself.

everything was fine,  the brothers settled in and all was well until it wasn’t.  exploring the woods and the barrens  –  finally opening up to his brother that things were strange in the town and he could feel something off.  they went looking but in doing so  . .  there had been an opening of weakness for the two  –  distractions and a trap.  their mother,  burned and in pain asking for their help  ;  of course the two came closer.  there was a small difference in this faux recreation and trauma that dante noticed  –  calling out for his brother to stay away but,  unfortunately the youngest saw the eldest fall victim to the trap  –  terrified and running away when he couldn’t do anything but possibly fall victim too.

time passed,  school continued on with whispers and comments on how the twin had probably did it himself,  causing the kid to isolate himself from everyone even though he knew what he say.  adults didn’t believe him but there was a group that seemed to have had a run in with this   . .  fuckin’ clown.  

(   going off:  smol™ dante getting involved with the losers after he straight up talks to one of them about what happened and what he saw  /  big™ dante having gone off like the rest of the losers doing his own thing aka kill other demon / eldritch things as normal kinda sorta and then re - meet up with them  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ )

same person but different mistakes  ;  still wrought pain upon brothers ( altered outcome / divergent v. )

CANON DMC DIVERGENT.   pretty much a what if  /  reversal if dante led the life vergil did instead of vergil himself.  it’s pretty much the same events but with dante the cause of them or involved instead of vergil.  his attitude is close to what 2.0 dante is but not entirely there in terms of destruction.  however he is still trying to deal with the aftermath of nelo angelo fame and dmcv’s whole thing.

ARISE ;  for you are reborn into something greater.   ARISE    baricontralto angelo - fight.  ( post dmc 5 div. nelo angelo dante v  )

HE HAD BEEN COCKY. the cambion had been cocky upon returning back with his twin from the underworld   ;   cocky that with his twin that nobody could beat them if they simply worked together.  and he was right.  he was right up until he was wrong and time,  well  . . time wasn’t kind.    it had been nine months   since their return from the underworld from cutting down the qliphoth and in that time a   familiar blue amulet   found itself back in dante’s possession.  it had been lost for several decades,  having been lost to the boy during the day he had come home to find gavreel and the family slaughtered on the lawn.

he kept it close,  he knew the meaning   –  he knew that there was   peace   again but  .  . he knew the danger of once again having this but would not dare get rid of it   –  he’d ride the coaster until it stopped.  he’d be happy to have this shred of happiness and he felt he was finally allowed to have something   –   happy to have his brother back and have some semblance of family.

that was,  well,  until he   lost   the amulet.  he didn’t notice that he did,  believing it was still in pocket during a small run in with demons  ;  a job that he had taken alone   –  it seemed that fate was playing her hand that day.   it had been dropped during an evasion and was lost upon his shift ahead   –  he didn’t even spot it.  the job became less easy,  it tiring him considerably as the  small group   of demons became larger   –   and while it was initially a challenge   . .

it soon became taxing.  as the larger the numbers the more exhausted the demon hunter became,  the more he started to slip up.

it was only then did he realize that this was no job.  it was a   trap   and he was caught in a net he couldn’t tear himself from.  a familiar feeling emerged,  one he   hadn’t felt   for decades.  a demonic force that he had thrown fury at that same time.  he hadn’t been this week before.  he knew who this was and   . .   he was in trouble.  this trap had been calculated and he had fallen into it hook,  line and sinker.

the distraction of the feeling,  of the demonic energy rising in the space leaves him vulnerable  –  attacks slicing at his back,  his arms and legs   –   a lucky slash to his throat leaves him struggling and gripping his throat.   he hits his knees before he realizes he does  ; he ultimately   —   unintentionally   —   bows    to the demon king before he passes out, demonic weapons and claws slashing into his back.

the next   redacted years   in the demon world are a nightmare that  post   angelo dante would have trouble remembering for all that happened are buried deep in repressed memories.  the years blur together,  but dante holds for a long time  –  dante suffers,  he burns,  he aches,  he struggles    –   he perseveres.  for a time anyway.   he recalls and holds onto the trade out  . .  that this could have been   vergil   here instead of he.  last minute changes,  bouts of laughter as he accepted the job and ran out the door.  

see you soon   he had said.  but the jovial air had long past.  memories begin to muddle,  to ebb and fade in and out as things became foggy.  a struggle to remember  –   a struggle to fight but   . .   not all fights can be won.  this one eventually was lost.

out of years of torturous pain and bloodshed arose a new pet,  a puppet that was loyal and true.  one that slaughtered doppelganger after doppelganger of brother and self,  of friends and allies that the king knew that the former knew.  he was satisfied that his little puppet would do just fine.  that perhaps he could lure in his old   ;   have the complete set  –  for use of the younger did fine in breaking the elder.

this soldier has two forms  ;  one that fed to his devil trigger (   generic nelo angelo  –  not much power is used for it  –  basically it’s dante on the regular tapping into demonic power with his first devil trigger.  he’s stronger than normal,  having given into his addiction to human and demon blood and grown more powerful because of it  )  

and another that feeds into his   sin   devil trigger  (  essentially the  ‘  dragon  ‘  -  esque look.  however its almost imperfect in how the black scales have become the darkish red  / brown  ;  something not quite right.  scales do fall off without warning from time to time, revealing a near lava like flow underneath.   )  

baricontralto  . .  a name to be used to not arouse suspicion  ;   a soldier that would destroy armies and bring cities to their knees in the name of his master.   time would be swift for the pawn to be used,  for the king himself was pleased.  he was cocky with his new toy  . .   and it wasn’t long before he was to be used   . .  

despite all your losses & destruction ; despite trauma &  trials  . .  my darling boy you’re still you. (  undertale v.  )

[  fight  ]                     [  act ]                    [  item  ]                   [ mercy  ]    

                                     ↳   [  dante sparda ]                                      ↳   [   check  ]

IT WAS UNPRECEDENTED.  a human and a monster coming together and falling in love.  falling in love after the war to a human   witch   that found herself in the closed off underground after a tumble.  sparda protected eva from the monsters at first,  keeping her under his care  –  yet the umbra witch found herself using her powers and skills to assist in healing a monster in peril.  

keeping eva out of harms way was  . .  difficult due to her humanity being a source of contention.  monsters wanted to escape.  eva rather enjoyed being alive.  in the end eva’s healing magic to save and protect those around her and her love and the fact that she was  older   and not prime use to open a proper exit to the human world.  asgore swore eva off limits to monsters as she was kind and a healer to them all.

in time sparda and her married and she bore two children  ;   hybrids   –   part monster and part human.

but not even the king’s word could stop those who still feared humans and humanity.  those who held   rage   toward a species that had caused so much trouble and locked them away for thousands of years,  if not more.   a fire erupted into the underground,  started at the quaint yet spacious house and spread further throughout the underground.  by the time it had been put out  –  eva had been recovered,  dead,  in the home attempting to escape herself but the boys nowhere to be found.  with her last ounce of magic she had sent her boys away,  far away and out of the underground and topside.

now alone and separated from his remaining family and traumatized by the attack to his home the hybrid remained alone  –  growing up such until he found himself protecting humanity against   other   monsters   ;   demons.  demons and monsters that had managed to stay in the human world but grew dangerous and lost themselves.   dante sparda grew to love his humanity yet slowly accept the monster part of himself.

with a job giving him   whispers   of the brother he thought he lost through his own hand now somehow residing in the underground  . .  he flew in to investigate,  still holding some anger over what had been done to his family yet   . .  holding   determination   and patience to deal with the rumors and what he’s about to come across.

[13signs]

Saturn enters Sagittarius Heads will roll, empires will fall

The Montage of Losers

Any or all of these world leaders could be deposed during Saturn's transit of Sagittarius. Clockwise from left, Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe England's Theresa May; Grace Mugabe; US' Donald Trump; Germany's Angela Merkel.

Saturn enters Sagittarius on Nov. 19, 2017

Guess what happened on the eve of Saturn changing Zodiacal position from Ophiuchus to Sagittarius?

1) Robert Mugabe, senile dictator of Zimbabwe was forced out of office after 37 years. In this time span, the country went from being one of the most prosperous of Africa's newer nations, to the poorest. The people rejoiced in the street, as the army somewhat reluctantly takes over the reigns of power. The new leaders, however, can hardly be expected to solve any of the overwhelming problems that the country faces, which stem from the massive corruption and mismanagement of the economy.

Image by AFP

Zimbabwe Parliament erupts in joy at the news of Mugabe's resignation.

2) German Chancellor Angela Merkel's center-right government collapses, forcing a snap election. The right wing is sharpening its knives for a anti-immigrant government, and it looks like the end of the European Union--which has been called, "a currency looking for a state".*

The rise of the economic realities of falling prices and exports, and the collapse of the social contract between government and the workers can drive German political divisions into a complete schism. Fascist parties are on the march. Germany would be a forerunner for other Western industrial societies splitting apart along class and culture.

(image from Alarabiya)

The takeaway from Saturn's new position in Sagittarius is that dynasties will fall, governments will crumble, empires will face their doom. High hopes will come crashing down. It will rain on everyone's parade. It's happened before. Will history repeat itself, same story, different empire?

The Last time Saturn was in Sag. (1988)

Saturn in astrology always represents the State, the central authority of an organized society. Immobilized with civic responsibility, imbued with unlimited power, stratified by hollow traditions, Saturn may not make the rules, but enforces them as like the glue that holds a political structure together. Freedom and decentralization is anathema to Saturn, since either would cause the unraveling of state power and the rise of individualism. To see how this works in real time, one only has to look at the "deep state" in the US, which, while pontificating on the sanctity of personal privacy can meanwhile set up an electronic spy bureaucracy that can invade every aspect of our lives. Ophiuchus, by contrast is secretive and guarded. Ophiuchus has ancestral memories of the state and church burning her fore-bearers at the stake, murdering them as heretics and witches by the thousands, for thousands of years.

Ophiuchus is the pariah of the state, since she wants her own coven of belief and action in which she is the head of state, the sole leader, the benevolent dictator.

When Ophiuchus stands her ground against the state, overcoming the fear of persecution, it is war to the end. The hopes and dreams of the generation are resting on Ophiuchus victories. As some women fight against the unspeakable evils of our time, others will cooperate, and be held accountable. Even the crisis is serene because it is part of nature.

What happens in Sagittarius is that the high, some might say inflated, hopes of success and good luck get crushed under Saturn's hob-nail boots. The deflating feeling of failure; the lost youth, love betrayed and highest aspirations dashed.

There are enough metaphors to describe the problem; the rise and fall of an idea, the archer overshooting his mark, the return to the animal, the savage, the beast.

With Saturn's heavy hand, there's always an element of having to surrender the lofty goals, not scale the mountain, not measure up, not make that payment. Yet once this new path of retreat and recoil has been mapped, Sagittarius will take the hit, accept the challange to bring about change, even if it means sacrificing everything.

"Not with a Bang but a Whimper"   --T.S. Eliot "The Hollow Men"

*Today we have two weakening empires that could fall apart under the sway of the newest 2017-2020 Saturn transit of Sagittarius: the faltering European Union, which is skating on the thin ice of bankrupt member states, and over-extended central bank debt. Brexit may just be the first of several fissures in the Union, with Italy, Spain and Greece in danger of default. Of course, the biggest cheese, the United States, could be headed for a military defeat in the middle East, and a subsequent massive loss of wealth at home, with probable gridlock and fragmentation of the Federal government preventing any solutions.

However, the EU seems to be closer to disintegration, since it has always been a marriage of convenience, rather than a truly integrated union. Recent events in Spain illustrate how tenuous a grip some EU governments have on their own sovereignty, much less that of the Eurozone. Germany has always been the dominant member, and has shielded the other countries from accountability, in exchange for opening up their markets to German goods. However, the divisions between European nations is, and always has been, so deep, that a even free trade, common markets and a shared currency is not enough to paper over the national hatred they have for each other. The EU marriage of convenience, more like cluster-fuck, ultimately benefits the larger, richer members at the expense of the poorer ones. Germany is the economic wolf, hiding among the sheep-nations. With the economic suicide of Great Britain's Brexit; a divided Spain, the gutted economies of Greece, Portugal, Italy hanging on by a thread, and now a German political crisis--it appears that the EU is coming apart at the seams.

The Last Sag. Saturn

A toppled statue of Vladimir Lenin in Lithuania, Sept. 1, 1991, symbolizes the end of the Soviet Union during Saturn's last transit of Sagittarius.

The last time Saturn entered Sagittarius, in 1988, the Soviet Union began a 3-year process of demoralization, dissipation, and disintegration that ended in its complete collapse and subsequent plundering by its foreign and domestic enemies.

The USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics) was itself born in Sagittarius, on Dec 22, 1922, and died there as well, on Dec. 25, 1991. The end of the Soviet Union wasn't predictable. At the beginning of the 1980s, the Soviet empire looked impregnable, and militarily invincible, coming off its invasion of Afghanistan, its network of client states, and its highly-touted hosting of the Olympics.

However, by the time Saturn started to engage the Centaur constellation in 1988, fissures began to show, and the facade of the Soviet "worker's paradise" was stripped away by internal strife and even outright rebellion. By December of 1991, 69 years after the Soviet Union was established, its dissolution was official.

The Soviet Union also invested all its moral authority in the protection of the state against its enemies, using a vast secret police network to weed out troublemakers. Although no capitalist ruling class was allowed to take control, the civil service, the army and the local authorities became a quagmire through which Soviet citizens had to constantly navigate. Corruption and bribery were the rule, and the people became more and more cynical and weary of the reality behind the heroic propaganda of the revolution.

Women, workers, and soldiers held the power in the worker's state. Or was it all just a cruel hoax?

The beginning of the end for the Soviet Union was its invasion of Afghanistan on Dec. 24, 1979. The pretense for the invasion was to support the liberal but unpopular government that the Soviets themselves had installed there. The Russians wanted to secure Afghanistan as a strategic buffer zone and captive market, treating it much the same as it did its other satellite republics. The cold war between the USSR and the US was a series of proxy wars, where the two main nuclear powers would battle for dominance in small, brutal wars fought in smaller, otherwise neutral countries that were transformed into battlegrounds.

In the late 1960s, the US had blundered into a 10-year struggle to colonize Vietnam and failed spectacularly, having to withdraw unilaterally after the deaths of 58,000 American soldiers. The Soviet Union and China both helped the Vietnamese resist the American invasion, but in the process, over a million Vietnamese soldiers and over two million civilians were killed during the slaughter, before the fighting ended in 1975, as Neptune entered Ophiuchus and Saturn entered Cancer. The war in Vietnam was a shattering experience for the American military and changed our view of war forever. A shattered and disenfranchised baby-boomer generation wilted like a tree hit by lightning, losing all its bearings in the pall of cynicism and defeat of its lofty goals. Vietnam destroyed a generation of Americans by dividing it into warring factions; those who supported American imperialism, and those who resisted it.

Accordingly, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was "Russia's Vietnam" and hit the Soviet empire with a sledge hammer. As Saturn entered its transit of Sagittarius in 1988, The Soviet empire was crumbling under the weight of its foreign ambitions and its domestic miasma. As one Soviet republic after another peeled away from the core, and the Russians suffered shortages of consumer goods from soap to vodka, the weakness of the state and its leadership ended the reign of the largest and most powerful socialist country, reducing it to roadkill for the capitalist vultures circling around it.

[fiinalgiirls-aa]

GENERAL INFORMATION.

FULL NAME - genevieve sloane channing NICKNAMES - neve GENDER / PRONOUNS - she/her DATE OF BIRTH - february 12, 1988 PLACE OF BIRTH - portland, oregon CITIZENSHIP / ETHNICITY - united states american; irish, scottish, welsh RELIGION - atheist / agnostic SOCIOECONOMIC STATUS / POLITICAL AFFILIATION - grew up very low socioeconomic status in ne portland, before the gentrification, but is now considered middle class due to her nurse’s salary. she’s liberal. MARITAL STATUS - single ( previously engaged ). SEXUAL & ROMANTIC ORIENTATION - bisexual, leaning more towards an attraction to men. EDUCATION / OCCUPATION - bachelor’s of science in nursing; emergency nurse LANGUAGES - english, spanish, and a few small phrases pertaining to medical emergencies in vietnamese and russian.

FAMILY INFORMATION.

PARENTS - doug and paula channing, both deceased. SIBLINGS - none OFFSPRING - none PETS / OTHER - robocop ( a black and white siberian husky ). i’d also like her to get a cat at some point ! give me this plot point !! NOTABLE EXTENDED FAMILY - none

PHYSICAL INFORMATION.

FACECLAIM - adelaide kane HAIR COLOR / EYE COLOR - brown / brown HEIGHT / BUILD - 5′3″ / slight, athletic TATTOOS / PIERCINGS - nostril piercing, small tattoo on anterior right forearm. DISTINGUISHABLE FEATURES - a scar above her left ear that goes into her hairline approximately three inches, bold, full brows. freckles. usually has bruised knees.

MEDICAL INFORMATION.

MEDICAL HISTORY - laceration to left temporoparietal area, sprained ankle, fractured collar bone, well-controlled asthma. KNOWN ALLERGIES - penicillin, watermelon VISUAL IMPAIRMENT / HEARING IMPAIRMENT - nearsighted, but usually uses contacts; tinnitus. NICOTINE USE / DRUG USE / ALCOHOL USE - occasional alcohol use, former smoker ( has had an errant cigarette on occasion ), drug use as a teenager.

PERSONALITY.

TRAITS - ( + ) compassionate, resilient, tenacious, ; ( - ) self-righteous, cynical, aloof TROPES - nerves of steel, canine companion, good is not soft, deadpan snarker. TEMPERAMENT - melancholic ALIGNMENT - chaotic good CELTIC TREE ZODIAC - rowan, the thinker MBTI - infj HOGWARTS HOUSE - ravenclaw VICE / VIRTUE - pride ; liberality LIKES / DISLIKES: animals, reading, running and weight lifting, not having to share her popcorn, take-out, breakfast for dinner, leather / denim jackets, white sneakers, fresh cut flowers, solitude, people who think about others,  /  medical dramas, arrogance, science deniers, bok choy, people who talk to her at the gym or when she has headphones on, movie remakes, passive aggression. QUOTE:  ❝take a body, dump it, drive. take a body, maybe your own, and dump it gently. all your dead, unfinished selves and dump them gently. take only what you need. ❞

FAVORITES.

FOOD - curry. DRINK - coffee. PIZZA TOPPING - pineapple ( yes, she’s that bitch ), but with olives, mushrooms, tomatoes, and tabasco. COLOR - earth tones, grey, black and white. MUSIC - synth, hip hop, indie. BOOKS - horror, true crime, historical philosophy of science and medicine. MOVIES - the thing, nightbreed, notorious CURSE WORD - fuck, goddamn it. SCENTS - lavender, vanilla, chocolate.

BIOGRAPHY.

trigger warnings: murder, death, graphic violence, mental health, postpartum depression, suicide, cancer, drug mention, parent death, medical, euthanasia mention, stalking, guns

THE FOG CREEPS IN ; GIRLHOOD IS A GRAVEYARD

genevieve channing is born on a cold, grey february sometime around midnight to douglas and paula channing while the heavy oregon fog kisses the modest concrete jungle of portland oregon like a phantom. paula gives her a big name, telling the nurses with heady confidence that she’ll be famous one day, and it’s the biggest gift she ever gives her. baby genevieve is in her arms so often, she hardly touches a cradle, but it’s not long until douglas feels an uneasiness creeping in.

paula is bohemian silk skirts and crushed velvet. she grows restless being trapped in the plain, modest home in northeast. she is a woman that is easy to fall in love with—not meant to sit at home idly with a collicy baby, where she finds herself in tears more than ever. douglas returns from work to find baby genevieve screaming unattended in her crib while paula cries in the backyard with an ashtray full of cigarettes. she tells him she’s worried she’ll crash the car one day on the way to the grocery store with them both inside. douglas digs his teeth into his bottom lip and tries not to cry. he squeezes her hand and tells her she needs to go to therapy. what he really wants to tell her is that their baby needs her. he leaves paula outside and spends the afternoon tidying the house with genevieve swaddled against his chest. it’s a warm feeling.

it’s not long after that paula starts disappearing for periods of time and douglas learns she can’t be trusted to watch after the baby on her own. when she calls from downtown in tears, hyperverbal and desperate, he picks her up in his old chevy truck and brings her home. she agrees to see a doctor and for awhile, they figure out how to live again. some days are even as sweet as the rhubarb pies she starts to make again.

there are only two ways neve later remembers her mother, and the first is lovely–paula is picnics and shakespeare in the parks. she’s dried roses in the window and salmon tacos with mango salsa. she is whirlwind adventures and laughter. she teaches neve to make wishes on stray eyelashes, blowing them into the wind like dandelion seeds. on the good days, paula’s eyes are filled with stars. on the bad days, they are left black as the night sky while she cries the constellations down her cheeks. occasionally, she is cruel. mostly, she is absent.

by the third grade, neve expects this. douglas has never been much of a cook–save hamburger patties with canned green beans and a baked potato. she cooks their dinners from recipes she learns from her grandmas and helps around the house. most nights she’s home alone until the grumbling sound of the chevy breaks through the dark and signals her father’s return. eventually, she stops missing her mother from the everyday–it’s only when the other kids talk about their moms that she feels the pang of loss and wonders where she is. some nights neve finds herself sitting in her bedroom window pulling out eyelashes just to have something left to wish on. some of paula’s friends overdose on heroin or get murdered in the nights when neve is sleeping; she stays up late and hopes that her vigil will keep a distant mother safe.

there aren’t many trees on their street–unlike some of the other neighborhoods. the big weeping birch in their backyard that drives her father crazy as he rakes leaves every fall is neve’s pride and joy. there is comfort in the shade its branches cast every summer. at night it makes her lonely as it blocks the silhouette of the waxing moon. on lazy summer days when her father leaves for work, neve sits with her back curved against its rough trunk and reads the day away.

on a cool april afternoon, just after preparing a plate of cherry poptarts with a thin layer of butter on top of the frosting ( much to her father’s chagrin ), neve ventures out to the modest yard to sit under her tree. the familiar crushed blue velvet of her mother’s favorite dress catches her off guard and she drops her breakfast onto the unkempt lawn as her mind makes sense of the unnatural height of its hem as paula swings–marking the time of neve’s pounding heartbeat. the butter solidifies as it cools in the dirt, the heel of neve’s hand-me-down airwalk sneakers mashing her breakfast. the cherry filling sticks to the sole like bubblegum; she’ll never eat them again, but she can’t help but recall that her mom always preferred the maple and brown sugar.

THE ODDS ARE STACKED AGAINST HER ; A GIRL LEARNS TO COUNT CARDS

portland in the eighties and nineties is less portlandia and more drugstore cowboy. a lot of kids from other neighborhoods don’t go downtown. the ones that do have an air of palpable grit. neve takes the max, rides her skateboard in the dark. douglas has cautioned her a hundred thousand times, but paula’s death has instilled such a great fear of losing his daughter that he lets her get away with more than he knows he probably should. he fears paula’s ghost will someday possess her and she’ll wander off into the ether. most days he insists that the only parts of paula he sees in his cherished daughter are the good ones–neve holds onto the corporeal world with claws. it’s only on the worst nights–paula’s specter cooling the sheets of his bed in the dark–that he wakes up with the fear his daughter is gone.

douglas’s new wife, rosie, does her best to pit them against one another, but sometimes–she’s not so bad, neve thinks. it’s nice to have a mother figure in the house again even if she falls short most days. sometimes she thinks that maybe they could learn to love each other. if nothing else, she’s sure she owes a bit of gratitude to the woman; the nights of her father’s haunting sobs have become fewer and farther between. it isn’t until douglas begins receiving late notices on utilities that he begins to grow suspicious. rosie is quick to throw neve under the bus–a young girl like that? she’s probably stealing their money to spend on drugs and CDs at sam goody. douglas has never bet on anyone like he bets on his daughter; rosie’s gambling debts are news to them both.

the fallout of the relationship leaves douglas and neve in dire financial straits. the father is heartbroken–another love lost, he blames himself for always choosing the wrong lady luck. despite their financial ruin, left in rosie’s wake, douglas has a hard time getting out of bed most days and blows through what little sick time he has available to him. school takes a back burner and neve barely attends it at all–favoring her time on finding work ( legitimate and illegitimate ) to help keep their small family afloat. she attends class when it’s profitable and waits tables or washes dishes when she can. it’s still not enough.

a few kids turn neve onto small crimes to turn a profit. they ride the max to the suburbs and crash parties–stealing pills out of medicine cabinets and turning them over for profit. calculus wasn’t worth a good goddamn, but distribution teaches skills. it’s hard not to get caught up in petty thefts and the occasional break-ins. neve and her friends find it easy to justify in the spirit of class war. a pin on her denim jacket reads ‘eat the rich’ and it doesn’t sound so bad. portland is a cannibal and it eats its children.

neve is a cat with nine lives and despite her friends being caught by the long arm of the law or the stronger arm of revenge, she evades detection. even such cats live with a fear of death, and as consequence catches up to members of the small circle she runs with, neve knows she is living on borrowed time. sooner or later, she knows, her luck will run bone dry.

SPRING RETURNS TO PORTLAND ; THE FROST CLINGS TO FRAGILE BONES

neve dropping out of high school is a wake up call for douglas. he sees farther than she does and knows that she deserves a better life than the one he’s scrounged together for her. most days, he blames himself for a life that could have been; some kids like her wore neatly pressed dresses and folded over lace socks on picture day. some kids had piano lessons and summer camps. there’s a lot of insight in hindsight, but neve staunchly opposes his masochistic remorse and becomes determined to prove him wrong. it takes her a couple years of working to figure out what she wants to do–a girl baptised in her mother’s blood is born with the kind of heart that takes on too much. she is meant for saving lives and carrying the world on her shoulders like atlas himself.

it takes time, but as douglas gets their house in order and starts working again. neve is able to start up at portland community college. she takes up a work study job and works a steady flow of odd jobs on the side to support herself. lady luck shines her fortune on the pair for the first time in forever to make up for the steady losses they’ve sustained over the years. life isn’t lavender and gardenias, but somehow waking up becomes little and less painful each day. some days neve wakes up and forgets that she can’t breathe. most days she spends her gratitude in the heap of debt the world owes her–waiting for the other shoe to drop.

the rebirth of their family is a hearty soil; both channings flourish as if made anew. the dew drops that cling to garden spider webs in their window signal the looming anniversary of a mother’s misty breath and neve learns not to fall apart. douglas works hard to do right by her and make up for the years of never knowing what to do and waffling between what is best and what is desirable. he is a man that longs for dreams–feet barely brushing the earth like her mother’s did on that day–but he is learning to make dreams work too. his dreams take root around his daughter once more; he builds them around her and builds her up with them.

the highschool dropout graduates her community college adn bridge program and she can hardly believe it when she’s accepted to ohsu for her bsn. there are no college diplomas with the channing name hanging on walls with peeling wallpaper or tucked away in trunks with paula’s things. douglas has saved his money for months to get her the right graduation gift and neve laughs, downplaying that it’s not a real graduation, but still walks in the ceremony at his insistence.

she returns home to the small party of friends she’ll start to grow apart from when she gets tired of the jeers about how she thinks she’s ‘too good for them’ now. neighborhoods like hers don’t always love to watch you grow if it means you’ll leave them. they’ll still blow up her phone for medical advice, but the invitations dry up like the drought of portland natives in southeast. for now, it’s a pleasant barbecue. the highlight of the evening comes in the small bundle of inky fur that douglas proudly produces after neve’s second burger. peering out from his strong arms are the brown eyes of a young siberian husky. douglas begs her to name the pup murphy over robocop, but loses easily–a hearty chuckle on his lips. they are bonded instantly–girl and dog–robocop becomes neve’s second most stalwart companion next to her father.

nursing school is hard, but it’s not impossible and it is full of new kinds of joys. she makes new friends and they eat lunch from the thai foodcart—nestled within the pod of south waterfront—and lay on the quad drinking smoothies and complaining about the next pharmacology exam. nose in a book and a drink in her hand at happy hour down at cha cha cha !, neve attracts the attention of pa student shane stone. he knows a nursing school classmate of hers from high school and is quickly incorporated to their study groups with a couple of his friends. he is tall with dark hair and kind eyes and just the sort of person a girl dreams of falling in love with. he spends little time worrying about things like rent and bus passes. it’s not even the end of the semester before study dates evolve into movie dates. there’s an entire world between them, but somehow the pair build a bridge.

DEATH RATTLES AND DYING BREATH ; THE GIRL’S OTHER SHOE DROPS

as neve focuses on school, douglas seems to be making steps to keep himself around longer. they go for long walks with robocop around the neighborhood. southeast portland is becoming a different neighborhood and the cost of living is high. restaurants crop up with around the block waits and family friends are forced to move to grayer pastures. it seems, to the channings, that it’s the end of an era. with neve spending most of her time at shane’s apartment on south waterfront, douglas’ weight loss is hardly noticed–everyone assumes it is merely the byproduct of increased activity. it isn’t until his stature becomes gaunt that neve starts to worry.

shane holds neve close when she finally breaks down–sneaking into the single bathroom of the clinic to let her fall apart the way he knows she can’t do in the open. like a wild animal, the girl he loves hides herself away when she feels death’s acrid breath on her neck. he doesn’t know what loss is and he certainly can’t relate to what she’s been through. douglas’ diagnosis is like watching the noose tighten around her mother’s neck all over again. her throat is dry like she’s choking on the fibers of that same rope; the world has a foggy edge—hollow like street lights illuminating an empty suburban neighborhood on a clear, dark night. everything is wooden; everything feels like a dollhouse.

it’s hard to keep up on her studies, but somehow neve muscles through. shane gives up his idyllic apartment and moves into their modest southeast home to help out. he makes a lighthearted joke about finally being a real portlander and moving so near the trendy, revitalized mississippi neighborhood and neve drops and breaks her coffee mug on the unfinished wood floor of the kitchen. it’s just another reminder that he doesn’t belong in her world any more than she does in his. it doesn’t sting as bad as the ink on his mother’s checks that she cashes to keep her father comfortable on his deathbed while she learns to be a better caretaker. life ebbs and flows, but douglas’ drains away until she hardly recognizes the sinewy, pale hands that hold hers so strongly for a man that can’t sit up by himself any longer. she curses her mother once more for leaving and twice for never having been there in the first place.

death isn’t slow or peaceful like the woman from her father’s church will lie about at the funeral. his death rattle lasts for hours and the bellows of his chest quake with weary breath. part of her wishes that the hospice nurse had started an iv on him and a sick, hidden part of her wishes it because a sweet dose of morphine would’ve ended it all sooner for him. she wonders silently if that would do more to ease his pain or hers? he hasn’t been conscious in two days. shane sits with her at the side of his bed with rapt attention and as his breathing slows, neve crawls into the hospice bed next to him. the next several months are a blur and a father misses his only daughter’s graduation. neve is barely present there herself.

shane insists that she’s not an orphan–his parents fly in from denver and treat her like one of their own. it guilts her that she can’t help but resent them for the simple virtue of living while her own father is reduced to a cold dust. she wears his ashes around her neck in a pendant from the funeral home and spreads the rest in every beautiful place she can find. some of them spill into her purse during a hike with robo and shane and she breaks down in tears. there are so many small things that make her sick or numb. a multitude of tiny memories that weigh as much as planets; isn’t dust what helped create the milky way? even around the stone family she feels alone. maybe especially around the stones.

HACKLES RAISED, A GIRL LEARNS THE DANGERS OF BEING FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE

the emergency department attracts all kinds of people in myriad dire straits. people come in at the end of their ropes–infections ignored too long, stabbings and shootings, a broken bone from slipping off the slide, and sometimes when they feel like they can’t live any longer. evan does not fit into any of these categories when he comes in. among the myriad failings of the medical system, lack of access and use of primary care is one of the larger contributions to higher emergency department volumes and evan is another data point in a sea of statistics. he comes back to neve’s room with a sly grin plastered on his face and states that he’s new to the area and can’t get into a new primary care for a few months. his daily asthma inhaler is out and he needs to renew the prescription and get a referral to a clinic.

there’s nothing on the surface that identifies this man as a threat. he’s almost charming and he’s nontoxic appearing–a nice easy patient in a sea of sick people is sometimes a great relief. they make some small talk and it’s the usual stuff she chats about with patients: ‘where’re you from?’ ‘where did you go to school?’ he expresses an interest in nursing and she recommends the program she attended at the hospital she now works. there’s almost a tension there, and when he makes a casual comment about the tan line on her finger she tells him that she doesn’t wear her engagement ring at work because it can tear the gloves. that’s only half right. maybe he can sense the rest of the truth; she’ll wonder that later when she pieces together every scrap of something she can use to blame it on herself.

he sends her a message on facebook, which makes her lips curl downwards in uncertainty. even that isn’t entirely alarming. it opens up reminding her that he’s knew to the area, and that he’s interested in the nursing program she went to. it’s a surprise, but he makes mention of a girlfriend’s wifi and he even asks how shane is doing. he loves her dog and mentions wanting one himself. sure, it’s a little weird–unconventional–but neve has always been interested in helping others find nursing and agrees to meet him for coffee to discuss the program. when they meet, she sees the mistake inherit in it before she even opens the cafe door. he’s disheveled and hyperverbal when he speaks to her and she can barely get a word in edge wise. between the gift he’s brought her and the intensity of his stare, she wonders how she could have read him so wrong. it’s then that he drops the bomb that makes her stomach sink into the trench it detonates in–will they take him in the nursing program with a record? she doesn’t ask, but he provides the details anyway. death threats to some girl he barely knew that wouldn’t leave him alone, he paints the canvas well, but she can read between the lines. evan stevens is dangerous and his lethal eye is trained on her.

she makes an excuse to leave–the first of many excuses, the illusion of being unavailable, unattainable. it’s the advice she’s given to women before, but never had to follow. those words offered to women in distress seem so trite now, so hollow. there is so much fear in cutting ties slowly–the strategic approach to keep an impulsive person like that from escalating. she wishes she could take those clinical offerings of textbook wisdom back from those women and hold their hands. she wonders how many of them still live. he starts blowing up her phone constantly. he comments on all her social media. all day and all night. if she doesn’t respond, he threatens suicide. some days he asks if she’s working and says he brought her lunch. if she says she’s sick, he asks for her address to bring her tom yum takeout from the restaurant she’s posted about on instagram. everything makes her sick now.

A FINAL GIRL IS FORGED ALONE ; THERE IS NO SUBVERTING FATE

god, it’s hard to speak about. she can’t even let the words reach her tongue, lips and teeth to birth them. they shrivel and die in her throat, festering there until she swallows them and they rest in her stomach like great stones. she wonders if evan will cut her stomach open like a wolf and find the rocks there. that’s not how the story goes; she tells herself so many versions as she lies awake in the dark afraid to sleep.

when she finally tells her friends–a smattering of girls and guys from nursing school, the er, and her neighborhood–the response is like the knife she dreams about in her gut. she shows some of the girls at her work his picture, worried that he’ll come in asking about her. she’s chided by these friends, “he’s actually pretty cute, florence nightingale” they joke. “it must be flattering to have the attention.” even shane suspected that there’s some indulgence on her part. that maybe she likes trying to fix people who are broken so much that she gets some sick reward from the experience. he doesn’t speak the words, but neve is fluent in shane stone. he says it in his eyes, the downcurve of his lips, the tense way he sighs when her phone dings over and over again during date nights.

on a cold night in december, neve works on meal prepping alone in the kitchen. evan has been out of town helping his mother remodel her kitchen and neve feels like she can finally breathe in the space he’s left behind. turning on the wireless speaker, she tries to pair her phone to play music as loud as the thin walls of her father’s modest northeast portland home will allow and instead hears, in the cold, robotic voice ‘pairing with neve’s iphone and evan’s iphone.’ robocop doesn’t even lift his head in suspicion the whole night. she calls 911, but they find neither hide nor hair of him. in the morning, neve nails the windows shut and buys a gun–a smith & wesson .357 snub nose revolver. the weight of it is heavy in her hands and she buys a membership to a gun range, calling into work and practicing until shane returns. she doesn’t tell him about the gun and she stops telling him how bad things have gotten with evan. the click of his tongue and disapproval in his eyes is more dooming than a death sentence and she can’t bear to bring further disappointment. neve channing is a strong woman–a smart woman. things like this don’t happen to women like her.

somehow, evan is everywhere and he knows all her secret places as if he exists as an extension of her. maybe he even believes he is–sending her voice messages about how they’re connected. they are the same; they are foils of one another. he send her a picture of his ouroboros tattoo from a new number after she finally blocks him. ‘we are the same.’ he is an all-consuming, devouring force, but she is not a serpent’s tail. he is moloch–besmeared with blood, the great, horrid king–but she is not a child and she will not be sacrificed for sins she has not committed. he has not right and there’s only one way she can see this ending as the days grow longer. like life itself begins, this too will end in blood.

LOVE IS A HARD KNIFE ; A GIRL CAN’T STOMACH AMBROSIA

there is a consequence to every action and every inaction. every little thing she chooses not to tell shane fester and boils. the late nights at work and the new passcode on her phone seem more to shane like cheating than a worsening of some creep’s obsession. she hasn’t even mentioned evan to him since the trees started blooming again. when he elects to cheer her up and bring her lunch during a shift she traded so she could practice at the gun range, his suspicions deepen and while she sleeps that morning, he rifles through her work bag and finds alongside her locked cell phone the cold steel of a secret that he cannot abide by.

it’s not his fault either and she means that from the bottom of her heart. every kindness from the stones feels like another debt and neve can’t help but let the resentment fester in the tasteful diamond on her finger. when she looks upon his face now all she can see is death and it’s the world’s cruelest joke, because she’s the one with cemetery dirt underneath her fingernails. she can’t tell which of the two of them she resents more and they both deserve lives where ghosts stay buried and the dead don’t whisper malcontent in her ears while she struggles to fall asleep. nightmares are her own warm milk; she’s sick of the cold metal of a gun as she moves it from her night stand to her purse each morning. she’s tired of being made to feel like she had a stake in any of this.

it’s not the kindest way to leave a man, but she’s not sure she’s ready to face him again after all that’s happened. she leaves her house keys with her cousin paloma and packs up shane’s stuff. paloma has just started nursing school and can use neve’s father’s old house to sublet. the rent’s free and she’s always been gentle hearted. neve can’t think of anyone better to care for her father’s old house. with dear john letters to both shane and the hospital, neve takes robocop and enough of her things to fit into her subaru forester. it’s not goodbye. it’s never goodbye, she thinks as she hugs paloma on the modest porch. it still feels so permanent, but neve tells herself that big decisions always do. she yearns to discover who she is outside of grief and fear and love. a daughter cannot bloom in her parents’ shadows and she is suffocating underneath the gentle love of the mourning glory.

on the road without a real plan–because if she doesn’t know where she’s going, then neither does evan–neve signs on for a travel nursing company. the first assignment she considers is salem hospital an hour south and it’s a great department, but it’s too close to home. he’ll find her there easily. st. charles in bend isn’t far enough away either. it doesn’t feel like enough of a difference and none of them do until she’s cruising down the interstate through blythe, california and she sees a listing for a level one trauma center in tuscon, arizona. it feels like it could be the right place to burn and be born again.

A GIRL AND HER DOG; SOMETIMES PEACE IS ITS OWN KIND OF PRISON

the cool steel of the snub nose .357 revolver lies buried beneath her registration and owner’s manual in the glove compartment. she wonders briefly as she pulls out her sunglasses and slips a salty french fry into her mouth. the car stereo fades in and out along the southbound highway, switching between some smooth-talking radio host and the tinny crooning of buddy holly. it makes her think of her father, and she blinks back tears–plugging in her iphone to switch to a tune that doesn’t bring back such painful memories. robocop whines in the backseat and neve discovers that her maps aren’t loading any longer, the gps unable to locate their vehicle.

there’s no sense in pulling over and pulling out the map of arizona she purchased from a disinterested teen in the first gas station she’d come across in the state. there’s only two days before the job starts and, according to her recruiter, they’d already moved the orientation up a day, cutting her time to adjust to her new ( temporary ) place before work in half. taking a long drink of coffee–now as cold as her french fries–she blinks hard to keep awake and just when she thinks she’ll have to pull over and sleep in her car huddled close to robocop’s warm, furry body.

neve passes a hospital on the outskirts of town–lit up all pretty against the dark desert sky. it looks nice enough and the longer she drives, the more she considers that her recruiter might’ve told her they were full up in tuscon. maybe that was why they moved the date up for orientation afterall. in the dark august night, most of the businesses are closed and the lights in the mobile home park neve passes are off. the first place she sees open is bj’s food mart and she stops to get a fresh cup of coffee and stretch her legs. she learns inside that amen county is always hiring and leaves with a smile on her lips.

neve has spent nine peaceful months in boot hill. the gun no longer lives shoved into the bottom of her work bag or nestled into the glove compartment of her subaru. now it spends its days in solitude in the coffin-like drawer of her bedside table. evan will never find this place, she is almost sure of it. he might be looking for her, but he’s not looking for boot hill. some evenings on her long strolls to work, she smiles and closes her eyes–listening to the soothing sounds of the town.

soon enough, neve is sure there really was no travel assignment to reach. or, if there had been, she can’t remember where it’s at. instead, she takes some time to enjoy the small town and the anonymity she feels there. she’s not even living out of the silk bonnet hotel anymore. she hadn’t seen boot hill on any map during her road trip and, if that’s universal, her past can’t find her without a destination to set its sights on. there is more than great comfort in that. by the end of her first month, she can’t imagine living anywhere else.

the emergency department is not the bustling trauma center she was used to, but there is an appeal to the autonomy rural medicine offers an experienced nurse. hell, in some places the doctors only come in if you call them. neve can’t exactly remember the application and interview process anymore. it seems like there are so many things that have become mysteries and she can’t find herself caring enough to investigate them long enough to follow an actual lead. it seems like she’s always worked there–an instantaneous sensation of home. she couldn’t even leave if she wanted to.

[spicynbachili1]

Steam Autumn sale begins indie picks

Steam’s Autumn Sale has begun, and slashed costs litter the bottom like so many soggy fallen leaves. It’s gross sales season from now till the center of January, and our wallets are below siege. RPS is right here to assist select the very best of the bunch, and with out leaving your checking account fully pillaged. You could find the official record of video games on sale right here, ranked by how properly they’re promoting. There’ll be extra picks to come back later, however for now, I’ve bought a handful of private suggestions for you all under, plus some tips about the place to look outdoors of Steam.

As we’re within the run-up to Recreation Of The 12 months ceremony season, Steam are assembling their user-generated nominations. Each sport’s web page on the shop gives the selection to appoint it in quite a lot of classes, listed right here. I’d not be shocked to see the likes of Warframe or No Man’s Sky within the Labour Of Love class, however I’m most curious what VR Recreation Of The 12 months seems to be. I’ve bought some uncommon picks for this yr’s greatest, however you’ll have to attend some time longer to listen to these. However till then, right here’s some budget-priced picks to begin you off, most of them off the crushed path.

The Void Rains Upon Her Coronary heart, by Veyeral Video games – 35% off, £three.76/5.19/$5.19 – Don’t let the flowery title and speak of fixing your issues with love put you off. This can be a bullet hell boss-rush shmup with mild roguelike parts, adaptive issue that ought to scale down even to style newcomers, and an intriguing story about alien fairy-things with melancholy. Can’t get extra indie than that. It’s nonetheless technically in early entry, therefore the comparatively minor low cost, but it surely has extra bosses and options than many different ‘full’ shooters thrice the worth.

Battlestar Galactica: Impasse by Black Lab Video games – 60% off, £11.99/€14.79/$15.99 – value a nod as a labour-of-love in my view. This Battlestar Galactica technique sport was a bit of light-weight at launch, however a number of expansions (the latest not discounted but) and main patches including game-changing new parts on the common has made this the very best BSG sport obtainable. Granted, there’s not too many good ones on the market, but it surely’s nearly muscled out the fan-made Diaspora as my favorite.

The Magic Circle by Query – 75% off, £three.74/€four.99/$four.99 – I used to be late to the social gathering on this one (it got here out in 2015, my backlog is the stuff of legends), however at this value it’s laborious to go fallacious. A intelligent, introspective take a look at sport improvement, wrapped up in a pseudo-immersive-sim puzzle format. Your aim is to assist save a vaporware sport from its builders personal egos by usurping them with the assistance of an entity from inside the sport itself. It’s all a bit Reboot meets The Freshmen Information, however with some entertainingly free-form puzzles to unravel by assigning stolen traits to NPCs.

Deep Sixed by Little Pink Canine Video games – 40% off, £6.17/€6.78/$7.79 – Develop into captain of the galaxy’s worst spaceship, on a barely-funded suicide mission to repay your personal debt or die making an attempt. Half roguelike, half point-and-click puzzler, half disaster administration simulator. You sprint across the numerous chambers of the ship (offered nearly like scenes from a later House Quest sport), fixing techniques, tuning lasers, making an attempt to finish missions and avoiding getting humped to dying by space-whales. It’s such as you’re actually Miles O’Brien, Star Trek’s most long-suffering engineer.

That’ll get you began. Our Katharine – unstoppable bargain-hunting fiend that she is – has already assembled some nice offers over in her huge Black Friday 2018 hub. I discover that Murderer’s Creed Odyssey is considerably cheaper there, together with loads of different big-ticket video games. Far Cry 5 is a pair quid cheaper outdoors of Steam, Monster Hunter: World too. Nonetheless, Steam is way forward of the competitors on some video games – Valkyria Chronicles four for £25/€30/$30 catches my eye. Store round – with so many shops jockeying for place, a bit of digital legwork goes a great distance.

Pleased bargain-hunting, of us, and keep in mind: Restrict your finances. Don’t impulse purchase. Don’t hoard video games for a ‘wet day’ that may nearly actually by no means come (otherwise you’ll find yourself with a backlog like mine), and share any explicit gems you discover, eh wot?

The Steam Autumn sale runs till Wednesday, November 27th at 6pm GMT.

from SpicyNBAChili.com http://spicymoviechili.spicynbachili.com/steam-autumn-sale-begins-indie-picks/

[oscopelabs]

Cogs in the Machine: American Despair in Paul Schrader’s ‘Blue Collar’ by Vikram Murthi

Paul Schrader’s directorial debut Blue Collar was supposedly inspired by stories of “real-life disillusionment.” Though that feeling certainly pervades the film from its opening minutes, the more appropriate term would be “utter despair.” The story of three “hard worked, fucked over men” who take on The Man and lose badly, Blue Collar stands among the class of films that attack the American Dream, the laughable ideal that “life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone” when it’s only ever destined for some. However, Schrader doesn’t merely bask in half-baked cynicism or preach cheap platitudes. Instead, he pulls no punches and confronts capitalism’s ills at their foundation, examining the hollowness of that Dream through a corrupt union’s indifference to the plight and desperation of its workers. It should come as no surprise that it tanked at the box office, or that the similar, more uplifting film Norma released the following year was a commercial and awards success. Norma didn’t intend to leave the audience with a bitter aftertaste.

Blue Collar’s script, written by Schrader and his brother Leonard, wholly immerses the audience into the compromised lives of three desperate Detroit autoworkers—Zeke (Richard Pryor), Jerry (Harvey Keitel), and Smokey (Yaphet Kotto)—who decide to rob their union headquarters to alleviate their financial woes. Though they only find $600 in petty cash, the trio also discovers a notebook containing records of the union’s illegal loan operation, implying ties to organized crime. When the gang tries to blackmail the brass, the tables are inevitably turned in a most heartbreaking fashion—murder, assimilation, and betrayal. Their Robin Hood caper becomes a cautionary tale of defying a corrupt establishment. They didn’t know that the game was rigged from the start.

But before Schrader brings the proverbial hammer down on his subjects, he first paints a portrait of a noxious work environment, which trickles down to its hopeless employees. As the credits roll, the film tracks rows and rows of equipment tended by workers shrouded in the bright glow of metal sparks, neatly introducing the cogs in a machine that incidentally manufactures literal machines. The working conditions are generally unsafe. The slave-driving supervisor, widely known and hated by everyone as Dogshit Miller (Borah Silver), rules the floor, getting on the nerves of every menial employee with his persistent nagging and casually virulent racism (“You pick cotton this slow?” he sneers at a black worker, who promptly gives Miller the finger as soon as his back is turned). Even the vending machines are busted, driving one frustrated worker (George Memmoli) to take revenge and destroy it on company time, costing him two weeks pay but making him a hero amongst the guys. A young, naïve worker (Ed Begley Jr.) reads Catch-22 in his off time without registering the irony.

Meanwhile, the main trio is perpetually in dire straits with seemingly no way out. Zeke cheats on his taxes to raise the income for his family, but when the IRS man (Leonard Gaines) shows up at his door one night, he learns that he owes almost $3000 in back taxes for claiming more children than he has and not disclosing a part-time job. “If I had the Navy and Marines behind me, I’d be a motherfucker, too!” he screams through a cracked voice as the taxman quickly leaves his home, knowing that Uncle Sam owns him just as much as the plant. Jerry, on the other hand, works a second job pumping gas to provide for his family, but he’s still in debt from a prior strike and can’t afford to pay for his daughter’s braces, prompting her to dangerously try to fashion them with a wire. Finally, Smokey owns money to violent loan sharks, and yet despite this unfortunate choice, Schrader characterizes him as the light amidst the darkness, a man who supplies his friends with intermittent joy in their otherwise difficult lives.

Schrader wholly sympathizes with the three men, even when Zeke and Jerry cheat on their wives and spend the little spare money they have on drugs. Despite their occasionally good spirits, the day-to-day drudgery of their lives perpetually threatens to crush whatever is left of their souls. Early in the film, Zeke, Jerry, and Smokey confess their anxieties after a coke-fueled night. Jerry takes out credit to pay for household appliances that he’ll likely never pay off. Zeke admits he’s terrible with money and that he knows he won’t be able to fulfill any of the promises he’s made his wife over the years. It’s a literal-minded scene, one that offers the audience a chance to merely sympathize with their plight instead of strenuously empathizing with their choices. Yet, Keitel and Pryor sell Schrader’s words with aplomb, filling them with equal parts rage and sadness. Though the scene technically preaches, it never scans as didactic, only honest.

While Blue Collar’s first half examines the reality of the workers’ lives, Schrader emphasizes the union brass’ abiding interest to maintain the status quo at all costs in the second half. Schrader initially characterizes the union as simply indifferent to the concerns of their workers, exemplified by Zeke’s broken locker that they don’t care to fix, but after the gang commits the robbery, he portrays the union’s actions as much more nefarious. Knowing that their corruption could be exposed, the union, led by boss Eddie Johnson (Harry Bellaver), sets out to silence or buy off the three men. They kill Smoky in a horrific paint-based accident on the factory floor and claim that it was an accident, as he’s the only one that they can’t control internally. They send mob guys after Jerry because he’ll buckle under any sort of violent pressure; after realizing he can’t outrun the mob, he becomes an informant for the FBI. Finally, Johnson promises Zeke a soft promotion to shop steward, knowing that the illusion of power will satiate his rage and allow them to keep him in their pocket for the foreseeable future.

Schrader’s script might be schematic insofar as after a certain point the film can really only end in “a very specific Marxist conclusion,” as he describes in a 1978 interview with Cinéaste, but this never registers on a moment-to-moment basis because the characters’ actions track logically and he mostly keeps the action on the ground floor. There’s recognition of evil deeds committed by the people upstairs, but they never arise above the dramatic level of sinister bigwigs who want to make money at the expense of people they swore to protect. We see the world through the lowlifes at the bottom who took a shot to challenge authority and ended up in an even deeper hole than they could possibly imagine. They’re pawns that always believe they’re in control right up until the moment they lose it.

Schrader swears in that same Cinéaste interview that he didn’t set out to make a left-wing film when he was writing Blue Collar. In fact, he bemoans leftist films that emphasize ideology over character, claiming that they don’t work dramatically and have no respect for their subjects.

“Aesthetically, you know, Che Guevara’s life is no more interesting than Rommel’s life. You could make a great, rich story about either one of them. As an artist, you have to hang your film on a character and let the character give you your strength, and if a critical feeling comes out of the character, all the better…That to me is the danger of so many left films—they know the thesis before they know the characters and the characters never live up to the thesis, and it has to work the other way around to have any dramatic sense. The left films I really like are the ones that love their characters.”

Schrader’s decision to privilege drama over ideology—essentially having the former lead the latter—ultimately strengthens the film’s politics. His demonstrable love for his characters makes their fates that much more devastating, and in turn emphasizes the political weight of the film’s thesis. In Blue Collar’s clumsiest moment, Smokey explains to Zeke and Jerry that the union only wants to keep them in check, and that they’ll pit workers against each other, primarily along racial or generational lines, to distract them from the real top-bottom malfeasance. While this brief explication needlessly points a large arrow towards the film’s potent subtext, it nevertheless lends a heavy melancholic overtone to the film’s final act, as we see how Zeke and Jerry eventually turn on each other and fall back on racial animosity to fuel their division.

Schrader’s idealized depiction of racial harmony between the trio breaks apart when Jerry and Zeke can no longer understand the compromises they’ve both made. In their final talk as friends, Zeke tells him that he took the promotion and returned the stolen notebook because he knows he’ll never receive the same opportunities as a white man. Jerry balks at his suggestion, since they both know the union’s involvement in Smokey’s death and that their corruption will remain the same, but Zeke calmly informs him that if he has to kiss ass, he wants to choose the ass he kisses. It’s a startlingly honest conversation about race between two men on opposite ends of the color divide, and how some will never be able to understand the compromises others make just to keep on moving forward. Even as Schrader breaks Zeke and Jerry apart for reasons they don’t (or can’t) understand in the moment, he never robs them of their own personal dignity or self-awareness.

Jerry walks away from Zeke’s house with an offer to take over as supervisor and with the knowledge that his last friend sold out their chance to expose a corrupt, violent union. Though he might have the moral high ground, he can’t empathize with Zeke’s perspective or his unique life experience in a crucial moment, and thus their relationship shatters.

The final scene culminates in blows and a messy freeze frame. Both Zeke and Jerry call each other out for being a sellout and an informer respectively. These once close friends, who shot the shit and partied and whose families went bowling together, are now exchanging racial epithets because of their interpersonal betrayal. In the process, they’ve completely forgotten that it was the union who sold them out to begin with, and that they wouldn’t be there in the first place if the institutions they trusted didn’t look out solely for themselves at the expense of their charges. Schrader repeats Smokey’s subtext explanation in voiceover, and though it’s a heavy-handed aesthetic move, it does provoke chills in spite of itself. It’s fairly impressive that a mainstream Hollywood film ends on this note, that those in power will exploit racial discord in order to keep desperate workers divided, because they instinctively know that if those workers joined forces, they could overthrow the whole damn system.

[empathyeatings]

💀 --OOP

UTTERANCES     /     BCNQUET !     THE PRAXIS    —    (NOT ACCEPTING) !

     ‘ i can’t stand it when they yell and – and carry on like that! ’  an anger is welling within the tremor of his voice, he speaks excitedly, muddled and voice caked with a the obstruction of phlegm at the back of his throat. the soles of shoes scuff the polished floorboards (carpet rolled and pushed to one side), he’s…nervous, for the first time in a long time, nervous doing this. because he’s being watched. by hannibal. the way his entire frame leans forward on edge rather than settled back into itself, shoulder blades down, the way he paces back and forth on the balls of his feet rather than his heels, it all shows. but he doesn’t care what he is expressing, doesn’t think about how much. 

head hangs with a shame directed inwards, he’s anxious to throw away his entire routine based upon this intrusive and unwelcome feeling. it’s burying it’s way through his intestines and climbing each prong of his ribcage. his palms clasp at the back of his neck as he attempts to wade through the mess in his mind, tries to decide what to do. he knows what will happen will be born on impulse, there is really no point in trying to conceive this. and still, he is frustrated, because despite how racked with the implosion of sensation and sentiment he is on these nights where the moon wanes and waxes time for him, he is also very clear-headed in purpose and follows a very direct path. until now. 

hannibal ruined everything, is ruining everything at this very moment, just by breathing and looking, just by being. will resents his presence, but he is also exhilarated by it. such deep and glowing a strange and expelling brown enkindles and animates, he feels a fever by his brow and feels the cool kiss of steel by the shell of his ear. 

     hannibal represents the wrong. and his fearful lust to be wholly seen sans judgement. he remembers that heaven is a simple state of mind and time is just there to kill.

stagnant for only mere moments, he is the tide that laps at the shores of the other man’s attention, but hasn’t met his eyes yet. all around feels jagged and unstable, sharp rocks of curiosity collapsing into the foaming crescents of his consciousness. his skin is soaked and his conscience is bare but he chooses not to wade further into the deep. 

     but the choice is not my own.

such a rush, such a purposeful and powerful charge, will graham whips back and the full strength of this unbearable violation is brought down beneath the bellow of his boot. the sound of bones crunching as he crushes the writhing man’s windpipe, once, twice, again and again. the final silence is only drowned out by means of transportation, as he is aware that he is somewhere else, basking beneath a generous warmth that is the end. he did not give what he had meant to give, but he took so much more and within these concupiscent dreams, the fleeting gratification lasts only seconds. he cannot tell if these loud voices are inside his head, or if they are him, himself.

somewhere half-way between an anguished groaned and a scream of distress, he imagines they are of the dead man beneath him, though his mouth lulls permanently and dumbly open, this illusion only serves to further the stormed stomps. what a mangled mess! fingers grip onto the handle of a now useless blade, his other hand totally numbed to the nails cutting into his palms. his fists shake but his body is dedicated by thew and moves fluidly with each verdict brought down by his thigh. and will graham can’t remember when he stopped, only the seething, hot air through gritted teeth and the heavy rise and fall of chest as he pays back his debt to oxygen. it is an electric emotion.

     there, that settled it. 

he feels much better now. it will hit him later, what he’s done, he can punish himself at a later date but for now the euphoric ignorance washing over him placates any previous fear, the anxiety, the sickness for the unknown, the eyes on the back of his head. he drops the knife, and too a weight from his shoulders, scraping off a congealed and grotesque mess of skin and blood that sticks to the bottom of his shoe. he first uses the body’s trouser leg for this, and when this proves insufficient and with a little glancing around, he takes to the sturdy heap of carpet now conveniently bundled to withstand the push of rubber. it’s as if he’d planned that. 

to himself he thinks that hannibal will now have to think about a little redecoration. it was time for a spring cleaning anyway, and he makes mental note to remind him of this once he’s fully calmed down. for now, the enlivened man looks up, he’s had his head down for so long in concentration his neck rings a dull ache and shoots it down his spine. he sees in the other’s eyes something a bit more than foreign, didn’t even think the psychiatrist could ever even…look like that. well…he had just watched his friend brutally murder a man through an unnecessary amount of force and asphyxiation. will had totally decimated his upper body, skull split and face now far more than unidentifiable. 

he’s been told he needs to care less, relax more: he would allow himself the pleasure to agree up until the point he walks out of this room. he should get back to business. standing around never did him any good. 

[dfroza]

Today’s reading from the ancient books of Proverbs and Psalms

for Sunday, december 20 of 2020 with Proverbs 20 and Psalm 20, accompanied by Psalm 90 for the 90th day of Autumn, and Psalm 55 for day 355 of the year (now with the consummate book of 150 Psalms in its 3rd revolution this year)

[Psalm 20]

For the worship leader. A song of David.

May the Eternal’s answer find you, come to rescue you,

when you desperately cling to the end of your rope.

May the name of the True God of Jacob be your shelter.

May He extend hope and help to you from His holy sanctuary

and support you from His sacred city of Zion.

May He remember all that you have offered Him;

may your burnt sacrifices serve as a prelude to His mercy.

[pause]

May He grant the dreams of your heart

and see your plans through to the end.

When you win, we will not be silent! We will shout

and raise high our banners in the great name of our God!

May the Eternal say yes to all your requests.

I don’t fear; I’m confident that help will come to the one anointed by the Eternal:

heaven will respond to his plea;

His mighty right hand will win the battle.

Many put their hope in chariots, others in horses,

but we place our trust in the name of the Eternal One, our True God.

Soon our enemies will collapse and fall, never to return home;

all the while, we will rise and stand firm.

Eternal One, grant victory to our king!

Answer our plea for help.

The Book of Psalms, Poem 20 (The Voice)

to be accompanied by these lines from The Message:

That clinches it—help’s coming,

an answer’s on the way,

everything’s going to work out.

See those people polishing their chariots,

and those others grooming their horses?

But we’re making garlands for God our God.

The chariots will rust,

those horses pull up lame—

and we’ll be on our feet, standing tall.

The Book of Psalms, Poem 20:6-8 (The Message)

[Proverbs 20]

Too much wine begins to mock you,

too much strong drink leads to noisy fights,

and whoever is misled by either is not wise.

A king’s wrath strikes fear like a lion’s roar;

those who provoke him to anger sentence themselves to death.

Honor is due those who refuse to fight at the drop of a hat,

but every fool jumps at an opportunity to quarrel.

A slacker procrastinates when it is time to plow;

so when it’s time for harvest, there are no crops in the field.

The real motives come from deep within a person—as from deep waters—

but a discerning person is able to draw them up and expose them.

Most people claim to be loyal,

but can anyone find a trustworthy person?

The right-living act with integrity;

the children who follow their example are happy.

When a king sits on his throne as judge,

he ferrets out all evil and scatters it with his royal stare.

Who can say, “I have cleaned my heart”?

or who can proclaim, “I am purified from sin”?

False weights and differing measures are alike:

both are disgusting to the Eternal.

Youth reveal their true natures by their actions

whether they do what is pure and right or not.

Ears to listen, eyes to see—

the Eternal designed them both.

Do not fall in love with sleep, or you will awake a poor person.

Stay awake, get to work, and you will have more than enough food.

“Bad quality for a bad price,” bargains the buyer;

but then he runs off with his prize in tow, bragging, “What a steal!”

Gold and rubies abound,

but lips that utter knowledge are a rare jewel.

If someone guarantees a stranger’s debt, hold his garment as collateral;

if that stranger is a foreigner, hold the creditor responsible.

At first the bread of lies tastes sweet

until guilt reduces it to gravel in the mouth.

Plans are finalized on the basis of good counsel,

so only go to war when you have wise instructions.

A gossip will reveal your secrets!

So avoid the company of people who talk openly and foolishly.

If someone pronounces a curse on his parents,

the lamp of his life will be snuffed out as complete darkness creeps in.

An inheritance acquired hastily at first

will end up not being blessed after all.

Do not say, “I will get even for this evil.”

Wait for the Eternal; He will defend you.

He despises dishonesty in business;

false weights and deceptive scales are wrong.

Every one of our steps is directed by Him;

so how can we attempt to figure out our own way?

Those who rashly dedicate something to God are trapped;

only afterward do they realize what they’ve promised.

A wise king weeds out the wrongdoers,

then drives over them with his threshing wheel of justice.

The lamp of the Eternal illuminates the human spirit,

searching our most intimate thoughts.

Loyal love and faithfulness safeguard the king;

his throne is perpetuated through loyal love.

The best asset of youth is the strength of the body,

but the beauty of age is gray hair.

Severe punishment scrubs away evil,

and tough blows scour the innermost parts.

The Book of Proverbs, Chapter 20 (The Voice)

[Psalm 90]

Book 4

The Numbers Psalms

Psalms of our pilgrimage on earth

God, the Eternal

A prayer of Moses, God’s prophet

Lord, you have always been our eternal home,

our hiding place from generation to generation.

Long before you gave birth to the earth

and before the mountains were born,

you have been from everlasting to everlasting,

the one and only true God.

When you speak the words “Life, return to me!”

man turns back to dust.

One thousand years pass before your eyes

like yesterday that quickly faded away,

like a night’s sleep soon forgotten.

One day we will each be swept away into the sleep of death.

We glide along through the tides of time—

so quickly gone, like a dream that fades at dawn.

Like glistening grass that springs up one day

and is dry and withered the next, ready to be cut down!

Terrified by your anger, confined beneath the curse,

we live our lives knowing your wrath.

For all of our faults and flaws are in full view to you.

Everything we want to hide, you search out

and expose by the radiance of your face.

We are banished to live in the shadow of your anger.

Our days soon become years until our lifetime comes to an end,

finished with nothing but a sigh.

You’ve limited our life span to a mere seventy years,

yet some you give grace to live still longer.

But even the best of years are marred by tears and toils,

and in the end with nothing more than a gravestone in a graveyard!

We’re gone so quickly, so swiftly;

we pass away and simply disappear.

Lord, who fully knows the power of your passion

and the intensity of your emotions?

Help us to remember that our days are numbered,

and help us to interpret our lives correctly.

Set your wisdom deeply in our hearts

so that we may accept your correction.

Return to us again, O God!

How much longer will it take until you show us

your abundant compassion?

Let the sunrise of your love end our dark night.

Break through our clouded dawn again!

Only you can satisfy our hearts,

filling us with songs of joy to the end of our days.

We’ve been overwhelmed with grief;

come now and overwhelm us with gladness.

Replace our years of trouble with decades of delight.

Let us see your miracles again, and let the rising generation

see the glorious wonders you’re famous for.

O Lord our God, let your sweet beauty rest upon us

and give us favor.

Come work with us, and then our works will endure,

and give us success in all we do.

The Book of Psalms, Poem 90 (The Passion Translation)

[Psalm 55]

Betrayed

To the Pure and Shining One

King David’s song of derision, for instruction

God, listen to my prayer!

Don’t hide your heart from me when I cry out to you!

Come close to me and give me your answer.

Here I am, moaning and restless.

I’m preoccupied with the threats of my enemies

and crushed by the pressure of their opposition.

They surround me with trouble and terror.

In their fury they rise up against me in an angry uproar.

My heart is trembling inside my chest

as the terror of death seizes me.

Fear and dread overwhelm me. I shudder before the horror I face.

I say to myself, “If only I could fly away from all of this!

If only I could run away to the place of rest and peace.

I would run far away where no one could find me,

escaping to a wilderness retreat.”

Pause in his presence

I will hurry off to hide in the higher place,

into my shelter, safe from this raging storm and tempest.

God, confuse them until they quarrel with themselves.

Destroy them with their own violent strife and slander.

They have divided the city with their discord.

Though they patrol the walls night and day against invaders,

the real danger is within the city.

It’s the misery and strife in the hearts of its people.

Murder is in their midst.

Wherever you turn you find trouble and ruin.

It wasn’t an enemy who taunted me.

If it was my enemy, filled with pride and hatred,

then I could have endured it. I would have just run away.

But it was you, my intimate friend—one like a brother to me.

It was you, my advisor, the companion

I walked with and worked with!

We once had sweet fellowship with each other.

We worshiped in unity as one,

celebrating together with God’s people.

Now desolation and darkness has come upon you.

May you and all those like you descend into the pit of destruction!

Since evil has been your home, may evil now bury you alive!

But as for me, I will call upon the Lord to save me, and I know he will!

Every evening I will explain my need to him.

Every morning I will move my soul toward him.

Every waking hour I will worship only him,

and he will hear and respond to my cry.

Though many wish to fight and the tide of battle turns against me,

by your power I will be safe and secure;

peace will be my portion.

God himself will hear me!

God-Enthroned through everlasting ages,

the God of unchanging faithfulness—

he will put them in their place,

all those who refuse to love and revere him!

Pause in his presence

I was betrayed by my friend, though I lived in peace with him.

While he was stretching out his hand of friendship,

he was secretly breaking every promise he had ever made to me!

His words were smooth and charming.

Yet his heart was disloyal and full of hatred—

his words soft as silk while all the time scheming my demise.

So here’s what I’ve learned through it all:

Leave all your cares and anxieties at the feet of the Lord,

and measureless grace will strengthen you.

He will watch over his lovers,

never letting them slip or be overthrown.

He will send all my enemies to the pit of destruction.

Murderers, liars, and betrayers will face an untimely death.

My life’s hope and trust is in you, and you’ll never fail to rescue me!

The Book of Psalms, Poem 55 (The Passion Translation)

[origami-goblin]

Episode 26 - Just Deserts

---

Wednesday, November 29th, 2017

First order of party business is to loot the bodies to try and gather some additional information about the Sanatorium and its residents. Apart from some potions and a couple wands, Krask finds two sets of keys which the party hopes will grant them access to the rest of the building.

As they travel upstairs, they find a series of detainment cells and two figures within. One of them is an old, senile man named Wald who babbles incoherently as if he were in the middle of a great battle. The other person is a blind, emaciated kobold named Brudik. Since he is able to hold a conversation, the party begins to ask him about himself - how he became an inmate, where he's from, etc.

Through their dialogue, it is learned that Brudik is actually from the same kobold clan as Krask - the Dirt Diggers. After Krask had stolen from the dragon, Longtooth went into a rage, believing that Krask was not the first to have stolen. Over the course of several weeks, he underwent an extensive interrogation of the clan, eventually wiping out all of the kobolds. The dragon crafted a massive, grisly, charred bone chime in his cave from their remains - all except Brudik. He was allowed the live, albeit maimed and blinded, under the orders to locate Krask and notify Longtooth of the Deserter's whereabouts.

Krask is uneasy about letting Brudik know that Krask was standing right in from of him; there was an element of shock and surprise that Longtooth had exterminated so many kobolds for such a seemingly insignificant offense. Theo silently indicates that they could just leave Brudik alone, none the wiser, but Krask's curiosity eventually gets the better of him.

Brudik requests a dagger and proceeds to cut open his lower abdomen, revealing a bloody glass vial. He throws it to the ground, shattering it, and revealing the dragon's message to Krask:

“The mountains shake. The river weeps. The sky chokes. The world knows and remembers the transgressions of The Deserter, emblazoned in our minds with a boundless flame of writhing hatred. Foolishness defines the acts of a coward, scuttling away with his ill-gotten prize. Forget not, the scheming joy you felt in that moment, when you held your golden salvation aloft, believing that you had triumphed over me. Me, the rock that had sheltered you from the torments of the world. Instead, you choose to be eroded and erased from existence. You choose to be crushed by the suffocating weight of my wrath. You choose death.

As such, the Deserter shall become naught but dust, joining the wretched and worthless of this land, void of legacy and life. He shall quiver underneath my boiling fury, and his debt shall become due in full, a thousand-fold. His bones will smolder before joining the remains of his fellow worms in my Chimes. And the wind will regale the tale of your folly with a somber, hollow melody with every gust of its disappointed breath. I, Brindrisdin, the Hollow Tyrant, Sovereign of the Dust Worms, and the Ashen Collector shall be repaid. And The Deserter will become one with the desert, barren and without life.”

As the message fades, Krask is visibly shaken. His little act of defiance has caused a murderous ripple, and having a dragon seeking you out was akin to a death sentence. The party unlocks Brudik's room and agrees to help him reach the House of Blue Stones in Sandpoint where he can live out his days as a monk at the monastery. They continue searching the Sanatorium.

To quickly sum up the results of their findings, they find a manic wererat whom they leave untouched, a series of invasive surgical tools, and a necromantic workshop down in the basement which includes Caizarlu's spellbook. Satisfied, they head back to Sandpoint, arriving around nightfall.

They immediately visit the Cathedral to cure Fobias' blindness. The healers are generous and restore the half-orc's sight for a relative discount. Before heading to debrief Sherriff Hemlock, they make a pitstop at the House of Blue Stones and drop off Brudik. Brudik cautions Krask to watch his back and hopes that he survives this terrifying ordeal before heading inside.

At the garrison, the party notifies Sheriff Hemlock of the events at the Sanatorium, including the deaths of Habe and Grayst. Even though Hemlock is inclined to give the party the benefit of the doubt after the services that they've provided to Sandpoint, but still needs to exercise his due diligence in fact-gathering to verify the party's story. He asks them to sit tight overnight while he investigates the Sanatorium and reach a verdict.

The gates of the holding cell close with the entire party behind them.

What did Caizarlu know about the Sihedron Rune? Was he creating undead to feast on Sandpoint's citizens? Will Sherriff Hemlock find Isotoners at the crime scene?

[inaneinthenextplane]

#NotMyAss: A Case For Why The Democratic Party Should Change Its Symbol From The Andrew Jackson Donkey To, Anything More Progressive

“It is to be regretted that the rich and powerful too often bend the acts of government to their own selfish purposes.” - Andrew Jackson

People aren't perfect, in the modern day this can be noted about many (if not any) of us & our capacity as people toward imperfection permeates all from the lowest in the social pecking order to the highest. It is often said that when judging people in the past, especially of leaders both religious and political, that one should not apply the ethical standards of modernity when designating who does & doesn't deserve our collective admiration or respect as people. Certainly, the United States is not a stranger to the controversy plaguing its record & history. However most will tell you that while the founding fathers for instance may have been slave owners, they for their time had altered their society for the better. That through their violence against the system of monarchism, they're said to have bravely redefined societies' relationship with the government, incorporating some of the progressive elements of the age of enlightenment at that time to form a constitutional republic that would spring revolutionary fervor as far as France & even as close as Haiti against the French First Republic itself. However you may feel about the founding fathers, their religious & civic beliefs, their involvement in slavery, their war crimes against the Native population, etc, there is no doubt that they left behind a tumultuous legacy that cannot be said to have given modern society no gifts that the people of today continue to indulge in. Our constitution, though it is unfortunately often ignored or otherwise subverted by the government today, has given people rights and autonomy over their own lives that other nations only wish they could possess. Legacy is an important thing to consider when evaluating the worth of men of history, it's how we determine the weight of the gifts they've given to the world vs. their atrocities, how we determine who we'll honor from our past or condemn to the realm of the reviled.

Andrew Jackson was a war criminal Indian killer, a rogue president, and an enemy of the abolition of slavery. Apart from the founding fathers, he was a president & leader of the country with a fundamentally different kind of legacy. Some may even say his was an accomplished one, and indeed, it doesn't strike even me as wholly blemished or uproarious. However, any idiot could argue a silver lining within the track records of even the most loathsome of tyrants. "Mussolini may have instituted fascism, but, at least he had the trains running on time". "Mao Zedong may have been the catalyst for the murder of 45 million, but hey, he was good for women" (I'm not shitting you, this is a narrative pressed in the New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/25/opinion/women-china-communist-revolution.html). But, it isn't unreasonable to suggest his contribution to the country had its bright sides. In the interest of being measured I'll list some of said accomplishments here:

He was an accomplished general who throughout his military career diligently fulfilled his functions in the battles he fought, delivering crushing defeats to enemy armies, most notably the battle of New Orleans. This was one of the most one sided battles of the War Of 1812 and lead to the death of 2,037 British soldiers, compared to 71 Americans.

He expanded voting rights to all... white males. Which, I mean, as a white guy I have to take as something of a plus. I certainly shouldn't have to own land or pay a poll tax to vote. No siree bob, fuck you, up yours, get laid, eat shit, drop dead, jack me off, suck this, I'm not interested in your rigid voting standards. Perhaps, this could be said to have set the groundwork for future generations of increased suffrage for other interest groups.

He solved a succession crisis presented by South Carolina caused by Southern farmers' not wanting to pay high tarrifs issued to benefit Northern industrialists by authorizing the use of force in implementing the tariff but also passing a compromise bill that adjusted the rates enough to lower tensions among the growingly embittered population of the state. He fought the banks, and managed to be the only president to balance the federal budget & leave the country with zero national debt by the time he left office.

I list these in part because already I could picture the internal dialogue of people whom may be fans of Andrew Jackson, or who believe that historical outrage is an indulgence characteristic of SJW's & other victims of guilt over a contrived notion of white privilege who resent their own existence. I don't consider myself aligned with such outrage culture, however, the character of the country matters & our relationship with the past should reflect the lessons we've learned from it.

A brief history of the symbols of the two major parties: In 1828 Andrew Jackson's populist rhetoric earned him the designation of 'stubborn Jackass' among critics. However, this insult was adopted proudly by Jackson who then printed images associating his campaign with a strong willed & determined donkey. Conceptually its the campaign equivalent of taking back the “Ehn-Word”. Less interesting is the story of the Republican elephant, where basically a magazine named Harpers Weekly published a political cartoon of a bunch of animals fleeing from a braying mule but like, the elephant was brave and didn't flee. Woo-oo.

Here I would like to enumerate why I believe, as a leftist, that it is in the Democratic parties' best interest to shirk the donkey that now symbolizes the only party that fosters progressive thought, from Bernie Sanders to Elisabeth Warren to the majority of the liberal base of the US who vote.

We talk now a lot about the imperative nature of Supreme Court justices. Democrats begging the left to vote would use the Supreme Court as one of their alarmist rationales for voting not so much for Hillary Clinton, but rather against Trump. There's a current panic among the left as far as abortion goes, as the right has been seeking the death of Roe vs. Wade ever since its passage in the year of 1973. Well, lets talk about the Supreme Court & president Jackson. Jackson was a slave owner, which isn't at all unique to the history of presidents of that age, but let's compare him to Thomas Jefferson.

Jefferson (the third president), a noted slave owner, claimed he partook in the industry for economic purposes & actively resented the industry. Jefferson referred in public to the institution as a 'hideous blot' & even went as far as to ban the import of slaves into Virginia. His proposed amendment to ban slavery in all northern and southern states after 1800 would have succeeded, were it not rejected by one mere vote. Jefferson had a complicated relationship with slavery, & even as he owned slaves, he seemed not to be its legislative ally while in government.

The case of Dred Scott vs. Sandford is perhaps the most notorious decision made by the US Supreme Court. I remember learning it in history class as the worst ruling ever produced by the court in AP US Government class during high school. The ruling basically set back the abolitionist cause by many years and helped to solidify the inevitability of the entire Civil War. Basically, Dred Scott was an enslaved man who sued for his freedom after his master John Emerson had died, leaving his wife to handle his estate and therefore Dred Scott as a slave. He was not only denied his freedom but his ability to sue was rejected on the grounds that he, as a slave of "the negro African race", was property on level with a shovel or other type of tool. This decision stands as one of the worst decisions ever made in the history of the judicial branch of government, & it was facilitated by the appointments of Andrew Jackson, a vehement opponent of the then nascent movement towards abolition. By that point, four of the judges influencing this decision were appointed by Jackson, only one of which voted as a dissenting opinion. While John McLean of Ohio voted against, John Caltron, Roger Brooke Taney, and James Moore Wayne all voted in favor of the ruling. Compare this to what Jefferson, a president three terms down from him was attempting, with much less cultural traction at the time. Does the Democratic party at this time want to be represented by a symbol describing the man who committed the exact administrative evil they fear so much in this age, when Donald Trump threatens to do the same?

The Supreme Court today is one of the most sought after checks against the Executive Branch, especially today as Donald Trump attempts to institute so called 'Muslim bans' by cutting off immigration to majority Muslim nations. The courts, up until very recently, had put the kibosh on his ban, ruling it unconstitutional. Now the ruling has been temporarily uplifted, but the issue remains undecided & under review in the courts.

Imagine a world where Donald Trump ignored the ruling of the court, going as far as to throw Muslims out of the country at the barrel of a gun & barring refugees from wartorn nations in turmoil from entry everywhere from the mainland to even the territorial United States?

Well,

it just so happens that there is precedent for a president committing such an affront to the checks and balances of the United States. Oddly enough, only a few administrations into the country itself with its relatively new constitution no less.

The Trail Of Tears, earned Andrew Jackson the name of 'Sharp Knife' from the Cherokee nation, it was a forced death march designed to evict multiple native American tribes from the eastern territories of the United States out west to what is now Oklahoma. Rich American farmers were for a while during & prior to Jackson's' administration coveting the lands of the Indian nations of the Choctaw, Chickasaw, Seminole, Creek and Cherokee. Under the auspices of their 'savagery', the practice of forced removal of Indians from their land had been no big deal traditionally for state and federal governments of the United States. These five tribes however underwent the process of 'civilizing' themselves, & had organized private ownership, adoption of Christianity, learned to speak and read English, even circulating their own newspaper at that time in an attempt to distinguish themselves as perfectly willing to assimilate in the interest of becoming culturally neighborly as a people. They had even in many cases sued for their right to their lands not to be infringed. In cases such as 'Cherokee Nation v. Georgia' (1831) and 'Worcester v. Georgia' (1832), the Supreme Court itself even demanded that the state government of Georgia and Jackson's' administration cease the persecution of these tribes, affirming their sovereignty as nations.

But this motherfucker, this truly savage man, this rogue & treacherous president would go on to completely dispense with the opinion of the very court designed to provide a check on his office. Jackson said these fateful words in response to being contradicted by the court:

“John Marshall has made his decision;

now let him enforce it.”

A statement of utter irony, when one considers that is is the very nature of the Executive branch to enforce the laws, as interpreted by the courts, & crafted by the Legislative branch. Without any food, medicine, or clothing/blankets given from the government, the Chocktaw Indians would be first to journey at the point of a bayonet and sometimes even in chains down a miserably long road to Oklahoma. Of fifteen thousand Creek Indians that next would be moved, three and a half thousand would not make it. More than 5,000 Cherokees would die on their road to a forced new land. The Seminole Indians who would not leave even went as far as guerrilla warfare tactics, putting an ardent fight but ultimately failing to succeed in the preservation of their rightful lands. For the ones who capitulated to the governments demands & moved, diseases such as whooping cough, typhus, dysentery, & cholera among others would mar the entire genetic makeup of their people & starvation would plague them & only them as soldiers would accompany their miserable trek to a new life in a new land.

These people were not allowed to win. They were not allowed to live peacefully and many weren't even allowed to live because the United States was headed by a genocidal maniac, an opportunistic slave monger & white supremacist who had a history of practicing ethnic extermination throughout his military career; even going as far as to recommend the killing of Native American women and children to those under to him. In fact, during the first Seminole War prior to his presidency the military came upon two British men Alexander George Arbuthnot and Robert C. Ambrister living amongst the Seminole people. One of the men had written a journal expressing dissenting opinion against the persecution of the Seminole & their forced removal, which Jackson would use as the evidence necessary to try and execute them in a “special court martial” for conspiring to incite the tribe to fight back against his advance on them. A perfectly reasonable reaction for them to have come up with of their own volition! Only no, they were enticed to by these dangerous trouble making Brits.

What a contradiction of American values of freedom of speech, of due process, of the will of the Supreme Court!

Imagine being a Jew in modern day Germany, living in a democracy where one of the major supposedly leftist/liberal parties was symbolically depicted by a Nazi flag with no other options in sight to vote for representing your interests. Imagine being Jewish in a Germany where boys and girls pay for ice cream with dollar bills depicting the portrait of Adolf Hitler. Or where the grave to this day of Hitler is still honored to this day.

You might say this is a reach, but think of what was at stake for both groups of people. Think of the method of execution & even movement of these people who were both subject to genocide at the hands of a significantly more powerful 'other'. As the Soviet Union proceeded into Nazi territory from the eastern front, the occupants of concentration camps were evacuated and forced to move-via death march- where many would die of disease or being shot by SS soldiers when they could not go one, in the harshness of winter no less.

The property and territories of Native American tribes were sacked and their supplies stripped from them prior to being forcibly moved to the federal governments designated reservation, their movements took place under very similar circumstances & the general disregard for their humanity also strikes me as similar in their malevolence. There was simply no army to save “The Five Civilized Tribes” whose fate at the hands of their enemies would be most uncivil. 'Stubborn jackass' is perhaps the least venomous of insults you might lob at Jackson, & perhaps this is why he so willingly painted himself as such in the political landscape of his nation.

We shouldn't even honor the grave of this former president, his ironic place on the fiat currency of our American 20$ bill could not have found a more beautiful 'Fuck You' than in being replaced by abolitionist radical Harriet Tubman (though perhaps in her case 'cathartic' might be a better word) even if it is only on one side of the bill.

What is the utility of the donkey as the symbol of the Democratic party? When most people are obtuse to the history of it in the first place, why should the Democrats be content to leave anybody with the intellectual curiosity to research their primary logo the chance of being disgusted by their own national history? It strikes me as very ironic, when it should be iconic. It is a symbolic affront to one of their more coveted voter bases, because lets face it, Native American voters aren't exactly gung-ho to vote for the Republican party who specifically sell out to the very people who stand to profit from our modern affront to tribal rights, the tar sands Dakota Access oil pipeline. If Democrats are to be sincere in standing with the water protectors of Standing Rock, I think a great gesture in the right direction could consist of adopting a wholly new symbol, designed to do in effect what Obama proposed in response to calls to investigate the criminals in the Bush administration who committed torture & warrant-less wiretapping: to look forward, as opposed to looking backwards.

Below are my sources I used for this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0K27oIJlAlA

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dred_Scott_v._Sandford

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Jackson

https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005162#

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/how-the-parties-got-their-animal-symbols/

https://indiancountrymedianetwork.com/history/people/indian-killer-andrew-jackson-deserves-top-spot-on-list-of-worst-us-presidents/

http://www.history.com/topics/native-american-history/trail-of-tears

https://www.biography.com/people/andrew-jackson-9350991

http://www.subzin.com/quotes/M18643d18b/George+Carlin%3A+Complaints+%26+Grievances/Bullshit%2C+fuck+you%2C+up+yours%2C+get+laid.