#they would be the world's worst enablers for one another's bullshit

[teatitty]

KakaIru childhood friends AU's should just be them pulling off all sorts of bullshit together [pranks, tricks, insane mission plays etc] and Kakashi bragging about how big of a genius he is and Iruka going "Hey genius it was my idea" and Kakashi going "Well I pulled it off" and then they grapple on the floor about it. Like Nala and Simba yanno

[titleknown]

You're creating yet another degrowth strawman.

Read some JK Steinberger and maybe you'll calm down.

[Referring to this post]

...Like, how is it a strawman when I point out the things that they've actually said and where I see the implications going?

Like, I'm asking in good faith, because I do not get how people look at the broader Degrowth Movement and not get nervous.

Like, Kallis is not some rando, from my knowlege he's a big name I see brought up a lot. And like, while I don't think this essay I wrote has aged particularly well (I probably would not defend Phillips or The Breakthrough Institute), I do think it's useful to show a lot of the absolute bullshit I've seen Degrowth People say, because I directly linked them. Enough so to give me an idea of a pattern.

And like... to give a further example from something I've personally noticed on why I read the implications I do, in all the talk about degrowth and how much free time their society will provide to pursue your passions, it's always about very analog passions.

Like, they talk about woodworking, playing an instrument, painting. But never about any hobbies that require computing devices, like digital art, video games, game development, programming, robotics, ect-cetera.

Most degrowth-movement-people I've seen have had nothing but spite for the devices that enable those hobbies, because of the very real atrocities that exist in the world-as-we-know it to produce them, but in that I always see the presumption that they could never exist or innovate without that exploitation.

Especially given my conversation wrt the person I mentioned who talked about "emerging technology is a capitalist grift" and how that's reflective of that broader contrarianism I see towards basically any technology that might make the need for mandated-aeceticism less.

One degrowth person on here said was "well, video games are just a substitute for what capitalism took from you," which I think is a grotesque way to treat an entire artform just because you find it inefficient.

Why is it such a strawman to think that, given they talk about the need for those mandated limits on production, means of accessing or iterating upon those devices would be choked off? Especially under the system of soft-pressure Kallis describes.

And like... speaking personally, as a fan of a lot of mediums that're often strangled by the efficiency fetishism of capitalism (Animation being the big one), I do not get how one doesn't get very nervous at the tendency towards efficiency fetishism in the Degrowth Movement.

And that's what I see a lot of from Degrowth People, efficiency fetishism. That contempt I see for computing and those that use it, the framework of "harsh truths" that you might never have an orange again, the quest I keep seeing to define so many things as manufactured interests, in aggregate it's extremely noticeable to me.

I see it concealed through the language of free time, but when I look deeper at what they talk about using free time for and what mediums they shit-talk, it feels very much more like the idea that they simply think their hobbies are "efficient" enough to avoid the axe, and people who's aren't should get fucked.

Like, from all I see of Kallis' work it's not "Does it bring joy?" it's "You need to make its absence bring joy through 'self-mastery'" which like...

...If one's autistic, the idea of altering your interests for the sake of "self-mastery" or "self control" driven by pressures to be "efficient" is an extremely familiar pain, ugly and cruel in a way that a lot of people who never experienced it don't realize.

And again, I see a lot of Degrowth People citing this guy, and a lot of people echoing the worst of his points.

Like, again, I've come around on the idea of degrowth as a technique, a tool in the toolbox, but none of that has been from the works of the actual degrowth movement, but rather through people who don't have that aestheticized efficiency fetishism.

And like... maybe it's just my different reading and my experiences at play, but I fundamentally, genuinely, do not get how my bringing it up is a strawman.

Like... I do not get how y'all don't see it, reading those trends. How?

[openingpandorasbox1]

BLACK SHEEP

BLACK SHEEP

                There are black sheep and I’m one of them.

                There’s definitely some kind of class division or a hierarchy where some people think they are better than others. I don’t know what this is based on.

But the truth is that it’s based entirely on who the biggest wankers are in the room.

There are class groups, it’s like being on the Titanic.

There are the narcissist’s who look down on others, then the group in the middle who aren’t in but not out either and then there’s the ones of the bottom, the scum.

                The wankers and bitches seem to think they are better than everyone else and just sit around making snide comments about people, even when someone is right in front of them they will make snobby and bitchy comments about them.

                I tend to be a magnet for bitchy people, I’m way too nice to people and I don’t behave like they do. If someone bitches about me I don’t start World War III and I don’t bitch back. I’m not like them. I don’t want to be like them, I see no reason at all why I would want to be like them, I find them vile. I don’t think they even realise how atrocious they are. I can’t relate to people like them.

They are like those bitchy kids in those American high school movies such as Mean Girls and Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion. That’s exactly what they act like. They are the bitchy reality TV personality. Why would you want to be like one of those bitches on a reality television program? So tacky!

If you watch TV programs like The Bachelor, there are always the nice contestants, the funny contestants, the narrator who calls shit out, and then you get the bitchy nasty ones.

Bitchy people remind me of those girls, the bitchy people on a reality TV program.

                I don’t know why anybody would want to be like that but I guess that’s who they want to be.

                Bitchy people aren’t all female, a lot of them are men who are just as bitchy (or even more bitchy) than the women. They are just as bad as each other and they bounce off each other’s bitchiness.

                I hear and see them bitching. Bitchy people tend to nit-pick, they are the worst kind. They have very little to go on, so they just make assumptions or turn something very small into Ben-Hur! Those people are toxic, because they just like to hate and bitch and if they don’t have anything to bitch about, they will make shit up. What a bunch of assholes!

                The most ironic part about it is that they bitch about someone and then they have the absurd belief that their victim should be going up to them, say hello to them, ask them how they are, care about what is going on in their life and give them a kiss and a hug (or some shit like that).

Victims aren’t fake people, if people spend time bitching about them (which they do), why should they approach them and embrace them. If I don’t like someone I won’t approach them, I will avoid them and won’t have anything to do with them.

                They are toxic and I don’t want to be around toxic.

                I don’t have time for their bitchiness.

                Even if they are bitching about me or someone else, no one says or does anything about it. They are enablers.

                I’ve always had this idolized image of someone who doesn’t put up with bullshit - the outsider. Sometimes you watch a movie or TV program and there’s always that one cool character, like an Aunt or someone who attends a wedding or a funeral even though they haven’t attended any family gathering for 15 years (or some length of time). They attend the family gathering and realise what a shit show their family is and then they leave and you know they’re never going to attend another family gathering again. I love those characters because the black sheep are always the coolest characters in movies.

                I find it extremely hard to relax when I’m an environment with more than one bitchy person. I’m an introvert as well which makes it more difficult for myself to cope in a situation like that and that could be one of the reasons why they find it so easy to target me.

                Years ago one of my cousins (who lives in a suburb near me) said to me, “Remember how as kids we used to play together and we used to get along?” and she then said, “When we grew up it’s like they look down on us now and they are above us”.

                It’s not just the bitches that make me feel uncomfortable but it’s also the flying monkeys and enablers who spend time with the bitches, they hear what the bitchy people are saying (all the bitchiness that is flying out of their mouths) but they don’t stand up for others. They just sit there, listen to it and enable it to persist. The enablers and flying monkeys continue the problem.

                I feel partially the reason why I go to gatherings where I know I’m going to be bitched about (because it happens so often) is that I feel guilty if I don’t go. I’m too busy trying to please others and live out ‘obligations’ even though I’m the one who is getting trodden on in that environment.

                When I do attend it’s an unhappy and uncomfortable experience for me. I don’t want to go somewhere where I am being bitched about and where I’m surrounded by nasty villains. Why would I want to be around people like that? I don’t.

                We’re not in high school anymore.

I’ve never really fitted in anywhere and I feel like I’m okay with that, it’s the bitchiness and nastiness that I don’t like. I’m okay with being an outsider; just don’t hate me for nit-picking reasons. I don’t deserve it. I don’t want to conform to be like them to be accepted by them. I would rather be alone then be one of those bitchy and nasty people. I think that’s why I’m targeted, you have to be bitchy and nasty to be liked and I don’t want to be liked due to that. I would rather be nice and decent and hated as a result.

                I don’t like fakeness, I like nice people but I hate people who smile at you (and pretend to be nice) and then stab you in the back - they are fake. Too many of those people about.

                I tend to gravitate towards black sheep and the underdogs because I relate to them partially. They are the outsiders, and not all black sheep are bad people. Sometimes the majority is worse than the minority. I can’t stand watching people being treated like shit. I don’t care if a shit load of people are hating on one person, I have my own mind, if I don’t believe that person deserves it, I won’t hate them just to fit in. I have my own mind and can think for myself. I’ll make the decision for myself of whether I think that person is cool or not, I’m not going to have my mind manipulated by a narcissist just so they can bring someone down.

                Bullies are narcissistic but I feel they do it because they need to feel better about themselves and want to be better than others. Majority of the people who have bullied myself and others have been insecure and their insecurities is obvious.

                I don’t believe in revenge or to be a bitch back to people because that’s not who I am as a person. My revenge is letting people do what they want to do because that’s where the truth is. 

                The truth is my revenge.

                If people feel the need to cut people down then it reveals who they are. 

               I’ve been dealt with a bad hand when it comes to the people within my life but I’m confident enough not to be like them. I call people out on their bullshit but I’m not going to go down to their level, I don’t want to be like them. I don’t want to put people down for lame reasons, I don’t nit-pick everything someone says or does, or what they look like - I’m not going to do that.

                If you want to make the world a better place you have to start with your own behavior.

                Some people are cool but there are also a lot of dicks and you usually get that with any group of people. I just don’t like all the put downs. When I’m around them I feel uncomfortable and become withdrawn. I don’t want to approach them because they are nasty and so I just keep a distance from them. I don’t want revenge or to be a bitch towards them, I just don’t want to be around them.

                I just don’t like all the fakeness, the fake smiles and the fake ‘hellos’, fake people who smile and say hello and then stab you in the back. I’ve been around people like that for far too long and I’m getting to the point where I’ve decided to cut all the toxic energy out of my life. I can’t be happy or improve my life when I’ve got toxic individuals who go out of their way to bring me down consistently. They bitch about me when I’m there in earshot but won’t say anything to me directly; of course, they usually do it when other people around them, other people who are bitchy like them.

Their bitchiness is obvious but everyone who is around them is cool with it, it’s a fucked up situation.     Like many others who have bullied me in the past they bully me because they see me as an easy target because I got no one on my side and no one to stand up for me. This shit has been happening for years and yet they do it around other people and other people hear them and no one says or does anything to prevent it from happening, the witnesses sit there and enable it and then others will join in. It’s easy to abuse people when there are no repercussions. They know they can get away with it and they keep doing it because they get away with it. I have no support.

                People who have support from family and friends are extremely fortunate. Not everybody has that.

                I’m also single, but I feel like this also puts a target on my back. It’s not the reason why they bully me but it enables them to bully me. If I had a partner would they continue bullying me? I feel like if I had someone by my side that supported me and stood up for me, there would be less bullying. When I stand up for myself, it just gives them more venom to bully me some more. It doesn’t stop the bullying, it just makes it increase. I’ve stood up for myself all my life and it doesn’t stop bullying or abuse, they only thing that can stop it is me walking away from it which is what I do. Nothing I say or do will stop them bitching about me. I just have to remove myself from that environment and that’s all I can do.

                People don’t like people who are ‘different’, I’m different and I’m okay with that but other people aren’t accepting of that. I’m not married, I’m single, I don’t have children, sometimes I’m working and sometimes I’m not, I’m not an extrovert, I’m not a bitch, I don’t have money, I’m poor, I don’t have a support network, and I’m not fake.

                This makes me a target for shitty people.

                There’s definitely a class-division and prejudice, when society talks openly about prejudice they often refer to sexism, homophobia, race, but it’s not always about that, sometimes prejudice can come down to the way someone looks, what colour hair they have, someone’s income, their social standing, what they are wearing, relationship status and that sort of thing. Prejudice comes in many forms.  

                I’m not going to go over to them and behave fake, and be nice to them and try to win them over, because they aren’t worth it. I can’t even approach them or open up to them because I know whatever I say and do will be used against me in the court of the NU club (Narcissists United).

                I avoid nasty people because I don’t have time for that shit. I want to spend my time doing things that make me happy and what I enjoy. I don’t want to waste another second of my life around people like that. I’m not going to damage myself like that. I have a choice and I’m going to make the best decisions for myself. They already hate me so it’s not going to make a difference. I feel anxious and depressed when I’m around them and I’m used to not having anybody with me to support me. Just because I’m alone, it doesn’t mean what they are doing is right.

                There are narcissists and there are the flying monkeys and there is me just putting up with a lot of shit that I didn’t deserve just so someone can have something to bitch about. I feel like they are using me as a target to amuse themselves because they are small-minded fucks. I’m not into trashy people, and their behaviour is trashy, they talk trash about and it’s trashy, their behaviour is trashy, they are trash.

                I have to protect myself. I will no longer associate with people who put me down or those who are accepting of those who have put me down. If I ever bring the subject up, there is silence, there is gaslighting. If they want to remain on friendly terms with the bullies that is them, if they are okay with the bullies behaviour towards me, that is on them.

                I’d rather have no friends or family then associate with people who are shitty people.  

[stuckinsquahamish]

Crazy ALOTO Wizard of Oz Thought

The 3 butch Peaches, Jess, Lupe, and Jo are the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman, and the Cowardly Lion respectively.  

Each of them appears at first to lack, and then turns out to possess, a personal quality in the same manner as each of these characters.  

Let me explain.

Jess: The Scarecrow.  A Brain.

Jess appears at first glance to be an uncouth and uneducated heathen from the Canadian hinterlands.  She lacks refinement, shall we say. She also lacks the ability to pass, which is a strategy even the other butches seem to be able to employ.  The fact that she is so outwardly masculine further compounds her rural vibe to give off a (prejudiced) impression that she probably won’t be that intelligent (I could write a whole thing about why people associate female masculinity with stupidity but that is for another time), and definitely won’t be emotionally intelligent.

This turns out to be wrong very quickly.  Jess is smart.  She is highly observant, ridiculously emotionally intuitive, great baseball iq, good musical ability, at least a decent understanding of math, plus whatever you would call the rural version of street smarts (woods wits).  She’s not a book smart genius or anything, but honestly, she seems like a genius in her own way particularly when it comes to reading people.  Like the Scarecrow, people assume she’s dumb.  Like with the Scarecrow, they are wrong.  

Lupe: The Tin Man.  A Heart.

Lupe seems like a complete hard ass from the first moment we meet her and in a lot of ways she is.  She’s harsh with Esti, weirdly abrasive in her first interactions with Jess, defensive with Carson, etc.  She is competitive, she is here to play.  (I am in no way saying this is unjustified, by the way; I think Lupe’s overall harshness is a defensive strategy that makes perfect sense in a world that is coming for her on so many fronts, especially when she’s dealing with racist BS from within her own team.) She tries very hard to seem like she doesn’t care about anything or anyone.  

This also turns out to be blatantly untrue, though, often to particularly entertaining effect.  It makes for a great laugh, actually- especially in the scene in the bar with her date from the other team (Wait, baby.!..I mean, I don’t know her) and the scene where she and Jess search for Esti (No I don’t care...we need her, I’m worried about the team).  Despite her carefully callous exterior (and genuinely tough personality), it becomes clear that she cares.  This is especially true where Esti is concerned.   Yeah, she cannot show it, but it’s not caring too little that makes her lash out at Esti; if anything it’s the opposite.  Like the Tin Man, Lupe seems harsh and cold.  Like the Tin Man, she had a heart all along.

Incidentally, Jess and Lupe’s friendship/brotherhood showcases this well for both of them: Lupe’s heart first shows in her bond with Jess, and Jess’s weird little genius enables her to see through/facilitate fixing some of Lupe’s bullshit with Esti. 

Jo:  The Cowardly Lion.  Courage (The Nerve).

Jo is such an under appreciated character, in my opinion.  She had one of the best arcs on the show.  

From the moment we first meet her, Jo is placed as the more cautious “voice of reason” to Greta’s antics.  She is wary of Carson as baseball competition when they first encounter her.  She is constantly concerned with Greta breaking the rules, and interrupts and reminds her of them.  She is the most reluctant to go to the bar.  But through all of this, which we are mostly seeing from a more Greta or Carson based POV, there’s something else happening on the inside.  Jo starts urging Greta to go for it.  She does go to the bar, and when the worst thing happens, instead of turning tail and running she is bolder than ever.  She doesn’t want to hide anymore.  She’s not the scared one-Greta is.  And she is going to take her moment to shine, goddamn it.  She faces the future with courage, and defiance, and even a kind of joy, in the face of everything.

When I first watched the show, I was so expecting it to go a different way, with Jo blaming Greta for talking her into going to the bar and thus getting her trapped in the raid.  That would have been the predictable fight.  But instead, it went for something so much richer and more interesting, and in that it revealed that Jo, like the Cowardly Lion, had the nerve all along-she was finally ready to use it.  

This concludes my rambling unedited analysis. 

Who is Dorothy in this situation? Carson, obviously, and I do think these 3 all play a role in her journey pretty similar to their Oz counterparts (Lupe and Jess guiding her at the bar, a more contentious back and forth with Jo-it’s not a perfect match but I see something there).  Also I would like to shout out the butch trio dynamic which I wish we’d seen more of-”showering” Lupe with praise, Jess and Jo bonding over boxers, etc.-I think their interactions were awesome and they only reinforce this reading for me as well. 

I do also think they each share some physical traits with their Oz counterparts (Lupe is physically rigid, Jo is big and strong, Jess...literally looks like a scarecrow IDK what to tell you) which is certainly a coincidence but entertaining none the less.  

Finally, I doubt this reading was written into the text intentionally, but I think it’s a fun way to look at it and thought I would share.  I couldn’t fit all of my thoughts in here, unfortunately, but I did my best.  This is unedited so apologies for the rough spots.  I love this show and its butches!  Go Peaches!

[qqueenofhades]

Trump's SCOTUS pick scares the ever loving shit out of me. I'm trying not to have a full blown panic attack actually.

Sigh. I know.

I’m not going to say that picking someone literally, un-exaggeratedly out of The Handmaid’s Tale for SCOTUS, especially to replace someone like RBG, isn’t mother fucking terrifying. It is.  Especially since Mitch McConnell is trying to set her final confirmation vote for October 29, literally five days before the election. Yes indeed, that would be a third Supreme Court seat filled by an impeached president who lost the popular vote by three million votes, (possibly) confirmed by Republican enablers (some of whom are absolutely going to lose their seats in this election) who represent a sizeably smaller fraction of the US population than their Democratic counterparts, in a display of outright, staggering, truly breathtaking hypocrisy about the protocol of election-year vacancies on SCOTUS, which they themselves shouted about to no end with Merrick Garland in 2016. This is how tyranny by minority rule works, and... yeah. It’s bad. It’s awful. When is this going to end.

That said, however: we do not yet exist in this theoretical grimdark future where some dystopian 6-3 (or even 7-2) conservative SCOTUS strips us of our rights at every turn, with no recourse except for us to sit passively and take it, and there are a lot of things that we ourselves can do between now and then to make sure that it never happens. First off, House Democrats have proposed a bill to introduce 18-year term limits for SCOTUS justices, rather than it being an automatic lifetime appointment. This would also give every president the ability to appoint two justices per four-year term. Because SCOTUS has become such an instrument of partisan warfare, and because the obvious implications of having a partisan head of state pick the senior federal judges for a lifetime is part of what has fucked us up now, this would be a GREAT improvement. House Dems can’t make it into law right now, because Democrats do not hold a majority in both chambers of Congress and they do not hold the presidency. You know how this COULD be passed? If Joe Biden was elected with a blue House and Senate. That way, even if God forbid the GOP horror show snuck Coney Barrett onto the bench just before the election, this could be fixed.

Here’s another way to think about it. I myself have a HUGE problem with catastrophizing: a bad thing happens, and then it seems like an inevitable chain of nonstop bad things until everything gets irredeemably, unfixably even worse. This year, obviously, has not done much to help that, because yes, the bad things keep coming. But they’re still individual events and have not yet crystallized into some unbreakable, unavoidable future. History is made up of thousands of millions of choices, accidents, unforeseen developments, total random bullshit, and much more, as much or more as it is made up by the macro-scale actions of oligarchs. Obviously, globalization and capitalism have made us all more connected to each other, and thus changes to the system can ripple more broadly, but they are not the only people who make history. If there’s one thing I can tell you as a historian, it’s this: the future is just history that hasn’t been made yet, and it is subject to the exact same unpredictable bullshit that has constituted history throughout, well, history. Nothing is unavoidable and we have never existed in a world where we can’t do anything at all. Also, authoritarian regimes (especially those imposed without the consent of the people -- willing subjection to authoritarianism is one thing, but the other, yeah) have a relatively short shelf life, historically speaking. That won’t help all of us who could be hurt right now (though we can STILL fight back and speak up and help our neighbors), but it’s the truth. Authoritarian rule (especially when it’s not balanced by economic security, which sure as hell isn’t happening right now) can last for a while, sure. But it is always its own worst enemy, and it will always be ended. How that ends is a choice we can make.

This isn’t the “get out on the streets and Start The Glorious Revolution!!!” nonsense that the armchair internet leftists, none of whom are actually starting a glorious revolution or doing anything except bitching on Twitter about how Biden and Trump are alike, are fond of. This is an active choice to realize that there are always things you can do, that there are things you can do right now, and one of them, most obviously, is voting. This mess was all completely goddamn avoidable if people had voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016. But well, they didn’t, and we get one last shot to fix this by democratic process. Trump is already openly setting up to contest the election results/try to invalidate them/throw out ballots. This is all old-school fascism. This is what is happening. He is counting on another razor-thin margin of votes that he can then contest in his hand-picked SCOTUS; he wants another Bush v. Gore very, very badly. The only way to blow away any legitimacy for anything like this is to vote in such overwhelming numbers that there’s no question of Biden’s victory, no need to wait for mail-in ballots (another reason the GOP has been trying so hard to destroy the post office) or anything else. At heart, Trump is a coward. He’s also an egomaniac. If it comes to stepping aside peacefully or being dragged out of the White House by the FBI for everyone to laugh at for the rest of time, hmm, I doubt he’s going to go for that. (And if he does, well, I will also savor the sight of him in handcuffs for all eternity.) However, that doesn’t mean the GOP machine won’t TRY, because Trump is not just Trump, but is his entire miserable cabal of enablers. I have written my fingers raw about how badly people need to vote. This is literally your last chance to do it.

I’ve seen a lot of the-sky-is-falling, we’re-doomed, they-have-the-votes-so-don’t-even-bother handwringing in the last few days. To some degree, yes. We all feel doomed. We have all been asked to find strength to deal with massive and unending waves of terrifying bullshit past anyone’s normal capacity, and we’re tired. We want it to end. But it’s SO CLOSE to ending, if we can all just get out and vote for Joe Biden in massive numbers on November 3 (or if your state has early voting, sooner; BANK YOUR VOTE). That’s such an easy thing to do. Nothing is set in stone. We can still fix things and make it so, you know, we’re not living in a fascist state ruled by Gilead. (And besides, all this Chicken Little rhetoric is super easy for the Russian troll farms to exploit. Don’t listen to it. Shut it down. Reject it.)

They want you to think you’re powerless. You’re not.

They want you to think this will never end. It will. We decide how.

They want you to think this is a foregone conclusion and you should just go back home and let it happen. You don’t have to.

They want you to think your vote doesn’t matter. It does.

They want you to think your rights are gone. They’re not.

They want you to think this future is inevitable.

IT’S NOT.

Hang in there.

Lots of hugs.

[sea-owl]

So if you haven't guessed yet I have a really strong love/hate relationship with Bruce Wayne.

Some part fandom, other part writers. Part of it is the batfam itself and peoples constant need to exclude every outside influence on those characters via starting with Bruce. Another huge contribution to my love/hate relationship is that I hugely favor the alien heros over the human ones. I also know if Bruce had his way due to his paranoia of unknown variables, like the alien heros, they would not be on earth. Aliens would probably be a thing of fiction to the main public.

For the longest time too Clark and other kryptonians were that one exception to Bruce, until Bruce was forced to interact with more alien heros in the Justice League.

I do not think the supesfam would be as accepted to the batfam had Clark not been one of Bruce's first hero friends and creating the Justice League together. If Bruce had met Clark later and Bruce had established his "the one" relationship to someone else say like Diana he would definitely be higher up on anti alien.

And the sad thing is that a lot of the batfam members have an emotional suport alien. Bruce has Clark, Dick and Jason share Kori depending on the writers, Tim has Kon, Damian has Jon, and Mari in kindom come. Kara bounces between the batgirls. Even the dog has an alien friend with an alien dog. Amd Dick has two half alien children that should be addressed more.

Now Bruce, and I'm using this word loosely, tolerates the alien influences on his kids, Kori getting the worst of it because she is not a kryptonian, despite working with multiple of the robins, and her caring for each of them. He has a better attitude with the supes but that's mainly due to his relationship with Clark

Now imagine those relationships gone, right away Tim and Damian lose their best friends, any emotional growth from those relationships, gone. Jason just has Roy with outsiders for a long time and they would probably just enable their bad behaviors. Bruce would probably be even more closed off and/or paranoid because Clark is the one that checks Bruce on his bullshit the most, probably almost rivalling Alfred. And Dick, oh baby throw his character growth and character you love out the window. Dick did a shit ton of his growing during that over decade long periord with the Titans, with Kori who helped him accept emotions. Dick would probably be more of a second Bruce without her.

I think I just really want someone to have a fic or comic that shows this alternate world without the alien heros and maybe knock Bruce down a peg. A world with no Martian Manhunter, no Miss Martian no Starfire, no Hawkman or Hawkgirl, no Supes at all, none of them. Because their influence goes beyond the batfam, it also affects the world. I want Bruce to see that influence on the world, and in his family.

[normal-thoughts-official]

Ahahah I'm not French, I used to study it in school but I forgot to take that language option off of my phone keyboard so I still deal with autocorrect tehee (I'm Welsh if you were curious)

I've never intentionally been biphobic, but total props to you for making sure your boundaries were set down to prevent bullshit anons. I can't remember my exact wording (so I'm sorry if it seemed like I was intentially being cruel) but I think I said I related more to Alec's queer experience than Magnus' which is just the truth in my case (at the time I was pretty in denial, and sad so despite Alec's character being butchered by cassandra clare I still found him pretty relatable when I was 14, in comparison to ultra confident magnus - which was just shitty writing)

Another fantasy and scifi thing I've kind of noticed is in retaliation to the chosen one you've kinda got the chosen bad guy. (Like in gotg2 u have this guy just destroying planets on his own?????? No followers no nothing - I rlly hate that movie but back 1 the point) But he never becomes a martyr, it feels very much like oh he's dead. My bad guys! He was just so persuasive! Like it never shows how these people are enabled into coming into power through money etc, or even legally. I feel like if voldy had been slowly changing the laws within the ministry while he was dead the whole thing would have had that added sense of realism, bc his supremacy would have been totally normalised in the eyes of the law. I don't know if its just fantasy trying to be fantasy and escape the real world but my minds like ok if someone murdered tr*mp there would be literal carnage what do u mean everybody realised the error of their ways???? To be fair this is just a continuation of everything you've already said

❤️❤️

ahh cool i was just curious. also, ur welsh, nice! happy belated Prince Philip Is Fucking Dead Day! drinks on me

and yeah okay if you mean by the story that makes sense, it just felt a bit like it was simply because he's gay so i was a bit uncomfortable but glad we cleared that up

also ur assessment is really true and i had never thought about that, but you are completely right, the evil ones are also kind of the chosen ones for evil, which always circles back into some maniqueist/essentialist thing which imo is always dangerous because if you imply some people are inherently evil, randomly deciding which people that is is just a minor extra step. and again helps people distance themselves from the villains like "that could never be me! he was chosen by god to be the worst"

in fact it's almost like their evilness only exists to uplift the main character and make his arc have higher stakes, which like, i know IS why villains exist in storytelling, but there is what the author is thinking and there is what the narrative is implying, and if you act like oppression is really just a great opportunity for a privileged person to grow, that's gonna have really bad implications dadjsadsjaiodsajdioas

and yeah it's so annoying like the oppression is literally just that person and once they are gone it's like everything is over suddenly. it's so weird and fucked up and i think it stems from again the idea that racism isn't/wasn't a historical and systemic problem. like, oh no, it wasn't the belgium state doing horrific things in congo, it was King Leopold. and like of course he should go down in the trash bin of history as the genocidal maniac that he was, along with everyone else like him (like prince philip!), but when we pretend that it was all about one person who rose to power we can very quickly make the state as a whole unaccountable for its crimes, you know?

[admiralty-xfd]

ode to an evolved fox

You never believed it before; all that bullshit about women changing men. Everyone says it isn’t true, has never been true. 

You still don’t believe it. 

Perhaps you can rationalize what’s happened; lay out every piece of scientific evidence side by side, laid bare to pick apart and dissect. Analyze the data. Find the answer, the explanation, like you’re used to doing.

But you know it’s pointless. With him it’s never been about the data, the countless traits that compile, making him the man he was, is, will become.

With Mulder, it’s pure instinct. It’s a feeling. It always has been.

You feel it when you shake his hand and aren’t quite sure what you’re getting yourself into but somehow it seems fated. It pulls you forward on a particular path, unstoppable; this drive that wills you to follow him anywhere. 

And you do. You follow him everywhere. You’ve never been the type of woman to follow a man. 

You, Dana Scully, you run. 

But you don’t run from him.

Instead you let him in, piece by piece, let him show you the wonders you would never have seen otherwise. Let him mold you, change you, improve you in ways you never thought possible.

And you do it slowly. Carefully. Because this thing between you, whatever it is, you cannot risk losing it. You cannot make this into something that will push him away because the truth is, as much as you try to convince yourself that loneliness is your choice, you need another person. 

You need this person.

In what way you need him, you don’t know. You try to parse out what it all means, what he means to you; this man who’s taken up every last molecule of space in your life, every thought, every breath, every dream. Even every nightmare. You don’t know what to make of it. 

The progression is gradual, glacial. Even more so considering the intensity of your work, the force with which your worlds have been pushed together, pulled apart; like taffy, sweet but impossible. Like whiplash.

You lie awake in your Georgetown apartment and think; of what happened today, what will happen tomorrow. And how none of it would be possible if he weren’t in your life. This relationship— no, this partnership, because with a partnership there is no one else, just the two of you— is the most precious thing you’ve ever had in your life and you cannot, you will not rock this particular boat. 

You let him in because you have no choice, every part in succession, like you’re performing an autopsy: clean, deliberate, tedious. 

First, his mind. That beautiful mind which inspires, teases, even arouses you. You hate it when men are smarter than you (because they rarely are) but this man is a challenge you never tire of facing. His brain stimulates your own as though it were a brand new organ. Like that feeling you get when you go skiing and afterwards physically quake from the exhaustion of using muscles you didn’t realize you had. It’s new and exciting. It’s better than sex. Almost.

Then comes his heart. It rushes in like a hurricane, a fierce love you feel in your own heart long before either of you use the word. It’s not romantic love, sexual love, not yet, at least. But it isn’t long before you want it to be. Even though your mind is telling you not to go there, this is biology. Science. Your refuge, this inexorable vestige of truth, and biology dictates this carnal desire. 

For him.

The physical, tangible evidence of this love percolates for years, and waiting only feels wrong in moments of desperation: an ouroboros; a cancer diagnosis, an ex. 

The perpetual compulsion to get on the same page, when you know it may never, ever happen.

He isn’t the guy for you. You know this deep down inside, in that place you rarely scrutinize because insisting he isn’t your perfect match in every possible way is the only thing you can do to keep yourself afloat; to keep him from pulling you underneath with him, to stop yourself from drifting down a current that will become an unstoppable whirlpool in which you’ll drown, drown forever.

Drown in him.

You never try to convince yourself you don’t love him because it’s never going to be true: you do love him, painfully, desperately. But you do try to convince yourself you could never be  with  him, not like that, that could never be. 

He isn’t made for that.

This hesitancy keeps your partnership intact; avoiding this whirlpool, because the alternative still feels impossible. Turning your entire life over to him, to his care, is concerning.

It isn’t concerning. It’s fucking terrifying.

So you wait. You keep him at arm's length and in doing so you keep yourself safe from your own vulnerability. Waiting is how you are most comfortable.

He holds you when you need to be held, a respite from the day-to-day horrors you willingly signed up for. And he keeps his hands off you while neither of you are ready. He’s a gentleman through and through, and you love him even more for it. You both wait without feeling like you are waiting. 

Time passes in moments. Nothing happens for a reason.

There are days you feel like giving in; letting yourself get swept up in all the things you love about him, all the things that keep you awake at night, all the things that invade your dreams while you sleep. 

Mostly his eyes: the ones that feel like they were made to look at you and only you. The ones that house the trust you’ve come to expect, but also the love of which neither of you dare speak. His eyes can be frightening. You want to look into them forever; you want to look away.

You know it’s a bad idea, falling for him. So you choose loneliness yourself, again and again, for years. 

Sometimes you wish time could stop like it did back in Oregon, that you could capture it in an Erlenmeyer flask and seal it up, enable the two of you to hang suspended between here and there forever. Between now and the inevitable. Between  A and C. You wish it wouldn’t happen almost as much as you crave it.

You wish you could have known him as a young boy: before his family fell apart, before his trust was broken. Before Samantha. 

Somehow you know Samantha is a pain that will never subside, not even after he learns the truth. But your truth is that you’ve waited for this moment for seven years: the moment you know his love belongs to you and you alone. It isn’t simply a product of this quest, of duress. It’s a choice he’s been unable to make before.

You’d die for Mulder, but you won’t allow yourself to love him.

He was right, that black-lunged son of a bitch. There are few things in life more disconcerting than your worst enemy seeing so clearly what you struggle daily to hide. 

Except, perhaps, the disconcerting realization that your worst enemy is in fact the part of yourself that keeps you from the truth.

You’ll never really know if the cancer man’s words had an effect on you; if subconsciously, the idea of continuing to live a lie had been too hypocritical to face in your perpetual search for truth. But not long after this realization, you give in. You make a choice, you allow yourself to succumb.

You go to him in the night and without words you tell him you are ready. No… you show him you are ready. And from the way he accepts you with no hesitation; with longing and urgency and the deepest affection, you know he is finally ready too. This is the point of no return, the point where you give yourselves to each other entirely, completely. You trust him with the deepest love you could possibly express.

And you do love him. You love him so much you give him everything you have, all of you, every part until there is absolutely nothing left to give.

Clinging to each other in a dingy motel room after what feels like an entire lifetime of heartache later, even as you cling to hope, you know the truth. This won’t work, it can’t work. He’ll never stop and get out of the car. He’ll never want that, even if you do.

Years later, he isn’t lying when he tells you he’s the one who hasn’t changed. He isn’t. He hasn’t.

And even though you hate yourself for thinking it, for wishing it; that’s the problem.

He chooses the darkness every time. Even when inky blackness surrounds you both until you can’t see each other anymore; until you can’t look into his eyes and find him there, eager, willing, passionate. The man you fell in love with.

You love him still. You’ll love him endlessly. 

It isn’t his fault you have to go. 

He once compared himself to a shark; told you a shark never stops swimming. You want him to stop swimming so badly but he won’t, he can’t stop. He’s not built to stop. If he stops, he will die.

It isn’t his fault that you fell in love with a shark.

Loneliness is a choice.

This is the crux of your dilemma: this is the inherent contradiction of Dana Scully: that you’d fall hopelessly in love with a man who cannot be the kind of man you need. That you’d allow it to happen despite your years of holding back, despite your rational brain advising against it. That you’d follow him again and again, to the ends of the earth, to your undoing, even, desperate love your sole motivator. 

That love is what makes everything worth it, absolutely everything... until it isn’t worth it anymore.

And the final, cruel insult, is that after all you’ve lost, all you’ve sacrificed, your only option is to relinquish him as well.

You can choose loneliness again, you think. It feels good to be out of the tank for a while. But that’s the thing about tanks: the wall that separates you from him is made of glass. You can still see him, swimming around and around. He can see you. Even though you’ve left the warmth of his arms, of the bed you once shared, he is still a part of you. He swims through your veins.

All you want is him, Fox Mulder, to make a choice between you and the darkness. All you want is, for once, to see him choose the light.

It takes you a long time to see it; to really see. As it always has. 

But today, you see it.

Today, it isn’t about believing. It’s about seeing. And you see it with your own eyes.

I don’t know if any God is listening, but I am standing right here, and I am listening. Right beside you. I’m all ears. That’s my choice.

You didn’t change him; you couldn’t, and you wouldn’t. You never wanted that. You only wanted him to want to make that choice.

He lights a candle, finished choosing darkness. For the first time it isn’t about a feeling, at least not only a feeling. It’s reason and faith in harmony. It’s A to B to C. It’s the man you’ve loved for half your life finally making a choice, and that choice is you.

You still don’t believe a woman can change a man. Because you weren’t the one who changed him. 

He did it himself, and he did it all for you.

[thecorteztwins]

(Just a basic superhero vs supervillain brawl here between Force of Nature and the ladies of the Winter Guard, with a little twist at the end! No deep character stuff, but tagging @sammysdewysensitiveeyes because Pyro and Avalanche are in it!) Russia had the largest amount of forests of any country on Earth, even more so than the famous Amazon rainforest, boasting 55% of the world's conifers and 11% of the Earth’s biomass. And yet, the logging industry, especially the illegal side, was so rampant and unrestrained that deforestation was threatening even this arboreal giant. It was for this reason that Force of Nature was sent to attack the headquarters of one the largest logging companies in the nation, and one with the most illegal activity under its belt. It was the first mission for their new recruits---two mutants, Pyro and Avalanche of the Brotherhood, representing the elements of fire and earth. Though their origins were in the very political Brotherhood, they had the right mercenary attitude for the squad. They also got on well with the two pre-existing members. Well, no, they got on well with Aqueduct, not so much Aireo. But Aqueduct assured them that no one really got on with Aireo, and that he was just glad to have a couple of “normal guys” like himself on the team at last. “It’s not that I didn’t LIKE Theary and Terraformer,” he hd said, “But you couldn’t really have a beer with ‘em attitude-wise, you know? And I literally CAN’T with Aireo, poor guy’d die of alchohol poisoning after one glass. He’s got a real weak system, Inhuman, y’know.” They knew. It was getting him to SHUT UP about it that was the issue, Pyro had found. The skinny beanpole---for once Pyro got to call someone else that!---really got under both their skins, his and Dom’s, with his superior species bullshit. Though St. John kinda had to admit there was an irony to it, given how he’d and Dom had used to run in the Brotherhood, which preached the same thing, just with regards to a different species. And it was kind of novel how Aireo looked down on them for BEING human, rather than NOT being human like most people. Pyro would give the wind-master one thing, he didn’t discriminate against mutants, just ALL humans in general. There was a fairness in it he could respect---if it wasn’t so damn IRRITATING! That aside though, it turned out they worked well together in the field---Skybreak stayed aloft where he could be hit accidentally by Avalanche’s seismic waves, and his winds helped fan Pyro’s flames from above. Speaking of Pyro’s flames, Aqueduct could put them out if they got out of hand---a much quicker way to do it than relying on Pyro to calm them, something he always had trouble with---and he could also make mud for Dom to send his shockwaves through, which made for some interesting effects you couldn’t get with just dirt and stone. It was really just plain FUN, in Pyro’s opinion, to watch some fucker DROWN in it. Right now though, a few logging employees were drowning in the wood chips that had been knocked over by Avalanche’s avalanches...the ones that Pyro wasn’t lighting up, anyway. “Talk about burning through your profits eh?” St. John yelled to his team over the din as workers and officials scattered. One brave soul tried to spray a fire extinguisher at him, Dom’s shockwave knocked him off his feet while a breeze from Skybreaker sent foam back in the poor sod’s face, just before a wave from Aqueduct washed him away clear to other side of the room. “Come on mate, your life’s not worth whatever crap they’re paying you”, Pyro called over to the guy, though he knew the Russians likely didn’t understand him. “Yeah, nobody try to be a hero here”, added Aqueduct.

“Oh, but I think I will,” said a woman’s voice from behind him the water-wielder. It came from within the swirling black portal that had opened at his back, and poor Aqueduct turned his head just in time to get the side of his face punched by a white-gloved fist emerging from the portal, followed by a black-haired woman attached to it, wearing a red costume with a white-pointed white star emblazoned on the chest. Another black-haired woman stepped out with her, this one in a barely-there purple getup with thigh-high boots, and a younger blonde between them in a black costume with a yellow diamond star and a bejeweled headband. Pyro didn’t recognize them but he knew what they were-- “Supes!” Dom yelled. “Correct,” said the blonde in Russian-accented English, “We are the Winter Guard, defenders of Mother Russia and all her people---and we give you ONE chance to stand down and surrender!” “One chance is all I need to boil up some Russian hotpot!” Pyro proclaimed, turning his flames their way...only to have them harmlessly swallowed up by the Darkforce portal that Darkstar, the blonde, summoned to intercept them. “Wha---that’s cheating!” St. John exclaimed. “Then let’s even the score, Johnny,” growled Dom, sending a quake out from his hands towards the women...only for it to turn out THAT--- “They all can fly?!” he exclaimed. That REALLY was not fair! “They may ride the air,” scoffed Skybreaker from above, “But---can they command it?!” With that, the Inhuman hurled contained hurricanes intended to grab the women, knock them around, even break their bones inside it---or worse, hopefully. Darkstar teleported away, but the others, Starlight and Fantasma, were caught by the tornadoes. Skybreaker started to laugh, but his triumph was short-lived---a Darkforce portal appeared behind him, and he was pulled in by Darkstar, then spat out into the tornado himself, right next to Fantasma. The sorceress seized the opportunity, and seized Skybreaker himself, grabbing him and manipulating his bio-field to render him unconscious. Thus, the tornado stopped, and he dropped to the ground before Starlight or Darkstar could grab him, which Fantasma did not even try. blonde, Darkstar, ported away “Aireo!” Aqueduct yelled, “Hey, he’s got delicate bones!” “Your concern for your comrade is admirable,” Starlight commended “But you should worry about yourself,” added Fantasma “Get the ‘porter,” Pyro commanded to Aqueduct and Avalanche, having learned from what he just saw, “She’s the real threat, herd her to me and I’ll toast her!” “You like playing with fire, hmm?” Starlight had overheard, “How about nuclear fire?” And with that, Pyro found himself surrounded by flames that emanated from her body. Normally that was something he would have no fear of, quite the reverse, but this fire felt...wrong. He shrank from it reflexively, as he would something alien and dangerous. “My radiation is not something I wish to inflict on anyone---especially not one with infractions so minor as yours---but threaten the life of my teammate, and you can consider your own to be forfeit!” “Ulp,” Pyro replied, “Got it.” With Skybreaker down and Pyro caged, that left Aqueduct and Avalanche, and Pyro didn’t have much hope for them. Great guys, but not great thinkers, those two. He didn’t expect this fight to last much longer, and he was right. The last thing he remembered was one of Darkstar’s portals surrounding him, and then everything was black and cold... ...and woke up into just more darkness and coldness. “John? John!” Dom was leaning over him, his square face contorted in concern. “Ahhh...” Pyro sat up, rubbing the back of his head, “Feels like I got the world’s worst hangover...” “We all did,” said Aqueduct, “Everybody except Aireo.” “I was passed out already before that witch passed us through our portal,” Aireo said venomously. Pyro didn’t need to ask where they were. He could tell already. A prison cell. A bad one too. No beds or benches attached to the walls, no toilet, no bars, just three walls and a solid steel door. It was very, very cramped in here too, with minimal light coming only from the tiny window in the door. And he didn’t like the crusty brown rim around the drain in the center of the floor. Pyro also knew that power-dampeners must be installed, or these three would have already busted loose with him in tow.  This...did not look good. Pyro had HEARD what the Russians did to mutants, even the ones who WEREN’T foreigner criminals... “Johnny, get down!” Dom yelled, and pulled Pyro away from something. Pyro turned and saw that behind him, one of the Darkforce portals was forming. “What do you want?!” he demanded of Darkstar and Starlight, who were visible within it, though not emerging due to the cell being so small. “For you to come with us,” said Starlight. “We love our country, make no mistake,” explained Darkstar, “But the present government’s treatment of the super-powered who do not serve it is inhumane.” “Even for villains,” Starlight added. “Where’s Stripperella?” Pyro asked, noting that what had been a trio was now a duo. “Fantasma...has a harder time understanding the nuances of these things,” Starlight said, “She follows the law, and believes it is good. And it is. And you broke it. You should be punished, as the law demands. But not like THIS.” “What’s...this?” Aqueduct asked. He was apparently not as well-read as Pyro about how Russia did things. “You do not know what is in store for you?” “Er...no?” Dom said. He was also not exactly on the up and up in this department. The women exchanged looks. “Better that way,” said Starlight, “Come on---enough talk.” “We’ve just shut down the power nullifiers,” said Darkstar, “Quickly, make a mess so it looks like you escaped on your own---we’ll help make sure you get through the facility, you just leave a ‘trail’ as you go.” They did exactly that, their elemental powers wreaking havoc through the facility, while Darkstar’s portals enabled them to evade being seen or caught. The portals were bad enough though; Pyro realized now why he’d felt so terrible after going through one, why he’d passed out. It was staggering to go through them, even for a second, and all four of Force of Nature quickly protested their use, preferring to take their chances being seen. “It is the Darkforce,” Darkstar explained apologetically, “To me, it is friendly, harmless---but when others travel through it, the effects are...unpleasant. It is helpful for quickly subduing foes, as I did you before, but it makes it less than ideal for transporting friends, especially those unused to it.” “Even I’m still getting used to it,” admitted the sturdy-looking Starlight, who appeared to Pyro no worse for the wear despite the multiple small trips....while he felt like he was going to drop again, and the others looked about the same. Finally, they reached the end, a wall that Starlight instructed them to burst through, which Avalanche did with ease. They walked for awhile, Pyro burning a path through the snow---the ladies had considerately brought him a lighter---til they had left enough of a trail, then Darkstar took them all for one last ‘port, in the opposite direction, to the outskirts of Moscow, where they could find a way to contact their employers and get a flight scheduled. “From here, you must make your own way home,” said Starlight. “And never return, “Darkstar warned, “Or else you may not find us so merciful next time!” Actually they would be---but they didn’t want to risk these dumb-asses knowing that and coming back.

[vagrantblvrd]

Bones (1/1)

Summary: There’s not a lot to do between missions. Hell, there’s not a lot to do on missions sometimes with the whole hurry up and wait bullshit that happens.

So you know, you find ways to entertain yourself. Pick a random topic and go off on it just to keep from being bored out of your mind while you wait for something to happen.

Notes: Prompt fill for Anon who asked for agency Jeremavinwood with Battle Buddies vs Play Pals???

(Read on AO3)

There’s not a lot to do between missions. Hell, there’s not a lot to do on missions sometimes with the whole hurry up and wait bullshit that happens.

So you know, you find ways to entertain yourself. Pick a random topic and go off on it just to keep from being bored out of your mind while you wait for something to happen.

“So wait,” Jeremy says, bundle of wires tucked into the corner of his mouth. “You’re telling me you two idiots decided to call yourselves the Play Pals because you couldn’t figure out what the designation Command gave you meant?”

Well when you put it like that, it does sound stupid. (Also, team designations are randomly generated by some fancy computer algorithm or something, Michael tuned out when Ryan tried to explain it to him once, because who the hell cares?)

To be fair to Gavin and Michael, however, most of the teams in the agency get two or three letter designations. They’re the only ones he’s heard of to get a four letter designation.

Jeremy must have finally realized that too because he just had to go and ask about it, didn’t he. Got Michael going on the subject while he tinkers and fiddles and swears under his breath as he works.

“Gavin’s idea,” Michael says, because the little idiot’s not there to refute the claim. “Who the hell else would come up with something so dumb?”

Not his fault he’s got Gavin as a partner and not some melodramatic idiot like Ryan with a penchant for the really destructive kind of chaos. The kind of team designation that lends itself to them being called Battle Buddies and having it stick until no one can remember a time when they weren’t called that. (Funny as all hell when Command slips up and puts it in the official reports that go to the bigwigs in DC, though.)

Jeremy laughs and almost inhales the wires he’s fucking around with. Gives Michael this look when Michael reaches over to hit him on the back to keep him from choking and all that.

“Thanks, pal,” he says, in that way he does sometimes.

Sarcastic as fuck and this touch of amusement to it and then the alarms go off, which means their dumbass partners have finally arrived to rescue them from their terrible fate as prisoners. (Shit happens.)

Michael glances around at the unconscious bodies of the guards who were meant to be watching them.

Some might lean a little more towards dead, but since they’re the ones who started it Michael doesn’t feel too bad about things.

There’s at least three levels of secret bad guy base above them, and Michael can still hear the explosions clear as day.

Michael and Gavin make a hell of a team, and so do Jeremy and Ryan. Do a little mix’n’match like this mission has forced them into and the results are maybe not the desired sort. (To hear Command talk anyway.)

“You got the door, or are we going to wait for those morons to save the day?”

Their escape may have met with a few complications, or maybe just another round of bad luck. They made it out of the zip ties and locked room these assholes had them hidden away in, sure, but then they had the fortune (misfortune?) of getting locked in this shitty little room. (Because fuck them, that’s why.)

Michael gets another look because Jeremy’s been trying to hot-wire the door’s locks or whatever the hell he’s been doing for the last half hour with no success. (Michael may or may not have been heckling/nitpicking him the whole time, but that ties in with the finding ways to entertain himself.)

Another explosion goes off above them, big enough Michael can feel it, and Jeremy looks down at the mechanism he’s been fiddling with. Takes the wires out of his mouth and gives Michael this wry little smile.

“Well,” he says, and dusts his hands off before reaching for the hand Michael's holding out to him to help him up. “Since they’re here anyway and all.”

Right, right.

Hate to pop their balloon or whatever bullshit excuse Jeremy has.

Another explosion rocks the compound and Michael

========

Michael loves to give Gavin shit for pretty much everything he does? But the truth is that Gavin is good at what he does. (And he does a lot.)

Still, there’s no denying he’s also a colossal moron.

“Gavin,” Michael says, because how the fuck, and also why the fuck. “What did you do?”

Ryan is running around HQ with a gooddamned crossbow and nowhere is safe.

Gavin is a goddamned horrible little goblin who loves enabling Ryan and his lunacy and Michael and Jeremy were gone for maybe – maybe – twenty minutes tops for a coffee run.

And now look at the place.

Crossbow bolts embedded in the walls and people hunkered down waiting for someone to either talk Ryan down from playing with his new toy or just tranq his ass. (Oh, Ryan’s too good to be careless with the damn crossbow, but that doesn’t make him any less of a menace with it.)

Gavin’s rolling around on the floor wheezing and squeaking and no damn help at all because he thinks it’s hilarious.

Meanwhile Jeremy’s tracking Ryan down and checking in every few minutes sounding like he’s trying not to choke on his own laughter. (With Geoff in DC for budget meetings Michael’s the only sane man left.)

“You’re explaining this to Geoff when he gets back,” Michael mutters, and heads out to grab a tranquilizer gun to put an end to Ryan’s little rampage before it really gets out of hand.

========

The kind of missions Michael and Gavin get sent on mostly deal with stealth. In and out before their target knows what’s happening because Gavin is fucking spectacular when it comes to stealth and Michael’s not too bad himself. (He’s always been a quick study, and keeping up with Gavin is not something just anyone can do.)

Jeremy and Ryan get the missions where subtlety isn’t a key factor. Get sent in with a case of explosives and other shinies and walk out when everything’s on fire. (That wasn’t always the case, but Geoff and Jack just kind of gave up after a while, and hey, it works.)

Every once in a while they get sent on missions together, and that's just -

“Oh, dear,” Gavin says, leaning back from his laptop. “That’s not ideal.”

Michael leans over his shoulder and tries to make sense of the million and one windows Gavin has open.

Security cam feeds he’s plugged into thanks to the Battle Buddies and satellite feeds. Other bullshit Michael recognizes but doesn’t give a damn about because things just went to shit.

Again.

“Christ,” he mutters, wondering if the agency throwing them together on missions is just an experiment to see how quickly things will turn to shit when combining their bad luck or if they’re just cursed like that. “They didn’t even make it inside this time.”

Gavin smothers a laugh, turns it into a cough as he toggles between camera feeds to keep track of Jeremy and Ryan being marched through the compound to wherever the guards are taking them.

“Should have taken Jack up on that wager of his, Michael,” he says, because he’s an asshole and Michael forgot, okay, he forgot.

Too busy checking over their gear to pop over to Jack’s office to join in on the betting pool and then Ryan threw a fit because he didn’t get the flamethrower he wanted. There was a lot going on, okay. Fucking sue him.

“Fuck off,” Michael says, and glances at the weapons crate stuffed full of the goodies the Battle Buddies love to lug around with them. “And dibs on Ryan’s mini-gun.”

========

So the thing is, the four of them get along a little too well for Command’s peace of mind.

Don’t give a shit about so-called friendly rivalries or trying to one-up each other in the hopes of currying favor with Geoff or Command.

No point to it when none of them give a shit about those things. (Geoff’s not the kind of guy who’d appreciate any of it no matter what he says, and Command’s long been wise to them.)

Gavin and Ryan are the worst because they’re stupid smart and have that little workshop down in one of storage subbasement no one’s supposed to know about. Make use out of the downtime they get between missions to “improve on” whatever gadgets tech comes up with for them and other fun experiments of theirs.

Jeremy joins in every so often when he gets a hankerin’, as Ryan likes to call it. Stars in his eyes and visions of explosions in his head or whatever the hell, and Michael?

“Jesus Christ,” he says, and plucks the grenade out of Gavin’s hand before the idiot blows them all sky high. “No.”

Gavin gives him a look, all sad-eyed puppy in the rain because Michael is a terrible bully. Behind him Ryan is just kind of pathetic, because somehow he set himself on fire – again – and thankfully Jeremy was there with a fire extinguisher, because what the hell.

“Michael,” Gavin starts, earnest as hell like the three of them aren’t the most ridiculous idiots Michael’s ever met. “You’ll love it, Michael. Ryan had the best idea!”

And, see.

Michael knows it’s going to be the worst damn idea in the world if Ryan came up with it. Dumbass always thinks he knows what’s what only to have things (sometimes literally) blow up in his face.

This time it’s something about putting the explosive power of a grenade in a pen – a pen - like something out of a dumb spy movie to use on missions.

“Just think of it, Michael!” Gavin says, clearly infected with Ryan’s dumb. “It would be amazing!”

It would be a disaster is what it would be, but then again that sounds prefect for them.

========

There are fraternization rules and regulations in the handbook they were given when they signed on. Outdated bullshit no one bothers to enforce because it would mean cracking down hard on half the agency at this point.

The only time anyone brings it up to Geoff is when it’s a suit down from DC to see how the funding they receive is being spent. Little meet and greets with the operatives and other assorted assholes working here and find them lacking in some way. (None of them are ever what people expect them to be. Too human to begin with, all these hopes and dreams and lives outside the agency. Emotions, feelings, all that shit.)

“Just don’t – don’t let it fuck things up,” Geoff told them when he found out. Tired and worn down and trying to act like he didn’t know because the suits wouldn’t get it, understand. “Be careful.”

It’s a lot to ask of assholes like them, but they do their best to make it work. Have their moments where things get real shitty real fast thanks to the stress of their jobs and the way life has of being a shitshow.

Rough patches and all that, but they’re all a little too invested in the life they’ve built for themselves to give up so easily and he knows it baffles the hell of the people who know. Look at them and try to figure out how the hell assholes like them make sense, when they don’t even know themselves.

(Only bit of good luck to stick for the four of them, and goddamn if they’re not going to hang on to it with everything they have.)

[bluehhj]

listen to me — chapter 16

LISTEN TO ME  — 0016

listen to me masterlist;

WORDS: 2.4K

The next day, Jisung woke up with a headache so strong that the world around him seemed about to explode. His stomach burned and wrapped at the same time. He was going to vomit soon; however, he didn't want this to happen, for he knew that he would lose the little strength he still had to assimilate the last events correctly. Definitely, Jisung hated feeling the effects of the hangover.

His first move was to get out of bed and look for the headache remedy that never came out of his reach. Keeping balance with the help of the walls and any object that would enable him to support his own body, the boy walked to the kitchen, filled a glass with water and swallowed the tablet. When the icy liquid hit his empty and sensitized stomach, the feeling of malaise only worsened. Jisung needed to eat something, but he wasn't hungry. Not when last night's flashes insisted on appearing in your mind like a badly made movie and spreading a fair amount of panic to the rest of his nervous system. After all, what the hell had he done?

Jisung looked down and saw that he was wearing only a pair of underwear. His hair was a little damp, as if he'd washed and slept on it without even bothering to brush. He couldn't remember how he had taken off his clothes, much less how he had thought of taking a shower before bed — he was sure he did, as he checked the bathroom stall and noticed that it was still slightly wet. Jisung wasn't sure of much, but a single clear and vivid scene compared to the others played in a loop before his eyes: Jinah was at his house. And that wasn't good.

Stumbling on his own feet, Han grabbed his phone and jumped back into bed. He looked up Woojin's number on the contact list and, more than quickly, called his friend. The last one must still be sleeping, since it was only eleven in the morning — when they went out at night, Woojin used to sleep all day, so, yes, it was still early. The call was terminated without any answer, but Jisung was persistent. He called once, twice, three times, until Woojin's momentarily hoarse timbre sounded on the other side, surrounded by a deep state of lethargy:

"What do you want, hell?"

"Why am I just in my underwear and why do I have the fucking memory of Jinah here at home?" Jisung asked in a single breath; then, heard a lazy laugh.

"Don't you remember?", Woojin replied with another question. "I think she's going to be a bit upset. It's hard to forget these things, especially when it comes to the first time."

"Don't play with me like that" Jisung wanted the older boy to believe that he really wasn't putting faith in that absurd explanation, but his face was paler than a sheet of paper. "Tell the truth."

Woojin would've made some more jokes, but he didn't want to have to deal with the fury of that new version of Jisung later, when he discovered the truth. It was a bit dangerous and Kim still had to finish his college.

"I don't know that right, man", he was sincere. "You drank like hell, suddenly said you were going to the bathroom, and when we realized, you were already crying on Jinah's shoulder over Chaerin."

Jisung buried his face in the pillow. That alone was enough to embarrass him for the next two months, and he hadn't even heard the worst yet.

"I took you home later. Jinah was with me, then went along, too. Are you ready to listen to the rest?"

"No."

"Right. In my head, I was just going to stuck you under the cold water, pull back and throw you in bed, but you said, with all the words, that I wasn't worthy to have the sight of your splendid body."

"Until then, I didn't say any bullshit."

"But Jinah was worthy, you know? You asked her to give you a shower without shame.", continued Woojin. "You left all happy when she accepted and you banged your head on the doorframe. That must be why it is hurting now."

Jisung widened his eyes at every word said by the older boy. In the end, it seemed to have two dishes below the eyebrows. If before the water was already cooling his stomach, now it had turned into a mini-iceberg.

"And then?" the fear of finding the answer was as big as curiosity.

"Ouch, I don't know. I just laid on your couch and went to sleep. When Jinah woke me up, she was all red, flushed, and her hair messy, then we left. I don't know if you even kissed in there, but it looked like, you know?"

"No, no, no..." Jisung began to despair. It was horrible to try to get in your memory the information you wanted so bad to get and find nothing but gaps. "I don't remember!"

"Ask her then", Woojin suggested as if that were the simplest and most uncomplicated route.

"I can't, that's... That's too embarrassing! Jinah's my friend!"

"So what? I kissed all my friends, including you."

"I didn't call you to talk about things that happened years ago!" Jisung snorted. "What if something really happened? I'll do what?"

"You'll enjoy it, of course." Woojin didn't think twice before answering. "When life sends you a woman like that, you don't question, you thank!"

"If you don't remember, I just got out of an engagement in the hardest way possible. I don't have the stability or the urge to get into another relationship any time soon, whether it's serious or not."

"Aish, Jisung..." although the other couldn't see, Woojin rolled his eyes. "I'm not saying it's easy to go through what you're going through now, but life doesn't stop, you have to move on!"

"I can't move on in that way," quieter, Jisung sighed. "I can't try something different with one person while my heart's still pounding for another, and I don't want to use anyone else's as a bandage, let alone Jinah."

Woojin was silent for a moment. He didn't agree, but he couldn't help but understand that, at one point, Jisung was right. "So, what do you intend to do?" he asked, with no more arguments.

"Apologize" the younger boy got up from the bed and walked toward the bathroom.

"Are you going to call her?"

"I don't even have her number." he frowned at this, but didn't blame himself for his lack of attention. Jisung already had too many problems and obligations on a daily basis, such as dealing with a broken heart; tolerate the absurd meddling of people of the university in his life; take a deep breath to keep from freaking out before his electronic store notice came to an end; to prepare his psychological for the bomb that accompanied the last two periods of his course ─ which was denominated like the notorious stage (that would begin in that same week) ─ and more an infinity of things. Jinah had arrived and settled in his life not long ago, she still didn't deserve such high priority. "I'll talk to her in person."

"See if you're not going to ask her to bathe you again, eh?"

"Fuck you, Woojin."

Having the call terminated, no thanks or goodbye, my friend made itself heard. It was enviable how much the basis of that relationship was sweet and provided with much affection, attention, education, and companionship. An example of friendship full of love!

                                                        ♡˖°

Jinah waited for a reaction from her friends as she finished her fateful account of last night's events, yet, she had to hold on to the anxiety and stare at the three faces, not at all surprised until Jade resolved to break the silence and drop one:

"I warned you."

"Didn't even shock an egg," Chan added.

"But you guys don't understand!" Jinah squirmed on the couch. There was little left to throw herself on the ground and start making drama about how unfair and meaningless her life was. "I can't even like a little of him, that should be out of the question!"

"A little?" Changbin arched an eyebrow. "I'd say you really like Jisung very, very, veeeery much."

"You don't have to exaggerate, either."

"Jinah, you've been freaking out since seven in the morning, didn't let anyone sleep," Jade stated. "That's because the guy just threatened to kiss you; so, no, it's not an exaggeration."

"I don't even want to see when this kiss really happens," Chan added again.

"That's the problem. That kiss won't really happen," Jinah claimed with all conviction. "Yesterday was a fatality. Jisung was very drunk and must've let himself go, but that doesn't change the fact that he not only likes, but loves Chaerin, and there's nothing I can do to change that," she sighed sadly. "And everything repeats itself again..."

"Oh, JinJin, it's not like that either." Changbin wrapped an arm around Jinah's neck, to comfort her. "He can learn to love other people over time."

"Or not," the girl retorted. "And I, honestly, don't want to wait to take the risk again."

Jinah was just tired of watching her heart always picking the wrong people. Tired of being just that medicine that others use to recover and, when they can, discard the empty card. With Jisung it wouldn't be any different.

"I just have to forget this while I still have time," she continued, shrugging her shoulders. "I've gotten over worse things, anyway."

Jade opened her lips, but her next sentence had to die in her mouth as the bell rang and Chan smelled burned from the kitchen; soon, the american got up to open the door and the aussie was trying to save the lunch.

Jisung swallowed as the girl's face changed dramatically when she saw that the visitor was none other than her newly declared enemy.

"Jinah's there?" he spoke directly, already afraid that the girl would invent some lie just to keep him from stepping in her house for a few minutes, but, Jade merely sent him a merely friendly look and gave him room to enter the apartment.

The symptoms of liking someone are usually very clear, such as Jinah's faint despair about her pajamas and her face from who hadn't slept in days. Appearing so untidy in front of Jisung wrapped her stomach, but she soon tried to scare the feeling, thinking that her goal from that moment was to destroy any unrelated feelings besides friendship when it came to Han. It'd even be good for the boy to see her deplorable appearance, so he'd eliminate any chance of a second kissing attempt between the two ─ if it wasn't already completely and utterly extinct.

Changbin greeted the newcomer briefly and followed his girlfriend into the kitchen. Being alone with Jinah, Jisung bit his cheek inside and did everything he could to keep the shame from taking action, but it was such a difficult task!

"You visiting me at this time?" Jinah pointed with her chin at the seat next to her and tried to act as she always did with the boy. She couldn't make it clear that she only wanted to open a hole in the ground and hide her head like an ostrich. "Or rather, you visiting me? What bug bit you?"

"I came to apologize," Jisung sat down "for happened yesterday. I wasn't very well."

"I noticed" Jinah forced a laugh. "But that's okay, it happens."

"Talking about it..." Han tucked his lower lip in his teeth, visibly uncomfortable with the conversation, but curiosity was always bigger. "What happened yesterday? At..." his cheeks flushed. Lovely! Jinah soon blamed herself for the unwelcome thought. "At bath time."

"Nothing. I barely touched you, I swear. You just complained a lot, but with that I'm kind of used to."

"It's just that Woojin said you looked nervous when you woke him up to leave."

Jinah found herself in front of three paths, where one of them was to pretend to have alzheimer, the other to lie, saying that nothing happened, and the last to tell the truth. Considering that she hated that people lied to her and believed that a good friendship was built on the basis of trust, she chose the third path.

"You tried to kiss me."

"Did I?" Jisung wanted to die, there was no other way of describing what he felt.

"Yeah, but you slept about two minutes later. You can calm down, nothing much has happened."

The boy opened and closed his mouth several times, but not even shaking his hands in an almost desperate gesture to try to recover the gift of speech, he managed to explain himself properly. Ouch, that had at least an explanation!

"Sorry," he finally said. "I didn't want to do it, I'm sorry."

"I already said it's okay." Jinah dismissed the other's concern with a snap of the tongue in the roof of her mouth. "That wouldn't have happened if you hadn't been drunk."

"Not at all" hearing the confirmation of what she intimately knew already was even worse, Jinah proved. "But I didn't want things to get strange between us."

"Things between us have always been strange, Jisung."

"But not in that sense."

"For the third time, I repeat: it's okay, you have nothing to worry about," Jinah reinforced, noting that the boy was almost as stubborn as she was. "Now forget about it. Do you want to eat something? I don't think there's lunch, but there's pizza."

"No, I have to go." Jisung stood up. He lied about not being hungry, but he feared he might die choking if he'd been in the sights of Jade's eyes for a long time. "Thank you. For yesterday and for the invitation."

"No need to thank." Jinah also lifted her body from the sofa and followed the boy to the door. "Friends are good for that" somehow, even if it was because of fatigue, she had to convince herself that they would never be something more than that.

And she really would've been convinced, but Jisung made a point of sending her a ravishing smile of weakened hearts; one he had never sent before, which triggered her return to square one.

Poor Choi Jinah.

[oxatouchofthewickedxo]

Saturn’s Return

this post is more for my own benefit bc my memory sucks so you can stop reading now if ya want.

so a while back when i watched parks and recreation all the way through for the first time, i got very intrigued by the conversation that donna and april had about the concept of saturn’s return. which if you don’t know, saturn will return to the exact spot it was when you were born around 27-29 years later. apparently this is a time for rebirth and renewal as well as a shedding of your child self so you can begin the process of growing up and becoming an adult.

not too long after that, i happened to be really paying attention to the lyrics of “the grudge” by tool in which maynard talks about saturn ascending and forcing you to make a choice in your life. didn’t really do much research on it at the time because i was actually in the bath tub while listening to it and like i said, my memory is terrible so by the time i got out and got dressed, it slipped my mind.

last night, my best friend came over to my fiance & i’s house and somehow this concept of saturn’s return came up in conversation which sparked the tool song in my head again. i began to look into it and apparently this theory is extremely prevalent in the land o’ tool. i’m just gonna list the things that may be all in my head but considering maynard and the insanity of all that tool is, i highly doubt it:

1. at least 2 songs have this concept as a theme: the grudge and jambi

2. 10,000 days is the title of an album as well as a song. saturn’s return takes roughly 10,000 days.

3. opiate came out in 1992, 10,000 days came out in 2006, and fear inoculum came out this year, 2019. so in my opinion, opiate is like the birth of tool, 10,000 days come out 14 years later which suggests they are midway through their journey as a band, then in 2019 which is 27 years later, saturn returns and tool as we know them have reached their peak. so i believe that if tool does in fact make another album after this, they may not be the tool we are all used to. 

4. lateralus is 78 minutes and 51 seconds long. 78 minus 51 is 27.

5. the grudge is 8 minutes and 36 seconds long, 36-8 is 28.

please note that i do realize that lateralus came out before 10,000 days but i am just pointing out the constant use of these numbers throughout the band’s history. if i didn’t know maynard the way that i do, i would think these were all just coincidences but i have learned so many times throughout the last 9 years that there literally are NO coincidences in this band. everything has meaning. LITERALLY everything.

as far as my personal experiences with saturn’s return, i truly believe this is a real thing. my fiance was 28 years old when we met in 2010 and he turned 29 3 months later. this was a time of internal struggle, self discovery, and straight up insanity for him. he had been using crack for about 4 years at this point and was at this precipice with it where he literally hated how the drug made him feel but his addiction would get the best of him every time and he would end up using. however, something came over him one day and he decided that he wasn’t going to let this happen anymore so he voluntarily went to rehab and he came home a new man. sure, there have been a couple of slip ups here and there, but no binges and definitely a different type of regret afterwards. literally from that moment that he made his mind up to better himself, he has been a completely different person. he is the most incredible human being i know and i am so grateful for whatever clicked in his brain to make him change.

flash forward to now and i am currently 29 years old and the last 4 months have been the most life shaping ones of my life. on august 13th of this year i got fired from my job. 2 weeks later, the cops showed up at our house looking for me. luckily, i had literally just left 5 minutes before this so i didn’t end up in jail. turns out there was a warrant out for my arrest due to a driving under suspension charge i had gotten in may when i got pulled over for speeding. i had absolutely no idea my license was suspended by the way. but anyway, i completely forgot to go to my court date and for some reason, they never sent me anything about the rescheduled one so hence the warrant. due to the fact that not only was i unemployed, but also the cops showed up twice in one day, my fiance’s grandparents told him i could no longer live in our house which we rent from them and is behind theirs. they are super old school so the minute anything like this happens, they think the worst. i had nowhere else to go, so i in the blink of an eye was homeless. prior to losing my job, i had been going to the methadone clinic for over a year in order to get off heroin. because i could no longer afford my methadone, i immediately fell back in with my heroin dealer who was like my big brother, so instead of giving me dope for money, he gave me dope for rides to work. so here i was, homeless, back on heroin, and completely uncaring and oblivious to the shit hole i had dug for myself. all of this led to me driving 2.5 hours to my father’s house on october 11th. i came completely clean with my dad, told him about all the horrible things i had been doing over the last few years, and begged him to let me stay with him for a while in order to get my shit together which i thought was very doable since i was no longer in my city around drugs and enablers. instead though, my dad’s solution was to ship me off to a 12 MONTH LONG FAITH BASED “recovery program.” i should add that i do not believe in the christian god at all and think that organized religion is a joke and he knows this about me. to make matters worse, they also did not allow me to have ANY correspondence with my fiance who i have been with for 9 years and has been my ONLY support system during this time. i am talking no phone calls, no visits, and not even letters back and forth. as if all that wasn’t enough to make me want to kill myself, they also didn’t offer any type of medically assisted detox. i was told all that would be available to me was ibuprofen, rest, and water. if you’ve never gone through opiate withdrawal, then you have no freaking clue about the hell that i was about to be in for. i can’t even put what dope sickness feels like into words. it is literally the worst thing i have ever experienced in my life. i wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy. there’s a lyric from the highly suspect song “bath salts” that kind of describes it perfectly....”6 AM, there goes the moon, i feel like death is coming soon & oh, all i wanna do is fucking sleep.” which is about damn right because you feel like you are dying and no matter what you do, you can’t sleep. no amount of downers or sleeping pills can calm those restless legs bruh. but anyway...i am getting off track. i knew going into this bullshit that i wasn’t going to make it. not because of me wanting to use again, but because i was going to have jesus literally crammed down my throat and the absence of matthew from my life for a year was just NOT going to happen. adding insult to injury, the day i went into this god forsaken place was october 14th, ONE FUCKING DAY before our 9 year anniversary. the only thing i even wanna say about my time at this place right now was that they are satists because they would only give me ibuprofen, etc. once a day, i was only allowed to “rest” the first 3 days i was there and this rest was either laying across the world’s most uncomfortable chairs or on the freezing ass cold floor of a fucking church sanctuary. anyways, on the weekends we were FORCED to go all over the east coast in small groups to fundraise in order to “earn our keep”...we had to do this for 13 hours a day every friday and saturday. fast forward to my 2nd weekend there and my 2nd day of my 2nd fundraiser. i’m not sure what came over me, but something inside me snapped. i reached my “i cannot take this shit anymore” point. we went inside the walmart we were fundraising at and i stole one of those small personal boxes of wine, went into the bathroom, and shotgunned the fuck out of this thing. once we were back outside at our table, i waited until it was my turn to “man” the table and my leader’s turn to “work the door” and i went into her bookbag & stole the $550 we had raised the day before. i then asked her if i could go get my tennis shoes out of the van and when i did that, i also grabbed my id and social security card out of my wallet. a couple of minutes later, i asked for a bathroom break which we were not allowed to take alone, so as soon as she went inside a stall, i turned around and ran like a crazy person out of that store & across the street to metro pcs to get a cell phone. after that, i went to walgreens where i got a prepaid debit card and ordered a lyft to a hotel where i got a room for the night. once i got settled, i first made plans with my dealer to come home and get up with him. we looked into me taking a lyft home but that would have cost $200 so we decided i would wait til the morning and take a bus. not sure what it was but something kept telling me that it was a horrible idea to do all of that. it kept getting stronger and when my gut talks to me like that, i listen, so i knew i needed a plan b. i don’t know what put this thought in my head, but i decided to call this guy i had worked with a few years ago. i worked at a pest control company as a schedule coordinator and he was one of the technicians i scheduled for. we lived in different states, about 4 hours away from one another, but we talked on the phone constantly obviously. during the time i worked there, we grew incredibly close and even after i stopped working there, we maintained a relationship and anytime he had to come to my city, which is where the corporate office is located, we would get together. in 2016, i even cheated on my fiance with him. this kid was head over heels in love with me, but i never felt the same way, but me being my typical bitchy self, i preyed on that to my advantage. he and i hadn’t spoken since shortly after we hooked up in 2016, but he literally jumped in his car the moment i asked and was on the way to come get me. unfortunately, his car broke down on the interstate like 45 minutes after he left, so i ended up getting a bus ticket to where he lives the next morning. he came and got me at the bus station and all of a sudden, i was in a different state, 4 hours from home, and living with a man who was not my fiance whom at this point i hadn’t even called yet. i was terrified to tell him about what i had done because i was so ashamed. i didn’t want to disappoint him yet again because at this point, that’s all i was doing. fast forward to 2 weeks later and my fiance found out that i had decided i was going to stay where i was and be with this other dude because i had convinced myself i didn’t need him and that i was living my best life, so of course, he stopped talking to me and said he was done. for 5 days, i didn’t try to contact him or even look at my phone, but one night while the new guy was at work, i was laying in bed watching how i met your mother and seeing marshall and lily made me miss my fiance on a physically painful level. so, i finally caved and turned my phone on even though i knew that any communication from him was going to be negative and horribly mean. instead though, i only had one message from him and it was the sweetest msg ever saying he was going to always love me and be waiting for me if i wanted him, but he wasn’t going to interfere with my happiness if this new dude made me happy. i immediately called him and we stayed on the phone for 2 hours during which we made the plan for him to come rescue me. that was on a tuesday and we planned for him to come pick me up the following monday. those were the longest 5 days of my life. when we finally were together again, he picked me up, i wrapped my legs around him, and we kissed. it was at that moment i knew that he is my fucking home. there will never be anyone for me but him. those 37 days without him were the most agonizing days of my life and i swear i will never be away from him again. 

so to bring this to a close, my saturn’s return literally returned me to my home in the literal and figurative sense. i have learned more about myself and about what life is about in the last 4 months than i ever have in my 29 years of life. things are far from perfect right now, but i am somehow at peace because for once, i listened to my heart instead of trying to please everyone else. i can’t explain to you the realizations i have come to in these last few weeks, but i am beyond clear headed and i know without a doubt i did the right thing for my sanity. this saturn’s return shit is real and is no fucking joke.

PS....AS OF 12/12/19, I WILL BE OFF OF OPIATES FOR 2 MONTHS AND THAT IS THE LONGEST CLEAN TIME I HAVE HAD FROM THEM IN 8 FUCKING YEARS SO AYYYYYYE! lol

[angel-wings-and-broken-things]

A rant about Vanya Hargreeves

(Note: this is decidedly anti-Vanya. If that bothers you, I suggest you click off right now, you have been warned. That said, I'm always up for some friendly debate if you see anything that I’ve said is incorrect, but please don’t respond with bullshit comments like “Luther made her” as it’s an embarrassing display of the pure immaturity that comes from Vanya stans.)

So I’ve been putting off this rant for a long time, mainly because I’ve been busy with school and other stuff. Also, I’ve been getting my kicks ranting to my sister about the pure idiocy that is Vanya Hargreeves and Vanya stans. However, my sister now says that she is done listening to my hour-long rage-fueled rants. Let me tell you that I cried, because a staple in my morning routine has become eating my toast and spilling tea with my younger sister. However, when presented with the facts, for example, that she has never watched the show and has no opinions on the character nor on the cataclysmic stupidity of the fandom for idolizing this psychopathic monster, I realized that perhaps it was the proper time for me to make this, and pray that I can move on to a life of happiness after expelling my hatred of these unintelligent people and arguments.

Also, I’m extremely high on caffeine and procrastinating my essays. So please bear with me as I take you on the journey of my three AM coffee induced rants. I understand that there is a very slim chance that I will change anybody's mind about Vanya, as many people choose to be ignorant about the problematic and hypocritical behavior of their favorite character. Society is relentless in its enablement of the truly moronic behaviors, and nothing has made me lose more faith in the world than the actual arguments I have seen from the half-witted, mindless Vanya stans. I’m not saying that everyone who stans Vanya is an idiot, but if someone else were to say it I would not disagree. Unfortunately, that is simply the conclusion that all evidence leads to. This introduction has gotten away from me a bit, so without further ado, here is every single bullshit argument that I have seen Vanya stans argue debunked.

Vanya’s Childhood.                        

First of all, I would like to point out that I have the utmost sympathy for all of the Hargreeves children for having to grow up with an abusive father. At no point in this rant will I disvalue Vanya’s trauma. As much as I truly hate her character, invalidating traumatic experiences and PTSD is a fucking dick move that I will leave to other parts of the fandom (*cough* anti-Luthers *cough*).

Now that that’s out of the way, let me dig deep into her psychopathic tendencies and unflinching lack of remorse for her actions that clearly has been present since adolescence. First, let us address her powers. I see people everywhere saying that having her powers bound was abusive and horrible, that Allison could have rumored her to have control instead, that she didn’t mean to do any of the things she did, etc. However, please consider that Reginald didn’t have a choice. Or rather I should say that his choices were limited and he made the best possible one given the circumstances. I’m not condoning his actions at all, I will be the first to denounce his actions and character. However, we need to consider all of the facts; not only did she physically attack him, but she also murdered several innocent people because she didn’t like oatmeal. This was to the point that Reginald designed Grace for the sole purpose of having someone who could control Vanya. Vanya was clearly displaying apathetic tendencies towards murder at a young age and cares nothing for the people she killed as long as she got what she wanted. She murdered people over oatmeal, and people stay defending her?

I was shocked when I saw this scene and realized that people were still stanning Vanya, because do you know what this points to people? A pattern. Vanya is a power-hungry maniac. This is shown many times in the show. She knows that she’s the most powerful person in the room and she shamelessly abuses that privilege. When she is a child and she realizes that she’s more powerful then Reginald can handle, what does she do? She explodes the glasses and hurts him with her powers. When she is fed a type of food that she doesn’t like and knows she can use her powers to get whatever she wants, what does she do? She murders her nannies for the sole purpose of getting her way. When she is an adult and realizes that she doesn’t have to listen to Allison, what does she do? Slits her throat and attempts to literally murder her, then runs away. When she doesn’t want to be held captive she destroys their house. When her siblings try to stop her from hurting people she burns the world to the ground. Do you see the pattern?

Furthermore, let us discuss The Umbrella Academy. Also known as Vanya once again showing her true colors as a spoiled brat. We see in both her autobiography and in the flashback scene where she destroyed the house that she felt excluded. Listen, I am a sibling, I have felt excluded before and I’m sure that my sisters have as well. But somehow none of us have burned our house to the ground. I know, you’re probably sitting at your keyboard shaking your head in awe at out restraint. I get that people sympathize with her loneliness throughout childhood, and I can see why. But honestly, I didn’t see anything too terrible in the flashback scene. What? Diego was pissed at her for barging into his room and Allison didn’t want Vanya to see her macking on Luther? Call me crazy but that just seems like siblings being siblings (aside from the making out with your other siblings part, that’s weird). Yes, the one about her being left out from the family portrait was kind of rough, but no reason to attempt to murder your whole family, kill your mom and father figure, and destroy your house. 

She clearly has a being left out complex that began in adolescence and carried through adulthood. It’s okay when you’re a kid and you’re whining that Jimmy and Tommy won’t let you play tag with them, but it crosses a line when you act that way as a grown ass woman. Her book was also crossing a gigantic, fat red line that says in all caps YOU’RE TAKING THIS TOO FAR. What, Ben didn’t want to share his toys so in return you write a passive-aggressive novel about how much your siblings suck and left you out of their super secret club? Let’s say that Klaus also published a book talking about all of his traumatic experiences, and at the center of it was perfect Vanya who was normal and never experienced a single hardship. Different story, right? We don’t seem to talk about the fact that being in the Umbrella Academy seemed to suck. Klaus was forced into a mausoleum and made to live his worst nightmare, Ben was made to kill people using his powers, Luther was transformed into an ape-man without his consent and exiled to the moon, Five ended up stranded in the apocalypse for 45 years, and that's just when was shown on the screen. I’m positive that there were tons of other horrible things that the academy experienced, so where does Vanya get off pretending that she invented tragedy all because her precious feewings were hurt? 

Locking Vanya Up 

Listen. Listen. I said that I wasn’t going to invalidate Vanya’s trauma, and I plan to stick to that. Luther locking Vanya in that cage was fucked up. He shouldn’t have done that. However, in order to properly make my case we need to analyze everything, so allow me to play devil’s advocate for a moment. Vanya slit Allison’s throat. In what universe is that even a little bit acceptable? Not only was Allison her sister, but she was just trying to help. She says repeatedly that she loves Vanya, that she wants to help her, that she’s trying to rescue her from her abusive boyfriend, and once again we see Vanya turn to violence when she doesn’t get her way. I see tons of people saying that Allison had it coming because she rumored Vanya into thinking she was ordinary, but consider this: you’re an asshole. Allison was a child, she didn’t realize that what she was doing was wrong. She even admitted it to Vanya and said that she was confused/just remembered it. Guilty people don't admit their sins. Allison was confused and hurt, and Vanya tried to kill her. 

Additionally, let’s refer to Leonard. Vanya killed him. Now, I’m not particularly broken up over his death, the bastard sort of had it coming.  However, this is yet another example of Vanya overreacting with violence when she’s upset. Her murdering Leonard wasn’t self-defense, as he wasn’t attacking her, nor had he ever physically hurt her. While I’m aware that emotional abuse can be just as bad as physical abuse, and that Vanya was definitely in an emotionally abusive relationship with Leonard, it was still murder. There is no way that it would have held up in court, and I get that people can get trapped in abusive relationships, but if you want to leave a toxic relationship, the answer is not murder. It is never okay to kill someone unless it is in direct defense of your life. or someone else’s. Vanya killed Leonard and showed absolutely no remorse. In fact, the only time she ever showed any sort of guilt over what she did was to Allison, and she got over that in about 30 minutes.

I have gotten a bit off track, so going back to Luther locking Vanya up, he shouldn’t have done it. That much is clear, you should never subject someone to their worst fear. I could go on about Luther and his motivations, but I’ll save that for another rant. All I’m trying to say is that he had a good motive, it's still not okay but I feel that the entire fandom already holds Luther accountable for that, whereas no one holds Vanya accountable for her actions. Additionally, consider the other timeline. In the time where Five came from, Luther didn’t lock Vanya up. Why would he? We can see from Five’s flashback to finding his family dead that Allison’s throat wasn’t slit, therefore because Five was the one who pointed them in the direction of Harold Jenkins, and he wasn’t in the original timeline, there is only one conclusion to draw based on the evidence. In the original timeline, no one went after Vanya. Therefore, Leonard was able to convince her to go destroy Hargreeves mansion, and sometime in the process, Luther ripped his eye out. This is supported by Five saying that while he has assumed that the mansion fell with the apocalypse, it has actually happened before that. Vanya then, after murdering all of her siblings, went on to destroy the world, Leonard, and herself in the process. This shows that Luther was actually somewhat justified in his actions, Vanya has already proven that she is capable of killing and has no qualms about doing so. She has killed billions of people in multiple timelines, and Vanya stans still want to act like none of it was her fault? Okay.

The Guy In The Car

This is a pretty specific sub-category, but I felt like I had to bring it up because it is so fucking incredible the things that Vanya stans are willing to look past. Vanya literally murdered someone because he honked at her. Even if you can justify everything else she did, how can you justify that? Is road rage seriously worth killing over? People are so quick to say “YAS badass Vanya! A QWEEN!” but was Luther a badass when he grabbed Klaus by his fucking neck? No, so why is Vanya a badass when she nearly kills her sister and actually murders innocent people?  The fact of the matter is, Vanya shows a continuous pattern of killing without remorse. She has not only killed many nannies, Leonard, her siblings (in the alternate timeline) and the whole fucking world (twice), but she murdered the man in the car for absolutely nothing. He could have had a family, he could have had children, but did Vanya think of that? Probably not, because she’s a psychopath.

Stop and take a good long look at any of these gifs and try to tell me she wasn’t in control. Try and tell me she isn’t a murderer.

The Apocalypse

Finally. The part of this rant that I’ve been the most excited to get to. This is where I get the most idiotic comments about Vanya. I may have to write a whole other section addressing the most stupid comments I have gotten. But nonetheless, everyone seems to be unanimously in agreement that it wasn’t Vanya’s fault, and this is where I run into some issues. Vanya isn’t a child, she’s a grown ass woman. Correct me if I’m wrong, but when you’re almost 30 years old, its time to take responsibility for your actions. Some of y’all’s mamas didn’t raise you right and it shows. When I was a kid, it didn’t matter if my little sister told me to steal the candy bar, I still stole the candy bar. It was my fault, I got punished. No one held a gun to Vanya’s head and forced her to burn the world to the ground. If you rewatch the final scene, it’s pretty clear that she’s in control of her actions. The only times I saw her lose control was when she was defending Leonard from the muggers and when she was ranting about her siblings. During the apocalypse? All I saw was pure vindictive pleasure. She was pissed off, so she would have everyone die. 

I would like to point out, because I haven't seen anyone else talking about this, that Vanya was straight up ready to kill Luther, Klaus, Five, and Diego. At the end, when they all were trying to stop her (from destroying the world) she had them suspended in air and was clearly hurting them. You could see them in pain, their lives were literally draining away. It was pretty clear that they would have died if Allison hadn’t stopped her. And through it all, she didn’t care. She didn’t care that they would die, she didn’t care that the world would burn. The bottom line is that Vanya Hargreeves is a psychotic murderer, and the fandom needs to stop treating her like a goddess.

In conclusion

To summarize, Vanya displays the characteristics of a spoiled toddler. All she does is lash out when she doesn’t get her way and destroy the world and other people. She has killed countless people, and the fact that people keep saying it wasn’t her fault is such a classic example of the world’s stupidity. If you say that she wasn’t responsible, or that Luther made her do it, then congratulations, you are just as mature as Vanya is and that is not a compliment. No one can make you do anything. You always have choices, Vanya chose to destroy the world and that is something that she needs to be held accountable for. 

I can kind of understand the appeal to Vanya, I suppose. She could come across relatable because of her lonely childhood. Or maybe shes just amassed such a large following because people love Ellen Page (which I get). But the fact remains that I have heard so many idiotic Vanya supporters preaching her psycho gospel and completely ignoring every shitty thing she’s done. So next time I reply to someone’s moronic, unintelligent, not thought through comment, and they try and start beef with me, I’ll just link this rant. I’ve gotten tired of repeating myself. So hey, if you said something to me on twitter about how Vanya isn’t responsible for all the people she killed in cold blood, and I commented with this link, then congrats! You are such a moronic mouthpiece that I felt the need to spend hours writing this essay detailing every single reason as to why your opinion is invalid. Save us both some time here and just stop talking. Either that or turn on your notifications and fight me irl, I won’t hesitate to cleanse the bloodline of your stupidity. Sucks to suck man, don’t let the door hit you on the way to hell. 

If you finished this, congratulations. Grammarly tells me that this takes an average of 12 minutes to read so thank you for sticking with me throughout this 2,500-word monster of a rant. You’re a real one. And if you still stan Vanya, then no worries. Believe it or not, I’m not against stanning Vanya. The problem is that most Vanya stans love her on the grounds of believing that she’s innocent, and the fact of the matter is that she’s not. It’s okay to like whoever you want to like, but acknowledge that your fave is problematic instead of being an idiot and naively trying to convince me of her innocence. The facts are on my side here, people. You’re not going to win this argument. 

[frazzledsoul]

So since @austennerdita2533 answered here how she ranked the Gilmore seasons along with the revival as well as her top five worst/best episodes I thought I’d rank mine

Seasons rank

5

1

4

3

2

Revival

7

(most cavernous gap in teevee history)

6

The revival is very flawed, of course: thematically it undercuts the entire mission of the series, and many characters do things that make absolutely zero sense. That ending is designed to make almost everyone unhappy. And of course, there are many awkward and flat-out terrible moments. But I think out of the four episodes there is a lot of good to be found in each episode and there’s no one plotline that is excruciating agony to sit through (like the Lorelai/Christopher thread of S7) and no long stretch of the characters hurting each other as much as is humanly possible (aka the long nightmare of S6). I also like that Luke and Lorelai are basically together for the entire length of it and although there are problems between them, they are by no means insurmountable. So it’s somewhere between the first five seasons and the mostly horrible last two.

Worst Five Episodes 

(this got wordy, guys, look under the cut)

5. Take These Deviled Eggs. Lorelai’s behavior is so flat-out terrible at that baby shower that I made it one more week (which was the classic They Don’t Shoot Gilmores Do They!) and then quit watching for over a year. I just didn’t like her anymore and the show’s attempts to make her the victim over the Sherry/Christopher situation were making it one thousand times worse. First of all, you don’t fuck someone else’s boyfriend and then go to their baby shower if you have any decency as a human being or enough self-preservation to realize that this woman is full justified in kicking the ever loving crap out of you. If I were Sherry, the first thing I would have done is to punch Lorelai in the face (OK, I would have dumped Christopher right away and then punched both him and Lorelai in the face immediately. But that’s neither here nor there). Sherry tries to connect with Lorelai, to share a moment of how she felt isolated and alone in her pregnancy and thinks Lorelai can understand because she may have felt the same way and Lorelai’s response is to . . . go into her bathroom and DESTROY HER PROPERTY. Then she emotes all over her teenage daughter (who she is setting a terrible example for which will echo long into her daughter’s adulthood) and then both she and Rory go and trash Jess’s car for no reason.

I’m sorry, Lorelai, but you lost. You interfered in someone else’s relationship and you ended up alone as a result. You got what you deserved. Sherry may have been rubbing her pregnancy in Lorelai’s face or she may have been clueless, but you know what? I’m on her side. She was the innocent party in all of this as well as her child, but Lorelai can’t see outside her own narcissism. And of course Rory never does learn that it is wrong to get involved with someone who’s already in a relationship, because Lorelai made it clear that the other person doesn’t matter. 

4. I Can’t Get Started. It’s obvious from the previous post that I think the Christopher/Lorelai situation at the end of season 2 is massively wrong and upsetting, but I just want to lay it out for a minute. First of all, it’s fucked-up to take someone else’s boyfriend as your date to a wedding (it could be innocent in context, but it’s definitely leaning towards stuff that could cause trouble). Lorelai knows that Christopher and Sherry have not broken up, that they are still living together by the time she fucks him. She does it anyway, gushes to Sookie afterwards about how cute it is that she’s doing Christopher (never mind the stupid girlfriend you’re screwing over, TEE HEE HEE) and then has a conversation with Christopher about the state of his relationship. This is cheating, plain and simple, and we’re supposed to think this is romantic. IT’S SO MESSED UP.

Lorelai parades Christopher around as her date to Sookie’s wedding. She gushes to EVERYONE SHE KNOWS about their newfound relationship. She lets Rory get excited about it. She lets her PARENTS get excited about it. The entire time she knows that Christopher has not broken up with his girlfriend yet. I actually think this is worse than the sex! Even if it weren’t wrong, it’s A HORRIBLE IDEA. We get proof of this when Lorelai goes to find Christopher before the wedding starts and she tells him she understands if he can’t break up with Sherry. Lorelai knew the whole time that this was going on that Christopher was with another woman, and he could always change his mind and decide to stay with her.

Christopher is primarily responsible for this situation, because he was the one in the relationship and he decided to cheat. However, Lorelai enabled him 100% of the way and placed herself in a situation where she allowed Rory and her parents to get hurt as well as herself. I have zero sympathy for her in all of this. I hate that the show made me watch her acting so cruelly and wanted me to root her on. It still disgusts me that this is one of the show’s highest-rated episodes on IMDB.

I might have forgiven all of this if the show had Lorelai acknowledge that she had made a mistake and had sat Rory down and explained to her that this is why it’s a bad idea to sleep with other people’s boyfriends. As we all know, it didn’t happen that way.

(Oh, and yes, this situation kind of ruins the rest of S2 for me, unfortunately. It’s why it’s at the bottom of my rankings).

3. A Vineyard Valentine. I think everyone knows why this episode is horrible. . Luke is a massively uncharacteristic douche throughout all of it. I think forcing Luke to double-date with Rory’s boyfriends brings out the worst in him because he is so protective of her, but this was absolutely overkill. Worst of all, he makes a promise to Lorelai that he’s committed to their engagement, he breaks it, and he doesn’t even know because Lorelai doesn’t tell him. The whole thing is horrible.

OTOH, I do appreciate the revelation that Logan taught Rory to cook.

2. The Big Stink. You really could plop any one of the early S7 episodes here where we have to endure Christopher “courting” Lorelai, Lorelai isolating herself from the town, and having to endure Rory hang around with her lame friends because Logan isn’t around, but I picked this one because I think it’s the only episode where Lorelai is flat-out nasty about Luke and makes statements to the effect of how much she prefers Christopher to him. It flat out hurts. On top of all of that, Luke is in one scene and since he’s our sole connection to the town at this point in the season, Stars Hollow isn’t, either. We end with that scene of Lorelai, Christopher, and Rory in the car and it’s implied to us that Lorelai’s Stars Hollow life is inferior to her happy new existence with Christopher.

S7 features this kind of plotline a lot, but it also has Luke being an adorable dad to balance it out. We didn’t get any of that here.

1. Partings. Look, I don’t care that ASP wrote this long beautiful monologue for Lorelai. I don’t care that she has admitted that she wrote this travesty of an episode as an attempt to whore for awards attention (this is why she does not deserve “make-up” awards for this show. Not after what she did to get them). it’s false, untrue drama, and it’s unfair. Lorelai gave up after her conversation with Anna about April. She avoided Luke for days and refused to speak to him. He was wandering all over Stars Hollow, worried and concerned about her. Lorelai is confused and vulnerable, and she has the world’s most unprofessional therapy session with a therapist that doesn’t know her or any context to what Lorelai tells her, and is advised to give up on her problems if she doesn’t get what she wants. Lorelai then decides to go in for the kill and decides that the best way to resolve her relationship dilemma is to scream at him in the middle of the street and act like an absolute lunatic demanding that they get married now or else in order for him to prove that he really loves her. When Luke does not go along with this insane plan, Lorelai decides to punish him by sleeping with Christopher. She knew he couldn’t forgive her for that. 

ASP said afterwards that all of this was the best course of action for everyone involved so that Lorelai could “do other things” (aka Christopher). It’s bullshit. ASP’s contract negotiations didn’t go her way, and she decided to punish the show for not going along with what she wanted. She also was punishing the shippers for not going along with her narrative and refusing to hate Luke as much as she did.

I bring this up like this because what Lorelai asked for was impossible. Luke could not abandon everything at that moment and elope. It was a horrible idea that would not have solved her problems. Like it or not, Luke had an obligation to consider April’s welfare by this point, and he could not choose Lorelai over his child. The fact that she asked him to and we’re supposed to resent him for saying no is ridiculous. Lorelai of all people should have understood this, but she didn’t. We’re supposed to hate Luke for being a responsible parent who keeps his cool when his fiance is acting like a crazy person. This is BAD WRITING. And it doesn’t work. I refuse to judge him.

You know what would have worked? If Lorelai and Luke had sat down and had a reasonable discussion about how to balance their responsibilities like adults. But ASP had to provoke this situation in order to sell her favorite.

(You may notice a few episodes missing here. I don’t include French Twist because I haven’t seen it. I’ve only seen the Luke/Lane/Zach scenes. I also have not seen Unto The Breach, but I refuse to watch that because it hurts to know that Luke and Lorelai’s make so much progress and then take so many steps backwards and Lorelai is once again interpreting their breakup as Luke not loving her enough to go through with the elopment - their problems were so much more complicated than that! I also hate I Get A Sidekick Out Of You because the entire episode is meant to sell Christopher as this dreamy romantic alternative and we actually have to endure Lorelai taking him on a date to a wedding of someone who is close to Luke but I don’t think it’s fair to include that as one of the worst since I fast-forwarded through most of it).

Best Five Episodes

5. Forgiveness and Stuff. I love this episode so much! We get Luke being the unassuming romantic hero by driving Lorelai to the hospital. There’s emotional Gilmore family bonding that actually doesn’t! The Santa burger! The Blue Baseball Cap Of Love! And lots of bonding and longing looks on the L/L front. I really wish they would have gotten together here. It was the perfect moment for it.

4. Hay Bale Maze. If this episode didn’t exist, I would not have supported Luke and Lorelai getting back together and I would have walked away forever after season six. It’s the episode that ASP never would or could have written, and it was absolutely essential to reconciling me with the show. Those Hay Bale Maze apologies lay the groundwork for everything else that happened in Luke and Lorelai’s future, and it could not have existed without them. In addition to that, I think it’s a really sweet Stars Hollow-centered episode and we see Rory and Logan at their absolute best and it’s clear how well they really worked as a couple.

3. Last Year’s Fights This Year’s Tights. This episode is perfect: lots of townie shenanigans, Luke being a romantic hero and sweeping Lorelai off her feet, and Luke fully reconciling with Jess. That dance around the courtyard: the stuff of dreams, y’all!

2. Written In the Stars. I basically swoon during this entire episode, because Luke is so chvalrous and unexpectedly open and devoted and you can see how utterly smitten and delighted Lorelai is with this new side of him.

1. Raincoats and Recipes. I think this is the pinnacle of the show’s achievement: Lorelai realizes her dream, Luke and Lorelai finally stop dancing around each other and go for it, and Rory falls off her pedastal as Lorelai realizes that guiding her daughter to adulthood is going to be more difficult than she thought. I love that the Christopher/Sherry stuff I went into such detail earlier in this post is at last denounced and Lorelai has to deal with the implications of the example that she set forth and that she doesn’t allow Rory to use it as an excuse.

I think if Lorelai had applied the same attitude towards Rory when learning of similar behavior in the revival Rory could have avoided melting down the way that she did later. Maybe that wasn’t possible after Lorelai had screwed up again, but it’s yet another thing that could have been explained that wasn’t.

(I just want to state after all of this bloviating that I don’t hate Lorelai: she did some really, really fucked up things and not all of the wrong that she did was acknowledged. The plotline of villainizing the “other woman” in a love triangle when she becomes pregnant was actually very popular on TV in 2002 when those earlier episodes aired: however, on this show Lorelai WAS the other woman, and the show tried too hard to make us hate the one truly innocent person in that situation. Obviously, it didn’t work for me).

[kalesandfails]

a showing-up God

Someone asked me why I didn’t decided for myself what kind of God I believe in, and the most honest thing to say is that I really don’t know if I do believe in God.

I want to, but also, I am afraid not to, not so much because so many people remain lined up to promise eternal suffering if I don’t — that just seems like a clumsy effort at manipulation; your average seven-year-old could do better —  but because there is so much very real suffering happening all around us at this very moment, and also for the entire scope of human history and we — I — want very badly for it to be okay.

If God is real, then there is a hope of something other than horrible, unimaginable pain for a wife losing her husband to dementia or a now-childless mother or the any number of parents and children and siblings and friends trying to get through the next few days in Christchurch. And if there is no God, I don’t have an answer that makes it okay that we are going to die. God, the universal solvent who takes all these horrible things and leaves us with something other than nihilism.

The problem with that is that that fixer God lets me stay petty. Lets me forget that I don’t have time to worry about whether I ran or not today, lets me ruin chunks of my life hating my body instead of attending to my life.

And when people look at another human being and say: what matters in this story is that you came here illegally, and not that you are a child and someone is trying to kill you; what matters here is that your parents are poor, but you don’t know better than to want to eat lunch like your friends do; what matters here is that you want to marry the person you love, but the whole thing makes me uncomfortable and I’d rather not see it — when people say these things, “God” seems to be for those people an explanation for what would otherwise seem like cruelty, bigotry, or ordinary shitty behavior.

I don’t know how to find a God worthy believing when everyone seems to keep throwing around of the word “God” as a weapon. And I don’t know what God could be like, because if a God is real, it seems that it’s a God who is content with a world in which unimaginably horrible shit happens with regularity and those perpetuating it claim He’s telling them to do these things.

Still.

I don’t know if this is God: but one night I woke up, soaked in blood. I was sleeping in a bed at my cousins’ house in California and I was four months pregnant, less than a year out from a miscarriage. I shook my husband awake and told him. I sat on some wadded up towels in a rental car as we drove to the emergency room and I was too tired and numb to cry. Caked in blood, I watched the screen as the doctor — his name was Paul — found my son’s heartbeat.

And today my son is here, and that’s a thing I believe in. Not that a God decided to give me a child I wanted — not that a God takes and takes and takes from other pregnant women, other moms of born children, but likes me and consequently let me have what I wanted. But that I thought I was losing my baby and instead he is here.  And I am grateful.

Another thing I believe in: a friend of our family, braver and stronger than I am, lost pregnancy after pregnancy, lost adoptions that fell through, and then one day picked up the phone to the news that her baby was waiting to meet her. And her son is learning to play guitar now, his hair a revelation and his movements, his expression as he plays, all mirroring his dad’s.

And a third: an acquaintance of mine, a man I barely know, really, lost his child around the time my son was born. He watched his baby fight cancer for years, seem to recover, then ultimately die. I know this man now because he has spent the subsequent almost-decade passionately seeking out other children with cancer and trying to help them. He sends them matchbox cars, he visits them when they are in the hospital, he travels to Harrisburg and Washington D.C. to advocate for research to help them live. He stays close to his son doing these things. This is how he cares for his child now that they are apart.

So when I imagine God, what I imagine is a guy who finds you when you wake up in blood, finds you in moments or days after you lose your most important person, finds you when there really seems to be no reason to continue, and reaches down. Get up, he says. He doesn’t say it’s okay because it’s not; I have never found a lot of meaning in “God’s promises” for teens or grads or moms or anyone else. He just tells you what to do to get from this moment to the next moment.

And I think maybe those of us who are rich white Americans don’t get to see this God much when we are not actively losing the people we love; not dying or watching someone else die; not stuck in places we don’t see a way out of. I think that God may not be hanging out at our potlucks or in our “life groups” as much as we think, and I feel pretty certain God has quietly gotten the fuck out by the time we start sharing our feelings about other people’s marriages or abortions.

But I think that God is very much with the families in Christchurch right now. And I am pretty certain of a God down at our border, consciously not making any promises to the children and parents still crying out for each other. God’s there very intently pushing open the lungs of the girls trying to get abortions after being raped, the girls from whom our government is withholding medical care, because I know what it is like to live in a body that you find intolerable, a body you just want gone so every moment is no longer consumed re-experiencing your assault.

If there is a person besides a grieving parent who might need a God to step in, it’s a child taken from her parents, raped, and left without medical care in an effort to keep her pregnant with the aftermath. The fact of her situation seems the largest argument against the existence of God I could think of; but the reality of her survival seems to me to be the most functional definition of sacred in our experience.

I don’t think at all of God as a mastermind of the world as it is now, a conscious creator who wanted things this way. In fact, I think that to the degree we claim that kind of God, we’re basically enabling the violent assault and destruction of sociopaths and monsters. 

But I believe that somewhere in the ability of those being oppressed to keep breathing in the face of their oppression, and of those whose lives seem unsalvageable to move through that loss and come out on the other side, there is something sacred and powerful.

To me, that God feels as real as does the absolute absence of a God who would will the destruction or suffering of anybody. In fact, to the degree that I believe in a God who shows up in the worst possible moments, I believe that the God who endorses the generation of those moments — through, say, nationalism or colonialism or misogyny or simple, stupid hate — is a bullshit lie used by evil people so they can show their faces on Fox News, and so that we let them.

[elliot-orion]

For Atticus: 7, 10, 14 For Theo: 15, 20, 25 For Edgar: 29, 33, 35

Atticus

7 You have the key to immortality in your hands. But not for free. If you want it, as a price, your worst enemy also gains immortality. Is it worth it?

“I mean not really. I don’t really care about the worst enemy thing, I can just. You know. Move. But immortality is overrated and I’d rather Just… not… (id like to note Atty is mildly suicidal. So there’s that)

10. If a lot of people, possibly innocent people, have to die in order to make a real change, is it worth it? Can you live with their deaths even if it helps people in the present?

“What kind of change are we talking here? I need to move away from my family change, or like. Slavery is bad change? Because no for the first one. The second… I don’t know. If they aren’t innocent, sure whatever, but innocent people… I don’t know. I definitely couldn’t live with it, that’s for sure”

14. What of love? Say you discover your lifelong crush on another has finally been reciprocated… but they are currently dating a family member or a dear friend the crush feels responsible to honour. Do you force the break up? Date on the side? Bottle it up forever?

“Well how on the nose of a question. It just so happens my two crushes are Fucking dating each other, and no, I’m not going to do shit about it. They are much happier without me barging in on the relationship and I wouldn’t dare break them up. It’s TheoandEdgar. Inseparable. They have their fairytale ending and I’m not a part of it. That’s just how it is.” (Id like to note that eddie and Theo who are serial eavesdroppers are pretty pissed about this. Also you made atty mad and now he’s moping)

Theo.

15. Is lying to others to gain their approval more important than being genuine and hated?

“Fuck no. I’m not going to lie! If you have a problem with me bring me then you can just leave because I don’t have time for that shit.”

20. Are there people in this world who, no matter how much time and penitence is given, should never be forgiven?

“Considering I know Atty’s Dad and sister… abso-Fucking-Lutley.”

25. What is more important to you? An idea of yours being used and appreciated or the credit for that idea beings yours and yours alone?

“I have never done anything even remotely interesting so I don’t know. Usually my ideas are of the enabling kind so they aren’t appreciate anyways. Well, Edgar loves it. Atty and Reilly… less so!”

Edgar

29. Is genius equal to hard work? Does a genius deserve praise for doing well without effort? Are they above us?

“Genius is a bullshit term ok? You are smart. Cool I guess. Genius is inventing French fries. Genius is someone who can beat a rigged carnival game and win me another squid hat. You don’t count as a genius if you can make numbers work. You’re just smart. Congrats fucker now you’ll never get a date because everyone hates math.”

33. If you could wipe certain memories from your head, would you? Why would you? What memories?

“I used to think I wanted to wipe Theo from my brain. I thought forgetting everything that happened would make it easier to deal with his death. But Mom talked to me and said that forgetting doesn’t make it any easier, because your heart will still remember the pain and you can’t get rid of that. So no. I think I’ll keep my memories.”

35. Is every person in this world wholly unique or can they be categorized? Can they be grouped and mentally dissected? Are you just another sheep in another flock or are you the sole unique soul?

“You know what? Fuck that ok. People are unique. Every Fucking one of them. I’ve seen people’s souls. I know for a fucking fact that every one looks different. People don’t fit in neat boxes. Even if you like the exact same things as someone else, you have different emotions and you can’t categorize those. Life isn’t neat little boxes. Life’s messy colors and drawing outside the lines. So fuck this question and fuck the idea that you aren’t original.”

THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THE ASK FRUEND I LOVE YOU