#this is based on nothing except an idiot OP i found in my 'for you' dash who recommended

[askshivanulegacy]

"If you ever see a post on XYZ be sure to check the OP"

n o

"It's a free blocklist!!!1!"

do you take me for someone who cares

[highqueenofelfhame]

All I Ask Of You - 15

I can’t see the end of this just wanna feel your kiss Against my lips and now all this time Is passing by, but I still can't seem to tell you why It hurts me every time I see you Realize how much I need you I hate u, i love u - gnash

“She’s not his...girlfriend,” Fenrys said, leaning in the doorway of Aelin’s private quarters. She insisted she didn’t need them, but Lorcan said he didn’t feel like seeing her walk around in a towel. Eyes had rolled, and Aelin had trudged to the room and thrown herself onto her bed. 

Aelin looked up from where she sat, lacing up her boots and making sure her pants were tucked down into them. It was her first day assisting with training, and if she didn’t look like a hardass, the men wouldn’t take her seriously. A huge mistake on their part, but it tended to happen anyway. 

“I don’t care,” she said flatly, standing up and tucking her white t-shirt into her pants. 

“Aelin–”

“You should have told me! Like, what the fuck! Any of you could have told me. Any single one of you and you opted not to. And you evidently didn’t even tell Rowan I was flying in because he looked just about as surprised to see me as I was to see him with some girl hanging on his arm. You are my best friend. And that was shitty of you and I’m not going to lie, Fenrys, I’m really pissed about it.” She turned, shaking her head as she pulled her hair into a bun at the base of her skull.

“I’m sorry. I just– Fuck I didn’t want to hurt you. We don’t even know who she is to him, he doesn’t talk about her or anything.”

“And this was better? Jesus. That’s bullshit and you know it.” Another shrug of her shoulders and she pushed passed him and making her way outside, taking a large gulp of air.

It was more humid here than it was in Terrasen, the heat so different from the cold of the mountains and snow. Even their summers and springs were mild and beautiful. It was just hot and humid in Doranelle but still beautiful. 

She ignored the recruits and officers as she walked through, rolling her eyes when a few of them whistled at her. It was gross. Being around so much testosterone and not enough estrogen made the male brain so, so disgusting. 

For whatever reason, there weren’t many women in the military in Doranelle. There were no women on their special ops teams, which left Aelin with only male company. It made sense that there were no women. Aelin was the only one in Terrasen’s history to make it into special ops, much less be running with the most powerful special ops team probably ever. And she was damn proud of that fact. 

She walked across the campus, rubbing her palms into her eyes while she contemplated how her relationship with Rowan ended up so messy. It didn’t make sense. They had been made for each other, and everyone had agreed. Aelin even liked to think about how much her parents and Sam would have loved Rowan, how they would have approved of him. And then he cheated and got distant, and quit trying. He quit doing little things for her, he quit surprising her on long weekends. Their sex life had dwindled down when they had always been on each other before. They had been so passionate, so in love with each other that being with other people had never even computed for her. And now he was sleeping with someone else, and she found herself pausing to take a deep breath, face turned up to the sun. 

“Aelin!”

Of course. Of fucking course. Her jaw clenched and she kept walking, pushing the way her name sounded on his lips from her mind. The closer she got to the pool, the quicker she tried to walk until he was right behind her with his fingers grazing her elbow. 

“What do you want! Gods above, Rowan, what the fuck do you want?” Her hands were thrown out to the side, a hollow laugh climbing out of her throat. 

“Just– I’m–” he trailed off, running his hands through his hair. 

“I can’t look weak here. I am the only woman on this entire base, and I cannot look weak here. And you?” Her voice cracked and she shook her head, teeth running over her bottom lip. “You make me weak. I can’t focus when you’re around. And I hate it. And I hate you. And I just– I need you to please leave me alone. If you ever cared about me, you’d leave me alone. It’s fine that you’re over me I don’t–” She shook her head and wiped at her eyes. 

“Fireheart, please,” he reached up to brush his fingers across her cheek and she jerked back. 

“Please don’t touch me. Don’t call me that. I’m not doing this. I’m not a toy for you to play with. I’m the girl that was ready to die so that you’d be safe and you walked away. So just–” She shook her head and turned, jogging the rest of the way to the pool. 

~*~

She was screaming. Blood curdling screams that vibrated through her entire body, screams that made her throat raw as they clawed their way up and out of her throat, their dagger sharp nails ripping her body to pieces. Not only was she screaming, but thrashing: her arms falling into muscle memory of combat. But it was nothing compared to the way she kept screaming ‘no’ over and over. Her voice would crack, terror gripping through her entire being. Every single cell was fighting an imaginary threat–

“Aelin! Aelin, love. Wake up. Wake up it’s just–” Rowan didn’t have time to finish his sentence because she was slamming her hands against his chest, obviously trying to take blows to her face. When he caught her wrists, careful to be gently, she screamed louder. The entire metal bed rattled. “Aelin!”

She gasped, struggling against the grip he had on her hands as she tried to twist out of his grip. 

“It’s me. It’s just me. Look at me,” and then she wasn’t struggling anymore but blinking at him; her face completely crumpled. 

“Rowan,” she rasped, a sob ripping through her body, her throat. Aelin leaned forward to rest her forehead against his bare shoulder. “Rowan,” she said through another sob.

“I’ve got you. You’re okay. You’re safe. I’ve got you.” 

His hands slid up and down her back, his mouth pressing soft kisses to the top of her head while murmuring sweet nothings: that she was okay, that he was there, that it was just a nightmare. Surely he could feel her heart thundering in her chest, so close to exploding out of her body like a time bomb. 

Aelin grabbed one of his hands and pulled it into her lap, toying with his fingers while he told her to breathe. He was taking the same breaths as her to guide her through breathing until she calmed down enough. Part of her wanted to allow him to continue. The other part wanted him to never touch her again. 

The fact that he always knew how to calm her down, that he knew what steps to take to bring her down from a panic wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair that despite everything he’d done she just wanted him to stay with her, rocking her to sleep until her breathing evened out and she fell into a dream state. Not that she would be able to fall asleep tonight. The nightmares got worse every day. The entire six months she’d been in Orynth she’d been required to see a therapist, to talk about her feelings and mixed emotions. Truly, it had helped her sort out everything, she stopped having panic attacks during the day. The nightmares, however, never stopped. 

She was still shaking, unable to will her body to stop. When Rowan stood, she looked at him with her eyes wide in panic. 

“I’m not leaving, love,” he said softly, sitting back down with his back against the wall.

He grabbed her hand and tugged gently until she crawled onto his lap, her face pressing against his neck. Rowan’s scent was so familiar. He smelled like pine and snow and it had always reminded her of home. 

Reminded her that he was home, too. 

Except that he wasn’t. Except that the same hands that were brushing her hair from her neck had been on someone else’s body. Rowan had been inside someone else, and she didn’t even want to think about if it sated him, if he was pleased, if he was emotionally attached to her. It hurt too much. 

Still, she took a deep breath and traced her fingers up and down his side. Rowan was so warm and she was able to count the lines of his abdomen. His body had always been perfect from the first time he’d met her at her basic training. Perfectly chiseled, perfectly beautiful, perfectly tanned. 

With her heart beating at a normal pace, she lifted her head and rubbed her eyes. When she pulled her palms away they were soaked with tears. She could only imagine how splotchy and swollen her face was. The sigh that escaped her body was heavy. So, so heavy. 

His fingers tilted her chin back and he was searching her eyes despite her not looking at him. “Look at me.” Like an idiot, she did, and it hurt. 

And then his hands were cupping her face and his thumbs brushing her cheekbones and his nose grazing against hers and she didn’t have the power to stop. To tell him no. When he whispered her name softly, she remembered that she was supposed to be angry, but the way he said her name was the same way he used to mouth words against her skin. But it wasn’t the past anymore, because his lips were on her shoulder, her name being traced with his lips and she was a goner. 

When he started kissing up her neck she was a puddle of goo, her skin so hot that surely her bones would melt. His lips grazed her jaw and chin before those same lips that set her on fire were passing over hers like a ghost. 

“Aelin,” he whispered again, this time against her mouth. 

And then he was kissing her, softly at first before it turned into something needy. Something necessary like he’d been starving or drowning and she was the fresh air he inhaled once he surfaced. His tongue slid against the seam of her lips and she opened for him, sighing when he moved them so she was on her back and he lay atop her. Rowan’s hands dragged up and down her body, sliding beneath the t-shirt she wore to feel her skin. The feeling of his hands– calloused from so much training, from shooting guns and climbing ropes and wielding daggers– electrified her. 

But then she remembered that those hands had been on someone else. That he had likely touched her like this, that he had rocked his hips against hers the same way he was doing now. His lips had pressed against someone else’s skin and he had freely moaned in pleasure because of someone else. Rowan’s mouth had dragged over and marked another woman, his hands had slipped into the waistband of her pajamas and it became too much. 

So in a quick maneuver, she pushed his head away and rolled out from beneath him. This time when her chest rose and fell so quickly, it was for entirely different reasons. Aelin hated the effect that he had on her. 

“Aelin–”

“Please go. Please, Rowan. I am begging you.” 

At that, he ran his hand down his face and stood, pausing in front of her for a split second to press a kiss to his forehead. And then he was gone. 

~*~ 

The looks on the men’s faces when they saw Aelin standing with Lorcan and Rowan had them snickering quietly to themselves. You’d think that her being part of the Cadre would prove enough about her work ethic and skill, but because she was a woman they judged her. Misogyny ran rampant here. 

Aelin had her arms folded over her chest, nodding along to Lorcan’s game plan for the day. She was already sweating in her stealth suit, the black material absorbing the heat of the sun too well. 

The twins were helping a group perfect their sniping techniques. Vaughan was overseeing water competency. The others had commanders assisting them, but the commanders wanted to participate in hand to hand combat training because the way the Cadre was able to stealth kill and take men down with nothing but their hands. Aelin included. 

She toed the ground with the tip of her combat boots, still nodding to Lorcan’s instructions. The man was long winded as hell, and he’d repeated himself twice to make sure she understood. 

“You know, it’s weird. I have ears and an exceptionally competent brain,” she said, a brow raised as she looked up at him. Rowan snorted and Lorcan turned to address the men. 

“You are going to divide into three groups. We all have very different ways of handling hand to hand combat. Whitethorn is probably the most creative,” he shot Rowan a look who tried to not laugh. It was always the story of how he’d impaled a man with a table leg, pinning him to the wall in the process because it went straight through the drywall. 

“Galathynius is by far the fastest and has a unique skill set that can be difficult to master, but it’s incredibly useful for stealth kills.” The men standing before them looked at each other, slight grins on their faces. Aelin couldn’t wait to throttle each and every one of them.

“I have a more classic way of handling things so you’ll learn more basics from me, which are incredibly necessary and I can show you how to anticipate what your opponent is going to do next.” It was annoying that Rowan and Lorcan both were legends. At present time, Aelin was Terrasen’s best kept secret. 

“If you’re in group one, you’re with me,” Aelin said, letting out a sigh as she turned to walk to the area she would be training in. 

“What’s your skill set?” One of the guys asked her. He had brown hair and a perfect jawline. She pursed her lips and ran her tongue over her teeth. Later, she would find out that his last name was Samuels. 

“We’ll get to that because I want you to understand what the element of surprise can do for you in a fight. It could be crucial to whether or not you walk away or they do. Whitethorn and Salvaterre’s skills precede them. I’m sure you’ve all heard the stories, and if you haven’t go ahead and ask them. Whitethorn is particularly proud of the shit he’s accomplished. Now raise your hand if you have any idea who I am.” No hands raised, and Aelin grinned. “There’s a reason for that. Okay, I want all of you to form a pretty wide circle because we’ll need the space but not so far that you can’t observe well enough.” Surprisingly they did as she said, forming a large circle that she stood in the center of. 

“Why aren’t you wearing standard uniform?” Someone asked, none of the men before her hiding the way they were likely appreciating her body in the skin tight suit. 

“It’s my stealth suit.” She didn’t bother to elaborate. “Who wants to go first?” Nobody answered. 

“No offense, ma’am, but I don’t want to hit a girl.” 

Aelin snorted when a few of the others nodded in agreement. She even let out a low laugh. 

“Rowan!” She shouted, and his head whipped around. He held up a finger and said something to his group before jogging over to where she stood. “They don’t want to hit a girl.” This time, Rowan was the one to laugh. “Would you do the honors?” He braced his hands on his hips and nodded once, cracking his neck before he got into fighting stance. Aelin shook out her shoulders, ignoring the pain that shot down her arm. Shit. 

Rowan nodded once at her and then he was swinging. It was too easy for her to spin away from him, to avoid every hit that he threw at her. The ones she couldn’t avoid, she blocked with her forearm, not bothering to pull the punch that came in contact with his jaw. He got a few hits in on her, too, but not quite as many as she did. 

She managed to swipe his legs out from under him, and he swore when he hit the ground only for her to drop onto his chest. A flick of her wrist and her daggers were in hand, scissored over his neck. She laughed a little when she saw a small bead of blood and wiped it off his neck. 

“Godsdammit, Aelin,” Rowan breathed, laying on the ground for a few more seconds to catch his breath when she rolled off of him. She had completely knocked the breath out of lungs. When she held out her hand to help him up, he took it and rose to his feet. He was still breathing hard when he walked away. 

This time when nobody wanted to go first, it was out of fear. 

~*~ 

“There’s something so satisfying besting fifty men in a day. I can’t wait to do it again tomorrow,” she told Fenrys as they walked towards the city. Aelin was starving after burning so many calories and sweating off her body weight. She almost felt brand new after showering and had even put on makeup for their night out. Fenrys had let out a low whistle when she met him outside only for her to roll her eyes. 

“I can’t believe you knocked Whitethorn on his ass that hard.” 

“I haven’t beat him in awhile so it felt so, so good.” Fenrys huffed a laugh. “He heard me screaming last night. I was having a nightmare. He woke me up and held me for awhile. He kissed me.” Aelin’s lips were turned down in a frown and Fen cursed under his breath. 

“Did you–”

“No. I told him to leave. For once he actually listened to what I wanted and left,” she said as they walked into the bar. 

Fenrys squeezed her shoulder and made his way to the bar to get their drinks. Aelin slid into a chair and rested her chin in her hand, eyes scanning the crowd. She hated that she was looking for Rowan. Looking to see if he was with that girl. 

She felt so stupid. They hadn’t been together for years and yet she was still tripped up over the asshole despite everything he’d done for her. It made her weak, it made her distracting and it was– quite frankly– pathetic. Still, her eyes continued to scan the crowd. 

“Who are you looking for?” Aelin started where she sat, her hand flying up to her heart. He set a drink down in front of her, and she didn’t bother looking at him as she took a drink. 

“Fuck, Rowan.” She didn’t have to look to know he had a slight grin on his face. 

“You didn’t answer my question,” he pointed out, and Aelin finally turned her head to look at him. His green eyes were alight. Playful. Aelin rolled hers and looked down, swirling the little black straw. 

“You.” Her voice was soft and she couldn’t get herself to look at him. Rowan sat down next to her, his arm pressed against hers. She started to shake her head when he leaned over, so close that the low timbre of his voice sent chills all over her body. 

“I’m not sleeping with her. I never was.” 

“It’s not my business,” she shrugged her shoulders and took a long drink. The burn of the alcohol was welcome because his lips were still too close to her ear, she could smell him and feel his body heat. 

“I just wanted you to know.”

“Did…” she trailed off and furrowed her brow, not wanting to ask. 

“We kissed once. I felt absolutely nothing.” She looked over at him then, his face too close to hers. She nodded a single time and downed the rest of the alcohol in one gulp. After offering him a tight smile, she slid off the chair and made her way over to the bar. When she found Fenrys he was talking to Connall with his forearms leaning on the counter. Aelin ordered two shots and took them back to back. 

“You sent him over, didn’t you?” Her tone was accusatory, eyes narrowed. Fen gave her a sheepish smile and she rolled her eyes. Down the bar, she noticed that pretty girl that had been on Rowan’s arm the other night and decided she wasn’t quite in the mood to be out after all. 

Aelin had just reached the door when Rowan stopped her by catching her elbow. Quirking a brow, she looked up at him. Aelin was taller than the average girl, but Rowan still towered over her with his 6’4 frame. 

“Where are you going, love?” 

“Back to base. I don’t feel like being out.” There her stomach went again, doing somersaults in her body cavity. 

“Alone?” Aelin shrugged and nodded. Obviously alone. Nobody else was with her. “Like hell you are.”  It made her snort and she walked outside anyway. Despite the loud music and chatter from the bar, she could hear Rowan’s exasperated sigh as he followed her outside. “Can I walk with you?” 

“You’re going to do it whether or not I say yes anyway,” she pointed out, giving him a flat look that had his lips turning up at the corners. Her eyes wandered down his arms, clenching her jaw at how his shirt barely contained his broad chest and muscular arms. It felt like the universe was out to get her. It probably was. 

“How’s your shoulder?” 

“It’s fine most of the time. I don’t have full range of motion but it’s close enough. The humidity is fucking with it though. It hurt so bad by the time we were done with those training sessions earlier that I took something for pain. I don’t have to do that often though.” Rowan nodded as she spoke, the two falling into a comfortable quiet. Every so often their hands would bump together, and Aelin was too tipsy to care to pull away. 

When they got back to base, she leaned against the door to her quarters and said, “Thank you for walking me.” 

He was standing too close. Memories flooded her mind as she remembered his hands all over her body, his mouth leaving trails across her skin. Almost involuntarily, she reached out to pick at the hem of his shirt, unable to look up and meet his eyes. Rowan placed his hands on either side of hers, his cheek pressing to her temple. Having Rowan this close was too intoxicating. She couldn’t think straight. 

When she finally looked up at him, his head was ducked down. Rowan didn’t move, merely rested his forehead against hers. He wasn’t going to make the first move this time. He was going to let her decide. 

Her hands ran up his chest and up his neck, stopping when her fingers were grazing his jaw. Aelin found herself unable to look away from him. This close, they were breathing the same air, his breath warm on her face. 

“Rowan,” she breathed, pulling his mouth down to hers.

It was hot, the tension between their bodies nearly palpable. It didn’t take long for him to grip her thighs and pin her against the door, her legs wrapping around his waist. The kiss was bitten lips and tangled tongues. He tasted like cinnamon whiskey and she wanted to get drunk on him. 

He managed to get the door open, kick it shut, and have her pinned against the wall inside the room in a matter of seconds. Every movement was rushed, Aelin’s hands pulling at his shirt until she threw it on the floor. His hands slid up her shirt and pushed it over her head. 

“Off, off, off,” he murmured against her neck, setting her down only long enough to pull her jeans and panties off her body in a quick movement.

They couldn’t get close enough fast enough, her fingers undoing his jeans until they dropped to the floor. His briefs followed soon after, and then he had her up against the wall again. Rowan’s mouth connected with the curve where her neck met her shoulder, sucking and biting at her skin until she knew there would be dark purple marks tomorrow. 

“Please,” she begged him, reaching her hand between them to take his length in her hand. He took the hint, pushing up into her in one swift movement. The feeling made her moan loudly, a moan that he caught with his mouth and returned in favor. 

They fucked hard against the wall, Rowan pounding into her over and over again. She couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe. It was almost too much to take in the best way, the feeling of him inside her. She whispered his name over and over into his mouth, dying to have him deeper, to have him faster and harder. 

“Fuck, Aelin,” he groaned, biting her throat in ways that sent heat straight between her legs. 

“Come for me,” she whispered against his mouth. “Please. Inside me. Please. Please.”

She didn’t stop begging until they both crashed over the edge, Rowan spilling inside her. When she rested her head back against the wall, he started pressing softer kisses down her throat and across her collarbones. She kept her fingers in his hair, combing through the strands softly. 

Aelin had just started to drop her legs from his waist when he caught her calves and shook his head. She let her legs tighten around his waist and he carried them over to the bed, laying her down gently. It was only then that he slipped out of her and smoothed his hand down her hair, fingers brushing her cheeks. 

When he kissed her, it was soft and slow, nothing like what they’d just done. It was loving, it was passionate. It was her favorite way that he kissed her– like she was everything to him, like she was all he’d ever wanted. He kissed her lips one more time before he sat up and started to stand. She took a moment to appreciate his ass, biting her lip before she sat up and caught his fingers. 

“Don’t go. Stay. Please?” Rowan turned to look at her. “I want you to stay.”

So he did. 

@starseternalnighttriumphant @musicmaam @city-of-fae @slytherin-25 @myfeyrelady @tangledraysofsunshine @westofmoon @nalgenewhore @kandasboi

[boulbilehibot]

Sam and Tommy, a Villain/Hero friendship

Sorry for my bad writing and bad English!!!

Hero had always been proud of himself for not showing when he was having an hard time.

Always strong, always here to protect and help others. Protect the town. His town.

And tonight, when he heard about Big Villain terrorising people on the central place, he didn't think twice before going.

Even if he feels sick. Even if he's unsteady when he walk. Even if the fever is only rising. Even if the ribs that Big Villain had break at their last fight torture him as he walk.

Just showing may make the Big Villain leave and he knows it.

However tonight, Big Villain doesn't redraw just by seeing him.

Well, he should have expected that. He looks terrible. Not really frightening...

So he jump into battle. Assaulting Big Villain with his all arsenal of fire techniques. Only rising up his fever more and more. After about twenty minutes, Hero is just exhausted.

Big Villain his breathless and try to regain strength. His hands on his knees.

It's hero's last chance.

Hero focus, closing his eyes and after a couple seconds, let go a deflagration who encircle him. Touching Big Villain and his sidekicks.

Hero hear Big Villain scream something. But he can't find out what. Probably to finally redraw because everything become silent and calm after that.

Everything his fuzzy... Blurry... Fuck... He won't be able to make it to his base... He has to try so...

He limps awkwardly in some direction... He thinks it's the good one... Maybe... This little ally remember him of something... Maybe... Damn... He's awake enough to know that he's beginning to lose it but not enough to remember his way home...he must return to his base... Home... Anywhere safe and with some...

He freeze.

Villain, a childhood friend who had take a different pace his standing right in front of him on the ally... Hero tried to steady himself a little and stopped holding his chest like to protect his broken ribs.

He had never tried to fight him... Always avoiding him... So why now... They are always friendly to each other when they meet unexpectedly in their everyday life...

-What are you doing here? Ask villain rising an eyebrow

-Going home... Not today Villain... Need to-go. Answer Hero advancing towards him to continue his hard travel.

You're in my perimeter here Hero. I have a reputation to maintain you know it, we've talked about it. Said Villain.

-'M not! Let me go Sam. Hero half yelled, half mumbled , continuing to walk right in front of him.

-You are. And you'd better walk back in your district. Said Villain noticing the fact that Hero calling him by his nickname in this context was more than strange.

Hero continue to walk slow to keep it steady. He try to inspire deeply. He can't breathe well. It's bothering him. He shake his head, like if he could do something.

"Don't approach. Hero, I'm not playing here! I'm warning you! " Villain yelled toward Hero who just keep walking to his direction.

Well, hero his arrived to Villain side. He barely look at him. Villain had no choice, but he doesn't go on him to hard. Villain just put a low kick on him. Trying to stop hero and make him react.

It stopped him a little to well. Hero's knee give up with the kick and hero start to fall limply on the ground. Not fast enough to put his arms in front of him for protection. Instead, he managed to fall on his shoulder.

He wasn't moving after that. His helmet resting on the concrete. Turning his back to Villain.

Villain looks at that with round eyes.

He had noticed that something was weird, the kick he gived him was far to weak to make his former friend fall like that. He was supposed to be a strength of nature... Was he playing games? Had he had a problem?

Villain carefully kneeled behind him.

Slowly turning Hero to lay on his back. His helmet rolling on the ground as he switched position.

-Hero? Are you ok?

No answer. Hero's chest his rising and falling really fast, moving only inches each time. He noticed the few pieces of skin that he could see was too pale and sweaty.

Villain gently begin to took Hero's helmet off.

Hero raised his arm to prevent it.

-No~ don't.

-It's me, Tommy, I need to take your helmet off, you seem struggle breathing properly with it...

-Sa~Sammy?

-Yes, it's me, no one else can see us, trust me. Said Villain soothingly.

Hero let go of Villain's arm, his own arm falling on the ground loudly.

Villain managed to slowly take of the helmet.

Hero's face was white as sheets. His cracked lips shivering like his all body. Sweat was literally dripping from his forehead.

His breathing was too fast, rattling, wheezing.

Their eyes sweeping everywhere, loosing focus. Blinking longer than it normally takes.

- Tom? Are you with me here? Villain asked shaking Hero's cheeks softly. He was getting more and more worried.

- 'Am? ~ Silberm'n... Hero mumbled.

Silberman? The high school nurse? What the fuck was he talking about?!

- What happen' to you?! What's wrong?!

- n'thing... Can't breathe...

- You idiot, you can't answer "nothing" And " I can't breathe " In the same sentence! Yelled Villain.

- 'op screamin'... Groaned Hero, grimacing and imperceptibly moving his head away from Villain.

- Look at me Tom. Said Villain while checking Hero's forehead's temperature after quitting his gloves. You're burning up! He added.

Hero's eyes couldn't stay fixed on Villain. They kept fluttering away.

- You're coming with me. I'm not letting you die in here. Said Villain, beginning to raise Hero's Back with one arm.

- 'ome... Hero blown, his head lolling limply with the movement of his upper body.

-Yes, don't worry okay? Try to stay awake, we are at my base in a minute. Tried to soothe Villain in hero's hear while putting his other arm under Hero's knees.

He stands up. Hero's eyes widen in agony with his moved wounds and broken ribs, before rolling back.

- hgn! No Sam 'lease, hff" Hero puffs before passing out. His head lolling on Villain shoulder as he began to walk towards his base.

- Who did this to you?... Gonna fuckin' murder them...Villain whispered in the night.

Hero doesn't wake up when Villain lay him on his table to undress him... Well more cut of his clothes off... He's now naked on Villain's table. Shivering and spamming against his wooden table.

Villain needs hero to wake up in order to assess his injuries.

He already sees a wound that looks infected.

As if he couldn't take care of it. It wasn't even stitched...

He moved a little bottle under Hero's nose.

"Hey, wake up Tommy. Come on, open your eyes." Villain say while shaking Hero's shoulder.

It work a little to well. Hero jerks and scream before sobbing, trying to touch his shoulder, only to scream again as his broken ribs are disturbed by his movement. His hand fall limply on the table. Hero gasps while his eyes are rolling back again.

-No, no! Need you to stay awake! Tell Villain while putting Hero's face in his hands and shaking a little.

-hur~ hurts... Hero say with broken voice.

- I know buddy... Villain bit his lips with compassion. But I need to know where you're hurt to fix you up...

-Just sleep... Sobbed Hero, tears rolling on his hot cheeks

- Soon Tom... Villain tried to soothed him by stroking his hair out of his face. Now, does this shoulder hurts? He asked while touching the shoulder on which Hero had fall earlier.

-Arg! Fuck yeah! Stop! Yelled Hero. This time, pain seemed to waked him up.

- I think it's dislocated.

- Sweet! Now get out!

- It's my place... Replied Villain teasingly before Parcouring Hero's Arms and legs with the tip of his fingers. Nothing except bruises.

Hero was only breathing faster and faster. Taking less air with each gasps. Stars dancing before his eyes. Sobbing and groaning between his teeth. Clenching his fists.

Villain moved to Hero's ribs. Applying a little pressure on every one of them.

At some point, Hero jerked and vomited bile before opening his mouth to scream, only to struggle taking his breath.

-Ngrbl~ 'top! Tried Hero

-Can't. Replied Villain softly, continuing to asses the number of broken and cracked ribs.

By the time he finished counting them ( 3 broken and 5 cracked on his left side) Hero wasn't really here anymore. He was babbling and sobbing incoherently. White and clammy skin. He seemed too much in pain to breathe or even think. Spasms jerking his body against his will. Hurting him even more.

-You're badly wounded... Whispered Villain more to himself.

- Sa~ Sammy, can't- 'nt brea- Hero's tried. gulping for some tiny amount of precious and unreachable air. Panic in his unfocused eyes who tried to fix his old friend.

- I know. I got you. You're safe. Villain said to him, gently applying an oxygen mask on his face.

Hero's eyes widen in surprise before closing slowly. His body beginning to fall limply again and relax as oxygen was filling his cells again.

Soon he was dead to the world and Villain begins to wash him gently with wet cottons and disinfectant, sew him up, put his shoulder back in place, bandaging him, and finally, applying fresh tissues all over him to make his fever drop a little.

When he wakes up again, bandages are all over he can see on his chest and belly... It's hurt...There is something warm in his hand... He looks. Sam?! Sammy is holding his hand while sleeping next to him... What happened?... Yes, Big Villain... He was sick and went for a fight anyway... He had lost? Sam had found him?

He try to move and regret it. Groaning in pain.

Villain wakes up too.

- Don't try to move... You're pretty messed up.

Villain say while scrubbing his eyes with his free hand. Once he noticed that he was still holding Hero's hand, he blushes and remove it.

-'t 'pen? Words comes weird from Hero's dry mouth.

Villain helps Hero to sit a little.

Hero his hissing and sight with pain.

-Here. Drink and swallow that up. Said Villain after giving him a glass of water and some pills.

Hero is far to weak to even rise his arm more than a few inches.

Villain sigh and put the pills in Hero's mouth without ceremony before putting the cup of water on his lips.

Hero struggle to swallow and cuffs a little before sipping the rest of the glass.

- Now, tell me who hurt you so bad? Said Villain with a sparkle of anger in his eyes.

[doodle-scrapyard]

i am knocking on your window PLEASE do tell us more abt the demon au it looks so epic,,

watch out bro u hav unlocked: a lot of talking (stolen directly from me rambling to andy in dms w/some additions & edits)

Basic concept behind it is that demons will form pacts w/people to get stuff/favors/stronger/just for fun/really depends on who you're asking 

There's 3 main distinctions of demon with a bunch of subclasses that are self explanatory once u hear em so I won't really elaborate on individual powers w/exceptions. ANYWAYS 3 main distinctions are elementals(your lights, your fires, your waters, your winds etc), animalistics(birds, dogs, cats, sheep, etc) and our lovely exception, the Unmentionable(who's only got 2 subtypes: void, who are unstable and usually violent, and undead, who are bad to be around bc they're breaking nature more than everyone else). Generally labelled as unmentionables bc you're Not Supposed To Make Pacts With Them, reason being that they usually have dangerous tradeoffs no matter what you're looking for. 

That's not to say that animalistics and elementals are exempt from asking for some serious stuffs in their pacts, it's just that unmentionables have a high kill rate on whatever human they make deals with. 

Then??? The benefits??? You get to borrow powers from your pacted demon (and take on some of their characteristics temporarily) nd go wild. I'll figure out the logistics of this later just know it's a thing mostly fr me going hoghgoghgohgo design....

OKAY NOW FOR HERMITS. I haven't written about everyone but so far so far, stress is an ice elemental who partially wanted a bestie and partially wanted to get stronger so she traded iskall an literal eye-for-an-eye so they could travel together and do sparring w/hermits. They're like the model elemental example djvdksbdkdg 

Mumbo is a birdie animalistic boyo. Grian won't say why he pacted w/mumbo but says mumbo is a big fat liar bc mumbo always says it's bc grian needed a smart person around. Grian doesn't call up mumbo often to use his abilities but when he does it's for flying. We love these idiots. 

REN. Ren. First problem child. He found Doc one day on the verge of turning into stardust and made an impulse decision pact. Here's the catch: Doc is an unmentionable. Specifically a voidy* boy. Doc wasn't always an unmentionable, he was caught up in a whole mess and (of course it's nho backstory) lost the rest of his friends. Doc asked ren to help him find the nho again, and ren gets to have cursed forbidden powers. Hooray for severely unfair trade offs! *void unmentionables are extremely unstable and prone just, falling apart completely. v powerful but basically held together by duct tape & staples without an anchor point (like how doc has ren)

Joe is also a problem child. He likes collecting things and undead unmentionables tend to bind themselves to objects and spring a pact on whoever picks them up. So of course Joe finds cleo in a shipwreck and she's like "pact motherfucker" expecting him to be japed into doing crazy shit and he's like "only if you help me with writing" and so now Joe just casually has access to one of the most dangerous form of demon magic and uses it to make narrative poems.

now onto new stuffs I didn't ramble about to andy!

zedaph is fully aware that youre not supposed to pact w/2 demons at once bc uh, the toll it takes on ur body in relation to energy output+having to deal with 2 promises hanging over you is Kind Of A Thing. zedaph said “okay but now I have TWO friends” and he only regularly passes out. impulse is an elemental electic boyo & tango is a fire elemental. impulse has cool dragon wings and zedaph borrows that OFTEN for funsies. zedaph is barred from formal sparring because he double dipped on pacts and is frankly kind of op

 wels… welsy also double dipped on pacts . its rly funny tho? for him its actually hilarious. he wants to become this really epic fighter who has a bunch of power & clout but hes more like a glass cannon who immediately just drops the moment a fight is over. it also doesn't help that jevin(who is a lovely water elemental) is viciously apathetic abt fighting. like yeah sure dude I will lend u my power but ur not gonna be able to do anything cool about it. biffa on the other hand wels almost never wants to ask for bc 1 biffa b koala animalistic & is asleep 90% of the time and 2 he goes ham cazy cazy and tends to destroy everyone in a 5 meter radius even if they were an ally. of course this isn't biffas default but how would YOU feel if you were sleeping and someone was loudly shouting for you to start being violent . I would make wels go sicko mode as a revenge. that's what you get for not letting me nap motherfucker

xisuma. xisuma never pacted with any demon according to everyone, but false kinda knew a bit more? xisuma was obsessed with trying to CREATE a demon. of course, what ended up happening was him doing a lot of dangerous deals with unmentionables, before disappearing completely. falsie kinda watched him spiral into nothing but a demon himself. who knows where he is now

anyways false is pacted w/python and theyre an exploring duo & false always comes back to home base w/a bunch of cool shit to trade with the others

uhhhhhh (does a lil dance) yeah yhats what I got

[johannesviii]

Top 10 Personal Favorite Hit Songs from 1992

This list was incredibly difficult to make and some cuts were made. Using both the US and the French year-end charts also made this list way more interesting than I anticipated.

Also, you will hate me for all eternity. For various reasons, actually.

Disclaimers:

Keep in mind I’m using both the year-end top 100 lists from the US and from France while making these top 10 things. There’s songs in English that charted in my country way higher than they did in their home countries, or even earlier or later, so that might get surprising at times.

Of course there will be stuff in French. We suck. I know. It’s my list. Deal with it.

My musical tastes have always been terrible and I’m not a critic, just a listener and an idiot.

I have sound to color synesthesia which justifies nothing but might explain why I have trouble describing some songs in other terms than visual ones.

Honorable mentions to Back to the Hotel by N2Deep, Le Chat by Pow Wow, and November Rain by Guns N Roses. That last one is objectively great but was never my thing, for some reason.

The only reason Bohemian Rhapsody isn’t on this list is because it’s a re-release and I decided it wouldn’t count because the list was already VERY difficult to make without even including it.

If the year had been as wretched as 1990 was, I would probably have counted it, though.

10 - Under the Bridge (Red Hot Chili Peppers)

US: #8 / FR: Not on the list

I respect this song more than I enjoy it, and I’ve never been a fan of this band (I know. I know. Keep your rocks to throw them at me later. I swear it’s gonna be worth it), but listen. I have to acknowledge quality when I hear it

9 - Jump Around (House of Pain)

US: #24 / FR: Not on the list

I don’t have anything particularly interesting to say about that one, it’s energetic, it’s fun, it kicks some serious ass. That looped high pitched noise might have been annoying for a lot of people but I thought it was fine.

8 - Baby Got Back (Sir Mix A Lot)

US: #2 / FR: Not on the list

Actual critics have already written long thinkpieces about this song and why it’s so important in the cultural landscape but frankly, I just like it because it’s a lot of fun and because that beat is fantastic.

Yes. I’m putting the ass anthem higher than the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

No, I insist, don’t throw your rocks yet, save them for later.

7 - Beyond My Control (Mylène Farmer)

US: Not on the list / FR: #59

Just imagine what these lists would look like if I was STILL a fan of this singer. That is a terrifying thought.

Anyway. That’s the paroxysm of her goth phase, featuring murder, wolves and possible witchcraft, and yet another not safe for work music video, and she had nowhere else to go in that direction. And she mostly crashed and burnt.

She’ll be back later, unfortunately for all of you and for my poor brain trying and failing to ignore her songs like the multiple calls of a vengeful ex.

6 - Paradoxal Système (Laurent Voulzy)

US: Not on the list / FR: #94

We’ve already reached the songs I genuinely love. In a more mediocre year, this could have easily taken the top spot and it’s only #6 here.

This song’s melody has a weird contrasted watercolor-like gradient as a background and its colors are very, very strange and it would be enough to land it here but the lyrics are also pretty nice, something about a long distance relationship that works better from far away than in person, and the more apart these two are, the more in love they are, which sounds like a receipe for disaster and makes it way more interesting than your standard Voulzy love song. Listened to it quite a lot when I was around 15.

5 - The Show Must Go On (Queen)

US: Not on the list, I REPEAT, NOT ON THE LIST / FR: #10

You can thank the French charts because otherwise this wouldn’t be on this top 10 at all. I actually couldn’t believe it wasn’t on the US year-end chart. Like? Really?? You found a hundred songs better than this one in a single year? How???

I have nothing to say about it. You all know it, you all love it, let’s move on.

4 - Sweet Lullaby (Deep Forest)

US: Not on the list / FR: #92

Aaaaand we’ve now officially entered the “played that song on a loop for hours” category. The album too, actually.

It’s the perfect balance between calm enough to listen to while working and energetic enough to enjoy it while walking. Also I’ll let Wikipedia say the most interesting thing about it:

The song is based around a traditional Baegu lullaby from the Solomon Islands called “Rorogwela”, and uses a vocal sample originally recorded by ethnomusicologist Hugo Zemp in 1970 and later released by UNESCO as part of their Musical Sources collection. The lyrics refer to a young orphan being comforted by his older brother despite the loss of their parents.

Loved it way before I even knew that, but still. Good.

3 - Smells Like Teen Spirit (Nirvana)

US: #32 / FR: #6

You knew this was coming. Remember how enormous the impact of that song was? I mean, look at its placement on the US year-end chart. Wow.

Ok. Now look at its placement on the French year-end chart.

Yepppp.

Why isn’t it higher on MY list, you ask? Overplay from the radio and overexposure from years of being an edgy angsty kid, mostly, but also the fact it’s a mostly meaningless roar of anger. A very powerful and cathartic roar of anger, mind you, but still. Also my ex significant other/best friend (insert here the “It’s Complicated” fb relationship status) when I was 16 absolutely adored Nirvana and there’s some bagage attached to this song for me.

Even taking all that into account, the fact I’m putting two songs above Smells Like Teen Spirit should be enough to permanently revoke my punk card.

Especially when you’ll see what these songs are. Be prepared.

You aren’t.

2 - Rhythm is a Dancer (Snap)

US:  #75 / FR: #2

SEE. I told you my favorite Snap song was yet to come. You can throw the rocks now. I’m ready.

The funniest thing about this is that I don’t have anything to say about this song. Yes the rap bridge is terrible. But this is extremely good 90s dance music and I’m a sucker for that, as the next lists will probably demonstrate.

Now that you’re out of rocks to throw at my face, we can proceed.

Because.

Uh.

Here goes nothing.

1 - Friday I’m in Love (The Cure)

US: #71 / FR: Not on the list

A Real Critic(tm) would tell you that this is the worst Cure single ever and that it is a complete sell-out and that it is cutesy and stupid and OH MY GOD YOU’VE PUT THIS ABOVE NIRVANA WHAT THE F█CK

But you know what makes a cute and silly happy song better? When it’s sung by a band who’s mostly making vaguely angsty, mostly slow music and who’s members look like they slept in a bin and put on their make up at the bus stop. It sounds happier than ever (the music video doesn’t hurt either, it always makes me smile). We need more music like this and I will never get tired of this song. This is the sound of being in the gutter and wanting to die and suddenly seeing a really dumb and cute thing that makes you forget you're sad for about three minutes, and for a moment everything is ok again. Like, look, a bird! OH. A CAT. That song I like is on the radio. Someone gave me a free cookie. Holy shit it's FRIDAY

So... YES. I’m putting the silliest, happiest, cutest Cure hit ever above Nirvana. I know. It’s absolutely outrageous.

Fight me. In. The Pit.

Be careful though, I have a tambourine and I won’t hesitate to use it.

Next up: Another top ten where some painful cuts had to be made to make room for songs nobody is gonna defend in the year of our lord 2019 except the OP

[ur-mom-kayn]

Loyalty Chapter 36: The Conference

Kayn Pov

"Shit, I'm so sorry for what happened to you. Damn ... you have to hate me from the bottom of your heart." "Nonsense! Kayn, no one can care for his origins. It's only important what you make of your life. You deliberately chose against Noxus as soon as you had the opportunity." Kayn just felt shitty. He hated his blood more than anything else. Even though he seems very much in love with himself, he hated himself for his origin. He still finds it difficult to claim to be Ionian. It would simply be a lie. "The fact remains that I killed Ionier. Innocent and good people. Even if I did not kill your girlfriend, maybe I killed another man's girlfriend. I'm no different than these monsters." Kayn rarely looked so depressed.

Akio recognized his desperation. He put an arm around Kayn's shoulders and pulled him closer to him. "Shit Akio. Why are you just such a good big brother? You would have the right to treat me like the last bit of filth, but instead, you try to cheer me up as you tell me your tragic story. Crap! Besides Zed, you were my greatest teacher. Except for the little squabbles, you've always treated me fairly, though I have the fucking face of a Noxian." "Yes, but a very pretty face." Akio desperately smiled at Kayn while his little brother pulled on his knees and tried his face to hide. "Honestly, I should have been a much better brother to you. I should have stood up to Zed more than he gave you house arrest. I tried to convince him to release you, but he did not listen to me. Do you know Kayn, I never cared about your origin. You are my little brother like everyone else. You are the only family I have. And when I see one of my brothers suffer, it hurts me too. I promise you that I will protect you at this conference, even though it will be the last thing I do."

Kayn could barely believe what Akio was saying to him. He did not know this side of him. No way the people of the order are cruel monsters. The order is a brotherhood. The fact had lost sight of Kayn lately. Since Rhaast ... Now stop it! I am always to blame for your miserable life. Your brother is trying to tell you all the time that he cares about you and the entire order. Now, raise yourself again and tell him how thankful you are. Rhaast was right for once. Kayn raised his head and sought the hug to Akio. Somewhat perplexed, his opponent also accepted it. "Thank you. Thank you for allowing me to be your brother. I never want to disappoint you and the others again. We have to rock the conference. We must ensure that the Order of Shadow is recognized as part of Ionia. I do not want to see any victims on our site anymore. We need an alliance, otherwise, Noxus overruns us sooner or later. We know that they are not sticking to the League's peace agreements. But we. It is our duty tomorrow to let the cat out of the bag. Unfortunately, I am not the best speaker. I hope you can help me."

Akio pushed his little brother closer to him so he lay on top of him. This closeness was unusual, but not unpleasant. "Kayn, I do not think it would be a good idea to start talking in the middle of the conference. I'll only talk when I'm asked." "And what do you think you think, should I do?" "What you do best. Just be charming. Wrap the old bags around your finger and do not stir. If something happens, I will protect you. You can trust me 100%." Kayn looked up at his brother and smiled at him. "That's why I ordered you here too. I like to go on missions with you. It's lame because it's so boring, but I know I'm safe." "Yes ... Hey, look! Master Zed has an Ace. Is that good?" Akio pointed a finger at the screen. Kayn immediately looked at the replay. "Yes, his triple kill allowed him to score an ace, so his team can now push the base through. The nexus will fall now. He will be with us in about 10 minutes. We should have a concrete plan by then." "I felt I did not understand a word. However, we have a plan. I'll shut up and you're just the dream of all your mother-in-law. Sounds good, right?" Kayn took a seat next to Akio again before Zed would catch them. He definitely did not want to send false signals to his lover, even though this intimacy between Akio and him was purely fraternal.

A few minutes later, Zed appeared in his room. "What? Are you both peacefully in a bed? That I may still experience the day." Zed took off his blades and sat on the edge of the bed. "We have set aside our differences." "I'm glad. And do you have a plan for tomorrow?" Both men bent to their Master. Actually, their plan was nothing to do with it. But Zed did not have to know that. "Well. How about food? I could order something." "Sounds nice, Master, but sometimes another thing. The conference is tomorrow. Where should I sleep?" "You can take my room. I'll just sleep with Zed ... " "KAYN, YOU IDIOT!" Zed screamed at him.

"What do you mean, you can sleep with Zed? Is something going on there?" "NO! This jerk wanted to say something completely different, Kayn agrees?" The young Akolyth was just overwhelmed with the situation. What should he say now? "Eh ... no, there's nothing going on." "And why did you suppose Zed just let you sleep with him?" "Well, I slept with him for about 5 months because I did not have a room." Zed slaps his hand against his iron mask. "Kayn, you've never been so stupid, you know that?" As Zed groused his student, Akio looked shocked. "Look, that means you know Master Zed's face. Is that so? And please tell me the truth." "Well done, Kayn. Now I have to tell the truth. Yes, he knows my face. But not because he did not have a room, but because he was like a son to me. He has known me since he was 12." "Your Seriousness, Master?! I founded the order with you. Why do not you trust me? How did I give you a reason to doubt?"

Kayn felt guilty. Zed's identity was a very sensitive topic and now he is confronted with it because of him. "Akio please believe me. It has nothing to do with you and my trust in you. I never really wanted to show my face to Kayn. I harmed him and he still held to me. I revealed to him out of guilt because I was afraid he would not trust me anymore." "And what about me? You just hurt me too. How do you want to regain my trust?" "Is my face so important to you?" "No. Actually, I do not care what my master looks like because I thought you would treat us all the same. But now I start to doubt. I know you have white-gray eyebrows and a scar on your left eye. What's so bad about showing me the rest?" "Nice ... whatever you want."

Just as Zed was taking off his mask Kayn pushed in between. "Are you really sure? I do not think Akio wants to force you to do that." "Kayn let it be good. We have known each other for so long. He's right. It just would not be fair. He gave up a lot for me. No one trained as hard as Akio. Unlike you, he had no talent. He always was too scared to fight. And now look at him. He is my 2nd strongest man and not without reason. He trusted me when I promised to make him powerful and now I should trust him. He will not hurt me." Zed removes the mask and pulls down his hood. Akio opened his eyes to his fluffy, white back. "Are you really sure? Just that you are ready to show me your face is enough for me. "Zed did not answer his student. Instead, he turned to look at Akio, so that he could inevitably look into his face. A very special moment for everyone present.

Akio seemed a bit shocked, but not horrified. What was going on in him? "So how old are you again?", Akio asked. "28 Why?" At the answer, Akio had to swallow briefly. "I beg your pardon? You were a child when you recruited me. How can that be?"  Do you understand now why I always wore a mask? No one would follow me if they knew what I looked like. I'm not ugly, but young and my look looks very demonic. I tried to find recruits like that, but I did not find one. It was not fair to think that you would not follow me if I did not wear this mask. But let's face it. If you had seen me with that face when you ran against me, would you still have been so confident in asking me to take your revenge?" "No ... I would not have trusted you to do that. I always thought that you are older than me and now I find out that you are 7 years younger. I am shocked. But also deeply impressed. I was surprised when Kayn led the order at the age of 15. But you founded it with ... 17-18 years. You two are real workhorses. I'm proud of you. I am honored to serve you. I do not really care about the look. Also that you have white hair, a few scars and shitty looking young. I'm grateful that you trust me, and I promise you I'll never abuse that trust." "I'm glad," Zed replied, grinning slightly. Even Akio had to start grinning inevitably.

After a leisurely meal, Zed played one or the other match in the summoners rift. When it was finally over, Zed and Kayn met him, Akio slept in Kayn's room for the night. The next morning they met again at Kayn.

Even though the strategy had been clarified so far, it was still unclear what they would look like. "Hey Kayn, I took some of the traditional kimono order. You should wear it." Akio handed him a beautiful violet kimono. "And what do we do with his hair?" Zed asked. "I thought about splitting his hair. The bottom side stays open and the top side back and braided." "Mmmh ... ", Zed thought about the suggestion. "I did not understand anything," Kayn stated. "If you want, I can style you. But only if I'm allowed to touch your hair." Akio suggested. Actually, Kayn just wanted to let Zed by his hair, but he did not believe that he had understood what Akio had imagined. "You may, but only this once. If you hurt me, you'll be a head shorter." "Do not worry, brother." Akio reached for Kayn's crest and set to work. After 5 minutes it was done and the hairstyle was sitting. Kayn had to admit that his brother got it. His braid was a lot cleaner than Zeds. Just as he was about to get ready, there was a knock at the door. Kayn went to the door and opened it to his guest. To his surprise, Shen stood at the door. "Hey Uncle Shen, how can I help you?" "I thought maybe to help you. I just wanted to inform you that the whole conference is only spoken ionic. I hope that will not be a problem for you. Zed said you could speak fluently." "Yes, even without an accent. Do not worry Shen. I'll understand what the old crackers have to say." "That's nice, but please do not call them old crackers. That's not good," Shen pointed out. Kayn was not that stupid again. Shen said goodbye to Kayn and went before.

After they got dressed, Akio and Kayn went to the conference room with the Rhaast and a few blades. The room was inside the Ionian district so outsiders were not allowed in. Unfortunately, exactly what both had feared happened. Two guards were at the door and caught the two. "What will that be, if I may ask?" One of the guards asked, "Ehm, we are from the Order of Shadow and we have been invited." Kayn replied in a quiet tone. "That may be, but you can not get in here with the weapons. Unfortunately, we have to confiscate them." "But Rhaast is more than just a weapon, I even have permission to take him anywhere in the Institution of War." "Everywhere except here," the guard countered, "And what do we do now?" Akio whispered to Kayn. "Plan B.," he replied, annoyed. "I'll call Varus, he's the only one I can give Rhaast now, just a moment." Kayn pulled out his phone and called Varus. Shortly thereafter, the Darkin appeared. "Thanks for coming so soon." "Yeah, I have a match right now, so just get him out of my room when you're done, good luck." Varus took his brother and disappeared as fast as he came. "And that was ...?" "One of Rhaast's brothers." Akio looked after Varus in surprise. "Did not think he looked so ... human." Kayn had to chuckle for a moment, remembering the words Rhaast always used to describe his pants. "Yes, so Varus devoured 2 people, so maybe that's why. But Aatrox is very different, he looks pretty scary, there's nothing human about him, like Rhaast, just bigger," Kayn said.

After that was settled, Akio also gave his weapons off. He did not need it anyway, as long as his counterpart had some. That's exactly what made Kayn so startled. He was sure the others were allowed to keep their weapons. When they were completely unarmed, they were finally allowed to pass. Kayn civilized opened the door and looked around first. The room was a huge conference table covered with name tags so each clan knew its place. Everyone was already sitting, except for Kayn. The guards stood behind one, so, unfortunately, Akio had to stand. Kayn sat down next to Master Wong and Master Shu. Both come from the northern provinces. Actually, Kayn knew that only because he has always taken care of history lessons. It was important for him to know the Ionian story. And now he just sat next to such great, historic personalities. "Hello, young man, who are you? I have never seen you before." Master Shu asked. Kayn smiled charmingly at him. "Pleased to meet you in person Master Shu. It's an honor to meet the man who was able to tame a real dragon. You have to be of real size. My name is Shieda Kayn. I represent the Order of Shadow, rather than Zed." When the name Zed fell, Kayn got all the attention of the table, and the old cracker at the bottom of the head table said, "You two are Zed's students? Underwear models?", Almost amused, stated the elder.

"Thank you for the compliment. In fact, every one of my brothers, including Zed, looks good. We pay great attention to our health and our appearance. I'm sorry if we cause confusion." Kayn just tried to be frank and smile constantly. Not so easy. "Speaking of the new ones, tell us why you would like to take the advice." Master Wong asked. "To be honest, we hope for a possible alliance with other provinces and clans. We are still very often attacked by Noxians on the Navoricoast. While we can ward them off, for the most part, it will only be a matter of time before they completely kill us." "Do not talk shit Kayn," Irelia intervened. "There is peace through the league. Noxus must not attack us." "Ah, is that so? What nonsense. Do you seriously believe Noxian itches such an agreement? We have a pile of documents in which it is recorded when and how often we have defended the coast. I alone have recently extinguished 100 at a stroke. The threat is real and unthinkable. You have to believe me." "I believe you Kayn," Shen said. "In fact, there has been an imbalance on the coast recently. Maybe that's because of the increase in Noxians." While everyone was brooding, Akio slowly leaned towards Kayn and whispered something in his ear. "Even if it does not look that way at first glance, they are all armed. So watch what you say."

Kayn nodded and continued. "So what should we do about the Noxians? We can not tribe alone on the coast." "That may be, but I hope you understand that under no circumstances we want to start another war. Without proof, we can not attack Noxus," said one of the elders. "So what should we do? Spying on the Noxians?" Karma asked. "There is a possibility that they might hold council meetings like us. It would be possible to eavesdrop on them," suggested Master Yi. "Not a good idea. How should we do that? Maybe they will discuss in oldnoxic. It's impossible for us to understand a word," Shu explained. "That does not necessarily have to be. Kayn could spy on them," Shen suggested. Kayn immediately lost his cool expression and opened his eyes wide. "What the fuck Uncle Shen? How do you know that I am just made for this job?" "Well, on the one hand, you can not only run unnoticed through walls, but you can also stay in it. Besides, you can understand oldnoxic." Suddenly all eyes are on Kayn again. Shen, the jerk.

"That is absurd. I can not speak the language. There's no reason to." "Sure, you're a Noxian by birth." Kayn's heart stopped for a moment. For so many years, he tore his ass off to be one of them, and now everyone sees him as a monster again. As if that was not bad enough, Akali suddenly lunged at Kayn. She jumped onto the conference table and aimed her blade at Kayn's throat. Just before the blade could hit the young acolyte, Akali stopped. The Shadow Owner was just up.

[blessuswithblogs]

The Forest, Subnautica, and Survival: The Wages of Building a Cool Tree Fort

Spoiler Warning for both games as the article goes on! Do exercise caution.

I love survival games. That's just kind of a part of how my taste in games has developed over the years. I adore Minecraft, Terraria, Starbound and any number of creatively inclined "build and explore" games. I could think of a couple of reasons for this, the most prominent being that this kind of game is extremely good at making incremental progress feel rewarding, and that I've always had a fascination with habitation in extreme environments like the deep sea, space, and Magical Block Land where the Cacti Explode. Lately, I've been playing an streaming both Subnautica and The Forest, two games that belong in a sort of subset of the genre: Survive and Escape.

Both games start out with a cataclysmic (space)plane crash that deposits you and a number of other doomed survivors in a hostile world that wants to eat you. With Subnautica, you crashland on planet 4546B, an ocean world in which something has gone terribly wrong with the ecosystem. The Forest instead pops you out on a vaguely Canadian peninsula out in the middle of nowhere and cannibals kidnapped your son. Subnautica, as it is in most respects, has the more solid premise of the two. The Forest can scratch a kind of The Hills Have Eyes itch if you have one, but the overall setup of the game is sssssslightly too racially charged for my tastes.

In deference to alphabetical order, let's discuss the Forest first. Of the two games, it has the more robust crafting system. While it has overall less moving parts than Subnautica, you can still build a cool houseboat and you have a great deal of freedom in the overall shape and function of your buildings. In fact, that's originally what sold me on the game - I found the idea of having to build a base not only capable of sustaining you but also withstanding attacks from monsters to be very appealing. Base building can take a long time on your own (2 player co-op is a definite point in favor of the Forest versus Subnautica if you're one of those people that has to quantify the better game) but there are some things that can speed it along and make you feel like a regular Swiss Family Robinson - with all of the cultural baggage that entails. Completing a fort and finally creating a safe haven from the mutant hordes is a rewarding feeling, but it is one that the game almost immediately undermines.

The Forest is a game working at cross purposes with itself. It gives you the tools to create elaborate custom buildings or entire complexes if you so choose to do so, but there is also The Narrative, and The Narrative is most insistent on Finding Timmy. Timmy, your son from the beginning of the game, is assumed to be the player's top priority, but in actuality it's really easy to just forget about him. The game gives you a checklist of things to do as a sort of compromise between total freedom and a more linear experience. Most of the items on this list are some variation of "explore this cave". Cave Exploration is kind of where The Forest fragments into two separate halves: the crafty buildy survivey game, and a different sort of first person metroid slash cannibal murder simulator. The minute you enter a cave you basically go completely blind and have to rely on a variety of deeply inadequate light sources just to fumble your way around. The gameplay loop is simple - go into a cave, kill all the mutants, find a point of interest, go as far as you can until you find an impassible barrier, then retreat back to the surface. The points of interest are often interesting, to their credit, vaguely telling a story about A Deep Secret Beneath the Peninsula as you find various photographs and torn magazine clippings to gawk at for a few seconds, but it is impossible to shake the feeling that these spelunking expeditions have nothing to actually do with any of the other things you've been doing. You can find a number of useful objects in the caves - a flashlight, a map, a compass, a fine piece of hanzo steel - that will make your life easier, but are primarily designed to let you go into the caves Better and Deadlier.

Here's where we get to this stark divide: you don't actually have to make a base in the first place. All of the fantastic tools The Forest gives you to make your own log cabin city are, beyond Basic Fire and Temporary Shelter, utterly superfluous to actually progressing in the game. The weird thing about the caves is that they are actually borderline overflowing with supplies. The Forest has you spend your first couple of hours thinking that you're gonna really to have to grapple with the land in a titanic struggle for survival but actually you can just go into a cave and find like six respawning boxes of Fun Drink! soda and Snack brand snacks which work just as well if not better than like. Hunting for food and purifying your own water. Sleeping is entirely optional, too, something that becomes readily apparent down in the caves where it's always pitch black regardless of the day night cycle. You can easily manage just by building the occasional temporary shelter to save your game or just find one of the many tents already in the game world. There's a whole complex system of substats and sanity meters that you can basically just ignore as you go careening through the depths.

Progress in the caves is gated by two things: environmental obstacles, and enemy mutants. You will occasionally find a novel map feature like a climbable wall or an underwater pool too deep and dark to go swimming through without some help that will keep you from moving forward. You can blow up walls occasionally too, but not often or clearly indicated enough to make that feel like a genuinely well implemented system. To overcome these obstacles, all you have to do is find the right items - the climbing axe and the rebreather will let you go basically anywhere, once you get your hands on them. The world of The Forest is big, and it plays a dirty trick on you - most of the stuff aboveground is useless bullshit for idiots. Basically everything you want or need is down below, and if it takes you a while to realize that, I imagine that it would be pretty frustrating to feel like you had basically accomplished nothing for the last however many hours of exploring the lush but ultimately very empty forest floor.

Speaking of the game playing dirty tricks on you, there is one more instance of needing an item to get to where you need to go. But instead of some neat piece of exploration gear or a Really Big Stick of Dynamite, it's a keycard. The door that requires a keycard is at the bottom of an incredibly long and grueling run through several cave systems that empty out into the bigass sinkhole that dominates the landscape and taunts you with secrets and mysteries from basically day one. The keycard, regrettably, is not nearby. It's halfway across the world hidden in one of the many Super Fucked Up and Scary mass graves the mutants like to keep in their cave systems, requiring either foreknowledge or impressive pixel hunting tendencies to find beforehand. The game gives you a clue where to find it in the form of an old photo - located right before the door itself. It is a slog and a half, to put it bluntly, and since this is a survival game, you're working on a constantly ticking timer of hunger and thirst, and this particular cave system is quite stingy with soda and snacks where the other caves were giving them out like it was an afterschool baseball game. It might have actually been faster to simply reload a save file from before I even attempted the journey and just go get the keycard first, but I didn't think of that at the time. I'm harping on this because it's a huge departure from the fairly natural flow of cave exploration that came before and also a HUGE waste of time. Like, why. Fuck you, that's why.

The endgame sequence is kind of a mess, basically the devs realizing that the game had been in alpha for like literally 3 years and they needed to have some kind of conclusion in place for the full release. While I have no doubt that through the game's development history they had been most diligent about slowly developing and uncovering secrets about what's really going on in The Forest, the actual part where they have to put their money where their mouths are and provide some answers it's just. Kind of. Ehhhhhhhh. Basically you tumble headfirst into a SeCrEt PhArMaCeUtIcAl LaBoRaToRy where they were toying with ancient alien artifacts to create anti-aging cream or some bullshit which, somehow, ended up creating a race of weird mutants without private parts except in certain individuals who have like. ALL of the private parts and probably more besides. The Sahara Labs company even had this fucking supervillain Relic Laser System that shot down passing planes so they could abduct more test subjects away from prying eyes and honestly its like if you want to be that evil and kill people just jacking up the price of insulin is way more efficient and easier on the PR department.

Basically it boils down to you finding Timmy inside some alien bullshit device, dead as fuck, and pantomiming being very distraught about it. However, it comes to light that actually the machine he was hooked up to can bring people back from the dead in exchange for a sacrifice, so you continue deeper into the facility with even more murder than usual on your mind. You eventually find Megan Cross, the girl that Timmy's life force was used to bring back from the dead. Unfortunately, because ancient alien technology never works right, probably by design because ancient aliens are fuckers, Megan mutates into this fucking Resident Evil limbs monster and you have a fucking final boss fight. I aallllmost put the game down there because like. Seriously? Seriously seriously this is what we're doing? I have to use this game's janky ass combat systems to kill an angry little girl monster that can kill you in like 5 seconds if you get within 5 feet? I stuck it out because the devs were kind enough to just kick you back outside the Big Final Boss room with a health and energy penalty whenever you died (which was frequently). Eventually the thing dies and you go rushing back to Timmy with the corpse in hand. But, alas! The machine requires a living subject! After that you just kind of shuffle through some more cave systems with spooky skeletons in them until you find the control tower for the Airplane Killing Laser Beam and you are presented with... a choice.

You can either shoot down a passing airplane to kidnap a viable sample to resurrect Timmy, dooming every single passenger to a gruesome, cannibal related death... or you can just shut the damn thing off, which is really the only reasonable thing to do. Like, who the fuck even is Timmy? I don't know Timmy. Timmy can fuck off. Timmy wants to guilt me for building a gazebo? He can stay dead. It's the Fallout 4 problem all over again - you can't just take it for granted that the player is going to care about someone because you screamed "THIS IS YOUR SON" in the first five minutes of the game and then immediately deprived you of any meaningful interactions with them. It is the unfortunate tendency of parents to believe that their children are things owned by them, brought to the logical extreme. You have no reason to feel particularly compelled to rescue either of these kids aside from the simple fact that they're Yours, whatever that means. So when Shawn is actually the sleazy, amoral director of science fascists, fuck him. When bringing Timmy back to life means putting somebody else through what I just went through, keycard bullshit and all, fuck him! Enough! Time to move on! So I turned off the machine and escaped through some more caves and then I burned my picture of Timmy and got the crafting blueprints to a Timmy effigy made of cloth and sticks which was, admittedly, kind of hilarious. You also get one for your dead wife, which is just labeled "Wife". That was less hilarious and more of another look into the mindset of the people who make these games and why they are a problem. Also you can find another alien obelisk in a boat and open up a door to find a god mode sphere or something but I did not have the patience to go do that.

So I've been down on this game quite a bit, but I actually enjoyed my time with it a lot because what it gets right, it gets very right. Plumbing the dark depths of the cave systems with nothing but a shitty lighter for illumination and an airplane axe for protection, straining your ears for any noises that might break the deafening silence of the underground, constantly scanning the edge of your vision range for the signs of movement in the shifting shadows - it's a fantastic horror experience that a lot of games could learn from. Similarly, the crafting and survival elements, superfluous as they are, are also a lot of fun. You can hunt game for meat and skins, find berries and learn to tell the difference between the poisonous ones and the edible ones, make a bunch of improvised weapons like a fishing spear and a shitty bow and arrow set, build fires to cook food and boil water to make it safe to drink - all of these systems are well thought out and fun to engage with. Like I mentioned earlier, base building is fun and The Forest gives the experience a very down to earth feel by having you chop down trees and transport the timber by hand. You can also build a wide variety of traps and defensive structures, but that brings us to another major sticking point. The Forest wields silence and darkness like an assassin's blade, but falters completely when it comes to actually fighting things.

Combat. Do you ever wish a game didn't have it? I do. A lot. The Forest is one of those games. Fighting the mutants that inhabit the peninsula is as tedious as it is distasteful. It's mostly just a bunch of wild flailing about with an axe or other bladed instrument in the general direction of the enemy. If you're feeling frisky you can use molotovs or poison arrows or even TNT, tactics that become necessary when fighting the game's Creepy Mutants (name not mine i swear). The Creepy Mutants are large, monstrous enemies usually comprised of several individuals fused together. They're big and tough and they have soooo much fucking health god christ ass. You can skin them and use their mutated hides as armor which is pretty metal but fighting them is just not fun. Which is the same for all the other enemies honestly. You just kind of get the enemy into a stunlock and try to finish them off before another mutant puts two and two together and stops running around in circles and actually tries to hit you. Your enemies are hindered by very curious AI and stunlock vulnerability, but to even things out you have to deal with some of the same vulnerabilities, as well as certain lighter related limitations when it comes to explosives and incendiaries that really makes using them a chore.

It feels odd to say this, but The Forest doesn't need its mutants. It's better off without them, to be frank. The dangers inherent in spelunking and surviving in a cold wilderness are more than sufficient to create a sense of vulnerability. Like if you really had to you could just put more crocodiles in the game and make them more aggressive, those fuckers hurt. The story wouldn't even have to change that much - the real movers and shakers of the plot aren't mutants at all. They serve very little purpose except to be the architects of a number of grisly tableaus we've already seen in other games with aspirations of environmental storytelling. There are no toilets in The Forest but if there were, by god would they just be filled to the brim with skulls. There's a severed head in a water cooler at one point. That's in the same spirit. And, of course, there's the elephant in the room: the mutants, as a concept, are deeply racist. Facing down a horde of hooting and hollering brown and black miscreants clad in tribal body paint and loincloths while brandishing various sticks adorned with skulls at you cannot be separated from our bloody colonial past and demonization of native peoples. It's just not happening. This game is about the White Man versus the Savage, whether or not the devs meant it that way. They probably didn't, trying to offer assurances that these aren't actually natives, they're mutant hell cannibals with no dicks. But like. Nah. Not buying it. The mutants will occasionally marshal a big attack on your base or settlement, bringing a big creepy mutant or two with them to try and knock down your shit. What should be one of the game's selling points is marred both by really unfortunate historical imagery and the fact that it's really hard to actually defend anything from getting broken because none of your weapons can actually hit straight down a wall without either lighting them on fire or blowing them up. If they really needed to have an enemy faction in the game, there are five million other angles of mutant they could have gone with - lizard men, tentacle monsters, psychic fuckers, zombies, a Mitch McConnel clone race - but the fact that they went with "tribals" instead of something even moderately less racially charged says a lot.

So that's The Forest! Promising game, fun for the most part, but intrinsically flawed in some very inescapable ways. What about Subnautica? Well, I have good news: Subnautica is much better. It starts the same way, with the spaceship the player is riding on suffering a catastrophic crash landing in an inhospitable world, with most of the other crewmen missing or just dead outright. You start with a life pod fabricator and a sassy corporate issue PDA to point you in the right direction, but aside from that, your only real goal is to survive. Crafting is much more hands off in Subnautica - it's handled almost entirely by way of fabrication stations where you input raw materials and it spits out a finished product in a very scifi way. The way you progress in Subnautica is quite organic: you find a recipe in your databanks you want to build, you go searching for the materials, and in doing so you uncover more of the world. You build an enhanced air tank to stay underwater for longer so you can go deeper and farther. You build a seaglide vehicle to go faster, you build a little underwater seabase to hold your growing collection of rare materials and creature eggs, and so on and so on. Unlike The Forest, where the survival aspects can be basically ignored, learning how to maximize and streamline your food, water, and power production is quite pivotal to getting anywhere.

There are a number of ways that Subnautica arrests your progress, from hostile megafauna to severe radiation leaks to hiding important blueprint fragments behind laser cutter doors. The big one, however, is depth. Appropriate for a game about the sea, I think. At first, depth functions as a barrier of how deep you can go before running out of air - the seas are pretty deep, and after some changes from beta, you can only have so many air tanks equipped at once. Once you learn how to get around that by making some sweet submarines, depth becomes a matter of water pressure. Oxygen is no longer a problem, but crush depth certainly is - take your seamoth below 200 meters and you start to have problems real quick. This necessitates a search for ways to better withstand the pressure. Subnautica is a masterclass in making incremental progress feel rewarding. Instead of having your numbers go up slightly, you get extremely tangible benefits from the various gear upgrades you create or find in the world. The Seamoth is both extremely fast and convenient for getting around and your only practical way to bring an oxygen generator with you, and installing a depth module just increases your freedom and utility that much more. Finally putting a Cyclops together is actually just building an almost self-sufficient mobile base. Even something as mundane as learning how to make a planter represents a big boost to your food production and can expand your operational range by a great deal.

Subnautica is a game that delights in its own world. The vibrant underwater ecosystems you explore and uncover range from beautiful to the slightly terrifying, but there is a genuine love of nature - even scary nature - evident in Subnautica that's infectious. Subnautica does not really have combat, as such. You have a survival knife and a couple of space age tools like the Stasis Cannon which you can use to defend yourself in a pinch, but there is no mutant menace to contend with on 4546B. Hungry Reaper Leviathans and Crabsquids, maybe, but wild animals are wild animals. No moral judgment is cast upon the Stalker's tendency to try and take a bite out of your ass. In fact, you can learn to pacify and even play with them by bringing them fish to eat or scrap metal to sink their teeth into. There is only one entity on the planet that is actively and determinedly hostile to the player, and it's a real fucker, but there's a good reason for it.

The reason for your unexpected visit to the ocean planet is revealed to be the work of a planetary quarantine system installed by Ancient Aliens (again) a long time ago to prevent the spread of a particularly virulent and deadly variety of bacteria. You gradually find evidence of the Kharaa bacteria and the involvement of a precursor civilization as you explore: certain fauna will be covered in green pustules, the PDA will inform you of the presence of infectious agents in the water and how some biomes are curiously lacking in biodiversity, and you'll occasionally find vents and structures of an obviously alien design. A refreshing thing about Subnautica's Ancient Aliens is that they aren't depicted as magic space gods. They have advanced technology compared to that of Earth's, but ultimately they were just some dudes who got caught on the wrong side of a very nasty bacterial plague and didn't quite figure out how to cure it in time. At this point, you have two goals: get rid of the infection, and find some way to disable the giant quarantine laser gun and get off the planet. Finding a cure for the kharaa bacteria requires going deep into the depths with a heavily armored PRAWN suit designed to withstand crushing water pressure and even the most angry and enormous of predators, where you can find a number of alien facilities using the abundant geothermal energy of the planet's magma layer. Finding a way off world involves putting on a radiation suit and exploring the wreck of the Aurora to both fix the catastrophic radiation leak and to get in contact with the home office, who in between ordering ham and cheese sandwiches are gracious enough to send you the blueprints for your very own interplanetary rocket ship.

Throughout all of this, you'll get intermittent distress calls on your radio giving you the coordinates to various points of interest like other lifepods and bits of the Aurora that were unceremoniously scattered to the four winds upon impact. You can also find evidence of people who came to this planet before you and learn their story from PDA logs and the condition of the temporary shelters they left behind. I am not especially fond of the whole audio log method of storytelling, but in Subnautica it's framed less as "the entire population of earth compulsively records their thoughts on tape recorders" and more "corporate issue malware will obsessively observe and catalogue all interactions between you and your fellow employees." There is a definite undercurrent of anti-capitalist criticism in Subnautica, from the Alterra Corporation's insistence on framing interpersonal relationships as business transactions to your PDA's intermittent reminders that all of the things that you are building to survive and get off the planet with are steadily incurring a ridiculous amount of debt to your employers due to exploitative contracting. It can get a little on the nose, but more and more I am finding that even the most on the nose satire is leaps and bounds more subtle and nuanced than actual reality so I can't complain too much.

As the game goes on, a rescue attempt by the Sunbeam freighter ship goes terribly awry when the quarantine enforcement platform blows it the fuck up and your own level of infection steadily progresses. You start to receive periodic telepathic messages from a mysterious being, who claims that it wants to help you. When you finally make your way through the briny Lost River and into the dangerous Active Magma Zone, you find the alien's primary containment facility housing a remarkable organism: The Sea Emperor. The Sea Emperor is an enormous leviathan class entity, twice the size of the gigantic magma spitting Sea Dragons hanging out nearby. However, like the enormous cetaceans of Earth, the Sea Emperor is an intelligent, sapient being that feeds by filtering microorgansisms from the surrounding seawater. The story of the last remaining Sea Emperor is a sad one, contained by the precursor aliens for over a thousand years in order to study the mysterious Enzyme 42 that it produced. This enzyme was the only compound they had ever found with the ability to neutralize the Kharaa virus, but due to the Emperor's advanced age and their inability to communicate with it, they reached an impasse. The Emperor was no longer capable of producing large amounts of the enzyme, and its eggs were trapped in a sort of indefinite stasis due to the conditions of the holding tank not being optimal for their hatching. So its basically been waiting all alone for a good millenium or so for somebody to come and help hatch its eggs.

Fortunately, the survivor of the Aurora's crash is a determined and compassionate soul, and by working together with the Sea Emperor, manages to put together a vial of artificial hatching enzymes by gathering samples of flora from the outside ecosystem. The eggs hatch, giving both the Sea Emperor species and planet 4546B writ large a chance at a future. The adult Emperor dies of Being Over a Thousand Years Old shortly after. Most likely, it was only its determination to see its children grow and flourish and save the planet that kept it going this long, so once that purpose was fulfilled, it finally felt able to go to its final rest. The Emperor is a philosophical individual, with complex ideas about other minds and the potential of life after death and reincarnation, idly wondering as it dies if it might come back as an ocean current or a tiny being that fits between the grains of sand. It's an affecting sequence that taps into a lot of our hopes for maybe one day being able to truly communicate with and understand our own huge marine life. Once the young are released into the wild, you follow them and obtain a sample of Enzyme 42, which completely cures you of the Kharaa infection. All that's left after that is to disable the quarantine platform and build the neptune escape rocket.

After you complete the rocket - an impressively large construction, even bigger than the Cyclops submarine - you are prompted to create a time capsule before you take off. The time capsule includes space for a few items you can leave behind , a screenshot, and custom text note. The idea is that other players might discover it on their adventures and find what you left behind, another surprisingly emotional touch to the game. Admittedly it was slightly ruined for me because when I exited the cockpit to go and take a screenshot the entire launch platform was flung into the sky for no reason, me along with it. I did have the presence of mind to take a  blurry screenshot of the several tons of plasteel sailing through the air as if by magic. We both eventually landed and I managed to climb back up and (properly) launch the rocket. As you leave the atmosphere, the spirit of the Sea Emperor contacts you one last time to thank you once again for giving its family a future. As the credits roll and you reenter Alterra space, your PDA happily congratulates you on making it back and assures you that you will be cleared to dock just as soon as your outstanding debt of several trillion credits is settled. As the music fades and you return to the main menu, you can't help but think: man, maybe I should have stayed.

It is this sentiment, I think, that truly separates the quality of the two games as experiences and statements on the human condition. The Forest presents you with a superficially beautiful peninsula swarming with Evil Tribal Cannibals that must be overmastered in order to rescue your darling son object, that exists to be exploited and despoiled in your quest to build a Sick Fort that isn't even really necessary. You can even get an achievement called "climate change" for cutting down 100 trees and like. Fuck off. Not funny. You can legitimately deforest huge swathes of the game world if you find the chainsaw and some fuel. In the Forest, you are an invading conqueror masquerading as a victim of circumstance. In Subnautica, you are an observer and survivor. The primary building material is titanium, which you get mostly from salvage from the Aurora, occasionally supplemented with some more exotic ores and corals found naturally on the seabed. The ecosystem of 4546B, even though it is devastated by plague, is bigger than you could ever hope to be. It's beautiful and fascinating and glorious, and the attempts that your predecessors made to exploit and subjugate it ended in abject failure. Your seabases are compact and efficient affairs, equipped with machinery for survival and research. The game specifically forbids you from building most kinds of weapons, citing a historical massacre that necessitated all weapon blueprints deadlier than the survival knife to be scrubbed from the database. Combat is fruitless and difficult, even in the PRAWN suit - it's better to just evade hostile fauna and slip by undetected with silent running. The only way to survive and escape is to work in concert with the indigenous life, not thoughtlessly destroy it.

I didn't expect, going in, to feel so compelled to compare and contrast these games, but when presented with the reality of the situation and how similar they really were, I didn't have much of a choice. They're almost dark mirrors of one another, the Forest presenting a Bad Future where the nazi sound designer from Subnautica was in charge of the entire project. I enjoyed the Forest, but there is a deep moral emptiness within it that I have trouble compartmentalizing, especially when Subnautica offers an alternative outcome that doesn't make me feel vaguely monstrous for playing it. Subnautica is, at its core, a more beautiful, more engaging, more thoughtful and even more frightening work than The Forest. The Forest comes close to offering a genuinely scary experience during the cave sections, but undermines its own premise by filling the haunting void beneath the earth with giggling naked canninbal men. The dark, trackless depths of the ocean, however, remain a fundamentally terrifying environment, populated by the strange and terrible lifeforms adapted to living deep beneath the crush depth of even the hardiest submarines. The Ghost Leviathans that lurk in the endgame areas and in the tremendously unsettling open ocean beyond the crater's edge are frightening to behold and terribly dangerous, but their presence is almost comforting, a reminder that other beings still exist in the lightless void. The hooting and hollering of The Forest's mutants simply cannot compare to the otherwordly cries of Subnautica's megafauna, and indeed, The Forest is at its most tense when all is silent.

I would be awfully interested in a game that took The Forest's robust crafting, building, and survival mechanics and transplanted them somewhere far away from the wretched peninsula and its ravening caricatures, perhaps a kind of Subnautica that took place in an alien jungle, or an earth jungle, for that matter. Anywhere less relentlessly ugly and hateful would be fine. Subnautica makes good on most of its lofty promises (except when it crashes. Stability is an area where The Forest has an unquestionable advantage) and presents a strong, unified experience. The Forest is a jumble of compelling systems mashed together in an unconvincing way with set dressing straight from the production of Birth of a Nation. A missed opportunity at best, an extremely questionable exercise in tone-deaf xenophobia at worst. I would be interested to know how the developers of the game justified their design decisions as not-racist, or if they even bothered. Subnautica is reflecting and uplifting, while The Forest, in all of its cynical attempts to push boundaries and put blood and titties on the screen, ironically only ends up feeling safe and derivative, contradicting itself and wasting the genuinely strong mechanics it developed. With certain statements from E3 about how certain developers try to distance themselves as much as possible from political statements while simultaneously creating deeply political games fresh in our minds, I think we should be more insistent than ever that this kind of cowardice is both ridiculous and transparently self-serving. All culture is political, because all human experience is political, inextricably intertwined with the struggles and conflicts between nations and groups that serve as the backdrops of eras. Subnautica knows this. The Forest either does not, or does not care.

[kurlyq722]

Excerpt for DHKY Ch. 44-’Til Death--Mercedes/Rachel Excerpt

When Mercedes did finally wake up, it was cuddled up next to the warm but empty expanse of pillow and blanket beside her. Still slightly disoriented, she felt around in the darkness for Sam, but couldn’t find his body in the emptiness. Before she could question his absence, her phone vibrated, for the second time, underneath her head. She fished out her cell from underneath her pillow with an annoyed groan, squinting at the bright display to search for a name before answering.

“Whoever the hell this is, why the hell are you calling me at….” Mercedes checked her phone display once more for the time. “Three thirty-five in the morning? Is everything okay?”

“Mercedes! The third most amazing thing in the history of amazing things happened to me today! Oh, and Happy Holidays, by the way.” Rachel always spoke in an out of breath rush whenever she was excited, like her emotions were running a physical marathon. “I just had to call someone and tell them immediately. I tried calling everyone else, but you were the first person that actually answered.”

“Because I was the only idiot that would answer a three-a.m. call from a private number.” Mercedes grumbled, sitting up to rest her back on the doorframe. “Why are you calling from a private number anyway?”

“Guess who’s phone I’m using to call you? And before you guess incorrectly, no, it’s not Barbra or Bette. But, it is another one of my favorite Jews! Can you guess?” Rachel asked eagerly. “I’m gonna tell you if you don’t guess it in the next five seconds.”

“I don’t really know, Rachel. My thoughts on show-biz Jews aren’t favorable at the moment.” Mercedes grumpily replied, side-eyeing her phone. “Who?”

“Fran Drescher!” A beat of confused silence from Mercedes followed. “Alright, I know what you’re thinking. Since when is Fran Drescher one of my favorite Jews? And your second question is probably, how in the world did I meet her, right?”

“Yes and yes.”

“Well, while I’ve never been a long-time fan of The Nanny, partly because of its mixed reputation in the Jewish community and partly because my dads wouldn’t allow me to have any Hasidic female influences in risqué clothing with a comedy show on CBS, I found one of her memoirs in this quaint little bookstore in Brooklyn called David’s Stars, which I thought was such a cute spin on star of David since, y’know, they only sell Jewish literature and memorabilia, which is where, interestingly enough, I found the best freshly baked Italian baguettes I’ve ever found in the entire city, and they go darling with this green tea no whip frappe that I found at this new coffee shop I’m obsessed with—“

“Just get to the point, Rachel!”

“Okay!” Rachel pulled the phone away from her ear in disgust. “Someone’s not a morning person, obviously.”

“No, I’m not a three-a.m. morning person, Rachel. There’s a difference.” Mercedes explained, in annoyed deadpan. “Get to the point.”

“Right. So, I made the move to New York after graduation, as you well know, and found an agent. I took a brief break from auditioning after Finn and I broke up, just to give myself a month or two to grieve, process, and journal about it for my future autobiography, and tried my hand at being a waitress at this cute little dining masterpiece called the Spotlight Diner in Manhattan. Apparently, lots of actors apply to work there, since a lot of the Broadway and Hollywood elite stop by to dine there. Well, sure enough, the illustrious Ms. Drescher shows up at one of my tables! Word on the street was that she was trying to do a one-woman musical based on the series, but it never quite hit the ground running in the way she’d hoped. Naturally, being ever the chameleon, I walked to the table with a tray of hot mugs of lemon water, cool and collected, and opened with a modest and sincere compliment of her book. I even made references and quotes to prove that I wasn’t just another actor fishing for an opportunity.”

“But, you are just another actor fishing for an op—“

“Ah, ah! She didn’t have to know that!” Rachel indignantly insisted. “We ended up hitting it off really well, thank you very much. So much so that she called my agency the next day and asked for me! She said that she really liked my look—which is something I’ve never heard in my life—and wanted me to come and audition for her!”

That little tidbit actually woke Mercedes up. “Rachel, that’s amazing! So I’m assuming you got the part for….whatever the audition was for?”

“Wait, Mercedes! Let me tell the story!” Rachel laughed, happy to hear that she was finally awake and engaged. “So, at first, the audition doesn’t give any details, just that it was some new pilot that Ms. Drescher was pitching and she wanted some fresh talent. Then, during callbacks, we had to read a monologue piece for this character named “Eve”. And I thought that name sounded a bit familiar, like I’d heard it recently. Then, it occurred to me, I heard that name on an episode of The Nanny I’d watched the night before! You know, for research.” It shamed Rachel to admit that she’d gone on an entire series binge the day of her initial audition. Loathe as she was to admit it, gaudily dressed and brash Fran Fine was her new life icon. “Eve was the name of her character’s daughter! By the time I finally put two and two together, Ms. Drescher herself pulled me aside and told me that, although they hadn’t done official calls yet, that I’d gotten the part of Eve! They’re doing a sequel series to The Nanny called The Babysitter, centered around her daughter, Eve of course, who wants to become a famous actress. To do that, she believes that she has to step out of her rich and lavish lifestyle and really slum it with the masses, to get an idea of what it’s like to be a real working class woman.”

“You were literally cast as a TV version of yourself. I love it.” laughed Mercedes. “No wonder you were perfect for the role.”

“Eve decides to go back to her mom’s old neighborhood in Flushing to babysit her childhood best friend Val’s five kids. Naturally, hijinks and hilarity ensue. I’m so excited! This is my first major comedic role! It’s not Funny Girl or Broadway, but it’s certainly something big!” Rachel squealed. “I asked Ms. Drescher to borrow her phone so I could make calls to my family and friends because my phone died. I better go soon, though. I’ve been locked in her dressing room, making calls for the past hour. She might grow suspicious.”

“That’s amazing, Rach. I’m so, so proud of you.” Mercedes smiled, stifling a yawn. “And I’m glad you’re handing the Finn breakup so well.”

“Yeah, well…..” Rachel paused, shrugging off the bit of melancholy that passed over her. “We’re going in different directions right now. He’s run off to backpack in Fiji, of all god-forsaken places, to try and find himself. I wanted to be here in New York, starting my career. If our paths are meant to cross again, I’m sure it will. And when you think about it, the thought of us just continuing after high school was a bit much. I mean, who really has a lasting relationship with their high school sweetheart?” Rachel gasped and quickly covered her mouth, catching her own error. “Shit, I didn’t mean it like that, Mercedes. You and Sam are obvious exceptions.”

“Oh, yeah. Yeah, I know.” But Mercedes’s reply was half-hearted and unconvincing, even to herself. She kept staring at the empty space and rumpled covers next to her, wondering where Sam had run off to. “Sam and I decided to get married this coming Monday, by the way. Did I tell you?”

“NO! No, you did NOT tell me, Mercedes Jones! Oh my god!” screamed Rachel, shrieking in excitement in Mercedes’s ear. “See? If I didn’t call you, I never would’ve known! You really need to start speaking up, girl.”

“Yes.” Mercedes rolled her eyes to the heavens. “Apparently, ‘not speaking up enough’ has become a new habit of mine.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ll tell you later. Promise.” sighed Mercedes, rising to her feet. She had a sudden craving for some hot chocolate, now that she was fully awake. “But I really am happy for you, girl.”

Rachel grinned into her speaker, covering her mouth. “Thanks, diva. I knew I could count on you for support. But seriously, keep in touch, alright? Everyone from Glee club’s been in touch with everyone else but you and Sam. It’s like you guys are in a bubble or something.”

“A bubble that might’ve already burst.” Mercedes mumbled under her breath, tiptoeing down the stairs.

“Whadya say?”

“I said college is the worst. It eats up all of your time.” Mercedes flicked the lights on in the kitchen, slowly opening the cupboards to retrieve a pot, a giant mug and the appropriate ingredients to make a peppermint version of the classic holiday drink. It wouldn’t be Christmas without some form of peppermint. “Between my classes, work and functioning as a human being, I barely have time to look at my phone anymore. It’s been really hard, trying to be the ‘normal’ girl I was in high school.”

“Ugh, I know! Tell me about it. I’m glad I took some time off to audition and regroup. If I hadn’t, I might have missed this amazing opportunity!” gushed Rachel. Then, in an unusual display of selflessness, she continued, in the gentlest voice, “And despite whatever’s going on with you, I know your next opportunity is right around the corner. I see nothing but goodness for you too, Mercedes.”

The sentiment stunned her. “Thanks, Rachel.” she smiled, blinking away her tears when the contents of her pot began to bubble and rise on the stovetop. Turning off the burner, Mercedes walked softly to the fridge, careful to step over the creaking spots on the floor, for a carton of milk and some vanilla. Nettie always kept her vanilla in the fridge, to “keep it fresh”, as she explained. “The goodness I see seems so far away, but I know it’s real.”

“Of course it is, babe.” Rachel assured. “Happiness is just a……” A knocking sound interrupted on Rachel’s end. “Oh, I think I have to go. That’s my cue.”

“Go ahead, I understand.” Mercedes smiled half-heartedly, already saddened by her absence. Rachel had been a surprisingly welcome distraction. “I have to go, too. I’m making some peppermint hot chocolate.”

“Ooh, yum! Enjoy! And I’m so sorry I can’t be there for your wedding, but please tell the rest of the gang that you’re getting married on Monday. You need to have at least one of your friends there to support you! Are you planning on having an actual ceremony afterward or is it just the quick, courthouse way?”

“No, we do want a ceremony, eventually. We just got tired of not being married, you know? After all our time together, we might as well do it.” Mercedes cringed slightly at her own explanation. Surely, there were more romantic, loving ways to explain their choice to marry. “When we do have a ceremony, everyone’ll be invited, I promise. For now, it’ll just be us and the minister.”

“Well…ok, I guess. Not what I pictured for you guys, but It’s your life and I respect it.” Rachel replied, trying in vain to hide her reservations. “Can’t wait for the future wedding invite! Congrats to you both in advance!”

“Congrats to you too, girl! Talk to you again soon. Can’t wait to see you on TV!” Mercedes smiled at Rachel’s quick sentiments and goodbyes, ending the call before pouring herself a tall mug of hot chocolate. Leaning her back against the counter, she held the piping hot cup to her lips and let the steam waft across her nose, warming her face, before taking her first sip. The heat scalded her tongue a bit, but it felt deliciously comforting traveling down her throat. The lingering cool of peppermint invigorated her, and for a moment, it finally felt like Christmas.

Mercedes wandered to the living room to gaze at the Christmas tree. A quick glance toward the doorway as she passed made her realize that Sam’s shoes and jacket were missing. Instead of jumping to conclusions and fearing the worst, Mercedes chose to settle in on her grandmother’s recliner, nestled right next to the twinkling multicolored lights, and let the festive mood envelop her.

She hummed a version of Silent Night under her breath, one of her late grandfather’s favorite carols, in between sips from her mug, comforting herself as she waited for Sam to return from wherever he’d gone.

Because he would come back. He had to.

Sam wouldn’t abandon his family. He wouldn’t abandon her.

O-O

[newsincapitalism]

No Pink Wooly Caps for Me

As I looked at the photos of women’s marches in Washington DC, San Francisco and all over the world on January 21, I was struck by one thing. Whiteness. The marchers were predominantly white - even in places like Nairobi. Not only were they white, they looked like they were upper middle class – able to afford the finest warm clothes and designer outfits, down jackets, sporting iPhones to record themselves. When interviewed they appeared to be educated and articulate. All of this raised alarm bells in me. Even before the march I had reservations. Why, I wondered, did the organizers change the date from the day of the inauguration to the day after the inauguration? Why did they quickly back off from their acknowledged protest against Trump to a vague “support for rights”? Why was there suddenly no mention of Trump anywhere in their materials and postings – only a vague reference to “the new government? In fact, I read an interview with one of the organizers who specifically said, “This is not an anti-Trump march”. In reality, it seemed to be exactly that. So why did they not want to admit that?

What is their goal?

What is their demand? Do they sincerely think Donald Trump and his followers are going to watch them and say – “wow – this is serious – I guess we had better change our ways”? That’s a little like a meme I saw recently on Facebook that said “Your political FB status updates totally changed my opinions. Said no one. Ever.” Their march was indecisive – all over the place. All of the issues they were raising are part of what is called “identity politics”.

Is it a feel-good day so they can go home and congratulate themselves on having “made history”? Then they can go back to their comfortable lives and do nothing more to organize or fight in any systematic way except to call their congresspersons – whose phone lines are down and can’t take more calls and who have systematically proven they pay no attention to these calls. Knitting pink caps, making signs and going out in the streets with others just like them gave them a feeling of catharsis.

Since the march I’ve watched many of the same people rush to the airports to defend immigrants being banned from the U.S. by Trump’s anti-Muslim edict. Does this mean that if immigrants are allowed in everything ok?

Whose march was this?

This was not a “women’s march”. This was an “upper middle-class women’s march”. This was a Democratic Party directed march. These were women – and men – who were upset that their candidate didn’t win. They wanted Hillary in the White House no matter what – partly because she is a woman. They paid no attention to her war mongering, Wall Street loving, elitist past, capitalist actions. And, rather than blaming her or the Democratic Party, they raged – and are still raging – at anyone who didn’t vote for her. They are all over Facebook pointing the finger at anyone who didn’t vote for Hillary and claiming they are the ones to blame for Trumps’ election. They are particularly raging against the 42% of the population who didn’t vote over - 90 million people - because they saw no point in it. Voter turnout was at the lowest point in two decades. Because they understand that, not matter who they vote for, their lives are not going to change for the better. The upper middle class has no investment or interest in actually talking to these folks to find out why they didn’t vote – and then working towards helping them.

And where was the middle and upper middle class while all of this was happening? Nowhere to be found. The middle class was not even aware that it was shrinking to the lower middle and working classes, and all the while the upper middle class was growing. Now the upper middle class is a whopping 9% of the population. So it’s not accurate to talk about the 1%, because it’s really the top 10%. And none of the concerns that the working class and the poor have been fighting for are concerns of the 10%.

I have to ask – where were these women throughout the 8 years of war during the Obama administration. What exactly did Obama do for women? Where were they on all the marches so many of us were on against police violence against blacks, illegal wars for control of oil, outrageous student debt, low wages, poor working conditions, lack of benefits, Wall Street, Goldman Sachs? They were nowhere to be found. Or they might be found at Starbucks, the gym, having brunch. It doesn’t matter. Obama was charming, articulate, smooth and tall and now is being deified.

Not everyone participating in the march was a Clinton zombie. The Democratic Party has more or lesser control based on the city in which the march was held. But without making a clear distinction of their issues on the signs they were carrying, these marchers are being used by them.

Who supported the march?

Let’s look at a list of the people who spoke at or participated in the Women’s March:

Gloria Steinem

Michael Moore

John Kerry – and his dog

Van Jones – a total sell-out

Kamala Harris - Debbie Wasserman Schultz grinning next to her

Madonna

Cher

Billy Joel

Lady Gaga

Jennifer Lopez

All of these people are strong, vocal supporters of Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party. Hillary, herself, tweeted her support. Michael Moore fought hard against the Greens to ensure we had no hope of having a third party in this country. He did the same thing to Ralph Nader when he ran as a Green 8 years ago. Gloria Steinem told women they must vote for Hillary because it’s time for a woman to be in the White House. Most are celebrities – whose single claim to fame is that they are famous. And they are rich - very, very rich. Where have they been on the ground fighting for the rights of the working class and poor? They may be very good at what they do – acting, singing – but what bestows on them the wisdom to lead us in our voting decisions? These people should not be our role models. They are the upper 9% supporting the ruling 1%.

Who funded the march?

These are some of the primary funders:

George Soros – a billionaire and long-standing supporter of the Democratic Party who was one of the initial donors to Moveon.org

org – formed in 1998 to oppose the impeachment of Bill Clinton and has spent millions supporting the Democratic Party

org – the Rockefellers gave billions to their campaign

Planned Parenthood – supported by the Democratic Party

Sierra Club – supported by the Democratic Party and members of the 1%

Amnesty International – supported by the Democratic party and partially funded by George Soros

It’s important to understand that, while we may support the above organizations, we need to know where their funding comes from. Where there is funding, there is influence. This was clearly a march to support the Democratic Party and see them reinstalled.

The cops are NOT our friends

Seeing the photos posted of women shaking hands with the police, giving them pink pussy hats to wear – and seeing them plop them on their heads for photo-ops – made me sick. Yes, the cops are nice to them – they pose no threat. They are “good people”. Non-violent, not really rocking the boat. They also are from the upper middle class – the folks whose property is protected by the police – the very class the police are paid to protect. They are not paid to protect the middle, lower middle and working classes. The police state came about in the 19th century to protect the capitalists from the workers who were striking and demanding fair pay and treatment. And they are still protecting the capitalists. It was disgusting to see these upper middle class whites talking about how wonderful the police were, and posting thanks to them on FB. Other protestors who were not part of this group were attacked and arrested. Most of the protest marches I’ve been on we’ve watched the cops in their riot gear and helmets watching us.

A friend of mine who was going to the Women’s March told me she was worried there would be “some of those anarchists who want to cause trouble”. OK – I get it – it’s only a good march if everybody is orderly, peaceful and exactly like you. Sometimes the only way to get attention is to stop business as usual by breaking things. The police presence, in itself, IS violence. It’s a threat – but not to the upper middle class.

Qualification

Before I get accused of being a Trump supporter, I want to make clear that I think he is a megalomaniac, idiot of a bully but a very dangerous bully. And he is not alone. The real brains behind the throne is Steve Bannon, who is a much more dangerous threat because he actually reads books (mostly about war) and is capable of crafting a long-term plan to push through the strategies of the far right and neo-nationalism.

Why not name the system?

All of these issues raised during the march and airport protests are important but, they didn’t start with Trump. They all existed during previous administrations – Democratic or Republican. The difference now seems to be that there is no hiding those attacks – they are out in the open. The difference also is that the front man for them is a bellicose, obnoxious misogynist with a complete lack of charm or intellect. These very same issues did not bring people out on the streets while they continued to go unaddressed by the Obama regime.

Where were all the identity politics people during the Obama administration’s failure to secure a minimum wage above poverty level, build low cost housing or deal with the worst police force in the entire industrial capitalist world? Under Obama’s reign the U.S. continued the illegal wars begun under Bush, pushed for the Dakota Access Pipeline, did close to nothing to punish the banks and Wall Street or demand a cap on emissions to slow global warming.

Whether its the neo-nationalist new-money faction of Trump-Bannon or it’s the old-money Clinton, Bush, Koch Brothers, Kissinger faction, we know that the capitalists give all of them their marching orders. The primary goal of both parties is to protect capitalism and undermine any attempts to regulate, let alone change, the economic system that is driving the majority of us into the ground.

Making demands is for those who accept their subservience

It would not be fair for me to only comment on the women’s part of the march because their were other groups there as well. The problem with all these “demands” is that they are demands. There is no promise to take power. The implication of demands is that there is someone in power that is in a position of granting or refusing the demands. It accepts the capitalist rulers and complains they are not fair and just rulers. Demands are the plea to make ones in power be better leaders.

I’ll march for a socialist transition program

Bernie Sanders influenced 12 million people and used the word “socialism” in his speeches. Most of his followers did not cringe under the bed and say “McCarthy will come after us.” Neither did they seem to worry that “the masses are not ready for socialism”. The Green party had a golden opportunity to throw down the gauntlet to Sanders and say to his followers “hey folks, he’s not a socialist, we’re the real thing.” Instead they offer him their nomination if he would join them. Socialist Alternative seems to have stopped using the word socialism in its rallying cries and has dissolved their identity into an “Anti-Trump” movement. Many of the organizers of all these current marches are not liberals but socialists. They don’t have the nerve to tell ethnic and religious minorities that “we are socialists and we will help you as part of our socialist transition program”. Neither do they have the nerve to reach out to the working class people who voted for Trump because he offered them jobs. Most of all, this cringing left does not use its collective imagination and provide a clear down-to-earth vision of socialism for all poor, working class and middle class people to see and craft a transition program. Whether you like Trotsky or not, he was on the right track. We need a socialist transition program publicly presented at any future public encounters.

So, no, I won’t be marching with a pink, wooly cap. I’ve been through with New Left single-issue identity politics for many years. Why would I want to march with them? I will be marching with a broom, a shovel and a hammer when a socialist organization steps up with a socialist transition program.

Barbara MacLean has worked as an academic and career counselor at California State University, East Bay, and as a career counselor and manager of the downtown Oakland One Stop Career Center, a public career and jobs center in partnership with EDD. She is a socialist feminist. She is a founder and organizer for Planning Beyond Capitalism. Follow them on Facebook and Twitter Email her at mailto:barbaramaclean8@gmail.com