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aeempress · 3 years

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Apritello Express Evidences, part 2

Khem-khem, ladies and gentlemen, we shall continue out praising Apritello's episodes. And yeah, this part will be dedicated, in entirety just one episode.

Purple jacket. April and Donnie's episode.

I really love this piece of masterpiece, because it show April and Dee relationship, better reveals them as characters, and demonstrates their connection. (My previous points at this whole situation)

The episode begins with Donnie sneaking into April's school under the pretext of helping her. Soon, April stated the reason why she called D - her science computer project. Actually, she could take a photo of the code and sent it to Donatello, and I'm sure, he would send her the correct one right away, he's coder, he's prodigy, no probbles.

But still, April just asked him to come over and help her without stating any reasons. And he, indeed, came at speed of the light.

I want you to understand what exactly does that mean.

First: April is aware how much Donnie is into human culture. He wants to study in normal human school, do some average teen stuff. Especially, he is loving school and science-related stuff, all these science school projects, visits to botanical gardens, experiments and laboratory work. Because it's his field. It's exactly his domain, where he's good at. His family does not share his interest in science, and April is only one who can understand him. Probably.

Also, April know, how badly Donnie wants to go to school, which gives him an excuse, even if not the most solid one, but an excuse, nevertheless, to visit her school again.

Why again?

Because he has no problem navigating there. Donnie went directly to April's computer class.

He loves this place. And he'd already helped April with her projects.

Even so, knowing that every time she asked guys, especially Don, for help, it turned into a cataclysm, April still called him to help.

It's just a weird, indirect way to say, " Let's hang out, I know how much you like this whole situation with science, school and etc. Here ya go, buddy"

It seems like April did that to make something pleasant to him, something small, but nice to make him feel better. Because, as I state before - he likes to help April (praise, doing something useful for April - still counts as a motivation) and he likes school.

Second: khem-khem, D came at her school, as it seems, right away she called/texted. He didn't even know the proper reason, but c'mon: April ask for help, plus, her school. Sounds legit, don't you think?

Anyway, April has always been being the reason and excuse for teetles, but especially for Donnie. Clear? Clear. Good.

Donnie also tends to not think things through when he is excited. Because he went at the daylight in place, full of people just to help April.

ROTTMNT shows us how turtles were really afraid of human reaction and possible consequences. They have plan "H" to pretend they are going to Galaxy Con, brothers have explanation why they look weird and it's definitely not because boys are mutants, uh-huh, no, plus, guys go on surface at evening or night hours, when there are not so many people, and it's dark, obviously, to cover them and keep unseen.

Yeah, of course, Donnie seems more capable then his brothers to handle the surface (he has cash, D's dressed up as old ladies more than once, according to Leo, he was in April's school before, so yeah, no big deal) and I suspect that his friendship with April is one of the reasons.

Third: do you remember how April worried about looking "normal" when she was finally invited to a school party? She even forbade Mayham to appear nearby, just not to look like the lizard boy. Because cool kids don't bring pets to school. April doesn't have many friends, or rather, there are none at school, and she's been trying to solve this problem by getting close to Taylor Martin, the coolest girl in school.

And April O'Neil just calls Donatello, an objectively strange guy (since when is it normal to be a fan of school? Pretty questionable) in place, where her reputation is hanging in a balance. Our girl does not try to hide Dee, as it usually shown in shows for kids, and April do not pretend that she sees him for the first time in her life because, you know, Donnie will catch everyone's attention being himself and may embarrass her in front of her classmates. But no - April says with all her actions: "Yes, I know him. Yes, that dork is with me. And I don't give a damn about your opinion. Your problems, not mine. And yeah, I'm fine with him being here."

I mean it, guys. The devil is always in the tiny details.

The way they behave around each other.

Donatello is way more, MORE relaxed and just being himself: dramatic dorky nerdy ninja with current obsessions. The way he sneaked in school and April's classroom, the way he behaves alone with her is contrasting the way of his attitude while his brothers are near.

Don has a specific way to shown up. Instead of texting her, Donnie used shurekens. Yes, he almost fell off the lamp, but still, that's... quite an entrance he makes there.

April worries about him, when he fell from ceiling.

Our girl feel relaxed enough around Donnie, so she winks at him.

A wink is a fairly casual gesture that shows some expression of sympathy, trust, and togetherness. It's both good for saying "We're in same boat, we're team" and show the playful attitude towards someone. Isn't that an indicator?

Ironically, that being the best friends April and Donnie do not have any secret handshake/brofist/special greeting, as it usually the besties have at kid's series. Like Kendra and Jeremy have.

I can do only one possible logical conclusion: their relationship is far beyond "friends," "best friends," and "family".

Btw, about this certain phrase about secret five.

- Nay, fair April. A secret five[...].

Once again, nice wording, Donatello. Fair April? Maybe I'm too critical, but often when someone wants to convince their interlocutor and at the same time show one's condescension to them, it's usually uses "my dear ..." or something like that. I understand that semantically the difference is not very big, but in the first case, you can feel Donnie's personal attitude, even though he uses a book word. The second is just formal politeness, which emphasizes the difference between the rightness of the disputants.

This phrase were interpreted on official Russian dub as (okay, it's really hard to choose the correct word, because there's a lot of synonyms in English that sits quite well, while on Russian it's just one word, damn) "Нет, милая (No, honey/sweetheart )". Actually, a strange choice of wording, 'cause this is not what usually friends use to say to each other. We prefer use words like " my darling", "my dear", to demonstrate leniency. And again, most often this prerogative belongs to the older generation. Russians rarely throw around such words as "honey", "dear", "sunshine", because this deprives these endearments of any meaning, and a person using them, as a rule, is familiar. Of course, there are people who use them on a regular basis, but I HIGHLY doubt that Donatello is one of them. It's not his style.

But still, maybe I just too critical at this point.

April, as it is shown, have some kind of power to cool and calm him down and bring Donnie back to life reality.

1. Don awakes from his daze while heard April's voice

2. He's literally coming back to life, when April said about his broken jetpack.

3. Dee obediently interrupts his touching farewell to the jacket when April yells at him.

Oh, and his face. I remind you, fellas, we're talking about Donatello, "I really do not like to express emotions"-guy and "I will die if someone broke my bAbEyS"-guy.

And what do we see? Donnie's emoting. And feels free to do that. He's even drooling. (What seems kinda interesting without context, if you're understand what I'm talking about ;))

Dee doesn't seem angry about broken jetpack. And his wide smile, while he's assuring April he can fix it? A few minutes ago, he was steamed when his stuff was stolen, but when the jetpack was broken, he doesn't even raise an eyebrow. Very eloquent.

April is his support

April also supports Donnie whatever he's up to. Yes, she hadn't been excited when Othello had expressed a desire to join the club. However, she also introduced him to Kendra and company. Yes, she showed by her whole appearance that she did not share his joy, but nevertheless, our loyal captain O'Neil was there for him, by his side all this time.

And her sweet facial expression. From "Srsly? Join this jerks?" to "If you dare to even think about to hurt him, I'll smash you".

And one more cute detail about Dee. Even if he does whatever he wanted so badly, Don constantly looks around at April, looking for her approval.

- Be honest, April, do I look fantastic, or SUPERBLY fantastic?

- You look like you drop a juice box in a laundry. (Play nice, April, don't be mean)

He cherishes her opinion.

April had even called him late at night just to, technically speaking, say that his tech were stolen. And what's the big deal with all his outfit? It's late night, they can just sneak out into Nakamura in their usual form. But noooo, April give a special ride on her bicycle. Just. You know. Our girl carried her own weight and his all the way without stopping. And then she went up 53 + floors running non-stop because Donnie's equipment was stolen. And then she had to chase the her classmates, dodge and jump out of the window. Because Purple dragons stole Dee's tech. Like shooting fish in a barrel, no big deal at all.

And it's definitely not because he will be totally crashed or he'll do stupid things during his anger, which will then come out sideways.

And April comes along with him to very end.

By the way, their phone conversations.

Donnie is the very case when "Call at any time of the day or night and I will pick up the phone".

When April called him when he needs D's help with Albearto, when something is definitely going on behind.

As it says in transcript of the episode:

[April takes out her phone, scrolls to Donnie’s listing and calls him. Donatello appears on screen. Behind him a flying microwave wearing boxing gloves shoots lasers at his brothers.]

Don: "You are conversing with Donatello."

April

[Crouched on floor in hiding.]

Dude, I need your help."

Don: "For you, anything. As long as it does not involve bees, or spiders, or beach balls.

[There’s an explosion behind him and his brothers cry out, which he ignores.]

And yeah, he took her incoming immediately, he ignores absolutely and totally everything around him, because... April? Expositions, bloody flying microwave bot turned to destroy mode, his brothers screaming and being in life-threatening situation? Naaah, it can wait.

Donatello was at Todd's, building "the puppiest place on Earth" and was very enthusiastic about to finish this thing. But he paused anyway to answer April.

We already know how obsessive with work Don can be: if something interesting gets into his field of view, he begins to do it all day long. Remember "The Purple Game" - a very revealing case. Yeah, we weren't shown how much Donnie is into engineering, but I can guess that point remains the same.

April called him at late night and Donnie picked up the phone.

April, unlike Donatello, is a teenager who is burdened with social relationship such as family, school, and work periodically, which implies a more or less strict schedule to follow and some conventions, such as " April, you can't go out late at night to catch robbers, you are underage and you have to go to school/work tomorrow). However, she was watching the news late at night, so she called Dee. ( I have a lot of questions, but I'll never get answers, as it seems)

D, in turn, doesn't have so many contacts with the outside world. I highly doubt that anyone else outside of the family and April has his number. And yet, when he hears the call late at night he takes it. Yes, he had awaken from the nightmare, but still.

And what's up with his usual "You're conversing with Donatello"? He didn't even understand what's going on, as it seems, he's too sleepy to play his usual image and playfully attitude as we could see in "Hypno Part Deux" and "War and Pizza".

Adorable couple-like D&A arguing

April very rarely uses "I told you so" against anybody, or rather, this is almost the only case. This phrase is more suitable for Leo or Donnie, and you know," I told you so! " we usually use on people we know well, and we want to tease 'em about them being wrong. Which, in fact, once again highlights and proves how close D&A are. And I don't even get started about the fact that this is more like a couple's quarrel, not a friend's.

And one more time - in the end, when April suggests using the jacket to stop Kendra.

Their teamwork

I stated that before, I'll tell it one more and more times. The chemistry of their team interaction is incredible. It's as if they can feel each other, and each knows what the other is capable of doing in the next moment. April easily adapts to Donnie's attack, realizing his plan.

Donnie also throws them both out of the window in order to continue the pursuiting Kendra on the jetpack. Don is one hundred percent sure of April, that she will understand what he wants to do, Dee trusts her with his life without hesitation, and she has never used his jetpack. He just puts her before the fact: April will be using the tech.

Up for Donnie!

I really like how this scene was made. Donatello struggles with his own tech, somewhat he made by himself, having invested almost whole himself and his soul, but what "betrayed" him in end. When Dee finally managed to shake one of his battleshell, which almost choked him, Donnie feel so scared and unsecured. We can see his anxiety - Dee's coaching position with covering his head with his hands and tucking his knees.

Defenseless, helpless, and mostly lost, and then, just in time - hero comes to save his life. She uses Donnie's name as battlecry, look how furious she is.

Funny fact: on Russian dub April yells "Don't touch Donnie! (how dare you, madafaka)

April fits in Donnie's type of girls. She's cute (obvious) and mean (not so obvious).

I can't say that meanness is the main feature of April's character, as we can say about Kendra. But this personality trait is still present in her and sometimes it does not manifest itself so widely. April's meanness is not so pronounced, it is much softer and smoother, and it is not exposed.

But April becomes really mean when someone messes up with Donnie.

She's his support and prop. Literally. Just look at first frame, okay-okay, jokes aside

She's genuinely enjoying of kicking bad guys ' asses, even letting go of witticisms and barbs.

Last scenes

Don survived a rough night: he was used, his tech was stolen, so he and April had to chase the satin robed punks. Donnie was hit in the head with a hammer, he fell from a bird's-eye view, passed out and then his battleshell tried to strangle him. And April is here to comfort him, to cheer him up.

Yes, we don't get any hugs (because it's kids show, bleh), the tactility is kept to a minimum, except for April's comforting hand on his shoulder, but they don't even look at each other. But the softness of her voice, the intonation with which she utters a phrase (that is usually sent to the friend zone, but "pal" is really neutral word, and the most important how she said that) turn the scene upside down. It is not what April did to comfort him matter, it's how she did this.

I said "yes" to you way too often

April mirrors Donnie with his "Anything for you". Yes, of course, she said this with a certain amount of grumbling, but her voice and her demeanor suggest otherwise - she is not at all averse to going to giving in him.

And the way they're look at each other.

This one

And one more detail

It's really tiny, it's hard to catch from the first watching the episode, but still, it's possible. I'm talking about graffiti on the walls of the alley where April and Don had landed.

This one

Yeah, if we speak about reality it's quite normal to see graffiti like this. But we talking about TV-series, where everything has its own place and meaning. And if there something, it must be there, it's not just whim of artist who put it in there. But this little graffiti changes the mood of scene.

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writing-in-april · 3 years

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Converging Parallels

Spencer Reid x Female Single Mom Reader (Spencer’s POV)

Summary: Spencer goes to a support group Penelope suggested after the death of Maeve. He quickly connects with a single mom who’s experiences have been similar to Spencer’s.

A/N: I’m prefacing this by saying I know shit about math and am horrible at it lol 😂 so my math analogies might be horribly off 😂 This is my fifth fic for my 30 fics in 30 days for April- this one was requested by @samuel-de-champagne-problems- this is the request- (go check out there fics too!!) I tweaked it a little bit so I hope you enjoy it 🥺 a lot of it is confined to Spencer grappling with his thoughts- but there is dialogue I promise lol 😂I had a good time writing it ☺️Thanks for all the love recently and if you want to drop me an ask for any reason you can do so here- I’m always looking for some new friends on here (I promise I don’t bite lol) Thanks again and hope y’all enjoy 🥰

Warnings: Angst with a hopeful ending, General dealings surrounding death and grief, Mentions of Maeve’s death, Reader’s a widow, Guilt about moving on, Reader’s child is a daughter

Main Masterlist Word Count: 1.6k

Parallel lines were never supposed to meet, they were set on a strict path following in a similar direction with no hope of ever converging. At least that’s what was the widely accepted definition by anyone with any authority in the field of mathematics.

My own math degree was being contested by a set of two lines set on a collision course with each other, though they were not supposed to. Logically I knew that the two lines were not beholden to any mathematical equation as I was referring to two human lives.

We were set on a similar course, only slight differences that seemingly were leading us to different destinations, or at least I tried to convince myself that. I tried every night to convince myself that she was only a friend, that it wasn’t what she wanted and I was desecrating the memory of the person I still claimed to be the only person I loved.

Logically I knew that by forcing where I wanted our relationship to go, what I thought the universe wanted to happen wasn’t what I truly wanted. The reason I had boxed us in so vehemently was only because I was scared and guilty, I knew it too. I wanted us to converge, but logic doesn’t always win out when dealing with guilt.

It had all started with Garcia mentioning that I should consider going to a grief support group after the death of Maeve. Every action I took was being weighed down by her death, whether I cared to admit it or not.

Garcia had good intentions when she suggested going to this meeting to me, of that I was sure. It isn’t that I saw no reason to go to the support group, I just knew that it would dreg up all the unwanted feelings that bombarded me enough already.

The flier in my hands felt heavy even though it was made of paper it weighed my hands down enough where I almost dropped it. I could have let it go then to have it fly away, being taken by the wind, that would let me forget about it. But, I knew it would have only made me forget for a short while, I’d inevitably get questions from Garcia and my own mind wouldn’t let me forget the reality of what had happened. And, logically I knew that it would most likely help. So instead of letting the wind take it away, I crumpled the paper slightly in my hands out of frustration, moving my feet forward one step at a time to enter the building.

That’s where I had first met her. When I first walked in I didn’t immediately lock eyes with her or anything, my eyes were too fixated on the ground for that to happen.

I only noticed her when she was invited to tell her story. Her strength instantly captivated me, almost making me feel like a failure at first. Her story of how she lost her husband was eerily similar in some aspects, especially the cause of his death. The feeling of failure on my part to be strong swirled in my gut as she recounted her struggles that were so starkly similar to mine. She even had a young daughter to take care of as well, she often spoke of her whenever she told her story, almost neglecting herself sometimes- which she admitted she knew she needed to work on.

However, when she came up to me to talk after the meeting was concluded my opinion switched to view her as inspiring. We began getting coffee after each meeting, sometimes talking for hours, sometimes sitting in silence. Whatever I needed she was there to give it to me, whenever she needed help I wanted to be there too.

To see our almost parallel lives begin to converge at first felt like someone had driven a car into traffic about to collide straight into my path. My mind would not stop arguing about whether or not I should pull away from her or not, like guilt was on shoulder and my potential happiness was on the other.

—-

Guilt was eating away at me from the inside out slowly, that part of my mind would not stop clawing away any good aspect of my relationship with Y/N. The relationship between us had shifted in recent weeks, tension invading what had once been a simply platonic connection formed through our shared experiences. When it became clear to me what our lingering stares and touches were leading to, guilt had reared its ugly head to burrow its way down deep and take root.

It had disrupted my sleep even more than usual, nightmares ranging from Maeve guilting me to the visuals of her death. The images of Maeve and any time I had shared with her invaded my brain at all hours of the night, haunting me. I scrunched my eyes up tight, maybe that would banish the images from my brain. That only made the guilt worse it seemed as I now felt double the guilt for wanting to banish the thoughts about a person I still claimed to love.

My hand hit the pillow in frustration, then grabbing it and throwing it to some unknown location across the room. Sitting up, no longer being able to tolerate laying down knowing that sleep would never come, made my exhausted joints beg me to lay back down. I leaned forward to put my head in my hands, also tangling my curls with my fingers. I tried to think about what Y/N had said to me at one of the first meetings I had attended, my normally impeccable memory struggled as the memory of Maeve’s bloodied face would not leave. Screaming internally was the only thing that seemed to work to push the words I was looking for forward,

“I try to think about something my therapist told me- Although it's difficult today to see beyond the sorrow, May looking back in memory help comfort you tomorrow.”

The quote wasn’t something groundbreaking or new, though the origins were unknown. But, the words still struck me deep everytime I forced my memory to call back on them.

The words she had spoken in the meeting when talking about her husband made me want to try too. She inspired me whenever she told snippets of her story to me or the rest of the group, her story had been similar to mine- with the added element of having a daughter to raise on her own.

Her strength was what had drawn me to her initially, like a moth to flame. Our relationship wasn’t even a friendship at first, just two people sharing advice (more her giving it to me) about how to deal with crippling grief.

What had blossomed since then from death and decay had thrown me for a loop. I hadn’t been expecting for this to happen, I never even thought romance would be an option for me again. I thought that I would have one great love and that our time in the sun had ended along with any option for romantic interests in the future.

Then she came along and spun my thinking upside down, not that I blamed her at all for it. She originally had just reached out to help me, not to pursue any romantic connection purposefully while I was vulnerable.

She continued to stay with me to help despite my urge to push her away even though that’s not what I wanted. I tried hard to convince myself that our lives were never meant to connect, that we were destined to remain apart.

It took many more sleepless nights for me to realize what I hadn’t seen for so long, even with Y/N reassuring me at every turn. Maeve would want me to be happy, I was sure of it. So I’d try to let myself, no longer letting myself get hindered by my own swirling thoughts of guilt that Maeve wouldn’t have wanted me to feel.

—-

Asking her out on a date had been surprisingly easy once I had let go a little of my guilt. We had chosen to go somewhere different than a coffee shop, since we already did that often. I took her out to more of an upscale restaurant than she was used to, which may be too fancy for some for a first date, but she deserved it. She worked so hard to take care of her daughter and even me to some extent.

At the end of the night we were both standing outside her door ready to go in to relieve the babysitter for the night. I had already given her a chaste kiss for the night, even though my nerves kept trying to talk me out of it. I was about to say goodbye when she grabbed my wrist to hold in her hands. She looked afraid at first, almost like she wondered if I wouldn’t like her touching me. Touch may bother me with most people, but she wasn’t most people, I’d happily share germs with her. When I did not pull away relief was evident in her eyes, then taking a big breath before speaking,

“Would you like to meet my daughter?” Her voice was shaky, understandably full of worry.

“Of course.” In the past hesitation would have littered my voice if she had asked me the same question. But, my thoughts had been slowly shifting to want our lines to converge fully and with no fear. Sure, Maeve would always capture a place in my heart, but I was ready for our lives to collide. Our parallel lives converged into one line, with a set path forward. It may get derailed from its intended path, but we would be stronger together than apart.

Ask me anything

—-

Tag lists (message me if you want to be added):

All works: @shotarosleftpinky @oreogutz @90spumkin @kyra-morningstar @s1utformgg @takeyourleap-of-faith (damn tumblr just let me tag them)

All MGG characters: @muffin-cup @willowrose99

Spencer Reid/CM: @calm-and-doctor @destiny-tsukino @safertokiss @slutforthegubes @onlyhereforthefanfics @jareauswifey

#spencer reid #spencer reid x reader #spencer reid angst #criminal minds x reader #criminal minds #mgg #mgg x reader #matthew gray gubler #matthew gray gubler x reader #spencer reid fanfic #30 fics in 30 days

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masterthespianduchovny · 3 years

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No please share your theory if only you want to though. Well I mean David did kinda almost slip up when he said years age Nate's the single guy lol & him unintentionally always bringing her up and Gillian is getting flustered and shit and whatnot all the time when he's brought up. In your OWN opinion do you think that DD is also captivated/charmed with GA's charisma and her being her in general?

Wait, what does “Nate’s the single guy” refer to again?

Full disclosure: the only thing I claim to be true is that David and Gillian are friends, which I’ve stated before last Sunday.

This is all speculation on my end and I don’t claim it’s the truth by any means.

Personally, the only way I can make sense of David and Gillian’s is if they were/are having a torrid affair.

Antis will claim this is a fantasy of mine, but I don’t fantasize about people having affairs. However, I am realistic that these things happen.

As I mentioned in another post, how is Gillian still flustered about a question she literally answers several times a year for almost 30 years? Why can’t she give a straight answer? Why does she lie and sometimes contradict herself?

Because she was and currently is involved with David in an on again/off again affair. Depending on her answer, they’re either involved at that moment and/or she’s upset at him.

Where as David can answer the question, but he slips up in other ways.

And it explains why they’d lie about it.

Let’s get something clear: they’ve always admitted that they’ve had a complicated relationship, which they are open about, but they’ve never said they’ve hated each other.

Part of the reason is that they both have dominant personalities, the other reason is that they couldn’t or wouldn’t commit to each other for whatever reason. Then when they got married to their respective spouses and had kids, but still fucked around, they couldn’t expose their indiscretions.

They’re both trying to protect their kids, David more so than Gillian. David’s father cheating, and then leaving his mom for his mistress, deeply shaped David and his brother. People may think this is ironjc and hypocritical, but sometimes kids mimic their parents behavior. Even the toxic shit. As a result, he doesn’t want his kids finding out what he did because he knows what it could do to them. It’s also to spare their former spouses embarrassment (to be honest, I’m not sure David and Gillian would ever receive public blowback for it, esp now. People already think they’re fucking, so what difference would it make). Acknowledging that they ever hooked up leads to questions about when, and then people doing the math.

Gillian’s marriage was from ‘94-‘97 and David’s from ‘97-‘14. Okay, so maybe Gillian was single for a few months and David was single during his separations from tea. I’m not sure there’s a lot of overlap where they were both technically single at the same time. David dated Perry and the woman who dated det white. There has almost always been a relationship going on.

So if they’ve been fucking on and off for almost 30 years, it wasn’t always when both were single. One or both of them were definitely in relationships.

Something we know happened: Gillian admitted that they were talking (as in trying to see if it could lead somewhere) when David lost interest because she wasn’t from New York.

So there is evidence straight out of Gillian’s mouth that when they first met they kinda hit it off in that way before David walked away.

During the dark ages, you know the time they famously ‘hated’ each other, David elopes and doesn’t tell Gillian. Months later, her and David are doing an interview for print or video where they interview each other. Gillian brings up tea and is like, “you must’ve really liked tea to marry her so quick” and “why didn’t you tell me that you were getting married?” This isn’t verbatim, but the gist of it. David says, “you’re still mad about that?”

Let’s take a moment to note how weird that is. They hate each other, right? Why would Gillian fucking care that David didn’t tell her he was getting married and that it happened so quick? It doesn’t matter, but she was hurt by that. She really was. It wasn’t friend hurt, it was jealousy and betrayal.

David hates Gillian, but makes snarky remarks about her boyfriend Roland aka “six pack” (or is it eight pack). “Well, he hates her right, so it makes sense he’d make cracks about her boyfriend?” Well, years later, it’s an inside joke between them.

Their failed relationships are inside jokes to them. Does anyone else find it unusual how often they joke about their failed marriages and relationships? How is this something apart of their narrative or necessary when talking about how long they’ve known each other?

The only way their behavior and responses makes sense to me is if their relationship is messy as hell.

Why would you lie about how close you are to someone unless you had something to hide?

When you comb through their history and read/see what they were doing and what they said, it doesn’t match this narrative that they hated each other. They were at a difficult point in their relationship, personally and professionally, and that bled over into work and interviews. But they’ve always maintained that it wasn’t hate, it was just complicated.

I think in “ghost in the machine” Gillian pretends to blow David. They insisted on doing the “cut” FTF loss and I write cut in parenthesis because, although it was cut, it shouldn’t have existed. They made out twice for fun. Why? Why would you make out for fun with someone you hate? And didn’t this occur during the dark ages? In the unnatural, after tea leaves the set, David starts humping Gillian and she giggles. Yes, two people who hate each other right there.

Their relationship was so tense and complicated because they were stubborn, proud, and strong willed. Those type of people are bound to clash. Throw in their work environment and their relationships, it was a pressure cooker. An explosion waiting to happen.

When people say they hated each other, the question is why and how did they get over that?

There’s never an answer for it. Or when they do claim something, it’s disproven.

And that’s because they didn’t.

If they hated each other, they wouldn’t have done IWTB, various cons together, or even seasons 10 and 11.

Could I be 100% wrong about this, ABSOLUTELY.

Look, it’s no skin off my back if I’m wrong.

I just can never shake the sensation of how Gillian looks like she’s about to be caught or is scared when she’s on a late night show and someone says “picture” and “David” in the same sentence. She looks shaken.

What was up with their kimmel interview?

Why we they basically flirting while talking about hooking up with women?

I expect anon hate accusing me of saying “you said that they had a horrid affair doe 30 years.” 🙄 “but Gillian was so in love with Peter and David loves young pussy.” But my whole point is, I don’t know what to make of their relationship and this is the only thing that makes sense to me. Both of those things could be true in these hypothetical anon hates, it still doesn’t change what I said.

Hell, even Téa while freshly married to David described his relationship with Gillian as sibling like and like a married couple. What does that even mean?

People who talk about “Téa had to force David to invite Gillian to his housewarming party.” Was that because he hated Gillian or because they used to fuck/were fucking. Inviting your former/current lover to your new home with your new wife. A bit awkward and disrespectful, wouldn’t you say?

Keep in mind, months before (or a year before), he was her date to the Emmys, as a friend, to support her because her divorce was being announced that day. How do you go from that to hating each other and not wanting this person to come to your housewarming party?

What was the catalyst?

Why did the fall out?

Didn’t their tension start around the time he married Téa? 🌚

I don’t know if it’s in the same year or within the same 12 months of his marriage, but she’s mad at David at one award show and kissing him on the cheek at another. Dark ages, right?

Remember when Gillian gave a spot on, unfavorable assessment of David and he responded to it all hurt and moody? 😂

And, how could I forget, let’s think of the other suspect behaviors.

1. David: we only email like five times a year.

Gillian: that’s what you like to tell people.

2. Gillian’s gum falls out of her mouth, David puts it in his mouth.

3. Gillian spitting food in his hand and David not being grossed out by it.

3. David pulling on the hem of Gillian’s shirt to pull her closer so he can sign it. Neither thinks twice about it, despite the level of intimacy being unusual.

4. David biting on her shirt.

5. David going quiet and making shit awkward after joking about her saying she kept saying she’d point at random men and say, “I’m going to marry that man.” Same occasion two minutes before, Gillian asking how David knew who mitch’s wife was (it was her stunt double). It felt accusatory.

6. The chili’s story where she has to explain she means Mulder and Scully had sex at Chili’s and not them.

7. Then holding hands under the table at comic con in 2013.

And there’s a lot of stories either I forgot or don’t know, I’m still finding out new things.

I know this theory destroys their perspective of DDGA and it ruins them for some fans, but it’s just a theory. Like I said, I’m not saying it’s the truth. I’m saying it would explain a shit ton about the ebbs and flows of their relationship and why they’re so inconsistent and reactive to being asked about each other for just about three decades. Why aren’t they bored of the question by now and answer it without this big to do?

I don’t know if David stans believe he is/was a cheater, but Gillian stans swear he is until you mention he could’ve cheated with Gillian. All of the sudden, he’s faithful and committed. 😒

I can admit that I might be wrong because I don’t know them. Only they know what goes on in their relationship. But if you had friends acting like they do, you’d think they were fucking or wanted to even when they insist otherwise.

To tour last question: OF COURSE David is captivated by Gillian. Gillian is attractive, funny, and flirty. They seem to have similar senses of humors at times as well. She’s silly too. I can totally see David being taken in by her because we see that now.

He’s more of the straight man to her zaniness, but he finds her zaniness endearing.

EDIT: please feel free to add any normal colleague behavior between David and Gillian over the years. 👀

#anon mail #evergreen gillovny #prepares for hate anon #how many will I get #it’s fitting it should be on the one week anniversary of THE PICTURE #Just sub ‘they were having an affair’ at certain difficult points into their relationship and it all makes sense #😂

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jbuffyangel · 5 years

Note

U talk about Oliver’s habit of lying to Felicity & u say that it’s something that will never change about him &Felicity just has to learn to accept that but that really doesn’t seem healthy imo. If my husband kept lying to me and keeping secrets from me over and over again, I wouldn’t just shrug and say “oh well that’s just who he is”. That is absolutely a behavior he can change. It doesn’t have to be either/or. Oliver can be a hero without sacrificing his relationship with Felicity & vice versa

I would also like to add that I’ve been in relationships where my boyfriend lied to me about things repeatedly and I think that he truly believed he was justified, but in my opinion, there really is no “good” reason for lying to someone you’re supposed to love. So when I see people (not you specifically, but just people in general) try to justify Oliver’s lies, it makes me really uncomfortable and, as much as it would break my heart, it kinda makes me want Felicity to leave Oliver because she shouldn’t just have to “accept it”. Sorry about the rant, but I feel like I’m the only one that takes issue with Oliver’s constant lying. I think I’m mostly just mad at the writers. :/

I’m sorry your ex boyfriend(s) lied to you. That’s awful. Nobody deserves to be lied to. I think most people can relate to this experience because we’ve all been lied to at some point or another. If you haven’t been lied to then count yourself lucky. I can understand why you are upset anytime Oliver lies. We all bring our life experience to how we feel about stories. Certain storylines can trigger a deeper, more emotional response. We can even relive a painful memory or trauma from our own life. Lying is your trigger storyline. Mine are miscarriages, abortion and cheating. Everyone has them, so I hope you can take comfort in the fact you are not alone.

However, I disagree with how you’ve interpreted my response to these storylines. There can be a very large divide between what I write and how someone interprets it. It’s just one of the pitfalls of blogging I guess. Sometimes I understand because my writing has been unclear or I phrased something poorly and it requires additional explanation. But in this instance I gotta be honest, I have no idea where you are getting this from:

“U talk about Oliver’s habit of lying to Felicity & u say that it’s something that will never change about him & Felicity just has to learn to accept that.”

Not only have I never written or said this, I don’t understand how you can interpret that I did. But nonetheless here we are, so allow me the opportunity to be very clear.

Your interpretation of how I look at Oliver’s lying is just flat out wrong. I have never said or written Felicity needs to accept Oliver’s lying. I have never said or written this is something Oliver can not change. Anytime Oliver lies I say it is wrong because it is wrong. Anytime Oliver lies to Felicity I strongly disagree with his choice and voice my disagreement for many, many pages- including the post I believe you are referring to. Anytime Oliver lies to Felicity I am angry, disappointed and frustrated with him. So, it makes absolutely no sense to me why you think I believe this is behavior Felicity must accept.

What I wrote was this:

There are simply aspects of Oliver Queen that are never going to change. He will always be the put-it-all-on-the-line-fall-on-the-sword-sacrifice-everything-for-everyone guy. And as maddening as this may be, Oliver is not always going to ask Felicity’s permission before he does it.

The behavior I said will never change is Oliver’s heroic selflessness. Oliver will always sacrifice himself or his happiness for the good of other people. This is the behavior I said Felicity needs to accept because this is who Oliver is. And Felicity has accepted this. It’s one of the reasons she loves Oliver. In fact I believe this is what she loves most about him. She has said as much on multiple occasions.

I’ve also said in multiple posts, including the one you are referencing, that Oliver’s selfless heroism is not a free pass to lie to Felicity about his actions or not consult her. He should have told her about William (although I don’t categorize this particular lie as selfless heroism). He should have discussed going to prison with her. Oliver should tell Felicity about the deal he made with the Monitor immediately. Anytime Oliver has failed to do these things I am emphatic about my disagreement.

As much as Oliver says Felicity and William are his top priority, they are not. What comes first in Oliver’s life is the Green Arrow. He puts the welfare of the city and world above his own. Sometimes Felicity and William are the people Oliver is protecting, but more often than not they are what Oliver is sacrificing. That’s the definition of a hero. Heroism requires sacrifice and therefore what is being sacrificed is Oliver’s happiness - his relationship with his wife and child. We’ve seen this time and again on Arrow because this is a story about a superhero and that’s what superheroes do.

This is why you don’t marry Batman.

I believe intent is important. Oliver wanted to tell Felicity about William, but he was hamstrung with a ridiculous ultimatum. I think he absolutely did not want to go to prison and was confident Felicity would talk him out of it. I think he was in SPACE negotiating with the Monitor and couldn’t make a phone call to the wife to get her approval to sacrifice whatever he agreed to. The circumstances surrounding these lies do matter to me.

None of these good intentions excuse Oliver’s lies, but they are evidence of his good heart. Oliver often does the wrong thing while fervently trying to do the right thing. As I’ve said many times, he is an imperfect heart trying to love perfectly. Once again - Felicity’s speech in 6x11 is an acknowledgement of all of this.

Sometimes good people make mistakes. Sometimes they make the same mistakes several times before they finally get it right. Me recognizing Oliver’s fallibility and offering forgiveness like his wife has done is not the same as saying his lies are okay. Nor is it saying the lies are something Felicity has to accept.

I don’t know what your boyfriend(s) lied to you about, but I agree we can rationalize pretty much everything and there are seldom good reasons for lying. I don’t put up with lying in my marriage. Trust is vitally important, easily broken, and difficult to repair.

However, this is why I said in the post I am not applying real world scenarios to Oliver and Felicity all the time. They live in a fantasy world where they fight aliens and go to prison without a trial. I don’t know about your boyfriend, but my husband isn’t lying about sacrificing his life for the world. My husband and I aren’t a crime fighting duo trying to save a city. At this point in our lives, our biggest problem is trying to figure out what to watch on Netflix.

I’m sorry, but I’m not going to crucify Oliver for lying to Felicity while he’s saving his loved ones from prison, the lives of other heroes and/or the world. I am going to give the guy some points for that. I’ve also accepted Oliver isn’t always going to ask Felicity’s permission to do what he believes needs to be done . Sometimes he physically and logistically can’t (re: space) and other times it’s because it’s actually easier on Oliver if he doesn’t discuss it with Felicity.

I will explain the “easier on Oliver” reason hopefully before people start throwing things at me.

Nope. Too late.

As I’ve said countless times before, when would Felicity ever be okay with Oliver sacrificing his freedom and/or life for her or anyone else? She wouldn’t. I don’t know any spouse who would be okay with that.

Ultimately, I am asking for Oliver and Felicity to have the same discussion again and again.

I already know what Felicity is going to say.

So does Oliver.

She’s said it all before in previous seasons.

They’ve had this fight many times.

The circumstances might be different

and what is said may change,

but it’s always the please-don’t-go-we-will-find-another-way

song and dance.

This is exactly what Oliver tells Felicity in 3x20.

Sometimes he just doesn’t have the emotional energy to have the same fight. Sometimes it hurts too much to have it. Sometimes Oliver is afraid Felicity is going to convince him otherwise and then he won’t do what needs to be done. Again, not a free pass to lie, but I can understand why the biggest oak tree to ever live makes the choices he does sometimes.

The flip is Oliver doesn’t get to be pissed with how Felicity’s deals with all his sacrifices. He doesn’t get to come back and Monday morning quarterback all her decisions.

There are also going to be times when Felicity is going to hero in ways Oliver disagrees with. She’s going to put her life on the line, make moral judgments, and cross lines just like him. If Oliver has the freedom to operate this way then so should Felicity. May I also add that when Felicity behaves this way I cheer her on. But when Oliver behaves this way I am supposed to reprimand him? That feels like a double standard to me.

Their discussions in 7x08 & 7x09 are meant to show that Oliver and Felicity understand the world they live in and the choices they are required to make. Instead of judging and being pissed at each other about all the heroic sacrificing they do, Oliver and Felicity decided to recognize they are both pretty spectacular individuals and they love each other more than life itself. I’m okay with that.

Is it possible to find another way? Sure. It’s always possible for Oliver to do something else, but this is Arrow we are talking about. It doesn’t always make sense and it has plot holes the size of the Grand Canyon. We aren’t watching Breaking Bad y’all. Oliver is constantly boxed into corners with ridiculous plot lines. As audience members we can say, “He should do this or that,” to avoid the situation, but those loop holes and easy exits are never available to Oliver in the show. Why? Because the writers are forcing the character down a certain road.

Rather than beat my head against the wall arguing about all the contrivances, ridiculousness and A, B, and C options that will help Oliver easily avoid the sacrifice, I accept the scenario as is. It’s a fruitless endeavor to do otherwise. I accept Arrow for what is is and what it is not. Nor am I going to penalize the character or the relationship because of the writing choices. I’m not blaming Oliver and Olicity for the stupid shit the Arrow writers do.

I absolutely wish the writers would stop with all the lying. It’s unnecessary and truly doesn’t add a lot to the plot, but they’ve decided this is a great way to drum up drama for Oliver and Felicity without breaking them up. I think we can move on from this plot point because the writers have done it to death.

However, this may be like me wishing for Elena to be more than a tennis ball The Vampire Diaries writers bounce back and forth between Damon and Stefan.

I’m not sure. Time will tell.

I feel like I am in between a rock and a hard place. If I am not reassuring everyone that Oliver will tell Felicity the truth about the Monitor deal then I am accepting of his lies. If I say Oliver will tell Felicity right away and I’m wrong then I’m getting everyone’s hopes up. The reason I am saying I don’t know if Oliver will tell the truth is because I don’t know. That’s not a moral judgement on the behavior though.

This may be a hugely unpopular statement, but I do not believe lying to Felicity is the worst thing Oliver has ever done. I got on board with this character when he was murdering people regularly. Sure, they were all bad people, but how is that any less a rationalization for morally questionable behavior? It’s not. We’ve been morally rationalizing this character’s actions from the pilot. Oliver Queen is a character in constant moral flux. That’s the show.

We are moving slowly, but surely along a a spectrum. Oliver has lied since day one to every single person to ever come in contact with him. While he has yet to fully grasp the necessity for complete transparency, his reasons for lying are becoming less selfish - not that they were all that selfish to begin with. Also, his sacrifices are rapidly approaching Jesus level.

Can we honestly say Oliver doesn’t pay for his mistakes? Anytime Oliver lies he’s either tortured, loses a loved one, is sent away to a maximum security prison, etc. The list goes on and on. The man gets more than his fair share of comeuppance.

So, no I’m not going to advocate for Felicity leave Oliver. I don’t think the lies Oliver has told are cause for divorce. It’s fine if you do, but that’s not where I’m at. Quite frankly, I wouldn’t divorce my husband for lying about/failing to discuss going to prison for me or offering his life to save others. It takes a pretty amazing person to do those things. So, maybe it does make it easier to forgive him for his wildly disrespectful, hurtful, and dishonest choice of not cluing me in on the plan.

But first, I would cry and tell him I need him more than the world does.

And then I’d be pissed as hell at him.

I’d read him the riot act about how it’s my life too and he should’ve talked to me.

I’d scream and yell about how he abandoned me.

I’d tell him where to shove his apologies.

Nor would I put up with any judgement over how I behaved in his absence.

But I would still love him.

I would still want to be with him.

But this is why I didn’t marry a superhero. Felicity Smoak did. You best believe she knows exactly who she married. Oliver Queen is her choice and that includes all his imperfections, repeated mistakes, and hurtful behavior. That’s marriage.

Oliver doesn’t have to become a fully realized superhero to learn he shouldn’t lie to his wife. But the writers may very well decide the end point to Oliver’s lying is when he is a fully realized superhero. I don’t know. I don’t control the story.I was extremely patient with the murdering, so I figure I can be patient with the lying. More importantly, I’m not to going penalize Oliver Queen for being the Green Arrow in a show called Arrow. You may see these situations as very black and white Anon, and that’s fine, but I do not. I don’t think Felicity does either.

#arrow #olicity #oliver queen #felicity smoak #oliver and felicity #arrow spoilers #olicity meta #oliver queen meta #felicity smoak meta #spoiler theoretical

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connywrites · 5 years

Text

of flesh and blood 14

start - part [13]

Was it all just in my head? I feel your hands around my neck 'Cause you took what you thought was yours Now I'll take mine Don't pretend you're innocent An eye for an eye

While his sleep gradually became regular and he'd learned to follow a strict schedule while maintaining a timeframe for personal hygiene and a few minor slots for space to himself, Gavin still felt surprised to wake up and see cold, distant silver rings staring him down.

They held infinite knowledge, and this individual model had a deep understanding of himself that made him sick to his stomach, as 900 could pull up anything he might want to keep secret and hold it to his face on a whim. Wondering exactly how it knew so much about him, alongside the memories of his interactions in the DPD, the detective part of his brain stirred as he pieced together an assumption: the tablet news articles he'd skimmed over were probably right, assuming Cyberlife must have taken the department's security camera recordings and uploaded them to the RK900. One of Connor's biggest flaws, as Gavin and his co-workers never shied from talking about, was the inconsistent "memory" loss from the amnesia between deaths. A different Connor didn't remember it's past chassis' demise or seemingly anything before it, and any other pieces of information that might have been lost from the internal damage; meanwhile it was blatantly clear the RK900 remembered what it and its previous model experienced, and much more from before it was made at all, making him wonder if it held the remaining memories of the old RK800s as well. In his mind, it was the only way to make sense of how it could indicate his emotions and preferences down to a point he didn't acknowledge in himself; the base of what was so terrifying to him as the androids knew him too personally and were capable of spreading that information to what might as well be a global scale on a whim, by how he felt. It probably knew the same amount or more about the others that worked at the department, but had no inclination to pay attention to such a thing while he was the one singled out.

Running away had given him all the more time to become absorbed in his own paranoia, glancing back down every alleyway turn as he'd ran for hours, feeling the stretch of his physical endurance as his lungs burned and his muscles felt red-hot. He'd ran, climbed, jumped, dug and swam as far as his body could take him for any sense of unfamiliarity, wanting nothing more than to escape this living hell he’d been stuck in. No matter his attempts, there was no satisfaction as he knew he’d never entirely escape, proven by the fact he woke up in his own bedroom all over again - dressed down to his boxers despite the fact he’d left fully clothed. He could already imagine the scornful tone the 900 probably used when it talked to itself, as it often did, likely saying something about how he’d ruined perfectly good, new clothes with mud stains, sweat, or whatever else it could think of. Lost in thought, he didn’t turn to look at the android until the familiar, pale hand waved in front of his face, a clear demand for his attention. His eyes followed the movement of its hand, then trailed to its eyes, blinking a few times as he tried to shake off the sleep still fogging his mind.

"You have scars dating back to childhood. To infantry. What tragedies have you suffered?" Gavin nearly choked on his drink, scoffed, and then laughed a fake, dry chuckle that lasted all of four seconds before he straightened out again.

"I don't really want to go down that road, if you don't mind," he muttered, his gaze only halfway focused on RK900 as he otherwise looked straight ahead. The second half of his sentence was touching dangerous territory, he knew, but forming sentences right after he woke up was still difficult.

“I asked you a question, and it wasn’t for a response of personal opinion.” The demand only reached halfway through his mind as his thoughts drifted off, feeling the swooping dizziness of exhaustion trying to tug him back into unconsciousness. Rapidly snapping fingers caught his attention anew, tired eyes glancing up and over to the android again, seeing that it was visibly ‘growing impatient’ with a glare that signaled an unfortunate demise in his favor if he didn’t respond fast.

“It’s a broad question.” Acknowledging the truth in his words, it nodded, eyelids flickering with a millisecond of understanding.

“The worst thing you remember.”

Ah. All it wanted was his agony; yet again, he chastised himself with the awareness that he should have known better.

“Why do you wanna know that?”

“Consider it another simple curiosity.”

“Worst is a real hard pick, buddy. I guess the first thing that comes to mind was being shoved back against the hot stove, while the burner was still on fire. That weird ring of a scar on my shoulder, next to your second zero? Yeah, that was that.” While he tried to remain stoic in his speech, Gavin couldn’t help the way his voice grew low and quiet whenever he talked about this – which was, ultimately, never. It hurt too much, and it made him feel embarrassed, weak. 900 wanted to feed off of that misery, he knew, but he wouldn’t let it get away with it more than he could help.

“That is a particular burn scar.” Gavin turned his head, squinting at the android as he made another attempt at piecing together exactly how the machine worked, and what it knew, alongside how it knew what it did. Sometimes it talked to him like it had known him since high school, yet others he’s reminded they’d only been working together for a few weeks. Maybe a month now, if he added the two days before the first weekend. They’d only ‘grown closer’ since, and the way the RK900 hadn’t left his sight since day one was more than irksome, given the circumstance.

Gavin considered the idea this could be sort of a game to the android’s mind, as it seemed to respond to some things in such a way, and with this being his personal history, he was almost certain it would find some sort of entertainment in the exchange.

“What do you wanna know all that for, anyway? Er, don’t hit me, please – I mean it.” Lifting his hands with his palms in an immediate motion of surrender, he felt his heartbeat pump blood at a quicker and heavier rate once he’d caught his own words. Eyes on the RK900, he felt relieved to see it didn’t look too bothered.

“You asked this question already, but I suppose stating it as a mere interest of mine is a bit of a dead end for you. I want to know why you aren’t so physically fit in your age for how hard you work your body, and why you’re prone to muscle straining. I’ve learned it’s because you’re always tense, so something like a heavy gun recoil when you’re holding the rifle too tight nearly dislocates your shoulder. With your constant body tension, that encouraged me wonder why you clench up all the time in the first place, and with that added to the many scars across your epidermis, I assumed a history of physical violence would make one keep his guard up at any and all times possible the way you do.”

Gavin hated being accessed like he was a hospital test subject, but all he did was lower his arms to his sides and return to his regulated posture.

“What are some of the worst things you’ve done to someone else?” Heavy discomfort pressed down on Gavin’s chest, increasing his rapid breathing while an ugly sensation of guilt and well-aged self-disgust stirred him with nausea. No human had known to ask him about such a thing, and if they did, they weren’t brave enough to bring it up to his face.

“Being a crime scene detective is a morbid job to pick, but it was easier for you to accept that your life was already full of trauma and violence, correct? It’s not an uncommon pattern, but in you, it’s fascinating.” Gavin didn’t dare look at the android.

“At least I can justify shooting someone if I have a badge to back me up.” His voice was thick as an uncomfortable lump stuck in his throat and pulled his voice box tight. The urge to cry was already warbling his speech. 900 raised its eyebrows in mock surprise with a tone of disbelief in its voice.

“That implies you’ve shot people before you were on the police force. That would have been a felony and put you in prison,” it said, eyebrows scrunching while it processed the aspect in its artificial mind, “unless you weren’t caught.” In a moment like this, Gavin would usually feel cocky, shining a mocking grin in the face of whoever he’d consider an enemy, but he’d learned better than that by now. Listening to the android pick him apart and ask the most personal questions about his history was an overwhelming discomfort, and one he knew he wouldn’t be able to escape. Sometimes it was easier to go along with it and power through the engagement, but by the end it usually lead to him feeling a flood of emotions he hadn’t touched in years or decades, generally all it once in overabundance, throwing him into a mental breakdown from the psychologically and physically invasive aftermath.

“Yeah. I dunno, someone hurt my family and we just grew up doing whatever it took to make it right.” At least, that’s what his dad said, and as far as he knew, his own ancestors.

“The way you say that with ease means it doesn’t measure up to the more vicious actions you’ve carried out, in your mind. You must find comfort in seeing the darkness of others like you. Though, I’m sure you never would have imagined yourself being a victim.”

“That make you a suspect?” Gavin knew his phrase was wittingly sharp, but he slid under the excuse of being unable to help it. RK900 smirked.

“Only those with evidence towards guilt would a suspect make. No one assumes anything from me, so no. You’re on your own.” Discomfort stirred in his chest again, leaving him to feel unsteady on his feet. The android acknowledged the way he swayed, lethargy and gravity trying to pull him down.

“You haven’t slept so well, I see. We can pick up this discussion later.” Confused, then agitated, then complacent, Gavin went through the mental gymnastics of understanding and reluctantly accepting the situation. No matter how annoying the 900 was, sleep sounded great.

“Okay.”

“Try again.” A twitch of irritation pulled up his shoulder as he was unable to help the flinching every time he was told to speak the same words he’d grown to loathe:

“Yes, sir.”

“You lied to me. Don’t think I couldn’t tell.” Gavin wished he could do more than freeze and stand still every time the damn machine opened its mouth.

“You don’t care about your family, and you definitely wouldn’t risk your life for them. You shot that person for a reason you probably know was selfish.”

“Thanks for letting me sleep,” Gavin murmured, rubbing his eye as he tried to wake up a little more.

“What happened? Did you feel justified in your actions?”

“Yeah, if the guy deserving to be shot is what you see as justice,” he muttered, shuffling to pour another cup of coffee.

“I asked for your opinion.” Yawning, Gavin shook his head as he tried to understand where the android was going with this, only to find yet another dead end.

“In my opinion, he’s dead fucking meat and deserved to get eaten by the maggots. Are we done here? I’ve got work today—” there was a sharp prong in his side where the taser usually went, but this time it was but the sharp end of tonged barbecue fork, painful enough to make a point without doing any real damage to Gavin or his clothes. Flinching, he sucked in a breath and scooted away from the item.

“Er. Right,” he murmured with a sigh of defeat.

“Sorry. Yeah, I feel like I was right. He’s not hurting anyone else anymore, now is he?”

RK900 narrowed its eyes, staring at him for a few long seconds as something within its emotional coding decided it didn’t particularly feel comfortable around someone like this. It was something like fear, at a lower level, but still complicated enough it didn’t understand it, searching for a dictionary definition to replicate and apply to the sensation.

It took a few seconds, but Gavin caught on, turning his head to the side as he was suddenly brave enough to step forward, inspecting the expression on the android’s face. One of the most human ones of all, he was sure of it; uncertainty.

“What? Are you scared of what I’m capable of?” While the giveaway of stress was gone from its facial expression, it shifted into a combative stance without any prompt telling it to do so.

“I would worry for the sake of the other human lives you’ve interfered with, but that would be useless as I’ve now fixed the problem.” Gavin didn’t feel so brave anymore.

“You look like you’re scared I’ll hurt you again, Nines.” RK900 paused, genuinely processing the statement and cycling it through its mind with a yellow, blinking LED and a few seconds to idle.

“I don’t know why only now my emotional replicative processors are acknowledging your potential of being dangerous towards me,” it said in a voice that held modest confusion. Gavin studied its posture while it shuffled through its own coding, pulse flooding his ears as he wanted to repeat the night all over again in an act of vengeance, but felt much too terrified to do more than move from his position and try to brace himself for the worst.

“I thought only deviants were scared of dying,” Gavin spoke with a sharp tongue. This time, the android was the one that didn’t move, shifting its expression to show its confusion as it caught Gavin’s gaze straight on.

“You’re always asking me questions; can I have a turn?” Its eyes studied him, but even if it could read every physical statistic of his body, it wouldn’t find an answer for what it was looking for. Immediately recognizing it as an irrational instruction, the piece of code was deleted, leaving it to readjust its posture and stand up straight again.

“Sure,” it obliged, partially in challenge. Gavin went to fold his arms over his chest before feeling the tightness of his work shirt shift over his skin, a swift reminder to limit his posture and cuing him to return his arms to his sides. In a moment of realization, he turned to grab his coffee cup that was now turning cool, glancing at the watch on his wrist without thinking twice as he clocked the time, feeling the anxiety ease away from him as he ensured he wasn’t late.

It was harder to put his thoughts into words than he anticipated, leaving him to shift his weight and lean back against the counter in thought with another sip of coffee. He could learn anything in the existence of human knowledge from this thing, and while what he’d ask would never be ultimately important, he knew he had to watch his words when he tried to talk with it.

“What’s your goal? Everything has to relate to something for you, right? That’s how it works up there?” He gestured an index finger towards his right temple, an obvious signal, although mocking, of what he was talking about.

“Anyway, the hell—er. What are you trying to learn now? Doing all this? To me? I don’t get it.” The admission was harder than he’d assumed it would be, leaving his body shaking with the realization he’d offered raw emotional vulnerability. Curling his hands into fists, he pretended to shove away the anxiety.

RK900 seemed to sincerely consider the question, its expression softening as it turned its head to register the look on Gavin’s face. It’s library of pre-programmed facial expressions seemed like a farce compared to watching a human like him in action.

“Your instructions were embedded into my coding and I followed them.” There wasn’t a reason for it to keep hurting him after the first night, though.

“After that, I suppose it was of my own accord. Something about it is…” it paused, quickly searching its database for a synonym that it found suitable for the context of their discussion.

“Gratifying.” Gavin raised his eyebrows with the familiar knee-jerk reaction of fear making him scoot away from the android a bit more, feeling the shift of new, clean bandages on his back; for the most part, the itching and aching faded into the background of his conscience, but it was always more apparent whenever the 900 made a verbal point of hurting him for its own pleasure.

“Politically speaking, androids may obtain rights, but we have yet to suffer from wrongs. You can’t put me in a fair trial, you can’t throw me in jail, and you can’t have me destroyed. There’s no way to get rid of me, and your point makes me curious as to why this is the case as well.” After it dawned on him the android wasn’t aware of why it was doing what it was at all, he set down his coffee cup in a moment of nausea and turned away to head towards the door, breaking his well-trained character in an anxious moment of forgetfulness.

“Can we talk about that on the way to work?” With nothing cuing it to get rough with its hands, it opted to follow through for now; getting work done was still its main priority, no matter what else took up its time on the sidelines. It considered Gavin a personal side project, something that wasn’t necessarily beneficial to the Cyberlife team or the DPD, but a show of human psychosis that taught it more about the species’ functionality as a whole every day.

Gavin grabbed his jacket and unlocked the door, bustling through as he glowered at the falling snow, pulling the hood up and momentarily admiring the faux fur that lined the back of it – another one of 900’s precise purchases, of course – as well as the fact he was actually warm in it compared to the old worn-down leather coat and pair of sweaters he’d worn holes through over the years. Slipping into the passenger seat without further comment, Gavin adjusted the seat on his side and leaned back with a sigh as his stomach grumbled in a harsh reminder he’d skipped breakfast.

“What did you wish to discuss?” Gavin cast it a look of annoyance, but shook his head, glowering out the window and sliding back in his seat.

“Nevermind. Anyway, I’m putting in a request to get you off my cases as my partner, so don’t be surprised if you get fired.” The engine of the car had started humming, but 900 hesitated on the prompt that would begin its designated route as it internally put together exactly what Gavin had just said.

“And you didn’t notify me?”

“Well, what you said was right, you don’t really have a place in society. Sucks not having rights, huh?” Feeling smug, he had all of a few seconds to smirk before he felt the grip of its large, crushing hand around his neck, and all certainty and ego was quick to drain from him as the color disappeared from his face.

“I think you’ll realize that I have a right to end your life just as you did mine.” Confused, Gavin furrowed his brows, but he no longer felt any challenge left in him as he sat up in his seat, eyes locked on the android’s. He wanted to think the android wouldn’t kill him, that he didn’t believe it, but that would be false, and they both knew it. Whatever the upgrade did to this android, it was a constant threat in his favor, and he was too quick to forget just how real the threat was. It was as surreal as it was terrifying to think one of the dreadful machines had his life in its grip, ready to crush him to pieces as soon as it had the opportunity. He revisited the fact it branded him with deep, permanent lacerations for the satisfaction of seeing it alone, even if its own model turned out to be temporary – it would still haunt Gavin for the rest of his life.

Whatever he’d done to it the night of his overdose must have ingrained something awful within it, and he couldn’t decide if this was his own fault or not.

“I suggest you close your mouth before I shove your head to the gravel while the car is still moving.” Without another comment, 900 let go of Gavin and the car pulled from its position in park and started driving itself towards the department.

#wrow.. look at them go #also took this as full advantage to plug my ofab playlist lmfao #detroit: become human #dbh: gavin reed #dbh: rk900

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thelawyerthatwaspromised · 6 years

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Re-Thinking Tyrion (long post, again)

In my recent post (here) about Jon Snow incrementally taking control over Dany in Season 7, I had some passing thoughts about Tyrion and I have another post about Tyrion specifically from a few months ago (here).

Tyrion is probably the one character whose Season 7 arc confused the general audience the most. I don’t think his was the most complex character arc - I think that will emphatically go to Jon upon seeing events unfold in Season 8 - but I do think Tyrion’s arc works really well in conjunction with Jon’s and if we see Jon acting as I believe he did, then it makes Tyrion’s own story fall into place with a consistent narrative.

In a short statement: Tyrion misjudged Jon and fears that his status as Dany’s most trusted adviser is slipping away but he feels a profound discomfort with the direction Dany (as a person) is going and fears what she may become.

Tyrion started his service with Dany with a healthy amount of skepticism.

[continued under the cut]

This much closer to the Tyrion we expect. One who doubts almost everyone in power. The one who tells the story of the half-wit cousin crushing beetles and Tyrion’s sad realization that he’ll never understand exactly why some people hurt those who are weaker than they are; just that it is a fact of life and it’s one that he finds uncomfortable.

This reveals a “humanism” to Tyrion. One that accepts that, in practice, that “might is right” will often be how the world functions, but it’s not necessarily something he has no power to do something about.

He’s also come to really trust Varys. He may not always have a clear picture of the machinations that Varys wants to pursue, but he understands the why of Varys and really that’s probably enough for him.

I think the most important operative word for Tyrion’s character is “why”. He is always trying to figure out why certain characters do the things they do. Once he identifies that, he formulates his schemes and plots. (which are the same thing but anyway...)

But Tyrion’s own “why” is a bit jumbled - I think this is true in Tyrion’s own mind. He was in denial for quite some time that he enjoyed the game. And scheming. And outwitting people. He liked power. I do think a part of him wants to use his power as a big “F*** you!” to everyone who ever wronged him while also using it to keep half-wits from squashing metaphorical beetles.

As someone that’s always been shoved to the backseat - Tyrion naturally fears irrelevancy. Jaime has his sword..and Tyrion has his mind. Tyrion very much wants to be the person guiding Dany’s strategies, which is one of the reasons he felt so unhappy after he was removed as Hand. He didn’t feel important. He couldn’t strut around anymore and do or say whatever he wished.

Tyrion and Varys were also shown to have some very interesting foreshadowing in Season 2 that I referenced above:

So with that cursory understanding of Tyrion, I think I’m ready to examine his Season 7 arc with perhaps a bit more clarity than my first attempt.

The Setup

Tyrion eagerly vouches for Jon in Ep 2 when Mel arrives to ask that Dany summon Jon so she can learn of the White Walkers and the Army of the Dead.

He immediately states that he doesn’t really know the things happening beyond the Wall or whether they are true - but he does believe that Jon is a very good potential ally and one that would seemingly have no reason to to be trouble as Jon would assuredly want to kill Cersei even more than Dany does.

So right off the bat, Tyrion’s made two judgments about Jon: 1) he’s very very trustworthy; and 2) he would consider defeating Cersei by any means necessary a top priority.

We know Jon has lied before - but that he generally tries to be a good man. Honestly, Tyrion made his own bed by deceiving Jon in the first place but AT THE VERY LEAST, he vastly misjudged Jon’s primary goals. It’s not Cersei.

Jon’s priorties were clearly defined before he left Winterfell. Defend the North.

How can he be defending the North by going to Dragonstone?

Specifically to acquire Dany as an ally.

This is Jon’s stated purpose in leaving to go North

The White Lie and the Terrible First Impression

The way Tyrion actually gets Jon to go to Dragonstone is born out of deception. He intentionally fails to include Dany’s demand that Jon arrive to bend the knee. I think he envisions Jon having an “awww shucks” attitude when he gets there and ultimately not really having any trouble bending the knee to Dany.

And their first 5 seconds on Dragonstone go about as Tyrion had planned.

Except the curtain is quickly pulled back that Jon just walking into a different situation than Tyrion led him to believe.

So Jon already might feel a bit of apprehension about the mission as a whole - and Tyrion in particular.

Also worth noting that Tyrion started this by making a joke with Jon about being a bastard. Great, that was Jon’s most sensitive topic when last they met. So Tyrion feels at ease that Jon is basically the same person he knew before and he decides to break the ice with Jon about a topic they will be able to connect with.

I want to point this out specifically. Jon’s already had an uneasy moment on the beach when Missandei told him the Dothraki would be taking their weapons. Tyrion’s attempt at small talk to smooth any residual discomfort showed him that the topic of Sansa is completely off limits for Tyrion. Interesting.

Throne Room (Terrible First Impression Cont.)

Jon reveals he has no intentions on bending the knee and what happens between Dany and Cersei is nothing but petty squabbling to him. Tyrion is legitimately confused.

So Tyrion presses the issue. He tells Jon that if he just bends the knee to Dany, they can defeat Cersei and then deal with whatever is happening up North. Jon says there’s no time for any of this. It’s stupid, it’s pointless, he doesn’t care about Dany v. Cersei.

Tyrion pleads with Jon again. If there’s no time to argue, then just bend the knee, because it takes hardly any time at all, and they can hurry up and do what needs to be done.

To which Jon gives his most defiant response.

You uses “Your Grace” derisively. He makes Tyrion consider that maybe Jon has been shown absolutely no reason to flock to Dany. Revenge worked to pull in Olenna, Ellaria, and Yara. Conquest and glory worked for the Dothraki. Unquestioning loyalty worked for the Unsullied. None of these factors play to Jon. He doesn’t care about revenge with Cersei...certainly not more than facing the AotD. He doesn’t care about conquest or glory. He doesn’t have any reason to have blind faith in Dany. Tyrion’s main pitch (“help us defeat my sister”) is not at all why Jon is there. Tyrion didn’t understand Jon already.

The “How Can I Fix This?” Phase

Tyrion goes up to Jon on the cliffs to talk to him about what happened in the first meeting. He does feel bad at this point, I believe. He sees Jon as a do-gooder who just doesn’t realize how much good Dany can do.

Tyrion believes that all Jon needs is some indication that Dany isn’t like her father, and then Jon will understand she can be trustworthy enough to cede control to and then everything can get moving forward again.

Tyrion believes Jon only needs evidence that Dany is a good person - but he’s still operating under the assumption that the war with Cersei is more important and that Jon will come around.

He advises Jon to go ask around about who Daenerys Stormborn is and why people follow her. Meanwhile he tells Jon he will ask Dany to grant him the privileged honor of mining the Khaleesi’s precious dragonglass on the island. My assumption here is that he intended for this to simply show Jon that Dany is good and worthy. Instead, he made Jon realize that he needs to observe how others deal with Dany in order to figure out how to move her in his direction.

Meanwhil, Tyrion is operating under a false belief that talking to people about how amazing Dany is combined with Jon getting the dragonglass will be enough to get him to budge.

Buuuuuut as we know - Jon’s goal is to convince Dany to come North and fight with the North. Tyrion has unwittingly opened the door for Jon to make a good impression on Dany and helping Jon realize the best strategy to achieve his ultimate goal.

Dragonstone Beach - Tyrion Realizing Jon’s Ascension

Dany absolutely goes off on Tyrion when she accuses him of working against her to keep the Lannisters safe.

And Tyrion is clearly upset that she is berating him like this in front of everyone and personally challenging him. She lashes out at the idea that Tyrion wouldn’t want to hurt his family.

Which Jon notices - and this look says to me “is this normal for her???”

Jon gives good counsel. He essentially confirms what Tyrion would have wanted. “If you use them to melt castles and burn cities, you’re not different. You’re just more of the same.”

But it’s a public demonstration of Jon’s growing prominence and Dany’s shift from listening to Tyrion to listening to Jon. The fact this happens in front of everyone is meant for us to see the reactions of Dany’s circle.

Tyrion Seeing His Failures

Tyrion laments the Tarly execution. He and Varys are extremely troubled by what’s happened. Except Tyrion has no more answers. He doesn’t know how to get through to Dany. Think about it...Dany just publicly asked for Jon’s opinion (another ruling figure who is not an ally of hers and who has known her all of 12 seconds) over Tyrion’s, the person she chose to personally serve as her closest adviser.

If Tyrion had a good belief in Jon at this point, wouldn’t it have made sense for him to tell Varys that she’s taken quite a liking to the King in the North. Perhaps proposing a marriage alliance. Or just “hey, let’s get Jon in here and we can gameplan this stuff.” Nothing. We get Tyrion at a loss about the situation. He’s becoming irrelevant.

Also really really interesting was when Varys reveals he has a sealed scroll meant for Jon. And instead of referring to Jon by name, Tyrion passively calls him “the King in the North”. Doesn’t necessarily mean much - but I get the feeling that Tyrion does not feel a close connection with Jon at this point.

The Wight Hunt Plan

Is it not a little strange that Tyrion thought up what might be the worst plan in the show’s history? Ok the writing is probably to blame for a lot of this. But Tyrion sees Jon as a Mr. Hero who is brave and dumb but increasingly exerting influence over Dany. Why not imagine a mission that’s extremely dangerous and also puts some space between Jon and Dany?

Everyone in the room sees how super sad Dany is thinking about Jon leaving.

Tyrion communicates non-verbally to Dany that she should let Jon go. Why would he do this? Because the mission needs Jon? Or because he would be alright with the idea of Jon going? Tyrion’s advice has ALWAYS been for leaders to avoid putting themselves in dangerous positions because it’s generally stupid and often leads to their deaths. Yet he’s more than alright with Jon’s departure and in fact hatched the plan that achieved his departure.

It’s a potential win-win-win for Tyrion. He gets Jon separated so Tyrion can re-assert his prominence. If they succeed, they might be able to get that ceasefire that Dany’s been begging for. Bonus is that...I’m sorry...Jon might actually die and that wouldn’t be horrible for Tyrion.

Then Tyrion is mostly silent during the actual goodbye. He very noticeably observes Dany and her making her feelings to Jon very obvious.

He also...in my opinion...took notice of Jon’s non-romantic response.

What interests me even more is that when Jorah leaves for the Wight Hunt, Tyrion tosses him the coin Jorah used to sell himself into slavery in order to win back Dany’s affections in Season 5. Like...this is kind of heavy stuff. That coin was Jorah’s ticket to getting back into Dany’s life. Tyrion follows that up saying “our queen needs you now more than ever” but essentially he says this in secret to Jorah. I’m convinced he thinks Jorah is his best hope for keeping Jon from digging so deeply into Dany’s conscious thoughts that Jon would be the only one calling the shots.

Has anyone found it strange yet that Tyrion didn’t bother saying goodbye to Jon here? I think it’s strange unless it’s a visual clue that Tyrion does not trust Jon now. He underestimated him from the beginning and now Tyrion is seeing the waning of his own influence over Dany.

The Fireside Chat

Unprompted, Dany laments the fact that all of the men she’s ever been involved with behave as stupid heroes and they die.

Tyrion knows where this could be going...and he uses the opportunity to say that Jon Snow is in love with Dany.

Does Tyrion really think this? Maybe. But I’ve already shown his reaction to the goodbye scene. He told Jorah specifically about Dany needing him “more than ever”. We’ve seen Tyrion’s influence waning. He’s also engineered the plan that put Jon in harm’s way and separated him from Dany...but he’s finding that Jon is still not far from Dany’s thoughts.

So...in my opinion...Tyrion tries to undermine Jon by claiming that he is acting a Fool in Love in a way that others have tried to cast doubts with Dany regarding the true intentions of other rivals.

We’ve seen this before. Xaro, in proposing marriage to Dany, also attempted to undermine Jorah by “revealing” to Dany that Jorah is in love with her.

If you’ll remember...Jorah’s reputation was hurt in Dany’s eyes and she became much more skeptical of Jorah.

Ygritte is another character who has allowed the knowledge of another character’s love cloud what that character was saying. It’s damaging to their credibility.

The fact Orell was very much in love with Ygritte caused Ygritte to disregard Orell’s extremely on-point assessment that Jon wasn’t really working in her favor.

I strongly believe this is the sort of angle Tyrion was playing with. She needs to think Jon is motivated by love and desire because he thinks it will undermine Jon’s credibility and make Dany realize that she needs to act more clear-headed.

Except it has the opposite effect. Dany steadfastly refuses to stand down against Tyrion’s advice when Jon asks for her aid North of the Wall. She’s only become more aware of her feelings and found herself consciously choosing to do the stupid, brave thing that she just lamented her other fellas for doing.

The kicker: Tyrion’s desperate plea for Dany NOT to go try to save Jon and company. He both sent them on this mission and told Dany not to save them. In Tyrion’s eyes, Jon is disposable, Jorah is disposable, but Dany is not. Especially when it comes to his goals of unseating Cersei and remaining relevant. He believes that Dany is his only shot at significance.

Tyrion’s Angry Realization

The Dragonpit was not a good moment for Tyrion. Tyrion has seen his influence waning - but he clearly is still motivated by the same objective: he wants Dany on the Throne. He wants to unseat Cersei. He wants to be Dany’s Hand.

And then...

This idiot Northerner he thought he knew swoops in and completely derails Tyrion’s dreams. Then the idiot survives the Wight Hunt - while Dany also loses a dragon in saving him (which demonstrates that he already has too much influence). Then this idiot demonstrates to Tyrion that he’s putting their whole campaign in jeopardy because Tyrion had a ceasefire set up on a platter for Dany and Jon and co. and Jon torpedoed that by not even knowing how to lie.

He didn’t even tell his own advisers!

If this stupid idiot wouldn’t have displaced him as Dany’s main source of guidance, he would have told this stupid dumb idiot how to navigate this situation and how they could have avoided this big blow up with Cersei and gotten the ceasefire.

And then Tyrion Gets Really Really Unlucky...

Because he falls for a scheme that we, as the audience, already know is a deliberate betrayal.

But not before expressing to his sister that he has no handle on Dany and that he had absolutely no idea that Jon was going to pull what he pulled at the Dragonpit.

This is absolutely a professional embarrassment for Tyrion. To be so out of touch with the person that he’s trying to assure Cersei he can keep from nuking the capital?

As villainous as Cersei is; Tyrion has just demonstrated himself to be a failure as Dany’s Hand. And Dany has dragons. Realistically, how is Cersei supposed to have faith in Tyrion’s word that he can keep her from destroying King’s Landing after Tyrion tells her that she’s already threatened it? Cersei now knows Tyrion had no idea that Jon had bent the knee and basically admitted that he would have told Jon to lie about it in front of her.

So Tyrion secures a false ceasefire with Cersei. One that we already know is going to blow up in a huge conflict. We also know Tyrion is on the outs with Dany. And we know that he blames Jon for a lot of it.

“We Sail Together”

Tyrion is completely silent during the “sail together” scene. You know who does speak? Jorah. The guy who was told by Tyrion that Dany would need more than ever. I think it’s entirely possible that Tyrion and Jorah have had Jon Snow conversations off screen. About his growing influence and how it puts everything Dany has worked for at risk. She’s already lost a dragon because of him.

So Jorah is the one to speak up at the strategy meeting. And Dany publicly sides with Jon. Jorah gives his wonderfully skeptical look towards Jon which we’re led to believe is romantic jealousy but the likelihood is that Jorah sees Jon the same way Tyrion does - a man who wields a ton of power over Dany.

The Boat Look

And this is the crescendo of the season for Tyrion. Resigned to the fact that he’s utterly failed in stopping Mr. Honorable-Stupid-Northern-Fool Jon from completely usurping his position and causing Dany to completely change course from his personal quest to punish and unseat Cersei and what Tyrion believes is his last chance at relevance in Westerosi high society. Tyrion’s hail mary of calling on Jorah even failed.

Dany is at Jon’s mercy. And there’s nothing Tyrion can do about it at this point.

Is there hope for Tyrion?

Honestly, I’m not sure at this point. I think there’s a very good chance that Tyrion and Jorah will warn Dany repeatedly not to think that everything is at it appears with Jon. The bonus is that no one will see R+L=J coming. One of Tyrion’s worst fears is seeing Dany become her father (just as his #1 personal worst fear is becoming like Tywin).

There’s two ways Tyrion can go: I think he’s destined either to realize that Jon was playing a really savvy political game and that, begrudgingly, Jon demonstrated the wits and wisdom necessary to win the game while keeping a good heart and a main concern for protecting the people. Alternatively, Tyrion could become so angry and enraged that he acts out against Jon and tries to “expose” him as a liar and will ultimate suffer a bad fate because of it. I tend to favor the first option. I think Tyrion’s arc will coincide quite a bit with Varys’ arc and I don’t think Varys is going to take an action that isn’t good for the people.

I think Varys will see that Jon is much more skilled at the Game than anyone ever anticipated and he has the right family name. I envision Varys and Tyrion attempting to broker some type of uneasy peace between the Starks and Lannisters upon a realization that Jon has the legitimacy, the good heart, and, as it turns out, a lot more skill in politics than they really knew.

Varys seems destined for death by fire (after the threat from Dany in Ep 1 last season and the very first gif I included in this post from season 2) while I believe Tyrion’s survival is far more in question. Either way, I see a supremely interesting conclusion for Tyrion either way and of all the predictions about Tyrion for the finale season, I find this one sensible, logical, and satisfying to his character.

#tyrion lannister #political jon #political jon theory #political jon meta #jonsa #jon x sansa #anti targaryen #anti targaryen restoration #anti daenerys #anti j0nerys

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webwych · 5 years

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Soooooo, ICYMI (I’m getting down with the buzz acronyms - go me, huh?!), towards the end of last week, Mark Hamill posted photoshopped pic of himself, Carrie Fisher, Harrison Ford and Billy Dee Williams as their aged characters as seen in the ST. Personally, I’d say judging from the thread it generated it was accepted and challenged in somewhat equal measure by those who chose to respond it. I have to admit this and a recent article for The Independent online by journalist Clarisse Loughrey titled “Why There’s Still Hope For The Star Wars Fandom Yet”, made me think again about this labelled “toxic fandom”.

For those of us first fan generation, I personally take great affront at pretty much all of the descriptions thrown at us since December 2015, but I also recognise that due to the open social platforms where this is consistently happening, this has been one of the millions of social generational changes both for good and bad brought about by the invention of the mass internet. As a lady of somewhat mature years, I personally feel that I don’t have the life hours to waste on social media sites, but yet to be part of the enormous conversation that LFL have kept a monitoring eye on since the first SW chatroom appeared online, one has to, to a degree.

I missed Hamill’s “missed opportunity” tweet and had it bought to my attention by @culturevulture73. However, for a laugh, I thought I would look at the thread it had clearly generated. As I said I feel there was an equal measure opinion, however, looking at the thread, I did wonder if those who disagreed with the post realised that rather than being a sane voice, were actually inciting further toxicity through their need to respond.

There are a few cold, hard facts that those fans who want the fandom focus to be on the here and now simply can’t erase, and the first one is for 22 years the only SW we had were the OT on screen characters joined by the expanded characters from the former EU until 1999. That’s 22 years for fans to develop a relationship, and that’s important for ongoing business. The second one is nostalgia. While LFL was under sole ownership, I think the company was able to navigate it’s diverging timelines and characters well enough. Not being a massive merchandise collector, I couldn’t even begin to discuss or offer opinion (except in these broadest of strokes) on how focus was from the PT to 2012. However, once LFL was sold to Disney this was going to change. As it currently stands, corporate Disney is not about original creativity any more. It’s acquisitions of Pixar, Marvel LFL and now Fox have proved that. Why should they develop their own creativity or move once again into different area of film (remember Touchstone?) when they can acquire a company to do it for them. When you sit and think about it, the only major ongoing cinematic franchise not under the Disney label is James Bond but I’m sure if the current MGM management were able to obtain agreement from EON Productions to asset strip, Iger would be in there like a shot because he is a consummate, and currently very astute, businessman. Presently it is somewhat clear that Disney (when it comes to their own product) have commenced a carefully crafted race regarding IP copyrighted extension. Why do you think they are now offering live action (or non-pen and paint animated) versions of some of their successful animated titles? Of their back catalogue, I don’t think we will get a re-imagined “OLIVER & CO” or “THE BLACK CAULDRON” somehow but who knows? Again it all started somewhat innocuously with “101 DALMATIONS” with Glenn Close, “MALEFICENT” with Angela Jolie, “CINDERELLA” directed by Kenneth Branagh (sorry, but that is sorta like having David Lean in the director’s chair!), “THE JUNGLE BOOK”, “BEAUTY AND THE BEAST”. But suddenly it’s all got ratcheted up and audiences have had “MARY POPPINS RETURNS” and “DUMBO” with “THE LION KING”, “ALADDIN”, “MULAN” and “MALEFICENT 2” on their way. I have no doubt that more are in development. Disney is all about feeding audience nostalgia and making every character it owns pay their way (seriously, Browncoats - wait this one out, they’ll get to us, but I’m not sure we’ll like it when they do!) because that is how they keep their shareholders happy. Nostalgia sells because we all look back. A third one is that simply without us first gen fans who made SW a thing, there would be nothing to rail against.

So where does this social media/journalistic label “toxic fandom” come in this scenario? Within the context of the Clarisse Loughrey article is definitively with those who have clearly gone down the revoltingly obnoxious racism and sexism paths because they are the easy surface issues to investigate. On Twitter, the Dataracer account posted the Loughrey article with others to evidence that Disney/LFL have weaponised the social media treatment of both Ridley and Tran. I am not for one single word here making light of what happened to these 2 women because it remains heinous, obnoxious and must be continually universally be condemned by this fandom, but this twitter post also has a point whether we like it or not. A corporate entity, and those who comment are using this to bludgeon the very people who make this worthy enough to comment on. Where some will shout “fake news”, fandom observers scream “toxic”. This idea of what these 2 words, “toxic” and “fandom” are describing constantly twists by whoever is using them and are being used to describe the personally levelled hate as in the case of Ridley and Tran as cited by journalists to simply not liking the films as often used by Disney/LFL. That’s a Grand Canyon of distance and also prompts a further thought of when is it OK to dislike? And what is the actual issue, is it the mere act of offering a different viewpoint to the majority? Or is it just saying “it sucks!” and not trying to explain why? Or can it be that we all want to be heard but none of us can listen? What I’m writing here is all so very simplistic to what is a deep issue for which there will never be a pan-fandom fix.

With the release of TFA, the ST has clearly divided the fandom and we now have many social media platforms upon which to vent our pleasure or displeasure. Unfortunately, the easiest pushback is to bring up nostalgia and accuse older fans of not wanting to look to the present or the future as happened with Hamill’s tweet. I can only poorly make an argument of my issues with the ST which lie with the story creatives and developers but I have noticed a rise in voices like mine. I also believe that when it comes to the OT3, regardless of the agreements that Lucas obtained prior to selling to Disney, there would have been many points on that journey where Ford, Hamill and Fisher could have been told that plans have changed and they were not required. That is all part of a film’s development and a scenario to be accepted as par for the course. But someone made the concrete corporate decision to keep them, and not only keep them, but to have them as a focus in each film. Surely, that decision in itself becomes a corporate fan pander because Disney/LFL needed to ensure complete financial success or what what the point of the venture?

Overnight, Hamill felt the need to clarify his first post which I think is appalling in itself, but that’s me. As LFL continue to move forward with their SW plans, this is a situation that is never likely to improve and I have no doubt that in 20 years time the fans of SW then will be doing exactly the same to the SW fans of now.

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theteablogger · 6 years

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Bullshit

Two things:

First of all, I’ve heard through the grapevine that Andy is sharing screenshots that allegedly prove that mine are fake. For what it’s worth, I have never in my life faked a screenshot of anything, let alone a screenshot of one of Andy’s posts. The most editing that I’ve done to them is to crop out extraneous material that might identify the person who sent them to me, to join screenshots together when it takes more than one to capture an entire post, to censor other people’s names and pictures or Andy’s own contact info, and occasionally to highlight something. That’s it.

Second, I’ve recently received screenshots of a Facebook post that shows what Andy is telling his friends about what’s recently happened in LA, and how Andy awareness bloggers and tf-talk are entirely to blame for it. I’m going to share it here and respond point-by-point. I realize that Andy is talking about more people than just me, but a) there are very few of us (outside tf-talk) posting about him now, and b) I can only speak for myself anyway. This is going to be long. Sorry.

(If you’d like a quick preview of Andy’s post, he’s been saying almost exactly the same things since at least 2012, so here you go.)

One major problem with this is that the “30 second cocktail party bio” is often all that people get. His former host was very clear that he hadn’t told her about leading two cults, sexually abusing people, mentally and emotionally abusing and manipulating people, and more. What little he did tell her, he blamed entirely on mental illness and made it sound like a lot of stupid internet drama.

When he refers to “listing [his] birth name and literally every screen name [he’s] had or people have suspected was [him] since 1995,” that’s obviously about me. The reason that list is featured so prominently on my blog is that Andy has used so many aliases and screen names over the years that reading about his past can be very confusing for people. Many times, even recently, I’ve seen others express surprise that Thanfiction and Victoria Bitter (for example) are the same person, although they were familiar with most of the trouble that he’d caused under both of those names. I would never, ever mention Andy’s birth name if not for the fact that his earliest known online manipulation and lies were under that name.

Now, here’s the really big issue, for me: I have never said that Andy is a sociopathic narcissist abuser. I have never tried to label him with any specific diagnosis or even a DSM category.

Once in 2014 (before I even had a blog) I submitted a post to 1-purp0se that included something about emotional vs. cognitive empathy, positing that Andy had the latter, but not the former. I’ve regretted that part of the post ever since because I am not a mental health professional and that was only my opinion. In the years since then, I have made sure that I could substantiate everything with screenshots and I have not made anything approaching a diagnostic claim.

I have always been very clear that I have never met or personally interacted with Andy. It’s there for all to see in my FAQ. Also, I have never, ever so much as implied that Andy has abused me in any way. Anyone who thinks that I have either has not actually read my blog, or has a serious reading comprehension problem. I have never even suggested that X was anything like Andy, and have only shared those stories on my blog in hopes of being helpful to other survivors. I am disgusted by the implication that everything that I post is merely a projection of my own experiences of abuse...and at the same time, darkly amused that this is the best Andy can do to refute anything that I’ve said about him.

I have never rejected, harassed, or attacked anyone who’s contacted me about Andy. I have been attacked and harassed by people attempting to defend Andy, and I had a bit of a meltdown in 2015 when I was attempting to defend one of Andy’s friends in tf-talk.

When Andy posts social justice things, he does so in a way that shows that he has little more than a surface-level understanding of the issues, and that he’s more concerned with appearing to espouse a currently popular cause than with actually supporting it. For example, while “raising awareness” about Ferguson, he repeatedly made analogies equating black people with dogs and wild animals. He told people affected by the late-2014 wave of fake suicides in SPN fandom how they were “allowed” to feel and respond. In 2016 he made a number of posts that included misleading and false election statistics, and was very dismissive of people’s concerns about a Trump presidency. That’s the tip of the iceberg, and all that was just on Tumblr. Andy whitesplains and mansplains all the damned time.

There’s “making new friends”, and then there’s forcibly inserting yourself into a pre-existing social circle, acting like you know them all extremely well, and putting intense pressure on them to introduce you to other friends of theirs who are either connected to or actually part of the cast of the webseries on which you are currently fixated. The latter is what he did in LA, according to people who were actually there and were involved.

When Andy says good things about his friends, or other people, they are often backhanded compliments (e.g., his incredibly condescending liveblog of a friend’s SPN fic) or blatant negging (such as making extremely hurtful and gross comments about a woman’s body and following them up with over-the-top assurances that he thinks she’s beautiful). Does he do this every time he makes a positive comment about someone? I have no idea. But it happens often enough to be cause for concern.

"If people say I don’t hurt them, it’s proof that they’re brainwashed or afraid of me, etc. If friends stand up for me, that’s proof that I have created a cultish, us-against-them mentality.”

That first sentence is part of what set off my 2015 meltdown, so I’m not even touching it. I have never said anything even close to that. I have often talked about the fact that Andy has led two actual cults, and that he fosters “us-vs-them” thinking in his friends because he did and he does. Many, many former friends of Andy’s have spoken about the us-vs-them thing, and it’s evident in many of his posts over the years.

I have never said that Andy needs to tell everyone that he is “a sociopath who was intending to inflict pain.” What makes his “apology” posts fauxpologies is that he continually finds reasons to excuse or minimize acts of abuse he has committed, to explain things away as “misunderstandings”, and to deflect blame in a variety of ways. He also tends to make significant omissions and to bend the truth as far as he can unless/until he’s called out on it.

“We know the secret.” This is hilarious because that’s exactly what Andy used to tell the Bagenders and the DAYDians: “[XYZ everyday occurrence] seems insignificant to everyone else, but because we know the secret, we understand that it’s a message from Kali and Raz,” or what have you. I think there have been a handful of times that I’ve said that something Andy’s done would have sounded innocuous coming from anyone else, but takes on more sinister overtones when his history is taken into account. These things generally have to do with specific lies Andy has told, or with specific, documented ways that he has manipulated people in the past.

This is very misleading. No one has moved the goalposts; there never were any goalposts in the first place. Nobody said, “Andy, if you do these specific things, then we’ll believe that you’ve changed and we’ll never talk about you again.” I have said, and have seen other say, that maybe if he did this or that thing it might indicate that he was serious about changing, or that something that he was doing at the time was a reason to hope that he was honestly trying to change. I and many others have also said numerous times that part of the process of moving on for Andy would have to be leaving fandom for good. Andy is the one who decided that putting on a show of leaving fandom (but still sharing fanart and trying to get other fans’ and creators’ attention via mentions and fannish tweets) was the one and only thing he needed to do in order to convince everyone that he’s a different person.

And this next bit is the real crux of the issue: even if he really had “ticked all [the] boxes” on an imaginary list of criteria that Turimel, or tf-talk, or the Andy awareness blogs, or whoever had given him...it wouldn’t matter because he is still engaging in many problematic and abusive behaviors. He is “actively, presently committing abuse”, and I believe that he is still dangerous. I refer you again to Molly’s post about his recent stay with her. On the other hand, I have never made any claim that he is abusing Meg or the cats, or about “dozens of other current victims”. (Past victims that we don’t know about? Sure. Although I’m not very fond of the word “victim”.)

I won’t claim that I stand behind everything that’s said on tf-talk, or every post that every other blogger has made. But by all means, try to claim that there’s bias and twisting in my timeline, when it’s full of substantiating evidence in Andy’s own words and in the words of people who have been hurt by him.

I’m not sure where he’s getting “a dozen” from. There are maybe five of us blogging about him sporadically on Tumblr now (very sporadically, in most cases), and an unknown number of anons in tf-talk and fail-fandomanon. Our blogs and tf-talk often go quiet for long periods of time, and he isn’t mentioned that frequently on FFA anymore...until something like this happens.

I love the implication that no one who’s decided to stay away from Andy based on the many warning posts about him, the contents of tf-talk, Abbey’s blog, my blog, etc. has actually read any of it. They’ve all just made blind assumptions. But Andy’s not saying anything bad about them! Oh, no, they’re still smart, reasonable, good, empathetic, woke, and the kind of people that he wants to be friends with and work with. See what I mean about saying shitty things about people and then following up with lavish praise? This is also exactly what this anon on FFA was talking about. Anyway, based on my Statcounter and the fact that Google Docs will show me how many people are currently reading the timeline whenever I open it, I’m going to say that far more than .0002% of people actually read this stuff.

And here it is: it is ALL OUR FAULT that Andy hasn’t changed, even though he’s trying so hard. Comparing himself to a snake that’s had its venom sacs (not poison, Andy) removed is very disingenuous as it implies that it is now impossible for him to do significant harm. That isn’t true of anyone, let alone someone with a 20-year history of lies, manipulation, and abuse. And he actually did “bite” someone recently--again, read Molly’s post, and realize that all happened just a few days ago.

The truth does speak for itself. Those people in LA already had serious concerns about Andy before they read about him online, but they had been cutting him a lot of slack. Molly was already aware that Andy was, for example, trying to dredge up her memories of extremely abusive past relationships in order to manipulate her. She and his friends had already realized that he was constantly lying to all of them about pretty much everything. They’d already pegged him as a performative ally. They’d noticed that he negged the hell out of trans and plus-size people, specifically playing on issues of gender/body dysmorphia, and that he was competitive and condescending toward other men. All of this was based on their own direct observations of his behavior, before they had any idea about his history. And the person who filled them in wasn’t a blogger or someone from tf-talk; it was a close friend of theirs who realized who he was and felt the need to warn them.

(Also? Even if none of the LA people would say that Andy had actually harmed them--I don’t know because I haven’t talked to them all--it is evident that he at least tried to harm them psychologically and emotionally. None of the above behaviors can be waved away as accidents, especially given that they were happening regularly and frequently.)

So what is Andy to do? Maybe stop doing the things listed above, for a start. If what his friends read online (again, after spending time with him in person for a couple weeks) really hadn’t matched what they knew of him personally, the outcome would have been very different. But they’d already been comparing notes on his shitty behavior, and when they read the links they’d been sent, everything that had been happening suddenly made sense. That’s why they kicked him out. If you’re a manipulative asshole, people may be willing to let things slide for a while--but when they find out that you’ve been doing the same shit and worse for 20 years, yes, everything might just be snatched away from you. And that’s your own fucking fault.

Here’s a further comment from Andy:

This is fucking disgusting.

Other than the occasional tf-talk anon, the only person who has regularly (as in, more than an off-hand comment) compared specific words and behaviors of Andy’s to a past abuser of their own was Delwynmarch. And that was several years ago; it’s been a long time since he posted anything at all. Del had his fair share of insightful, on-point analytical posts, too--like his breakdown of Andy’s attempt to explain away his admission of having committed rape and sexual abuse. It’s incredibly disingenuous and dismissive to suggest that the volumes of information and analysis that others have written amount to nothing more than projection, and that we’re just a bunch of poor, ignorant babies who don’t realize how misguided we are. He feels sorry for us. Give me a fucking break.

I have been open about being a survivor of abuse and having lost people in my life to cults. While that is part of what inspired me to start blogging about Andy, that doesn’t mean that it is the entire basis for all of my opinions and analysis. Andy is fond of analogies, so I’ll use one here: This is like saying that because I was once bitten by a dog, any time that I feel the need to correct my own dog’s behavior, I’m obviously just projecting my past experience onto him, so I should just back off and let him keep shitting on the rug.

Furthermore, as much as he likes to say that we don’t know him and therefore shouldn’t act like we understand him...I know Andy a hell of a lot better than he knows me. I’ve been reading others’ words about him since 2003, and I have probably millions of his own words about his life, his mental health, fandom, and a host of other topics, dating back to 1998. All he knows of me is what little he sees on this blog.

Nice try, Andy, but I neither need nor want your sympathy. Nor do I accept any measure of blame for what happened last week. You did it to yourself.

#andythanfiction #thanfiction #andrew blake #andy blake #andrewmblake #psa #abuse #leaving fandom #andy blake defense squad

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lifeispaynefultruth-blog · 6 years

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Gun Control: From a Modern American Understanding

The topic of gun control seems a difficult one to discuss here in the United States. This is most likely due to the fact that it, like many other politically-charged issues, can so quickly turn into an argument that an educated discussion seems unattainable (and in certain respects undesirable). The incident that inspired me to write this essay occurred a few weeks ago, when myself and some co-workers discussed this topic on a slow night at work. This had been just after a mass shooting, and as soon as gun control was brought up, the nature of discussion quickly changed. The air (which had been lush with a friendly carefree tone just minutes earlier) became heated with the toxicity of political narratives. Friends turned on one another, finding that they had different opinions on the subject, and ultimately, no ground was gained. At the end of it all, we went back to our respective departments without learning any new facts, evolving our own perspectives, or even agreeing to disagree. All that occurred was a reinforcement of a reality which we already knew. This is an uncomfortable topic, so let’s not discuss this anymore. This is the problem we face in the United States regarding this issue. The discussion is not a comfortable one to be had, therefore we will not have it in order to maintain a sense of civility. And what makes this thought process so overwhelming is that it’s a relatively reasonable conclusion to draw, isn’t it? If a conversation cannot be had civilly, then it should not be had. In other words, “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all” just like our parents told us. But this can’t be the end of the discussion. This conversation is too important to not be had, so what do we do? Well, if the conversation is uncomfortable and if it doesn’t get us anywhere, it seems to me that we simply need to change the conversation. Unfortunately, we look at this issue through a political lens, rather than a (for lack of a better word) common sense perspective. This means that there is an “us” against “them” mentality depending on what side of the political spectrum you may fall on. In order for a productive discussion to be had, however, these bipartisan shackles must be thrown off and replaced with open minds and honest mouths. That is to say that it is important for everyone to understand that just because you may hold certain beliefs, it doesn’t make them true. You are a human being that is capable of making mistakes, therefore your beliefs must always be subject to change. Additionally, it’s important to understand that even if you take an opposing view to others, they have legitimate points. Just because you think someone else is wrong in their conclusion doesn’t necessarily mean that the premise of their argument is also wrong. They have a reason for believing what they believe, and you have a responsibility to understand that reasoning if your goal is to achieve clarity. This is the mindset with which I came into this essay, and I believe it is the mindset that we all must have if this issue is ever honestly discussed in this country.

In the spirit of this newfound open-mindedness, I turned to the NRA. I typically find this group to be dishonest and disagreeable, but I approached them with a new perspective and an open mind. In the article, “When Gun Control Fails” by Awr Hawkins, Hawkins discusses multiple incidents where gun control did not succeed in preventing gun deaths. Among the incidents cited were some fairly recognizable ones, including the Sandy Hook massacre, the Aurora movie theater shooting, the San Bernardino shooting, and the Orlando Pulse shooting. Hawkins makes a good point in stating that, in all these attacks, the shooter legally possessed a weapon. This means that, in all of the incidents mentioned (aside for the Sandy Hook shooting, where Adam Lanza did not actually own the guns used, but got them from a law-abiding gun owner), the shooter in question followed the assigned guidelines including background checks, gun restrictions, and legal carrying permits, yet lives were still lost. To Hawkins’ credit, this is a good point, and to most proponents of gun control legislation, it is a fact that none want brought up. However, I don’t think Hawkins realized that he might as well have been making an argument for the “left” (his words, not mine), which is the opposite of what he was actually trying to do. In stating that gun control as it currently exists does not work, he reaches the conclusion that the “left” (again, this is the “them” in his argument) simply wants control of gun owners. He does not state why or how this control would benefit them, however. I guess this is left to the reader’s imagination. One can easily see how some might imagine guns being taken by a tyrannical left-wing government in a dystopian future, however. This is where the dishonesty of this article lies. Not in the facts, but in what he implies by them. Not only is he stating that gun control doesn’t work (which I’ve already stated he has legitimate evidence for), but he is also arguing that it is dangerous and harmful to gun owners, which he has no evidence for. However, if you think about his claim, it can just as easily be an argument for the opposing side to his views. What he’s really saying in his article is that gun control, in its current iteration, does not go far enough. There may be flaws in the current system of background checks that do not get considered. Additionally, there may be other methods of gun control utilized to prevent gun deaths in ways that the Democratic Party, or the “left” as Hawkins would say, has not considered. This is where I believe his logic to be flawed. The premise is most definitely there, gun control in the way that it currently exists did not work in the instances he described and it may even have more overarching flaws that need to be taken into account before it is instituted on a large scale. However, the idea of this tyrannical “left” seems to be an underlying boogeyman that Hawkins uses to sway his readers into closed-mindedness. His implications of dictatorship among unarmed citizens leaves much to be desired, and it is easy to see that this is an article written from the perspective of someone who is closed-minded to the ideas of others, rather than someone who is willing to compromise. Ultimately, this viewpoint is harmful to modern Americans.

Take this in contrast to the Vox article, “The research is clear: gun control saves lives” by German Lopez. Now granted, there is no article or author out there without bias (in fact my preference of this article as opposed to the previously mentioned NRA article could be a showing of my own bias) but consider the point the article makes. The piece in itself is a reaction to another piece written in The Washington Post about gun control (and more specifically, how the author of the Post piece, Leah Libresco, has changed her mind on gun control). The Post article claims that gun control in other countries cannot be contributed to their ban on certain weapons and other general measures taken to reduce the amount or lethality of the guns in those countries. Lopez argues against this, stating that no actual studies were cited in this article. Of course, due to this fact, Libresco is technically correct in stating that the decrease in gun deaths and mass shootings in these countries cannot be contributed to the increased gun control, but wise readers may be able to put two and two together. But an important point is made in this article, an honest point that does not leave the reader in suspense upon the lasting effects of gun control. With all the statistics and studies mentioned that prove the author’s point, there is one statement that at least reduces the impact of any supposed “liberal bias” in this piece. Towards the beginning of the article, Lopez claims that while gun control may be able to reduce the overall gun deaths of this country, they cannot be eliminated completely. This is, of course, something that gun owners and gun control advocates can most assuredly agree on. When shuffling through all of the misguided narratives and implications of underdeveloped thought from author to author, from article to article, we can still find a common ground, whether intentionally staked or otherwise. This is perhaps the greatest lesson the 21st century American reader may learn from modern media. In other words, it is quite obvious that narratives reveal unintentional truths about those that conjure them, but this does not always have to be seen in a negative light. Whether these two authors like it or not, and whether or not they would ever admit it to one another or to anyone else, they actually agree on something.

But this is the unsung truth of the gun control topic. When it is presented to the modern American, it is often done so under the guise of a debate. And this is a problem, because if you present the issue in this form, it implies that there are only two perspectives to this issue. It is an argument, not a dialogue. It’s “us” versus “them”. Pick a side and go to war. “Blast” the other side, “destroy” their opinions on social media. This is not only unproductive, it’s unhealthy. This sort of introduction to the issue at hand is manifested perfectly in the article, “Should More Gun Laws Be Enacted” of procon.org. In this article, the issue is presented at the top and followed by the “top” pro and con gun control arguments. This presents a dichotomy in thought that divides people and ideas, and I’d argue that it was written to do so. Some examples of arguments from the article are as follows on the pro side: “More gun control laws are needed to protect women from domestic abusers and stalkers”, “legally owned guns are frequently stolen and used by criminals”, and “more gun control leads to fewer suicides”. The headlines of these arguments speak for themselves. In fact, the description of these statements as ‘arguments’ speaks more than any information in the article ever could. This information is being presented in a way that is intentionally shaming gun owners, or people that don’t support gun control. The headlines might as well read: “You don’t want women to be abused by harmful spouses or raped on the street do you?”, or “You don’t want a psychopath stealing your gun and using it to shoot up a school do you?”, or “You don’t want to have someone in your household commit suicide do you?”. Provocative, eye-catching, and ultimately, ineffective. How are you supposed to get others to agree with you when you are basically stating that they should be ashamed of their behavior? This ultimately results not in compromise, but in reactionary counterarguments. A doubling down of beliefs that cause them to be solid and unmovable rather than fluid and ever-changing. This response can clearly be seen on the con side: “Gun control laws infringe upon the right to self-defense and deny people a sense of safety”, “Gun control laws will not prevent criminals from obtaining guns or breaking laws”, and “Gun control rates and lower gun ownership rates do not prevent suicides”. These are direct denouncements of pro-gun control claims, and they are a reaction to the shame implied upon gun control skeptics by them. It’s a strongly staked nuh-uh that is perpetuated not to denounce the claims of the opposing side, but rather to defend the actions of those denying the claims. For gun control skeptics, the argument is not made out of an attempt to persuade, it is made out of an attempt to defend their actions and beliefs as moral. And to gun control proponents, these arguments are maddening, because they are directly contradicted by evidence that was presented in their own argument. But because they are so set in their beliefs and so unopen to the ideas of anyone who disagrees with them, they cannot and will not realize that this reaction is their own fault.

There has been a good deal of ambiguity in the arguments presented thus far. This is true, more so in the underlying intentions of those who advocate either for, or against gun control and the news media that covers and perpetuates those intentions. But surely the Constitution can shed some light on the subject. How is it that something as legally binding, as well-written as was jotted by the Framers so many years ago, can be so misinterpreted? Well, as Victor Haynes points out in his article, “Gun Control in the United States”, the Second Amendment is not as ironclad as is thought to the casual reader. According to this piece, the Second Amendment states, “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.” The reader will notice the ambiguity of the Amendment. If you were to ask anyone today what the Second Amendment stated, I submit to you that less than half would mention anything about a well-regulated militia. Most people would not know that it was there and depending on what side of the political spectrum one may fall on, one may wish to pretend it wasn’t there. And that is the fault of the modern media and how it excels at perpetuating laziness in journalism and sensationalism in its headlines. The truth of the matter is that the Second Amendment is one of the vaguest and poorly-written legal pieces ever transcribed in American history. But let the reader be warned not to say that too loudly in a public setting, lest they be labeled a communist that “wants the terrorists to win” (true story). Yet despite all the vagueness, we base not only our current laws on this piece of writing, but our history as well. We take pride in the fact that the United States rose up from the tyrannical clutches of an oppressive nation to become what it is today. And we did it all because of the heroic sacrifices of volunteer soldiers who brought their own weapons to fight off the best fighting force in the world at the time (being of course the British redcoats).

But let’s imagine what that may look like today. Everyone in this nation can agree that it has problems, and that the people in power are not doing all that they can to solve those problems. In fact, I’d argue that a good amount of people would even agree that the government is corrupt in some ways. So where is the revolution? It is most definitely true that we are more well-armed than our forefathers were. According to the article, “Gun Rights vs. Gun Control” of opensecrets.org, there are 88.8 guns per 100 people in the United States. That is more than we have ever had in our nation’s history. This, of course, is not even taking into account the fact that the colonists were sporting smooth-bore muskets and we have semi-automatic assault weapons. So, what is the hold up? This juxtaposition of narrative and reality is slightly comical, but it also presents me with a certain hope. It tells me that if you sift through all the narratives and strip away all the bias, people don’t want to fight. We are not the nation we once were, and in our current state we could never have a revolution and a civil war. Because we are more connected than we have ever been, and although this connectivity has highlighted our disagreements and has in some ways divided us (ironically enough), it has also given people a common understanding of one another. These biases cannot and will not survive if we inform ourselves. And with the potential of things like social media that information could spread like wildfire if we all chose to embrace it. Not narrative, not biased hypocritical principles of a generation before, but the truth.

But the truth is not a static thing, it’s fluid and often bends and shapes itself to fit the perceptions of the time it takes place, and those that are perceiving it. According to a study done by the American Journal of Psychiatry, news media often affects people’s perceptions of gun control and people with mental illness. This is true more so just after a major mass shooting has taken place. According to the study, the likelihood of people to hold negative feelings for those with a serious mental illness and support gun control is significantly higher when they have seen a news piece about it after a mass shooting. This, of course, can be beneficial in that it causes beneficial legislation to be passed after times of great tragedy, but detrimental to the growing stigma of people with mental illness.

According to an American Journal of Public Health article by Jonathan Metzl and Kenneth Macliesh, there is a bit of a contradiction between the public’s perception of the mentally ill and the statistics and literature of mental illness. The inconvenient fact for those blaming mass shootings on mental illness is that the vast majority of mental illnesses do not promote violent actions, and the vast majority of mentally ill people are nonviolent. This, of course, is a bit of a contradiction to what we see on the news, however. For the most part, those that commit horrible crimes such as mass shootings are often mentally ill. And, stripping aside politics, the fact that some of these people can legally get their hands on a deadly firearm is objective insanity. Most gun owners would agree. In fact, in researching for this essay, I interviewed Jonathan Vasquez, a retired United States Army veteran, a gun owner, and an unapologetic skeptic of gun control. As you can probably infer, we disagreed on most issues, including the politics behind raising the gun age, limiting magazine capacity, etc. However, when it came to mental health, we reached an agreement. Not only did Mr. Vasquez state that he would be in favor of background checks to anyone purchasing a gun, in order to ensure that they did not have a history of criminality or mental illness, but he also stated that he would be opposed to any proposed budget cuts to social programs that would uphold these background checks. This is something that most gun control advocates and gun owners can agree on. However, as stated before, it does come at a social cost to those who are mentally ill. That being said, it does also benefit these people as well. Keeping weapons out of the hands of the mentally ill does not just ensure the safety of the public, it ensures their own safety as well. There are surely many solutions to the problem of mental illness in this country that are not being addressed, but a great first step is to ensure that these people do not hurt others or themselves. If we can decrease instances like this, we can remove some of the social stigma that comes along with mental illness.

But this, of course has not been studied because in the United States, at least, it has not been tried. And why should gun control ideas be tried in the United States? Well, evidence has it that they work in other countries. Take Australia, for example. Famous for kangaroos, terrifying spiders, and no mass shootings since 1996. According to a British Medical Journal article, Australia’s sweeping gun reform, which eliminated semi-automatic and pump-action rifles and shotguns from civilian possession, was incredibly successful in reducing gun deaths nationwide. Since these gun reforms, an average of 0.04 people per 100,000 have died of total firearm deaths, 0.007 per 100,000 have died of firearm suicides, and 0.15 per 100,000 have died of firearm homicides. Essentially, the argument of “gun control doesn’t work” is definitely false, because it does in other countries around the world. Because of this fact, this should not be the question. The question shouldn’t be whether or not we institute more strict gun control laws in the United States, but what those laws should be, and to what extent they should be implemented.

As I’ve stated before in this essay, there is nothing that can be implemented legislatively that will totally eliminate gun deaths. There will always be people out there willing to make bad decisions and harm others for stupid reasons. But they are the exception, not the rule. Just as the strawman neo-liberal communist and the alt-right fascist are the exception and not the rule. Most people can agree that we can come to a compromise on what to do about guns in this country. Most people can reason that something must be done to keep people safe, to keep deadly weapons out of the hands of the mentally ill, and to achieve some sort of progress that benefits us all. And I suggest that if our leaders aren’t willing to have that conversation and come to that compromise, we take charge as a people and do it ourselves. I suggest that we come together as a nation and talk about what would benefit all of us rather than squabbling among our own arbitrary political groups. I suggest we make that choice, and I suggest we make it now. Because if not, more blood will be spilled on our watch. More will die and we will only be able to blame ourselves. If there was ever a time for us to live up to what we can and should be, it’s now.

Works Cited

Markoff, Steven C. “Gun Control - ProCon.org.” Should More Gun Control Laws Be Enacted in the United States?, 7 Aug. 2017, gun-control.procon.org/view.answers.php?questionID=001964.

H, Victor. “Gun Control in the United States.” OMICS International, OMICS International, 11 June 2016, www.omicsonline.org/open-access/gun-control-in-the-united-states-2332-0761-1000206.

php?aid=74881.

McGinty, Emma, et al. “Effects of News Media Messages About Mass Shootings on Attitudes

Toward Persons With Serious Mental Illness and Public Support for Gun Control Policies.” American Journal of Psychiatry, 1 May 2013, ajp.psychiatryonline.org/doi/abs/10.1176/appi.ajp.2013.13010014.

Chapman, et al. “Australia's 1996 Gun Law Reforms: Faster Falls in Firearm Deaths, Firearm Suicides, and a Decade without Mass Shootings.” Injury Prevention, BMJ Publishing Group Ltd, 1 Dec. 2006, injuryprevention.bmj.com/content/12/6/365.

Metzel, Jonathan, and Kenneth MacLeish. “Mental Illness, Mass Shootings, and the Politics of

American Firearms.” Mental Illness, Mass Shootings, and the Politics of American Firearms | AJPH | Vol. 105 Issue 2, 12 Dec. 2014, ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/full/10.2105/AJPH.2014.302242.

Lopez, German. “The Research Is Clear: Gun Control Saves Lives.” Vox, Vox, 4 Oct. 2017, www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/10/4/16418754/gun-control-washington-post.

West, Geoff. “Gun Rights vs Gun Control.” OpenSecrets, Feb. 2018, www.opensecrets.org/news/issues/guns.

Hawkins, Awr. “When Gun Control Fails.” NRA-ILA, 21 July 2017, www.nraila.org/articles/20170721/when-gun-control-fails.

#gun control #deception #bias

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imagineclaireandjamie · 7 years

Text

Flood my Mornings: Winky

Notes from Mod Bonnie

This story takes place in an AU in which Jamie travels through the stones two years after Culloden and finds Claire and his child in 1950 Boston.

See all past installments via Bonnie’s Master List

Previous installment: The Difference (J/C moment the first night Ian’s home with them)

July 28, 1951

“Oh, little love....You are a sweet one, aren’t you?”

It was just after sunrise and Ian and I were already up and at it, fed (for his part) and cuddling on the sofa. Truly, he was an uncommonly sweet baby, calm and untroubled by most things encountered in the course of his day, and fairly easy to quiet when he did cry or fuss. Bree, by contrast, had been cranky by default, at least for the first month. No less fiercely loved for it, of course, but I couldn’t deny my relief at the prospect of having an easier go of things in general with this little lad.

Beyond that though, even at only one week old, it was becoming clear that Ian had a very curious spirit. He was forever stretching his limbs and making little happy gasping sounds as he studied his surroundings, taking it all in with wide, keen eyes..... dark amber eyes, to Jamie’s utter delight. Currently, he was propped up against my bent knees, gumming his wrist enthusiastically.

“What have you got there, sweetheart?” I whispered, beaming down at him despite my sleepiness (and roaring headache and aching nipples). “Does it taste nice?’

Apparently it did, for he kept moving upward until, by complete accident, he caught his thumb in his mouth. He blinked once in surprised, then began sucking with alacrity. “Oh, aren’t you clever! Found a treat, have you?” I laughed. The only problem was, he hadn’t quite mastered the art of getting the other fingers out of the way, so his tiny fingernails were poking into his eyelid. I watched as his face went from sensory delight to puzzlement to realization of his discomfort then complete despair as he burst into a wail.

“It’s alright, winky,” I half-laughed, half-’aww’ed as I helped him get the extra fingers out of the way and he quieted again, blissfully self-soothing. “There, love, that’s better, isn’t it?”

“I swear, Sassenach,” came Jamie’s voice from the doorway to the kitchen through which he was walking with two steaming cups of tea. “I never seem to catch him at it, myself.”

“You’re awake! And an angel,” I all but moaned as he set my cup on the endtable to cool. “....Catch him at what?”

“Winking. Shout for me next time he does so I can see, aye?” He kissed my cheek, then his son’s. “Mind yourself, Ian. Ye must be trying it on wi’ your Mam a terrible lot for it to have become your name, aye?”

Jamie gave me what he surely thought was a roguish wink in demonstration (see: unsettlingly-intense blink) and I spluttered laughing. “Well, if he ever did take to winking, we’ll know he got it from me, won’t we?”

“I can wink!” Jamie declared indignantly, demonstrating again, the only difference being that he now looked like a decidedly peevish owl.

“Trust me, darling, you really can’t, but don’t ever stop trying.” I kept giggling as I shifted Ian up off of my legs and cuddled him close. “But no, I call him winky for Rip van Winkle.”

“For what, now?” Jamie had just sat down, and he was looking over his cup as though he feared the fatigue had gone straight to my head.

“Because of how much he slept those first few days. Don’t you remember? I know you heard me call him that in hospital.”

Jamie silently mouthed the words rip van winkle then realization dawned. “Oh, aye,” he said slowly, nodding, “ye did, at that. Just went over my head, I suppose.”

“Oh, I see, you just presumed your wife was spouting nonsense in her addled state, mm?” Jamie’s sheepish grin was answer enough. “Well, anyway, I kept calling him that on my own, and over time it became winky, and it seemed to suit him, so, here we are.”

“But what in God’s name is a rip-Van-winkle? And what’s it to do wi’ sleeping?

“Rip Van Winkle: eponymous hero of a classic American short story. Well—as classic as something published in the early 1800s can be.”

“Ah, ‘tis a name. Van Winkle: a dutchman, then?”

“Almost! He’s a loyal subject of George III residing in New York who gets drunk and falls asleep on a mountaintop. Upon awakening, he learns that twenty years have passed, and he’s left to take stock of all that has changed in the interim.”

Jamie snorted into his cup. “Canna even fathom such a preposterous thing.”

It took me a moment to register, but then there were chills rushing down my spine. Lord, if any two people in the world could relate to such a tale, they were in this room. Could there be some grain of truth behind the story, I wondered. Had Washington Irving himself experienced something that he couldn’t explain? Might one discern an ominous buzzing in the Catskill Mountains, had they the knowledge to recognize it? All of literature now suddenly seemed a secret testament, waiting to be sifted and seen for what it might truly be: evidence.

I shuddered again, brought back to the present only by Jamie’s hand gently prying at my fingers. “Give him here, mo ghraidh. You’ve sat wi’ him all the night.”

In fact, Jamie had twice been the one to arise in the night to hold and soothe and change nappies, but he would get no protest from me. I retrieved my tea and surrendered to its comforting warmth, snuggling into the cushions and happily watching my two lads.

“And how fare you today, a bhalaich?” Jamie was asking in Gaelic, holding the baby up at eye level. Ian only burped and dribbled milky saliva down his chin. “Oh, I’m grand, myself, thank you most kindly for asking.” He kissed the tip of Ian’s nose, then cradled him expertly in one arm and cleaned the messy face with the sleeve of the other as he addressed me again. “So, then: what did Mr. Winkle find, when he awakened? Did he like the things he discovered?”

“It was mostly a political commentary, if I recall correctly. The story was written a few decades after the American Revolution, and I think the author meant to give his own opinion of the new republic.” I sipped my tea, trying to remember the particulars of what old Rip had had to face. “The man got off easily, really,” I summarized flippantly. “Hardly anything at all compared to the adjustments you or I had to make.”

“Snob,” Jamie teased.

“You say snob; I say we’ve bloody well earned our laurels! Lord, I mean, what’s two decades in the grand scheme of things?”

“Yet in a man’s own life,” Jamie shrugged, letting Ian chew on his knuckles, “'tis a verra long time indeed.”

“That’s true... Particularly since the story suggests that he aged commensurately. Came down the mountain with the long beard and everything.”

“So he had to see his children already grown? All those years he missed?” Now it was Jamie’s turn to shudder. I saw him tighten his grip around Ian, a hand coming up over his head as though to shield him. “Perhaps you and I had the more difficult task in terms of weathering a baffling new society, Sassenach, but the dutchman had a burden to bear, himself....a mightily great burden.”

Thinking on such things must have been painful, for Jamie looked up suddenly with a determined sort of cheerfulness. “I’ll count myself blessed that the stones let me keep my youth. Doesna bear imagining what I’d look like, now, at, what.... 228?”

It was clear Jamie wanted to keep things lighthearted, so we laughed and joked as the sunlight continued to fill the room, but I couldn’t resist asking, “Did you like the society you found, Jamie?”

He looked over at me across the baby’s head, Ian now—true to his nickname— sound asleep on Jamie’s shoulder.

"I only wondered how often you find yourself longing for your own time? If the past seems—better, purer, easier, you know?”

I myself had had such thoughts at times, particularly in those early days of readjusting to electrical contraptions and busy streets; or when reading the papers and seeing the pure scale of butchery and tragedy across the world. While the eighteenth century had surely been no picnic, there were days when I longed for it with startling fierceness.

Jamie leaned his head against Ian’s, thinking, though it didn’t take him long before he said: “I dinna think there shall ever be a generation that doesna glorify the setting of their own youthful memories. Still...Change will always be for the good and the bad, but a ‘society’ is what you make of it, aye? Provided I was free and the governance over me (on the whole) just and principled? Then the greater merit of a time should always be determined by the loved ones I had wi’ me, to make it mine.” He beckoned me close and I nestled in, laying my hand on Ian’s back. “Both will always be home, in their way. But this...” His hand pressed overtop mine, overtop Ian, “this is my time. Wherever you are, our family is: that is what I claim as mine.”

“Well, Jamie,” I said a long time later through the still-clearing lump in my throat, “you’ve got Mr. Winkle well and truly trounced on all counts, now.”

“Oh? How’s that?”

“The only blessing he truly counted to himself after the twenty year sleep was that his wife had died in the interim.”

Jamie’s eyes, first puzzled, went red with fearsome indignation. “Why, the wicked wee shite!”

“Yes, indeed,” I laughed, still wiping away a tender tear or two. “He grieved terribly when his dog didn’t recognize him, but was practically over the moon to learn he’d been made a widower. The story made quite a point of how hen-pecked the man was.”

“Well, as for that,” Jamie said, leaning forward to nuzzle his nose against mine, “I canna relate in the slightest.”

#;mod bonnie #Flood my mornings

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the-record-columns · 5 years

Text

Sept. 18, 2019: Columns

The ‘Death Quilt’…

The ‘Death Quilt.’

By KEN WELBORN

Record Publisher

While I love to find things old and unusual, I have no ability whatever to see something else in the miscellaneous items I may run across.

For example, I have a whole barrel of railroad spikes from which I occasionally will give one to a child who seems to enjoy the old things here at the offices of The Record and Thursday Printing.

However, persons I like to call folk artists, for example, the late Calvin Linville, may see that same railroad spike and envision a green grasshopper complete with wire legs and big eyes made out of washers.

To that end, today’s story revolves around death, and some folks’ quirky attitudes and opinions about it.

I have several items around here that involve death or dying. A photo of my Aunt Cleo who died at about 3 or 4 years old. They had no photographs of her and took one after she died. She was a beautiful child and her picture is positively angelic, but The Record’s editor, Jerry Lankford, and my wife, both say it is creepy. (So I hung the photo in Heather Dean’s office, as she is not afraid of anything.) I also have a wicker death basket, used by undertakers well over 100 years ago to pick up bodies from the home; a tombstone rescued form a trash pile in Athens, Georgia; a casket in the warehouse, as well as other assorted items of “memorabilia.”

Well, a couple of years ago, a friend of mine gave me a very unusual quilt. It seems as though her grandmother lived near a large cemetery, and, some time after a graveside service, would go through the floral funeral arrangements and remove the ribbons. Over a period of time she had a fairly large collection of these ribbons and decided to pick through them, press them out and make a quilt top from them. Sometime after she finished the quilt, she gave it to her granddaughter, who, years later, gave it to me. I thought it was a beautiful idea and an even more beautiful quilt, and knew right away where to show it off in my apartment.

However, not everyone was as excited about the quilt as I was. When I showed it to my wife at the office, she immediately launched into her “What is it with you and death?” routine, and started her “…that thing stays downstairs,” sermon. Well, I did a bit of preaching of my own and, at the end of the service, my beautiful quilt was proudly displayed hanging over the rails at the foot of the brass bed in the guest bedroom.

Periodically, at my apartment above The Record an open house of one kind or another is held. During those events, if my wife had the chance, she would refer to my quilt as “Ken’s death quilt,” and make it clear it was not there of her choosing, and go on to remind folks about the death basket and the tombstone and such downstairs.

I think it was either during the Apple Butter Festival in October or the Light up Downtown event in November that my wife was upstairs taking folks through The Mayflower that she ended up in the middle bedroom and told the story of her husband’s “Death Quilt.” There were a few folks huddled together in the bedroom as she spoke, and, when she was finished an older lady tugged her sleeve as my wife was about to leave the room. “Honey,” she began, “…that’s not a Death Quilt at all. It’s a Soul Quilt.”

That was all it took.

With that sentence–only a dozen words long–whispered by a lady with a kind face, my quilt had been rehabilitated into a thing of beauty to be shown proudly. It is a wonderful remembrance of the many souls it represents, and as a testament to folks who see worth far beyond the obvious in everyday things.

What a difference one word can make.

Israel to the rescue!

By AMBASSADOR EARL and KATHLEEN COX

Special to The Record

All conversations concerning the Middle East, and specifically the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, involve many moving parts. The Palestinians claim that Israel is an illegal occupier of land they say they rightfully own even though archaeological evidence connects the Jews to the land since the beginning of time. The Palestinians have created a false narrative and are working hard, aided by the liberal media, at turning their lies into truth. A lie told often enough eventually becomes the truth.

Israel is not the enemy of the Palestinian people, assuming such a people even exist, which they do not. Palestinians are Arabs and Israel is actually the protector of those Arabs claiming to be Palestinians. I wonder if these people, who proclaim their desire to destroy Israel and every Jew from off the face of the earth, have ever stopped to consider what would be their fate should Iran follow through on their threats and decide to drop a nuclear bomb on Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, or any other city in Israel. The bomb cannot distinguish between people. Even an accurate hit would result in the death of Israelis and Arabs alike.

Tehran is less than 1,000 miles from Tel Aviv and a mere distance of only 35 miles separates Jerusalem from Tel Aviv. Gaza is less than 50 miles from Tel Aviv and Ramallah is less than 7 miles from Jerusalem. It’s a tight knit area. Iran is the only player on today’s world’s stage which actively and vocally declares its intentions to destroy Israel and which, despite denials, is actively pursuing nuclear weapons capabilities. Any nuclear strike against Israel would certainly come from Iran and the Palestinians would become collateral damage. While the Palestinians are in favor of killing all Israelis, it’s likely they have not considered all the ramifications and consequences of an Iranian strike. If they had, their relationship may not be so cozy. Iran is the financial backer of Hamas in Gaza. Iran is also the supplier of weapons to Hamas which they use in their attacks against Israel.

Back during the “Cold War,” there was a concept known as MAD, or Mutual Assured Destruction. MAD preserved the world and kept the tensions between the US and the USSR, in check. In a sense, Israel has this concept in place today. Any nuclear strike against Israel would be attributed to Iran and Israel would respond accordingly. While Israel is quiet about its nuclear capabilities, it’s generally believed they possess a high-tech, healthy arsenal. Any retaliatory strike would obliterate Iran thus saving the “Palestinian” people from total destruction and annihilation. The very people the “Palestinians” hate are the very people who are their best protectors. Ironically, it’s Israel to their rescue!

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thejovianmute · 7 years

Text

A Different Way Home, Ch 2

Author: TheJovianMute

Rating: Explicit

Fandom: Fullmetal Alchemist (any, since it's AU)

Pairing: Ed Elric/Roy Mustang

Tags: Alternate Universe, Modern Setting, Prostitution, Hooker Roy, Student Ed, Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Rape, Violence, PTSD, Disabilities, Vision-Impaired Roy, Eventual Happy Ending

Summary: Roy's standing on a freezing street corner, his body for sale and his pride long-since gone, when the boy in the red coat approaches him.

Notes: So the first few chapters of this are going to be pure fluff and smut. Basically, I wanted to develop the relationship a little before everything goes to hell. So if anyone's just interested in the happy porny stuff, read on and I'll warn you when things are about to get dark so you can bail.

I had intended to include both Roy and Ed's POV in this chapter and get through the entire evening, but I hit 10k words and still wasn't done and realised I really needed to split it in half. On the upside, that means I already have 3k of the next chapter done!

Still pretty terrified about posting, but people were so lovely with feedback on ch 1, it was incredibly encouraging! Thankyou to everyone who reads, kudos or comments, you're all wonderful!

Ch 2: In which Roy is fed, Ed is kissed, labels are contemplated, and there are orgasms all round.

Read on AO3, or read under the cut:

Ed leads Roy to a large apartment block made of grey stone. They take the lift up to the fourth floor and head down a corridor to the door at the end. Unlike Roy's apartment block, this one is relatively tidy and clean, even if the peeling and faded paint gives away its age.

Ed fumbles his keys before managing to get the right one in the lock, and Roy notices that he has a little plastic suit of armour on his keyring. The silver paint is chipped and scratched, marking it as a long-time favourite. Roy wonders if Ed fancies himself something of a knight in shining armour.

Once Ed's managed to unlock the door, he holds it open and gestures for Roy to go through. "So this is my place," he says, somewhat unnecessarily.

Roy enters with a touch of caution. He's not expecting Ed to try and pull anything unexpected or untoward, but old habits die hard.

Directly inside there's a little entrance hall, with a bookcase crammed with books on one side and a shoe rack on the other, above which are a row of pegs. As Ed divests himself of his long red coat Roy follows suit, taking off his jacket and hooking it onto one of the unoccupied pegs. Ed proceeds to lean against the wall to unlace his boots and tug them off, so Roy assumes this is household protocol and removes his shoes as well. He places them in a spare space at the end of the rack, noting as he does that there are two distinctly different sizes of shoes present. The smaller size likely belongs to Ed - a supposition borne out as Ed dumps his boots haphazardly beside the smaller set of sneakers - but there's no explanation for the latter.

"You have a housemate?" Roy asks casually, gesturing towards the larger sets of shoes. It's not likely to indicate anything sinister, but if Roy needs to keep an ear out for a boyfriend returning home early, that will definitely change the tone of the evening.

But Ed doesn't look in the least abashed, nodding and visibly brightening. "My brother, Al. He's a year younger than me, but he's fucking brilliant." There's unvarnished pride and affection in Ed's tone; it's obvious the brothers are close.

"He's not here tonight," Ed adds. "He's staying with his girlfriend." His nose wrinkles, and Roy wonders if it reflects Ed's opinion of said girlfriend, the idea of a girlfriend in general, or the idea of his brother being sexually intimate with anyone.

Ed heads through the archway and into what Roy presumes is the main room of the apartment. Roy follows, looking around curiously. It's a reasonably-sized lounge, with a kitchen directly attached to the right. In the lounge area two couches are arranged with a television opposite, and a dining table is strewn with textbooks, notebooks, paper and pens.

Ed dumps his satchel in the corner by the dining table, pulls off his gloves and tosses them on top, and then turns back to Roy.

"Payment up front, right?"

Roy nods, surprised - he often has to prompt tricks to remember that part, especially first-timers who don't know the drill yet.

"Be right back! Feel free to make yourself comfortable, or whatever."

Ed disappears down the hallway, and Roy uses the opportunity to look around. The apartment has a lived-in feel, with evidence of the occupants' personality in everything from the carefully-repaired furniture to the assortment of geeky nick-nacks arranged along the windowsill. There's no coherent colour scheme, but the mismatched curtains, cushions and throw rugs - which should in theory clash rather horribly - simply make the place look bright and homely.

Best of all, Ed must have flipped on the heating as they entered, and warm air is already circulating, slowly defrosting Roy's numb extremities.

Roy finds himself drawn to the table and it's haphazard spread of books and papers. The notes are written in two different hands - one neat but cramped, the other a chicken-scratch scrawl - neither of which his vision can make out. But the titles of the textbooks are printed in bold, clear capitals, and he aches at their familiarity: "Fundamentals of Materials Science", "Introduction to Electrodynamics", "Malchion's Inorganic Chemistry", "Classical Mechanics". The texts range across the sciences, from biology to chemistry to physics and several crossover areas in between.

One of the textbooks is open, and he lifts the front half of the pages so he can read the cover. The design on the rust-coloured background is immediately familiar, and he doesn't even need to read the title to know what it is: "A History of Chemical Discovery". He runs a finger over the bonds of the molecule on the cover, an odd sense of nostalgia stealing over him.

In his peripheral vision he sees Ed return and approach the table to stand beside him.

"Rifamycin," Ed comments, looking at the cover Roy is still staring at, lost in memory.

"Rifampicin," Roy corrects absently, and then freezes as he realises what he's just revealed.

Ed's eyes widen and he looks down at the cover and then back up at Roy.

"You've studied chemistry?" Ed asks, surprise and confusion in his tone.

"A long time ago, yes," Roy says stiffly. He carefully re-opens the book to where he'd marked the place with a finger, waiting for the inevitable question: so how the fuck did you go from studying chemistry to whoring yourself on a street corner?

But Ed surprises him yet again. "That's so cool!" Ed says, his delight seemingly genuine. "What was your favourite? Organic or inorganic?"

"Inorganic," Roy replies automatically. The sudden, vivid image of flames blazing against a starlit desert sky reminds him of the uses his chemical knowledge was put to, and he shuts the memory down hard, his hands clenched into shaking fists.

"Mine too!" Ed enthuses, oblivious to Roy's distress. "Al's totally into organic, he's probably going to go into medical research or biomedical engineering or something fancy like that. He really likes people, wants to do something where he can work with them, not just be stuck in a lab all the time. I'm still undecided. I mean, materials engineering would be fascinating, but I'm not sure what I'd do with it, y'know? Astronomy is kinda tempting, too, but it's not all that practical. Al says it's more important to do what you love than what's useful, but there's a lot to be said for not worrying about where your next meal is coming from."

Speaking of income seems to remind him of his errand, and he holds out his hand, in which is a folded bundle of notes. "Sixty thousand," he says, sounding oddly cheerful about the amount.

Roy's not even going to ask. He takes the money and slips it into his pocket. Normally he'd count it first, especially if it was from a trick he didn't know or didn't trust, but he wants to trust Ed. More than that, he wants Ed to be trustworthy. His self-preservation instincts mutter their discontent, but he forces himself to ignore them.

"And speaking of food, I'm starving," Ed says, with enough fervour to imply that he hasn't eaten in a week. "I'm gonna cook. Stir fry all right with you? It's not real Xingese style, as Al's girlfriend likes to point out repeatedly, but it's pretty damn tasty all the same."

Ed looks at him expectantly, waiting for an answer while Roy stares back at him blankly; he's never in his life had a trick offer to cook for him before. He was relatively sure he knew how the evening was going to go once they got here, but Ed's just veered completely off-script and Roy feels like he's been caught flat-footed.

Ed, however, misinterprets his hesitation. "If stir fry isn't your thing, I make a mean quiche. I'm pretty sure we have enough eggs, lemme look…" he trails off as he opens the fridge and begins to rummage through the contents.

"I have no objections to stir fry," Roy says, managing to finally find his voice. "But you don't have to feed me."

"When was the last time you ate?" Ed asks, peering around the open door of the refrigerator.

Roy pauses, trying to remember. He's only been awake since the early afternoon, but he has no idea whether or not he ate when he got up today. He often forgets to eat if he's not hungry, and he hasn't felt particularly hungry lately. He hasn't really felt much at all.

"If you have to think about it, it was too long ago, and it's time to eat again," Ed declares.

"All right," Roy says, his shock slowly fading into amusement. Ed's the one paying for his time, so if Ed wants to spend it cooking for them both, Roy's not going to argue.

Ed starts rattling around the kitchen, pulling out pans and knives and ingredients and setting everything on the bench.

"Can I do anything to help?" Roy asks.

Ed waves him away without even looking. "I've got it under control. And besides, you're a guest! I'm not gonna put you to work."

Roy finds this both amusing and perplexing; few people would consider a hooker they've hired to be anything resembling a 'guest'. The dismissal does give him a convenient opportunity to watch Ed as he works, however, so Roy takes advantage of it. Although Ed prefers his left hand, he seems quite willing and able to use the right when he needs to, and its dexterity is impressive. He also crouches down to reach things stored on the lowest shelves, without even a hand on the bench for balance.

The functionality of the prosthetics is extremely impressive, and he finds himself curious about exactly how they work. Not a conversation he's going to initiate, of course - regardless of how sensitive Ed is to the topic, Roy's here do a job, and he doubts talking about missing limbs is going to get Ed in the right kind of mood. He wonders idly what will get Ed in the mood, and spends the next half an hour alternating between watching Ed and thinking about what sort of tricks he can use to get Ed writhing and begging for more.

By the time Ed serves the stir fry into bowls and clears room for them at the table, the house smells of the savoury sauce Ed fried the meat in, and Roy has to admit it smells pretty tempting.

"Would you like a drink?" Ed asks.

Roy would kill for something alcoholic, preferably neat, but he knows that drinking on the job usually leads to making bad decisions, and he really doesn't need any help in that department.

"I'll have whatever you're having," Roy says instead. He's expecting some kind of soda, but Ed surprises him yet again.

"Juice for me," Ed says, heading back to the fridge. "But there's milk if you'd rather." The shudder in Ed's voice suggests that drinking ditch water would be preferable.

The set-up is too perfect for Roy to resist. Any other trick and Roy wouldn't bother trying to engage, but he can sense the tentative beginnings of a rapport between them, and Ed's earnestness makes him too tempting a target.

"What's wrong with milk?" Roy asks. "It's good for growing bones." He pauses for effect, and then adds: "Although it rather looks as if yours have given up on the attempt."

"Hey! No!" Ed exclaims, incensed, "I'm still growing!"

Roy smirks, having hit the target dead-on. "Perhaps if you drank more milk they'd put more effort into it."

Ed splutters indignantly, cheeks reddening, obviously working himself up into some kind of rant in response.

"Juice is fine," Roy says before Ed can let it loose, unable to suppress a grin.

Ed gives him a darkly suspicious look before pouring them both a glass and delivering them to the table, finally collapsing into a chair in an untidy sprawl. Roy takes the seat opposite, so he can watch Ed as they eat, as well as his vision allows.

Fortunately, when faced with food Ed's ire quickly vanishes, and he dives into his bowl. Roy follows suit more sedately.

As it turns out, Ed's assessment of his own cooking isn't actually hyperbole: the stir fry is quite tasty, and after the first couple of mouthfuls, Roy's body begins reminding him of exactly how hungry he is. He makes an appreciative sound as he swallows, and Ed grins at him, obviously delighted.

"See! It's good. Mei's just a food snob," Ed declares.

"Mei is Al's girlfriend?" Roy asks.

"Yeah," Ed says, in between mouthfuls. "She's all right, I guess. Not really sure what he sees in her. She seems to adore him, at least - but who wouldn't, he's Al. He's like, a kitten in human form or something."

Roy is amused by the description, especially considering the size of Al's shoes compared with Ed's - Roy is guessing that he's significantly taller.

"Mei is from Xing?" Roy asks.

Ed nods. "Came here to study, Al met her in one of his classes. What about you? I mean, where are you from?"

"I'm from Central," Roy answers, tone a little flat. He dislikes the the way too many people ask him the question, as if his exotic looks make a lie of his assertion that he's Amestrian, despite having been born here. He's never even been to Xing, doesn't speak the language or know anything of their culture. He never knew his mother long enough to learn.

To his relief, Ed doesn't seem to see any need to question his nationality. "I figured as much," Ed says, "from the fancy accent. Al and I are country bumpkins, we're from out East. Risembool, if you've ever heard of it."

Roy is amused to hear his accent described as 'fancy', especially considering his background, but if there's one thing Madame Christmas taught him it was how to socialise with the elite as if he'd been born one of them. Her informal elocution lessons over tea (for him) and gin (for her) were a regular part of his week, his accent being gradually 'corrected'. By the time he reached the Academy, he only had to introduce himself and the well-bred young men there simply assumed that he was one of them.

So he supposes that to a country kid he would sound rather formal. It's a strange juxtaposition, considering their current roles; Ed the one with money and a bright future ahead of him, while Roy has lost everything and returned to the gutters he was born in. He shuts down that line of thinking, knowing it can lead nowhere good.

"I know of Risembool," he answers. "I spent some time in the East."

"Neat," Ed says. "It's a nice place, but there isn't all that much to do there. Me and Al both knew we wanted to study science when we finished school. We researched every university in the country, but we heard that Central University had the best science department in Amestris, so we moved here."

"That's what I've heard, too," Roy agrees.

"Where did you study?"

Roy freezes, and then forces himself to swallow the mouthful he was chewing. Admitting the truth would reveal far more information about him than he had any intention of admitting to a trick he's just met. He knows he could easily lie, come up with something convincing that Ed would have no reason to question. But he finds that he doesn't want to. Ed's been nothing but honest with him so far, and he feels like it would change something between them if he broke that tentative trust, whether Ed was aware of it or not.

"CAA," Roy says finally, knowing that even someone as provincial as Ed will have heard of it. Central Army Academy is well-known throughout Amestris as the only choice for officers who aspire to the upper echelons of the military hierarchy.

Ed's eyebrows fly up. "You're military?"

"Not any more, obviously," Roy retorts, with more bite in his tone than he had intended.

Ed stares at him, wide-eyed, obviously aware that he's just stepped on a verbal landmine and not quite sure what to do about it.

Roy takes pity on him, smoothing things over with the skill he's cultivated since childhood. "I'm sure the Academy did things rather differently than the University, of course. Tell me about your studies, and how you've been finding it so far."

The relief on Ed's face is obvious and Roy wonders what his life has been like, that he's never had to learn to school his expression the way Roy did to survive.

Once prompted, Ed is more than happy to ramble on about his studies and his experiences at the University to date, and the brief tension which had flared between them quickly dissipates. Ed is an engaging speaker, his enthusiasm contagious, and Roy listens with genuine interest. It helps that he has the background to understand the things Ed's learning, and is able to ask relevant questions that get Ed shooting off on fascinating tangents.

"What drew you to study science?" Roy asks eventually. "And what about Al - did he choose to follow in your footsteps, or just happen to be interested in the same areas?"

"Al got into science because he wanted to use it to help people. Me, I thought it'd be kind of like a superpower: if I could understand the fundamental building blocks of the world and how they worked, I figured I could learn to make them do anything I wanted!" Ed snorts - Roy assumes at his childhood naivety. "It didn't work out like that, of course. Understanding matter and energy doesn't give you some kind of magical control; it's not like waving a wand or having a superpower."

Ed is silent and contemplative for a few moments, getting the look Roy is beginning to recognise as the one that means he's about to go veering off on a tangent. When he speaks again, Roy isn't disappointed.

"I mean, as far as superpowers go, matter transformation would be pretty damn cool. But if you're going for flashy it's hard to go past super-strength, and there are definitely a few assholes that I wouldn't mind punching through walls. But if we're talking about utility - and matter control was off the table - you'd have to go for something like telekinesis or intangibility, maybe teleportation. Something that you could use in all kinds of ways - to rescue people, steal stuff, whatever you wanted." Ed pauses, giving a grateful Roy a moment to catch up; following Ed's mental meanderings feels rather like being aboard a bus taking lefts and rights suddenly and at random, with no actual destination in mind.

"What about you?" Ed asks. "What would you pick?"

Roy considers the question.

If you had have asked him when he was Ed's age, Roy probably would have said pyrokinesis. He's always had a fascination with fire, the way the tongues of flame flicker and dance, beautiful and almost supernaturally alive as they consume all they touch. But now, having seen the horrors he's seen and knowing how he'd be forced to use a power of that kind, the idea makes him ill.

Again he has to force down the mental images and phantom smells of burned and bloody bodies, and give himself a moment for his stomach to stop churning. He tries to breathe through it, keeping his expression bland.

The thought of the wounded and dying makes him tempted to choose healing. Certainly there was a moment in time where he would have sold his soul for the ability, and would have gone happily to his eternal damnation if it had have saved the man bleeding out in his arms. But now there's nobody he cares enough to save.

Now… now he thinks he'd go for mind control. He'd take control of the Amestrian Government and make sure that nothing like Ishval could ever happen again. He'd restore Amestris to the country it should have been, without the political aggression and expansion-at-all-costs philosophy that caused decades of territory wars and destroyed an entire race of its people. He'd be a dictator, he knows, but a benevolent one, working for the good of the people. But then, all dictators probably think of themselves as benevolent, he supposes.

"I don't know," he says finally, unwilling to expose so much of himself by speaking his thoughts aloud.

Ed accepts this at face-value instead of pushing, for which Roy is grateful. A moment later and Ed's quicksilver mind is off and racing again, this time steering the conversation into the realm of superheroes and comic books. It's been a while since Roy's read anything in the way of comics; a while since he's been able to read anything at all. But he enjoyed comics during his younger years, and finds common ground with Ed over the heroes and villains of a decade ago.

By the time Roy finishes his meal, Ed has long-finished his. Roy finds himself feeling satiated and well-fed for the first time in a long while. The sensation settles on him uneasily, making him feel like it's something he hasn't earned. He reminds himself that it was Ed's choice to feed him: Ed's is in control here, and Roy's being paid to go along with whatever he chooses to do, sex-related or not.

Roy helps Ed clear the dishes despite Ed trying to wave him away, and then they move back into the lounge. Ed stands awkwardly for a moment, looking at one of the couches, and then abruptly turns on his heel and disappears down the hallway.

Roy is somewhat nonplussed by his sudden departure, unsure if he's supposed to follow or wait where he is. After a few moments curiosity wins over caution, and he follows the path of Ed's retreat.

He finds Ed in a bathroom, standing at the sink and squeezing toothpaste onto a toothbrush. Ed looks up as Roy appears in the doorway behind him and their eyes meet in the mirror.

Roy raises a questioning eyebrow.

"What?" Ed demands defensively, with a somewhat embarrassed scowl. "It's polite to brush your teeth before you kiss someone."

Roy is amused by Ed's defensiveness but genuinely touched by this small display of thoughtfulness, and his smirk softens at the edges.

Ed pauses with the toothbrush halfway to his mouth, suddenly breaking the eye contact and looking away. "I mean, only if you want to. You don't have to, of course." He pauses for a moment, looking back up to the mirror. "Do you kiss? I mean, your, uh…" Ed stumbles to a halt, obviously unsure what term to use.

"Clients?" Roy suggests, trying not to smile at the kid's verbal fumbling.

"Yeah," Ed agrees, obviously relieved by the save.

Roy contemplates the question for a moment - generally he doesn't kiss, but that has more to do with the acts he's usually performing than any kind of prohibition on his part. It's difficult to kiss with a mouthful of cock, or while he's being hammered from behind. That being said, he certainly has no desire to kiss most of his clients, shuddering to think of that kind of intimacy with those of poor personal hygiene or who get off on the more degrading aspects of his work.

But Ed… Ed, who is brushing his teeth for Roy's benefit, who is forthright and sweet and awkward by turns. He thinks he could kiss Ed. He thinks he might even want to.

"I kiss," Roy says simply, not daring to say more for fear of what he might reveal.

Ed's expression brightens, and he shoves the toothbrush in his mouth and begins brushing vigorously, as if concerned that Roy might change his mind.

"Do you have a spare?" Roy asks. "Fair's fair, after all."

Ed crouches down to rummage in the cupboard under the sink and pulls out a pack of a dozen-odd toothbrushes, only half of which remain. Roy extracts one from the packet and Ed makes room for him at the sink.

They stand side by side as they brush, and Roy tries to make sense of the picture they present in the mirror: two men, pressed close in the limited space. It's an oddly domestic scene, typical of partners or family members. There's nothing to mark Roy as a whore, or Ed as his trick.

The pair of them are a study in contrasts. Ed is in the same black shirt and cargo pants as the previous day, his golden hair up in a ponytail, cascading down his back and forward over one shoulder. Roy is taller by nearly a head, wearing plain blue jeans and a grey t-shirt, his arms bare. In the mirror Ed's eyes are golden-bright, while Roy's are so dark a brown they look black.

Ed spits and rinses, and then makes room for Roy to do the same. When he's done, Roy hands the brush back, and Roy adds it to the little rack where Ed's and his brother's already stand. Roy isn't quite sure how to feel about that, so tries to put it out of his mind.

They head back through to the lounge, which is when Ed seems to run out of steam, looking unsure of himself for the first time.

"So, uh. How do we do this?"

"Well, generally, my clients tell me what they want, and I get on with doing it." Roy takes a step towards him, letting his hips tilt a little and offering the knowing smile that gets him the attention of both genders; Roy knows he's good at this particular game. "But if you like, I can make some suggestions. Would you like me to kiss you?"

"Yeah," Ed says, voice low with want. "Yeah, definitely. I'd like that."

Roy closes the distance between them, until he's standing directly in front of Ed. This close, he can see how richly amber the depths of Ed's eyes are, currently alight with anticipation.

But he can also sense the tenseness of Ed's body, shoulders as tight as if he were braced for a blow. Ed's obviously nervous and uncertain, but Roy can't discern the cause. Is it because Roy's a stranger? Because he's a man? Because Ed expects something in particular to happen that he doesn't want?

"Here, let's sit down," Roy says, putting a hand on Ed's shoulder and guiding him towards the couch, nudging Ed to sit when he's close enough and taking a seat beside him when he does. He hopes that the casualness of the position will help Ed relax, with the added bonus of reducing the height difference between them.

Then he slides a hand around the back Ed's neck and guides him forwards with the lightest of pressure. Their lips meet lightly, slide over each other's, and part again. Roy gives Ed a moment to process, and then moves back in to kiss a little more firmly.

It takes Ed a few moments to engage fully, and then he's leaning into the kiss, mouth fitting to Roy's, warm and wet and tasting faintly of mint. Ed's left hand reaches to grip Roy's bicep as the kiss deepens. Roy licks at Ed's lower lip, a gentle request, and Ed opens his mouth for Roy to delve inside.

It's quickly obvious to Roy that while this isn't Ed's first kiss, he's not particularly experienced either. But he's enthusiastic, and willing to follow Roy's lead, and Roy finds himself enjoying a kiss for the first time in too many empty years. He slides an arm around Ed's body to pull him closer, cradling the back of his head with the other hand, silken hair sliding over his fingers.

Roy breaks the kiss off after a few minutes. "How are you doing?" He asks, wanting to make sure Ed's still on board. His enthusiasm seems genuine and his physical responses indicate he's enjoying the proceedings, but people can be complicated, Roy knows.

"I'm great!" Ed says fervently. His breathing a little fast and there's a pink flush stretched across both cheeks.

"Do you want to keep going?" Roy asks.

Ed nods. "Definitely!"

Roy smiles and succumbs to the urge to run a thumb over the blush on Ed's cheek. He kisses Ed just once, and then nudges him to lie back, using the arm around him to help guide him down until Ed's reclining along the length of the couch. Roy follows him, shifting until he's lying atop Ed's body. Ed's eyes are wide beneath him, and it takes a few moments before Ed lets his arms come up and fold around Roy's body.

He kisses Ed gently, letting Ed dictate the intensity. Ed shifts beneath him, and Roy can feel Ed's cock, hard against his pelvis. Roy has little doubt that Ed's just as aware of his own erection, pressing into the hollow of Ed's hip. The kisses slowly become more heated as Ed's confidence increases and his arousal builds, and Roy is pleased when Ed gets game enough to slip his tongue into Roy's willing mouth.

Ed pulls back to gasp a breath, and Roy moves his attentions to Ed's neck, nuzzling and kissing at the soft place beneath his jaw, sucking lightly and then scraping his teeth lightly along the skin. Ed bucks beneath him at that and Roy smirks against his neck. After that Ed can't seem to hold back the little twitches and jerks of his hips. Several times he presses up deliberately and then stills again as if he isn't sure he's allowed to seek his pleasure against Roy's body.

Roy rolls his hips in response, a deliberate grind, and Ed groans. Roy can't wait to get Ed out of his clothes, to have no barriers between them, nothing but skin against skin. He remembers Ed asking if Roy was willing to fuck as well as be fucked, and his cock twitches just at the thought of sinking into Ed's body.

"Do you prefer to top or bottom?" Roy asks against Ed's neck.

There's no immediate response, so Roy pushes up so that he can see Ed's face. "When you're with men," he elaborates.

Ed's gaze slips off to the side and he reaches up to scratch at the back of his neck, looking sheepish. "Well, uh…"

"You've never tried either?" Roy asks.

Ed shakes his head. "Not so much, no."

"What have you tried, with other guys?"

"I've never really, uh…" Ed trails off with a shrug. "Yknow. Anything, with a guy."

Roy sits up and moves off of Ed's body, knowing that there's a conversation here that needs to be had without distraction.

Ed follows his lead, sitting up and trying to sweep his hair into some semblance of order, looking at Roy a little warily.

"I'm the first man you've been with?" Roy asks, gentling his tone.

"Yeah," Ed admits. He gives an embarrassed sort of smile, and then suddenly looks worried. "Is that a problem?"

Roy shakes his head. "Of course not, but it's useful for me to know. I don't want to rush you or do anything you're not comfortable with, so we'll just take it a little slower than usual, all right?"

Ed looks relieved by this. "Yeah, that would be great," he says.

"And if there's anything you find you don't like, please tell me. There are always plenty of other things we can try."

"I will," Ed promises. He looks as if he wants to say more, so Roy waits patiently.

"Are you into guys?" Ed blurts abruptly.

The question isn't what Roy expected, and throws him slightly. "I'm a male prostitute," he says sardonically, resorting to deflection. "It would be problematic if I wasn't."

"Yeah, but…" Ed shrugs. "It's not like you'd have to be into it to do your job, would it? I mean, if you aren't, uh… the one doing the fucking, then it wouldn't matter if you weren't into it, right?"

And damn this kid for being one of the insightful ones, for not accepting Roy's prevarication at face value. Roy wonders for a moment what would happen if he said 'no', whether it would make a difference to Ed, whether Ed might halt the evening altogether out of respect for Roy's stated preferences. But Roy has no reason to lie.

"You're right, of course," Roy concedes. "But as it happens I am sexually attracted to men. Why do you ask?"

Ed fiddles with his sleeve. "I had a girlfriend," he says after a few moments, and Roy realises that Ed's issues might not be limited simply to his inexperience. It would hardly be the first time he's been rambled at by a trick working through their own hangups, though, so Roy settles himself more comfortably as he waits.

"We practically grew up together," Ed continues, "and just sort of fell into a relationship when we were pretty young. We broke up a bunch of times but we always got back together, until this last time."

"What was different about this last time?" Roy asks.

"She wanted to have sex," Ed says. "And I realised that I didn't. I mean… not with her. I love her, I really do. But I just didn't feel that way about her. When I kissed her, it felt… nice, I guess. But it didn't make me want to do anything more."

"It didn't turn you on?"

Ed shakes his head, and then shrugs. "I mean, she sat in my lap and I got hard - but it was a physical thing, y'know? She was rubbing against my dick, it paid attention. But that's all."

"Did you have sex with her?" Roy asks.

Ed shakes his head again, and Roy is oddly relieved, glad that Ed wasn't pressured into doing something he didn't want. "She didn't get why. I'm a teenage guy, I'm supposed to be desperate for it, but I turned her down, even though I was sitting there with a hard-on tenting my pants. She got pretty angry at first, and then she cried." Ed winces a little at the memory. "She thought it was just her I didn't want, but it wasn't. I've never felt that kind of thing about any girl."

"Did you think you might be attracted to other men?" Roy asks.

"Well, at that point, it hadn't really occurred to me. I know that sounds stupid - I mean, how can someone not even know what floats their boat? But the thing is, for most of my life I never really thought about sex at all," Ed says. "I was so busy taking care of Al, making sure we stayed together, trying to fix our bodies, plus studying and working on top of that, that I just didn't have room in my head to think about sex as well. I mean, I jerked off, but it was just a physical thing, I wasn't really thinking about anything in particular. At school the other guys would talk about sex all the freaking time, but I just… didn't. It was only after Winry said she wanted to that I really stopped to think about it."

"What conclusions did you come to when you did?"

"I realised that I just wasn't into girls."

"And?" Roy prompts.

"And I tried thinking about guys, and that did make me want to do more."

"But you haven't had the opportunity to try it out in practise, as yet?"

"No."

"So, is that why you hired me, then? To test out your theory, see if it works the same way in reality as it does in your head?"

Ed doesn't answer for a moment. "Well," he says, looking somewhat abashed but with a hint of a grin, "to be honest, I just saw you and wanted you. I didn't really think about it much further than that. But I guess it works out, right? Means I can try stuff out with a guy and if I don't get into it, it doesn't matter! It's not like having a date that'll be pissed if you realise you're just not into dick halfway through." He pauses and then the grin spreads wider as he reaches down to adjust himself in his pants, erection still obvious. "Not that I think being into it's going to be a problem."

Roy smirks. "I'm flattered to have caught your attention." He's definitely getting the impression that Ed's not really the sort to look before he leaps, jumping into the things with wholehearted enthusiasm, but not always a lot of forethought. In this particular instance, however, it seems to have worked out well for both of them: Ed gets to experiment with his sexuality without the anxiety of trying to please a partner, while Roy gets the easiest night's work he's had in years, and gets to stay warm in the bargain.

"And you're right, I certainly won't be offended if you choose to stop the experimentation at any point during the evening. You've paid for my time and you get to choose what to do with me, even if you decide to do nothing."

Unexpectedly, Ed's expression twists in a grimace of embarrassment. "You must think I'm a total loser," he says, looking away. "Hiring a hooker to lose my virginity. Like I couldn't get a guy any other way."

"Not at all," Roy says, frowning. "My first time was with an escort, too." The words escape before he can corral them, and Roy curses himself for opening yet another chink in his protective armour of anonymity. He's only ever told that story to one other person, and he certainly hadn't planned on divulging it to a trick he barely knows.

But Ed's looking at him with sudden hope in his expression, so Roy tries to push the self-recriminations aside and continue.

"She was kind and gentle with me - she made sure I enjoyed it, as well as teaching me some useful things about how to please a woman."

He didn't mention that it was at the request of his foster mother, who had specifically chosen one of her girls to initiate him, once she decided he was old enough.

"Really?" Ed stares at him, wide-eyed. "And you don't regret it?"

"Not at all," Roy says. "Look, Ed. There are a whole range of reasons why you might want to hire a sex worker, and other people have no right to judge you for it. It doesn't mean you're a loser, or that you couldn't find a partner to have sex with if you tried. It just means that you're choosing to take control of the experience in a particular way."

"I guess so," Ed says, not sounding entirely convinced.

"When you have sex - especially when it's your first time - it should be with someone you feel comfortable with," Roy presses. "And someone you trust to stop if you need them to. If that person is someone you hire, so what?"

"I feel comfortable with you," Ed says, a touch shyly. "I trust you."

"I'm very glad," Roy says, trying not to let Ed's hesitant, earnest smile get to him, while fearing that he's not entirely successful.

Roy wants to tell Ed that he has entirely too much faith in people, that it's not safe to trust anyone, particularly someone you know so little about. But he doesn't want to be the one to disillusion the kid, or expose him to the fundamental assholery of humanity. At the same time Roy recognises the hypocrisy of the thought, considering he's broken several of his own rules this evening already because he trusted a kid he'd only just met.

"So you like girls, too?" Ed asks, obviously contemplating Roy's earlier statement.

"Yes. I'm bisexual." Roy ends up drawn to men more often than women emotionally, but finds women more convenient for casual sex. He used to, anyway - he hasn't had the urge for any kind of sex in a long time.

Ed seems to digest this silently. "I guess that makes me gay," he says, as if only just coming to the realisation. Roy gets the feeling that Ed's recently-discovered attraction to men is something he still hasn't fully processed.

"Ed, they're just labels - try not to get too hung up on them." Roy reaches out to cup Ed's face in his palm, stroking Ed's cheek with the side of his thumb. Ed tilts his head into the touch, eyes fluttering closed for a moment before refocusing on Roy's face.

"People like labels to conveniently pigeon-hole others, but not everyone fits neatly into one box or another, or even identifies with the same box from day to day. Don't let other people's labels push you into doing something you don't want, or keep you from doing something you do want."

"I want this. I mean, I want you," Ed says, no uncertainty in his tone this time.

"Good. That's the only thing that matters, right now."

"So, does that mean we can keep doing stuff?" Ed asks hopefully, seeming to have shelved his sexuality-related anxieties for the moment. "Like what we were doing just before?"

"Of course," Roy says, hiding his amusement. "We can do anything you like."

"I liked it when you were on top of me," Ed says, with a mix of embarrassment and defiance. "Kissing me."

"In that case…"

Roy presses Ed back down onto the couch, settling himself between Ed's thighs and covering Ed's body with his own. Ed immediately grabs Roy's hips, pulling him down while pressing up against him, making his desires clear. Roy smirks against Ed's mouth as he kisses him; he's getting the impression that patience isn't one of Ed's stronger suits either.

Roy accedes to the unspoken demand and grinds his hips against Ed's, setting up a regular rhythm, the pleasure slowly building as their cocks rub together, pressed between their bodies. Ed hooks his flesh hand around Roy's neck, holding him in place as their mouths slide over each other's, heated and wet. Ed's making stuttered moans whenever they break for breath, the sounds going straight to Roy's cock. Ed presses his face against Roy's neck for a moment, overwhelmed, and the warm caress of his exhalation against Roy's skin makes him shiver.

Being with Ed like this feels good in a way that Roy hasn't felt in a long time. It's completely unlike the sex he has when he's working; he never makes out like this, clothed and messy like desperate teenagers. Usually he's using his skills to drive his target towards orgasm as quickly as possible, or letting them use his body to do the same. His own pleasure just doesn't enter into it.

But he could come like this, Roy thinks, just from grinding against Ed's body with all of his clothes still on. It's obvious that Ed's already well on his way to the finish post, if the way he's squirming beneath Roy is any indication. But Roy doesn't particularly want to come in his pants, especially when he has to walk home in them.

What he wants is to slow things down, to undress Ed and explore every inch of his body with fingers and mouth, to show Ed all the different types of pleasure his body can experience. But he knows that Ed doesn't have the patience for that right now. He's practically vibrating with pent-up arousal, desperate to come as quickly as possible. Fortunately Ed's also young, and shouldn't have any issues getting it up for a second round, so there's no harm in getting him off fast right now.

But Roy's still not coming in his pants.

Roy sides off Ed and encourages him to turn so that they're both lying on their sides, facing each other. Ed's looking at him inquisitively, impatience held in check for now but lurking not far beneath the surface.

Roy reaches down between them, undoing Ed's belt and pants by touch alone as he watches Ed's face. He pauses with his fingertips just under the elastic of Ed's boxers.

"Do you want me to touch you?" Roy asks.

"Yeah," Ed breathes. "Fuck, yeah!"

Roy pushes the waistband down, freeing Ed's dick, and wraps a hand around it, taking a long, slow stroke.

Ed makes a sound halfway between a choke and a gasp, pushing into Roy's hand in an unspoken demand for more.

Roy obliges, setting up a rhythm, experimenting a little to see what gets a reaction. Some guys prefer firmer pressure down at the root, others like a squeeze over the head on the upstroke. Ed seems to appreciate everything Roy tries, looking half-dazed with pleasure, responsive to every change in Roy's touch.

"Good?" Roy asks.

"Oh hell yeah," Ed says breathlessly. "I didn't think it'd feel so different - someone else's hand, I mean. But it's so much better."

Roy smirks, using a few of his tricks to tease Ed and wind him up even further, while Ed grips his arm so tightly his fingers will probably leave marks.

Meanwhile, Roy's own arousal is a low ache in his abdomen, his dick still clamouring for attention.

Roy releases Ed for a moment, ignoring his small sound of complaint, and quickly undoes his own belt and pants so he can pull himself free. Then he presses forward until his cock is aligned with Ed's and takes them both in his fist, stroking firmly.

"Oh, fuck," Ed mutters, looking down between them to where the heads of both cocks protrude from Roy's fist on the downstroke. "That is so fucking hot."

"Do you want to come like this?" Roy asks.

Ed nods quickly. "Yeah, fuck yeah!"

Roy strokes them both firmly and quickly, foregoing any further teasing and simply pushing them both towards orgasm as quickly as possible. Ed is so wound up he can't hold himself still, his hips stuttering forward and back to push himself further into Roy's hand. It makes Ed's dick drag against his own, and Roy moans at the sensation. Soon they're both breathing hard, foreheads pressed together, Ed's eyes closed.

Ed is the first to tip over the edge. He stiffens abruptly with a sharp indrawn breath, and then he groans as his dick pulses in Roy's hand and he starts spurting onto both of their stomachs. Roy eases him through it, slowing as the orgasm tails off. Ed is gorgeously flushed and breathing unsteadily, his good hand still gripping Roy's shoulder.

Roy takes a few moments to enjoy Ed's dishevelled state before giving in to his cock's throbbing demand for attention, taking himself back in hand and stroking hard and fast. It isn't long before he reaches his own climax, gasping as the pleasure crashes through him. It's been so long since he's jerked off that the rush of sensation and the relief that follows nearly blindsides him.

Afterwards, they lie tangled together on the couch as they recover.

"That was fucking awesome," Ed declares.

Roy can't hold back a snort of amusement, Ed's combination of enthusiasm and inexperience ridiculously appealing. His unbridled delight at a simple hand-job - the tamest trick in Roy's sexual repertoire - is a novelty completely at odds with the the usual reactions of his clients, who barely seem to enjoy the acts they engage in.

But then, the experience was something out of the ordinary for Roy as well, the intensity startling and unexpected. He can't remember the last time he enjoyed sex. He's certainly never come when he's on the job before, never let himself turn the act into something mutual, or let his own pleasure enter into the equation. There's no denying he enjoyed himself, though, not with the evidence still decorating the front of his t-shirt.

"It was pretty awesome," Roy agrees, both amused and sincere.

Roy's hand is now thoroughly sticky, so after a minute he carefully extracts himself from Ed's tangle of limbs, re-fastens his pants with his left hand, and makes his way down the hallway to clean himself up.

In the bathroom, he stops at the sink and meets his own eyes in the mirror. His hair is in disarray from where Ed's fingers have threaded through it, and his mouth is reddened and kiss-swollen. He's coming down from the high of orgasm and the reality of the situation is starting to intrude in unpleasant ways. His thoughts clamour at him, reminding him how dangerous it is to get attached, to open himself up, to trust in any way, big or small. He should know better, he thinks. He should remember the lessons that were hard-learned.

"Roy," he mutters to his reflection. "What the hell are you doing?"

#my fic #fma fanfic #a different way home #royed #roy/ed #fma

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ark-of-eden · 7 years

Text

Thoughts on the Function of Art?

(R:) I didn't want to append this to that big thread about censorship, questionable story content, and authorial intent because I am a Small Person who just consumes things and I was pretty sure that I can't actually add anything useful to the discussion. But I'm still stuck on it a little, so here is a thing that I'm putting behind a readmore in case everyone is fucking tired of the whole censorship debate.

tl;dr: Riss is old and grew up in an environment that was not exactly info-rich when it came to controversial issues. Riss is clumsily attempting to tape this and that together for some reason, possibly just to get it out of the brain. (This ultimately turned into a long fucking story about my early life that doesn't really go anywhere. It's just a long fucking story.)(**ALERT: This includes discussions of stereotypes, slurs, and fetishization.)

People in that thread pointed out the weird over-reliance on interrogating an author about what exactly they meant by writing certain content and that authorial intent should be a yardstick for whether certain content is edifying (and deserving of existence) or not. Other people wisely pointed out that every consumer will inevitably interpret every creation through the lens of their own experience and come up with a different take on what the piece is "saying" about whatever it depicts.

Back when I was very young, there was no way to directly contact any sort of creator. Novels had small text somewhere that mentioned how to send snailmail to the author C/O the publishing company, but naturally there could be no expectation that an author would ever actually write you back. Direct contact with creators was usually in the context of them being guests at a con or signing or gallery showing, which was sort of like seeing a band play live. Every other exposure to them was one-way or indirect, through their work or news articles or possibly from hearing a radio interview or watching a TV program about them, if they were important enough. This was pre-widespread-Internet, so nobody had blogs; some big-name people had fanclubs that mailed out regular newsletters, but the vast majority of creators had nothing but their content in circulation.

I guess that the point of saying all of that is just to illustrate that the present-day situation in which creators have public social media accounts that one can just drop into and toss opinions and questions about intent at them is...kind of a luxury, in my experience? For writers of "classics," there might be printed articles or essays in which they went on about their intent or process, but for creators who weren't popular while they were alive, historians have to go mining for diaries or letters to even get an idea of what sort of person they were, much less what they meant when they wrote that one scene from that one novel that was Kind Of Problematic.

And that was a tangent leading around to a perspective about creative work in general that I heard very early on and took to heart when it came to consuming media. I read somewhere that the point of creating something was to produce a response or emotion in the consumer. Any response. The creation was meant to be a catalyst for newness or change in the viewer, even if the response was something like anger, fear, or disgust. The worst possible response to a creation was dull indifference, because it had failed to do anything at all to the consumer.

I saw supporting evidence for this perspective in a lot of media. Bands built up weird, elaborate Aesthetics purely to draw attention to their songs, not because they were demonstrating some deeply-held belief system. (I've lost track of how many CDs I saw from bands who made dark music about cruelty, despair, and the emptiness of the universe and yet, in tiny liner-note text, poured out flowery squee about how they thanked the loving Lord God and Jesus Christ for blessing them with their musical careers.) Artists who talked to other artists about their craft admitted that they often made the art they did just because they wanted to make it for no special reason, but they fabricated deep-sounding bullshit to attach to it so that collectors would buy the thing just for the story that went with it.

A piece that kept getting talked about over and over back then was Piss Christ, which was literally a large glass jar full of urine that had a crucifix floating in it. Large sections of society were fucking outraged that this thing even existed, that galleries dared to let it darken their doorways, that the artist was even depraved enough to think up such a thing. I don't recall what the artist herself (I think it was a she) said about why she made it, but what was clear to me was that she had succeeded at the goal of art like an absolute champion. Nobody could look at that piece without having some kind of intense response, and whole groups of educated people were compelled to spill out their opinions and argue about it. Piss Christ was Successful Art, the thing that every piece of art wished that it could be. It didn't matter that most of the responses were negative. Apart from making it, the artist did nothing to encourage all the discussions prompted by the art's existence. People used it as a springboard for debates about What Is Art Really, the empty veneration of religious iconography, public obscenity, and all sorts of other things, entirely on their own.

Granted, there were clear downsides to not having instant access to people's creative narratives and backgrounds, or to the greater community of consumers. There were panels discussing themes in modern writing at cons and sometimes a nearby book club where people could rec things and talk about good and bad aspects to whatever they were reading, but if you weren't in a position to have either of those things? There wasn't a lot to do but chat with any reader buddies you might have or actually trust marketing. This book is a NYT Bestseller and has its own special display in Borders? Well, must be a well-written book with quality content, or else it wouldn't have that kind of backing, right? (I was such a trusting little idiot back then, seriously.) So this was when all those toxic norms of casual misogyny, racism, and queer villainization went unchallenged in a lot of places and was just The Way Things Are.

My family moved around to many parts of the US while I was young and I swear I never heard people anywhere bothering to have a discussion about the trend of weak female characters or how POC cultures kept getting reduced to exotic window dressing. There was a sense that those kinds of intellectual topics were the sort of thing that academics did in far-off Academic Country, where they only read classic literature and went over word-by-word symbolism with ever finer combs. I'm no quality literature historian, but I imagine that those kinds of thematic conversations probably got louder as widescale communication got easier, such that a person could throw out into the aether, "Is it just me, or is the only time when cultural elements from Asian, Middle Eastern, Native American, or African civilizations turn up in mainstream lit is when they need 'exotic savage foreigners'?" and people would be able to chorus back, "OMFG THANK YOU I thought I was the only one bothered by that!!" (I mean, advancements in communication helped every minority find other people like themselves, which is why the Internet is part of real life and a genuinely precious resource to isolated odd folk who are forced to live in places that are hostile to them. You no longer have to live your entire life being the only lonely freak instance of your kind in the entire universe.)

So I recognize the shitty situation of having mainstream marketers telling people which stories were good and which story elements were admirable without also having access to Discourse that would challenge those norms. I remember just accepting that girls would hardly ever be able to be heroes the way boys could be, and that people from far-away cultures were always primitive and backward but in fascinating ways. Nothing in my daily life countered anything that I read. Discussions that I found online much later in life caused me to rethink the trends in everything that I'd read as a kid and see it all with fresh eyes so that I could realign my opinions. It's vital to have discourse and challenge happening alongside creation so that we don't have generations of people absorbing shitty norms that are supported by fiction and not realizing that there are even alternative ways of seeing things.

But there's still that issue, in my mind, of a good creation being one that creates ripples far outside of itself by prompting any kind of response in the consumer. Which is, I guess, why it seems fine to me that Problematic things exist and that people encounter them even if they come away hating those things. The encounter with that thing can make a person think about their own perceptions and experiences, and it can prompt conversations about was learned from that encounter - the why of the result and what it means. Obviously, the same can be done with media that makes a person happy or comforted, and that ends up in Discourse because people end up comparing their experiences and questioning whether the people who are happy/comforted are correct to feel that way about the media.

(Bonus Tangent: it's never possible to be incorrectly upset/offended, only incorrectly happy, strangely. Because telling people that they are not allowed to be upset about something is controlling and aggressive, but telling people that they're wrong to enjoy something is...I'm not finding any positive result. It's shaming, which is a response used to exert social control over others. Talking about whether or not casting shame on total strangers leads to the desired result is something that even I don't want to take the space to talk about. I'm one of those who considers emotion to be out of a person's control. Emotion precedes action. What's important, IMO, is what action a person takes regardless of what emotions they might have, because it's possible to choose actions. Telling a person that they're not allowed to feel a certain way is an attack based on something that a person can't actually control. Whenever I see antis saying things like "no one should ever enjoy this content," I wonder how people are supposed to casually shut off their enjoyment. Can the antis shut off their outrage with a flip of a switch, since it's just an emotion too? Attempting to reprogram a person's emotional or motivational palette leads to things like conversion therapy, which has a high rate of failure/relapse and tends to traumatize people into other mental deformities. That's why it's far more useful to focus on responses to emotion instead of emotion itself. People with uncontrollable emotional responses - such as phobias or fetishes, say - can learn adaptive actions faster than they can unlearn emotional responses.)

This was a hugely roundabout way of saying that I really think that bad media or problematic media are still important. They can prompt discussion and introspection, as mentioned, but, IME, even a shitty representation of a concept can put cracks in a person's worldview and make it possible for them to be open to better ideas in the same vein later on.

For instance, I had that strict mainstream heteronormative upbringing. The only thing I knew about queer people for a huge part of my life was that they needed to be pitied because they were going to hell, and the closest thing to a trans person that I knew about was that Crying Game trap drag queen concept where the sinister man in a dress seduced honest straight men with borrowed feminine wiles. (I literally did not know that transgender people were actually real until after I was 20, which is one reason why I am such a massive late trans bloomer.) I also had that strict gender role upbringing in which there were certain things that a person must and must not do in order to be "proper."

Back when I first got on the Internet and started interacting with fandoms, genderswap fics were popular in my circle. Often, it was basically the same plot as the source material, but you'd switch everybody to the opposite binary gender and then, based on the assumption that men and women think and do things in slightly different ways, the plot would usually derail from canon because the genderswapped characters wouldn't do the same things that they canonically did. It was just one of many common fanfic thought exercises.

Looking back, reading genderswap fics was something that started eroding the strict worldview that I'd inherited. The "men and women just naturally do things differently" was enough in line with traditional gender roles that it passed by my defenses, but the swapped cast of just about everything ended up with lots of strong, heroic women and the occasional male sidekick. Further, writers tended to use the "women are more socially/emotionally intelligent than men" stereotype to correct shitty things that male characters did in canon because, if they were women, they'd be too smart and perceptive to do whatever stupid thing they did and everything would have happened differently. Nowadays, there's formal discussion about the lack of strong female characters in mainstream fiction, but in fandom, female writers just fixed the problem directly with genderswap so all the interesting, powerful people could be women and the guys could be useless arm candy for once. It was a way of reclaiming importance and power when canon media didn't give women much else to work with.

(I became aware while ago that Discourse is informing people that genderswap fics are hugely offensive to trans people. Now, I've described my crappy upbringing, but as a trans person, I don't understand this at all. I get that the "opposite gender" swap upholds the gender binary, but the issue is offense against trans people, not against genderqueer or nonbinary people. I seriously don't get why I should be offended? Is it because the genderswap doesn't include actual RL transgender experiences, as if the entire cast were realistically transitioning as a plot element? Genderswap is not acceptable unless it specifically includes things like "this is the story of how Cloud Strife got her testicles removed and enjoyed growing breast buds thanks to HRT"?? Maybe I'm an idiot, but those are two distinctly different story concepts and both have merit. o_o)

Later on, I became aware of people who were preoccupied with stories and fantasies of fantastical gender transformation, usually male to female. Some stereotypical male character would get injected with an alien serum or zapped by a fairy's wand or something and he would immediately metamorphose into a woman. There was often a disturbingly rapey element to these stories, like the boy wouldn't want to be transformed and was horrified while he was changing, but after he settled into the woman-shape or had sex as a woman after changing, he realized that he loved it and felt so much better that way. The stories were mostly just short repeats of this exact same situation, written by different authors with slightly different details, and this group never seemed to get tired of them.

Eventually, I learned that most of the people in the core of this group identified as trans women, but they lived in circumstances where they weren't permitted any female expression or had lost hope of ever transitioning. They fixated on transformation fic as a way to soothe the pain of living. Looking back, the noncon/dubcon themes that kept appearing in the fics made sense as a way of indirectly satisfying the powerful social forces that were demanding masculinity of them. The male characters were trying hard to stay male, fighting back against the transformation; they were clearly performing all the do not want signals expected of men threatened with feminization. They fought the good fight, but the enemy overpowered them! Womanhood was forced upon them! It was totally unexpected that they enjoyed being a girl after all, but because their maleness had been aggressively destroyed, they were free to stop performing resistance and love themselves.

But you can find fetish material like this in a lot of places, without any context as to the intent of the creator. (And I'd argue that it counts as a fetish if you crave it as necessary somehow, regardless of whether or not you're jacking/jilling to it.) Some people would write the same kind of stories for forced feminization as a type of humiliation. Among furries, transformation fetish material seems to add an extra angle of growing into new power and strength by a change into some larger, more magnificent creature in addition to changes involving sexual characteristics.

Further into the fantasy fetish scene is smut involving dickgirls/cuntboys. Those terms are inherently objectifying and fetishizing; the focus is entirely on the genitals and how a person has the "wrong" ones for their body. Understandably, this is where trans people get turned into dehumanized kink fuel, and real life "tranny chasers" exist who try to weasel into relationships with trans people just to have an embodiment of their fetish.

Artists seem to be slowly getting better with at least giving a nod to real trans people when tagging this sort of art, but (likely to get the most search hits) usually it's just "transwoman/man" alongside "dickgirl/cuntboy." And the art, at least, is clearly designed as fap fuel, so it's not like changing the label makes the content more respectful to the real humans it resembles.

Fetish art with that sort of name shouldn't be uplifting or encouraging because it makes trans people into objects, I know. But I enjoy it when I see it not because it gets me hot in itself, but because I feel heartened when I see sexy art of, essentially, trans people who have not had any genital surgery. I'm fortunate in that I don't have the worst soul-crushing dysphoria surrounding my (still XX factory standard) genitals, but I know a lot of trans people get seriously torn up about theirs and worry that they'll never be truly attractive to others because their genitals are "wrong." While it's possible to find humiliation art online of people with all kinds of body configurations, I tend not to (YMMV again) find much that seems to be specifically shaming or hating on characters who have trans genitals specifically because they are wrong/ugly/queer/etc. They're just participating in enthusiastic hot sex like all the other characters. Sometimes they're literally just standing around looking sexy, like any other badly-posed pinup. But when they're in the mix of whatever smut they're depicted in, they're objects of desire with their own sexual power, unashamed and equal to the others, and the other characters find them attractive and are clearly really excited to be doing whatever they're doing with that hot trans character.

And this response is very problematic, I know, because smut of trans characters that's designed to satisfy fetishes actually does lead to cis stalkers who want trans partners as living sex toys. And art of pre/non-op trans people being sexually liberated and desirable might end up being nearly indistinguishable from most of the fetish art I've seen, apart from lacking the objectifying dickgirl/cuntboy label. I hate seeing those terms in art tags, but the art itself makes me happy. Not even aroused, just happy to see characters who are essentially pre/non-op trans people being desired and enjoying themselves. When you've lived your life believing that you're ugly and unlovable, seeing people similar to yourself in those kinds of situations is a Band-Aid on an old, deep wound. I wish someone would look at me that way. I wish someone wanted to touch me that way. And even if you can't have that for yourself, you can at least look at art where similar people can, and even if those trans people are imaginary six-breasted purple foxtaurs, you can still feel like at least there are trans people somewhere in the galaxy who are free and happy and desirable. It's the same as those trans girls who spent years telling each other the same MTF transformation story over and over and over even though it was pure fantasy. They needed periodic inoculations of that fiction to keep themselves afloat when they believed that they could never have the reality.

That's why, to return to my earlier point and to the points that the people in that big thread probably said better than I have, I don't want bad media to go away. Even gross White Man Story For White Menfolk fiction can at least prompt discussion and response and might have little bits in it that made someone out there think of something in a way that they haven't before. Even depictions of minorities that are pretty clearly designed to be shallow fetish fuel might be a lifeline to some isolated person to whom that shitty depiction is the most positive representation of their identity that they've ever seen. You'd hope that they'd quickly be able to find better ones, but beggars can't be choosers, and if that shitty depiction hadn't existed then they might never have had the chance or the knowledge that different views were possible. You just can't know what people see and think when they consume a particular piece of media. They bring so much of their own context into the experience.

That's why I wish people would focus on action instead of on vague, catastrophizing speculations about intent or potential or who has a "right" to create or consume certain things. There are at least a couple of stories floating around about female fic writers who regularly wrote m/m smut, but who, IRL, opposed same-sex marriage and disowned their queer relatives. IMO, that's how you can tell who is making objectifying content - by whether they treat actual, living representations of minorities/fetishes like frivolous entertainment. I would bet that those IRL-anti-queer fic writers wrote things that were indistinguishable from the general mass of fanfic, which was why other fandom people were shocked to discover their IRL actions. People create things for all sorts of different reasons, not because ther creations are a clear window into their innermost motivations. You just can't know what's in a person's head, no matter what sort of things they create.

And I've literally spent hours writing this and sort of vaguely editing it paragraph by paragraph, so I'm going to post this now and release myself from childhood memory hell. Ultimately, that reblogged thread still said all of this better, but I just had a compulsion to LET ME SING YOU THE SONG OF MY PEOPLE FOR TEN FUCKING PAGES. :P

And oh hey, I was so caught up in time-warping back to the 80's and early 90's that I forgot that Wikipedia existed, so here's their page on Piss Christ. Turns out the artist was male. Says it was only a photo?? Lies!! I distinctly remember seeing the goddamn gross jar of pee!! Because human memory is a reliable, unalterable record!! (Okay, I've clearly gone on too long here. I apologize to the whole internet in advance.)

#fetishization #queer #early life experiences #slurs #queer fetishization #fandom politics #not even sure what to tag this as so just sort of be generally cautious

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silver-and-ivory · 7 years

Note

You suggested Yudkowsky in a previous ask. How do you respond to the accusations that he is a crank? People make these accusations for a variety of reasons. For reference, consider rationalwiki's less than flattering article on him and his work. I am asking this question from a sincerely unbiased and simply curious standpoint. Thank you for receiving it, and, if you choose to respond, thank you for responding.

Hmm.

First of all, thanks a lot for how polite this was! Thank you for asking, and I am happy to respond for you. :)

I have in fact heard of these accusations.

To be perfectly honest, I don’t think these allegations are at all relevant to the validity of his philosophy in the Sequences. Ideas should be judged on their own merit; of course, we don’t have infinite time, so we have to use heuristics to figure out who to listen to, such as general correctness of beliefs; but I have already read Yudkowsky’s ideas and find him compelling. Since you (probably?) think I have relevant and non-terrible opinions, the heuristic “follow recommendations from your favored authors” (or whatever) should override the weaker heuristic about what to draw to your attention.

But I want to address the accusations in more detail, since they seemed interesting and I don’t think it would be satisfying to you if I didn’t. Keep in mind that I’m not qualified to evaluate many of the technical claims (like around physics or AI) in terms of knowledge or expertise. I’ll mostly be defending the idea that Yudkowsky’s ideas in the Sequences have merit independent of whatever weird shit he got into otherwise, but I also will make an effort to refute exaggerated or inaccurate claims.

So let’s get into discussing the accusations in question (long ass post below):

From what I’ve heard, they’re mostly as follows:

Roko’s Basilisk Debacle. I have no idea what happened here. Yudkowsky may have made a mistake in his comportment or in his logic, but it seems to be a sincere attempt to make the world better.

MIRI Work Inconsequential, Sub-par: Again, I don’t know anything about AI. I’ve never met Yudkowsky or MIRI at work, so I can’t really evaluate how hard they’re working or whatever.

AI Apocalypse is a Bit of a Sketchy Theory: I don’t know anything about AI, but the arguments I’ve seen are very unconvincing. After all, making the leap from “machine that does preprogrammed stuff really (really (really) (etc.))) quickly” to “thing with ability to manipulate, self-modify, and seep into the darkness of the internet to achieve its goals” doesn’t seem to be as easy as the arguments assume.

On the other hand, Yudkowsky might well be 1) operating off information I don’t know 2) concluded different, but equally reasonable (at this point in time) things from the information we share such that AI stuff is a major risk 3) giving into the bias that the things he’s interested in are Really Important or 4) something I didn’t think of that nevertheless doesn’t make him unreliable.

He might be wrong, but that doesn’t necessarily say anything about the other aspects of his ideology/philosophy. People make mistakes, they follow their biases too far, they get obsessed with strange things, they get stuck in bubbles. It’s erroneous to conclude that all of his ideas must be wrong just because he failed to live up to it.

Alternatively,, he could be doing it for personal gain - such as for fame - and therefore lying, which would bring his entire ideology into doubt as one could not know where he fabricated ideas versus where he was sincere.

Argument With Hanson: I honestly don’t care if he disagreed with Hanson over who the rightful caliph was AI foom. Ratwiki says:

It was immediately after this debate that Yudkowsky left Overcoming Bias (now Hanson’s personal blog) and moved the Sequences to LessWrong.

This insinuates a kind of foul play or bad faith on Yudkowsky’s side. I notice that it is unsourced, and secondly that Hanson and Yudkowsky both seem on still be on reasonable terms (as far as I know). Perhaps the split was already in the works, and Hanson and Yudkowsky regularly had similarly intense debate which was only “remarkable” because of the leave. Perhaps they believed it was confusing for readers to see a blog arguing with itself.

And besides, Yudkowsky couldn’t have decided based on this incident to create LessWrong in that short a time-span, which makes it highly unlikely that it was a petty reaction or whatever.

Yudkowsky Has Not Achieved Much:

Quoting from ratwiki here:

Yudkowsky is almost entirely unpublished outside of his own foundation and blogs[12] and never finished high school, much less did any actual AI research. No samples of his AI coding have been made public.

It is important to note that, as well as no training in his claimed field, Yudkowsky has pretty much no accomplishments of any sort to his credit beyond getting Peter Thiel to give him money. Even his fans admit “A recurring theme here seems to be ‘grandiose plans, left unfinished’.”[13] He claims to be a skilled computer programmer, but has no code available other than Flare, an unfinished computer language for AI programming with XML-based syntax.[14] His papers are generally self-published and have a total of two cites on JSTOR-archived journals (neither to do with AI) as of 2015, one of which is from his friend Nick Bostrom at the closely-associated Future of Humanity Institute.[15]

His actual, observable results in the real world are a popular fan fiction (which to his credit he did in fact finish, unusually for the genre), a pastiche erotic light novel,[16] a large pile of blog posts and a surprisingly well-funded research organisation — that has produced fewer papers in a decade and a half than a single graduate student produces in the course of a physics Ph.D, and the latter’s would be peer reviewed. Although Yudkowsky is working on a replacement for peer review.[17]

I really do not care how many successes Yudkowsky has had. His ideas are the issue here, not his actual abilities. Some of the more grandiose claims (”optimize the universe!”) are perhaps, well, grandiose; but that doesn’t undermine the other aspects of them.

(And in fact Yudkowsky has been able to create an entire movement of people, with highly influential members such as Scott Alexander and the Unit of Caring, which I notice is far more than is typical.

As for the allegations about MIRI, see above.)

Whether Yudkowsky considers himself a genius is unclear totally clear; he refers to himself as a genius six times in his “autobiography.” However he admits to possibly being less smart than John Conway.[18] As a homeschooled individual with no college degree, Yudkowsky may not be in an ideal position to estimate his own smartness. That many of his followers think he is a genius is an understatement.[19][20] Similarly, some of his followers are derisive of mainstream scientists, just look for comments about “not smart outside the lab” and “for a celebrity scientist.”[21] Yudkowsky believes that a doctorate in AI is a net negative when it comes to Seed AI.[22] While Yudkowsky doesn’t attack Einstein, he does indeed think the scientific method cannot handle things like the Many worlds Interpretation as well as his view on Bayes’ theorem.[23] LessWrong does indeed have its unique jargon.[24]

Yudkowsky may or may not have an overly large ego. I don’t think this is relevant to his philosophy.

Disagreement with Yudkowsky’s ideas is often attributed to “undiscriminating skepticism.” If you don’t believe cryonics works, it’s because you have watched Penn & Teller: Bullshit!.[25] It’s just not a possibility that you don’t believe it works because it has failed tests and is made improbable by the facts.[26]

I notice that “often” is doing a lot of work here. The citation links to Yudkowsky’s article on Undiscriminating Skepticism, in which he does not make the claim that “if you don’t believe cryonics works, it must be because you believed in Penn & Teller: Bullshit!”. Instead, he makes this (verbose and difficult to parse) claim (emphasis mine):

To put it more formally, before I believe that someone is performing useful cognitive work, I want to know that their skepticism discriminates truth from falsehood, making a contribution over and above the contribution of this-sounds-weird-and-is-not-a-tribal-belief. In Bayesian terms, I want to know that p(mockery|belief false & not a tribal belief) > p(mockery|belief true & not a tribal belief).

If I recall correctly, the US Air Force’s Project Blue Book, on UFOs, explained away as a sighting of the planet Venus what turned out to actually be an experimental aircraft. No, I don’t believe in UFOs either; but if you’re going to explain away experimental aircraft as Venus, then nothing else you say provides further Bayesian evidence against UFOs either. You are merely an undiscriminating skeptic. I don’t believe in UFOs, but in order to credit Project Blue Book with additional help in establishing this, I would have to believe that if there were UFOs then Project Blue Book would have turned in a different report.

And so if you’re just as skeptical of a weird, non-tribal belief that turns out to have pretty good support, you just blew the whole deal - that is, if I pay any extra attention to your skepticism, it ought to be because I believe you wouldn’t mock a weird non-tribal belief that was worthy of debate.

Personally, I think that Michael Shermer blew it by mocking molecular nanotechnology, and Penn and Teller blew it by mocking cryonics (justification: more or less exactly the same reasons I gave for Artificial Intelligence). Conversely, Richard Dawkins scooped up a huge truckload of actual-discriminating-skeptic points, at least in my book, for not making fun of the many-worlds interpretation when he was asked about in an interview; indeed, Dawkins noted (correctly) that the traditional collapse postulate pretty much has to be incorrect. The many-worlds interpretation isn’t just the formally simplest explanation that fits the facts, it also sounds weird and is not yet a tribal belief of the educated crowd; so whether someone makes fun of MWI is indeed a good test of whether they understand Occam’s Razor or are just mocking everything that’s not a tribal belief.

But I do propose that before you give anyone credit for being a smart, rational skeptic, that you ask them to defend some non-mainstream belief. And no, atheism doesn’t count as non-mainstream anymore, no matter what the polls show. It has to be something that most of their social circle doesn’t believe, or something that most of their social circle does believe which they think is wrong. Dawkins endorsing many-worlds still counts for now, although its usefulness as an indicator is fading fast… but the point is not to endorse many-worlds, but to see them take some sort of positive stance on where the frontiers of knowledge should change.

But it’s dangerous to let people pick up too much credit just for slamming astrology and homeopathy and UFOs and God. What if they become famous skeptics by picking off the cheap targets, and then use that prestige and credibility to go after nanotechnology? Who will dare to consider cryonics now that it’s been featured on an episode of Penn and Teller’s “Bullshit”?

So Yudkowsky isn’t saying that everyone who disagrees with him on e.g. many-worlds or cryonics is a P&T-thumper. Instead, here’s my interpretation of what he’s saying:

1. You can easily accumulate Skeptic Points by having certain views that don’t actually require that much mental effort to come up with, such as “homeopathy is dumb”.

2. These are not really relevant to your actual level of credibility.

3. Certain organizations, like Penn and Teller, have accumulated a lot of Skeptic Points by mocking things like homeopathy.

4. Mockery is not an argument. Organizations like Penn and Teller often mock things based on them being weird, which means that their mockery should mean absolutely nothing.

5.Unfortunately, due to the Skeptic Points that Penn and Teller has, their mockery has an outsize influence, which is bad.

6. If you want to assign Skeptic Points to actual credible people, you should test to make sure they’re not just parroting back their ingroup’s talking points.

The ratwiki interpretation is astonishingly uncharitable, and it also lacks substantiation for the claim it makes.

Note that I don’t know how accurate EY’s interpretation of the facts about cryonics and Penn and Teller is. It’s just that he didn’t say anything like what ratwiki characterizes him (an internet dweller? a random asshole on the bus?) as saying in the link, and that’s not how the principle was intended.

Yudkowsky Has Weird Viewpoints That Are Controversial:

Quoting again from ratwiki since I am very irritated at this point with them:

Despite being viewed as the smartest two-legged being to ever walk this planet on LessWrong, Yudkowsky (and by consequence much of the LessWrong community) endorses positions as TruthTMthat are actually controversial in their respective fields. Below is a partial list:

Transhumanism is correct. Cryonics might someday work. The Singularity is near![citation NOT needed]

Bayes’ theorem and the scientific method don’t always lead to the same conclusions (and therefore Bayes is better than science).[27]

Bayesian probability can be applied indiscriminately.[28]

Non-computable results, such as Kolmogorov complexity, are totally a reasonable basis for the entire epistemology. Solomonoff, baby!

Many Worlds Interpretation (MWI) of quantum physics is correct (a “slam dunk”), despite the lack of consensus among quantum physicists.[29]

Evolutionary psychology is well-established science.

Utilitarianism is a correct theory of morality. In particular, he proposes a framework by which an extremely, extremely huge number of people experiencing a speck of dust in their eyes for a moment could be worse than a man being tortured for 50 years.[30]

Yudkowsky believes some strange controversial things! Also, some people on the internet have presented evidence that doesn’t agree with Yudkowsky’s conclusions! Shock! He must be a total crock of shit!

Ironically, this falls into appeal to mockery, the same issue EY addresses in the essay linked above.

Again, I don’t agree with everything EY says, but it’s incredibly uncharitable to characterize his beliefs this way. For example, the dust-speck problem isn’t meant to be Obvious Truth- there was a massive debate around it on LW, in fact, and it appears to be construed specifically to be difficult to answer.

A wrong belief on something doesn’t make you discredited. It just makes you wrong on that thing.

Of course, you’d expect someone as smart as Yudkowsky to have a lot of correct opinions. But I don’t know whether his opinions are correct or not since I’m not an expert in his field. I recommend him based on my personal experience applying and thinking about his philosophy, not based on any particular object-level accuracy of his.

Yudkowsky Once Wrote a Story Where Rape Is Legal and It Wasn’t a Dystopia (rape cw):

Also, while it is not very clear what his actual position is on this, he wrote a short sci-fi story where rape was briefly mentioned as legal.[31] That the character remarking on it didn’t seem to be referring to consensual sex in the same way we do today didn’t prevent a massive reaction in the comments section. He responded “The fact that it’s taken over the comments is not as good as I hoped, but neither was the reaction as bad as I feared.” He described the science fiction world he had in mind as a “Weirdtopia” rather than a dystopia.[32]

Yes, and the point is?

Yudkowsky doesn’t go around raping people - though his non-rape-related philosophy wouldn’t necessarily be wrong even if he did - and he doesn’t go around advocating for a society like this.

It may or may not be morally wrong that he does not address it seriously. This wiki article doesn’t make any argument about that, though.

This is also irrelevant to his meta-philosophy.

In Conclusion

The ratwiki article on Yudkowsky managed to insinuate various terrible things about him which are often implausible, inaccurate, or technically-true but with false implications. It is nothing other than a mockingly snide attempt at character assassination.

It has little or nothing to do with Yudkowsky’s actual philosophy, and manages to strawman him badly.

I continue to recommend Yudkowsky for (critical, skeptical) reading. Thank you again for asking.

#Anonymous #asks #the rightful caliph #rape cw #big yud #philosophy #effortpost

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