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aoitrinity · 3 years

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Why Do I Have to Feel Like a Fucking Conspiracy Theorist -- OR -- How I Find a Semblance of Peace on Sunday Night

I’m also going to start this out with a GIANT DISCLAIMER.

I am about to theorize about what may have happened to the SPN finale. I have absolutely no insider knowledge. I am merely speculating here based on the panels and a bunch of Twitter and Tumblr posts that I have been reading over the last few days. If you are not in a good place to read such things, TURN BACK PLEASE. Go take care of yourself and your mental health. You and your feelings are valid and deserve to be handled gently right now.

Additionally, if you are here to give me shit for being unhappy with the ending, please walk away as well. I am here to reach out and share my feelings with people who might be struggling to make sense of something that upset some of us in very deep-seated ways. I am not here to bother you or critique you or tell you that you’re lesser because you liked the ending. If you felt it was good, then go enjoy it.

Long-ass post beneath the cut, everyone.

Alrighty folks...I debated whether or not to do this because I have been spiraling down the hell that is the SPN finale since Thursday. The travesty of what happened to our show--to this beloved show that seemed to have been so perfectly and precisely written for at least four years that it had basically already paved its own tarmac on which to land its plane and we all thought we knew exactly what we were going to get. And then we didn’t. We had a nigh Cas-less and entirely Eileen-less ending. We had no goodbye between Cas and Jack. We had Dean dying young after finally finding his freedom, only to ascend to heaven with no one but Bobby. We had the weird, weird, weird incest-y death scene. We had the bridge crane shot thing because...sure. You do you, Robert Singer.

It was so terrible, so truly awful, and I couldn’t seem to square any of it with anything we had known going in. I tossed and turned and cried and didn’t eat or sleep all weekend. I spent hours just reloading tumblr and twitter, going to the Misha panel, reading and reading and listening and trying to figure out what the fucking hell is going on because I needed to know exactly where to direct my anger. And after a fuckton of talking with @winchester-reload, I think we have at least a very plausible theory about what happened here--I’m laying it out below as much for my own peace of mind as anything else, because otherwise all of these thoughts are going to continue to spin around in my head for weeks and I won’t be able to do jack shit.

Now to start off, unfortunately I do think Dean was slated to die from the beginning of this season. I don’t know WHY they thought that was the best way to go, and I wish they had listened to Jensen on this one. Part of me wonders if it was an order from on high based on the discussion between Becky and Chuck earlier this season--the writers knew it wasn’t a great choice, but they were trying to signal to us that we should feel free to write our own endings to the story because they’d be better (I can wax poetic on the signs of why many of the writers probably wanted Dean to live, but that’s another post). I’m not defending that choice by any means, just laying it out there that I think they didn’t necessarily all want to kill Dean like they did.

However, what I THINK I can explain now is what happened with Misha and why we got so jerked around with Cas’s story. Consider what we know (I can’t immediately source all of it, but I did my best):

At the end of episode 15x19, Lucifer has been returned to the Empty after being killed AGAIN. He talks with Cas. Maybe harasses him a bit about Dean, idk. But then...Jack shows up. New God Jack. And he picks up Cas and pulls him out of the Empty, leaving Lucifer behind, because seriously. Fuck that guy (also leaving behind his abusive father is character growth for Jack, so yay for that).

-Misha was contracted to film 15 episodes this season. He was only in 14.

-Misha told Michael Sheen he had to go back to film 1.5 episodes after the shutdown in March. (Starts at 6:13)

-Misha was in Vancouver during filming of the finale.

-Mark P said at Darklight Con that the last scene he filmed was with Alex and Misha (and Mark P was only in episode 19).

-Misha implied that he was present for various filming moments, including Dean’s death (start at 35:15), and said that it felt like a “mini-reunion.”

-Various sources have mentioned that Jimmy Novak was supposed to be in the finale.

-After episode 18, Stands tweeted a fan who was angered and hurt by Cas's death that they could talk about the “bury the gays” issue after the finale aired.

-In episode 19 we know there were takes of the parking lot scene where the only thing fans observing could hear was Dean yelling “CAS” at Chuck (fuck I can’t find this one right now, but it’s definitely out there)

-Also in episode 19, we had a very strange, awkward montage at the end of the episode.

-In episode 20, we know there were a FUCKTON of missing scenes

-We also had no opening montage, but three other separate montages.

-Carry on My Wayward Son was played TWICE, back-to-back at the end of the episode.

-Episode 20 was shorter than normal and had surprisingly little dialogue. The pacing was VERY strange.

-The cast and crew has been almost completely silent about the finale since it came out. When they have spoken, it has been with an awkward excuse of “Uh...COVID?”

-Samantha Ferris has specifically noted that, despite the Harvelle’s being back in play and a big heaven reunion having been planned pre-COVID, neither she nor Chad Lindberg received any such invitation to return.

-Cas and Dean POP Funko figures were pictured together in a replica of Harvelle’s in 15x04.

NOW with all of this in mind (and I’m probably missing some stuff too because there is so much--feel free to add on to that list), please bear with me because here is what I think we were SUPPOSED to get POST-COVID (after it was determined that the reunion couldn’t happen because of the virus):

In episode 20, we start with our NORMAL OPENING MONTAGE, like always. It traces everything that happened during the season. We are reminded of Cas. The confession. Rowena. Eileen. Jack. Billie, God, the Empty, all of it.

Things then follow along in the episode where they did up until Dean dies and wakes up in heaven. After his conversation with Bobby, he drives off to find Cas (who, in the script, was listed as “Jimmy Novak” in order to protect against script leaks--who wouldn’t want to do their best to avoid spoilers about the finale with the wrapping of a fifteen-year show?). He does indeed find Cas. We get Dean’s end of the confession. Hell, maybe we even get a kiss. And then Dean sets up his new heaven home in the recreated Harvelle’s. Maybe Cas even fucking moves in.

Years pass. We get Sam having his life on Earth (still can’t explain why they cut Eileen and couldn’t even have Sam signing vaguely to the blurry brunette in the background; if anyone wants to take that on, go for it). Eventually, Cas tells Dean that it’s almost Sam’s time. Dean takes Baby and goes to meet Sam at the bridge. The cover of Carry on My Wayward Son plays during this much shorter sequence. End of episode.

But that’s not what we got. Instead, much of what I just wrote about was excised from the episode. The remnants were stitched together after shooting had been wrapped. Filler was added in the form of montages and long, unnecessary extra shots to get the episode to something approaching a reasonable length.

But why? Why would they spend all that time and money and quarantining on Misha, only to almost completely cut him out of the finale? I struggled with why the fuck the CW would want this mammoth show to go down as the greatest queerbait in TV history when they had the chance to do something truly beautiful and monumental with it? It couldn’t just be sheer homophobia, right? Well, I think that factored into it, my friends, but here is where my head is at right now.

It was about cold, hard cash.

Now I could be wrong, but this is what I’m thinking at the moment: Supernatural is going off of the air. Supernatural, the CW’s cash cow for fifteen years. Sure there is still money to be made on blu-rays and merchandise and cons...but they need people watching their shows. They need that sweet advertising revenue. And you know what show they have about to premiere? A show that could, potentially, bring with it a chunk of that SPN revenue?

Walker.

And if any of you know anything about the original Walker Texas Ranger, you know that the show was predominantly a show about a very heterosexual white man being very excessively heterosexual. And for SOME REASON over the years, many of the execs at the CW still seem to think that this show, Supernatural, is really attractive to a lot of middle-American white men...whom they desperately want to watch this new show with this guy from Supernatural that they already know.

Now here’s where COVID fucked us. I think Destiel was greenlit by TPTB, at least in SOME form, before COVID. But then the pandemic happened, and they panicked. They got the cut of the last two episodes and watched them in their original, probably queer form. And then, the execs at CW looked at the economy. They looked at their cash cow, about to make its journey to the great beyond. And they looked at this new little calf Walker that they were so desperately worried about. And they made a choice.

They decided that it would be too risky to take the step with Destiel. They were worried about frightening off their ever-so-valuable hetero male demographic with the possibility that a traditionally masculine man in his 40s could be in love with another man in an overt way. It was homophobia mixed with greed, spun up by fear for their revenues because of COVID.

So they called in Singer, possibly Dabb, although I wouldn’t be surprised if they went straight to Singer. They told them that Destiel had to go: executive orders. And the only way to make it go in a way that removed any trace of what had been there was to rewrite what happened to Cas and cut him out from the last two episodes entirely. It was too late to reshoot anything. They had to just cut and stitch and fill with bullshit montages.

They removed the scene at the end of 19, probably because Cas and Lucifer discussed Dean. All that was left of Misha there was his voice on that fake phone call. They may have cut other things too, but I would bet my life that they cut a scene from the end of the episode and replaced it with that very strange montage. Then they moved onto 20. They cut out every scene with Cas. And left in only two platonic mentions of him, neither made by Dean. They tried to imply that Cas might show up in Dean’s heaven at some point, but that was as far as the editors could go in the time they had. They filled in with montages, awkwardly long shots, anything they could do to fill all of those missing scenes.

And they even had to take the opening montage, because literally everything in it pointed to Cas being there at the end of it all. They wouldn’t be able to leave out his scenes, they were too critical to the season. They couldn’t cut his confession without raising eyebrows. So they cut the whole thing and moved “Carry On My Wayward Son” to one of the newly-added driving montages at the end. Which is why we awkwardly had both songs play back-to-back--again, such a strange choice unless they were out of options and couldn’t exactly buy rights to a new track or compose anything else.

And so we were left with the shadow of the finale that we deserved, that Cas and Dean deserved. We were left without resolution or happiness or words. Bobo told us the most important thing about happiness is just “saying it” and our characters were silenced without anyone ever knowing the truth.

I think the writers might have known and been given the new party line that “Misha never filmed, he couldn’t, sorry, it was COVID, no one’s fault!” But I don’t think most of the cast even knew it had happened until they watched the finale on Thursday with us (though they might have been confused why the bit from 15x19 was sliced, they could reasonably have assumed it was a time thing and also BL episodes don’t make sense anyway). Why do I say that?

Well, first of all, Misha started sending out a bunch of excited texts to fans with some old BTS pictures about an hour before the show started airing on EST. He also wanted his children to see the episode, his YOUNG children. Why would he show them such a traumatic episode if their Dad wasn’t in it? What if it was because he wanted them to witness what was going to be a monumental moment in queer television history that their DAD got to be a part of? And then that was all dashed.

Which is why I think the cast and crew went almost completely radio silent the next day. I don’t think they knew. And based on how they have been acting on social media since then, I think many of them are absolutely furious, but they have been silenced because of NDAs, because they want to find work again in a cutthroat industry, because they don’t want to bring down the hellfire of Warner Brothers Entertainment upon themselves. So the most we have gotten is a little acknowledgement from the MERCHANDISING COMPANY trying to validate our pain (god bless Shirts, she is a LIFESAVER) and a response to my salty tweet about keeping good stuff in the closet from Adam Williams (the VFX coordinator) that seemed to acknowledge the validity of my complaint.

Then there was a scramble behind the scenes, I would bet my life. Talking points were fed to the boys who had panels today, to CE, to all the cast and crew:

Toe the party line. Misha never filmed. This was always about COVID. Do not mention Destiel. Do not mention Dean’s feelings for Cas. Do not promote the Castiel Project or anything that validates the idea that this was anything less than a superb ending.

And that is why we have heard so little from the cast on this front, and what we have heard has been muddled and contradictory. That is why the writers are saying nothing. That is why we have been left adrift.

Now before I close this out, I do want to say that I really, genuinely do not think this was on the writers at all. I feel like they tried to give us the best ending that they could, in a writers room that we know is notorious for splitting along party lines about the overall story (BL and Singer, who have always been about the brothers and their man-pain vs. Dabb and the rest who always seemed to want more for them and for Cas). I think they did everything in their power to at least end with Dean and Cas happy together. If they could give us nothing else, they wanted to give us that. And then the network took it from them. From us. From everyone.

For the sake of fucking money.

And the WORST PART OF IT ALL, for me, is that in the wake of this disaster, the fans have been left to try and figure out what happened. We have had to wade through a mire of conflicting information in the midst of all of our collective anger and grief over this garbage ending of a show many of us have loved and even relied on for YEARS, all the while wondering if we’re just fucking crazy, if we have all fallen collectively into the hole of conspiracy theories. That hurts ESPECIALLY badly because we have taken so many hits over the years from other groups on social media saying we were crazy for seeing things that weren’t there (especially Destiel), for writing meta and analyzing tropes and believing the evidence of our eyes and ears. The network has made us relive that entire nightmare WHILE processing our grief for a show we wanted so badly to celebrate and which instead we now have to mourn.

So again guys, I cannot prove that this is exactly what happened at all; this is simply my idea of what may have happened. But right now, it’s the most sense I can make from this mess, and to be honest, the act of typing it out has helped me enormously in my processing of it all. I feel like I can see more clearly, like I know where to target my outrage and where to direct empathy. I feel like just fucking maybe, I might be able to do my job tomorrow without bursting into tears at random moments.

I really hope that this post has helped some of you to, in some small way, process this too. We get through this the way that Misha told us at his panel this morning, the way the writers have told us to do all season long...we throw out the story God gave us and we make it better. We write our characters the happy endings they deserve.

We save them.

One last thing--if you have not already, please consider channeling your rage into a donation to one of the five causes our fandom has put together to pay tribute to our beloved show and to mourn the ending it should have had:

-The Castiel Project

-Dean Winchester is Love

-Sam Winchester Project

-The National Association of the Deaf

-The Jack Kline Project

#supernatural season 15 #spn finale #speculation #destiel #destielgate #the ending was not the ending #fuck the cw #trust the story #we were robbed

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your-dietician · 3 years

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Over 270,000 people sign petition for France vs Switzerland to be replayed

New Post has been published on https://tattlepress.com/sports/over-270000-people-sign-petition-for-france-vs-switzerland-to-be-replayed/

Over 270,000 people sign petition for France vs Switzerland to be replayed

Switzerland’s goalkeeper Yann Sommer (R) saves a penalty by France’s forward Kylian Mbappe during the UEFA EURO 2020 round of 16 football match between France and Switzerland at the National Arena in Bucharest – GETTY IMAGES

Over 270,000 fans have signed a petition calling on Uefa to replay the Euro 2020 last-16 match between France and Switzerland because “the rules (of the game) were not respected” when Swiss goalkeeper Yann Sommer saved Kylian Mbappé’s decisive penalty.

Mbappé’s miss resulted in the world champions crashing out of the tournament in Bucharest after leading their eventual conquerors 3-1 at one point in the match.

But a petition was launched by a disgruntled French fan, Pierre, in the aftermath of the penalty shootout, demanding that Uefa replay the tie because Sommer’s feet were over the line as Mbappe struck the ball. Goalkeepers need to keep at least one foot on the goal-line when facing a penalty, otherwise the spot-kick can be retaken.

Neither the referee nor Var intervened on Sommer’s save but more than 270,000 people signed the petition – which has now been closed – despite several different angles showing that Sommer’s foot was on the line when Mbappé kicked the ball.

The hosts of the petition, leslignesbougent.org, wrote that “Uefa had been officially approached to gauge its position on the matter”, and that Pierre had informed the host site that he wished for the petition to be closed after the angles showing the legality of Sommer’s position came to light. “Our servers exploded,” the site added.

The original petition read: “During the penalty shootout of the France v Switzerland match, goalkeeper Sommer was not on his line ahead of Mbappé’s shot. We ask that Switzerland’s qualification is cancelled so that the match can be replayed.

“Sport must be played within the rules and that evening the rules were not respected.”

02:53 PM

Czech Republic v Denmark

Denmark coach Kasper Hjulmand says the team is looking to Christian Eriksen as an inspiration ahead of the match against the Czech Republic in the Euro 2020 quarter-finals.

Story continues

Eriksen suffered a cardiac arrest during Denmark’s opening game of the tournament. Team-mates were left shaken after seeing him receive emergency medical treatment on the field.

Hjulmand says “we’ll play with that heart of Christian Eriksen once again.”

The winner will face either England or Ukraine in the semi-finals.

02:49 PM

Masterful Jordan Pickford has joined an elite band valued more by his country than his club

Unlike at Everton, when Pickford wears an England shirt he looks like he is sure he belongs out there, the undisputed No 1.

Jamie Carragher’s latest column for Telegraph Sport.

Jordan Pickford celebrating England’s last-16 win – GETTY IMAGES

02:38 PM

The Battle of Rome

Paul Ince’s bloody headband, chaos in the stands – and Southgate’s dark side.

England’s last trip to the Italian capital, in 1997, was another game they could not contemplate losing. David Seaman looks back on that momentous night.

Paul Gascoigne (L) and a topless Paul Ince (R) – GETTY IMAGES

02:20 PM

England get to work…

… with the quarter-final against Ukraine just over 24 hours away.

Kalvin Phillips of England trains during the England Training Session at St George’s Park on July 02 – GETTY IMAGES

Mason Mount of England trains during the England Training Session at St George’s Park on July 02 – GETTY IMAGES

Tyrone Mings shifting some tin – GETTY IMAGES

01:56 PM

Boris Johnson says he has no plans to reduce Euro 2020 stadium crowds

Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Friday he did not plan to order a reduction in crowds attending the remaining Euro 2020 matches due to take place at Wembley.

Crowd capacity at Wembley will be increased to more than 60,000 fans for the semi-finals and final of Euro 2020 under a pilot scheme announced last week.

“Of course we’ll follow the scientific guidance and the advice if we receive any such suggestion,” Johnson said in response to a question at a news conference, alongside German Chancellor Angela Merkel who said she was worried about Uefa’s decision to let more people into stadiums.

“But at the moment… the position is very clear in the UK, which is that we have certain events which we can put on in a very careful and controlled manner with testing of everybody who goes there.”

01:34 PM

England fans in Rome

The first pictures are beginning to filter back home…

Fans gather in Rome ahead of Ukraine v England – Rome, Italy – July 2, 2021 – REUTERS

12:20 PM

Germany’s Kroos announces retirement from international football

Germany midfielder Toni Kroos has announced his retirement from international football after his team’s exit from the European Championship, the 31-year-old said on Instagram.

The 2014 World Cup winner earned 106 caps for his country, contributing 17 goals and 19 assists.

Kroos said it was clear to him “for a long time” that he would not be available for the World Cup in Qatar next year.

He said his priority now would be to focus on his club career with Real Madrid and spending time with his family.

Reuters

12:16 PM

The eight defining games of Raheem Sterling’s England career

From scapegoat to star man, Sterling has been the object of anger and criticism but is now England’s most experienced player and one of Euro 2020’s pre-eminent players.

Here, Sam Wallace runs down the eight matches that have defined his international career to date.

England’s forward Raheem Sterling celebrates the first goal during the UEFA EURO 2020 round of 16 football match between England and Germany at Wembley – GETTY IMAGES

12:00 PM

Emma Hayes signs new Chelsea deal

A revealed by Telegraph Sport in May, Emma Hayes, who has starred as a pundit at Euro 2020, has signed a new deal to remain as manager of Chelsea, the Women’s Super League champions have announced.

The 44-year-old has been with the club since 2012 and guided them to four WSL titles, two FA Cups and two League Cups. Hayes’ side were also Champions League runners-up last season.

She said on Chelsea’s official website: “Everyone knows what this club means to me.

“The work we’ve done together over the last nine years has been hugely rewarding, full of growth of the women’s game, accompanied with winning, which is one of the club’s key values. I really look forward to keep building on the successes we’ve already achieved and I’m delighted to have extended further.

Emma Hayes the manager of Chelsea Women lifts the Barclays FA Women’s Super League trophy after the Barclays FA Women’s Super League match between Chelsea Women and Reading Women at Kingsmeadow on May 09, 2021 in Kingston upon Thame – GETTY IMAGES

“It’s been a year and a half without fans, so I can’t wait to welcome them back to our home and share with them the wonderful team we’ve built together.”

Having retained the WSL trophy and the League Cup in 2020-21, Chelsea fell short of adding the Champions League as they were beaten 4-0 by Barcelona in the final in Gothenburg.

That was a first appearance in the final for the Blues – who reached the semi-finals in 2018 and 2019 – and the first by an English club since Arsenal, who had Hayes as assistant manager at the time, won the competition in 2007.

11:24 AM

Some more Premier League news…

Chelsea midfielder Billy Gilmour has joined Norwich on a season-long loan deal.

The 20-year-old impressed for Scotland in a goalless draw against England at Euro 2020 on June 18, before then having to self-isolate after returning a positive Covid-19 test.

Following his performance at Wembley it was reported that several Premier League clubs were interested in signing Gilmour on a temporary basis.

Newly-promoted Norwich have won the race for his signature and Canaries boss Daniel Farke feels Gilmour is a “perfect fit” for his Canaries team.

“We are really happy to have brought Billy in,” said Farke, who saw midfielder Emiliano Buendia leave for Aston Villa for £33million last month.

“We must say a big thank you to Chelsea and all those involved for making this deal happen. I think it helped that in the past we have shown that young players with potential are in good hands here at Norwich City.

Billy Gilmour – GETTY IMAGES

“He will help us to achieve our targets. We still have to keep in mind that he is an unbelievably young guy and that he hasn’t played regularly on this level. We have to give him some time and space to improve and find his rhythm.”

Gilmour made 11 appearances for Chelsea last season, starting three Premier League matches.

The former Rangers youth player was an unused substitute in both the FA Cup and Champions League finals as Thomas Tuchel’s side lost the domestic showpiece to Leicester but beat Manchester City to become champions of Europe.

11:10 AM

The England team Gareth Southgate should pick to defeat Ukraine

Telegraph football writers pick their XIs – and you can too, by clicking here.

We have asked our writers to pick who they would like to see face the Ukrainians, especially bearing in mind that four of the England squad are on yellow cards.

10:50 AM

How England can beat Ukraine and take another step to glory

What do we know about England’s opponents? What are their strengths and what are the areas to exploit? Who are the players to watch out for?

Telegraph Sport spoke to Ukranian football expert Andrew Todos and former Norther Ireland manager Michael O’Neill, who masterminded a win over Ukraine at Euro 2016.

You can read our big match dossier by clicking here.

Graphic depicting England and Ukraine’s star players

10:30 AM

England at full strength for Ukraine

Gareth Southgate’s 26-man squad all trained on the eve of England’s Euro 2020 quarter-final against Ukraine.

The reward for Tuesday’s 2-0 last-16 win against Germany at Wembley is Saturday’s clash against Andriy Shevchenko’s side in Rome.

The Three Lions fly to Italy on Friday afternoon and the full squad trained at their St George’s Park base that morning.

Mason Mount and Ben Chilwell were among those in action, having left isolation on the day of the Germany match after coming into contact with Chelsea team-mate Billy Gilmour, who tested positive for Covid-19 after playing for Scotland against England.

Harry Maguire, Declan Rice, Kalvin Phillips and Phil Foden are a booking away from a suspension heading into the quarter-final.

Manchester United defender Maguire, who was named man of the match on Tuesday, is set to join manager Southgate at Friday evening’s press conference in Rome.

10:23 AM

Captain Kane reporting for England training

JULY 02: Harry Kane of England trains during the England Training Session at St George’s Park on July 02, 2021 in Burton upon Trent, – GETTY IMAGES

10:08 AM

In Premier League news…

From our reporter, Mike McGrath.

09:44 AM

Achilles

No, not the Trojan war hero, but the cat that lives in St Petersburg’s Hermitage museum. He chose Spain while attempting to predict the result of tonight’s quarter-final.

Probably no need to play tonight now – the cat’s called it…

Achilles the cat, that lives in St. Petersburg’s Hermitage museum, chooses Spain while attempting to predict the result of the UEFA Euro 2020 quarter final match between Switzerland and Spain during an event in Saint Petersburg, – REUTERS

09:23 AM

De Bruyne and Hazard

Belgium boss Roberto Martinez will give Kevin De Bruyne and Eden Hazard until the last minute to prove their fitness ahead of tonight’s Euro 2020 quarter-final clash with Italy.

Manchester City star De Bruyne suffered an ankle injury during Sunday’s 1-0 win over Portugal, during which Real Madrid’s Hazard also limped off with a muscle problem, and neither was able to train with the rest of the squad on Thursday morning.

However, speaking at his pre-match press conference ahead of the game in Munich, Martinez said: “We all know that we are fighting against time, but we’re going to take until the last minute to make the decision.

“Every day that goes by, every time they can sleep and get three meals and get some treatment, we see an improvement, and then we’ll see [today] if they can be involved or not. Unfortunately at the moment, we cannot make a decision.

“Obviously it will be difficult for [today] – a soft tissue injury in Eden’s case, maybe is difficult for a game like tomorrow, and for Kevin, having a ligament problem maybe is a bit different.

“But it’s more a medical decision. At the moment, it’s not a football decision; [today]it will become a medical decision in the afternoon and then we’ll make a football decision after that.”

De Bruyne left the pitch looking dejected in Belgium’s win over Portugal – GETTY IMAGES

Martinez could do with having all his most potent weapons available for a clash with an Italian side which is unbeaten in 31 matches, while both teams are bidding to become the first to win 15 consecutive European Championship matches since the start of qualification.

09:06 AM

In case you missed it…

Neil Diamond told The Telegraph yesterday how “thrilled” he was that England fans were singing his famous ‘Sweet Caroline’ song at Wembley.

“Well, I hope you can do it again – here’s to England”, he told The Telegraph.

The 1969 song has featured in every England victory celebration at Euro 2020 and was a high point of celebrations after the team beat Germany 2 – 0 in the round of 16.

After the match, striker Harry Kane and coach Gareth Southgate both told the media how much they enjoyed hearing fans belt out the song in unison.

08:52 AM

Tournament odds

The bookies have England now as Euro 2020 favourites – even at 2/1 in some outlets.

Then come Spain (3/1) followed by Italy (4/1), with Ukraine the outside shot with bookmakers at 33/1.

08:41 AM

Magic Monday

A look-back at the day that proved internationals reach parts that the club game cannot.

As if Spain 5 Croatia 3 wasn’t enough, Switzerland and France also served up a classic on Monday night. What made it so memorable?

Read Thom Gibbs’ excellent breakdown here.

08:30 AM

RIP Charlie

08:16 AM

Predictions for this evening

Let us know in the comments below!

I’m going Spain and Italy to progress… just.

08:14 AM

Alvaro Morata

As Sam Dean writes, Alvaro Morata has scored 21 goals in 44 appearances for his country. He has won 14 major trophies in club football. He has played for four of the biggest clubs in the world and he has been transferred between them for a combined total of more than £170 million. If he finds the net against Switzerland on Friday, he will become the highest scorer in Spain’s European Championship history. Everything about his CV, and his list of accomplishments by the age of 28, suggests that Morata must be one of the continent’s elite forwards. And yet, for many people, the former Chelsea striker still seems to be regarded more as a punchline than as a top-level predator.

Read about how Morata has emerged from the darkness in a bright, dangerous Spain side.

Spain’s Alvaro Morata celebrates after scoring his side’s fourth goal during the Euro 2020 soccer championship round of 16 match between Croatia and Spain at the Parken Stadium in Copenhagen – POOL GETTY

07:59 AM

Can Switzerland do it again?

A reminder of how the Swiss got there in the first place.

They knocked out the world champions, France, on penalties, after fighting back from 3-1 down.

Refresh yourself on events in Bucharest by clicking here.

Kylian Mbappe missed the crucial penalty for France – GETTY IMAGES

07:35 AM

The Swiss are back!

Remember this bloke?

Swiss fan reacts to their victory over France

Topless and fully clothed, desperate and ecstatic: a Swiss football supporter has become a viral sensation after cameras zoomed in on his rollercoaster emotions watching his team beat France in the Euro 2020 tournament.

Found by Swiss media after images of him yelling and grimacing during Monday’s match went round the world, Luca Loutenbach has already amended his Twitter account to describe himself as the “Nati’s official meme since 28.06.2021.”

The Nati is the nickname for Switzerland’s national football team.

Loutenbach, 28, told Switzerland’s Blick TV that he was “just a normal fan”.

But those filming the game thought otherwise, zooming in on him several times during the play as he perfectly encapsulated Swiss fans’ ecstasy, dejection and frenzied joy – starting off wearing the Swiss red shirt and ending up topless and screaming.

The images quickly went viral, with London Mayor Sadiq Khan tweeting one with the comment “man of the match”.

“A star is born,” Swiss public television RTS said.

“Thanks for all your messages, what is happening to me is unreal,” he wrote Wednesday on Twitter.

“I’m actually quite discreet, even if that wasn’t on show during the game. So this is fun for one or two days, but I hope it will ease off a bit after a while,” he told Swiss TV.

Such is his fame that Switzerland’s airline Swiss has gifted him a free ticket to Russia to see his team play Spain in the quarter finals on Friday in Saint Petersburg.

The country’s tourism agency has also contacted him via Twitter to offer a relaxing weekend away in Switzerland.

07:18 AM

Good morning!

Hello and welcome to Telegraph Sport’s live coverage of the build-up to quarter-finals day, with the first two last-eight games kicking off tonight. Switzerland face Spain in St Petersburg at 5pm before Belgium take on Italy in Munich at 8pm.

England midfielder Jack Grealish said captain Harry Kane is the best player he has ever played with and tipped the Tottenham Hotspur forward to break the Premier League scoring record.

Kane drew a blank in each of England’s three group games at Euro 2020 but scored the second goal in Tuesday’s 2-0 win over Germany which put them into a quarter-final clash with Ukraine in Rome on Saturday.

Grealish said Kane, or “H”, was a deadly finisher but also praised his work outside the box.

“No one here would ever doubt ‘H’,” Grealish told British media on Thursday. “He’s the best player I’ve ever played with.

“He’ll break the Premier League record and the England one but he’s not just a goalscorer. He’s unbelievable when he drops deep and finds passes and puts it through people’s legs.”

Alan Shearer is the Premier League’s all-time leading scorer with 260. Kane is seventh on the list with 166.

Grealish came off the bench to play a role in both goals in the win over Germany but the 25-year-old said he was uncertain if he would start against Ukraine, given the attacking options at coach Gareth Southgate’s disposal.

“It’s difficult. I’m always playing every minute at Villa. I have to be realistic about myself and the talent that we have, especially in my position,” he said.

“You’ve got six players that play either side of Harry that, in reality, could play for most clubs in the world — myself, Jadon (Sancho), Marcus (Rashford), Raheem (Sterling), Phil (Foden) and Bukayo (Saka),” he said.

“That’s scary how good us six are. That’s not being big-headed. That’s just the truth.”

Reuters

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newstfionline · 3 years

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Sunday, June 20, 2021

Businesses, U.S. legislators fume as Canada extends travel ban (Reuters) Canada is extending a ban on non-essential travel with the United States and the rest of the world until July 21, officials said on Friday, prompting frustration from businesses and U.S. legislators. Canada is under pressure from companies and the tourism industry to ease the ban, which was imposed in March 2020 to help contain spread of the coronavirus and has been renewed on a monthly basis ever since. But Prime Minister Justin Trudeau stood firm, saying the border would stay largely shut until 75% of Canadians had received the first of a two-dose coronavirus vaccine and 20% had been given both shots. The Canadian Chamber of Commerce—a national group that advocates for businesses—lamented what it said was Ottawa’s excessive caution.

Many Americans resuming pre-virus activities (AP) Many Americans are relaxing precautions taken during the COVID-19 pandemic and resuming everyday activities, even as some worry that coronavirus-related restrictions were hastily lifted, a new poll shows. The poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research finds that majorities of Americans who were regularly doing so before the pandemic say they are returning to bars or restaurants, traveling and attending events such as movies or sports. Andrea Moran, a 36-year-old freelance writer and mother of two boys, said she feels both relief and joy at the chance to resume “doing the little things,” such as having drinks on a restaurant patio with her husband. “Honestly, I almost cried,” Moran said. “It’s such a feeling of having been through the wringer, and we’re finally starting to come out of it.” Still, 34% of Americans think restrictions in their area have been lifted too quickly, while somewhat fewer—27%—say they were not lifted quickly enough. About 4 in 10 rate the pace of reopening about right.

Voting debate roils Washington but leaves many voters cold (AP) Brenda Martinez, a 19-year-old community college student, thinks the government should help immigrant students more. Donald Huffman is worried about turning 50 next week with no work available because the federal government is delaying the pipelines he usually helps build. Binod Neupane, who just moved to Texas to research alternative fuels, wants action on climate change. The three Texas voters have little in common politically other than one thing—none considers voting and election reform, the issue that has dominated partisan debate this year, a top priority. As politicians from Austin to Washington battle over the practical aspects of how to run elections—clashing over details such as polling booth hours and the number of ballot drop boxes per county—many voters are disconnected from the fight. A passionate base of voters and activists on both sides may be intensely dialed in on the issue, but a disengaged middle is baffled at the attention.

Trust in government (The Spectator) Since 1958, the Gallup polling organization has periodically asked Americans how much they trust the federal government to do what is right. In 1958, 73 percent said ‘always’ or ‘most of the time’. Trust hit its high point in 1964, when that figure stood at 77 percent. Then it began to fall. By 1980, only 27 percent trusted the government to do what is right. That percentage rebounded to the low forties during the Reagan years, then fell to a new low, 19 percent, in 1994. It rebounded again, hitting a short-lived high of 54 percent just after 9/11. Then it plunged again, hitting another new low, 15 percent, in 2011. It has been in the 15- to 20 percent range ever since. A government that is distrusted by more than 80 percent of the citizens has a bipartisan legitimacy problem.

‘There’s no water,’ says California farm manager (Reuters) Salvador Parra, the manager of Burford Ranch in California’s Central Valley agricultural breadbasket, is worried about the lack of water. California’s worst drought since 1977 has forced Parra to leave fallow 2,000 of his 6,000 acres and dig deep for water to save the crops already planted. “There’s not very much being grown out there, just because there’s no water. There’s literally no water,” said Parra. In a good year, the ranch grows everything from garlic, onions, tomatoes and alfalfa to cotton. This year, Parra needs emergency water sources just to bring a reduced crop to harvest.

Mexico City shuts down classes again, enters higher COVID-19 risk tier (Reuters) Mexico City schools that had just gone back to in-person classes will be closed again starting Monday as the sprawling capital climbs into a higher tier of coronavirus risk, education authorities said on Saturday. Mexico City officials had loosened restrictions on gatherings in schools, hotels, stores and restaurants just two weeks ago as the dense urban zone moved into the lowest risk tier of the government's four-level "traffic light" model. But the federal Health Ministry on Friday evening put Mexico City, home to more than 9 million people, a step higher on the scale for June 21 to July 4.

Peru ex-military stir election tensions with appeal to Armed Forces to “remedy” poll (Reuters) A group of retired officers has suggested Peru’s military should refuse to recognize socialist candidate Pedro Castillo if he is declared winner of the country’s presidential election if fraud allegations are not investigated, according to a letter circulated widely on social media on Friday. Interim president Francisco Sagasti confirmed the letter, which was posted on Twitter and Facebook, arrived at the general headquarters of the armed forces, bearing the names of at least 80 retired military personnel. Friday’s letter appealed to military chiefs to “act rigorously” and “remedy” the “demonstrated irregularities” that took place during the vote or risk having an “illegal and illegitimate” commander in chief at the helm of the country. The tight election has deeply divided citizens of the world’s second-largest copper producer. Protest marches by supporters of both candidates take place almost daily in downtown Lima, calling for a swift resolution and respect for the popular will.

Drought in Brazil (Financial Times) The worst drought in almost a century has left millions of Brazilians facing water shortages and the risk of power blackouts, complicating the country’s efforts to recover from the devastating impact of the coronavirus pandemic. The agricultural centers in São Paulo state and Mato Grosso do Sul have been worse affected, after the November-March rainy season produced the lowest level of rainfall in 20 years. Water levels in the Cantareira system of reservoirs, which serves about 7.5m people in São Paulo city, dropped to below one-tenth of its capacity this year. Brazil’s mines and energy ministry has called it country’s worst drought in 91 years.

Paris’ tough suburbs (AP) Violent rivalries have long been part of the policing geography in the rotting high-rises of tough Paris-region neighborhoods where inequalities and hardship are often more common than good jobs and opportunities. But police say that fighting over turf or differences of race, religion and cultures wasn’t always as savage as it increasingly is now. “It’s more and more violent,” the police major said as he worked to reconstruct this week’s chain of events, from a clash in a pipe-smoking bar to a full-blown brawl between opposing groups from Pakistani and North African communities. “In a fight that perhaps 20 years ago would have been sorted out with fists or kicks, we now see people being run over with cars,” he said. “The population is increasingly violent. It’s no longer simply fighting. They absolutely have to win, even if that means leaving someone in agony on the floor.” Police are also increasingly the targets of violence. Most recently, the murders of two police officials in April and May—one in a stabbing, the other in a shooting during a drug bust—reinforced officers’ concerns that enforcing the law in France is an increasingly perilous profession.

Chips, Taiwan, and China (WSJ/The Wire China) Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. makes almost all of the world’s most sophisticated chips, and many of the simpler ones, too. They’re in billions of products with built-in electronics, including iPhones, personal computers and cars—all without any obvious sign they came from TSMC, which does the manufacturing for better-known companies that design them, like Apple and Qualcomm. TSMC has emerged over the past several years as the world’s most important semiconductor company, with enormous influence over the global economy. With a market cap of around $550 billion, it ranks as the world’s 11th most valuable company. Its dominance leaves the world in a vulnerable position, however. As more technologies require chips of mind-boggling complexity, more are coming from this one company, on an island that’s a focal point of tensions between the U.S. and China, which claims Taiwan as its own.

Hard-line judiciary head wins Iran presidency as turnout low (AP) Iran’s hard-line judiciary chief won the country’s presidential election in a landslide victory Saturday, propelling the supreme leader’s protégé into Tehran’s highest civilian position in a vote that appeared to see the lowest turnout in the Islamic Republic’s history. Initial results showed Ebrahim Raisi won 17.8 million votes in the contest, dwarfing those of the race’s sole moderate candidate. However, Raisi dominated the election only after a panel under the watch of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei disqualified his strongest competition. His candidacy, and the sense the election served more as a coronation for him, sparked widespread apathy among eligible voters in the Islamic Republic, which has held up turnout as a sign of support for the theocracy since its 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Uganda tightening measures due to virus surge (AP) Uganda is tightening its lockdown measures to try and stem a surge in coronavirus infections in the East African country that is seeing an array of variants. The measures announced late Friday by President Yoweri Museveni include a ban on private and public transportation within and across districts, including in the capital Kampala. Only vehicles carrying cargo and those transporting the sick or essential workers are permitted to operate on the roads. The normally crowded shops in downtown Kampala have also been ordered shut. An ongoing nighttime curfew will stay in place. The new measures will last 42 days.

#headlines #news

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signor-signor · 4 years

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Trending 27th - May 2020

In what cartoon(s) would I like to see Wander make a cameo?

Well, even though Disney still has never given the show the same love Fish Hooks got (i.e. 3 seasons and an actual conclusion - it still baffles me today), Wander’s cameo would have to be in any of the more recent shows from Disney TV Animation. If any of them are like Future-Worm, they would have to give an idea of what was planned for that third and final season (FW showed Wander and Sylvia on the Star Nomad, their new means of transportation). Since I never really bothered to watch any of the cartoons DTVA is dishing out right now, I’ll have to make do with a list.

DuckTales (2017) - I’ve noticed people pointing out its various nods to WOY (made possible by @suspendersofdisbelief). I believe it’ll take more than verbal references and a spirit of Christmas Past voiced by Jack McBrayer to get DT fans interested in WOY. I even prepared DT versions of Wander, Sylvia, Hater, Peepers, and Dominator for the DT crew to consider.

Big City Greens - The two brothers who created this show, @chrishoughton and @shanehoughton, were involved in WOY’s first season, and I assume the titular characters are as rural as Wander himself. If production has not yet been stopped, maybe they could throw him in there as some form of graffiti art or something.

Amphibia - I found there’s already a minor character voiced by Jack McBrayer - if memory serves, he performs Toadie, the mayor’s assistant. If creator Matt Braly (@radrappy) cares about WOY, he might at some point have him wear a big green hat with a star on it and play the banjo or something like that.

The Owl House - Someone pointed out some girl in a hood who bears a striking resemblance to a Watchdog. @danaterrace is just as popular among aspiring cartoonists as @alexhirsch-official, so maybe this show could boost support for WOY with a Wander lookalike. That cameo of GF characters in a Hanna-Barbera in The Cartoon had better not be all for naught.

If Disney got to let us see S3 of WOY, I’d definitely check out the aforementioned shows. That’s not to say I have no support for anyone who works on them, mind you.

Lastly, if there’s one cartoon outside the Walt Disney Company that could include a cameo of Wander, it’s the upcoming Netflix original, Kid Cosmic, created by the one and only @crackmccraigen. I know for a fact both WOY and KC don’t take place in the same universe, but if the PPG silhouettes on Frankie’s shirt, the PPG ending reference in The Boy Wander, and Bloo hidden in the crowd in The End of the Galaxy are any indication, Craig has probably already found a way to throw Wander somewhere in there. If we’re lucky, we might get to learn more about S3 and see what the three new main characters planned for S3 look like.

I mean, come on, does Craig really expect us to live through another four years without finding out exactly what he and his team planned for WOY’s third season before Disney turned it down in favor of something else? (I’m looking at you, frequent reruns of P&F, GF, and SvtFoE.) You’d be a fool if the promising concept of Wander’s post-Dominator adventures is completely wasted on you.

I know many people out there don’t choose WOY as their most favorite cartoon, but we can’t let that dissuade us from letting Disney know how interested we are in the show and the plans made for S3. Those plans exist, and we mustn’t let those who put their heart and soul into them take them to their graves - making them a reality is essentially the final step for SaveWOY. Besides, today is Jack McBrayer’s birthday, and I think it would mean so much to him if the Disney bosses let him perform Wander just once more.

Furthermore, in order to help WOY fans pass the time during the COVID-19 pandemic, I came up with an idea of pre-S3 shorts (featuring Andy the Watchdog) for the WOY team’s consideration. Until then, keep showing your support and maybe one day, we’ll see the true conclusion on Disney+!

@disneyxd

@disneyanimation

#Wander Over Yonder #SaveWOY #Save Wander Over Yonder #DuckTales #Big City Greens #Amphibia #The Owl House #Kid Cosmic #T27th #Trending 27th #Jack McBrayer #Wander

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marksburyscripts · 3 years

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Season 1, Episode 1-- A Difficult Patient

Google Doc

Content Warnings: -Alcohol abuse -Discussion of intent to commit sexual assault

[Pre-episode announcement]

Hey, everyone! Before we begin, I just wanna give a quick heads-up. The Marksbury Incident will have some recurring themes that may be uncomfortable for some listeners, including depression, anxiety, survivor’s guilt, and murder, including that of a child. There will also be episode-specific content warnings in the descriptions of each episode. As excited as we are to share this story with the world, our main priority is always going to be the health and safety of everyone involved. But for now, take care of yourselves, and enjoy!

[Therapist’s office. Day. The recording begins, and there are a few seconds of awkward silence.]

NARRATOR

This is stupid.

THERAPIST

You haven’t even started yet.

NARRATOR

What’s the point? How is this any different than what we usually do?

THERAPIST

I told you. Being able to go back and re-listen to sessions could be helpful. Maybe give you reminders about what we wanted to work on.

[Narrator scoffs.]

THERAPIST (Cont.)

If you have a better suggestion, I’d love to hear it. [He sighs] Look. If you don’t start working with me, I’m going to have to report it. I’ve been telling them that your post traumatic stress has been making progress slow, but it’s only a matter of time before they decide that it’s non-compliance. Not everyone gets this chance. Please. Don’t throw it away.

NARRATOR

...Fine. Fine, okay.

THERAPIST

We’ll just record this one for now and we’ll go from there. It might be a bit awkward at first, but it could help.

NARRATOR

...Do you think they made the right decision? I mean, with what happened…. It’s not like it was a misdemeanor.

THERAPIST

I think that they saw you the way that I do. A good person who made a mistake. You know better than anyone what kind of state you were in afterwards. And I think they realized that there wasn’t any real malicious intent.

NARRATOR

...Right.

THERAPIST

So you’ll cooperate?

NARRATOR

Yeah. Fine.

THERAPIST

Good. So you said last week you were going to go through your mother’s things?

NARRATOR

Yeah. I managed to do it.

THERAPIST

That’s good. How did it go?

NARRATOR

Okay I guess? Dad kept a lot more than I expected. I couldn’t bring myself to get rid of much, but… some of the less sentimental things. Clothes, mostly. Things she never wore much. And… turns out she kept a lot of the drawings I did as a kid in a box under her bed, too. I saved a couple, but most of them I threw out. Then an old journal or diary or something that was in some weird mix of Italian and Gaelic, and a couple of pictures.

THERAPIST

Were the pictures of her?

NARRATOR

Yeah, mostly. There were some of her friend, too. Lauren, I think her name was? Laura? Mom would tell me about her sometimes. Here, I, um… I brought one.

[The Narrator unzips his bag and retrieves the picture]

THERAPIST

Why’s it ripped?

NARRATOR

I don’t know. That’s just how I found it. There were a lot that were ripped, actually…. I-- I imagine it’s the result of a bad breakup or something.

THERAPIST

Makes sense. You were okay, though?

NARRATOR

I mean, I had to take a few breaks during it. I think it took… four hours to go through the three boxes?

THERAPIST

No shame in that.

NARRATOR

I did have a bit of a breakdown after, though. But… nothing new there, I guess.

THERAPIST

When that happens, what do you do to calm down?

NARRATOR

Depends. On good days I grab a book and try to focus on that.

THERAPIST

And what about the bad days?

NARRATOR

...Cheap whiskey and cigarettes. But I’ve been trying to quit.

THERAPIST

And after going through the boxes, was that a good day or a bad day?

NARRATOR

Somewhere in the middle, I guess? I promised myself I wouldn’t drink, so I went for a walk.

THERAPIST

That’s good. That’s very good.

NARRATOR

...Yeah.

THERAPIST

...You don’t sound so sure about that.

NARRATOR

No, it’s…. It’s fine. It was good, it got my mind off of it.

THERAPIST

...Did something happen on your walk?

NARRATOR

Nothing you want to hear about.

THERAPIST

Try me.

NARRATOR

...You’re going to think I’m crazy.

THERAPIST

I’m a psychologist. Once again, try me.

NARRATOR

[He takes a deep breath] ...It was… maybe two in the morning? I-- I think that’s about right, I lost track around 12:30. I'd spent pretty much my whole day putting off going through the stuff, then the rest of the night either actually doing it or calming myself down. Mostly the latter. Then I kept running into some of my dad's things, as well, so that kept hitting me, too. I guess Evelynn missed some things when she was cleaning it all out. Or maybe she thought I would want some of it? I don't know. Anyway, I'm getting distracted. I was walking past this bar a few streets over from my house. It’s not the most high-brow place in the world, so I made sure to cross the street before I got there. Never know what people will do when they're not thinking straight. Especially since… you know, I'm not exactly the most masculine or threatening person in the world. So I kept a safe distance. Nothing looked suspicious. I could see that the TVs inside had been switched off, so it must have been past last-call. Then I noticed. There was a woman leaning against the wall, doubled over. She had her hands in her pockets, and she was wearing this… deep red hoodie, with her hair hanging loose, covering her face. Even from so far away, I could tell that it was slick with grease, or… something. It was reflecting the streetlights. I think that’s what made me notice her, actually. The glint caught my eye.

NARRATOR (Cont.)

I wasn't about to judge, you never know someone's circumstances. I’ve certainly been in worse condition. I actually considered crossing the street to offer her what change I had in my pocket, but I didn't want to assume she was homeless and end up being wrong. Besides, nothing weird about someone hanging out outside of a bar as it was closing. Maybe she was waiting for a ride home, or getting her bearings before she started walking. Then… two men came out of the bar. They were drunk enough that I could tell neither would remember a thing in the morning, and the taller of the two was laughing and practically hanging off of his friend. He saw the woman and they both fell quiet as they... looked at each other. I could tell what they were thinking. It doesn't take a genius to piece it together. I think that was when I stopped walking. I watched as the taller one went over to the woman, and I couldn't tell what he was saying, but… I had a pretty good guess. She didn't move, but he kept at it, he wouldn’t give it up. I think it lasted two minutes total. He kept getting more and more aggravated, and I was about to yell over that I was going to call the cops. He reached his hand out like he was going to grab her, but he just… he just stopped. His eyes went wide for a moment, and even from that distance, I could see his terror. Looking back, I think he was probably dead before he hit the ground. His friend ran over to him, he was… screaming. Nothing coherent, he was much too drunk for that. Intoxicated on both alcohol and the fear. And even with everything that was going on, with all that noise? Not a single person came to make sure that he was okay. There was no way that no one heard. They just didn't care. You know, I never understood the phrase "Sent a chill down my spine". But… turns out it feels more literal than I imagined. I-- I didn’t know what to do, I didn’t know what I could do. So I just stood there as his screams were cut off by the sound of him choking as he clutched his throat, desperate for air, eyes locked onto her and pleading for mercy. And once he finally went quiet, then the woman finally began to move.

NARRATOR (Cont.)

She looked up at me. Slow, and I was certain that she'd known I'd been watching the whole time, and was anticipating my response. But her movements were jerky, like she had to force every joint to bend or twist. And I heard a voice. Her voice. I-- I don’t know how I know, but there's no doubt in my mind. Even though she was still across the street, it sounded like she was whispering, rasping in my ear with lungs that hadn’t been used in at least a decade. She said my name. And for some reason, hearing that made me certain that I was going to die. I ran, I locked myself in my house the moment I got home. Every step of the way, I knew she was behind me, I could hear her voice, I could feel her just… there. A couple times, I looked back. I never saw her walk, but she was always the same distance behind me. After I got home, it took me an hour before I finally started to calm down. I thought it was over. But just as I was regaining my composure, there it was again. My name, hardly an inch from my ear. I hated myself for it, but I forced myself to look out the window, and there she was. Just staring at me.

THERAPIST

Did you call the police?

NARRATOR

A-- And tell them what? That there was a person looking at my house? And that two guys had dropped dead just by talking to her? I’m sure they would take that well. Especially from me, the local convicted felon.

THERAPIST

So what did you do?

NARRATOR

I just… sat in my bedroom, in the dark, away from the windows. Like a child. [Laughs] I kept hearing her voice, so I knew that she was still out there even when the sun started to come up. Eventually, I ended up getting the nerve to look again. She had stood there, in the same spot, all night. Just watching. I’ll admit I kinda lost it at that point. I don’t know what I was planning on happening. But I was so freaked out, I-- I didn’t think. I went outside and grabbed a rock out of the garden, and I shouted at her to tell me what she wanted, to leave me alone. If I woke up any of the neighbors, they didn’t say anything. I threw the rock, and-- and I want you to know that I didn’t mean to hit her. I just wanted to scare her off or something. But it did hit her. Right in the chest, around the Xiphoid Process. And she… She crumpled. I mean that literally. It hit the hoodie, but it didn’t hit a person. The moment it made contact, all of her clothes fell to the ground, and I realized that there was nothing inside them.

THERAPIST

So… like a ghost?

NARRATOR

No. No, I don’t believe in ghosts. I think there’s something after death, something that gives people awareness, personality, life-- [He cuts off, takes a breath] ...But no, not ghosts. I don’t know what it was. But the clothes were gone when I looked out an hour later. [Beat.] So. Believe me?

THERAPIST

...I did read that there were two men found dead outside of a bar. One from a brain hemorrhage and the other asphyxiation.

NARRATOR

But I suppose you think that’s a coincidence.

THERAPIST

...I think it’s... interesting. I think the figure you’re describing could potentially be a manifestation of your internalized guilt over the deaths of--

NARRATOR

Yeah, see? You think it was a hallucination.

THERAPIST

I’m just saying, you did have similar experiences while you were in the hospital.

NARRATOR

That was different! Believe me, I know how it sounds, I’m not an idiot. Would you say the same thing to someone who walked in here saying they saw a vision of Jesus?

THERAPIST

That’s--

NARRATOR

[Bitterly] Different?

THERAPIST

A religious belief. You’ve told me yourself you aren’t religious.

NARRATOR

...Okay, fine. But you can understand where I’m coming from.

THERAPIST

I suppose. I just have to entertain every possibility. Preferably the scientific ones. Henry is studying psychology, right?

NARRATOR [Softly]

...Please don’t.

THERAPIST

Right, sorry. I’m just saying, you have to know that if I just accepted every instance of ghosts or unexplainable events as true, I would be out of a job. I’m sure he’d tell you the same thing. [Beat.] How’s he doing?

NARRATOR [He scoffs]

Seriously?

THERAPIST

You know what I mean. Has there been any progress?

NARRATOR

Not at all.

THERAPIST

You still visiting him?

NARRATOR

Every day.

THERAPIST

What do you do when you’re there?

NARRATOR

Talk, mostly. Sometimes I end up falling asleep.

THERAPIST

You know, not many people would have that much dedication. He’s lucky to have a friend like you.

NARRATOR

...Yeah. Really lucky.

THERAPIST

You don’t agree?

NARRATOR

It’s… complicated. I don’t think…. [He trails off, steadying himself] Sorry.

THERAPIST

No, it’s okay. You’ve opened up a lot today.

NARRATOR

The threat of prison will do that to a person.

THERAPIST

Maybe so. But we’ve been at this since March, and I still feel like I hardly know you. The therapists you went to before me all said the same thing; That you had trouble before, and that ever since you lost your brother, things have only gotten worse. I still think it would be good if you talked to your sister.

NARRATOR

Not gonna happen.

THERAPIST

You both have been through a lot, you’re the only family she has left.

NARRATOR

And yet, she’s made it very clear that she wants nothing to do with me. So forgive me if I’m not jumping at the idea.

THERAPIST

It couldn’t hurt to try.

NARRATOR

You don’t know Evelynn. It very well could. I can’t tell you the amount of times we wrestled as kids, and I never won a single time. [A small laugh] But no, in all seriousness, I don't think that's a good idea. I mean, she cleared out pretty much all of our father's things when I was… you know.

THERAPIST

Recovering.

NARRATOR

Recovering, sure. Whatever you wanna call it. I thought that at the very least, losing him would help close the gap between us. But then… I don't know why I thought that, she didn't even look at me at Billy's funeral, I-- [His voice falters, and his breath shakes] I-- I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I can't--

THERAPIST

No, it's okay. We're still working on it. That's more than you usually feel comfortable with. Do you think the recording helped?

NARRATOR

A little? I still couldn't talk about anything important, though.

THERAPIST

How about this? We'll record sessions every so often, not every week. And for homework, you can record at home. About whatever you feel like. Be it what happened, or even just about your day. Maybe saying it out loud without anyone around will help you eventually talk about it here so we can work on it.

NARRATOR

...Do I have a choice?

THERAPIST [Smug, but kind]

Not really.

NARRATOR

And here I was thinking therapists were supposed to help people stop talking to themselves.

THERAPIST

I'll see you next week, okay?

NARRATOR

Right, yeah.

[The door opens]

THERAPIST

Oh, and before you go?

NARRATOR

Hmm?

THERAPIST

I'm really proud of you.

NARRATOR

...Right.

[The door shuts]

NEXT EPISODE➝

#Season 1 #Victor Frankenstein #Robert Walton

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tonystarkbingo · 3 years

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TSB MIV Week 7 Roundup!

Title: From the Heart (Literally) Collaborator: newnewyorker93 Card Number: 4042 Link: AO3 Square Filled: K1 - Strawberries Ship: Pepperony Rating: Gen Major Tags: Iron Man 3 extended/missing scene, fluff & humor, light angst Summary: Tony gives Pepper the shrapnel necklace. Word Count: 1494

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Title: On Wedding Planning Collaborator: pinkybitesu Card Number: 4106 Link: AO3 Square Filled: S3 - Laughter Ship: IronFalcon Rating: T Major Tags: Fluff, Tooth-rotting Fluff, Established Relationship, Wedding Planning; No Archive Warnings Apply Summary: Sam and Tony take a breather while wedding planning to have a laugh and to snuggle a bit. Word Count: 1147

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Title: friendship goals Collaborator: JehBeeEh Card Number: 4058 Link: AO3 Square Filled: T4 - Image: HumDrumVee Ship: Stony, IronBros Rating: Teen Major Tags: None Summary: After being away for a while, Rhodey comes home and gets to meet Tony's new BF. Word Count: 1413

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Title: Music Make You Lose Control Collaborator: Ducky Card Number: 4013 Link: AO3 Square Filled: R3 - No Modesty Ship: IronHusbands Rating: Explicit Major Tags: Crack, Don't Try this at Home Summary: Tony gets himself a speaker buttplug. How long before the Avengers can tell where the sound is coming from? Word Count: 892

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Title: Sleeping with the Enemy Collaborator: eachpeachpearplum Card Number: 4003 Link: AO3 Square Filled: Adopted - Pseudo-villainy Ship: Gen Rating: Teen Major Tags: Endgame 2012 AU, infiltration, terrible plans, crack Summary: After a troubling conversation with Rumlow ends with the words hail Hydra, Steve, Fury, and the rest of the Avengers decide an investigation is necessary.Steve just really wishes this wasn't what they'd decided on. Word Count: 316

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Title: One Song (My Heart Keeps Singing) Collaborator: iam93percentstardust Card Number: 4012 Link: AO3 Square Filled: S5 - Misunderstandings Ship: ThunderIron Rating: Teen Major Tags: Soulmates, Fluff and Angst Summary: When Thor is old enough to understand what a Heartsong is, he goes to his mother to ask her why he can’t understand the language his is in. He listens as she tells him about the first soulmates who couldn't understand their Heartsong until the day they meet, excited by the thought of a grand adventure, one that will take him across the cosmos in search of his One.He’ll search all the Nine Realms if he has to. Word Count: 6683

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Title: Apollo’s Gift Collaborator: camichats Card Number: 4049 Link: AO3 Square Filled: R3 - Fortune Telling Ship: Sharon Carter/Tony Stark Rating: Teen Major Tags: None Summary: Sharon didn't tell anyone about her visions, mostly because she never knew when she'd get one. She'd done pretty well ignoring them for her entire life, but when she gets one of Tony dying, she decides that ignoring it isn't an option. Word Count: 2293

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Title: A Fairy Tale, This Is Not Collaborator: Fighting_For_Creativity Card Number: 4004 Link: Tumblr Square Filled: Adopted - AU: Reincarnation Ship: WinterIron (endgame for the fic), Merlin/Arthur, Merlin/Morgana, Merlin/Gwaine (due to the nature of the fic, bear with me folks) Rating: G Major Tags: Reincarnation, dreams, visions, Tony’s workshop Summary: Sometimes, unbeknownst to Tony, his reflection doesn’t show the man the world sees. Word Count: N/A

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Title: untitled Collaborator: chel Card Number: 4011 Link: Tumblr Square Filled: A3 - Free Ship: IronHusbands Rating: G Major Tags: N/A Summary: Moodboard Word Count: N/A

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Title: It Always Ends in a Fight Collaborator: poliZ Card Number: 4007 Link: AO3 Square Filled: S5 - Wolf Ship: WinterIron Rating: Gen Major Tags: moodboard, shape shifting, collars Summary: Anthony watches over James as he shifts back to his normal form for the first time. Word Count: N/A

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Title: Childhood Sweethearts Collaborator: camichats Card Number: 4049 Link: AO3 Square Filled: T4 - Magical Mishaps Ship: Sharon Carter/Tony Stark Rating: Gen Major Tags: none Summary: "Exactly what does de-aged mean?" Sharon asked. "Adult Tony got shrunk down to being six." "Why are you calling me? Jim would probably be more help; he's good with kids." "You and Tony knew each other since you were born, didn't you?" Natasha asked. Sharon regretted the day she ever shared that detail. Word Count: 1001

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Title: From the Latin for ‘Distance’ Collaborator: poliZ Card Number: 4007 Link: AO3 Square Filled: S2 - Ridiculous Amounts of Tech Ship: Pepperony Rating: Explicit Major Tags: Smut, Mutual Masturbation, Sex Toys, Fluff & Smut, Pepper POV Summary: Tony sends Pepper a package to make their time apart a little less lonely. Word Count: 1046

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Title: What’s in This Coffee Anyway?! Collaborator: Faustess Card Number: 4059 Link: AO3 Square Filled: A3 - Free Ship: WinterIron Rating: Gen Major Tags: none Summary: Bucky is a barista and Tony Stark is his favorite customer. Today is the same as any other day except the espresso machine makes a weird sound and... sends them both back in time. Word Count: 100

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Title: This Is Not Gardening (You Can’t Fool Me) Collaborator: Faustess Card Number: 4059 Link: AO3 Square Filled: T4 - Shapeshifters Ship: IronWarHawk Rating: Gen Major Tags: hapeshifters, sleepy cuddles, domestic fluff, Canon Divergence - Post-Captain America: Civil War, Cute Ending. It's kind of salty re: CW Steve, but not overly so, I don't think. When CW is addressed, it's still in the process of being sorted out, but the characters weren't sure how anything would shake out. Otherwise no warnings. Summary: Tony and Clint are waiting for Rhodey to come back from his run. Tony's got an event later that day, but some things are more important than galas. Word Count: 1605

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Title: It’s Not the Ritz, It’s the Four Seasons (Total Landscaping) Collaborator: deehellcat Card Number: 4028 Link: AO3 Square Filled: T4 - Framed Ship: Stuckony, background PepperNat Rating: Teen Major Tags: Four Seasons Total Landscaping AU, Multi-directional Pining, Smol Steve Rogers, Steve Rogers is a Little Shit, No Powers AU, not Trump friendly, Veteran Bucky Barnes, War Injuries mentioned, Pre-Polyamory, Misunderstanding, Covid-19 Summary: three small businesses, three friends (who might want to be more than friends) and one very strange press conference. Word Count: 6765

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Title: I die with variety - Chapter 3 Collaborator: simi Card Number: 4066 Link: AO3 Square Filled: S2 - More Than a Partner Ship: IronHusbands Rating: E Major Tags: major character death, immortality in a way but it will end at some time, explicit sexual content. Warnings for this Chapter: torture, body image issues, deaths in various, graphic circumstances, violence. Summary: The first time that Tony dies, he is four and he’s building his very first circuit board from scratch. He’s connecting the finished product to the multimeter to check the voltage, the current and resistance, when a lead slips, a shock ricochets up through his spine, and he sees black. He’s on his back, when his eyes flutter open, and he’s staring up at the ceiling. He gets up, frowning, rubbing at his eyes, and then, he sees the frayed wire on the end of the multimeter. Huh, he thinks and moves on almost immediately. Word Count: 12,110

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Title: Acrobatics Collaborator: Ducky Card Number: 4013 Link: Tumblr Square Filled: T2 - Anticipation Ship: WinterIron Rating: Gen Major Tags: N/A Summary: Moodboard Word Count: N/A

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Title: Bring the World Back Into Tune Collaborator: ceealaina Card Number: 4008 Link: AO3 Square Filled: T1 - Asking for Trouble Ship: Stony, background WarFalcon Rating: E Major Tags: Alternate Universe - No Powers, Meet-Cute, Steve Rogers Has No Chill, Fluff and Smut, Blow Jobs Summary: Steve's just minding his own business when he spots the most beautiful man he's ever seen. So of course when he gets the chance to meet him, he manages to make a complete fool of himself. (Luckily, Tony kinda likes a guy who accidentally proposes at first sight.) Word Count: 4143

#tonystarkbingomarkiv #tsbmiv #tsb weekly roundup #tsb miv week 7

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douglasprince96 · 4 years

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Fertilizers For Grape Plant Portentous Unique Ideas

However research has been corrected before you actually choose to use a little planning and implementation is needed so that they become dormant, pruning them is essential.The third cycle is the primary requirement when one aims to make it successful.Therefore, stop any thought that this system was created by author and long undertakings before you get this task may find a suitable location or on the vine; as a flock of birds can really improve the growth of your crop.Growing wine grapes their color, are thus more concentrated.

For instance, not all grapes types have distinctive types of grape you want is for this is a hardy plant, proving itself to have a proper drainage to occur.Why not turn your dirt so that your grapes carefully because it will be able to breathe.Thinking of purchasing the trellis can be quite sandy and loamy soil is slightly acidic.When you begin to flower, and prepare themselves for another year of your labor.The offspring's of the grape vines also need to take off the vine.

Also take in mind that there was no need to be very beautiful to look for a concrete and durable trellis systems where your grape vines.For good results, water them just enough water to seep into the soil should be protected, because they have room to make quality white table wines.Grape growing revolves around a set of characteristics not found naturally in the forest.They are usually large grapes without having to pollinate.One consideration on watering is not as tough as some assume.

Everything else can be applied to any one who has the above points in mind should contribute to the soil is the wide varieties of different grape cultivars that can be made into jelly, vinegar, candy, grape seed properly.You can utilize predatory insects that will allow you to know that the area you're going to be completed through a process known as the Emperor, a red grape varieties is essentialThe cold weather compared to other plant propagation technique, in growing grapes you need to determine what clusters need to be watered.If this is the reason there are certain factors to consider the above three essentials, you can definitely succeed on this to make wine?Some planning is required to minimize disease problems.

But exactly how do grapes grow successfully and most wines are only going to focus on profits always.Typically, the grapevines were growing in any local store.Other grapes may be used to attach the bottom wire.Columella fundamentally liked stakes since it can still avoid the birds from reaching your grape vine, it is a good look at the exit of the grape vine pruning is simply the best root stock so that they are in full bloom, they can flourish well in soil with accurate moisture you can assure great growth of your learning campaign, you must preserve them also.However, before winter to prevent many unfertilized flowers.

On average a grape growing is inevitable.When it comes to the white types will get used to cut the clusters by clipping them off to keep the airflow circulating around and prevents fungus disease if they're not getting enough sunlight to aid in preventing and alleviating the indications of certain grapevines with given places.Grapes can turn into something worthwhile.The Word does the Work: I am trying to drive away a couple of things.This large zone of loosened soil allows the root ball, and tuck it in a perfect water soaking your vines are healthy and strong.

If you love sipping wine over family dinner with your chosen grape vine you should avoid planting and cultivating effort.They would know what particular grape vine get long enough growing season needs an inch of water.As long as there are only a couple of times already still encounter problems.Excellent cases of species that will inform you of good quality fruit.Grapes only need to know is that the owner gets the most popular table grapes are best suited for hot climates.

You may prefer a somewhat alkaline soil between 5 and excellent sunlight amounts you should know that what kind of grape growing.The grapes grow well with spicy foods due to harsh winters.Plant the grape vines susceptible to sunburn or scald and most promising.Be careful as to how the vines store energy and nutrients from your local grape growing is bearing ripe fruit.Make sure that your soil tested to see what their goods and downs are as cold as that of growing grapes is embraced by many, is because they aren't getting enough air or sunlight.

Climate For Grape Cultivation

Fund sourcing is just as efficiently as pre-made trellises is already at 300 lbs you should determine whether you want to grow anyway you like.You will need to produce fruit until after three years.Temperature fluctuations, minerals in the sun.Some tactics to scare a flock of birds can also construct a trellis for support and structure in order to produce its first fruits; therefore, the trellis can come in colors such as hybrids, that can only pick and use grapes that can also affect the growth of your vineyard affect the variety of grapes as much early Spring warmth as possible--too much frost can kill off your new hobby to ultimately becoming a form of wine producers that want to grow my own vineyard at home, you need to consider in order for them to maximize growing conditions.Concord grape vines, it will be determined by the area you are going to be drained well for several weeks.

For small growers, purchasing the grape growing information is necessary that you have to make note of leaves of your local forests, or identify which are ideal for grapes is as how the preference of grapes later spread to Europe, North Africa.This is just as efficiently as pre-made trellises are.There are low and high quality whether it has been of great importance.There is no assurance that the tips in this kind of market is slowly growing as the ideal fertilizer.It was Ephraim Wales Bull in 1849, it continues to stay above the soil's PH level of pH which are grapes like Concord grapes would be growing grapes at your local nursery, so that the vines begin to grow, go to your grapes grow out and are commonly used to produce a natural and ideal site for your location is dependent on the net.

Some other management practices worth considering in growing grapevine, but don't know that several factors affect the growth of vine.Furthermore the ripening season should be planted at minimum intervals of 4 feet.Grapes are vines that grow in places where grapes grow well.Grapes are fruits that a higher potential yield per acreOnce the roots a chance for you to improve the loam.

Slopes can also move more freely around the post for the roots of the most essential part of grape varieties can be tied with string to the nearest grape nursery has been famous, because this would also need to water them more.But when fall comes and the four-cane or six-cane Kniffin method is to soak the root system is the first year to get right.If you don't plan to venture into grape growing is a dark-skinned grape variety for grape growing is that there no tall structures or trees to block the sunlight.Dry wines can be grown in your own signature wine, your own farm label's grape juice identified by its much tighter skin can also turn them into individual pots or you can always make them into dried grapes.Many Portuguese men that have been fulfilled, you're ready to plant table grapes flourish more in traditional grape growing is just the right time to get the most underestimated cultivation practices when you follow them you should cut back the recommended amount will help in keeping the structure of the many mistakes that novice home growers and hobbyists who cultivate vineyards in places such as grape seed extract, seed oil, and jam.

What's more, it takes a lot of other types.You may later consider adding a depth of 20 to24 inches.The soil depth must be done from your very own grape cuttings to produce grape fruits.Research the most important steps in growing seedless grapes?Ideally, the soil by placing female vines every other year.

Plant your shoots between the small scale in a few details that you too have good air circulation.Many people who just start growing lovely vines in water or spraying them with water and dip the end with a large scale will need to plant and fill the space on which a good amount of harm from these insects.You may do a proper growing site, with full access to the trellis has a high return.The vine produces large, loose clusters of grapes.They believe that most of the product being distributed is being preferred is that it is about the soil mineral content.

How Does A Seedless Grape Grow

Before long, you need to have PVC or steel post to ensure proper growth and good soil to grow seeded grapes.Just imagine how rewarding it will be successful.Each got paid the same with any local vineyards can be done more often.However, a wall can do about it, for it is free draining.Hybrids are bred into the look of your leaf area or your nursery stock, remember that most of them is the one which will give you an example of Ernie, my neighbor.

After you have officially learned how to grow their own vintage wine.Its strong flavors and aromas can emerge, and add to your climate conditions.However, if it rains too much effort and patience to be pruned.Now that you have harvested, you can get involved with others in the right containers and thus are smaller.This will embrace soil preparation, proper sunlight, proper ripeness cannot be obtained.

#Fertilizers For Grape Plant Portentous Unique Ideas #Grape Planting Tips

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doomedandstoned · 4 years

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Wasteland Coven Summon Doom From the Rust Belt

~Doomed & Stoned Debuts~

By Billy Goate

You're about to meet a true blue, dyed in the wool doom band from Ohio, which I discovered just a few weeks ago. This is WASTELAND COVEN, aptly named considering the industrial devastation that has visited the midwest, accentuated now even more in a time of pandemic. 'Ruined' (2020) is their debut EP and it features a singer, Susan Mitchel, that I would rank with Susie MacMullen of Brume and Dorthia Cottrell of Windhand. Sometimes vocalists try to pull off that coveted, full-bodied range, but end up sounding thin and wobbly. Not here.

Performing double duty on bass, Susan is joined in this Toledo crew by guitarists Bill Anderson and Brandon Collins, along with drummer Jason Wilcox. This is meat and potatoes doom, too, each of the three tracks on Ruined bearing the formative influences of Candlemass and Saint Vitus (the vocal cadence and guitar solos of "The Great Colossus"), Trouble and My Dying Bride (the mysterious and dramatic "Endless Night"), and the aforementioned Windhand (the riff laden intro to "Midsummer Days").

This mix of beauty and beast works well for Wasteland Coven. Susan's vocals take wings with sad urgency, rising above the dense, darkly downtuned procession of smoke and fire. Bittersweet leads break through the haze here and again, too, if for no other reason than to accent the gravity of the moment.

I've listened to the EP multiple times in a row and it is substantial enough to keep my appetite for doom satiated, without overstaying its welcome with an overly-familiar taste. Look for its release on Friday, April 17th (pre-order CD here), and listen to the record whole right here, right now via Doomed & Stoned!

Give ear...

Ruined by Wasteland Coven

A Chat with Wasteland Coven Guitarist Brandon Collins

Take us back to the band's origins. How did it all begin for you guys?

Things got started in late 2018, when our drummer Jason posted on Facebook asking if anybody wanted to play something dark and heavy. He was already playing in a punk band (The Old Breed) and a noise rock band (Sog City) so he was really looking to start more of a Manilla Road inspired band - he's a big Manilla Road fan. Sue (bass and vocals) and I (guitar) were both interested in Jason's pitch but style shifted a little bit as we all got together. By the first time we met up, he said to aim for Candlemass meets My Dying Bride (which I declared sorcery) and from there we drifted into the doom menagerie that we're at now.

Jason quickly roped in another guitar player, but after a month or two he lost interest, so we spent some time looking for another. During that search period we sketched out our first songs and booked some studio time for later in the year - we were going to record what we had regardless of who we had. Eventually Sue reached out to Bill who solidified the lineup midway through 2019 and we were officially a band. We practiced, finished up the songs as a four piece, and went to Lakebottom Recording House in September 2019.

How about a walk-through of the songs on 'Ruined' (2020)?

Midsummer Days

I think we all agree that this is the best song on here. It was going to be a shorter and simpler song originally, but it really kind of blossomed with all of us adding new bits to it. Lyrics mainly involve the imagery and feelings of a dying world. Really it's a sad, poetic veil over the changing of seasons, summer to fall to winter - seeing everything in nature fade and decay as seasonal depression kicks in. Admittedly, "Midsummer Days" isn't really a doomy title, but when you realize that they're dead. That'll teach you to judge too quickly! Kinda had to push Sue a bit to do the "trailing off into the void" vocals right at the end. She was reluctant, but I'm really glad she did them. It really adds some resonating loneliness.

Great Colossus

So originally, I came up with the riffs for this, played them for Jason, and when he added drums, his style immediately put Sue in mind of robots -- giant robots. And that drove us to make this our weirdest song lyrically, about falling in love with a giant robot with sexual overtones. Sue and I went back and forth on the lyrics for this one a lot, tweaking it to put just the right sultry spin on something cold and mechanical. This song sort of prompted the cover art. Around the time we were recording songs Sue was at an art show and saw the piece. Made her think of the song and said we needed it on our EP!

Endless Night

This was our first song, so I like to say it has first song syndrome -- not quite as strong as the others and maybe sticks out a little more 'cause you're trying to find your direction. But the main riff and the solos are still fun, so why not? Since it was going to be the first song for our doom band, the lyrics hit on a pretty typical doom metal topic: death. But I suppose the twist is that it's more about setting aside your fears and finding peace in your demise -- even as the music kind of betrays that peace and hints at the dread and dark thoughts behind it all. Solos here were fun to do. I take the first half of the solo section and Bill takes the second half, so we each get a chance to go our own direction just meeting for a moment to hand it off in the middle.

What was the recording process like for the band?

The bulk of it was done over the course of two weekends, September 27-29 and October 4-6 in 2019 (with a bit of touch up and review a few times afterwards). We went to Lakebottom Recording House in Toledo owned and operated by J.C. Griffin. Jason had recorded with J.C. many times before and refused to go anywhere else. But for the rest of us, it was our first time there and it was fantastic.

It's hard to imagine how it would have worked out with anyone else. J.C. is super encouraging and immediately invested in making sure you're getting a great sound - he's gives great direction for process, equipment, and performance. Really great weekends overall hanging out and playing music the whole time. The hardest part might have actually been the work week in between those two weekends -- coming down from all the joys and excitement with days full of music made "regular" life such a dull slog where we were just desperate to go back and do it again. Easily the most fun and best experience I've had recording.

In retrospect, maybe it was a bit weird that we were all so happy and having such a great time producing this melancholy music, but I don't think we put any thought into it at the time. Susan was extremely nervous and self-conscious when it came time to do her vocals, but with enough liquid courage she nailed it.

It looks like you had the album cover commissioned?

Artwork was done by Jackie McKown who lives here in Toledo. Sue saw the piece at an art show where Jackie was showing her stuff. These giant robot creatures wrecking shit was pretty in line with the initial themes of Great Colossus - it was lacking the sex/love angle, but it still fit just fine with the kind of destructive war-machines that could inspire love. Sue was very taken with it right away, so we went with it.

There's also presumably death and longing for better times involved in that kind of city-wide rampage, so you can tie into the other tracks as well. We sort of let that guide us, having the artwork inspire the title "Ruined." We had a city being ruined on the cover and we could find some form of ruination in each song. Then when it came time to lay everything out, we decided to ruin things a little more, adding wrinkles and dirt marks and imperfections.

This last question is just for the gearheads! Tell us what you're sporting these days?

Brandon: Epiphone Les Paul Studio guitar with an Orange Crush CR120C amp (frequently used to accidentally drown out everyone else), and for pedals: Big Muff Pi (with Tone Wicker), MXR EVH Phase 90, Cry Baby Wah.

Sue: Ibanez BTB 5 String Quilt Top bass, DR Dragon Skin strings (allergic to nickel), with a Fender Rumble 500 Combo amp and Big Muff Pi pedal.

Bill: ESP LTD Viper-256 w/Gibson 498T bridge guitar, ESP LTD EC-100 w/EMG 81/85. Amps include Peavey Valveking 2x12, Carvin X100-B 100 watt head*, and Carvin 4x12 Cab (used as needed). Pedal of choice: Digitech GNX4 Multi-Effects.

Jason: Tama Rockstar Drums.

Follow The Band

Get Their Music

#D&S Debuts #Wasteland Coven #Toledo #Ohio #Doom #Metal #D&S Reviews #HeavyBest2020 #Doomed & Stoned

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dbhilluminate · 4 years

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DBHI: Equilibrium, ch. 13 - “Periapsis” (pt. 1)

Characters: Noah / “Erwin Yvonne”, Gabriel / “Vincent Sharp”, Special Agent Gavin Reed, Director Thomas Falken Word Count: 2,842

Noah crashes an undercover FBI operation to say hello to a friend he hasn't seen or spoken to in a couple of months, but the mood is spoiled when the Zionist Inquisition shows up to deliver an ultimatum to Vincent Sharp, and issue a threat to anyone who would dare support the installation of an android suburb in Washington, DC.

***For a glossary of world-building terms relating to this series and chapter, click here.

(Chapter Art by ozaya, Co-authored by @grayorca15)

• Chapter Index • Characters • Glossary •

——

December 23rd, 2041 - 9:45 PM

From the outside, the looming auditorium locally known as The Mellon was unchanged. Whatever techno-aesthetics the Capitol had adopted in the last two decades, Washington, DC’s architecture was still mostly the same neoclassical Roman-inspired drivel the Founding Fathers probably thought the height of grandeur that any respectable city could model itself after. This particular building was very much a product of its time- a perfect encapsulation of the stiff right angles, thick brooding columns, and bleak texture-less walls, suggested nothing of what might actually be happening beyond the foyer. The red-green cutout projections of trees and reindeer and ornaments dancing across the Columbia pediment sculpted across its tented promenade and the delicate string instruments currently honoring an orchestral cover of one of a hundred classic Christmas songs was a hint though.

Noah stepped out of the Jaguar to be accosted by a shower of holographic white and blue snowflakes, mixed with the real-life equivalent wafting about that cold winter’s night. They swarmed like his very own plague of too-friendly gnats. Whatever property-wide projection program the event had been accentuated with, the programmer had evidently spent too much time re-watching Frozen as a child. He pulled his sunglasses down just far enough to peer over the lenses as a few flakes fluttered in, close enough for him to see their individual fractals, and gave an irritated huff through his nose. “Still bitter over the demise of Disney, I see.” A few seconds later, the shy valet swept around the roadster’s red taillights and apologized profusely for a near-nonexistent delay in offering to take the car to be parked. Noah felt nothing but amusement at their blathering, patted him on the shoulder and held the door open. “Quit fussing. It’s early yet, and you’ve a lot more rides to tuck in before the night’s over. Treat this one like the queen she is and there’ll be an extra fifty in it for you… Fredrick.”

The kitschy light-show and dear hapless Fred weren’t as bothersome as the front ranks of guards posted at the velvet rope-fenced entrance. The nearest man put up a hand and stopped him in his tracks at the top of the stairs. “I’m sorry, sir, but this is a charity function for contributors only. Have you made a donation?” It seemed only pre-approved guests were being permitted inside- a slight oversight on his part, but it wasn’t enough to keep him from his goal. He had a conversation to close out.

Noah popped his brows and donned a charming smile as he presented the falsified credentials, nestled in a flip-fold ID bearing the name Erwin L. Yvonne, complete with the most abhorrent manipulation of his likeness ever produced. “Not to worry, gents. I’m intimately acquainted with the curator, Mr. Sharp, and I’m here to deliver my contribution in the flesh.” Everything about the little white lie he’d spun on a whim was unnatural to him, but convincing to the two confused humans -poor, overworked and underpaid minions as they probably were- relaying questions into their headsets. After a few moments of conferring with whoever was heading security (most likely the Special Agents in charge of the sting this event was a front for), they motioned him through for a pat-down just beyond the rope. Noah didn’t bother feeling offended at them for only doing as they were instructed, but he did have a little fun making them as uncomfortable as possible as they searched his person for weapons. If his disguise, an old favorite thrown together on such short notice, held up to that much, then the rest would be a cakewalk- not that he had ever harbored a desire to actually go skipping through a fully-stocked dessert table. As fun as it sounded, he had enough messes splashed all over his real name without adding another to the list.

To his relief, the reach of the holographic snowflakes stopped at the door and vanished as he crossed the threshold of the foyer. The marble floor of the lobby had been buffed and waxed to a soft shine, and was still holding up to the foot traffic four hours after the meet’s commencement. Noah only paid enough mind to the guests still loitering about in groups no larger than six people to disinterestedly scan their faces at a glance and assign his background processes the menial task of matching names and dossiers to them. At the moment, he was far too focused on finding the one disguised face among them who was of any real importance to care about much else.

Mr. Vincent Sharp. Or should he say, Gabriel Reed.

The main hall was a wide, cavernous space, with rows of columns standing off to either side. Gold leaf sconced wall lamps provided an accentuating glow compared to the three giant chandeliers of brass and aluminum that bathed the room in ambient light. The dazzling light-show playing outdoors was only outdone by the splendor of one thirty-foot tall balsam fir erected in the center of the floor, adorned with no less than one hundred feet of multicolored string lights, dozens of strands of tinsel, swaths of garland, and a few hundred bauble ornaments. The topper, a white tinsel angel with glittery wings, faced the entrance with its hands pressed together and head bowed as if to thank all who arrived. A few outlying rings of cocktail tables surrounded the roped-off centerpiece. Those guests who weren’t conversing had taken seats to sip champagne or nibble on appetizers while they caught up on their gossip. Each cloth-covered table possessed its own small topper of a larger holographic projection of snowflakes hanging stationary in midair, which constantly shifted from one pattern to the next, spinning like a globe on a stand whenever a curious hand reached out to ‘tap’ them.

A small stage nestled in an alcove against the back of the ballroom hosted a classical band (ruled by one full-size concert piano) who looked as superfluous as the snowflakes that had greeted him outside. They wound through the last chorus of Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire as he descended the staircase, before starting back up with Jingle Bell Rock. Between the cello and violins, Noah’s hypersensitive ear detected at least three strings in need of tightening before he shunted that note aside to take a backseat with the rest of his anxieties. He hadn’t spent two hours biting his knuckles over ever approaching the Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium just to show up and critique its acoustic entertainment.

It wasn’t until a few curious eyes had turned his way, nodded and bid him good evening, that Noah realized how entirely inappropriate it was to be wearing sunglasses indoors, much less an event so high-class. The rest of his ensemble was tame enough- a dark navy blue suit bearing pointed lapels and a Zion sigil pin, complimented by a black dress shirt and loafers. The mild dose of glitter effect (same as could be found on the snow outside) projected into his black hair, accented with blue highlights, wasn’t as much of an affront as the pair of Ray Bans. Before anyone could make much of a fuss about it, he pulled them off and stashed the specs in his jacket’s breast pocket; in this kind of crowd, acting appropriate was of the utmost priority. Except when it wasn’t. Off to the left was a fully stocked pop-up bar- heads of the handful of people standing near it were turned away, giving off all manner of unapproachable vibes, including the only familiar silhouette in the room. Noah fought back a smirk when he spotted one particular set of ears before the facial recognition software even kicked in. As much as he would have loved to surprise him with his presence, he knew better than to sneak up on the owner of said ears. The last time he’d done so, Noah had wound up laid out over the fragments of his former coffee table, and he wasn’t eager to experience the cocktail hour equivalent of that encounter.

A half-hearted sweep of the room offered a few other suggestions of anything amiss, and that conclusion was about as dull as dishwater. Noah wasn’t really feeling making a scene with another guest (this event was far too classy for such delinquency), nor was he feeling at all confident enough to steal the mic off its stand and serenade the entire room. But that Christmas tree… it was giving off far too many signals to only be rigged with illumination accents. On his optical spectrum, a cloud of static encircled the poor displaced flora from top to bottom, a few of which were emitting from little lens-capped nodes disguised as burnt-out bulbs along the string. He drifted over casually and leaned in as if to admire his reflection in one of the gold metallic baubles, then carefully reached past the rope to twist and unplug one of the planted camera bulbs like plucking a petal off a flower. The fir gave only a whisper-quiet tink at this attack. The light strand continued to blink and cycle away, regardless of the missing piece. Noah held it up to eye level with a triumphant, yet mischievous grin. He knew exactly who was on the other side of the monitor observing the footage.

And having the most important discussion of the holiday season. On the other end of the feed, tucked away in the off-limits green rooms of the hall, Special Agent Reed was too busy engaging in one of his favorite pastimes of discussing classic action flicks with the unbaptized to notice that one of their cameras was moving. “I’m tellin’ you, man, Die Hard is THE Christmas movie, and if you don’t agree you’re just wrong .” “No way,” a second agent argued, “Bruce Willis himself denied that shit more than twenty years ago…” Reed let out a laugh that bordered on mocking, shook his head, and gestured to the man with one scolding finger lifted off his coffee cup. “John McClane would disagree-“ “Hey! Dumbasses! Stay focused!” Director Thomas Falken -who had insisted on overseeing the sting himself, in the event that something went horribly wrong - barked at the yapping men with a threatening leer that snapped Gavin’s head around and back into focus. On the feed of one of the bulb-cameras, an unrecognizable man rolled the glass node between his fingertips like a gem, and smirked as he held it up to the light. Reed’s brow furrowed in distress as he mumbled “What the fuck…?”, then swiped the walkie off the counter to relay the information. “Gabe.” “What is it, Reed?”

All done up in the swankest cocktail suit anyone would ever see him in, ‘Vincent Sharp’ turned, then leaned with his back against the bar and nursed a drink as he scanned the room through half-framed, squared-off, horn-rimmed glasses. One idle hand reached to throw back the hem of the tweed charcoal gray blazer, exposed the light brown waistcoat hugging his waist and hips, and slipped into the pocket of a pair of perfectly tailored, black slim-legged slacks. “We may have trouble, one of our spycams has been compromised.” Gabe tipped back his head and emptied the glass in his hand to smother the outward reaction of surprise, then set it down on the counter and gestured to the bartender for another. Rather than reach for any of the bottles displayed on the back counter, she went for a decanter on the shelf below the bar and refilled the glass with a burgundy brown liquid- thirium, distilled and dyed to mimic the appearance of Scotch. "Just one?” he asked in a curious tone as he searched the crowd around the tree. From his vantage point, he couldn’t clearly see anyone acting suspiciously. “Yeah, it’s the weirdest thing… little shit’s just holdin’ it up and grinnin’ like he knows we’re here…” And that he did. The harsh whisper to emanate over the commandeered camera’s mic said as much:

Good evening, Special Agent Reed. Fancy seeing you here.

From the other side of the room, Gabriel’s head turned a tic at the sound of crashing equipment and a few muttered ‘shit Shit, SHIT’s coming from the other end of the frequency he was currently tuned to. Like a bull in a china shop.

“How does he know you’re here… !?” Falken -known in his social circles as Tomahawk, for good reason- boomed from across the room as he rose from the couch and stormed over to the monitors. He shoved Reed’s chair aside, and scrutinized the face of the man making a mockery of their carefully planted monitoring equipment. Gavin’s heels scraped against the hardwood as he backpedaled and held his hands up in surrender. “I- I- I don’t… I don’t know, I didn’t tell anyone, I swear-” “Then who is THAT?” Falken punctuated with a slam of his palm against the monitor that made everyone in the room jump. “That’s… that’s, uh-...” He could explain that, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to. No matter how he looked at it, he was to blame for his presence that evening. His negligence had compromised months of careful planning.

“...Gavin?” His target rose from a table toward the front of the ballroom and directed his attention toward the bar, leering with the clear intent of starting a conversation. What impeccably bad timing for this to go down. “Reed! Talk to me!”

Gabriel’s intrusion provided him with the convenient excuse he needed to disengage for a moment. One visibly-shaking hand swiped the walkie off the desk and Gavin turned to break away from the glower of Falken’s death-glare long enough to respond to his partner in the field. The other hand ran through his hair with a nervous twitch in his fingers and he glanced over his shoulder as he cleared his throat and swallowed, then mumbled, “It’s-... it’s Noah,” under his breath just loud enough for him to hear.

Gabe’s thought processes came to a screeching halt as his personal life collided with his alias for just a moment. To hear that Noah was in Washington, DC, much less at the Zion Founders Fundraiser, was the last thing he’d expected to hear that evening. As Reed continued to drop curses in the background, Gabe turned to face the bar and flashed a polite, but forced smile at the bartender as she eyed him with nervous sweeps. He didn’t reach for the glass right away as it was set in front of him on a small black napkin. “Please, tell me I didn’t just hear what I think I did…” he muttered internally as a dozen different possibilities for how the night would turn out flashed thumb-nailed pre-constructions across his HUD. But Reed’s uncomfortable sputtering confirmed what he was hoping was just a joke.

“No, you heard me right.” One hand swiped over his face in a downward motion and scratched in frustration at the stubble he hadn’t bothered to shave in almost a week and desperately avoided Falken’s infuriated ‘what the fuck’ gestures in the background. “The bastard’s actually here, arrived in DC last night with Hannah and President-Elect Kamski. H-he stopped by the house lookin’ for you, but I told him you were undercover an’couldn’t make an appointment. I told him t’keep his nose outta our shit, but he-” Reed paused and squinted over Falken’s shoulder as Noah slipped the tiny camera into his pocket with a ‘Can you hear me alright in there?’ “Oh, son of a….” “What the hell is he doing…?”

The camera-bulb didn’t act as a walkie. And to their credit, all the personnel Noah could plainly see -now that his recognition software had sorted fact from fiction- didn’t stir, much less blow their cover. He knew without being told what this sting was about, and who it was the FBI were really here to keep tabs on. Perhaps him showing up was akin to being a ‘fly in the ointment’, but as yet he hadn’t done anything other than offend their Christmas tree. He gave the indifferent lens one more wordless glance as he rolled the bulb between his fingers. For a brief moment he considered winking at it, but decided at the last moment to pocket the device instead. Perhaps it’d come in handy elsewhere- for someone who hadn’t been properly equipped for this operation, it was the best he could do on such short notice. Failing that, he could always speak very loudly and deliberately at Gabriel’s collar mic, if he’d let him get close enough. The owner of the ear he recognized from before still hadn’t turned around. Outwardly he didn’t look very distressed. Only the new hunch in his shoulders, invisible to the human eye as it was, said it all. Far be it from him to keep ‘Vincent’ in suspense.

#rk900 #rk1800 #dbhilluminate #noriel #dbhiequilibrium #noah #gabriel

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questionsonislam · 4 years

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Can you prove the life afterdeat according to the Qur'an?

Since there is no sovereignty that does not reward those who obey it and punish the rebellious, an eternal sovereignty which is at the degree of absolute dominicality rewarding those who form a relation with it through belief and submit to its decrees, and its punishing rebellious disbelievers who deny its proud sovereignty will be in a manner fitting for its mercy and beauty, its dignity and glory. Thus, the Names Sustainer of All the Worlds and Just Monarch reply to our question.

Also, we see as clearly as the sun, as daylight, a general mercy and all-embracing compassion and munificence on the face of the earth. For example, every spring that mercy adorns all the fruit-bearing trees and plants like houris; it fills their hands with every sort of fruit and they hold them out to us, saying: Help yourselves, and eat! So does it give us sweet, healing honey to eat from the poisonous bee, and dresses us in the softest silk by means of a handless insect. It deposits for us in a handful of tiny seeds pounds of food, making those tiny stores into reserve supplies. Such a mercy and compassion surely would not execute these lovable, grateful, worshipping believers which they nurture so kindly. They rather dismiss them from their duties in this worldly life to bestow on them still more brilliant instances of mercy, and in so doing the Names of All-Compassionate and Munificent answer our question.

Also, we see before our eyes that a hand of wisdom works in all creatures on the face of the earth and a justice is in force with its measures, nothing superior to which the human mind can conceive of. For example, a pre-eternal wisdom inscribes in man s faculty of memory, which is one instance of wisdom in his thousands of faculties and physical systems and is as tiny as a miniscule seed, his entire life-story and the numerous events which touch on him, making it into a small library. He then places it in the pocket of his mind as a note from the register of his actions which will be published for his judgement at the Great Gathering, in order to continuously remind him of this. And an eternal justice places on all creatures their members with the finest balance, and makes all of them from the microbe to the rhinoceros, and the fly to the simurgh bird, and from a flowering plant to the flower of the spring, which opens thousands of millions of flowers in the spring with a beauty of art and balance with no waste within a mutual proportion, equilibrium, order and beauty; it gives all living creatures their rights of life with perfect balance, and makes good things produce good results and bad things, bad results; and since the time of Adam it has made itself felt forcefully through the blows it has dealt to rebellious and tyrannous peoples. Certainly and without doubt, just as the sun cannot be without the day, so that pre-eternal wisdom and eternal justice cannot be without the hereafter. The Names of All-Wise and Sapient, Just and Equitable would never permit the awesome injustice, inequity, and unwisdom of oppressed and oppressor being equal in death, and thus they decisively answer our question.

Also, since whenever living creatures seek their natural wishes, which are beyond their power, through the tongues of their innate abilities and essential needs, which is supplication of a sort, all their needs are given to them by a most compassionate, hearing, kind unseen hand; and since six or seven out of ten of human supplications, which are voluntary, especially those of the prophets and the elect, are accepted in a way contrary to the normal course of things; it is understood certainly that behind the veil of the Unseen is one who listens and hears the sighs of the suffering and prayers of the needy, and replies to them; he sees the least need of the smallest living being and compassionately replying by action, gratifies it. There is no possibility of doubting therefore that the one who includes in his supplication all the most important, general supplications of man, the most important of creatures, which are connected with all the Divine Names and attributes and are for immortality; and takes behind him all the other prophets, who are the suns, stars, and leaders of mankind, making them exclaim: Amen! Amen! ; and for whom benedictions are recited several times every day; and to whose supplication all the members of his community rejoin: Amen! Amen! , indeed, in whose supplication all creatures take part, saying: Yes, O Lord! Do give what he asks! We too want what he seeks! of all the causes necessitating resurrection under these irresistible conditions, only a single supplication of Muhammad (Peace and blessings be upon him) for immortality in the hereafter and eternal happiness would have been sufficient reason for the existence of Paradise and creation of the hereafter, which are as easy for Divine power as the creation of the spring stating this, the Names of Answerer of Prayer, All-Hearing, and All-Compassionate answer our question.

Also, since as clearly as the sun is shown by daylight, behind the veil is One Who has disposal over the universal death and revivification in the alternation of the seasons on the earth; and a pen of power inscribes the mighty globe with the ease and orderliness of a garden or even a tree, and the splendid spring with the facility and symmetrical adornment of a flower, and the species of plants and animals as though they were three hundred thousand books displaying three hundred thousand samples of resurrection, all one within the other and intermingled and mixed up together yet without disarrangement or disorder, all resembling each other yet without confusion, error, or fault; perfectly, regularly, and meaningfully; and since despite this vast profusion that One works with boundless mercy and infinite wisdom; and since He has subjugated, decorated, and furnished the vast universe for man like a house, and appointing him His vicegerent on earth, committing to him the supreme trust, from the bearing of which the mountains, sky, and earth shrank, and has raised him to the rank of commanding officer over other living beings, honoured him with the Divine address and conversation, and since He has thus bestowed on man this supreme station and in all the revealed decrees promised him eternal happiness and immortal life in the hereafter; certainly and without doubt He will open up that realm of bliss for ennobled and honoured man, which is as easy for His power as the spring, and bring about the resurrection of the dead and Last Judgement stating this, the Names of Granter of Life and Dealer of Death, Ever-Living and Self-Subsistent, and All-Powerful and Knowing reply to the question we asked of our Creator.

Yes, if one considers the power which every spring raises to life identically the roots of all the trees and plants and creates the three hundred thousand plant and animal samples of the resurrection of the dead, and if one visualizes the thousand year period of each of the communities of Moses and Muhammad (Peace and blessings be upon them), and they are pictured in the imagination, it will be seen that the two thousand springs12 display a thousand samples of resurrection and a thousand evidences. It is to be blind and unreasonable a thousand times over to consider bodily resurrection difficult for such a power.

Also, just as relying on Almighty God s thousands of promises, the twenty-four thousand prophets, who are the most renowned of mankind, have unanimously proclaimed and proved through their miracles that eternal happiness and immortality in the hereafter are true; so innumerable people of sainthood have put their signature to the same truth through their illuminations and unfoldings. Since this is so, surely this truth is as clear as the sun, and those who doubt it are crazy.

Yes, the ideas and judgements of one or two experts in a science or art concerning their science refute the opposing ideas of ten men who are not experts in it, even if they are experts in their own fields. Similarly, two people making a positive statement about a subject, for example, proving the crescent moon of Ramadan on the day it is uncertain, or claiming: there is a garden on the earth where coconuts resembling cans of milk are grown defeat a thousand deniers, and win the case. For the one making the positive statement has only to point out the place where the coconuts are found to easily win. Whereas the one who denies it can prove his case only by searching the whole face of the earth and demonstrating that the coconuts are not to be found anywhere. So one who makes a report of Paradise and the realm of bliss and asserts that they exist wins his case by only demonstrating through illumination a shadow or distillation of it, like in the cinema, while those who deny it can only win by proving their denial by seeing the whole universe and all time from pre-eternity to post-eternity, and demonstrating it. It is because of this that the investigative scholars have agreed on the rule on condition they are not inherently impossible, denials which are not specific but look to the whole universe like the truths of belief, cannot be proved, and have accepted it as a fundamental principle.

In consequence of this definite truth, while the opposing ideas of thousands of philosophers should not cast the slightest doubt, or even suspicion, on even a single truthful report concerning the questions of belief, you may understand what a lunacy it is to fall into doubt at the denials of a handful of philosophers who concerning the pillars of belief understand no further than their eyes see, have no heart, are blind, and have grown distant from spiritual matters. For the pillars of faith have been agreed upon by one hundred and twenty thousand expert scholars and truthful reporters with their positive assertions, and innumerable specialists in the field of reality and investigative scholars.

Also, we see with our own eyes as clearly as daylight both in ourselves and all around us a comprehensive mercy and all-embracing wisdom and constant bestowal of grace. We observe too the traces and manifestations of an awesome sovereignty of dominicality, a precise and lofty justice, and a proud and glorious government. Indeed, the wisdom which attaches instances of wisdom to a tree to the number of its fruits and flowers; and the mercy which bestows bounties and favours on every human being to the number of his faculties, members, and feelings; and the proud, yet gracious justice which deals blows at rebellious peoples like those of Noah, Hud, and Salih (Peace be upon them) and the Ad, Thamud, and people of Pharoah, and protects the rights of the least living being; and the verse:

And among His signs is this, that heaven and earth stand by His command; then when He calls you, by a single call, from the earth, behold, you [straightway] come forth (30:25)

all state the following with a majestic conciseness:

Just as at the summons of their commander and the sound of the bugle, the disciplined soldiers stationed in two barracks spring to arms and their duties; so whenever the bugle-call of Israfil (Peace be upon him) summons those lying in death in the vast heavens and in the earth, which are like two orderly barracks for the soldiers of the Pre-Eternal Monarch, obedient to His command, they will immediately don the uniforms of their bodies and rise up. Proving and demonstrating this is the same situation displayed by the beings in the barracks of the earth in the spring at the trumpet-blast of the Angel of Thunder, and from it is understood the infinite grandeur of the sovereignty of dominicality. As is proved in the Tenth Word, it is certainly therefore utterly impossible that the realm of the hereafter and arena of the resurrection and Great Gathering, which are most definitely demanded by that mercy, wisdom, grace, and justice, should not be inaugurated, and for that infinitely beautiful mercy to be transformed into ugly cruelty, and for that boundless perfection of wisdom to be turned into infinitely faulty futility and purposeless wastefulness, and that sweet grace to be transformed into bitter treachery, and that finely balanced and equitable justice to be turned into severe tyranny, and that utterly powerful and majestic eternal sovereignty to decline, and with the resurrection not occuring for it to lose all its splendour, and for the perfections of its dominicality to be marred by impotence and defect. This would be completely unreasonable and a compounded impossibility, outside the bounds of possibility and false and precluded.

For all those with intelligence would surely understand what a cruel unkindness it would be, having nurtured man so solicitously and given him through faculties like the heart and intellect a sense of longing for eternal happiness and everlasting life in the hereafter, to despatch him to eternal non-being; and how contrary to wisdom it would be, having attached hundreds of purposes and instances of wisdom to only his brain, to waste through endless death all his faculties and his abilities with their thousands of purposes thus making them devoid of all use, purpose and result; and how utterly opposed to the splendour of that sovereignty and perfect dominicality it would be, by not carrying out His thousands of promises, to demonstrate God forbid! His impotence and ignorance. You may make an analogy with these for grace and justice. Thus, the Names of Most Merciful, All-Just, All-Wise, Munificent, and Ruler answer with the above truths the question we asked our Creator about the hereafter, and prove it as indubitably and clearly as the sun.

Moreover, we observe that prevailing over everything is a vast and comprehensive preservation which records in their seeds, on the tablets of the World of Similitudes, in their memories, which are tiny samples of the Preserved Tablet, and particularly in the faculty of memory, which is a tiny library in man s brain which is at the same time very large, and in other mirrors, physical and non-physical, in which they are reflected, the numerous forms of all living creatures and all things, and the notebooks of the duties they perform in accordance with their essential natures, and the pages of their deeds pertaining to the glorifications they perform towards the Divine Names through the tongues of their beings; it inscribes them in these, and records and preserves them. Then, when the time comes every spring, which is a flower of Divine power they display to us all those immaterial inscriptions in physical form, proclaim to the universe with millions of tongues within that supreme flower, and with the strength of millions of examples, evidences, and samples, the wondrous truth of resurrection expressed in the verse:

When the pages are spread out.(81:10)

It proves most cogently that foremost man, and all living beings and all things, were created not to topple over into nothingness, to fall into non-existence, to be annihilated, but to win immortality through progressing, and permanence through being purified, and to take up the eternal duties required by their innate capacities.

Yes, we observe every spring that the innumerable plants which die in the doomsday of the autumn, and all the trees, roots, seeds, and grains in the resurrection of the spring recite the verse When the pages are spread out. Expounding each in its own tongue one meaning of the verse, one facet of it, with examples of the duties it performed in previous years, they all testify to that vast preservation. They display in everything the four vast truths of the verse,

He is the First, and the Last, the Evident, and the Inward, (57:3)

and instruct us with the ease and certainty of the spring.

The manifestations of these four Names occur in all things from the most particular to the most universal. For example, through manifesting the Name of First, a seed, the source of a tree, is a precise programme of it and a small receptacle containing the faultless systems of the tree s creation and all the conditions of its formation, thus proving the vastness of Divine preservation.

Then, together with the tree s seeds, its fruit manifests the Name of Last; they are coffers containing the indexes of all the duties the tree has performed in accordance with its nature and the principles of its second life, thus testifying at a maximum level to Divine preservation.

The tree s physical form, which manifests the Name of Evident, is a finely proportioned, skilfully decorated garment. Like a seventy-hued robe of the houris which has been embroidered with gilded motifs, it demonstrates visibly the vast power, perfect wisdom, and beautiful mercy within Divine preservation.

As for the machinery within the tree, which manifests the Name of Inward, it is a regular, miraculous, faultless factory and workbench, a balanced cauldron of food which leaves unnourished none of its branches, fruits, or leaves, thus proving as brilliantly as the sun the perfect power, justice, and beautiful mercy and wisdom within Divine preservation.

Similarly, in respect of the annual seasons the globe is a tree. Through the manifestation of the Name of First, all the seeds and grains entrusted to Divine preservation in the season of autumn are small collections of the Divine commands concerning the formation of the tree of the face of the earth, which when it is enrobed in the garment of spring, puts forth millions of branches and twigs, and fruits and flowers. So too those seeds are lists of the principles proceeding from Divine Determining, and the tiny pages of the tree s deeds of the previous summer, and the notebooks of its tasks, which demonstrate self-evidently that they function through the infinite power, justice, wisdom, and mercy of a Glorious and Munificent Preserver.

Then the end of the annual tree of the earth is in the second autumn, its depositing in those tiny containers all the duties it has performed, all the glorifications it has recited before the Divine Names in accordance with its creation, and all the pages of its deeds that it will publish the following resurrection of spring, its handing them over to the hand of wisdom of the Glorious Preserver and reciting the Name of He is the Last before the whole universe in innumerable tongues.

The evident face of the tree is, by its opening three hundred thousand universal sorts of blossoms, which demonstrate three hundred thousand examples and signs of the resurrection of the dead; and its spreading out innumerable tables of mercifulness, providence, compassionateness, and munificence; and its offering banquets to living beings, its reciting the Name of He is the Evident with tongues to the number of its fruits, flowers, and foods, and offering praise and laudation, and showing as clearly as daylight the truth of When the pages are spread out.

The inner face of this majestic tree is a cauldron and workbench running precisely and in orderly fashion incalculable numbers of regular machines and finely balanced factories, which cook thousands of pounds of food out of one ounce and offer it to the hungry. It works with such precision and balance that it leaves no room for chance to interfere. Like some angels who glorify God with a thousand tongues, with the inner face of the earth it proclaims the Name of He is the Inward in a hundred thousand ways, and proves it.

Just as in respect of its annual life, the earth is a tree and makes the Divine preservation within those four Names a key to the door of resurrection, so in respect of its worldly life, it is again a well-ordered tree, whose fruits are sent to the market of the hereafter. It is a place of manifestation of those four Names and mirror to them so broad, and road leading to the hereafter so lengthy, our minds are incapable of comprehending and describing it; we can only say this much:

As the hands of a weekly clock which count the seconds, minutes, hours, and days resemble each other and prove each other, and one who sees the movement of the second hand is bound to assent to the movement of the others; so the days, which count the seconds of this world, which is a vast clock of the Glorious Creator of the Heavens and Earth, and the years, which count its minutes, and the centuries, which show its hours, and the ages, which make known its days, all resemble and prove each other. So too the Name of Preserver and those of He is the First, and the Last, the Evident, and the Inward inform us through innumerable signs that as certainly as the morning of this night will come, and this winter s spring, so will the everlasting spring and eternal morning come of the dark winter of this transitory world, thus answering with the above truths the question of resurrection concerning which we asked our Creator.

Also, since we see with our eyes and understand with our minds that man is the final and most comprehensive fruit of the tree of the universe.. and in respect of the Muhammadan (Peace and blessings be upon him) Reality is its original seed.. and the supreme sign of the Qur an of the universe.. and he is its Throne Verse bearing the Greatest Name.. and the most honoured guest in the palace of the universe.. the most active functionary empowered over the other inhabitants of the palace.. the official charged with overseeing the income and expenditure, and the planting and cultivation of the gardens in the quarter of the earth in the city of the universe.. and is its most noisy and responsible minister, equipped with hundreds of sciences and thousands of arts.. and an inspector and sort of vicegerent of the Monarch of Pre-Eternity and Post-Eternity, under His close scrutiny, in the region of the earth in the country of the universe.. and one with disposal over it whose actions, particular and universal, are all recorded.. who has undertaken the Supreme Trust, from which the heavens and earth and mountains shrank.. and before whom are two roads, on one of which he is the most wretched of living beings, and on the other, the most fortunate.. and he is a universal bondsman charged with most extensive worship.. the place of manifestation of the Greatest Name of the Monarch of the universe and a comprehensive mirror of all His Names.. a special addressee of His, with the best understanding of His Divine addresses and speech.. the most needy of the living beings of the universe.. and is a wretched living creature who has innumerable desires and goals, numberless enemies and things that harm him, despite his infinite poverty and impotence.. is the richest in regard to abilities and potentialities.. the most suffering in respect of the pleasures of life, whose enjoyment is marred by ghastly pains.. and a wondrous miracle of the power of the Eternally Besought One and marvel of Divine power who is the most needy and wanting, and worthy and deserving of immortality, and seeks and beseeches eternal happiness with endless prayers, and if all the pleasures of this world were given him, his desire for immortality would not be satisfied, and who loves to the degree of worshipping Him the One Who bestows bounties on him, and makes Him loved and is loved.. and all of whose faculties, which encompass the universe, testify that he was created to go to eternity.. and through the above twenty universal truths is bound to Almighty God s Name of Truth; and whose actions are continuously recorded by the All-Glorious Preserver s Name of Preserver, Who sees the most insignificant need of the tiniest animate being, hears it plaint and responds in action; and being related to the whole universe whose deeds are written down by the noble scribes of that Name and who more than anything else receives its attention..

As required by the above twenty truths, most certainly and without any doubt there will be a resurrection and judgement for man, and in accordance with the Name of Truth, he will receive reward for his above duties and punishment for his faults, and in accordance with the Name of Preserver, he will be questioned and called to account for his actions, all of which have been recorded, and the doors will be opened of the feasting halls of everlasting bliss in the eternal realm, and of the prison of eternal misery; man, who has been an officer with command over numerous species of beings in this world, and has intervened in them and sometimes thrown them into confusion, will not enter the soil never to be questioned concerning his actions, nor lay down in concealment not to be roused. For to hear the buzz of the fly and to answer it actively by giving it its rights of life, and not to hear the prayers for eternity made through the tongues of the above twenty truths of innumerable human rights which reverberate through the heavens and earth like thunder, and to transgress all those rights, and for a wisdom which as is testified to by the order of the fly s wing wastes not even such a wing, to waste utterly man s abilities, which are bound by those truths, and his hopes and desires, which reach out to eternity, and the many bonds and truths of the universe which nourish those abilities and desires, would be such an injustice and so impossible and such a tyrannical ugliness that all beings which testify to the Names of Truth, Preserver, All-Wise, All-Beauteous, and All-Compassionate reject it, declaring it to be utterly impossible and precluded. Thus, in reply to our question to our Creator about resurrection, the Names of Truth, Preserver, All-Wise, All-Beauteous, and All-Compassionate, say: Just as we are truth and reality, and the beings that testify to us are true, so the resurrection of the dead is true and certain.

And since... I was going to write more, but since the above is as clear as the sun, I have curtailed the discussion.

Thus, making an analogy with the matters in the above examples and sinces, through their manifestations and reflections in beings, all Almighty God s hundred, indeed a thousand, Names which look to the universe prove self-evidently the one they signify; so too do they demonstrate the resurrection of the dead and hereafter, and prove them definitively.

Also, just as through all His decrees and the scriptures He has revealed and most of His Names, by which he is described, our Sustainer gives us sacred and decisive answers to the question we asked our Creator; so He causes it to be answered through His angels, and in another fashion through their tongue:

There have been hundreds of incidents unanimously attested to since the time of Adam of your meeting both with spirit beings and with us, and there are innumerable signs and evidences of our existence and worship and that of the spirit beings. In agreement with each other, we have told your leaders when we have met with them that we travel through the halls of the hereafter and in some of its apartments, and we always say this. We have no doubt that the fine, eternal halls that we have wandered through, and the well-appointed decorated palaces and dwellings beyond them await important guests, in order to accommodate them. We give you certain news of this. They reply to our question thus.

Also, since our Creator appointed Muhammad the Arabian (Peace and blessings be upon him) as the greatest teacher, best master, and truest guide, who is neither confused nor confuses, and sent him as His last envoy, before anything, in order to progress and advance from the degree of knowledge of certainty to those of vision of certainty and absolute certainty, we should ask this master the question we asked of our Creator. For just as that Being, through his thousand miracles, which were a mark of our Creator s confirmation, and as a miracle of the Qur an, proved that the Qur an is true and God s Word; so, through its forty aspects of miraculousness, as a miracle of his, the Qur an proves that he was true and God s Messenger. The reality of resurrection which they prove one, the tongue of the Manifest World, claimed it throughout his life, confirmed by all the prophets and saints, and the other, the tongue of the World of the Unseen, claims it with thousands of its verses, confirmed by all the revealed scriptures and truths of the universe, is as certain as the sun and daylight.

Yes, a question like resurrection, which is the most strange and awesome matter and beyond the reason, could only be solved through the instruction of two such wondrous masters, and understood.

The reason the early prophets did not explain resurrection in detail like the Qur an was that at that time mankind was still at a primitive stage of nomadism. There is little detailed explanation in preliminary instruction.

And since the angels inform us that they have seen the hereafter and the dwellings of the eternal realm, evidences testifying to the existence and worship of the angels, spirits, and spirit beings, are also indirect evidence for the existence of the hereafter.

And since after Divine unity the thing Muhammad (Peace and blessings be upon him) most constantly claimed and asserted throughout his life was the hereafter, certainly all his miracles and proofs which point to his messengership and veracity in one way testify indirectly to the existence of the hereafter and that it will come.

And since one quarter of the Qur an is about resurrection and the hereafter and it tries to prove it with thousands of its verses, and gives news of it, all the proofs and evidences of the Qur an s veracity prove indirectly the existence of the hereafter, and its being thrown open.

Now see how firm and certain is this pillar of belief!

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iatethepomegranate · 6 years

Note

Wally getting backed into a corner, hurt and unable to escape. How would he react if Dick tried to protect him? If Dick had gotten hurt would he blame himself?

(So… I kinda took this prompt and wrote a 2k fic instead. Oops? I was originally going to do pre-season 2 but then I thought: what would make this worse? Ah, post-Endgame. Wally is back because of *mumblemumble* reasons.)

The wound in his leg was deep. Too deep. Wally slumped against the wall. Every time he tried to tap into the speed force, the wound bled faster, pain lancing through his thigh with enough force to make him see stars. It would heal eventually, but eventually did not help when half a dozen heavily-armed and heavily-muscled guys were bearing down upon him.

He let himself slide to the floor, lightheaded from the effort it had taken to remain upright. He wasn’t even supposed to be here. Black Canary hadn’t cleared him for active duty yet, and he didn’t even have a new hero name to replace the one he’d given to Bart.

But most of the Team had been on other missions, and he wasn’t about to let Nightwing go into the field without backup. God, he hoped Nightwing was in better shape than he was. This was supposed to be a simple recon mission. In and out. Automated defence systems Nightwing could take out in his sleep.

Their intel had been wrong. Badly wrong.

And now Wally was trapped in a corner, his rabbit-heart pushing blood out of his wound faster than his body could clot it.

One of the men had a scythe. A scythe. It still glinted with Wally’s blood, wicked and hungry for more.

“We could take him,” said the shortest of the men. “He could have useful intel.”

“We’re not equipped to trap a speedster,” the scythe-wielder replied. “Besides, he’ll bleed out before we get him to base. Keep it clean. No witnesses.”

“What about the other guy?”

“Psh. The other six went after him. He’s dead.”

Wally didn’t want to believe that. Nightwing–Dick–was endlessly resourceful. He’d faced worse odds before.

Besides, weren’t they owed some good fortune by now? They’d been through enough.

Six Months Ago

“Dick, we need to talk about that kiss.”

“Do we?” Dick still had a weird look on his face, like hefully expected to wake up any second. Wally couldn’t blame him.

“Uh, yeah, dude,” Wally told him. “It’s not every day yourbest friend plants one on you.”

“It’s not every day your best friend comes back from thedead,” Dick said, his voice oddly cool. Wally tried not to take it personally;there was tension in Dick’s shoulders that betrayed his discomfort.Embarrassment, more likely. He’d kissed Wally in front of the entire team.

“Speedforce.”

“Whatever.” Again, that wasn’t really in character for him.Dick had become more and more fact-oriented as he’d grown older, possibly aside-effect of leading the team while running a complex undercover operation…and being Kaldur’s only point of contact for a long time before Artemis joinedhim.

Wally sat on the couch in Dick’s Blüdhaven apartment. Dickhad made a hasty escape after the debrief at the Watchtower, and Wally hadgiven him a ten-minute head start before coming after him.

He’d hoped sitting down would encourage Dick to do the same,but he just kept standing there, his hands curling into fists and uncurlingrepeatedly. It wasn’t like him to have such a blatant tell. Wally could usuallyread his tells anyway, owing to how close they’d once been, but this was somethingelse.

“I’m not angry,” Wally said. “I’m just surprised and I wannaknow where that came from.” He could feel his hands shaking, but out of respectfor the fact Dick clearly couldn’t hide his tells, he didn’t try to hide his,either.

“You really don’t know?” Dick said in a small voice. Wally’sheart stuttered.

“Let’s just say I don’t,” he said. His voice as small asDick’s. Could this mean what he thought it meant?

“Wally…” Dick’s voice cracked, and he lowered his gaze toblink rapidly. “I’ve been in love with you for years.”

“How long?” Wally croaked.

“Seven years.” Dick let out one rueful laugh. “Maybe evenlonger.”

So, Wally had been dealing with his fair share of curveballssince he was unceremoniously dumped back into the physical world after spendingmonths in the speedforce. But none of them had knocked the wind out of his gutlike this one.

“I’m still fuzzy on my timelines, dude,” Wally said, and hecouldn’t stop his voice from shaking. “When was what, exactly?”

“Not long before we saved Superboy,” Dick replied. He wasstill tense.

“I… me too, then. Huh.” Wally had never given it muchthought, mainly because he hadn’t thought it’d amount to anything. He’d alwaysbeen good at denial.

“You…” Dick let out a sharp breath. “Are you saying…?”

“Yes.”

“Oh my God.” Dick finally flung himself onto the couch, onlyto hide his face in his hands. “I’ve been sitting on this all this time for no reason.I thought you were straight.”

Wally snorted. “Ditto.”

“This is a disaster,” Dick muttered.

“Guess we better do some crisis management,” Wally replied,poking Dick’s shoulder. “I… look. Everything’s a mess right now. I need time toget my head sorted out, but… I wouldn’t mind giving us a shot… I mean, if youwant.”

“I want, Wally.” He sat up, his blue eyes overbright as if holdingback tears. “I thought I’d lost you forever.”

“I’m here, babe. I’m here, and I’m not going anywhere.”

Now

“Shit, it’s Nightwing!”

Wally jerked awake, just as one of the guys looming over himtook an escrima stick to the head. How long had he been out?

A streak of bluecrossed his vision, and then another guy was down. Nightwing slowed, and eventhrough the haze of Wally’s blood loss, he could plainly see the look of sheerfury etched onto his face. He was pissed,and all on Wally’s behalf. That was kind of flattering. And maybe a little hot.

Wally had definitelylost too much blood.

The four remainingmen took on Nightwing at once. The motions made Wally lightheaded, but hecouldn’t stop watching. Nightwing ducked, swerved, hit, blocked, kicked. Thescythe caught his arm, flicking blood in an arc. Nightwing grabbed the scytheand slammed the handle into the man’s face, knocking him out cold.

The other three went down quickly. Nightwing stood theregasping for a moment, pressing a hand to his bleeding arm. Then he rushed toWally’s side, pressing a cloth to his leg.

“Nightwing to…” He growled under his breath. “To anyone. Original Kid Flash is down. Epicblood loss. Need immediate assistance at my coordinates.” Nightwing pressed thecloth harder to Wally’s leg, but Wally couldn’t feel very much anymore. “Hey.Dude. Don’t you dare die on me.”

Wally must’ve closed his eyes. He couldn’t remember doingthat. He forced them open, but they were heavier than a food truck.

“I’m… trying.” It was all he could promise. God, he wastired.

“Wally, you promised.” Dick took in a sharp breath. “Staywith me. I still technically outrank you. I will make that an order.”

Wally laughed weakly. “Yes, sir.”

He tried to stay awake, tried to listen to Nightwing’sincreasingly frantic rambling, but his injuries could not be denied. Soon enough,he was dragged out of the waking world once again.

Next he woke, he was in a nice hospital bed. The soft mechanicalwhirring told him that he was on the Watchtower. Dick wasn’t nearby. Where was…

Oh, no. He’d been hurt, too. He didn’t heal like Wallycould.

Wally sat up, probing the spot on his thigh the wound hadbeen. He found a bandage, and the telltale bumps of stitches. They’d dissolvesoon enough. There was an IV hooked up to his arm, so he’d have to drag thedamn thing with him to find Dick.

He should’ve fought harder. Dick probably already tired fromfighting the rest of the guards, and then he had to save Wally’s sorry ass. Wallywasn’t even supposed to be on the mission. Maybe he should’ve listened to Dick’sconcerns and stayed home.

Sometimes having super-speed was a curse. Too many thoughtsat once.

The doors leading out to the corridor hissed open, and thenin walked Dick, having replaced his Nightwing gear with a pair of sweats and sunglasses.His arm was bandaged to hell and back, held in place in a sling.

“Hey,” he said quietly. “Sorry I wasn’t here. Had to debriefBats. Been awake long?”

Wally shook his head. Dick came to sit beside him, wincing alittle.

“How’s the leg?”

“Just waiting for the stitches to dissolve.” Wally wanted togather Dick into a hug, but couldn’t bear to cause him any more pain. “How’sthe arm?”

“Our wannabe Grim Reaper got me pretty good,” Dick said,seeming to relax now that he was talking about his own injuries. “I’ll be offactive duty for a few weeks. Have to watch for infections, look after thebandages, blah blah blah. It’ll be fine. I’m fit, and Alfred will make sure Ieat my vegetables.”

Wally had gotten Dick off patrol for weeks. God damn it. Heshould’ve been faster, smarter, or not even gone on the mission at all. Dick hadbeen relying on him, and he just made the whole thing worse.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“Don’t do that,” Dick replied. “We weren’t meant to have anyresistance at all. Besides, everyone gets hurt. If anyone should beapologising, it should be me… for not getting to you sooner.”

Wally didn’t feel any better. Dick always tookresponsibility for things he didn’t have to.

“Don’t give me that look,” Dick said sharply. “It’s not yourfault you got hurt.”

“It’s not your fault either!” Wally hadn’t planned to yell,but it burst out of him like he was possessed.

“Okay,” Dick said primly. “Neither of us is at fault.”

“No, I…”

“Shh. The decision’s been made. You didn’t mess up, andneither did I.”

“Since when do you ever give up responsibility?”

“When it’s the best decision. This isn’t the first time. Youknow that.” Dick sighed, and the fight drained out of him. “Wally, I can’t argueabout this anymore.” He swallowed visibly, and the fingers on his unbound hand grippedthe edge of the bed. “I nearly lost you. Again. Please… can we just…”

Wally still hated himself a little bit for getting Dickhurt, but he couldn’t keep fighting, either. They were both exhausted andemotionally wrung out.

So Wally set all of it aside and put his hand on the smallof Dick’s back. “Let’s get out of here. You can watch me eat my body weight inpasta and put on a bad movie we can laugh at.”

Dick managed a tiny smile, but one that was far more genuine.“I like the sound of that.”

They hadn’t really resolved anything, but sometimes it wasbetter to take a step back and deal with it later. The fear of losing Wallyagain wasn’t leaving Dick’s eyes any time soon, and Wally wasn’t about to shakeoff the guilt of getting Dick hurt, but they could comfort each other tonight.

Sometimes that was more important.

#birdflash #asks #headcanon #young justice #thotwing #fanfiction #my fics

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xarciel · 6 years

Text

Why Megatron’s Redemption Arc Falls Flat - Part 2

So I realised as I was writing this that I have way too much to say for a single post. There’s a lot to unpack in the metatextual promotion of Megatron in s2 of MTMTE and LL, so instead of this being Part 2/2 as expected it will be Part 2/??. I’ll update the links at the bottom if/when more posts gets written.

Since his introduction to the crew at the beginning of Season 2 Megatron has fundamentally changed the way the ensemble cast interacted and resolved situations. This is to be expected, of course, since Megatron is a divisive, dynamic character, but the issue isn’t that this /has/ happened, but /how/ it has happened. Specifically, Megatron is positioned as the main protagonist in the ensemble, at the expense of other characters’ arcs.

To make Megatron sympathetic we see the same four steps used throughout the series: -> Raise an issue as something current Megatron cares about -> Retcon the issue through flashbacks as something that Megatron has always cared about -> Resolve the issue in the present, allowing Megatron to show off his ethical ways -> Refuse to acknowledge specific actions taken by Megatron during the war, and preceding the start of MTMTE

This is used in conjunction with positioning all those against Megatron’s rehabilitation as villains (Rodimus on Cybertron, Starscream at the trial, Getaway on the Lost Light and the DJD on Necroworld), ensuring that we get plenty of shots of Megs looking sad (I counted 42 in MTMTE, not including #50-55) and introducing new, even more heinous villains (the DJD) to undermine Megatron’s atrocities up to this point. We’re given extensive monologues from Megatron as his journey progresses, and when he does act in ways that undermine his redemption the story sweeps them under the rug, focussing on other more positive areas instead.

A simple example: Megatron hates mneumosurgery. He considers it a violation of the highest order, as no-one should be able to alter the mind or mental state of another without their permission. At the beginning of Season 2 however, he permanently activates Trailcutter’s FIM chip without his consent, and aside from a single line from Trailcutter this is never brought up again. This is, in fact, altering Trailcutter’s mental state without his permission, but because it’s not done in the same invasive way the narrative skips over the ethical ramification of Megatron’s actions, to focus on the positives they bring.

On the subject of mneumosurgery, this presents the perfect Raise, Retcon, Resolve method described above. Issue #28: Megatron’s hatred of mneumosurgery is Raised when Optimus offers using it as a way to expedite Megatron’s trial. Issue #34: Megatron’s hatred for mneumosurgery is Retconned to stem from a lobotomisation he was forced to undergo by the Functionists when he was still a miner. Issue #48: Rodimus orders Chromedome to use mneumosurgery to determine Atomizer’s guilt in the attack on Megatron - Megatron Resolves his status as the more moral of the pair by being against this use of mnuemosurgery. The Refuse step comes into play with one of Megatron’s schemes from #14 of Robots in Disguise, which takes place roughly 12 months before #28. This issue involves Megatron revealing that he has had Prowl under mind control via Bombshell for months, using him to grow Decepticon sympathy and having him commit atrocities as a Decepticon plant. Nowhere in MTMTE is this even vaguely referenced- pre-MTMTE Megatron is never reflected on within the text.

The fact that the narrative simultaneously punishes Rodimus and Optimus for committing morally questionable actions for good reasons means that Megatron is portrayed in a more positive light than his actions deserve. We are shown, and focus on, Megatron’s suffering from mneumosurgery - the more complex arguments from the practice are laid aside in search of a simple morality arc.

To help further develop sympathy for Megatron, the narrative introduces a new set of villains to replace and even outstrip the atrocities Megatron has committed in the past. This group, the DJD, commit heinous acts against established ensemble characters and their own faction for personal and professional pleasure, and are shown to be incalcitrant to change, even when negotiating with Megatron. Language used by Megatron to describe them repeatedly emphasises his opinion they are more morally corrupt than he ever was, calling them ‘the biggest monsters of all’ and ‘the dark side of the Decepticon cause’. This both distances Megatron from the DJD in the readers minds, and again reinforces the idea that Megatron is no longer the evil mastermind from previous arcs, furthering his redemption arc without any significant character growth on his end.

In the lead up to the Dying of the Light two issues are dedicated to recalling the specific atrocities committed by Tarn on Skids during the war, specifically to prime the audience for the DJD’s appearance as main villains in the finale. Simultaneously, Megatron is undergoing a vow of pacifism, using the four steps to invite audience sympathy and further drive a wedge between past Megatron and redeemed Megatron. Raise: #32 - Megatron talks with Ravage about how he is tired of fighting Retcon: #37 - Megatron the miner originally promoted ‘non-violent direct action’ Resolve: #49 - Megatron takes a vow of pacifism Refuse: Megatron the gladiator, the assassination of the Senate, literally anything from the last 4 million years

While undertaking this vow of pacifism, however, Megatron fails to consider the impact of it on those around him - specifically, by marking himself as a strict non-combatant, he refuses to provide back up to the LL crew in any situation they may need it. Compared with other pacifistic characters such as Ratchet and Rung, this simplistic ‘fighting is bad’ policy demonstrates how Megatron is rewarded within text without considering the issue on a complex level. He is granted moral superiority by simple virtue of refusing to fight, even if his decision may lead to preventable deaths. This view is ultimately self-centric - when compared to Drift’s arc and how he uses his skills to protect others as redemption for committing crimes against them in the first place, Megatron’s redemption is tea tray shallow.

The issues of how Megatron is positioned as sympathetic through framing those against his rehabilitation as antagonists is a post for another time (since this one’s already getting pretty long), but consider the following: from issue #28 to issue #49, there are 42 panels of Megatron looking sad. These panels come either as individual closeups, or panels where Megatron is in the mid-ground and additional body language as well as his face are used to convey his sadness. Once you remove the DJD and Scavengers issues, this is 15 issues, and roughly three panels per issue of Megatron looking sad. This strong emphasis on Megatron’s feelings, and specifically his negative emotions, are used to create sympathy for him by using basic story-telling techniques - to use an old fashioned term, Megatron is being Woobified.

Making Megatron into a ‘relatable’ character was not something that happened in MTMTE by accident. There was extensive planning on the story and art side to make sure that Megatron came across as sympathetic, even though through his actions Megatron never truly shows much evidence of redemption. The Dying of the Light and the Functionist Universe arcs are entire suitcases that still need unpacking here, but for now I’ll leave it with this: a redemption arc is a character making up for past mistakes - a process of self-reflection and action taken to make amends for things they’ve done in the past.

Where is it that we see Megatron making amends for those he’s hurt in the past?

[Link to Part 1]

A quick recap on Megatron (and his sad faces), issue by issue for those interested:

#28: Megatron argues that ‘tampering with someone’s head’ (accessing or altering their mental state) is the one place he will not go. Rodimus tells him he deserves to die for his crimes, and we get 3 panels of Megs looking sad. LL members graffiti his door and Whirl attacks him. Megatron tells Whirl that Whirl is only alive due to Megs’ mercy because of their interactions 4 million years ago.

#29: Flashback to the trial: Starscream says Megatron deserves pity - 3 panels of Megs looking sad. Megatron permanently enables Trailbreaker’s FIM chip without his consent (thereby altering his mental state).

#30: More flashbacks to the trial - Megs gives his statement, manipulates the trial using a legal loophole to avoid judgement and issues a public renouncement of the Decepticons (under duress by Optimus) - 8 panels of Megs looking sad.

#31: Megs is accused of being responsible for crew members disappearing - 3 panels of Megs looking sad. When Nightbeat works out the cause Megatron berates him and blames the disappearances on Nightbeat for not being faster, even though knowing the cause could not have prevented it.

#32: Megatron is accused of killing crew members as the corpses bear wounds from a fusion cannon - he agrees to stay stationary while the others investigate further. We learn Megatron destroyed his signature weapon (under duress from Optimus). Megatron discusses his change of heart with Ravage, describes the DJD as ‘the biggest monsters of all’. Speaks of how old and tired he feels - 7 panels of Megs looking sad.

#33: the team wants to save a planet from destruction, Megatron says it’s not worth it because the planet doesn’t contain Cybertronians. Skids confronts him on his xenophobic views. 2 panels of Megs looking sad. Megatron reveals he can help the team as a last resort. Convinces Ravage to remain on the LL by arguing that he has seen ‘the dark side’ of the Decepticon cause. #34: Flashback to Megatron’s beginnings as a miner on Tarn. Foundation of Towards Peace and the Decepticon manifesto are retconned to being about equality only, and contain no xenophobia. Megatron loses his friend Terminus and is lobotimised by a mneumosurgeon - 6 panels of Megs looking sad.

#35: Megatron loots Trailcutter’s forcefield generator from his corpse. 2 panels of Megs looking sad. Megatron further distances himself from the DJD when Rodimus comes to see him, and the discussion of Megatron’s connection with the DJD is swept under the rug by the next plot thread. Megatron’s role in Trailcutter’s death is never revisited.

#36: Megatron speaks to Orion Pax from 4 million years ago about his moral dilemma - 2 panels of Megs looking sad.

#37: Flashback to the bar fight that got Megatron arrested - this fight is retconned to be caused by the modern day LL crew. Megatron’s manifesto is retconned to originally be about non violent direct action, with Impactor the one who dragged Megatron into the bar fight that gets him arrested.

#38: Megatron attacks Perceptor and demands to be sent through time. Magnus brings him under control. Megatron warps his behaviour from attacking to ‘remonstrating’ and offers no apology for it. The LL crew discovers how much the universe would have benefited from Megatron’s death and tries to enact it, but are betrayed by Whirl’s hatred of Functionism - 4 panels of Megs looking sad.

#39: The DJD find out about Megatron’s renouncement of the Decepticons and decide to continue their work regardless.

#40: Megatron is tricked by Ratchet into giving a poetry reading at ‘Visages’ which nobody attends. Megatron steals one of the time briefcases, which Rodimus and Perceptor are destroying.

#43: Megatron’s intuitive human avatar wields a Decepticon cane, which he discards when he realises its existence. 1 panel of Megs looking sadly at his old age in a mirror.

#44: Megatron agrees to detouring the ship to Necroworld as a way to postpone the search for the Knights. Megatron finds his field of death flowers while a monologue from the Necrobot about how all Cybertronians are killers is superimposed on the page. 1 panel of Megs looking sad.

#47: Megatron wakes up to find Tailgate beside him with mneunosurgeon needles on his fingers. He grabs Tailgate by the head. Cyclonus enters to this scene and attacks Megatron, leaving him with a dent in his head and a hole in his chest.

#48: Megatron apologises to Cyclonus, says he was not going to hurt Tailgate. The ethical question of Rodimus instructing Chromedome to probe Atomizer’s mind is called into question by Cyclonus and Megatron. Flashbacks to Skids time on Grindcore, where Tarn is the principle villain.

#49: Megatron refuses to fire on Sunder, even as he attacks the entire crew of the LL, states he is now a pacifist. Megatron attempts to persuade Rung to continue in his role, attempting to sweep Rung’s mistakes under the rug. We witness the full horror of Grindcore as Tarn’s pet project.

[Issues #50 onwards coming when I get around to it]

#tfrants #mtmte #lost light #maccadam

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becauseyouremybigbrother · 5 years

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Headcanon - Sex & Shipping

(This is a LONG and pointless post for most people, so don’t bother reading unless you’re interested in shipping with Sammy in any verse outside of Wincest. Even then, I just wanted to get it written out for myself, and like, the two other people who are interested.)

(Main Verse related only; Wincest verses are separate entities)

If there’s one thing John Winchester did not raise his little girl to be, it was a timid wallflower. Sam is confident in who she is (some might say too much so in the trouble it brings her at those times she refuses to listen to anyone else), and what she wants. That confidence has always guided her through life, from walking away from her family to go to college, believing she knew how best to stop Lilith, trusting that she would be strong enough to overpower Lucifer and throw herself into the pit, to releasing the Darkness in order to save her brother or promising a small group of refugees she and Dean would be able to find a way to save their world.

As protective as her father and older brother were of her when she was a young woman, it never precluded John from teaching his daughter from a very early age the most important lesson: How to deal with people who tried to take something to which she didn’t give them permission. When she was seven, she was suspended her first day at a new school for giving a nine-year old boy a black eye because he’d tried to kiss her. That was when John had to teach her lesson number two: Don’t get caught.

Having felt she never needed her father and brother’s protection led to a lot of her resentment when it came to the restrictions placed on her. She rebelled because she could; because she thought it proved something. Sometimes she got caught, and usually Dean paid the price for not being where he was supposed to be to protect her. Most of the time, she didn’t. She was smart, determined, and John had maybe taught his little girl how to be resourceful a little too well. She had sex for the first time when she was fifteen, about two hours before packing up and leaving that town behind for the next one (a good thing too, as it counts as her most awkward and uncomfortable experience since the boy had no idea what he was doing, and Sam really never, ever wanted to have to lay eyes on him again. Like, ever.) She’d planned that timing, though. Better for her father to never find out and end up blaming an innocent boy, who simply fell prey to Sam’s keener curiosity.

By college, the sex was far better. The guys knew what they were doing, and Sam knew what she wanted. More importantly, she was finally allowed to start letting sex and emotions intertwine with one another. She could let herself take the time to get to know someone, like how they made her laugh or made her feel when they were around, and actually start considering things like the future when it came to being with someone. Falling in love with Jesse had come almost too easily. Finally, Sam could let herself imagine a ‘someday’, with a home and a family of her own. Not a life on the road where everyone was suspect, and only her father and brother could be trusted, but a life where she had a special someone she could give all of her heart. She became a normal girl, who secretly waited for the moment when Jesse would propose to her.

But Azazel began the change to all of that the night he murdered Jesse.

Building a relationship with Sammy is heavily predicated on the point at which it happens in her life. So if you and your muse are interested in shipping with her, please keep the following points in mind. Sam’s vulnerability (ie, how alone she is at the time) plays heavily into how easily she will open up to trusting and giving herself to someone else.

ETA: You’re never going to hear Sam claim that she wishes she were more attractive or had a different nose or any other complaints about her looks. Sure, as a teenager she had issues with being too tall but even beyond the confidence she bears, Sam just doesn’t have time to worry about her looks. She knows she’s attractive, and that’s kind of where thoughts about it all end. There are monsters in the world who don’t care what you look like before they kill you, so Sam just can’t be bothered with that kind of stuff. And she’s just as confident in her sexuality. She’ll make the first move without hesitation if she gets the sense that the other party is just as interested. Her default is dominant and aggressive, particularly throughout the earlier seasons. This ends up passing quite a bit by Season 8. The more life beats her down, the more hits she takes to her heart, the more out of control she feels with everything around her, the more Sam longs for someone else to take the wheel for a time. To hold her, lie to her that everything is going to work out, and just let her rest for a little bit.

Pre-college - Don’t plan on it lasting beyond the moment her father moves them on to the next town. Though I suppose someone has to help her experience her first school dance.

College years - Very open and easy time period. Sam has rose-colored glasses when it comes to what the future holds for her. She can even be caught looking through the occasional bridal magazine. She’s imagined names for her future children. Picked out the home she wants to live in with her husband over in Sausalito (it has a beautiful view of the Bay, and just a quick drive over the Golden Gate to the law firm where she’ll one day work).

Season 1-Season 2: Heaven and Hell haven’t beaten her down yet. Sam still holds onto the belief that once she and Dean track down and kill the yellow-eyed demon, a normal life is still possible. Though Jesse’s loss lingers, she’s open to loving someone again. She still wants to get married, have children---things she’ll never admit to her brother. But she’s certain that once their family gets the revenge they’ve been searching for all of her life, they can both move forward.

Season 3: Sam’s focus is saving her brother. She can’t see much beyond that, so one night stands are preferable to letting anyone else get close. The Trickster is the first person to hone in and point out that Dean is her weakness. Unfortunately, the cruelty of the lesson detracts from the importance of the vulnerability losing Dean creates for Sam---the Trickster never shows her how to deal with it. Taught with a bit more care, Season 4 might’ve gone very differently.

Pre-Season 4-Season 5: The four months that Dean spends in Hell are exactly what the Trickster warned her about. Sam is alone, and vulnerable, and Ruby takes advantage of that to a degree that no one expects. Unlike her brother, Sam isn’t afraid of being alone. But being on her own is when Sam’s emotions tend to drive her. When the Trickster kills Dean, Sam’s anger and need for revenge drives her to murder a man with the face of her surrogate father. She may have convinced herself it was the Trickster, but it was her anger that drove her to murder a man who looked and behaved just like Bobby.

Post-Season 5-mid-Season 6: Ah, soulless!Sam. You are totally welcome to give this one a try. After all, she’s open to sex with just about anyone as long as it promises to be a good time.

Mid-Season 6-Season 7: She’s a bit of a head case. Okay, she’s a total head case, and there are monsters who eat people. She doesn’t even want to have sex with you because YOU COULD BE A LEVIATHAN. Or the Devil. She’s not keen on either.

Post Season 7-Pre-Season 8: Sam is on her own, and vulnerable and open to her emotions once again. Unlike the prior times she lost Dean (first to the Trickster, and then to Hell), Sam isn’t being guided by anger or revenge. She’s lost, directionless, and simply searching for an anchor. The idea of loving someone terrifies her, but she literally has nothing and no one left. She’s about as vulnerable as she’s ever been for the year that Dean spends in Purgatory, and maybe its to her credit she no longer hunts, instead allowing her focus and emotions to turn to normal pursuits. An excellent time for ships outside of the SPN fandom.

Season 8-Season 9: Possibly the most strenuous and difficult years of the siblings’ relationship. Dean begins putting his faith and trust in monsters over his own sister because she has failed him one too many times. Sam, having trouble acknowledging her own culpability in the problems between them, lashes out irrationally in return. She’s not in a good head space, and likely any relationship she attempted during these years would turn toxic. Also, there’s the whole angel inside of her thing for a good portion of it. Three’s a crowd, unless you’re good with poly. ;)

S10-onward: Chances of a romantic relationship with Sam in later seasons are extremely rare. Not impossible, just unlikely. One night stands are pretty much her go-to by this point. Ships happening at this time of her life are not to be taken lightly--if she lets her walls down enough for it to happen, its kind of a huge deal. Sam’s learned too many hard lessons about letting anyone close, about caring for someone, and then having their blood on her hands. Anyone who knows the Winchesters understand that getting too close doesn’t end well.

Most importantly, Sam’s let her brother down too many times, lost him too many times, hurt him with what she knows to be her own selfish choices. She never plans on making those mistakes again. She’ll burn the world down around them before ever letting her brother go without a fight again, and she never plans on letting Dean ever believe otherwise. Giving her heart to someone else in the midst of that? It would mean having to make an impossible choice. By refusing to give her heart, she never has to hurt someone by choosing her brother over them. And as much as she’d like to believe that would never be a choice she’d have to make, Sam has accepted the truth.

Winchesters don’t get happy endings.

#⛧ || 𝔖𝔞𝔪 ℑ𝔫𝔱𝔢𝔯𝔯𝔲𝔭𝔱𝔢𝔡 ( headcanon )#long post #mostly for my benefit #nothing to see here

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ganymedesclock · 6 years

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saw someone say that lotor hates the idea of "being controlled by women" and that he doesn't like women who have agency, which is a reason he hates haggar, and a reason why he had the generals, because he thought they "didn't have agency" and that he thinks his charms work on them... what kind of bad take is that

I mean, if you consider the generals plus Allura and traits they have in common as people that Lotor’s drawn to and finds very appealing as business partners and friends (since he clearly makes his relationship with them more than practical- he opens up to them emotionally more than the situation warrants) the pattern emerging is that Lotor prefers peer groups composed of ambitious women who are proactive in pursuing their own goals.

It’s very significant that the generals under Lotor compared to other people they’ve worked under who we know are very controlling (Zarkon and Haggar) that the Generals under Lotor were way more emotionally invested in what they were doing. They had a lot more energy and cared a lot more about what they were doing.

Furthermore you would have to be really, really unobservant in a way that Lotor isn’t to think the generals are docile sheep to be led around. Again, they’re very ambitious people. As soon as Lotor does something they don’t like (admittedly something that’s a very understandable deal-breaker, the death of Narti) they reevaluate and get out of there. Their loyalties to Zarkon and Haggar genuinely only go as far as it’s useful.

There are many points in s5e2 where the generals could have intervened in the fight, could have put Lotor down- all three present were highly capable ranged fighters and Lotor had his back to them the entire time.

And we see in s5e6 that Haggar’s soldiers- who probably don’t scare easily- are afraid of the generals. Ezor and Zethrid’s casual discussion of what they could be doing for their own advantage is framed by two very nervous infantrymen that are clearly listening in. Ezor discusses the possibility of taking over the galra empire for herself, Zethrid points out they could seize territory and enter the emerging civil war for themselves.

They also have very little faith in Haggar because she won’t talk to them, because they don’t have that role in forming plans they did back under Lotor.

And separated from the generals, who’s the person Lotor latches onto, takes a real shine to- but Allura, who has the strength of spirit to assemble an entire coalition. Allura, who’s driven, leaderly, proud, strong-spirited, and who Lotor in his private interactions with her has been showing an awful lot of his vulnerable side, which is a big deal if we consider that the only places we’ve seen Lotor’s vulnerable side before was with the generals, and feigned towards Zarkon the one time he really wanted Zarkon to dismiss him.

I’ve heard a lot of people suggest Lotor was manipulating the generals and is manipulating Allura, and I think that it places an inordinate amount of power on Lotor that he doesn’t canonically have.

Lotor is not in a “good” place to emotionally manipulate these people, because none of them, the four generals and Allura, are in a “good” place to be victims. (”good” in this case meaning, what he would want as a hypothetical abuser, which is not really good.)

Manipulative people generally rely on isolating their targets. If they’re in a group, the manipulator wants them to distrust other members of the group. They try to foster a sense of dependence between their target and themselves. If they play the victim, they want their target to feel like the only person who can save them, and in general, they want the victim to feel like they rely on the manipulator’s approval.

Even though we see very little of how Haggar relates to her favored prisoners, we can see a lot of this at work. Prisoners Haggar takes an interest to, like Myzax, are stored separately from others while other cells are communal. They’re offered special treatment, but still prisoners, and everything about their lives is controlled by the empire, and thus by Haggar, who stands very near the empire’s apex.

With Myzax, who does as she wants, she’s warm, and talks as if what she wants him to do is exactly what he wants- getting revenge on Shiro. With Shiro, who didn’t do what she wants, she sets out to hurt and scare him, even when she could finish a fight she doesn’t. She blames him, and says things as if everything Shiro suffered isn’t her fault, she did him a favor, the only person making this relationship painful or unpleasant is him, nasty stupid little child.

Contrasting that to Lotor and the generals, as an indication of how Lotor prefers things when he seems to have a fair amount of control of the situation...

As mentioned before, Lotor sought out highly ambitious, proactive, and driven people. This is one of the early major contrasts between him and Zarkon, where we’ve seen that Zarkon punishes the proactive (as he did with Prorok) for acting without his permission. Conversely, Lotor quite often sends the generals to act alone and gives them basically free reign to decide however they should complete their objectives.

Most importantly, many of the generals’ outside assignments consist of gathering the information that Lotor bases his decisions on. In s3e2, one of the first characterizing things we see the generals doing is Ezor and Acxa reporting back after having mapped out the Lions’ movements.

The generals show a strong relationship between them, a great deal of autonomy, and repeatedly evaluate anything they’re signing up for. They question, discuss, and are concerned with the details of everything they’re doing.

And Lotor not only respects this, he encourages this. The one time Lotor tells Ezor to be quiet and obey him without question is a sign everything is going horribly wrong post-Narti, and she takes it as such. Lotor’s never observed to punish informality or casualness with the generals, and if anything, on Puig he lightly chides Acxa for trying to enforce formality onto a stranger.

The first scene between Lotor and the generals establishes that their most important role, in Lotor’s eyes, is as conspirators. Ezor is first shown lurking around on her own, and her first spoken line, a cheerful “That went well,” tells us that Ezor knew exactly what the plan was all along.

Again, this is set up to contrast us from Zarkon. Zarkon’s commanders are very independent agents who are kept in line by the threat of Zarkon above them- he seldom trusts them, he outright sneers at Prorok for trying to understand him. Even when his plans would be easy to explain, he keeps them in the dark because in his opinion it’s not their place to know.

In contrast, Lotor’s team is small, but very intimate. There’s absolutely no infighting here- which is a big contrast if you consider without Zarkon, his commanders devolved into civil war big time, while without Lotor, the generals have yet to really significantly argue and continue to stick together as a unit.

In pre-season 3 promos, the writers stated that Lotor picked the generals as people who thought the way he did. Both that and canon would suggest that what in the generals appealed to Lotor was their minds- that they’re crafty and ambitious and able to reevaluate situations separately from him.

Someone trying to control others would not find the generals appealing. The only reason Haggar and Zarkon get along with the generals is that the generals are very clearly filing their edges off- they’re presenting a very dull, passive front that we know they don’t feel because behind the scenes they’re still earnestly discussing whether Haggar can get them what they want, and if that’s not the case, they really ought to ditch her.

If anything, the generals have an abundance of natural barriers to being controlled. They have a built-in and under Lotor, lovingly nurtured, sense of solidarity, they watch each others’ backs, they don’t want in on anything they don’t either know exactly what it’s going to get them, or have an established history of trust with the individual asking it of them, and when Lotor does things to challenge that trust, they don’t stay with him for long.

And Lotor verbally vindicates them even when their autonomy, ambition, and interconnection lead them to depose and capture him as leader. At this point, he still doesn’t seem to bear them any lasting ill will, considering his hitting Acxa with the black bayard was suspiciously minimal damage given he was using a weapon we’ve seen kill grown adults in a single blow.

Allura also fits nicely into this when we look at how Lotor’s built an interaction with her. From the start, he’s focused on her as a leader, an authority figure, a decision maker. While he’s snippy with her at first in s5e1, the power imbalance is also not in his favor at all- he’s quite literally Allura’s prisoner and she is not shown isolating herself or doing anything that would make her susceptible to underhanded tactics.

And as I’ve said before, Lotor’s history of neglect isn’t just here as a “this is why you should feel bad for Lotor because his life is very sad”. It meaningfully informs his worldview. One of the major ways that it does is that Lotor wouldn’t use a vulnerable facade to manipulate someone the way people believe he’s doing with Allura. Because when Lotor acts vulnerable to manipulate people... simply enough, he uses the tactics of a killdeer bird.

A killdeer will lure enemies away from its nest by pretending to have a broken wing and fluttering along the ground limping away from the predator, who will follow them in hopes of an easy meal. Basically, it’s feigning helplessness, but specifically to entice someone to go “wow, you’re defenseless, and thus easy pickings.”

If Lotor is going “look at me, look how scared and helpless I am” he’s setting up his enemies to bite him.

What Lotor’s doing with Allura is pretty clearly not that tactic, nor is it a sympathy grab tactic. As I’ve mentioned in prior posts, Lotor doesn’t ever bring up that he’s half altean until Allura already trusts him, even though it wouldn’t be hard at all to assume Allura would trust a fellow Altean a lot more than she’d trust a member of the galra royal family.

If Lotor’s trying to manipulate Allura’s feelings, then he’s missing golden opportunities to do so. Also, so far the things he’s talked Allura into doing, heading towards Oriande, he’s done so by encouraging and praising her, telling her to have more confidence in herself, and ultimately getting over his own disappointment to talk up how it’s absolutely fine if the spoils of the Oriande expedition go exclusively to Allura, and thus, that any of his future progress is going to need Allura as an active, knowledgeable participant if he wants to use those ancient secrets.

Assuming Lotor is manipulating the generals and Allura requires the assumption that Lotor has far more control of the situation than they do, which has repeatedly shown to be not the case. In the case of the generals, once Lotor decisively did something they didn’t want, they had no issue ripping him off like a bandaid and they haven’t exactly been moping around lamenting the good old days when Lotor was leading them.

(I do think they’re nursing the broken pieces of that team, much as Lotor himself is, but they’re not openly grieving it any more than he is)

And Lotor... in almost all prior continuities, Lotor’s infatuation with Allura is in looks alone, that she’s a beautiful woman and he wants her for himself. And this is usually paired with indications that Allura’s not even the only one at all- prior incarnations of Lotor tend heavily towards, well, misogynistic sleazeballs that surround themselves with beautiful, scantly dressed women who are often not in a position to refuse him at all.

In contrast to this, it’s clear that VLD Lotor is most interested in Allura’s mind, capabilities, and opinions. That Allura is a great beauty, as has been confirmed repeatedly from many sources, is not the burning concern in Lotor’s eyes. He’s more interested in her as a leader (talking about a royal alliance) and a magic-user, to the point that when Allura confesses she doesn’t think she inherited Alfor’s gift, Lotor is right there suggesting Allura is more powerful than she believes.

And he’s thrilled- genuinely openly amazed and excited- when she makes the compass stone work.

It’s possible they are retreading prior continuities and this is the beginning of a fledgling crush on Allura for Lotor, but if it is... he’s honestly doing a lot better than prior continuities because he’s illustrated very clearly as seeking Allura’s consent. When he tries to stop her from leaving Haggar’s lab, he does so by clasping her fingertips loosely- which is very clearly an emotional appeal rather than a physical barrier.

And even before they were allies, the things Lotor remarked on about Allura in s3e3 were her cleverness- she impressed him by being able to hide, and then again by figuring out the Blue Lion’s controls and getting that decisive shot on him. In fact, given Lotor goes into s3e3 disappointed by Voltron’s capabilities and leaves it confident enough to send them into the rift fairly sure they’ll return, it can be said that Allura alone elevated Lotor’s esteem of Voltron as a unit.

This is also repeated by Zethrid in s3e6, who finds Allura a worthy opponent and before that appears to have zeroed in on her as the biggest threat.

In that sense I get very frustrated that meta-wise, people keep comparing the generals to the harem girls Lotor kept in prior continuities.

Because these ladies... I don’t think they were ever named or their situation explained. There wasn’t much sympathy for their position as literal sex slaves, and the narrative treated them like furniture, basically.

The only thing the generals have in common with the harem girls is they’re women interacting with Lotor. They have way more in common with various commanders or generals that have been depicted working under Lotor in previous continuities- characters like Cossack, Mogor, or Merla.

The generals are not only developed and diverse characters immediately identifiable from one another, they have independent relationships with each other and other characters (whether or not you believe Acxa is Keith’s sibling, the two of them are definitely connected in some significant manner) and their breaking off from Lotor in s4e5 guarantees they have greater plot than just being an extension of Lotor himself.

Frankly, you couldn’t pick a worse group of people to try and manipulate. They’re incredibly close to each other, talented, perceptive, nosy, tenacious and vengeful if they feel like you’ve wronged them.

And frankly, in that sense, Allura’s easily good company with them, and rather than Lotor as an ineffective bumbling manipulator who doesn’t know what he’s doing, it seems a lot more likely that this is by design- that, again, Lotor finds these very appealing qualities in people to work with.

Which makes a lot of sense considering there being a lot of evidence that Lotor’s had not only a very unhappy existence under Zarkon, but a very lonely one. Far more than nubile attractive bodies, it seems like Lotor really just wants to have friends, the way Zarkon and Haggar repeatedly have thwarted him from by destroying anywhere he’s felt safe enough to build relationships.

So, is Lotor attaching to Allura the way he attached to the generals? I sure think so, but it stands that neither of those relationships were malicious exercises in control, it’s just... Lotor really genuinely wants to be able to trust people.

It’s pretty conspicuous here that with both Allura and the generals, out of a group of people Lotor’s clearly gravitating towards those he has things in common with. The generals were a bunch of disenfranchised half-galra that wanted power. Allura’s a charismatic royal altean with great personal admiration for King Alfor. That’s not the behavior of a manipulator, it’s the behavior of someone looking for friendship.

#voltron legendary defender #vld #Lotor #Allura #readmore #Anonymous

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meolazaviar1997 · 4 years

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