#first of all he totally has it coming he's bullied members and made really gross comments about some of the girls among other generic | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

deans-haunted-baby · 3 years

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Lately I can’t stop thinking about Adam, like I’m legit crushed over what this show did to him. I know Supernatural was never perfect but the way it treated this character was so damn vicious, condescending and nasty; no different than a high school bully picking on an injured elementary schooler.

He never stood a chance. The thing is I don’t know what it was that made me latch onto Adam so strongly for over a decade. Maybe I could just sympathize and easily relate to his situation of being discarded and forgotten by family members. Or maybe I saw potential in this character and couldn’t fathom why no one else on that writing staff and the SPN fandom couldn’t.

I want you to take a second and absorb these pertinent facts about Adam Milligan that this show put forward. This is not anti-anything this is all the truth so bare with me:

He was the illegitimate youngest child of hunter John Winchester; a man who treated his older sons Sam and Dean like soldiers on his platoon.

Adam only saw his bio dad ONCE A YEAR and it was only to take him to ball games not to train him so that he could protect himself and his mother from (supernatural) threats.

He never knew the existence of his older brothers nor did they know about him because John deliberately ripped those pages out of his journal. Essentially trying to erase any evidence of Adam and Kate.

Because Adam grew up having no clue what was out there or about the “family business” he and his mother suffered VIOLENT PRE-MATURE DEATHS at the hands of ghouls which Adam STILL REMEMBERS long after being murdered.

Oh and John failed to kill those ghouls, providing them the golden opportunity of impersonating him and his mother so they could kill John and his half-brothers.

Adam was only an 18 year old pre-med studying medicine. Probably wanted to follow in his mother’s footsteps in helping people as she was a nurse.

Because Kate worked nights as a single mother, Adam had to grow up being his own parent at times; cooking his own meals and putting himself to bed.

Adam was ironically born on September 29th (1990) which is also known as Michaelmas aka the Feast of Saints Michael, Gabriel and Raphael. A potential storyline that could’ve gone somewhere but didn’t.

Adam is also by birthright a Men of Letters legacy though his brothers fail to mention that 10 years later.

The last thing Adam was doing while he was in Heaven, designed to look like his Prom, he was kissing a girl Kristen McGee; whom we’ll never know about or if he’ll ever see again.

Adam was ripped out of Heaven against his will by the angels to be used and manipulated as their backup device in the Apocalypse because Sam and Dean refused to comply with their demands.

After being resurrected, Adam was then recovered, kidnapped and held hostage by TFW (Sam, Dean, Bobby and Castiel) where they all took turns mouthing off at this angsty teenager about why he should trust a bunch of complete strangers over those who made him promises.

Adam only wanted to work with the angels in order to stop Lucifer and return to his mother. Highlighting that this character had a sense of justice, responsibility, cared about doing the right thing but also had his own reasons for wanting to save the world.

Sam tried to emotionally manipulate Adam with excuses for why their dad never told him about his family. And actually had the gall to say that him and Dean would’ve looked for him had they’d known he existed so they could be a family. Forgive me if I just laugh at this for a moment 🤣

Zachariah was able to get into Adam’s head because he knew how vulnerable he was. Telling him that trusting the Winchesters would only let him down which *SPOILER ALERT* turned out to be true.

Zachariah tortured Adam for hours before the Winchesters arrived to save him. And Dean was only willing to submit to the angel when Sam was just briefly tortured.

One of the last things Dean says to Adam in 5x18 after he was shocked to see his half-brothers come to his rescue was “Cause you’re family”. Again I have to...🤣🤣

At the moment of their escape, Dean doesn’t even help Adam (WHO’D BEEN INJURDED AND TORTURED) out of the room nor does he care about ushering him to safety. Dean just grabs Sam and hurries out the door. So much for being part of the family.

The last thing Adam screams before before being possessed by Michael was “Dean, help!” and then he hears Dean say “Just hold on!”

Adam, not being Michael’s true vessel yet born from the powerful Winchester bloodline, was able to look directly at the archangel’s true form without his eyes burning out. And this is NEVER explained why.

Dean mentions Adam only a total of THREE TIMES after this happens in 5x19, 5x22 and 6x11 while Castiel mentions it to Sam in 5x21. And Sam, WHO’D BEEN THE MAIN EMOTIONAL MANIPULATOR, just doesn’t give a shit to remember him.

Castiel threw a Molotov cocktail at Michael (who was using Adam’s body) to briefly cast him out which Adam probably felt in excruciating detail based on what Michael says in 15x08.

Sam, possessed by Lucifer, pushed himself and his innocent half-brother possessed by Michael into the cage for all eternity.

Castiel somehow managed to pull Sam out of the cage but decided to leave Adam behind.

After Dean bargains with Death to get Sam’s soul and Adam out of the cage. Only to get just Sam’s soul and leave Adam to his fate. The issue is never brought up again between the Winchesters.

Adam sits a prisoner in a cage with an archangel for 10 years our time but thousands of years Hell time.

Michael most likely protected Adam from some of the horrors in Hell which is why he was able to keep his sanity.

Sam and Dean went to Hell to talk to Lucifer in the cage but continue to ignore Adam’s existence and don’t bother releasing him yet they let Lucifer escape.

Dean also went back to Hell to retrieve Bobby’s soul so he could go to Heaven and again doesn’t even bother with Adam.

Season 10 for Supernatural’s 200th episode, Sam and Dean were reminded by SPN fans putting on a musical that Adam was still in the cage yet THEY NEVER DO ANYTHING ABOUT IT.

Mary Winchester STILL doesn’t know about Adam even though she was reunited with John during the 300th episode. He’s never mentioned during their big family get-together. I guess he never counted.

Adam and Michael are finally set free of Hell only because Chuck threw a giant hissy fit at the Winchesters and opened all the gateways.

The first thing Adam wanted to do as a free man in 15x08 was not seeking revenge on his brothers for abandoning him, but to eat some diner food, change his clothes and get a “little job”

After years of imprisonment, Adam actually befriended the Prince of Heaven aka the one friend he has/the only other person besides his mother who actually gave a damn about him.

TFW trapped, kidnapped and imprisoned Adam and Michael at the bunker in order to force them to help against Chuck.

And Adam, though still angry, hurt and worn out over the situation; chose to help his brothers when there was NOTHING in it for him and successfully convinced Michael to do the same.

Despite how his brothers treated him, Adam STILL believed in their best and vouched that they “always try to do the right thing”

Adam went to Hell a cranky, sassy, angsty, naïve teenager and returned a kinder, wiser, more patient, humble and rational-thinking man who still managed to smile and laugh after enduring centuries of pain.

Dean gives Adam his much due apology for not saving him but Sam doesn’t. In fact Sam doesn’t even bring him up the next time the Winchesters see each other.

Adam’s last words on this show are to Dean and they’re “Since when do we get what we deserve?” and “Good luck” 🤓

Chuck Thanos-snapped Adam’s soul out of existence OFF-SCREEN yet Michael somehow remained in his body.

Adam was 90% of Michael’s impulse control hence why he was so dark in his last appearance without Adam because that’s the only way I can cope with that disgusting character assassination in 15x19

Jack supposedly revived Adam along with everyone else after becoming the new God. BUT his current status now reads “Unknown” instead of “Alive” so what the fuck am I suppose to think now?!

Sam and Dean didn’t even think about checking in on Adam to make sure he was okay before they hit the road on their last solo bro-outing.

If Adam really is alive then he’s doomed to a miserable, lonely existence without his best friend (who’s now dead). Broke, homeless, jobless; his brothers STILL DON’T GIVE A RAT’S ASS after he’d helped them in good faith. He’s legally deceased thanks to the ghouls. And he gets to look forward to demon city the moment he dies cause guess where he’s ending up?

No one remembers him even after he’d returned in 15x08

The car and the dog are more important to the Winchesters than their innocent half-brother.

Okay I realize I just unloaded a whole mountain of salt but this is the full outline of Adam’s tragic story on Supernatural. These writers never cared about him and why? What did he do to deserve this gross treatment from the show’s protagonists or just in general? Why was he even introduced if this was going to be the outcome of it all? I don’t know what’s worse leaving him in Hell (cause at least he had Michael for company) or bringing him back and not knowing what became of him after. It’s insufferable 😣 I just want everyone to know that the showrunners and writers may not care about him BUT I DO.

#adam milligan #supernatural #SPN #michael the archangel #midam #the winchesters #supernatural season 15 #supernatural season 5 #supernatural season 4 #adam x michael #michael x adam #spn meta #spn rant #Archangel Michael #the forgotten 3rd winchester brother

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knuffled · 3 years

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just practice - chapter twelve

thanks for reading! i promise i didn’t mean for it to be so angsty, but the road to hell is paved with good intentions or whatever the idiom is. anyhow, i hope you enjoy it, and it would mean a lot if you took the time to reblog or comment on AO3! i have been replying to every comment chapter 8 or 9!

read on AO3

The January sky was gray. It was not late, but darkness had already fallen. Snowflakes fell in a flurry, only briefly illuminated when passing beneath a street lamp. It collected on the roadside and turned to slush beneath the wheels of cars passing by. There was something about driving in the dark that had always appealed to her. Something about the gentle whirring of the motor, the luminescent lights on the dashboard, lurid in their juxtaposition with the velvet dark, and the effortless way the wheels glided against the tarmac had a way of putting her at ease.

The scenery was similar to the night of New Year’s Eve but duller. Grayer. The image of Percy, wreathed in a halo of moonlight, arose again unbidden in her mind’s eye, but there was no sight of the moon tonight. The clouds had seen to that.

She hadn’t been able to stop thinking about the not-kiss. Ever since that night, the sense of lack had never left her. It carved a hollow for itself in the center of her chest and consumed anything that trespassed its event horizon. Like a black hole, not a void.

Annabeth had spent nearly everyday agonizing about the feeling and what it meant, but it defied any attempt to be known. All she could decipher was the sense of dissatisfaction, like hunger, that gnawed at her, but there was no urgency to it. It merely sat there, an immovable object. She found it grating, but not enough to where it compelled her to act. So she tolerated it.

She pressed her lips into a hard line and pulled into the Seneca Falls high school parking lot. She was late, like always. Percy’s meet had started nearly a half-hour ago. Annabeth stepped out of her car and ducked her neck behind the collar of her jacket as she jogged to the front door.

It was dark inside the school. Only half of the lights in the hallways were lit, and those that were flickered erratically. Annabeth followed the signs posted to the wall, guiding her to the pool. She was baffled by the fact that it took her nearly five minutes to find the pool, at the far end of the building. But eventually she drew close enough to hear the noise of the crowd rumbling from behind closed doors.

Annabeth opened the door tentatively to peer inside and was immediately accosted by the smell of chlorine. Her heart dropped into the pit of her stomach. There was a heat going on. She prayed that it wasn’t Percy’s. Otherwise, the entire drive down to Seneca Falls would have been for nothing. Annabeth craned her head further inside, trying to make out the competitors, but she was too far away to tell.

When the heat ended, she released a breath she didn’t realize she had been holding and slipped inside. On her way to the bleachers, she scanned the crowd and felt a rush of relief when Piper waved to her from the fourth row. She had to squeeze past a family to reach Piper, and the seat was uncomfortable when she sat down. The screwheads dug into her thighs, making her grimace.

“Please tell me I didn’t miss Percy’s heat,” Annabeth said.

Piper popped a cheeto in her mouth and shook her head. “Nah, you’re totally fine. Want some cheetos?”

Annabeth shook her head. “Those things have texture like cardboard.”

“More for me then,” Piper said, shrugging. “I was worried you weren’t going to show.”

Annabeth raised an eyebrow. “I just had some stuff to deal with after school, and then it started snowing like crazy outside so I had to drive slower than normal.”

“Is it that project or whatever for Mrs. Dodds’s class? Jason has been complaining about it all week,” Piper asked.

Annabeth shook her head. “Taking AP Chem with that harpy is like getting your fucking teeth pulled. I just needed to review something for the english paper with Edmonds.”

Piper sighed melodramatically. “Still, so diligent. Truly a model student.”

“Fuck off.”

Piper balled up her now empty bag of cheetos and shook her head incredulously.

“I seriously can’t believe you aren’t feeling even a little bit of senioritis. Jason’s like that too. A pair of freaks, the two of you are. Mayhaps it has something to do with the fact that you’re both blonde. Seems to give one a proclivity for masochism.”

“I thought that the fact that we both unironically enjoy running stupidly long distances would have tipped you off about that by now,” Annabeth said lightly.

There was a pause before Piper cleared her throat conspicuously and said, “So what’s new with you, Annababe?”

“That was a real smooth transition there, Pipes,” Annabeth said.

Piper rolled her eyes and said, “Fine, you win that round. Happy? We can go back to the part where you were answering my question now, please.”

“Well, I’m sorry to disappoint you, but there’s nothing new on my end,” Annabeth lied.

“How are things going with Percy?”

Annabeth snorted and crossed her arms over her chest. “Are you going to ask me that everytime you see me?”

“Yes, now spill.”

“You know? You can be a real piece work sometimes, McLean.”

Piper threw an arm around Annabeth’s shoulder, grinning, and pulled her in close to press a kiss to Annabeth’s cheek, making her scowl.

“I bully you out of love, darling.”

Annabeth gave her a weary look. “So you admit that it’s bullying.”

Piper waved a hand dismissively. “Semantics, shemantics.”

“How come you never harass Percy like this?” Annabeth grumbled.

“Oh, I do,” Piper said brightly. “All the time, in fact.”

“Really? And what does he say when you do?”

“He usually comes to me on his own, funnily enough,” Piper said pointedly. “Though, I will admit that it has been a while since I’ve had the chance to have a proper talk with him.”

“I know this might boggle your mind, but some people appreciate privacy, Piper,” Annabeth said, rolling her eyes.

Piper opened her mouth, undoubtedly to say something clever, but Annabeth’s attention was pulled away by the fact that Percy was lining up in front of the pool. Three of his teammates stood in front of him, and it took Annabeth a moment to figure out why.

“Wait, he’s doing a relay?” Annabeth asked. “I thought he was doing freestyle, like always.”

“Fuck if I know,” Piper said, shrugging.

“State is next month,” Annabeth said, frowning. “What is he doing?”

Although Annabeth knew how intensely he practiced, she was still taken aback by his decision to not compete for the event he was doing at State: freestyle. She tried to glean some insight from his body language, but she found herself quickly distracted when Percy interlaced his fingers and stretched his arms away from himself, making the muscles of his upper back flex in response.

All at once, she found herself hyper-aware of the fact that practically all of his body was up for display. Her face flushed immediately, but she couldn’t force herself to look away. She’d seen him compete at meets countless times, but there was something different now.

Since when had his shoulders been so broad? How had she never noticed the beautiful curve of his spine or the sharp line of his jaw when he set it in concentration?

Over the years, Annabeth had heard her fair share of vulgar comments made by girls in her school about Percy’s physique. It wasn’t uncommon for many of them to show up at swim meets just to ogle at him. She had always found their behavior disgusting and objectifying. More than anything, it angered her that people talked about her best friend like that without even knowing him, like he was just a slab of meat. Annabeth had even snapped and chewed them out for it on more than one occasion.

Now, however, Annabeth couldn’t help understanding where those comments had come from, even though they were repulsive. She could no longer deny the fact that her best friend was gorgeous, even when he stood among other swimmers. Some of them were more physically impressive, sure, but Percy was imposing in his own right, trading impractical bulk for something more lithe and graceful. The untamed intensity that competition teased out of him was just the cherry on top.

Annabeth caught herself staring and immediately felt nausea and self-loathing rolling through her. She was acting like a fucking creep.

“Well, that might be the first time I’ve ever seen you checking Percy out so shamelessly,” Piper said, smirking.

Annabeth turned to her sharply, her face prickling. “I-It feels gross. Like I’m one of those groupies that show up at his meets just to perv on him.”

Piper snorted and said, “Annabeth, you’re nothing like them. You actually know him, for one thing. Besides, it’s not wrong to check out your boyfriend, you know.”

Annabeth mustered an uneasy smile and nodded. She tried not to squirm in her seat and to focus on the race instead, but her skin was hot. Uncomfortably so.

The first members of the relay stepped and took their places on the platform. Once they were settled, the official blew his whistle and they dove into the water. Westwood’s first swimmer did well, managing to stay in second place before handing it off to his teammate. She didn’t really pay much attention though. As long as there wasn’t too big a gap between first and second, they were fine. Percy was anchor for the relay and he was fast enough to make up that distance if push came to shove.

Still, Annabeth couldn’t help thinking that there was something off about Percy. She couldn’t say what it was, but he looked more tense than normal. As a competitor, one of the things Annabeth envied most about him was how relaxed he was at meets. Annabeth always had to wrestle with anxiety, but Percy had confessed to her that he barely ever felt nervous. If it was there, his focus was so finely honed that it didn’t even register to him. This was the first time that she had seen him look so jittery at a meet.

Her suspicions were only further solidified when Percy finally dove into the water. Usually, he barely disturbed the water when he breached it, but this time the water burst like he had belly flopped. It wasn’t a great start but they were still in second, so as long as he didn’t panic, there was no need to worry.

But he looked oddly sluggish. There was something wrong with his form. It lacked its usual effortless finesse and looked almost awkward. He slipped into fourth place by the time he kicked off the opposite end of the pool, and it didn’t look like he would be able to recover the distance.

Annabeth slid to the edge of her seat and worried her lip, praying that Percy would be able to figure something out, but at the end of the relay, Westwood finished in 5th place.

Percy stood there with a hand pressed against the pool wall and stared into the water blankly, his shoulders hunched. Eventually, one of his teammates helped pull him out of the pool, but they all looked as confused as Annabeth felt. This was uncharted territory for all of them.

His teammates look at one another, at a loss for words, before his coach pulled him away and had a hushed conversation with him. Annabeth couldn’t make out what they were saying over the noise of the crowd, but Percy’s posture never changed. His coach gave him an awkward pat on the shoulder and left to go deal with the team. Percy stood there for a few seconds before eventually dragging himself into the changing room.

Annabeth turned to Piper, hoping for an explanation, but she only reflected the worry Annabeth felt herself. They made their way down from the bleachers and waited at the entrance of the changing rooms. They had to wait for longer than she’d expected. Even though Percy had been the first to enter, he was the last to leave. When he did finally exit the locker room, his hands were curled tightly around his swimming bag and his hair was sopping wet, like he hadn’t even bothered drying it.

When he noticed them, he mustered a weary smile. “Ah, look! It’s my two favorite girls.”

Annabeth and Piper exchanged glances before Piper cleared her throat and softly said, “How are you feeling, Perce?”

Percy stopped smiling and pressed his lips into a thin line. “Not so hot, honestly.”

“Is there anything we can do for you?” Piper asked.

Percy rubbed at his eyes with his palms and shook his head. “Um, no— I-I’m just tired. I’ll be fine once I get some sleep.”

“You just had an off day,” Annabeth ventured. “It happens to the best of us.”

He set his jaw and looked away from them. “I really don’t wanna talk about it.”

Annabeth balled her hands into fists. She was utterly useless in situations like this. The situation only felt worse when Piper remained uncharacteristically silent. This was supposed to be her forte, not Annabeth’s — if she didn’t know what to say, Annabeth was screwed.

Piper glanced at her, trying to communicate something, but Annabeth didn’t know what she was trying to say. They stood there for a few more moments before Piper deflated with a sigh and shoved Annabeth towards Percy without warning, making Annabeth stumble.

“Well, I suppose I’ll let the girlfriend handle this,” Piper said with affected cheer. “Gotta go pick Jason up from the library anyhow.”

Annabeth turned to glare at her, but she paused when she caught the tick of Percy’s jaw when Piper said the word ‘girlfriend’. The gesture stoked the flames of helplessness burning inside her to even larger blaze. Annabeth turned to Piper in one last desperate attempt to ask for help, but Piper had already turned on her heels and walked away.

It seemed that Piper had thrown her to the wolves. Annabeth balled her hands into fists and tightened her jaw, feeling utterly lost. Piper was expecting too much from her. She didn’t know what the fuck she was supposed to do. She didn’t even know where to begin.

She tried looking at Percy for some insight, but he just looked utterly dead inside. There was something so wrong about that, like someone had extinguished the sun.

The floor squeaked underfoot when she shifted on her heels and wracked her brain for some combination of words that wouldn’t make the situation worse. It took all of thirty seconds for her to realize that she wasn’t going to come up with anything, so she decided to start with something easier.

“C’mon, let’s go to Martha’s,” Annabeth offered. “I’ll even buy you a milkshake.”

Percy dragged a hand across his face and said, “I’m exhausted right now. I just wanna go home.”

Annabeth shook her head. “I can’t let you do that. You’ll just spend all night beating yourself up if I let you go.”

Percy didn’t disagree with her, but he didn’t decide to go with her either. Annabeth screwed her eyes shut and exhaled fully. Then, she stepped forward and took his hand in her own and gave it a squeeze. It was enough to get Percy to actually look at her for the first time all night. She was struck by the fragility she saw in his eyes. No, fragility wasn’t the right word. More like vulnerability, more raw, more open.

“Look, I just don’t want you to be on your own tonight, okay? But if you really do want to go home, I won’t stop you,” Annabeth whispered.

There was a pause before Percy murmured, “Martha’s is fine.”

She almost asked him if he was sure before she thought better of it. “You should dry your hair or you’ll catch a cold again. It’s pretty brutal outside.”

Percy nodded and set down his swimming bag and dropped to a crouch. He tried to unzip the bag to find his towel, but the zipper was caught on something and wouldn’t budge. He tried to get it to work three more times, each attempt more violent than the next, until he stopped and sat down, shoulders hunched.

“It’s not working,” he said blankly. “Why isn’t it working?”

Annabeth crouched beside him and gently tugged the bag out of his grasp, saying, “Here, let me.”

It took her a few seconds to figure out part of his swimming trunks were caught under the zipper. Getting it out of the way took longer than she would have liked, but eventually she managed to tease the bag open. Once she did, she rummaged in the bag for the towel buried at the bottom and turned back to Percy with victorious smile.

“Took some work, but I managed to-” Annabeth’s smile dropped.

Tears were flowing silently down Percy’s face, and he bit his lower lip to keep it from quivering. Before her mind could catch up with her body, Annabeth dropped the towel and threw her arms around him. His breath hitched at first, but then he melted into her embrace and buried his face in the crook of her neck. It hurt to feel his tears straining her shirt and the spastic way his shoulders shook behind her palms.

“Hey, it’s okay. It’s okay. Just let it out. I’ve got you,” Annabeth whispered.

“I’m s-sorry. The stupid zipper. It- It wasn’t working,” Percy sobbed.

Annabeth ran her hands down his back, hoping it would be at least somewhat soothing. “It’s okay. It’s not your fault. It’s alright.”

“Can’t even open a fucking bag right,” Percy said tightly. “God, I’m so fucking useless.”

Annabeth pulled away and held him by the shoulders. “Hey, that’s not true.”

Percy looked away from her, coating her hands in tears. “It is.”

“It isn’t,” Annabeth said firmly. “You’re exhausted and having a really shitty day. It’s okay if you couldn’t open your backpack, alright? It’s not your fault.”

“Of course it’s my fucking fault,” Percy said, voice cracking. “I-I let them all down, Annabeth. They were counting on me, and I fucked it up like I always do.”

It took her a second to realize he wasn’t talking about the backpack anymore.

“You had an off day, Percy. It’s nothing to beat yourself up about. I can guarantee that none of them will blame you for it, I promise,” Annabeth said.

“And how would you know that?”

“Because I’ll kick their fucking asses otherwise, that’s how.”

That tore a watery laugh from him before he slumped back against the wall. Annabeth hovered near him, unsure of what to do. Percy rubbed at his eyes with the back of his hand and took a deep breath.

His voice was more steady when he said, “I’m supposed to be the captain. I’m supposed to be reliable. They put their trust in me, and I let them down.”

“They trust you for a reason,” Annabeth said. “They know how hard you work, how much you have given for the team.”

“But I still failed them when it mattered most,” Percy muttered.

Annabeth sighed and brushed her hair out of her face. “Literally none of them think that. They were just worried about you. I could see it in their eyes.”

When he remained silent, she added, “If one of them were in your shoes and had an off day at a meet, would you think they had let you down?”

“They aren’t captain,” Percy argued.

“So just because you’re captain, you have to be absolutely flawless, all the time?”

Percy opened his mouth before closing it again and looked down at his lap. Annabeth ground her teeth together. What could she do to make him understand? Why did he always hold himself to such unreasonable standards? He always shouldered too much responsibility, but didn’t he realize that, at some point, he would have to run out of things to give? Not even Percy could carry the world on his shoulders forever, but he would be damned if he didn’t try.

“Sometimes I wish people would stop putting their faith in me,” he whispered.

“I know but it’s not entirely their fault. There’s just something about you that makes people want to follow you,” Annabeth said.

Percy shook his head and said, “I don’t understand what they see in me. I’m not special. I can’t be who they need me to be. I wish I could. I really, really do. But I can’t. I just can’t. Even today, I lost us the relay because I couldn’t shut my brain off and focus. I just can’t stop thinking about the-”

“Can’t stop thinking about what?” Annabeth asked, frowning.

Percy swallowed and turned away from her. “It’s nothing. Just ignore what I said.”

A spark of anger that rushed through her. “No, that’s bullshit. You don’t get to do that. Tell me what’s wrong.”

“I-It’s not a big deal.”

“Then you should have no trouble telling me,” Annabeth said.

When he remained silent, she crossed her arms over her chest and said, “I’m literally not leaving until you tell me what’s going on. Even if that means staying here all night.”

When Percy looked up at her, the mix of fear and resignation in his eyes reminded her of a lamb being led to slaughter. A lump formed in her throat. Since when had things gotten so difficult between them?

She forced herself to take a breath and said, “I’m your friend, Percy. I’m not going to hurt you. So, please, just talk to me.”

There was a pause before Percy ran his hands through his hair, almost violently, and nodded. “I- I can’t stop thinking about New Year’s Eve.”

Annabeth furrowed her brow. “What about it?”

Percy looked down at his lap and clenched his shirt with one hand, right at the center of his chest.

“I almost kissed you.”

His voice had been so quiet, Annabeth had almost missed it. It took her a few seconds to process what he had said and what it meant.

“And that’s why you’re beating yourself up so much?” Annabeth asked, trying not to gape.

He looked up at her sharply and said, “I almost stole your first kiss, Annabeth. You deserve to have it with someone that you actually like, not wasted on a stand-in like me.”

“Percy, first kisses are not that big a deal,” Annabeth said exasperatedly.

“They are to me,” Percy said quietly.

Annabeth didn’t know how to respond to that. Honestly, the whole conversation made very little sense to her. She couldn’t understand for the life of her why this was causing him so much anguish. Besides, there was that comment he had made, about being a stand-in. It was technically true, but there was just something wrong about it.

“The worst part is that I wanted to,” Percy whispered. “Even though I knew from the start, at that moment, I didn’t care. I almost did something awful to you.”

There was a brief pause before Annabeth exploded.

“Christ, boys are so fucking stupid sometimes.”

Percy looked up with wide red-rimmed eyes, surprised by the hostility in her voice. Annabeth pulled him by the collar of his shirt so that they were face to face, close enough for her to see the dried tracks his tears had left on his face, and dropped her voice to a deadly whisper.

“Listen to me very carefully: you didn’t almost ‘steal’ anything that night. I could have stopped the kiss at literally any point if I hadn’t wanted it to happen. It was just as much my decision as it was yours, okay? I’m a person, not a fucking mannequin. Stop treating me like one.”

Annabeth set her jaw and glared at him, daring him to challenge her, but Percy held his breath and nodded once, slowly. She stared at him for another second before she turned to pick up the towel. Her hands were trembling. Annabeth was surprised at how angry she was. She dropped the towel twice because of it.

She turned back to him and said, “Turn around.”

Percy blinked owlishly before he did as she commanded. Annabeth took a moment to run her fingers through his hair. It had dried some, but it was still wet. Annabeth started to towel dry his hair, and Percy flinched, almost immediately, like she had expected.

He caught her wrist and peered up at her. “You don’t have to do that.”

“God, Percy, just shut up and let me take care of you for once,” Annabeth said, sharper than she would have liked.

A beat passed before Percy nodded reluctantly and turned around. Annabeth took a moment to swallow and returned to her task. She took her time. There was no rush, after all. Nowhere they needed to be. Nothing they needed to do. Nothing to stop them from being who they were. So Annabeth tried her best to do with her hands what her words could not.

She was careful with him. Thorough. Gentle. Tension drained out of him, allowing his shoulders to open up, and he leaned into her touch unconsciously. The repetitive motions lulled her senses and the world felt less sharp. The dim lights in the hallway flickered erratically and hummed like a droning bee. His hair was soft and tickled her fingers. She wondered if any of his former girlfriends had known that. They probably had. They probably knew more than she ever would.

“Annabeth?” Percy whispered.

“Yeah?”

“I’m sorry. And— thank you. For everything.”

Annabeth hummed in acknowledgment. A beat passed and Percy’s lips pulled upwards in a half-smile.

“It’s been a long time since you’ve gotten mad at me.”

“You sound far too pleased about that. Am I going to have to kink shame you or something?”

That tore a tired laugh out of him, and Annabeth smiled. Now, with her work done, she threw the towel back into his swim bag and stretched in place. Percy’s back was still facing her. Annabeth knocked her forehead lightly between his shoulder blades and grinned when it startled him. He turned around and raised an eyebrow.

“How are you feeling?” Annabeth murmured.

“Um, better, I think?” Percy replied. “Definitely more relaxed.”

“I- I didn’t make things worse right?” Annabeth asked tentatively.

“No, you helped,” he said quickly. “More than you probably know.”

Annabeth swallowed and looked down at her lap. “Okay, good. Just making sure.”

There was another pause and then Percy asked, “Should we go home?”

Annabeth met his eyes and nodded. “Yeah, let’s go home.”

#just practice #percabeth #percabeth fic #percabeth angst #fake dating au #percabeth fake dating au #i dont even know if this chapter is good anymore lmfao #i reworked it so many times #also ur boi is two followers away from 1k so if you could let people know that would be dope

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rachelbethhines · 4 years

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Tangled Salt Marathon - You're Kidding Me

So we’ve finally come to the last of season two’s filler episodes. Let’s see if we can knock this one out real quick.

Summary: The front door of the mysterious seashell estate vanishes, trapping the group. They try to find another way out but find a spinning top whose magic regresses Cassandra and Lance into toddlers and Shorty into a baby. They’ve only have an hour to find the top and reverse the effects or the changes become permanent. Unfortunately neither of Rapunzel’s or Eugene’s parenting methods keep their now childish friends on task.

So Why Did No One Stand Watch Last Night?

They were all sleeping right next to the entrance, and after the run in with the mirror monsters, you would think that they would have taken turns standing watch.

But nope, the front door vanishes when no one was looking cause they don't have any foresight.

A Low Budget Doesn’t Excuse Filler

Like most of season two, this is yet another episode that adds very little to the overall story. It’s slightly better than the Return of Quaid or Curses, but not by much. I put it on the same level as The Forest of No Return, as I do like the mains’ development, but there’s really no reason why such episodes exist to begin with.

The meta reason for staying in certain places for three episodes, instead of only one or two, is because of budgetary reasons. The crew have to build new sets and models for every new location or person the cast comes across. This costs money to make, so the higher ups wanted to reuse assets. Which is understandable, but not an excuse for utilizing them poorly.

If you need to stay in one area or have characters reappear, then you need to give story reasons for that. Ones that tie back to the overall narrative and/or the mains’ character arcs.

The shell house and Matthews should be more important than what they are as they both have connections to the ultimate big bad of the series.Adria shouldn’t be wasted for a whole episode when she’s the only one driving the plot in season two and has limited appearances. Vardaros and its people shouldn’t be a one and done thing if you’re going to spend so much time setting them up. And there’s still one off episodes, locations, and characters who aren’t brought back and add nothing

Not only does this make for a weaker story, it also undermines the cost saving measures that you tried to implement to begin with.

This Isn’t Representation!

Get it?!

She’s a top!

She’s totally gay, but like not really, cause this can also be interpreted as a dominatrix joke, and there’s no other real indication of her orientation outside her like smiling at her best friend/crush/sister sometimes and keeping that rose her creepy ex-boyfriend gave her.

And don't give me any bullshit excuses about Disney not letting the crew make Cassandra canonly gay/bi.

The Owl House aired just this year, the same year as Tangled’s final season. Also Globby and Carl from Big Hero Six were both confirmed to be a couple on screen a month after this episode came out. Both shows would have been in development at the same time as Tangled was. Both would have been subject to the same regulations and restrictions while writing their stories.

It isn’t “Disney” that stopped the storyboard artists from having Cass be a confirmed lesbian, it’s Chris and Ben, the head writers themselves, who failed to write it into the story properly, if at all.

Chris is the one who made Raps and Cass “sisters”. Chris is the one who wouldn’t tell the crew about his ‘twists’. Chris is the one who had Cass crush on Andrew, even after he tried to kill her. Chris is the one who made Cassandra ‘straight’ and has since used gay baiting to keep her fanbase in his pocket.

Like I am really damn sick and tired of Casspunzel stans defending Chris on twitter, when he’s the very one who sunk thier ship to begin with. I’m also really fed up with certain fans trying to bully others for not accepting their “Cass is a lesbian” headcanons as fact because what the storyboarders say on twitter after the show is over with isn’t gospel and isn’t real rep.

I don’t care if you ship Cass with Raps or headcanon her as being gay. Ships and headcanons are great and can be a lot of fun. But fuck you if you ever try to shame people for not sharing your ships/headcanons. Not only is it biophobic and acephobic to insist that there’s only ever a binary option when it comes to orientation and shipping, but it also reinforces harmful stereotypes and tropes about people in the queer community.

Like, yes, I personally may be an introverted angry bitch who’s an LBGTQA member and activist, but that doesn’t mean that every introverted bitchy woman in media is a lesbian. What kind of message does that send people when that’s the only character archetype that’s given representation or is loudly proclaimed as ‘gay’ by the wider audience? Fuck that noise!

I Know Humor is Subjective but...WHY?

Why did we give the baby a beard? How does that logically work? Did anyone outside of the crew actually find this funny?

TTS has like this one out of touch dude throwing out jokes that don’t really land with the target audience. Fans have called it ‘boomer humor’ but it’s actually ‘Gen-X’ humor. Not only because Chris and Ben are Gen Xers but because this is the type of crap my older brother would find hilarious.

Gen Xers are between Boomers and Millennials and so their humor is this weird blend of gross out shock humor, ironic nihilism, and out of date stereotypes that are only mildly better than those of the previous generation before them. They’re the generation who gave us Beavis and Butthead, South Park, and Clerks.

That’s not a criticism of Gen X as a generation, but rather just an acknowledgment that they’re worlds away from the neo-dada absurdism, more socially conscious, and globalized humor of Gen Z.

So Why Is the Bad Guy Telling the Heroes How to Foil His Plans?

Like he not only tells them how to fix their problem and how long they got in order to do so, but he also informs them how it happened in the first place. This goes directly against his plans. Had he simply said nothing and stayed out sight, then Raps and Eugene would have been lost for the full hour and most likely not have saved everyone on time.

I like to headcanon that Mathews is just “that asshole” that loves to taunt and tease but in a that manner that gives him plausible deniability. He also may just be bored, since he’s a ghost trapped in one place all the time. Yet that still doesn’t change the fact that he shot himself in the foot here.

Raps and Young Cass’s Relationship Is the Same as Raps and Adult Cass’s, and That Is a Problem.

Condescending, manipulative, hypocritical, and bossy is the way Rapunzel treats everyone. She doesn’t understand the actual difference between a child and an adult. She only understands who she who she can and can’t boss around. And those people that she can’t place under her thumb are labeled antagonists by the show.

Nor does she actually care about what either kid Lance or kid Cass has to say. She’s just being proformative, and young Cass can see through that BS, which why her methods do not work. It’s not because she’s not ‘strict’ enough; it’s because she’s not being honest.

Meanwhile Child Cassandra is just as combative, rude, bullying, and entitled as Adult Cassandra. In season three she regresses even further and becomes more violent than before.

Unlike Rapunzel, Cassandra wasn’t trapped in a tower for 18 years with zero human contact outside of her abuser. She escaped that fate and was raised in a loving home. That doesn’t mean that there won't be scars, but I still expect her to be more mature than her seven year old self. Just because she’s whining about not being special enough at 24 instead of screaming about the floor being lava doesn’t mean that she’s still not throwing a temper tantrum.

Like I should not be seeing a replay/foreshadowing of their main conflict here. They aren’t children. They’re dynamic isn’t that of a mother and child. It’s not even a big sister looking out for a little sister type relationship. Its two immature women dragging innocent victims into their bitchy cat fight for dominance over the other.

If you want me to take their issues seriously then give them real stakes to disagree over, mature behavior that I can root for, and a resolvement that doesn’t reverse any potential development that they could have had.

Matthews Plan Makes Zero Sense

For starters, half the group being kids isn’t enough of a reason for Rapunzel to stay at the shell house. Even if the effects of the time top became permanent, then Raps and Eugene could just leave and take the kids with them. Either to finish the road trip, or go straight back to Corona. Not that there’s any real reason to get the Dark Kingdom anyways, nor is there a ticking clock stopping Raps from trying again later if she chose to.

Rapunzel also is not obligated to become anyone’s mother. If she took them back to Corona than Cap would undoubtedly raise Cassandra all over again, and Lance and Shorty could be adopted by someone else. Any of the pub thugs might take them or even perhaps the King and Queen since they missed out on raising their actual daughter. Though for my money I’d get Monty or Xavier to take them in. They seem the most mature and both are shown to be good with kids.

Then again Rapunzel has been shown twice now to not give a damn about abandoning orphans, so even the ‘dump them at an orphanage’ or ‘leave them alone in the woods to fend for themselves’ isn’t entirely off the table either. I wish I was joking, but I’m not. Sadly, only Eugene’s love for Lance might be the one thing to stop her from doing just so, and even that’s iffy.

As for the missing door from earlier, if that was all that was stopping them from leaving then the time top shenanigans were fully unnecessary altogether.

I Actually Like Eugene and Rapunzel’s Conflict Here; I Just Wish It Was In a Better Episode.

Each of their viewpoints stem from their upbringing.

Rapunzel is unique in that she was simultaneously emotionally abused and neglected while being physically spoiled. Especially once she found out that she was princess, where she was then handed nearly anything and everything she wanted. She doesn’t recognize that getting your every possible whim come true can be damaging. Nor does she have any comprehension of what living in poverty is like and how this many toys is wasteful to someone like Eugene who had so very little and stole to survive.

She does however associate limits, boundaries, and orders with abusive behavior because she’s been denied autonomy and respect her whole life. She’s never seen what healthy parenting looks like and how rules can be applied correctly.

To Rapunzel no orders is ‘freeing’ and ‘validation’ is all that is needed to get a child to listen to you. Which doesn’t work for her because she doesn’t understand that real communication is more than just giving a compliment now and then.

Meanwhile Eugene lacked any sort of anchor at all. He was left to his own devices at a young age and had no one to rely on for emotional needs and, after leaving the orphanage, no one to provide physical needs either.

It’s telling that he and Lance latched onto Quaid as the only authority figure in their life, despite Quaid never out right adopting them. He was the only sense of stability that they had who they could trust wouldn’t hurt them, despite being strict with them.

And now that Eugene has gotten older and is reformed, he can probably understand why Quaid was so harsh on him and Lance. Quaid probably did more to try and help them turn from a life crime than even Rapunzel did. Like meeting Rapunzel was the inciting incident that inspired Eugene to make that leap, but the groundwork was already laid out for him to do so elsewhere. Things like his good communication skills, respect and empathy of others, and understanding of boundaries had to be learned from somewhere, and if not from the Sheriff of Vardaros than who?

What I’m getting at is that, while Rapunzel rejects her parents methods but then fails to break her learned habits from them anyways, Eugene is the reverse. He’s come to embrace his mentor’s teachings, but he fails to implement them correctly because he’s not Quaid. Being authoritative isn’t his strong suit. It goes against his usual nature as the easy going person that he is and so any attempts to come across as forceful fail as they’re hollow.

Kids know authenticity and genuineness when they see it. The children reject Rapunzel because she’s not being real with them, yet they also reject Eugene cause he’s not being honest with himself.

It’s a complex and mature conflict. Neither person is fully right nor wrong, and only by learning from each other and adopting both methods can they achieve their goal.

TTS can be deep when it wants to be. There’s a good foundation here for mature themes and complex characterization. It’s just the series doesn’t ever commit to it.

Whatever personal drama going on here about two young adults trying to cope with their past traumas and how that affects their current life and future goals is completely lost in the magical goofy antics and low stakes situation. Even the stuff about Eugene and his relationship with Quaid is reduced to nothing but a one off joke rather than being genuinely explored as a point of development.

Imagine how much more powerful things would have been if Angry and Red were brought along on the trip. If this argument was over them and whether or not they should adopt the two girls themselves or consider other options. That would be something with real weight. Something with a choice that had actual consequences attached to it. Something that would permanently affect all involved parties. Something that wouldn’t make the two leads look like outright dicks for abandoning two children for a second damn time in a row.

You Have 70 Feet of Magical, Indestructible Hair! Why Are You Afraid of a Bunch of Dogs!?

You’ve fought off giant monsters, killer robots, and supernatural beings with magical powers. What do you mean you can’t hold off a pack of guard dogs while busting down a stuck door? Why is Eugene the shield for everyone and not the actual unbreakable hair that you use as a shield all the damn time? And Why did we have to rely on Shorty again to be the deus ex machina of the episode?

At this point the writers should have just made him Demantius instead of the monkey.

What Happened To This New Dream? Where Did It Go In Season Three?

Most fans who do enjoy season two happen to be big New Dream fans as this is by far and away the best season for them. I’ll admit that the series, up to this point, had me actively liking them together, despite being originally lukewarm to the pairing in the movie.

Their conflicts were for the the most part mature and real. They learned from one another equally and had open communication when it didn't involve ‘marriage is a trap’ BS. Things, like compromising on differentiating future goals, honesty and communication, and making time for one another and extending effort into a relationship while being true to yourself are all relatable issues.

Even today's episode featured the topic of having kids and parenting. Which is a discussion you absolutely need to have with your prospective spouse before entering into any long term commitments and signing any legal contracts. For real, I’ve seen marriages fall apart because they didn’t agree on whether or not they wanted children.

I don’t know what went down between writing season two and season three, but things quickly took a sharp turn away from this dynamic and nosedived into a pit of uncomfortable bullying and gross sexist implications here after.

Matthews Plan Goes Against Zhan Tiri’s Plan

Yeah so Matthews is one of Zhan Tiri’s disciples, but he apparently doesn’t know of her goals/plans, cause she needs Rapunzel and company to reach the moonstone, not stay stuck here.

The meta reason for this that the Zhan Tiri’s story was altered at the last minute and the writers failed to make sure there was any sort of consistency between what they already set up and where they actually wound to actually taking the plot.

The in universe reason is that Zhan Tiri is an impotent moron, but that’s not what the writers were going for so it’s a fail.

Conclusion

I like the New Dream stuff, and Matthews is at least entertaining despite being incompetent. Everything else about the episode is ‘meh’ tho.

#tangled #rapunzel's tangled adventure #tangled the series #anti-tangled #anti-rapunzel #anti-cassandra #eugene

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miliyaread · 4 years

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My Hero Academia: School Briefs, Vol. 2: Training Camp by Yoshi Anri

Genre: Light novel

Summary from Goodreads.com: Midoriya inherits the superpower of the world’s greatest hero, but greatness won’t come easy.

Prose short stories featuring the everyday school lives of My Hero Academia’s fan-favorite characters.

At U.A. High School, it’s tradition for students to attend a training camp in the woods. Though the kids are mostly there to improve their Quirks, it’s also an opportunity for the ever-chatty class A, and class B as well, to cut loose in a way they can’t during regular classes.

My view on this book: This light novel is a continued of the first light novel and align with the story line of manga. This is during the time before their examination and during the summer camping training. I like this story better compare with the before light novel, except the Mineta’s part. Sorry for Mineta’s fan, but a pervert is a big no. Although, it is normal for a pervert.

The first part was about the preparation of the examination. As the manga reader and anime watcher known, Yaorozou, or as her friends call Yaomomo, invited her friends to study together. Ashido, Jirou, Kaminari and Ojiro were very shocked about Yaomomo’s house. They know Yaomomo is rich, but this is beyond crazy. Yaomomo’s mother is very sweet woman. She treats her daughter’s friends with love. I love her mother. Even though she kind of overboard with the preparation of hospitality to them. The very nutrient cookies send them awake in no time. Jirou, who wear a very stylish attire was very insecure with gaze she received from Yaomomo’s mother. She thought her attire was impressive as she also was fascinated with that kind of attire, even though she thought she was not suitable for that. I totally love Yaomama! There is also a part of story about Bakugou. I admitted that Bakugou was my bias. I love everything about him. However, the more I read the manga, my admiration become lesser from day to day. He also reacts quite harsh toward his old friends when they commented about Midoriya’s during sport day. Karashima is the only one who can tolerate Bakugo’s action. So, the conclusion, don’t bully anyone. Don’t act like you are superior with someone who is at the same level as you.

As for the second part, the class went for the school camp trip, the trip that they work hard in examination to join. Aizawa cannot hold back the class’s excitement and just let them be. The problem is when Aoyama was getting car sick due to watching his reflection on the rear mirror. Typical Aoyama! So, the class try to cheer him up and distract him. Mineta’s story is gross. However, Aoyama just cured himself by looking back at his reflection after the ride stop. During the trip, Todoroki being so sweet and let Aoyama take his chair as well to let Aoyama rest. Todoroki just care for his friend.

The 3rd part is about Mineta trying to peep the girl. The part of story is the worst. It is so much better if the author doesn’t focus about him peeping the girls. It is great that he finally got the punishment with Tiger, the member of Wild Wild Pussycats.

The next part is about the slumber party! This part of novel is refreshing and adorable. First, we have the interaction with the girls from Class A and Class B. They don’t really care about the rivalry for Class A and Class B like the boys. Having the sleepover and talking about love and everything is something that the girls will do. I like this moment since it explore more about the girls of Class B since the girls were making their rare appearance, especially in the manga and reader. Even though they are heroes, they civilizing normally, not like the boys. They can fight for their life just because for some meat and pork for nikujaga. And Momona is not helping at all! He really created all the tension in Bakugo for that. And all of them paid with the double training for tomorrow, since they have so much energy during their pillow fight. Turn out, they are busted since Vlad become suspicious with Monoma’s break time to toilet become more frequent during his time from redemption class.

Finally, the finale part with our favourite class representative, Ida. Ida missing glasses made him explored his friends’ sleeping style. The funniest style was Kaminari, as his head was hide by the pile of pillows with face-down and propped up on his knee. Also, Todoroki curse his father on his sleep on hope he choke on kuzumochi. When he finally found his glasses and want to return to his sleep, he heard the odd clicking sound. He found his teachers together with Mandalay and Pixie-Bob playing Mahjong. Ida finally realized the reason for tomorrow’s plan and how Aizawa has a faith in his students. Also, I like how Vlad is really care about his students and believed his students will win for the pillow fight. Talking about the doting teacher!This light novel is heart-warming. Except I wish that the author doesn't really focus about Mineta’s part. Reader know he is a pervert, but we don't need to know the detail.

How good this book?: 4/5

It is worth to read/buy?: Yes, if you enjoy the manga.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/42686609-my-hero-academia

Disclaimer: All the opinion about this book is based on my personal view!

#book review #Yoshi Anri #My Hero Academia: School Briefs Vol. 2: Training Camp #4/5 #light novel #boku no hero academia #my hero academia #Horikoshi Kohei

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uk-news-talking-politics · 5 years

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Johnson's Brexit plan: No viability, no decency, no hope

By Ian Dunt

It was only moments into his speech that Boris Johnson started lying. "We will under no circumstances," he said, "have checks at or near the border in Northern Ireland." It was false. Overnight, the details of his Brexit proposals to Brussels had leaked. They showed that there clearly would be checks. The British commitment to preventing any customs infrastructure in Ireland would be broken.

Once upon a time, Johnson could make these claims because he was engaged in the magical thinking of 'frictionless trade' and 'alternative arrangements'. There's no excuse for that now.

The Johnson offer to the EU will be published this afternoon, but last night's leak by the Telegraph's Peter Foster was largely corroborated by the details the prime minister offered in his speech. It works by separating out two elements of a future trading relationship: customs and regulations.

Customs involves the assessment of tariffs on goods. Regulations involve checks on whether the goods comply with the rules of the country they're being sent to. In the EU, none of this matters - you have the same tariff regime and the same rules. Outside the EU, it all needs to be checked.

Johnson's plan sets up two timetables - one for customs and one for regulations.

The customs timetable kicks in first. His deal, like Theresa May's, would have a short transition until 2021. But after that, Northern Ireland and the rest of Britain would leave the customs union with no backstop. Johnson is taking no prisoners here. He is refusing any concessions. The lock keeping Northern Ireland attached to the Republic is gone. That means checks.

How would Johnson try to avoid them? He plans to have a free trade agreement (FTA) with the EU. But that's extremely unlikely to be achieved by 2021. Free trade agreements between major partners take a long time. The one between the EU and Canada took seven years.

But even if he did manage it, there would still be checks. FTAs can hammer down tariffs between countries. But even when that's done, goods have to go through a laborious process of checks, called country of origin requirements, to ensure they're really from the state they're being sent from. This is so that other countries can't surreptitiously sneak their way in with no tariffs as part of a trade deal they didn't negotiate.

The government rubbished a previous leak this week which said there'd be customs posts on either side of the border to do these sorts of checks. But actually it seems inevitable that there will be. Their promises to the contrary are meaningless. They rely on the idea that new technology will magically be invented in the next two years to make them unnecessary. This will not happen. It is one of the great myths of the Brexit argument.

This plan is a complete rejection of the British government's commitment in the December 2017 joint report to avoid a hard border, or any physical infrastructure, or checks or controls. It goes against the promises made to the people of the island on both sides - the Republic, which had no say in all this, and Northern Ireland, which voted against it. There is no consent from these communities for these proposals. They have made clear they are against what they propose. Johnson wants to impose it on them regardless. It is a threat to the peace process. It is a betrayal of the promise of continued north-south cooperation. It is a complete and total abdication of moral responsibility.

The approach to regulations seemingly involves more concessions. Northern Ireland would remain aligned with the EU on agricultural and industrial goods regulations. This is dynamic, meaning that as the EU updated its rules, they would update theirs.

On the face of it, this seems significant. It would involve checks on the Irish sea between Britain and Northern Ireland, which is the kind of thing the DUP - whose votes Johnson would need to get a deal through - vociferously objects to.

But there's a catch. The alignment only lasts until 2025. At that point Northern Ireland gets a say on what happens. Does it want to stay aligned to the EU rules or join the rest of the UK? In practice, this gives the DUP a veto, which they will invariable use. The language is democratic, but in reality it simply serves to stagger the regulatory departure.

It's quite a remarkably tone-deaf package. Basically the UK is taking a bullying position to the EU without having anything to bully them with.

Think about their incentives. This is the kind of thing which essential to successful negotiation but which the Johnson administration is seemingly incapable of.

If Brussels accepted the package, Ireland would be thrown under the bus. It would be a complete betrayal, something they have made clear they would never do.

That's not just a moral point. It is a strategic one. If they go against Ireland, no other member state would trust them again. The offer the EU makes to countries - that they become stronger by working together - would be shown to be false.

So why do it? Johnson is presumably gambling on the fact that if they reject it they'd face no-deal, which would involve the border emerging immediately, without the lead-in to 2021 or 2025.

But this assessment is very weak, because the moral reality of that point is inverted. If the UK decides to leave without a deal, then the consequences are its responsibility. But if the EU signed up to this deal, then it shares that responsibility. And on the areas it cares about - checks on the border, north-south cooperation - those consequences would be equivalent to no-deal.

Such a move would also destroy the EU's credibility in negotiations around the world. It would be seen to buckle on all its key demands in the face of intransigence and threats. Why wouldn't other negotiating partners try the same trick?

But even aside from all that, the threat is empty because no-deal is not actually the consequence of the EU rejection of the deal. The Benn Act ensures that if there is no deal he must ask for an extension. He insists this is not true and that No.10 has found some kind of loophole in the legislation. Given his record, that is likely to be either false or a gross overstatement of some pitifully weak tactic. But even if it were true, parliament could work around it or see Johnson forced to retreat via the courts.

So the EU's incentives are not his deal or no-deal. They are his deal or extension. And extension opens up the possibility of a less insane negotiating team, or even another referendum with a result to Remain, making the whole border problem go away.

It's hard to come up with anything positive to say about this. It shows no understanding of the EU's red lines, no basic moral responsibility towards the problem in Ireland which the Brexit vote created, no consistency with the previous commitments of the British government, no viability, no practicality, no realism, and no concessions at all to the half of the population who voted Remain. It is almost impressive that after all this time they have come up with a proposal that has nothing whatsoever to recommend it.

#Boris Johnson #Brexit

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shooklynn-blog · 7 years

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Black Hole Meets Shooting Star (Chapter 3)

A/N: i’ve kind of been putting off my homework to write this fic lol but I'm just so excited for it! i have some exciting plans, but am trying to get the beginning established so that action to come later will be more justified and kind of make sense. this chapter isn’t super action-packed, but it’s good at establishing scenery and idk i just kinda like it.

not to tell you how to live your life, but you should probably read chapter 2 first

also: you can read the whole story on wattpad here :)

summary: Dan is so sick of everybody treating Phil Lester like some untouchable prince at school. Phil wears the same flower crowns and pastels Dan was heavily bullied for, but gets no grief. Dan would give anything to have Phil’s life, something that, in his eyes, is just perfect. Phil, the distant daydreamer, walks around, paying little attention to anybody but himself. He’s the person that Dan just loves to hate. That is, until Phil finds him after getting beaten up and takes him back to his place to get him cleaned up. Maybe Dan learns that there’s more to this Phil Lester kid than what meets the eye, and maybe all the distant boy’s daydreaming is just a distraction from the horrors of every day life.

genre: angst, fluff

warning: dan is n-o-s-y like omg dan can u chill out for 0.5 seconds pls, mentions of earlier vomit?? for like one line ur gonna probably be fine lol

word count: 1,814

Chapter 3:

The door to the kitchen swung open with ease. As I walked in, I immediately noticed how incredibly clean it was. It totally put my kitchen to shame. There wasn’t a dish in sight, all of them stashed away in the dark cupboards above the granite counter. The only thing sitting on the counter was a box of envelopes, neatly filed away. The kitchen looked like it was straight out of a home renovation magazine. There was a silver fridge with a long note pinned onto it by a small yellow magnet. I couldn’t resist peeking at it.

The note read:

“Hey Phil!

We’re so proud of you, and we know that you must be a little freaked out, but we know you’ll be fine! We’re only going to be gone for a week, and we are confident that you’ll be alright. The box on the counter has all things you might need to know in the case of an emergency, including contacts. Don’t forget to lock the doors, there should be plenty of food labeled in the fridge.

Make sure to call every night so that we can check in on you. If you have a friend who can stay over, that would be fine by us as long as you try and get to school every day and stay safe. You’re going to be fine.

XOXO,

Mum and Dad”

His parents were clearly very protective of him, but many parents were. Still, the note, clearly supposed to be comforting rather than instructions, was a little strange in itself. His parents were congratulating his bravery staying home alone? They must have cared a lot about him. He was probably an only child.

I would have killed to have parents who cared so much. Yeah, if I got seriously hurt my mum would worry about me, but it seemed like nothing to the extent of Phil’s family’s concern for their teenaged son who would be home alone for like a week. I was alone most of the time, so I was used to microwaved meals and the loneliness that accompanied most dinner times.

Looking through the box, there were instructions for everything you could have possibly imagined. They ranged from break ins to a wild hamster bearing rabies running into the house. Each envelope was clearly labeled with colorful stickers, his parents must have been pretty paranoid to put so much time into something like that. Did they not realize that he was a teenager who could, for the most part, do things himself without burning the house down. I supposed that some parents were just like that.

I went through another door, this one leading to a dimly lit hallway. The walls were burgundy, but the ceiling was the same too-bright white that the bathroom’s ceiling and the kitchen’s walls. At the end of the hall, there was a window, the only source of light in the narrow space, and a small table below it. There were 4 doors, 2 on each side of the hall. I slowly opened the first on the right.

It was probably Phil’s parents’ room. The walls were painted a light tan and there was a large king bed with a dark brown comforter on it in the left corner of the room. A bedside table was next to it, with two framed pictures propped up and a bowl of stationary tools. The first was a picture of who I assumed to be Phil’s parents with a boy who looked to be a bit older than Phil, but looked strikingly similar to him. There were mountains in the background, and they smiled like a happy family. I couldn’t help but feel a longing when looking at the photo. His parents looked so fondly at who I assumed to be Phil’s brother.

The second picture was Phil’s school photo from last year. I snorted a little, they clearly had a favorite son. While the picture of them as a family was adorable, it was just hilarious that they had a fully framed picture of Phil and not any of the other family members.

I heard the door open behind me. I’d been caught being nosy. I spun around to see Phil looking at me, slightly panicked.

“What are you doing in here?” he asked, his voice a little deeper than before.

“I-I’m sorry, I was just wandering around and I got lost,” I stuttered, “I can go now, I’m really sorry.”

“No, it’s fine. I don’t mind you being here, it’s just my parents’ room,” he stood there awkwardly, just kind of looking at me. We stood in silence, just sort of coexisting. I cleared my throat.

“So, uh, where was this taken?” I didn’t care much, but the silence was making me uncomfortable.

“I’m not sure,” he replied softly, fidgeting with his shirt. His eyes darted around the room, never resting on anything for too long. I kind of just stood there, not knowing what else to say.

“Is that your brother?” I was trying to save the dying conversation because I had no idea what else to do. Phil looked up at me.

“Yeah, Martyn’s 2 years older than me, off at boarding school,” Phil’s tone was lighter, actually looking me in the eyes as he answered.

“Really, that’s cool. I have a brother too. How long ago was the picture taken?” If his brother was only 2 years older than him, then it must have been fairly recent, as Martyn still looked slightly older than Phil in it. Phil began to fidget again.

“I’m not sure,” he breathed, so quietly that it was a miracle I’d understood at all. I decided to drop it, he seemed to be kind of uncomfortable.

“So, where are your parents at?” I didn’t want to give away that I’d read the note on the fridge, he already thought that I was nosy enough.

“They’re visiting some famous French doctor,” he almost seemed annoyed, “but I don’t really understand why that would take a whole week.” Why would they need to visit a doctor in France? I felt a sinking feeling inside of me, maybe somebody in his family was sick. Maybe it was his brother, and he was getting treatment in the “boarding school” he was at. It would explain why he’d gotten so shut out when I asked him about Martyn. God, I was a terrible person. I decided not to pry.

“God, that must have sounded horrible. None of my family is dying of disease, my parents are just doctors, so they like to meet with other doctors,” Phil chuckled a little, and I breathed out a sigh of relief. He looked at me apologetically, “I’m sorry, that reminded me, I’ve gotta call my parents to put them at ease. You can keep wandering around if you want, just don’t go opening any drawers you shouldn’t.” Had he just winked at me? He turned and walked out the door. Left standing alone, I decided to keep looking around.

I went to the room across the hall. The handle didn’t budge when I tried to open it. At this point, I had two options. I could have either left it alone as it was probably locked for a reason or used the paperclip I’d seen in Phil’s parents’ room. I went back to get the paper clip.

It was a fairly easy lock to pick, pretty standard. I was in within a matter of minutes. The room’s walls were painted black. The duvet on the bed in the corner of the room was checkered black and white. The bed was neatly made, the bedside table having accumulated a thick layer of dust. Muse, My Chemical Romance, Fall Out Boy, and Green Day Posters were all over the walls. The closet was full of band tee-shirts and black clothing. His brother reminded me of myself. I was sure I’d get along well with Martyn.

I was a little surprised that that was Martyn’s room. In the picture, he’d been wearing pretty bright clothes, it was hard to believe that the same boy in the picture owned all that black. I guess everybody went through their emo phase at some point or another.

“Jesus, when I said you could wander, I didn’t realize you’d go into the locked rooms as well,” Phil was back. He was back and he’d just caught me after breaking into his brother’s room. I turned around.

“We have to stop meeting like this,” I tried to make it sound lighthearted, but Phil’s expression was much more upset than he’d been when I’d gone into his parents’ room, “Is this Martyn’s room?” He looked distant again, and that scared me more than the anger I’d seen behind his eyes just a moment before.

“Nobody lives here,” he stated monotonously. He was back to the Phil Lester from school. He was back to the robot I’d seen him as too many times. He gestured to me, “Follow me, I can give you a ride home.” I followed him through the house to his car, climbing in. It was later than I thought. How long had I been unconscious for? The sun was already down.

I could still smell my vomit from earlier. Gross. It was a long, silent car ride. The tension was so thick I could slice through it with a knife. We just went by wordlessly. I thought about how much Phil had helped me, and felt bad about breaking into the locked bedroom. I’d overstepped my boundaries. Maybe it wasn’t right to have hated this boy who showed me nothing but compassion. It didn’t change the fact that I envied his life, with doctors for parents and everybody treating him kindly. His emo brother was away at boarding school, so he didn’t have to deal with him. He was clearly the favorite child. He pulled up to my house.

“Hey, thanks for everything. If it weren’t for you, I’d still probably be bleeding and slumped over a tree,” I couldn’t put into words how much I appreciated what he did for me, and how sorry I felt about breaking into the bedroom.

“It’s fine, here’s my number. Text me if you need anything. With doctor parents, I have every type of painkiller known to man in my cabinet,” Phil’s tone was warmer than earlier, and I put his number into my phone. I wished him a good night and returned to my empty home, longing to have been able to spend a few more minutes with the not-so-stranger. He waited until I got into the door to drive away, making sure I made it up the driveway. I went straight to bed and fell asleep, wrapped in his fuzzy yellow hoodie. My dreams were peaceful, very different than the one I’d had only hours before.

#phan #dan and phil fanfic #phanfiction #phanfic au #phanfic fluff #phanfic angst #fluff #angst #high school au #teen!dan #teen!phil #pastel!phil #dan x phil #black hole meets shooting star #chapter 3 #shooklynn #fanfic

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Sympathy for the Incel

If you want to know why young men are broken, ask them.

There is a cultural crisis emboldening the misogyny and violence of the little-known incel movement (an abbreviation for the self-professed involuntary celibate community of men) and which has now been tied to three mass murders: Elliot Rodger, Chris Harper-Mercer and, this week, the alleged Toronto killer Alek Minassian, who is accused of killing 10 and injuring 15 people in one of the most horrific acts of mass violence in Canada in years.

One after another, media outlets are seeking to understand how this could happen while raising the question of how we got here. The Internet is enabling a community of men who want to kill women, read the headline in The Verge. Can the radicalization of incels be stopped? asked the Globe and Mail. But one headline stood out, from The National Post: What should we do about the incels? Maybe help them. Shouting about what horrible women-hating losers they are (which they may be) is not going to prevent one of them from murdering again.

This, in particular, is the question Im concerned with, and why I am attempting to find whatever empathy or compassion might be possible for the disconnected young men flocking to the movement and who might be at a crossroads. One young man stood out in the countless hours I spent listening to podcasts, videos and chat room conversations within the incel community which I have been following for months now: 19-year-old Jack Peterson, a socially awkward Chicagoan who after hours of interviews agreed to reveal his real identity for the first time to The Daily Beast.

To be clear, Peterson initially did not want to do any media regarding the group, particularly a profile on what the makings of an incel look like, but after considering my appeal that perhaps others might want to reach out if they could have a better understanding, he agreed.

Born Kalerthon Demetro in the suburbs of Chicago, Peterson (his mothers last name) is a high school dropout who lives with his single mother and whose father left when he was two years old. Peripherally involved in the online incel community for years, Petersons first reaction to the Toronto horror was to record a podcast specifically condemning violence and misogyny and underscoring that for the majority of participants, this is not their reality. For him and many like him, he says, the incel community is a means of supporting one another in a world when it sometimes feels like there is no one else.

To listen to the teenager speak, he does not seem psychopathic. He does not seem like he endorses psychopathy. On the contrary, he seems shy and awkward and lonely and angry. He laughs when other incels make dark jokes about killers, but he does not make them himself. He gets it. They are blowing off steam.

Being an incel is not about violence or misogyny, repeats Peterson, who is the only incel who has been on television doing interviews in recent days since the alleged Toronto killer pointed a finger at the incel movement in a cryptic post on Facebook confirmed earlier this week. Yes, for some guys it is, but not for me. Not for many of us.

The challenge in covering the incel movement is that in many cases the cherry-picked and sensationalist coverage reinforces these mens persecution complexes and drives them further into a pit of rage-fueled nihilism. Attempting to find any kind of compassion is in no way to excuse or normalize the deranged among them. On the other hand, it is to see what options we have left in reaching them at all.

In the groundbreaking book Change or Die, author Alan Deutschman writes, [The sense of self is threatened by any major change in the deep-rooted patterns of how we think, feel, and act, even a tremendously positive change such as leaving behind a life of crime and addiction. A change in progress demands new explanations for a past thats now cast in a darker light.

Essentially, reaching someone entrenched within a near-fanatical belief system is often impossible because the ego will put up a fight to the death in order to not deal with the psychic pain of feeling that everything that has been done up until this point has been done wrong. But it is possible.

In Deutschmans book, spanning extensive research on changing past negative behavior to future positive actions, one case study of a parole officer illuminates how he found the most success in reaching the seemingly unreachable. By realizing that the real reason why people dont change is demoralizationthe overwhelming sense of hopelessness and power he applied the theory that the most he could do is to inspire a new sense of hope and power. Indeed, this officer invited 14 of the most argumentative ex-convicts and spent 90-minute sessions listening to them rather than telling them what to do. The response was extraordinary. The parole officer recounted: In one and a half hours they calmed down. They said, These guys arent against us. Now they come back every week and say, At least Im being listened to. In the last year the difference has been huge. They want to make a change.

In speaking to Peterson on the phone, while a journalist is about as a far away from a parole officer as you can get, its amazing the difference that occurs when I listen to what he has to say about the reality of incel culture versus how he sees the media portraying its members.

In his view, as despicable and morally unfathomable as the psychopathic fringe is, the reality of the wider membership estimated in the tens of thousands of active members is far more complex.

The way Peterson tells itand as is supported by his digital footprint of videos, podcasts and commentsfor him and many others, to be an incel is to seek the camaraderie of a group of male peers who provide an outlet where, for once, they can honestly talk about the increasing fragmentation, disconnection, alienation and ostracization they feel in an always-online world in which, as far as they can see, they are not welcome or wanted.

Peterson compared the mischaracterization of incels to the xenophobic broad brush that takes a minority of radicalized Islamic suicide-bombers and uses it to condemn the vast majority of Muslims. Instead, he said, there is an acceptance that there is a vile minority who distorts the vision of the communitybut that it is not his vision for the group.

Like many in the incel community, Peterson essentially grew up without a strong father figure.

His mother kicked his father out because, in Petersons words, he used to beat the shit out of my mother and she got a restraining order. His father was the same age that he is now when he got his 39-year-old mother pregnant, and hes never met him, but they have spoken on the phone a few times.

I dont really have any feelings about him, Peterson says. He just kind of is.

From an early age, Peterson felt a level of social anxiety that was bearable but distinct. His kindergarten teacher asked him why he did not play with the others. He said, I dont know how.

Things started to change around the third or fourth grade. It was the first time the girls started making fun of him, he says, saying he was creepy and gross and weird.

I didnt understand it, he says. I was told either to act like a man or that girls could do no wrong. And yet I was constantly told that men were the cruel, bad ones. None of it made any sense to me. I was just extremely shy. I didnt talk to them, but the teasing was relentless and made me want to kill myself.

In the seventh grade, Peterson transferred to three different middle schools all in one year as the bullying followed him everywhere. By the time he reached high school, he says, one young woman started taking photos of him and sharing them with other girls who openly laughed in his face about how ugly he was and why they did not want him near them. He did not finish his freshman year at the Chicago Academy for the Arts, but dropped out after the first semester. His mother never knew the extent of the bullying he experienced.

I was just ashamed, he says. How do you talk about that?

The profoundly formative pain of youthful bullying has been around forever. When a classmate taunts you and proclaims your worthlessness to all your peers, if you are a kid, the humiliation of such an experience doesnt feel like its happening in a classroomit can feel like a worldwide-televised death sentence.

Very few kids on the receiving end of the cruelty know how to deal with itbecause of a lack of life experience that is just as undeveloped as their pubescent brains.

But for a kid growing up today, the tool of the Internet levels the game. No longer do you wonder, Will anyone ever love me? Now you can Google it, and find secret places and communities and bodies of knowledge that your parents dont even know exist. This can be exciting, emboldening, a total game-changer.

I remember the first time I found a site that even mentioned the word incel, I was like, Woah, these guys are outcasts, too, he says. I kind of felt like, maybe Im not alone.

At the age of 11, Peterson visited 4chan for the first time, and he saw his rage and loneliness expressed as well as the impotence of such advice as just get over it. He didnt know how to. He didnt have anyone to ask. He just didnt want any more ridicule.

It was kind of crazy to see and read a lot of the stuff I did, Peterson says. But it was also the only place where other guys talked about some of the things I was experiencing. Feeling so alone and rejected by the people around you. I was extremely shy then, and still kind of am, but it makes you feel really fucked up to be told youre a creepy loser by a pretty popular girl when youre just sitting there, saying nothing, doing nothing, wishing you were invisible but instead being the quiet freak with the cystic acne all over his face.

He also received an indoctrination into the culture of these young men who accepted him and what they found acceptableand what he would need to as well if he were to finally fit in somewhere.

To understand the increasingly irony-rich language of the users, its essential to read Angela Nagles book Kill All Normies, which exquisitely captures the critical shift in online perspective and the death of what remained of a mass culture sensibility that happened at exactly the same time Peterson began actively engaging with it.

In her brilliant book documenting the culture wars of the extreme left and the extreme right in recent years, focusing on subcultures including 4chan and incels, Nagle describes the attitude rebellion on the site against the sentimentality and absurd priorities of Western liberal performative politics and the online mass hysteria that often characterized it.

Peterson is one of the best representations of exactly how these culture wars are shaping our young mens identities.

When everything is ironic, nothing is. So they mock it. All of it.

Theres this big hypocrisy in the fact that so many people who say they are all about human rights and empowerment think its actually funny when boys get mocked, he says. I never said a single misogynistic thing growing up. And I was punished. Just because I was weird. I couldnt help it. I honestly wanted to die.

On the contrary, the incel communities he found online seemed different.

When I dropped out of high school, the one place I felt okay about stuff for a little while was when I was online, Peterson tells me. By the time I discovered the incel culture on Reddit, it felt like, Okay, Im not insane. I was reading all these other guys stories about how girls told them they were repulsive. I never identified with the misogyny, but I did identify with the rage at the hypocrisy of just how untouchable women were in society. No matter what, no matter what awful thing a woman did, it was always supposed to be like, Oh yeah, thats female empowerment. But when you have no friends and are getting bullied and humiliated by women constantly and are told to both man up and renounce your masculinity its like the one bright light you see is this community.

By the time he was 16, Peterson finally met in person a young womanfour years older than himwith whom he had been chatting online since he was 12 years old. She did not know what he looked like for some time, and when he finally shared his picture, she told him that she didnt find him attractive. He lost his virginity to her, after which he says she ridiculed his penis size and laughed at him. Later, she sent him copies of messages that she had sent on to other men she was cheating on him with where she explicitly described the sex acts she wanted done to her. (Ive seen corroborating evidence of all of this.)

I was literally cucked, Peterson says. That word doesnt have any meaning anymore, but thats what I was. I still wanted to see her though. She was the only girl who had ever expressed interest in me, even though she tore me down and told me how ugly I was. It was still better than nothing.

According to Peterson, the relationship finally disintegrated when she began choking him and tried to go after him in her car. He ran to a nearby store to get help, and has the actual footage of the security cam showing him flailing against the glass window. The police came, and to cover for the girl, he said that he was suicidal. He spent three days in a mental institution because of it.

This was a turning point for Peterson.

He finally aligned himself fully as an incel. He was, in the words of Internet argot, black-pilled.

Anyone who has dabbled in understanding Internet lingo is likely familiar with the term red-pilled (inspired by the film The Matrix, where Neo is offered a blue pill where everything stays status quo or a red pill where the ugly truth is supposedly exposed). Adopted by mens rights activists around 2004, to get red-pilled is to subscribe to the particular ideology that feminism is a cancer and men are the real victims. But what does it mean to get black-pilled, as many refer to this communitys belief system? It sounds as bleak as it is.

Essentially, the philosophy is that everything is broken and the answer lies in refusing to engage in a meaningful or constructive way with society. (The phrase black pill first appeared in 2012 on a blog called Omega Virgin Revolt.) A critical part of being black-pilled is recognizing, with zero sentimentality or euphemism or explaining away, that women do not like genetically inferior men. They now have infinite options in the form of men who are higher status (be it, economic, physical, or intellectual) because of the breakdown in societal monogamy and now high-status men can game apps and use hypergamy (or dating up) to their advantage. (Meaning, a less attractive woman will nowadays reject a less attractive male if she is suddenly able to have meaningless sex with a high status man, who can juggle multiple women. This leaves men who are not as good-looking in the dust.)

Incels theorize that once you are black-pilled, you are finally given the gift of brutally honest Darwinian truth that, essentially, the game is rigged, so why bother? With such entrenchment in the truth of the doctrine comes freedom. No longer do you have to run around in circles. You can accept the world for what it is and settle back into your status on the lower rungs.

If you are red-pilled, you might take this theory of female behavior to use it in manipulative pick-up strategies to try to game women into thinking you are higher status or to find the weakest prey.

If you are an incel and have never had a single successful romantic attempt or only disastrous ones, this type of theorizing provides that wonderful feeling of certainty that comes with confirmation bias and the emancipation from regret of knowing that nothing could have been done anyway. Which is why many incels describe being black-pilled as an awakening from humiliation. Like finally realizing that you have been the subject of a joke that everyone else has been in on the whole time.

For a young man like Peterson, spouting such beliefs, he seems not so much a product of toxic masculinity as a failure of masculinity itself.

No one is teaching these men how to be men. This doesnt mean men in the sense of mens rights activists, but a healthy, balanced (not extremist) definition which includes someone who treats women well but also treats himself well by not being afraid to think for himself with opinions that deviate from the loudest, most hateful elements in the community.

But isnt the worst parts of the incel community hate speech? And shouldnt such hate speech be eradicated?

In Nadine Strossens timely new book Hate, she makes the case for countering bad speech with more speech, and illustrates how in countries where hate speech speech laws have been enacted, support for racist and xenophobic politicians has risen. In Europe, hate speech laws have in fact been used as a means of stifling dissent amongst the disenfranchised.

Equal justice for all depends on full freedom of speech for all, she writes.

Not only that, but as Keith Whittington argues in his new book Speak Freely, offensive speech is crucial to safeguard because of its utility in generating, testing, and communicating ideas.

One of the most brilliant defenses of the subject is Jonathan Rauchs 2013 essay, The Case for Hate Speech in The Atlantic, where he thanks the loudest and most noxious voices he faced along the way in his fight for gay marriage. [W]e won in the realm of ideas, he writes. And our antagonists–people who spouted speech we believed was deeply offensive, from Anita Bryant to Jerry Falwell to, yes, Orson Scott Card–helped us win.

For the incel community, of course, many of the ideas espoused are in defense of their identity as the losers of society, which frees them of the need to take personal responsibility.

I think thats a valid criticism, Peterson says. I get sick of the guys who seem like they just want to keep others down no matter what. Its almost like you are scorned when you experience a little bit of success.

The podcast Peterson recorded after the Toronto attack represents the incel community as not seeming as extreme as a cursory visit to the incel-tracking site We Hunted the Mammoth or the incel-mocking community Incel Tears might lead you to believe. On these sites, in the communitys most chilling screengrabs, posts include suggestions that in order to truly terrorize the women who have rejected incels over the years, perhaps mass acid attacks and rapes could be coordinated in order to inflict the same damage upon women that these young men feel has happened to them.

In contrast, Petersons podcast discussion contains an unusual degree of literacy about sociological phenomena, including the Japanese trend of hikikomori, or isolationism and utter retreat occurring with young men, which many incels predict will spread around the world in due time.

But at its core, it is still a conversation littered with misogyny and resentment.

At one point, someone says that women use men like emotional tampons. Another brings up the possibility of mandated girlfriends (or state-sanctioned rape, as shown on the new season of The Handmaids Tale). A joke is made that the best-case scenario is when incels go ER (or Elliot Rodger). There is discussion about the evolutionary benefits of sexual violence, which harkens Rodgers infamously deranged advocacy of a program where men could kill all women because if women were able to choose their own mates, their inferior brains would devolve humanity completely. Someone laughs about the idea of blackmailing women into having sex with them by threatening to post nude photos online. Peterson himself brings up the idea of access to assisted suicide for incels to prevent future attacks, and he suggests that talking to those who wonder about incel culture might help with improving our image, especially if you attach a face to the incel phenomenon, I think that that makes it more sympathetic.

Peterson clarifies to me: He was not suggesting it be him.

I meant someone else, but then it turned out, I guess I was the only person dumb enough to show my face in videos I made online, he says. So here we are.

When I ask him about the references in the podcast to Rodger, he responds, That guy was fucking nuts. I dont really joke about going ER, but I dont tell the guys who make those jokes not to do it because I know theyre being sarcastic. All this shocking stuff is often just the guys trolling. I would argue that I dont think anybody is going to be stupid enough to believe that sanctioned rape is being talked about as an actual suggestion. Sometimes the most ridiculous shit makes me laugh, even though I dont condone it. So if I do laugh at some of this stuff its probably me laughing at something because its fucking stupid.

The psychopaths are the problem, not the incels, he says.

If someone is going to carry out an attack like this theyre gonna have to be severely mentally ill to be capable of that, he says. Making jokes or being active in the incel community doesnt cause it. Being mentally ill does.

But what about when jokes arent just jokes?

I mention how last year when the Nazi website The Daily Stormers guidebook was leaked online, it contained the message: The unindoctrinated should not be able to tell if we are joking or not. So what about when such humor is actually a means of subversive propaganda?

I can see that, Peterson acknowledges. I mean, Ive had guys tell me some really fucked-up shit, and Ive told them, you know, get some help because I dont want you to hurt anyone. But I do think that making dark jokes for people who arent mentally ill helps keep a lot of us from going crazy.

And how exactly does he feel about the disparagement of women in saying that they use men as emotional tampons? Men do the same fucking thing, Peterson says. Thats not a one-sided thing. Men can use women emotionally, too.

And what of the suicide idea?

What it really comes down to is that Id rather these mass shooters and attackers just kill themselves than kill 10 or more innocent people. So maybe if it was easier to commit suicide wed see less of these attacks. Im not condoning suicide but I prefer that to innocent people dying.

On the incels.me forum, a stated list of rules for participation include guidelines that are stricter than most elite private clubs in America.

No women allowed. No exception.

Yes, this means that a forum dedicated to decrying success with women has as one of its primary rules a focus on enforced isolation. Other rules also brutally shut out any chance to provide advice or mentorship to other young men.

A few months ago, when Peterson was using the forum, he suddenly found that he was banned from having certain privileges in the chatrooms. Even the incels, it seemed, were rejecting him.

In response, he filmed and put on his YouTube one of the most astonishing, hyper-granular deconstructions of modern Internet life Ive ever seen.

It is bizarro land for anyone not deep in the world of Internet language.

To create the video, he spent three days nonstop (two days spent up for 24 hours straight in between passing out) to create a meticulous 30-minute PowerPoint video that he filmed objecting to the ban and making his case that he in fact was a genuine incel using a barrage of evidence and minutiae and dictionary definitions and failures of logic to try to break down the bullying he felt he experienced on the forum.

And, if you want to get brutal about the absurdity of the exercise (and the insanity such subcultures can create amongst its members), to prove exactly why he was just as reprehensible to society as the rest of the incels.

It was pretty ridiculous, he says in retrospect. Its like American Vandal, Netflixs mockumentary on super-deep-dive crime docs, except with the heartbreaking element of seeing how brainwashed a young man is into trying to obtain peer approval.

At one point in the video, he even includes a diagnosis that he is paranoid schizophrenic as evidence that he ought to qualify as an incel because of this mental illness. The reality is that after he was given that diagnosis, another psychologist said he was not. Instead, the doctor told him (and is evidenced in the video), he was making himself sick with his own thoughts.

All of this humiliation is laid out for his fellow community of incels to seeand all of it to get back into good standing in the incel community. Thats how bad isolated young men want status and the reassurance of having a community to call their own. Even when the group identity is in how perversely low and entrenched their status really is.

Is it any wonder that these boys need a father figure?

Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson (no relation to Jack) has been known to be moved to tears in interviews when discussing the crisis of alienation he sees amongst young men today and the need to provide them with tools that will reach them.

As he told Tim Lott of The Spectator late last year about his 90 percent male audience, Im telling them something they desperately need to hearthat there are important things that need to be fixed up. Im saying, You guys really need to get your act together and you need to bear some responsibility and grow the hell up. The lack of an identifiable and compelling path forward and the denialism these kids are being fed on a daily basis is undoubtedly destroying them and that is especially true of the young men.

Lott then observes the author of The 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos displaying a level of vulnerability on the subject that is striking.

At this point, to my astonishment, Peterson begins to weep. He talks through his tears for the next several minutes. Every time I talk about this, it breaks me up, he says. The message Ive been delivering is, Find the heaviest weight you can and pick it up. And that will make you strong. Youre not who you could be. And who you could be is worthwhile.

As psychologist William Pollack articulates in the documentary The Mask You Live In about the boy code that warps masculinity from an early age: The way that boys are brought up makes them hide all of their natural, vulnerable, empathic feelings behind a mask of masculinity When theyre most in pain, they cant reach out and ask for help because theyre not allowed to or they wont be a real boy.

In fact, boys express depression in a completely opposite way than girls. They act out. But most people see it as a conduct disorder or just a bad kid.

After the Parkland high school shooting in March, one of the foremost activists in trying to address the crisis of reaching out to troubled young men before they become killers met with President Donald Trump to say his piece. Every single one of these school shootings has been from young men who are disconnected, said Darrell Scott, the father of the first student murdered at Columbine High School almost 20 years ago. In response, he founded Rachels Challenge to intervene with action rather than yet another toothless spectacle of condemnation of the empirically condemnable violence itself.

In a tweet rant posted during this same time by Martin Daubney, the editor of the English lad magazine Loaded, he articulated a similarly jarring portrait of collective angst from young men who feel callously tossed aside and branded as innately wrong, which only serves to compound the sense of victimization even further.

Im mindful of a seminal TEDTalk by Warren Farrell, author of The Boy Crisis, Daubney wrote. He looks at school shootings, and says: Boys who hurt, hurt us…They say todays boys feel part of some grand problem. You could frame it as #ToxicMasculinity: the notion that all males are to blame for the actions of a minority of damaged individuals. This is identity politics at its most destructive. Because we live in a world where every male indiscretion is used to attack all males. Im saying this: many boys are switching off. Were losing them.

How does an incel feel about all of this concernextended within the realm of ideas and intellectualism?

Itd be nice, Jack Peterson says, if he just had someone else to talk to about it.

I like Jordan Peterson a lot, he admits in a tone that sounds more upbeat than the rest of our conversation. I was going to go see him with another incel but that guy ended up not being able to go. But I bought a VIP ticket so I get to meet him next week.

In the wake of the Toronto attack, Peterson is unique in that unlike many in the incel community who have scrubbed their social or taken down their WordPress blogs that chronicled their life, he decided to see what happened when he went on TV to talk about his life in this widely reviled community now most associated with mass murder.

The decision to do so was gutsy. Especially considering the against-the-agenda talking points he is now presenting in condemning misogyny and violence.

The reaction he has received from other incels has been negative. And the public certainly doesnt like anyone who might be an incel.

Its an unwinnable place to be for someone who might still have a chance of climbing out of the twisted, self-fulfilling prophecy gutter that such dangerous places can become for young men who dont think they have anywhere else to go.

But Peterson doesnt regret doing the media and putting his face out there.

Instead, he speaks with an inverse of the perverted sadism of the Toronto attacker. It is a nihilism of potential that is in stark contrast to the nihilism of murderous revenge.

As he describes the decision, you can almost hear an epiphany clicking: When you dont care when you have nothing else to lose, it can be used for good or evil.

I dont know why I said yes to identifying myself as an incel, he says, mulling it over. I just felt like, you know What do I have to lose?

Of course, within the incel community itself, the answer is clear.

He could very well lose his status as an incel.

They called him all the predictable names. He was a cuck. He was a status-seeker. He was an opportunist. He was a number of slurs that are not fit to print. But for an incel, the worst insult he received of all was that he was a fake.

And, this being incel-world, the name he was called was targeted and precise.

You see, for incels, each man within the community self-identifies with how they qualify for their incel status. For instance, mentalcels achieve their status as a result of mental illness. A braincel is that way because of intelligence. A truecel has never had sex, a relationship, any kind of success at all.

Thus Peterson was called a fakecel. No, Peterson says, thats wrong. He definitely still is an incel. He is a part of the group. Where then does he now belong?

Peterson is quiet as he considers the answer.

I think something where I can help people, he says. I like talking about the positive stuff more, even if its frowned upon.

He considers a while longer.

I dont know, he considers, maybe Im a hopecel.

Read more: https://www.thedailybeast.com/sympathy-for-the-incel

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