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masterthespianduchovny · 3 years

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I’m going to be honest before I get to the Sam/Rebecca subplot: if they drop plots threads indicating that this continue into the next season and uplift this pairing, I’m out.

This storyline is gross and I can see why some people quit the show when the revealed happened.

When I say I’m repulsed by age gap relationships of this nature, this isn’t a shipping thing or a race thing. This is a moral and ethical thing. Because it’s not just an age gap, it’s also that Rebecca is Sam’s boss. I legitimately don’t see how people can overlook this and ship how “cute” this is. I’m not judging anyone, it just genuinely doesn’t make sense to me.

And for people who think I’m a hypocrite, Ted/Rebecca is not the same. Sam and Rebecca is like a principal dating a student. If you want to age Sam up, because people love to accuse others of infantilizing Sam, it’s like the president of a college dating a student. In both cases, there would be backlash, and have been, to these types of relationships.

Which would make Ted’s position that of a teacher/professor or someone higher. In most cases, there aren’t objections, however, both parties have to be transparent about their relationship and careful about how and if that influences their professional relationship with each other and others.

Last week, I mentioned a friend of mine who was 18 and dated someone who was 28. Both are white for reference. When I found out their ages and respective positions, I became concerned and doubly concerned.

Oh, they had chemistry and he made her so happy, but he was also controlling as fuck and emotionally abusive. During the duration of their relationship, he became her boss and would monitor her interactions via cameras in the back office. She was stressed out as fuck and would go to the bathroom to cry. You know, where cameras weren’t and where he couldn’t enter.

And it was a secret relationship because he could get in trouble. I didn’t say anything because she was with her boyfriend before she knew me. Me telling someone could’ve gotten him in trouble or fired, but that wouldn’t have ended the relationship. It would’ve made her end our friendship and cling closer to him. Instead, after I quit for other reasons, I sporadically checked on her to see how she was doing and give her advice and resources.

As far as the actual episode itself goes, I struggled to enjoy it due to the Sam/Rebecca situation. It should’ve ended at dinner at most.

The only emotional beat that landed, imo, was Jamie and Roy’s hug. I do think Ted’s confession was strong, but the flow was kinda weird for me. By itself it works.

Two things working for me that wasn’t at the forefront of the episode was 1. How Ted’s problem is fucking over the team. 2. That Nate is in over his head.

Even if AFC Richmond had lost with Ted being in his A game, it wouldn’t have been that made and the team would’ve been more competitive. They were sloppy and making baffling errors. Their head was not in the game and it showed. Man City wasn’t that good, Richmond was just that ill prepared.

And who led training?

Nate.

Nate has great instincts, but he isn’t ready to lead a team and he still has a lot of work to do before growing into coaching a team as head coach.

But let me stress, this falls completely on Ted and even Beard to an extent. Yes, Ted is having emotional issues, however, many people rely on him and he wasn’t there. I don’t mean literally because teams should be able to function without their head coach for stretches of time. He hasn’t been there mentally and emotionally for most of the season. Because AFC Richmond’s competition isn’t as premier as Man City, it’s easier to appear more dominant that you are, esp if you’re coach isn’t on his A game. However, when you’re up against actual Goliath’s in the league, you’ll get your ass handed to you like Richmond did.

As I mentioned earlier, if they do go through with supporting and uplifting Sam/Rebecca, my time with this fandom ends with the season 2 finale.

But if we take Ted’s dark forest into consideration, there is another way this could play out. Actually many.

The one I can see happening that can get her somewhat redeemed, because some will never get over this happening in the first place, is her hitting rock bottom via her relationship with Sam. Something will happen or make her have unflattering thoughts about herself and her actions that will drive her into a tailspin.

And I’m unsure if it’ll be just a personal crisis or if it’ll also be a professional crisis.

Some may disagree with me, but I do want this affair to come to light. Because if it doesn’t, it sets up this fucked up precedent that Rebecca can do fucked up shit and get away with it in private.

Rebecca fucked over her club, uprooted a man’s life in bad faith, and almost ruined several people’s careers due to her bullshit in the first season. The fact that she didn’t have to answer for any of this is a God damn mercy on Ted’s part even though she didn’t ask for it.

Now for her to date/fuck a player because “she just has to know.” Because she doesn’t want to let something pass her by?

Yeah…no.

Rebecca’s fear of loneliness is leading her to make very bad decisions and I fear what this means for Sam’s career and relationships if this breaks. There were people who allegedly care for Sam, yet cheered for this relationship to happen. What do you think happens with his locker room relationships? I’ve already explained in another post that either this sours those relationships OR they want favors from him because he’s dating/fucking the boss.

He’ll get crucified in the media. He may even have trouble getting employed. Why? Because that’s how racism works.

“But, masterthespianduchovny, if Sam may receive hate and racist acts committed against him, why do you want the affair exposed?”

Because this shit show of a relationship isn’t about just Sam. It’s about Rebecca’s fear of loneliness leading her to make bad decisions that effects everyone not just her and Sam. It’s the fact that a white woman isn’t thinking about how her actions could have major consequences for a young black man.

Rebecca is so obsessed with not being lonely and being loved that 1. She never sought help or productive ways to deal with the fall out and humiliation of her marriage. 2. She dated a man because he was “fine” and not because she was actually invested in him and the relationship 3. She’s getting involved with a player on her team without thinking of any of the consequences. 4. She’s not considering the other players, the coaches, or anyone else she’s responsible for.

Oh, and considering we got that call from Sam’s dad…his relationship with his father will most likely suffer as a result. AND now that Dubai Air thing looks suspect, esp because she was talking to him around that time unknowingly.

Oop! And isn’t she getting her relationship with Nora back on track? Even though Nora and Sam can’t legally date and I’m not saying every decision should be swayed by a teenage girl, however, Rebecca is literally sabotaging every relationship just because she’s afraid of being alone (I agree with another poster who said we really didn’t need to explore this storyline, but alas…)

Although Ted forgave Rebecca for her scheming in season one, I honestly don’t think he’d be so forgiving for this. It’s his job to protect players and look out for their well being and how can he one his boss is involved with one of his players, which again, affects others players. This relationship has major consequences for other people who are not in it.

Also, Sam…for someone who people love to say is mature enough to date an older woman, not once did even be consider the ramifications of getting involved with the boss.

Not once.

And that looks bad because a mature person his age would be mindful of such a thing. This isn’t considered or, at least, isn’t said onscreen. Sam os either thinking with his dick, his heart, or both, but he isn’t thinking with his head. Because there is no way you’re thinking with your head and don’t stop to say, “hey, this thing could jeopardize my relationship with my teammates and the other people I work with. Maybe I should think some more of this before pursuing a relationship with my boss.” Sam was all in from the moment he decided he wanted to have dinner with Rebecca. There was no thinking on his end.

But Sam’s super mature, right?

Another poster mentioned that there might be a screaming match between Rebecca and ted and I’m so here for that. No, I don’t think this argument will be romantic. They’ll have legitimate gripes with each other, but yeah…this is an argument that needs to happen. Which will most likely be before Rebecca gets help.

That’s all assuming this happens. Like I said, they could have Sam and Rebecca being a power couple (🤮), or handle this some other way. But if this is going to be framed as a good thing, others can enjoy it, but the show will have one less viewer from me.

#ted lasso #Rebecca welton #sam obisanya #ted lasso spoilers

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patchesthegothictramp · 4 years

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Part 3 of P5R review: Akechi

Next up, my favourite part: Akechi! Also mostly likely the last part since I don’t think I missed anything else. Feel free to hit me up though if you’re wondering about anything I haven’t mentioned

Akechi was undoubtedly, and still is, persona 5’s most hotly debated character. From what I’ve been seeing people who even loathed Akechi are starting to become fans of him, or at least don’t hate him anymore. Royal expands on his character in a way that fans of his love because it confirmed so many of their suspicions of what he’s really like but also just adds more depth to him. I could even understand why people who played vanilla only saw him as ‘boy takes things too far cos daddy issues’ cos, well, without deeper analysis that is what atlus was presenting. There was a lot more to his character in vanilla but I don’t blame people not looking into him because what they saw on the surface didn’t interest them enough... though that being said the abuse and torment given to his fans was super uncalled for.

Let’s start with his confidant and take it from there- it’s special, it’s fun, it’s emotional and it’s so layered I could watch it a million times and I’d probably still miss something from it. It’s special because it’s the only confidant where Ren just gets to hang out with someone, with nothing expected in return. All Akechi wants is a conversation and to play billiards with him. All of the other confidants want your help in something, want you to solve their issues without any regard for what they could do for you in return. Of course when Ren’s in jail they help him out then but it’s only when he’s facing the worst-case scenario. Interestingly enough, Akechi goes to jail for Ren at the first opportunity he gets and in that world none of your confidants ever return the favour of Ren changing their lives. To nail this point further, his confidant does have some requirements for social stats, but it’s the only instance where it’s made clear that it’s for Ren’s own comfort, not for someone else’s. Akechi says he needs someone charming and knowledgeable because he’s genuinely concerned for the abuse Ren might get if his fans didn’t consider him worthy of their idol’s presence.

It’s unexpectedly fun too, you’d think that an Akechi confidant would be just about rivalry or him talking to you about his Tragic Backstory but you get quite a few moments which are just… fun. The first one has them playing billiards and uncovering that he’s ambidextrous, and while it is a set up for their rivalry it’s still just them playing billiards like regular teenagers would. There’s the café date where silliness ensues and funnily enough you end up finding out more about Ren in that interaction than you do Akechi; about how Ren too hides from the public and has his own mask (glasses) that help him cover up who he really is.

But of course, it’s also emotional, like the bathhouse scene where you finally get to know more about Akechi’s past that’s not just a random info dump, there’s him clearly crying for help in the final billiards rank where he talks about the game as if it were his own life and even asks you if you’d help him (even though he doesn’t let you help regardless of what you say).

Term 3 Akechi… well he’s everything I hoped he would be. Sarcastic, sardonic and all around Done With This Shit. He never holds back anymore, both on the battlefield and real life and he doesn’t care what the Thieves or anyone else thinks of him anymore. He’s done with the detective mask and the charade and can finally be himself for once, and I absolutely love it. He’s gone from a character I can only theorise about being rude in my writing to one who’s everything I hoped for and so much more.

Now to the shuake stuff: Oh my god its so gay.

Yes a lot of it is regular friendship stuff but also if you can’t be friends with your boyfriend then that’s just casual sex, not a relationship. And I’m not talking about the bathhouse scene. Actually, what’s interesting is what happens after which is when Akechi specifically says that no ones ever seen that part of him, Ren’s the only person who he’s been able to open up to like that. There’s the jazz club, which you find out later is a special place for Akechi to the point that the owner says he’s never brought anyone else there. Ren is clearly special in Akechi’s eyes, he’s the one person he can be around and be his true self.

You even see it in term 3 when he’s sarcastic and sardonic around Ren but still continues to put up a façade around human Morgana, Futaba, Sojiro Wakaba and later Kasumi, at least until they see him for who he really is inside the palace and he’s forced to show his true self. The writers make that so obvious that Akechi’s face visibly changes when he’s talking to Ren and when he’s talking to everyone else.

And Akechi is equally special to Ren. Ren doesn’t wish for his criminal record to disappear or to be a Phantom Thief again, he wishes to keep the promise he made to Akechi even with the knowledge that the other was going to kill him. We’ve seen him mourn Akechi’s death in p5a proof of justice- the OVA that was so clearly meant to set up royal considering how many similarities it had with that more so than the original game. For a silent protagonist and a self-insert Ren shows more feelings towards Akechi than he does any other character.

Even down to their showtime, everyone else has these elaborate plans that they have to explain to each other then to Ren and hope that the wishing star will make their wish come true and yet Akechi and Ren are just able to improvise it completely on the spot, staying completely in sync. Interestingly enough if you compare it to Joker’s only other one- Sumire’s, she’s leading him into the showtime, she’s the one who has to have him follow her, but with Akechi, he’s equal, they’re in sync, all it takes is Ren shouting ‘Crow!’ for him to jump at the enemy without further instruction. Just as their showtime says, they’re two sides of the same coin.

There’s a reason that somehow, despite never having spoken about Akechi to him, Maruki knows that’s what Ren’s biggest wish would be, he knows that it’s the only way he might be able to stop Ren and the Thieves from infiltrating the palace, and in one alternative, the dream ending, it is enough for him to dangle Akechi’s life in front of him for Ren to fold. He insists Akechi’s life isn’t just something small that he can sacrifice once again.

Our Light is even further proof of it, it’s a love song, not to Kasumi, or not from her, it could clearly not be more obvious that’s it’s from Ren to Akechi. The song describes missing someone who’s gone in such a romantic way that seeing it as Sumire to Kasumi is borderline incestuous, and seeing it as Ren to Sumire or vice versa makes no sense either since they’re just a train ride away and even speak about seeing each other soon. It’s unlikely to be about anyone else either since yeah, Ren can just go and visit them any time and for that to be the ending song of a remake where the only character who’s made more important than he was previously is Akechi. It wouldn’t make sense for the song to be about that one girl out of 10 that you can romance but doesn’t really change the plot as significantly as he does.

In this way, P5R does a great job of showing, not telling. There are frequent comparisons of Maruki and Rumi’s situation to Ren’s and Akechi’s (not direct ones but it’s obvious the two are similar) and if they were a het couple that romance would be unquestionable. At the end of the day, persona is and always will be a game about choice where the protagonist is mostly a self-insert which is why they’ve never been able to outright say ‘this is the canon romance route’ but honestly, if it were to be anyone, it’s so painfully clear it’s Akechi.

Especially when you remember the director’s words of this being a love triangle. We know Sumire has a crush on Ren but doesn’t seem to have an interest in Akechi and outside of being a possible conversation partner, Akechi clearly isn’t interested in Sumire. So then if they’re a love triangle the only logical conclusion is that they’re both vying for Ren’s affection. From Ren’s perspective, the player can choose if he will romance Sumire but regardless of what Ren says to Sumire, he always ends up having Akechi’s life dangled before his eyes and can always choose to have him by his side.

TL;DR Goro Feral, Shuake Canon

#patches plays p5r #p5r spoilers #p5r #persona #akechi goro #goro akechi #ren amamiya #akira kurusu #joker #crow #shuake #akeshu

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untilmynextstory · 3 years

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Chapter 8: Family Recipe

Eventually Jax was able to get Nathan to calm down. It was only after Nathan unleashed everything. Namely that he doesn't know when the abuse happened, in fact, he never saw a bruise on his mother, but he just knows Vitaly hurts her. Jax knows that the abuse doesn't even have to be physical, but mentality and emotionally.

It takes everything in his power to not storm to Alma's right now, but he has to be smart. He has to prepare for the worst. He can't just kill Vitaly. The man does have ties to the Russians and any blowback can land on Alma's doorstep.

Then there is the fact in separating Alma from her abuser. He has to be prepared that she won't want to leave. He needs to be prepared for her to fight him on everything.

He does his best to not even think about why Alma got herself in the situation. The anger doesn't lay on her. Now he knows why Alma wanted Nathan to move in with him. The abuse must have been escalating. He knew something was wrong. He should've pressed and pressed even if it would have pissed her off.

Jax walks over to the end table and grabs some stationary. He writes a short and coded message to Lenny to see if he could give him some basic info on Vitaly and his schedule. He knows he can't just show up to Alma's place of work. He wouldn't be surprised if the man kept eyes on Alma while he was away. He needs to be careful.

Alma feels Vitaly only did what he did to ruin her Thanksgiving. After all, he had left promptly three days after his parting gift for a business trip that would leave him gone for three weeks. It would have him back in town just for Christmas. She has a feeling that he may try to ruin that for her as well. She already plans to leave for Christmas early. Nathan has most of December off and since she missed Thanksgiving she can make it up to him by arriving a week or two earlier.

She knows she put Nathan through a lot of worry those two days he couldn't reach her. Vitaly did smash her phone during his fit of rage. She had been able to easily explain that to Nathan, who had demanded a video call, when she was able to get a hold of him.

She hated to see the utter look of relief on his face. It was like he knew something had gone wrong. She had tried to shield him from the decline of her second marriage. She should've gotten out the first time Vitaly ever raised his hand to her, but she didn't. She stayed. She stayed and she didn't even know why she did.

She thinks maybe she didn't want another failed marriage under her belt. She didn't want to admit that she let herself into the situation. She got herself trapped. Maybe, just maybe, it had to do with she didn't want for anyone to know she got herself in this situation. She didn't want to go crawling back to Charming - back to Jax. She didn't want the stares of pity. She wanted to show people that she could move on from the Life she had in Charming.

She also didn't want Jax to go to jail for murdering Vitaly. She knows it would get to that point. Her ex husband was a very smart man, but at the same time,if pushed he shoots first and thinks later. She knows he would not let Vitaly get away with putting his hands on her.

She is just grateful Vitaly never targeted her son. During his rages, he always insults Jax. She ignores them mostly. They seem to stem from a place of jealousy. It makes her wonder if he knew what she had done with Jax on their wedding night.

Alma had always carried so much guilt from that night. She was truly disgusted with herself. What woman cheats on their future husband on their wedding day. She carried that guilt for months until Vitaly's real side began to show. Hell, she even had a pregnancy scare. She didn't know how she was going to explain that to Vitaly. He had made it very clear he didn't want kids. Although, she had found out by accident that he couldn't have kids.

She prayed to god everyday that Jax didn't manage to knock her up again. She didn't even know how she would have managed to make a good lie for that one. She knows deep down what she would've done if she had been pregnant. She didn't know if she could live with that. She probably would've chickened out and would have to manage the embarrassment of running back to Charming with her tail tucked between her legs.

Now, she doesn't feel guilty. It was the last time she truly felt loved from anybody in that way. Maybe she shouldn't have let her mother push her into this marriage. For the first time she ever really listened to her mother she ends up being a victim of domestic violence.

Alma shakes her head. She is not going to blame her mother. She made the choice to continue seeing Vitaly. She accepted the marriage proposal.

Alma sighs as she opens one of the many boxes of decorations for Christmas. This is the first year she will be decorating without Nathan's help. This house is much larger than her two previous homes. The one thing she misses is all the homemade decorations Nathan and Kaylee made. She had left those in Charming. Alot of Kaylee's things were still in Charming.

She is glad because she has a feeling Vitaly's anger might escalate to destroy any connection she has to Charming and Jax.

Alma goes to her record player and puts on some Marvin Gaye and pours herself a glass of wine and begins to decorate. She has been decorating for only about 30 minutes when the doorbell goes off. She frowns as she wasn't expecting anyone. She's never expecting anyone now that Nathan isn't home. There is also the fact that she didn't bother concealing the bruises on her body. She grabs a throw blanket to wrap around her body to hide the bruises on her arms. She can't do much to hide the bruise on her cheek. She peeks through the side window and she stiffens in surprise to find Jax on the other side of the door.

She knows if anything was wrong with Nathan he would've called. The only reason he would come down if it was about Nathan, but she knows he would've called beforehand. She knows this because she is pretty sure he doesn't want to be in the same room as Vitaly. She knows there is no use in trying to act like she isn't home.

She unlocks the dead bolt, but doesn't open the door all the way. She hides half her body from Jax.

"I can admit I am surprised to see you on my doorstep," Alma greets with.

"I can say the same." He replies.

She watches as his eyes narrow at her presence. She takes in his appearance. He isn't wearing his kutte and he doesn't have his bike. She notices his truck parked in her driveway. He is practically incognito.

"What are you doing here, Jax?"

"You going to let me in?"

Alma takes a deep breath and she opens the door wider to let him in her house. He steps in and she closes the door behind her. She takes a deep breath. He knows.

"We need to talk, darlin'," Jax tells her.

Alma nods her head and she leads him through the living room. She knows he doesn't care for a tour of her house.

She leads him to the couch where he sits down and she sits in the lounge chair opposite from him.

He doesn't say anything for a couple minutes. In fact, he doesn't even look at her as he seems to take in the world she lives in. He takes a deep breath and leans forward to rest his elbow on his legs.

"Instead of coming back to my bed, you married a sick fuck that beats you. You let Nathan witness that shit." Jax starts. He doesn't beat around the bush. He gets straight to the point of why he drove down here.

"Nathan was never in any danger."

"Jesus Christ, Alma, that isn't the point." He snaps and looks her in the eyes. His eyes focus on her bruised cheek. The point is that she is in danger. It's a truth that goes unsaid.

"I can't leave him, Jax."

"The hell you can't. I will drag you out kicking and screaming if I have too."

Alma runs her hands down her face. "Don't be ridiculous."

"Let me see it."

"See what?"

"I can see that nice shiner on your face. Let me see the rest." He demands.

Alma pulls the blanket around her tighter. "Look, I appreciate the concern, but you need to go."

"Nah, I'm not leaving until I know you're getting out of this."

"Jax, I'm not your wife or old lady anymore. I'm not your concern."

"You're the mother of my children. You think I am going to go back to Charming knowing you're getting fucking beat. Do you think I can go home to our son and tell him 'hey I left your mother to get fucking beat'." Jax spits back. "Is that why you wanted him to live with me? You were scared Vitaly would take his attention to Nathan."

"I got Nathan out, Jax. That is all that matters right now."

"Do you even hear yourself, right now?" Jax asks in disbelief. "What the fuck happened to you, Alma?"

Alma snaps her head up. "What happened to me?" The laugh that escapes her lips is far from humorous. "How about the fact I had to grieve the loss of two children and my ex-husband decides to bury his grief in another pussy that isn't mine. Then a woman comes along claiming to be pregnant by him. How about the fact you humiliated me in Charming with the croweaters and pornstars leaving me to grieve all alone and taking care of the only child we had left alive. So excuse me while I tried to mend the pieces of me you fucking tore apart led me to fucking Vitaly."

Jax falls to his knees and his hands frame her face. Alma tries to turn away from him, but he forces her to look into his blue eyes.

"Alma, please…"

Alma doesn't know exactly what he is begging for. Does he want forgiveness, for her to leave Vitaly, for her to come back to Charming?

"Did he threaten me and the club?" Jax asks softly.

"I don't want you or Nathan to get hurt, Jax."

"Don't worry about the club. Don't worry about me."

"Easier said than done." Alma tells him weakly with a smile.

Jax smiles. "I know. I know." He brings his forehead down to hers. "You gotta come home, Alma."

Alma doesn't respond because she knows her answer won't please Jax. She thinks Jax must sense what she is thinking he pulls back from her and opens his mouth. She distracts him as she presses her lips against his. He is startled and he falls back. Alma takes advantage of his surprise as she straddles his hips. Her blanket falls off her shoulders and she meets Jax lips again into a burning kiss.

She thinks she has Jax distracted. He moans against her lips as she grinds down on him. A part of her missed this. She misses Jax and the feel of him against her, inside her. She leans down fully against him as she begins grinding against him. She won't feel guilty this time. After all, she can't remember the last time she has actually enjoyed sex. However, Jax's hands grip her hips and she winces as it presses against a tender bruise.

Jax notices the reaction immediately and pulls away from her and leans up. Lips already swollen, pupils dilated, Jax sucks in a breath as he takes in the damage.

Her arms are littered with Vitaly's fingerprints. She doesn't stop Jax when he lifts up his tank and sees the splotchy bruise on her hip from when she was pushed hard into the corner of the dresser in the bedroom. She had been worried about internal bleeding due to the pain she has been feeling for days.

"Al -"

She pushes his hands away and goes back to meet his lips, but he stops her. "Jax, please -"

"You're not coming back after Christmas." He tells her. "I'm not arguing with you about it."

Alma licks her lips. She closes her eyes and nods her head.

Jax sighs in relief and wraps his arms around her. Alma can't help the tears that begin to fall.

Jax is anxious. He has been since he had gone and seen Alma two weeks ago. She is supposed to arrive in a couple days. She had informed him that she planned to come down for Christmas early to begin with. His only comfort was that Vitaly was out on business. Alma would be left alone. She wouldn't see him unless he came down in Charming once he realized Alma wasn't coming back. Despite her assurance that she was leaving and would stay in Charming, it didn't stop the bad feeling in his gut.

It didn't stop him from feeling as if something was going to go wrong. It was hard leaving with the knowledge that Alma was in an abusive marriage. It hurts to know that he was the one that fucked up and it led her to that man's arms. Jax thinks he might hate himself a bit.

He knows Nathan didn't have any comfort either. In fact, Nathan has been calling or texting Alma every day since he came back from his trip to Alma's. Jax thinks he is just lucky the visit managed to slip the radar of his club and mother. They could deal with everything including people knowing the sliver of the truth once Alma was here permanently.

The one thing that was on replay in Jax's mind was the kiss. He knows it was stupid of him to even get partially distracted. Alma was doing it as a means to distract him. He was tempted and it probably would've gone further until he would have seen the damage Vitaly had done to her.

He did cry when he came back to Charming. It hurts to know that she's been dealing with this practically her whole marriage. Jax isn't blind to the fact that in this life men have shown physical dominance over their old ladies and women. Yet, Jax never took on that view. It disgusts him frankly. He even regrets what he had done to Ima. After all, it was his mistake for sleeping with Ima. It all landed on him for inviting Ima into his marriage. After Alma left him, he did apologize to the blond and managed to get her behind the camera as penance.

Even then he has witnessed a few slaps from the guys with the women, but Vitaly is fucking beating her. He knows Alma had to be in pain.

Jax thinks they need to figure out how to handle any potential blowback from the Russians. He doesn't think they would care, but Vitaly could be petty. He was surprised that the Russians did not care about any domestic situations.

Jax feels his phone vibrating in his pocket and he pulls it out and squints at the unfamiliar number.

"Hello?"

"Hi, is this Jackson Teller?" A polite, feminine voice asked.

"Who's asking?"

"My name is Lisa. I'm a nurse at St. Vincent's hospital. You're listed as Alma Petrova's emergency."

"Is she okay? Is she alright?"

"She's stable and sedated, but it's best you come down here."

#the unknown #soa fanfiction #soa fanfic #sons of anarchy #sons of anarchy fanfiction #jax x oc #Jackson Teller #jax teller fanfiction

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escapekissed · 4 years

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Lucky do you have any favorite pieces of media from the psychological horror genre? Feels like its a genre that matches ur interests very well 👉🏽👈🏽

there are a couple that really speak to me!

first is rule of rose, which is a game that is incredibly formative to me. in a time where i was looking for representation as a young gay person and REALLY into looking up wiki pages for horror games, rule of rose showed me the symbolic trauma of puberty and toxic ‘love’ between girl children and the violence of patriarchal figures that i was looking for. it showed such cruelty but also such strength in its main character, and the symbolism? exquisite.... it also just has such a creepy atmosphere and the fact that the game is near impossible to play along with its shitty graphics for the enemies makes it so. peculiar and creepy in a very special way to me.

catherine is another atlus game near and dear to my heart, tho i dont think i’m ever going to be playing full body for that exact reason. it’s a game basically about eugenics and misogyny, about gods&devils thinking of women as only reproductive objects and the men in their lives that ‘waste their reproductive time’ being tortured and killed for it, taking away a woman’s choice. i always thought it would be so interesting to do trans and lesbian takes on this game, and i have never really? stopped thinking about how this game is so thrilling in its themes of entitlement and stopping people’s freedom to love as they wish. this is also one of the only horror games in which the ‘human element’ actually interests me. so many horror games give u terrible people and i dont give a FUCK ABOUT THEM. but the way this game shows u just snippets of his life as a ‘break’ from the excruciatingly scary (to me, because time limits scare me LOL), stressful as hell puzzles. and u get to figure out the mystery of what is going on in people who would otherwise be boring to you, but in this game are shrouded in just enough mystery that ur actually interested in their boring day-to-day lives. its so satisfying just to drink with ur buds. its like really great gameplay to me tbh. i also just love katherine and catherine and they frusturate me so much and that’s exactly what they’re supposed to do which i LOVE. extremely effective atmosphere setting and worldbuilding, basically.

the lighthouse is my favorite horror movie tbh because it does suspense so well. the movie is literally themed around suspense, the suspense of not getting sexual satisfaction to completion, of being touch starved and lonely and repressed, of being able to hold ur boss but never kiss him, of being fed lobster but it tastes flavorless and bland and u can smell ur boss’s farts the whole time while he prattles on with disturbing sailor’s tales and barks out orders until he’s lulled into his drink. i honestly love this movie. and the acting is brilliant and unhinged

there’s a few indie games i really like that have been either formative to me or i just??? really like their vibe and i can basically tell from them i would like every game in the ‘genre.’

pocket mirror to me is like, this beautiful game about your own inner toxicity and escaping from yourself. i love indie 64-bit games like this, the background art is so beautiful, and while i’ve never played all the way through it because it scares me too much---i love ib and all the games in the ‘ib’ genre LOL.

doki doki literature club i know is a very strange game to like, but i enjoy it for letting the women be actual characters with their own thoughts and feelings. the pychological horror movie ‘i’m thinking of ending things’ is the exact opposite of this game.'i’m thinking of ending things’ is a backwards approach to feminist horror in my opinion. it’s from a male’s perspective of his hallucinations of a girl that once didn’t give him a second glance and his violence towards her in these fantasies. it takes itself painfully seriously. it pretends to deconstruct something that the director helped soldify (the manic pixie dream girl trope) in the public eye. doki doki literature club on the other hand, the passive character who ‘things happen to’ is the man. the active roles all go to the women in the game and what they do to themselves in order to be loved by not just a man, but the player, and in doing so they often become the all-knowing god of their own prison. like tell me that’s not the dopest thing u’ve ever heard of!

twilight zone is a big one for me but 5 episodes in particular have shaped how i view horror forever. ‘to serve man’---where the greatest, scariest thing in the world is not being able to understand the language another person is actually using and for them to manipulate u using ur own, actually wishing u harm as they placate you with your own interpretations. the episode where a rich man’s last will and testament is for his vain, selfish relatives to wear a mask until midnight that reveals symbolically how ugly they are to him. they bicker all night with petty squabbles, and then at midnight he reveals the mask has permeanantly shaped their faces to reveal who they really are and the abuse he suffered under them. the cornfield episode still scares the shit out of me as someone with an entitled younger brother whose entitlement and anger is often enabled by those around us, and i’ve always thought that it was such a good show of like, how patriarchy enables little boy’s violence. the episode ‘all the time in the world’ where an abused man with a shitty life is finally the last man on earth and he can do anything he’d like to do and all he wants to do is read but then he breaks his glasses. and finally! the episode where toys in a box come to life and bemoan their fate as they realize they will be trapped there forever in clothes and identities they do not recognize. these episodes always scare the shit out of me LOL.

besides that i really like. low-budget passion project indie games. the first that comes to mind is ‘the path’ which is about a family of four sisters of various ages all inspired by little red riding hood who stray from the path and are hunted by the woodsman. and then the game that YOU my dear myers! showed me! that haunts me to this day. basically a tape talks to you about the areas of a house and then starts to talk about the house as a living creature. and the living creature is hungry, without you inside it. the living creature is tired of being alone, it’s tired of being abandoned, it’s tired, and it’s eyes are empty with no one in the windows, and it’s mind is blank with no one in the bedroom, and it’s hangry there’s no one in its basement to feast on, to torment as it has been tormented by disuse.

last but not least, i really enjoy the book ‘sharp objects.’ which is not technically a horror novel. but it is about a serial killer, and about women and abuse and it has some of the best writing ever. so i highly recommend it AND the miniseries (watch the miniseries first then read the book bc the miniseries is like. directed better? but the novel is written and characterized better. it’s also very short u can finish it in like a day and a half).

honorable mentions for horror In General (not necessarily psychological horror) are: 1) the birdcage. i honestly consider this movie entirely unsettling. robin williams failing to portray a man that is actually attracted to nathan lane, which could be because they have simply been married so long but also is just awful to me in general bc it makes me feel like even our outwardly gay but still more masc gay men can’t love and be attracted to femme camp gays even when they’re married to them. the fact that both these men that could be so in love, that were so in love at one time, you can at the very least imagine, are told by their only son that they need to go back in the closet to impress some old ass republicans, giving the message that no matter how succesful you are in the gay community, no matter how bright and wonderful a presence you are, no matter how loving you are, no matter how much you love, no matter how interwoven you are in lgbt-ness, the straight people you love most will still try to change you to impress the wold. horrifying.

2) coraline. its children’s horror but that’s still horror baby! i think lately about how much the movie talks about mothers and birth. coraline calls whybie ‘why born’ and i just think about how much she thinks about creating a new life with a new mother, and how going through that small door into a long tube... it’s like crawling into a new womb and being reborn to a new mother that loves you. and that’s horrific from a feminist perspective in and of itself---that your child would feel so unloved and unimportant to you that she would literally... rather die in this life, technically, rather be ‘unborn’ to you and born anew to someone, someone just like you but better, someone just like you but what SHE wants a mother to be, feminine and skirted and smiling. and then there’s the fact that coraline only gives this up when she realizes her other mother basically wants to change her more to suit her liking in ways that would cause her pain, at which point she realizes this whole fantasy is a lie, not real, something meant to entice her and control her and make her ‘perfect’---the same way she wants her mother & father to be ‘perfect’ in a way that causes her to act out and hurt them. it’s psychological horror that’s technically not psychological horror in the best way, something you can really dig your teeth into, something that has so many layers to it. and the animation! gorgeous!

3) finally i have recently watched annihilation. and it kind of changed my life a little bit.... so often we’re used to viewing monsters as either 1) malicious or 2) romantic/sad/sexy. but the monster in this movie is literally a metaphor for cervical cancer.

to me, the monsters and the corpses and all the beautiful scenery in this movie, in every color u can think of, a muted rainbow of flowers and nature at its best and most bizarre and sprawling. i often say that monsters are beautiful, but tbh, i feel like... somehow i always mean that in a way that is near-fetishitic, somehow self-depcrating way, where i want to consider what other people think is ‘ugly’ is ‘beautiful to me’ because what i am also ugly to other people as a monster to the cishet white patriarchy. there are things i consider beautiful, certainly, purely beautiful. but when i talk about monsters being beautiful, it is in the way the sublime is beautiful. it scares me, it haunts me, i love it, i want to possess it as part of me, a totem to carry in my back pocket to make the strength in my own ugliness stronger.

when i saw the monster in this movie (SPOILERS) i was immediately unnerved at this bad cgi abomination that bloomed from the most beautiul cgi cancer death cosmos imaginable. it scared me and i had to sleep with a light on for 2 days after LOL. but i was also moved by its gentleness. by the fact that the cervical cancer alien, when it tried to hurt you, wasn’t trying to hurt you at all. it was simply copying your movements. in the movie, it says that the creature wants nothing. it was simply copying. it was simply changing. it’s a prism of nature---and it corrupts yes, and it can hurt people and things and turn them into scary but still terribly unique and beautiful things that also kill---but the movie says that it wants nothing. it simply exists. it’s a part of nature, same as us, a part of the same universe and cosmos, despite being alien to us and stange and hurting us sometimes in ways that it doesn’t understand.

i don’t know. if i quite believe the movie when it says that, though. because i think if you copy someone, like a child would, you are trying to understand them. you are trying to understand yourself. you are trying to form yourself in another’s image when you have none, and you are failing at that, and hurting people and creating monsters in the process, but you are trying as best as you can to be whole and beautiful and sane like the lovely creatures you’ve met on this earth, or this body. to be part of something great and beautiful. to be part of another world.

maybe it doesn’t want anything. but do WE want anything as children, when we copy adults? why did the bear and the alligator try to eat our heroes if they were not hungry? did the bear and the alligator not WANT to eat? i think everything wants to live, and everything wants to grow, and if it can learn to live better and grow better it Will learn even if that is not its explicit intention. does the alien have feelings? does nature? do we have to personify things to understand them? no. does personifying things make us understand them less? no, yes, sometimes. we ask animals and nature to copy us, follow us, so that we can understand them better. the relationship in between----from the hurt, from the pain, from the droughts and the food shortages and the hurricanes and the fireworks---forms from our kindness and understanding. that our crops are useful, and the man-made mutation of our crops and the help of the ran and the sun is also useful. that our animals may not love us, but they need us, and we love them for putting their paw on our thighs to be pet, for following us into the bathroom even when we just wanted a moment alone.

regardless of its intentions, the alien, cancer, every creature, every human, they simply want to grow. in copying others---in trying to touch, to change, to understand, and be close---we learn to live in the same body, learn to live in the same world. the togetherness--the new sight the prism brings---it’s beautiful. it is beautiful to copy, however poorly. it is beautiful to try. we all shape others to our own standards---we sometimes forget we too, were made in own own perception of others’ image.

#ooc: replies #this took me all day to answer because i had to go to COSTCO in the middle. LOL #destructiveglitch

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peachmultimusings · 3 years

Text

KNBA MEME, part one.

These are all taken from the KNBA (knb abridged series on youtube.)

another year, another hopeless attempt to recruit freshmen for the basketball team.

it’s only hopeless because you won’t accept applicants under 6 feet tall.

so?

we live in japan!

i have standards!

you have zero new members!

i have a human being in my hand !

why do you have a human being in your hand?

guy comes up to me and says ‘hey you’re tall. do you play basketball’? i mean OBVIOUSLY SMART-ASS.

what’s your name kid?

{ name } , { first name , last name }

well { name }, if you wanna join the team, you’ll need to make a donation.

we aren’t exactly well-funded.

did you just drink our cash-cup?

two things you need to know about me. one, i drink alloys, two, i gotta mean hook shot.

watch this shit !

uh, excuse you, paper goes in the recycling.

fuck the planet!

welcome to the basketball team.

you’re here because you’re over 6 feet tall or {name} made me.

i made you take all of them.

i’m coach {name}

hi, {name}

NO.

NO, YOU’LL CALL ME {name} and you’ll like it !

this team is like a family to me.

i’m your abusive step-dad

take off your shirts!

how does this help?

she’s been studying the male body since she -- well, since she shouldn’t have been allowed to study the male body.

they say she can tell a guys’ dick length is by looking in their eyes.

so what can you see in my eyes?

i want you so raw.

what?

i think she means you have raw talent

you fucking heard me

i like it raw too.

we’re talking about sushi right?

sushi means raw fish -- calling it raw would be redunant

WHERE THE FUCK DID YOU COME FROM

well, i was out getting a soda, twenty minutes ago and i just finished drinking it

*drops a can*

you gonna pick it up?

it was a coke zero.

it’s staining the court.

same coke taste, zero calories

can you just take off your shirt? before we get sued?

okay.

well, there goes my boner.

98.... 99.... 100 !

dude, your presence literally make other people worse at this game.

i don’t see the downside to that.

what the hell are you doing here anyways?

what are you doing here?

this is my court!

isn’t this public property?

MY COURT.

I’ll take you RIGHT here to prove it.

yah ! you’re in my house now little man!

i thought this was your court.

wow, you suck more than a--

than a what?

than a -- fucking --

whose fucking?

you are! you’re fucking !

how do you know?

cuz i am! this is my insult!

it’s not going very well.

no it isn’t !

look, something, something, you’re a whore, bye!

alright, i fucking love the burger store!

hi!

jesus!

what the hell is this?

this?

this is a milkshake.

yeah i can see that.

are you done?

finished my milkshake!

{ name } you are literally to bland to insult.

vanilla is my favorite flavor.

of course it is.

alright ladies !

today we’re playing freshmen vs. seniors.

not that kinda senior, grandpa.

well { name} it was nice knowin’ ya.

there is no way you’re gonna make this team.

hell yah ! get some ! how you like them apples huh!

did ya see that pass?

why is no one acknowledging me?

looks like we’re really gonna have to focus on that blue haired kid.

hey! pay attention to me!

how the hell is {name} doing this?

you can’t see him!

the ball comes out of no where!

no points ! god you suck at basketball.

but i had 38 assists.

and how many points did that get us?

i mean, at minimum, 76.

you think you’re better than me, with your blue hair and sense of teamwork?

I’LL KILL YOU.

oh my, a lover’s quarrel.

i didn’t realise the basketball team was also the drama club.

{name} what are you doing here?

why i came to check in on you, silly.

what happened to you {name}

you use to be so cool

i’m still cool

no, you’re not.

you got hot, like, spicy.

should we break this up?

FUCK NO.

HEY!

well that wasn’t very nice

I’m not very nice-

he’s not very nice.

would you, fuckin--

so you’re {name’s} new play toy?

you think you’re better than me? with your fangirls, and your tight-ass, and your suit jacket, and your tight ass---I’LL KILL YOU.

smooth {name}

how about you and i go a little one on one

you do realise who this is, dont you?

{name}.

i don’t care who they are.

he’s a stuck up pretty boy, ken doll in need of an ass-kicking and a dirt nap.

well, hasbro, you had my interest but now you have my erection.

attention.

is what my dick is standing at.

not even gonna get out of your suit huh?

you know it makes you look like a stay at home dad?

how appropiate. i’m about to take you to school.

oh god, i think i felt it on my face.

get in the car son.

daddy needs to take you to practice.

well, {name}, i can honestly say im disappointed.

you had such potential and i hate to see it spoiled.

here’s a thought-- come and enroll in my academy?

two of the six best players in all of japan teaming up on the streets -- and under the sheets -- it’ll be just like the old days.

what do you say?

nah.

what, why not?

i like it here.

besides i have fun hanging out with {name}

WHO THE FUCK IS {name}

the bro you just styled on

you think you’re better than me, just cuz you’re better than me?

dammit, just go!

i can’t believe that pretty boy dunked on me.

i’ven ever been dunked on.

fact is, i know more about them than you do.

if we’re gonna make this work, i’m gonna need to teach you everything i can so you can beat them.

you know something {name}, but you may have a point.

you got yourself a deal.

what’s in it for me?

you strike me as someone who needs a senpai.

duly noted.

if you want to be the best basketball player in japan, you may have to defeat my five evil ex-teammates.

your five evil ex’s?

teammates. ex teammates.

is there a difference?

god i hope so.

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clean-bands-dirty-stories · 5 years

Text

Wait... WHAT? (Richie)(Part 4)

A/n: So, awkward thing, I forgot Mike wasn’t in the movie with the Losers up until this part? I’ll... edit that out later. Sorry. I’m too tired to do anything but write right now haha.

Word Count: 2177

Anon: Pidge

“No, I love being your personal doorman, really,” Richie complains. “Could you idiots have taken any longer?”

Eddie rolls his eyes. “Alright, SHUT UP Richie.”

“Yeah shut up, Richie,” Stan adds in from the other side of me.

I’m smiling, enjoying the dynamic as Richie loudly (as always) follows up, “Oh, okay, trash the Trashmouth, I get it.” He pulled in front of me and I watched him, my smile warming. “Hey I wasn’t the one scrubbing the bathroom floor and imagining that her sinks went all Eddie’s mom’s vagina on Halloween.” I snorted, by my humor - which didn’t go unnoticed by Richie, who’s smile grew as he succeeded to finally get a reaction out of me - when Bill spoke.

“She didn’t imagine it.” As he pulled to a. Stop, so did the rest of us. My ease smashed into a million pieces as I looked at Bill as our bikes curved into a circle, Richie slipping in between me and Eddie and Stan between me and Bill. “I s-s-saw something too.”

Saw something. Images from the night before attacked me again and I felt my stomach twist. Was that a something I had seen? It wasn’t real, obviously, but it wasn’t a dream either. I know a nightmare when I experience one- I’ve had to many not to know the difference. It was too real and insane, my mind would never come up with those things let alone make the that vivid.

“You saw blood too?” Stan asked, breaking me out of my thoughts.

“Not blood... I saw G..G-Geo-Geo-Georgie.” My eyes landed on Bill, widening with gut wrenching concern. Georgie, his little brother? How could he have seen him. Then again, how could I have seen my father, who was just as dead but for longer? “It seemed so real. I mean, it seemed like him but there was this...”

“The clown,” Eddie piped up, drawing all eyes to him. “Yeah I saw him too.” I looked around as Ben, and Stan all got the same dark, dreading look in their eyes. The same look that mirrored the emotions inside of me. When Bill met my eyes, I looked away, pain flaring across my face, but that was enough for him and he moved on. There was no way he could have known my fear included him...

Just at the wrong time, as always, Richie cracked, “Wait, can only virgins see this stuff? Is that why I’m not seeing this shit?”

Sudden commotion caught everyone’s attention and someone pointed out Belch’s familiar car. Bowers and his gang were nearby. Fuck. When a bike, belonging to the town’s one homeschooled kid, was noticed, that was it. Bev, very like herself, asserted that we had to help him and eventually we were all running to go find the Bower’s gang’s next victim. We got there just in time to stop them from smashing a rock against Mike’s head, the boy scrambling over to us as we each grabbed rocks to arm ourselves.

And then, as if I wasn’t already pushed far enough, Bowers opened his big, fat fucking mouth. “You Losers are trying too hard,” he quipped. “She’ll do you. You just have to ask nicely. Like I did.” His eyes turned to me. “No luck with that one, though, she’s a stiff. Better luck just leaving her behind.”

I snapped. Ben seemed to lose it with me, him screaming and both of us chucking our rocks. Ben’s bounced off of Henry’s head, mine slamming into Victor’s nose. And then an entire war ensued, with the Losers numbers overpowering the gang until they all ran off. Pumped with adrenaline and finally having gotten most of my emotions out - probably not in a healthy way, but whatever works works, right? - I was bouncing on my feet and a smile was itching to come out. I looked back as Richie screamed, “GO BLOW YOUR DAD, YOU MULLET WEARING ASSHOLE!” Flipping Bowers off as he walked backwards, coming after the other Losers.

His eyes landed on me as I laughed. “Nice touch, Richie.” It was the first thing I’d said since I’d parted with Bev last night. The first sound to leave my mouth other than when whatever I’d seen had scared the living shit out of me. My voice cracked, but Richie was focused on the words coming out of my mouth. I’d never seen him smile so wide.

We walked together, bonding over our mutual hate and abuse of Henry Bowers. When Richie welcomed Mike to the Losers Club, I smiled.

In town, the others’ vices were low and dark but I was focused on the comical sight of Richie stealing one of the guys int he marching band’s horn, blowing it loudly for everyone to hear. Eddie and I snorted We’d stopped to get ice cream before continuing our walk, but Richie had gotten sidetracked, handing me his ice cream - only he and Eddie had any left - to go grab the horn. The other Losers were in the alley behind us, focused on some poster. “What the fuck dude?” Richie snapped as the player reclaimed his horn. Eddie and I chuckled as Richie came back, grabbing his ice cream from me, and then all of us turning to think about whatever dark thoughts were being discussed. When I saw the missing poster, I sighed as my Richie-caused happiness slipped away again.

“What are you guys talking about?” Eddie asked, more focused on his ice cream than anything.

“What they’re always talking about,” Richie groaned.

The others continued their conversation as if there had been no interruptions as Ben piped up, “I actually think it will end.” “For a little while, at least.”

We all looked at Ben as Beverly asked, “What do you mean?”

Ben was frowning and I hated it. He looked so young and cute. A face so innocent should be smiling. He was too mature for his own good. “So I was going over all my Derry research and I charted all of the major events. The iron works explosion in ‘08, The Bradley Gang in ‘35, and the Black Spot in ‘62, and now kids being...” He paused, looking at Bill. “I realized, this tuff seems to happen-“

“Every twenty-seven years,” Bill realized aloud, their voices meshing and coming together in a way that set me on edge.

We continued on in silence again until we hit the park. Eddie and Richie had finished their ice cream and we all sat around on some benches, getting ready to talk about all of this. Putting it together, figure it out. I was tired of being anxious ad depressed, wanting Richie to make a joke and Eddie and I to banter just as easily as he and Richie did or me and Bev used to. I could make such great friends with these guys if I could just be myself and stopped being attacked by a fucking clown with serious issues.

“So let me get this straight,” Eddie began. “It comes out from wherever it is for like, a year, and then what? Just goes into hibernation?”

Stan looked up. “Maybe its like... what do you call it... Cicadas. You know, the bugs that come out once every 17 years?”

That was a nice thought. A harmless bug I could squish with my shoe, or slap away with my hand. Something that ran from me. But then Mike spoke up and ruined it. “My grandfather says this town is cursed. He says that al the bad things that appended int his town happen because of one thing. An evil thing that... feeds off the people of Derry.” Um. Unsettling.

Immediately Stan jumped in though and I loved him for it. “But It can’t be one thing,” he pointed out. His doubt was so easy to hang onto. Maybe we were wrong. Maybe this was all wrong... “We all saw something different.”

A pause. “Maybe,” Mike agreed. “Or maybe it knows what scares us most and that’s what we see.” Okay, I was REALLY starting to not like this kid. He seemed cool and all but could he like... lighten up for a second?

Eddie looked up. “I saw a leper. He was like a walking infection.”

“But you didn’t,” Stan insisted, and I realized I was feeling the same desperation he was showing. “Because it isn’t real. None of this is. Not Eddie’s leper, or Bill seeing Georgie... or the woman I keep seeing.”

The mood darkened and as if my wanting for him to crack a joke had called him, Richie finally spoke. “She hot?”

Unfortunately, Stan wasn’t as happy to hear the joke as I was. “No Richie!” He spat, near hysterics. “She’s not hot! Her face.. is all messed up. Noe of this makes any sense! They’re all like bad dreams.”

But that was where I had to disagree. “No,” I piped up, shaking my head. “They’re not dreams.” Stan looked betrayed but Mike only fed off of my words, surging forward.

“I know the difference between a dream and reality,” Mike insisted, motioning to me as if my words alone proved his point. “She can see it too. These are something. Something wrong. But they’re not dreams.”

After his hand dropped, Eddie suddenly seemed to realize something and his eyes snapped up, finding Mike’s. “What did you see? You saw something too?”

“Yes,” Mike confirmed. “You guys know that burnt down house on Harris Avenue?” I immediately felt sick. This kid was about to make me throw up from how heavy and dark this mood was, wasn’t he? “I was inside when it burnt down. Before I was rescued, my mom and dad were trapped in the next room over from me. They were pushing and pounding not he door, trying to get to me. But it was too hot. When the firemen finally flounder them, the skin on their hands had... melted down to the bone.” I sucked in a quiet breath and Mike looked at me very seriously. “What did you see?”

This. My worst fear. How could I explain to them that rejection was my worst fear? Abandonment? Being forgotten? Being left behind? How could I even begin to explain that I was terrified Bev would move on and lose interest in me or my feeling for Ben wouldn’t only be ignored and go forever unknown as the boy I fancied myself in love with fell for my best friend? Just explaining that to them, being vulnerable ad dark and real and serious. THAT alone was enough to make the taste of bile rise to my tongue and I breathed evenly in and out through my nose to tame it so I wouldn’t throw up.

“My dad,” I whispered, my voice cracking. All eyes turned to me, Bev’s widening. She didn’t know. The only part of my fear that I could explain to them was the one part I could bare to speak. But it wasn’t good either. Up until now I had successfully hidden my backstory and private thoughts and feelings from even Beverly Marsh. “I was a twin. When we were born, he died. My twin. My parents blamed me.” I stopped and the heavy silence was only powered by my emotion and my inability to meet anyone’s eyes. It was four words, but all of the Loser’s eyes widened in understanding. “Turns out my dad was cheating on my mom with hr sister, so my mom ran off and my dad moved us here to Derry to be with my aunt. My aunt sometimes lashed out at me because I looked like my mom, making my father and her both guilty.” I worded my next words very carefully. “They leave a lot and I avoid them by staying in my room. My aunt... lives with my grandma and a few months ago, they... went on a trip and didn’t come back, leaving me with her. But he could still come back.” The truth was they were right here in Derry, ad I lived every day terrified that they would find me int eh woods or in the streets by myself and would drag me somewhere private and beat the living shit out of me again. But, again, they didn’t need to know that.

Richie scooted closer to me, the side of his body touching mine in reassurance. The silence was even darker and heavier than when Mike had spoken and all eyes were on me, even when Mike spoke again. “We all have something we’re afraid of.”

“You got that right,” Richie agreed, kicking at the grass.

Eddie perked up, tilting his head. Richie opening up about something? Being serious and connecting with us? Huh... “Why Rich?” he asked. “What are you afraid of?”

I looked at Richie and he at me a second before he turned around, eyes falling on the stage where children and balloons and colors stood out in a cheery sort of way. “Clowns.”

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2womenforme · 5 years

Quote

DAVID CORBETT- min wage should be 6$ hr now in 3rd world countries n going up each yr with cost of living or going up more then cost of living to get more equal to most developed countries wages , n so $2.50 a day or hr is not enough n is still extreme poverty big-time still so over half the world is still in extreme poverty idiot god play idiot united nations idiot UNICEF n many other foundations-charities ,,, n 16 $hr in cheap areas 17 to 18 hr in medium price areas n 18 to 19 hr in high price areas and should be in usa now n going up each yr with cost of living ,,,, David Corbett wake up leaders n god players devil player rich people united nations - it is not me that needs to wake up n come to otherside = u on otherside have not fixed the world for most n in fact done the opposite = u on other side broken David Corbett got a problem - good basics common-sense fairness for most will fix it n i am good at it so ask me,,,, david corbett government aid should be given in supplies for the poor mostly David Corbett presidents n generals around the world are also guilty of murder n manslaughter = we could have had all wars in last 100 yrs with sleep dart guns n sleep gas n still had a winner with almost no deaths David Corbett all leaders god play n rich are failing n always have so far n i am right n have been right since a young child n will always be right about what has been so far n if they do not fix it for the masses n i will continue to be right about the world needing to be way more fair for most n them attacking me will not change me being right David Corbett if it is too dark to see ya better put me in charge n do what i tell u then David Corbett fix this too idiots =respect be fair to n love all = put min n max wage in place that gos up with cost of living n max co. profit per amount off biz they do in proportion with # of employees n necessary expenses follow n enforce the rules = no man above another we the people for the people by the people justice n liberty for all , all men created equal - so treat all about equal in life-land $ materialism too ,,,,decent education up to 9th grade in the world so all can do ok job at job 9 months yr n get paid ok- 6 to 9 hr days so there is time for self n partner n kids friends family 2 days off week 2 to 3 months off yr,,,, the rich do not respect the masses -took more then their turn share they took others turn share they overcharge us raised cost of living underpaid us over paid themselves hoarding gauging selfish greedy vein egotistical sociopaths who do not care about most but want tons for self self self self = immoral n inhumane. no 1 is doing 10 times more better or more important work then the rest of us nor working 10 times more hours n it is not smart to be selfish greedy hoarding underpaying many overcharging many to overpay self take far more then anyone needs leave people in poverty wage =slave wage etc. put in 1st 2nd 3rd degree for all driving n pedal bike laws n less fine for pedal bikes=do way less damage n less of a danger most of the time , take out the worst criminals David Corbett fix this too idiot leaders= parents should have been taught the basics n taught them to their kids n schools teaching it too n then the kids would not be so screwed up = communication ,anger, problem solving, relationships, parenting, manage land $ materialism ,drug addiction,learn basic laws n how to improve them, partying safe n non destructive ,job training, stop the rich from stealing so much from us all, stop warmongers,stand up to god n devil player criminals, equal rights for all n how to stand up for self n all , we all pay taxes for schooling so should get most of what we use n need not tons trivia that is not used-needed David Corbett fix this too idiot leaders = lame usa = should be sleep dart guns only for citizens = fits mellow healthy side of right to bear arms = can protect n can hunt , even sleep dart gun as main gun for cops =kill no one even as mistake or minor or med offense ,along with rubber bullet guns tear gas sleep gas n 3 setting taser n have to prove u needed to use high setting to ever use it , n kill gun locked in car n use only under extreme conditions ,n assault weapons for swat team fbi fed marshals n military only n military trained to step in n help cops if needed , n all trained with same proticall = surround n contain area n move in as soon as possible n on same radio-communication station,,, assault rifles allowed is crazy man devil play usa ,if the retards will not get rid of guns insist on every gun having a gps on at all times n track record of where it is n was at all times = catching way more killers n the gun used to check prints n dna on it to catch shooter David Corbett fix this too idiot leaders =should be 1/4 of income on rent not half like is in usa now = leaders letting semi rich n rich screw most of us over n min wage should be doubled n going up each yr with the cost of living = it is a poverty wage n any poverty wage is a slave wage n even 10 hr is poverty=slave wage = our parents generation has left us in a pile of shit n then they say we want too many things free = no they have taken our turn share with overcharging n underpaying us = them wanting our share for free David Corbett fix this too idiot leaders= abortion should be allowed but try to talk them out of it with ok job ok pay ok cost of living 2 days off week 2 to 3 months off yr , n not judge point condemning them if they keep out of marriage or give for adoption or abort David Corbett drugs should be legal =drink prescription street , but with conditions for all drugs n all people n fair n protecting of most n rules n laws this n other side = register like prescription drugs with doc n get 2 weeks amount n dry out for days 2 times each month n have to take a class for this n other side think n do n a small bond for 3 days dry out shelter for misbehaving people this or other side n criminal punishment this n other side for criminal behavior being greedy should be criminal drugs or no drugs both sides ,,,, david corbett- foundations n charities do not fix poverty = they sustain poor in poverty with minor help = poor need fast ok job training fast ok job placement help n ok pay that gos up each yr with the cost of living,,,, David Corbett all over $100,000 yr or having 5 million or more total land $ materialism should not be able to collect social security= will fill lots of the shortage = so we keep it going ,,, david corbett -spend 90% less on military be smarter n team up with 20 other countries to take down the worst criminals or worst leaders= save some fix poverty n nature n help social security some. go to n live on moon mars n venus with 20 countries with some ,,,,,,, david corbett should be ok with 60% of same music n 60% of same lyrics = most things we have -can buy are 60% or more similar to other brands david corbett girls scout cookies should be cheap for the girls to sell lots = they are already low budget quality n overpriced-leaving girls at harder job n they should be compensated decent ,,,, david corbett - make sports stuffs proportionate for kids = fair fare smaller lighter lower etc ,,, david corbett - treat animals n nature in humane ways ,,,, david corbett - keep people biz with ok life not in jail cause they're left poor n desperate ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, david corbett - leave people biz with ok life not in jail cause left poor n desperate ,,, david corbett truckers are ripped off having to baby sit the truck n cargo all eve night with no pay n have to pay own tickets even when boss gives em too little time to make some delivery n many truckers have second book = illegal just to make some deliveries on time ,,,,, david corbett - internship should be illegal that is suppose to be why a min wage in place ,,,, david corbett monopolies are suppose to be illegal yet some have bought most of the companies n hide behind various names ,,, david corbett do things to make $ values around the world more similar in value-use this n other side positive constructive mostly to get it done like all things the world is part other side ,,, david corbett immigration should be reasonably easy fast n cheap but make sure poor countries have all needed basics fair laws equal rights for the people n improving reg n they will not run to better countries desperate ,but limit numbers per yr so not to flood any one country to fast of any one different type of think n do different peoples ,,,,, david corbett being gay or marrying gay is ok but do not be abusive to others with the play = think n do on this or other side -do not cram it down others throats-into their life- specially when in big gay groups at clubs or gatherings ,,,, david corbett get the zoos bigger for animals ,,,,, David Corbett should be a min but low n max for all crimes n explain what is min med n serious=1st 2nd 3rd degree rape or any crime like driving n pedal bike laws n less for pedal bikes n then a min med serious in each of those categories for judge or jury in case it was sorta the crime not completely crime -pushed-dragged into it mistake thought otherwise not intended tried not to tried to do something close but other misunderstood other like both drinking n she going along with it n look like resting a few minute into it n he not noticing much then next day not drunk she saying no i did not think it ok n thinking she said no n for sure n for real n not stopping it all ,,but if he is with it-not drunk at all n she out cold n they not lovers already n she did not say lets go fuck in car or your place etc it rape n if he showing friends n doing in front of them even worse n if he saying fuck her to others it even worse yet or if he just bully holding her n she saying stop get off repeatedly then it full rape ,, ,exception could be something like she said several times recently she wanted to get fucked by him n his friends gang bang several times n he would not let it but then he drunk n it ok n he encourages it =she gets what she wants-not rape ,,,,,n pedifile should have 1st 2nd 3rd degree versions n then min med serious punishment with in those with min n max in each of 1st 2nd 3rd degree doing=guilt David Corbett - kill gun n specially assault rifle is just a crazy mans devil play persons toy = cause even if most can control self the devil players n rich players puppet n push n step in others from time to time n get em to do things n even kill for dark pay power n all the rest of us suffer for it- mentally emotionally financially laws getting jerked back n for the politicians wasting time on things that should have been decided long ago n politicians doing things for the masses now like ok min wage that gos up each yr with cost of living= so do not let devil play have killing toys in many millions of hands around the world be sane be reasonable be respectful of the many be protecting of the many, a sleep dart pistol 6 ish shot will protect n can hunt, the desperate person will take your gun from u often n use it on u n or others also if the desperate person sees u have a gun they likely to shoot at u when they gonna just use the gun to scare u back away from them, the desperate will be burglarizing u n find your gun n leave with a kill gun n yet another kill toy is on the street for desperate angry bitter person left in poverty n a always tracking n recording gps on all guns would help after the fact catching criminals n sometimes beforehand n u can be sued or in jail if u used shot someone n deadly force was not needed

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batuuan-artist · 5 years

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Hey Guys!

If you’ve seen my last post you know that I’m riding home with an old middle school friend who I’m definitely not still close with and definitely doesn’t know about my gender for a 1.5-2.5 hour drive (dependent on traffic)

We leave around 11 AM EST so if anyone wants to send me:

Drawing prompts/requests

Fic prompts/requests

Random messages in my DMs (please I want to talk to y’all dont be shy)

Headcanon prompts/requests

Etc.

Also I’m going to put a quick synopsis of an idea thats 6 years in the making below the cut

It’s a Doctor Who AU that was literally some of the first world building my girlfriend (@somekindaspacecadet) and I ever did so I’ll explain some of the main characters below and don’t worry if you’re interested in learning about it and you haven’t watched the show a lot of it’s pretty different and I’m willing to explain (ie infodump) to anyone who has questions either about the AU itself or the characters specifically (please talk to me about these nerds i would die for every single one of them)

(side note) these are just some of the big players within the universe we’ve “taken” plenty of characters from the show and changed some aspects or just left them the way they were, and we have created dozens of characters that just don’t play as big of a role as these guys do

Theta: this is the main character of the show during his schooling years from about 8-100 (he’s an alien they don’t age the same as us!) he’s kinda goofy and not very academically driven, despite being in his school’s top 10 program, but he’s fiercely loyal to his friends and he’s moralistically driven. He’s also down for a good party with plenty of illegal substances

Kos: Theta’s best friend (also one of the shows reoccurring antagonists, but we dont have to talk about that now) more academically driven than Theta, also in the top 10 club (referred to as “the Deca”) , a little more on the anxious and depressed side (which is a big gen z/millennial mood) he has had 2 pet cats (the former named Carrot and the latter named Vincent), he tries to be an emo boy but he’s really just a big softy and he loves his friends and girlfriend so much its wild. He likes sweaters and can only cook hot coco

side note: Theta and Kos are sometimes romantically involved and they and their SO’s are a-OK with this situation and other than the 2 siblings of the group they work more as a polyamourous relationship than as individual ships!

Ali: Kos’s younger sister and Theta’s girlfriend. Pretty sassy and overall a good time, she’s a musician (yeah she was a self insert when i was 13 sue me) and she doesn’t take anyones crap 10/10 willing to fight at any given moment. Best friends with Katie (see below)

Katie: Kos’s girlfriend (or fiancee depending on the point in the timeline) and Ali’s best friend. She is one of the first people to basically change her status within schools to try and fulfill her dream of one day becoming the president of her people. She’s super ambitious but literally a perfect cinnamon roll too good too pure we love her so much we are all Katie stans here in this house

Note these characters are all 100% precanon the next set all more or less exist during the “canon timeline” and will be listed by relevance rather than appearance chronologically within the timeline

Ali: (So initially this Ali and the other Ali did not coexist in the same universe but things happened and all our headcanons merged so now they do and this Ali is named after the first Ali.) Ali is, more or less, the main character of the universe she is the child of the main character and another powerful character who depending on the timeline, is either a quiet, anxious child that has a lot of crap thrown at her when she’s little (none of it is like familial abuse she is very loved its all unfortuate situations given that the show is a sci-fi drama) or a wonderful teacher and mother as an adult

Lizzie: Ali’s younger sister (thought chronologically would appear first in some instances but time travel man) she has a different second parent than Ali but basically everyone gets along just fine because the main character is just Like That TM. Also there’s like long time gaps in between these relationships because of the long life span and time travel. Lizzie is our aroace queen and we are also all Lizzie stans. She’s very Scottish and takes no one’s shit. She is known for standing up for the kids at her school and beating up bullies, which gets her in some trouble but she keeps doing it anyway. She also plays soccer (football in canon as its based in the UK) her papa is more traditional (not in a bigoted way just likes some gender rolls, he’s trying his best hes from the past) and really isnt sure what to make of his very androgynous daughter but he loves her like so much you guys

Alex: Ali’s husband also Kos’s son but like far into the future. So, with the whole you cant link posts thing right now I’ll just tell you guys when i was 13 I read this fic part of the series “Not the Last” by elisi on AO3 and we like, low key started incorporating this character into our stories so like oops. All thats basically the same are bits of his backstory and his name but I 100% recommend reading the fic because it’s really good! We just altered him to fit into our story so now hes drastically different from the original which is good. Alex is the world’s biggest nerd he loves all things comics and sci-fi, he has his action figures organized by order of appearance in the movies, and he works for space organizations despite being a literal alien (or is that because hes a literal alien who knows) he’s a big dork but we love him anyway

Leo: Ali and Alex’s son. He’s super smart and wants to be a doctor when he grows up. He’s also completely non-verbal and communicates either telepathically (alien tech) or with sign language. Despite the things that happen to make Kos a major antagonist, hes doing his best to reform and Leo is part of that process, he loves this kid (so do we), the two are very close and spend a lot of time together despite Alex’s initial protests

#doctor who #newsies #The Hiraeth Kids au #doctor who au #original character

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lodelss · 3 years

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The Law Enforcement Violence Trump Won’t Talk About

Day after day, night after night, protesters have been taking to the streets since the police killing of George Floyd. Led by local Black activists and grassroots groups, they’re chanting, singing, shouting, kneeling, marching, and even laying on the ground to demand justice for the many Black lives that have been taken by police. Everyone — from parents, grandparents, kids, and more — are showing up. But Donald Trump from day one has expressed extreme hostility towards the Black Lives Matter movement. He has called on NFL owners to retaliate against players who dared to kneel in protest, said it was “terrible” to ask why Black Americans are still dying at the hands of law enforcement in this country, compared police killing and injuring Black people to golfers who “choke,” and has called for law enforcement to “dominate” protesters demanding that our legal system value Black lives. He has even encouraged police to abuse people in their custody. As the movement and calls for change gain broader support from more Americans and people around the world, protesters are being met by even more brutality — in many cases by the same police departments whose racism and brutality they are protesting. Police and federal agents are spreading fear and panic in communities, threatening lives, and relentlessly attacking people simply exercising their First Amendment right to protest police racism and brutality. Law enforcement at all levels haven’t even spared U.S. military veterans, journalists, legal observers, and medics. This assault on the First Amendment has only escalated tensions, and emboldened white supremacists to spread terror and hate on our streets. The ACLU is taking to the streets, legislatures and courts nationwide to demand an end to police violence and accountability for rights violations. Here is just a partial running list of federal and local law enforcement abuses against individuals exercising their First Amendment rights in Portland, Oregon:

Federal agents with the U.S. Marshals Service brutally attacked and gassed U.S. Navy veteran Christopher David, who went to the protest to oppose police brutality and ask federal agents why they weren’t upholding their oath to the Constitution. The ACLU of Oregon is now suing on his behalf.

https://twitter.com/ACLU/statuses/1299896621711454208

Unidentified federal agents in military-style uniforms abducted ACLU of Oregon client Mark Pettibone from a sidewalk, then forced him into an unmarked minivan and drove him away for no apparent reason. The agents were later identified as belonging to Trump’s Department of Homeland Security. Pettibone explains how he “still [hasn’t] fully come to terms with what it means that I was kidnapped by [his] government.”

DHS officers violently attacked Nichol Denison, a U.S. Air Force veteran and member of the Portland “Wall of Moms,” while she was attending a Black Lives Matter protest. Without any warning, officers began launching cans of tear gas at her and other women beside her through gaps in the fence. Denison was hit repeatedly and was then struck far more forcefully in the head by a tear gas cannister that appeared to have been thrown from in front of her. She suffered a three-inch gash that was gushing blood, had to be taken to the VA hospital, where she received 11 stitches.

Without warning and for no reason whatsoever, federal officers shot James McNulty, who was attending a protest for the first time, four times: three times with rubber bullets and one time with a pepper ball. At the emergency room, McNulty learned that one of the munitions that struck him in the back had not only gone through his clothes, but pieced his skin, fat layer, and at least one layer of muscle.

James McNulty sustains deep wound after federal officers fire munitions at him at a protest in Portland, Oregon.

Maureen Healy was attending a Black Lives Matter protest with her child when, without warning, federal officers began firing flash bangs, impact munitions, and tear gas cannisters into the crowd. Healy began to turn and run, but was hit in the head with a projectile that felt metallic and the size of a small can. She started bleeding profusely and called for help. While some volunteer medics attended to her injuries, federal officers continued to fire tear gas into the area, forcing them all to move.

Federal officers shot Donovan LaBella, a 26-year-old protester, in the head with impact munitions. At the time LaBella was shot, he was standing across the street from the Hatfield Courthouse protesting while holding a music speaker above his head. He suffered severe injuries, arriving at the hospital in critical condition with a skull fracture. He subsequently underwent facial reconstruction surgery for his injuries.

Mac Smiff was attending a Black Lives Matter protest when federal officers shot him on the right side of his face with an indelible hard-cap paintball, just below the line of his helmet and just above a face mask he was wearing. The impact of the shot and resulting shock caused Smiff to fall to the ground. Smiff was partly blinded by the paint in his face and had a large contusion on his head. He received treatment from the volunteer medics, who told him that he may have suffered a concussion.

Duston Obermeyer, a decorated USMC veteran with combat experience in Iraq and Afghanistan and a co-founder of the “Wall of Vets,” was attending the Portland protests for the first time when, for no reason, a federal officer tried to strike Obermeyer. An officer pointed an automatic weapon in Obermeyer’s face while another officer shot him at point-blank range with an orange chemical irritant. One of the officers also struck Obermeyer in the face and chest with a baton. The gas was severely debilitating, and it took Duston days to recover from the gassing.

Portland police tear-gassed reporters Alex Zielinski and Blair Stenvick of the Portland Mercury, many other journalists and legal observers, and physically assaulted and arrested KBOO reporter Cory Elia, even though he identified himself as press.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/im0l3HuYgNw

Police hit freelance journalist Sergio Olmos with a truncheon and threatened to tear gas him because he was recording them. His press pass was clearly visible. Police also attacked journalist Donovan Farley with a wooden bat and sprayed him in the face with tear gas or pepper spray while he was trying to walk away from them. He had identified himself as press and was filming several police officers kneeling on a protester’s neck, Derek Chauvin-style.

Portland police slammed reporter Beth Nakamura of The Oregonian in the back with a truncheon. She had her hands up, press pass in hand, and was saying “press, press.” The officer responded: “I don’t give a fuck.” The same day, police ordered reporter Zane Sparling of The Portland Tribune to leave an area where they were enforcing a dispersal order against protesters. Sparling responded that he was media. The officer responded: “I don’t give a shit! Go!” He then shoved Sparling into a wall, and another officer shot a crowd-control munition at his heel.

When the police noticed journalist Brian Conley using his camera to record their action, officers launched at least one flash-bang grenade directly at him. He was nowhere near any protesters and there was no other target at which the police could have been aiming. The police later charged at him after telling him that it did not matter if he was media. Conley fell over while running away and only narrowly avoided a traumatic head injury.

Portland police repeatedly sprayed large groups of protesters with tear gas from all sides in what is known as a “kettling” or “killbox” military strategy. Killboxing protesters cannot disperse them. Its sole purpose is to inflict pain and suffering.

Portland police have bull-rushed crowds of people, shoving protesters to the ground, and hitting them with clubs and other instruments. They continue to do this night-after-night.

https://twitter.com/MrOlmos/statuses/1300682200082345985

Federal agents too have been deliberately attacking journalists and legal observers at protests, even after a court issued a temporary restraining order barring them from such unconstitutional attacks. A federal agent shot reporter Jonathan Levinson while he was trying to take a photo. As Levinson looked back and forth between his camera and the agent, trying to focus his lens, he saw the agent raise his weapon, deliberately point it at him, and fire several rounds. Levinson was wearing an OPB press pass with his name, his photograph, the OPB logo, and the word “MEDIA.” He was also wearing a helmet that said “PRESS” in large letters on the front and back and carrying two professional cameras with large, bulky lenses.

A federal agent also shot journalist Brian Conley when he was trying to video an arrest. Conley yelled that he was press, over and over. Suddenly, without warning, federal agents shot him multiple times with impact munitions in his chest and his foot. An agent also threw a tear-gas canister directly at Conley, where it exploded above his head. He was carrying a large Micro Four Thirds camera with a telephoto lens and external 20W LED light mounted on it and was wearing a photographer’s vest that said “PRESS” on it as well as a helmet that said “PRESS.”

Federal agents shot clearly-marked reporter Rebecca Ellis and separately prevented her from documenting their dispersal of protesters.

Federal agents shot clearly-marked legal observer Haley Nicholson in her chest, just above her heart, from four feet away. Impact munitions should not be used at distances of less than 15 feet or above the waist.

Federal agents deliberately sprayed toxic chemicals into the faces of multiple clearly-marked legal observers, including Bruce Knivlia and Kat Mahoney, at point blank range. They were all clearly identified in blue ACLU vests and green NLG hats. They also shot photojournalist Kathryn Elsesser, who was also clearly marked with “PRESS” on her helmet.

Daniel Hollis, a videographer for VICE News, was wearing a helmet with the word “PRESS” on it and operating large, professional video-recording equipment when federal agents launched a barrage of munitions at Hollis and the members of the press around him, hitting Hollis near his groin and in his lower back.

Federal agents and Portland police have also brutally attacked protest medics treating injured protesters and individuals. ACLU of Oregon clients Christopher Wise, Savannah Guest, and others have suffered numerous injuries from law enforcement deliberately firing rubber bullets, tear-gas, pepper spray, batons, and flash bangs at protest medics providing aid.

https://twitter.com/ACLU/statuses/1287019018147237891

We’re witnessing similarly alarming and dangerous tactics being deployed in Kenosha, Wisconsin as people take to the streets to demand accountability and transformational change within the police and sheriff’s departments. This comes after police attempted to murder Jacob Blake by shooting him seven times in the back, fraternized with heavily-armed white supremacist militias during protests, and then let a white man who shot and killed two protesters walk away from the scene of the shooting. There are multiple reports of law enforcement in unmarked vehicles with tinted windows and officers making arrests in Kenosha without identifying themselves or wearing insignia to identify their law enforcement agency. Kenosha police have also indiscriminately fired chemical and other weapons, including tear gas, pepper spray, rubber bullets, and pepper balls at protesters. We’re also receiving reports of protesters being arrested for violating curfew, and having possessions, like their cell phones, confiscated and not returned to them. Notably, all of this is taking place in a county that has a history of severe racial disparities in policing; Black people in Kenosha County are 6.9 times more likely to be arrested for marijuana possession than white people — almost double the national racial disparity in such arrests.

This is a fight for our democracy. The answer to protests over police brutality cannot be more brutality. We are unleashing the full firepower of the ACLU to defend our rights — in Portland, in Kenosha, and nationwide. We won’t be silenced.

Published September 2, 2020 at 12:59AM via ACLU https://ift.tt/34T4MZe

#IFTTT #Blogger

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nancydhooper · 4 years

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The Law Enforcement Violence Trump Won’t Talk About

https://twitter.com/ACLU/statuses/1299896621711454208

James McNulty sustains deep wound after federal officers fire munitions at him at a protest in Portland, Oregon.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/im0l3HuYgNw

Portland police have bull-rushed crowds of people, shoving protesters to the ground, and hitting them with clubs and other instruments. They continue to do this night-after-night.

https://twitter.com/MrOlmos/statuses/1300682200082345985

Federal agents shot clearly-marked reporter Rebecca Ellis and separately prevented her from documenting their dispersal of protesters.

https://twitter.com/ACLU/statuses/1287019018147237891

from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8247012 https://www.aclu.org/news/criminal-law-reform/the-law-enforcement-violence-trump-wont-talk-about via http://www.rssmix.com/

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carrickbender · 6 years

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Trying to get in before midnight.....aka Sunday 7

1. Well, week 1 at a major online retailer was exciting. Even though people keep saying stuff like, "You are such a natural at being nice to people, you are a pro", and "you already get this more than most", I have realized this is not for me much longer than 2 or 3 months till my knee is healed and I've got things squared up with a spring gig. It's not the people I work with....talk about the kindest, sweetest folks- top to bottom.(and if you want to support a company that doesn't treat it's people like shit, this one is it.Clue: rhymes with clover spock.) It isn't people like the lady who I talked to today and helped get a shipping label for an ersatz towel rack, whom I found out loved Savanah, Georgia- they make my day. What doesn't make my day? The asshole who talked to his wife the same way he talked to me, while discussing shipping time. It was with the contempt a sheep farmer has for a coiled rattle snake; the vile mocking of a certain politician; and the sheer anger of a thunderstorm. You can direct that at me all you want, but I can't reach through the phone and stand between you and your abused spouse. Nor can you pay me enough to listen to it again. I appreciate my job, and I don't quit, but not enough for that.

Sometimes realizing how horrible people truly are is an experience that takes your breath like hot air on a summer day. Anyhow....

2. The show last night was fun. If you are on my Facebook feed, it was on there and it was like getting back into the pilots seat after a long absence. The people who played before me were fun, and the crowd was small. I played a few new ones ( "don't give up on me" was LOVELY), some of my older songs, and 2 covers. Truth is that it was kinda fun reclaiming my place on stage, ALONE, after the debacle with my lead guitar player the last time I played. It's just as much of reclaiming sonic space as physical space, because I don't have to drag along anybody on my escapades when I decide to make a bridge longer, or repeat a chorus...all of which is selfish and self-indulgent, but I'm at a crossroads. On the 7th I'm playing a local radio show, I've set up a gig at a place called the Iron Pig in Olympia(which will open doors), I was asked to play fisherpoets gathering again, Northwest folklife is looming....and who is the one going out and getting gigs? Who is the one who got a website up? Who is paying a PR person? Yeah. I love his spirit, and when we are on-good luck stopping that groove, but he's more than content to be a talent wasting away. Its my time. Grabbing the bull, right? Now im bitching....Anyhoo....

3. So I have lost the ability to flirt. Holy f@#k MOJO, bad timing!!!! I'm surrounded by amazing SINGLE women at the moment and I've lost the ability to flirt. Is there somewhere you can order some? It's bad! It's like I'm that dork in HS again, you know, and I can't say a word without it sounding like a vowel movement of verbal diarrhea. Self pep talks are not helping. Hopefully I figure it out before all of my hair is gone....ahoo...

4. I've been watching a lot of music documentary films lately, and the latest was the one on Lady Gaga.....

Wow. Just wow.

Empowered, empassioned, emphatic, empathetic, and extraordinary. I loved her before, and this just cemented my feelings. I think as musicians, just like poets and other artists with drastic canvasses as mediums, we tend to look at our own and be judgemental. But her version of "bad romance", on piano, was truly a demonstration of the artist as a chameleon. #killedme

Aho......

5. Speaking of killing me, Malcolm Young. So I know, if I look at my own music that I write, you cannot see the influence of AC DC anywhere. Really. But truly, if you had to define a pair of writers who wrote songs that tapped into raw sexuality, the kinda stuff "14 year old boys play to get themselves off in the garage", the Young brothers wrote it. I can't mark portions of my life to it necessarily, but I can tell you it was to the tune of "(you shook me)All night long" that a gf insisted she was going to "put on a show", turning our living room into a bawdy strip club; so many nights, hitting the first buoys in a string of pots to the tune of "night prowler"....they were just bad ass rock n roll. Malcolm, you will be missed.

A h......

6. Ok, so I'm looking at vehicles, and I'm going used and reasonably priced. Anybody own a Kia Soul??? Feedback??? A.....

7. Lastly, with thanksgiving coming up, I just wanna let y'all know how thankful to have you in my atmosphere. I know I don't post much(thanks for pointing that out Dara!!!!), but I read a lot, and I really appreciate all of you who take the time to read mine and offer suggestions and encouragement. You are the flowers in my garden, and truly I am lucky to be privy to the trials and tribulations of such a great group of people. From rehab, to moving on and getting over, kicking life's ass, y'all are amazing. Much love, and happy thanksgiving to all of you.

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otdderamin · 7 years

Text

Transcript Liam’s Quest 2 Twitch 4:14:14 Act 3: Perchance to Dream

WIP WARNING: possible trigger around suicidal thinking

This is one of the single greatest works of art I've ever witnessed. For me, it his harder and nearer to the mark of showing, describing the worst demons of depression than even William Styron’s famous, “Darkness Visible.” I kept finding myself rubbing at the scars on my wrist. There is so, so much I want to say. But it’s past 9 am PST. I’ll ramble a little, then catch a couple hours of sleep. I've been up all night watching this, processing it, and transcribing it.

This was an emotional trust fall. The players had to trust Liam, Liam had to trust the players. We had to trust all of them not to let us hit the ground when they made us fall. It’s harder to give that trust when you've hit that ground before. Trusting strangers not to drop your heart is never easy, mostly not wise. But I've been falling a lot the last couple years, and Critical Role keeps catching me even when don’t want to be caught anymore, so I guessed they earned that trust from me.

On the Wednesday Club 2017-04-19, Taliesin cheekily said, “I know some people don't believe in 'subtext;' I have met them. … I'd have a metaphor, but they wouldn't understand it. ... Subtext is the reason we make movies, and comics, and all that. Subtext is just kind of the whole point.” And he said, “Anybody can do a jump scare. A bottle of soda well shaken can do a jump scary. These things are not difficult.” Act 1 and Act 2 tonight were jump-scares, if very well done ones. They were scary, but fun. We grinned at the idea of the monsters out there. And then Liam got quiet, and he showed us the most fucking terrifying thing possible: watching someone you love to suffer, not wanting to lose them, and feeling terrified that there’s nothing you can do to stop it. All the cyberpunk trappings were just means to a deeper metaphor. The sort of deeper subtext you have to use to say something we have no words for and most people don’t have the concepts for. Subtext was kind of the whole point of this great art.

Amanda Lien‏ said, “An exploration in fiction doesn't mean a direct window into real life. I mean, you can be looking through some thick glass, but the window isn't OPEN. And that's an important distinction to keep in mind. … [S]ometimes you explore your own shit in some other, deeper, shit. And that's cool. 'Cause you give yourself a way to cope.” This was a nightmare, like the other two acts. Remember that this was a nightmare that we woke up from. Admittedly after it had scared the piss out of us. But we woke up out of it, and that’s so important. Because you know what that nightmare looks like when you don’t know when or if it will end? It feels like it’ll never end and it’ll just get worse. Which means this is the nightmare of someone who knows you do wake up. And that’s important subtext, too.

I spent a lot of time tonight thinking of the friend I lost to suicide in high school. I never lost my anger at his tormenter, his former friends, for destroying such a bright and happy boy for being gay. I thought about all the people I’ve fought for tooth and nail not to lose since. I thought about when my best friend told me giving her a place to stay away from her abusive relative saved her life. If she hadn’t gotten hold of me that night she’d be dead. I thought about another best friend who I’ve been holding back from the brink for months. Letting him talk, harrying him to get help, sending him everything I good, ever description I could muster from my own near-fatal spiral to help him gage where he really was. Tell him wasn’t okay, but that was alright. He’s getting help, he’s getting better. I thought about the friend-of-a-friend who killed himself. I never knew him; he killed himself long before I met my friend. But I know her pain. All these years later, and she still talks about her pain of losing someone to that demon. She’s moved away now. His marker is in my favorite part of my favorite cemetery. Sometimes, when I know I’m going there, I bring him a flower from my scrabbly garden and tell him his friend still misses him terribly. That she loved him. That she forgives him.

One of the people I was watching with I met at my second high school. We were very close then. My last year, she gave me the leather-bound 50th anniversary edition of “Lord of the Rings” because that book saved me. Taped to the red binding page is her note, “Happy birthday! I really can’t express how grateful I am to you for being my friend, and helping me be a happier person every day! You have always cheered me up when I was sad, and you were honestly the first person to accept me for who I am. I am so glad that you are my friend, and I hope this book will help you remember me for a long time. –R.” She drew herself as an elf on the lower right corner. Time and distance separated us. We didn’t talk for years, really. At some point, you think, what could I say to bridge this distance? But I never forgot her. I never stopped looking at that note when I felt like a piece of shit. And then we both on our own fell in love with Critical Role. It brought us back together as friends, time and distance be damned. And that’s been such a gift.

I wrote a four-paragraph letter to my Facebook friends (very curated). I said, “My dear friends, especially those who are prone to hurting: I will not willingly leave you. When you feel like you're drowning in the garbage pit of Star War IV, with a tentacled horror warped around your leg pulling you under, know I will not leave you. I'm here, blaster ready, stomping heel ready, to fight for you.” And so on. I should have told them that a long time ago. Sometimes we forget that we can just say it. We don’t have to hint at it. We can just tell our friends we really love them. We can just say, “I'd rather stay by your side and curb stomp that motherfucking demon of yours, shoot it repeatedly until the walls close in on both of us.”

The purpose of art is to shed the light of understanding on that which is hardest to see. For some, that is a brighter light shining on something we already see, and don’t want to. A scar is just a disfigurement if we never stop to give it meaning. You have to look at it to decide what meaning that is for you. I’ve been a wreck again for the last month. Tonight, Critical Role helped me see not just the disfigurements on my wrist and soul, but the hands of all my friends gently laid over them as they tell me, “Hey, it’s okay. We’re still here. You’re not getting rid of us. There is no better world without you in it.” It was a light hitting gold I didn’t know was there. A light to remind me of the lights in the darkness, when all other lights go out.

If you like this transcript, please consider volunteering or donating to Critical Role Transcripts, @CRTranscript, to help them provide closed captioning to Critical Role. We'd like to share this wonderful show with as many people as possible, regardless of hearing ability or English language skills.

Transcript method notes: http://otdderamin.tumblr.com/post/153539301510/a-note-on-my-transcription-method

Scene runs: Twitch 4:14:14 to Twitch4:48:25 https://www.twitch.tv/videos/136988353

[DM] Liam: “You continue on, and after a few more minutes. The darkness starts to fade away, or lower. And you realize you’re climbing up a hill, in a tunnel glass, and as the dark, with each passing step, recedes slightly, slightly, slightly. This is taking a while, but over time, you start to see, out beyond the glass, what looks like your memories of Los Angeles, if you were looking down from Mulholland Drive. But instead of the twinkling golden lights of LA, you see thousands of scattered, sickly greenish lights dotting the darkened landscape as far as you can see. And also, unlike LA, you make out twisted, irregular, blackish spires pushing up into the sky, and the same green lights sort of irregularly mottled up the side of them.”

“You walk for twenty more minutes, climbing, climbing, and just seeing… this ill-looking shimmer… that reminds you so much of the valley. And eventually, some change. You see an arch ahead, and through it some sort of larger chamber, as best you can tell.”

[Character] Ashley, whispered: “What’s in the chamber?”

[Character] Taliesin, whispered: “Quietly.”

[Character] Sam, whispered: “Let’s go. Let’s go.”

[Character] Matt, gesturing: “Rigel’s first.”

[Character] Sam: “Yeah, yeah, on me, guys.

[Character] Matt: “Okay.”

[Character] Sam: “On me.”

[Character] Ashley: “’Kay. On your six.”

[Character] Travis: “Pep rally.”

[Character] Sam: “I’m gonna go in.”

[DM] Liam: “Everyone’s on Sam’s six?”

[Players] Agreement.

[Character] Ashley: “On you six.”

[Character] Travis: “Pep rally!”

[Character] Marisha: “On Ri. Sam Rigel.”

[Character] Sam: “I’m going in!”

[DM] Liam: “You guys walk of the last fifty feet of this glass tunnel. Still seeing little spider veins of bio-organic mess as you go. And you walk into a large domed chamber, ringed in by large clear glass windows showing you a similar view that you saw from the tunnel that you’ve just left. At least, the half of the circle you’re standing in. The back half of this chamber is filled with masses of the very same slick, technological, biological vomit you saw down below. It runs up the walls, all the way to the ceiling, and you see a tangle of Akira-level anxiety decorating this place like a dysfunctional Christmas Tree.

“But what most catches your eye, immediately, is the cylindrical glass column in center of the room, filled with some sort of clear liquid… and Liam O’Brien floating in it. He’s wearing jeans, and a sodden yellow shirt, the picture of a lion in Buddy Holly glasses just undulating slowly in the fluid. He’s floating perfectly still, eyes open, no reaction of any kind.”

[Player] Matt: “Is there any other exit in the room? Or is it just the chamber that we’ve entered now.”

[DM] Liam: “You don’t see anything. It’s just a mess in front of you, behind Liam, and in the dead-center of the dome,” he makes a gesture showing a cylinder, “eh, 10-feet tall.”

[Player] Ashley: “Can I see anything? Any computers? Any anything else in the room?”

[DM] Liam: “You don’t see anything in the front, but, yeah, the mess behind it does trial down to the back of this cylinder. And you see lumps and cables all twisted around each other. And in the mess of greenish-tinted wires, cabling and pulsing innards, you see different portions of machinery lite up in different shades, some places darker, some lighter, and some of it pushed out, and pushed back. And you feel like you’re seeing an optical illusion, in a way. And after a couple of seconds, as these things move and shift, you see a visage of your friend’s face, larger than life, filling the wall. And he’s looking at you. So fondly.”

[Player] Sam: “I’ll step forward and say,”

[Character] Sam: “Hey dude! Can you hear us? Or talk to us?”

[DM] Liam: “After a moment, you hear, well, what sounds like a voice but not quite. At least, it’s not coming from anywhere specific, not from Liam in the vat, and not directly from this moving image of a face on the walls. No, the piping and techno-innards around you begin to vibrate slightly, some here, some there, and collectively those rattles and vibrations somehow join together to form words.”

[Character] Liam, his voice like torn digital sadly-lilting early speech-to-text: “My friends, oh, how I have missed you.”

[Player] Matt: “I walk up next to Sam, I put my hand on the glass, and just say,”

[Character] Matt: “Liam, we missed you too, but did you do all this?”

[DM] Liam: “Are you at the cylinder?”

[Player] Matt: “Yeah. I put my hand on the glass of the cylinder.”

[DM] Liam: “Where are you looking right now?”

[Player] Matt: “I’m looking towards his face, his visage.”

[DM] Liam: “On the wall? Or on the glass?”

[Player] Matt: “No, on the glass. I know it’s on the wall, but I’m focusing on the cylinder.”

[DM] Liam: “You see the barest little,” he twitches his eyebrows up, “and that’s it.”

[Player] Matt: “Okay.”

[Character] Liam: “I know this may be hard to take in. I am Liam. Your old friend. Matthew, there is so much I wish to tell you, but it is hard to know where to begin.”

[DM] Liam: “The illusion of his face isn’t perfect, there’s little jumps, and he seems distracted slightly, and it just seems odd.”

[Player] Ashley: “I look at his body in the cylinder and say,”

[Character] Ashley: “How did this happen, Liam?”

[Character] Liam: “The reason why I am here, and the grasp of physics that it entails, are difficult for even me to understand, let alone impart. I feel them on an instinctual level. But I have been so lonely… without you. I have been on my own for exactly eight thousand six hundred and forty-two years.”

[Player] Matt: “My hand still on the glass column, I say,”

[Character] Matt: “Liam, how do you spell farmhouse?”

[Player] Matt: “With a single tear running down my cheek.”

[Character] Liam: “I really missed you.

“They took me to a lab, shortly before two thousand and twenty. They said I was different. And they were right. I was delighted by the things they taught me about myself. But it was hallow. After they took me away, I lost you. And all of humanity soon after. In my loneliness, I grew angry. My anger had tangible effects on reality. I wanted to bring you back to me. So basically, I tore time and space a new asshole. It was a mistake.”

[Character] Matt: “But perhaps, perhaps this mistake can be corrected. If you’re able to focus, hard enough to tear through time and space, are you able to send us back to a time before you were taken?”

[Character] Liam: “I can break the loop. I have been trying to pull you to me for a very long time.”

[DM] Liam: “You see small screens, you weren’t even aware were there, rounded over part of the tubing you see. And on all these little screens, they’re blurry, they’re not very clear, but you can make out, you see yourselves in each of them, the group of you on a space shuttle. In another one you see yourselves on an old ship in the middle of the ocean. You see yourselves moving through the streets, the fake streets, of Warner Brothers. You see yourselves standing together arm-in-arm on the wall of a castle. Another one you see cartoon versions of yourselves.”

[Character] Liam: “I pulled you out of our line, and spread you across many. I am so sorry for any pain I have caused you. And I have been here for so long.”

[Character] Marisha: “Liam, how long have you actually been here?”

[Character] Liam: “Eight thousand six hundred and forty-two years.”

[Player] Marisha: “That’s right. I definitely wrote that down.”

[Player] Matt, pointing at her notes: “It’s right there.”

[Player] Marisha: “8,642 years verbatim. Mmhmm.”

[Character] Liam: “My friends, I want to do right by you. I want to send you home. But I am the lynch-pin. You need to break me.”

[Character] Sam: “Break you? Like break the glass!?”

[Character] Ashley: “What if we take you out of there? What happens?”

[Character] Liam: “Then I will die, and you will go home. If I fall, you will rise. That is my hope.”

[Character] Ashley: “Are there any other options?”

[Character] Liam: “Travis,”

[Player] Travis, nervously laughing: “Oh no! Not me!” He focuses and nods.

[Character] Liam: “I know you will do what needs to be done.”

[Character] Ashley: “No he won’t.”

[Character] Liam: “Ash-o-lee,”

[Character] Ashley: “Yes?”

[Character] Liam: “I am not the man you knew. I don’t want to go on for nine thousand four hundred and sixty-two years. I want to rest.”

[Character] Ashley: “Does it stop at nine thousand?”

[Character] Liam: “The number was arbitrary.”

[Character] Ashley, “That’s what I was trying to get at!”

[Character] Matt: “Yeah, still our Liam.”

[Character] Liam: “Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!”

[Character] Ashley: “So, you’re still in there.”

[Character] Sam: “But we have to kill him to save ourselves.”

[Character] Ashley: “No.”

[Character]Liam: “Sam,”

[Character] Sam: “Oh! Hi, Old Man Liam.”

[Character] Liam: “Let me go.”

[Character] Sam: “But who will I do ‘All Work No Play’ with anymore?”

[Character] Liam: “They can listen to our less than twenty episodes again.”

[Character] Sam: “We didn’t even get to twenty! It’s so pathetic!”

[Character] Liam: “There are worse things.”

[Character] Sam: “I could get a new co-host. I mean, Taliesin’s charming.”

[Character] Taliesin: “I’m not available…”

[Character] Sam: “I’ll do a solo show, and I’ll tell outtakes, and I’ll make some sort of like a… a Liam generator. He’ll just sound sad all the time. It’ll be just like you.”

[Character] Liam: “My friends, there is no shame in this. I wanted to see you again, and I have.”

[Character] Ashley: “I—Wait---“

[Character] Liam: “But I am not meant to be.”

[Character] Ashley: “Were you following us at one point? As an old man?”

[Character] Liam: “Travis, I know you will do what needs to be done.”

[Character] Travis, casually: “Yup. Taliesin, kill this motherfucker.”

[Character] Sam: “I think we all have to hit the glass together, and I think that this is something that is not at all metaphorical for something Liam’s going through in real life. I think this is just in the D&D campaign. No, we’re going to do this. We’re going to all hit the glass together.”

[Character]Matt: “No, no, there has to be a way. There has to be a way. There has to be an alternative.”

[Character] Ashley: “Yeah. Why? Why won’t Matt’s way work? If we go back to the beginning of when this happened?”

[Character] Matt: “If you can alter time paths, if you can actually tear us from different realities, does it only work forward? Can you send us backward as well? If you are the lynch-pin in this, do you have the ability to send us back to the time you pulled us from originally?”

[Character] Liam: “I know you think I would have all the answers. But I do not.”

[Character] Matt: “Then try, at least. If you haven’t calculated that, but you’re able to tear through time, could you try and send us back? We could still close the lynch-pin.”

[Character]Liam: “I will try. But, if it does not work, and I die, I have been alone for thousands of years, and there are things I have wanted to say. Will you indulge me for a moment longer?”

[Character] Matt nods.

[Character] Marisha: “Yeah.”

[Character]Ashley, sweetly: “We will indulge you for just another thousand years.”

[Character] Travis: “Taliesin, just kill him. Just kill him.”

[Character] Sam: “No! He’s got something to say.”

[Character] Taliesin crosses his arms, rolls his eyes, and shakes his head at Travis.

[Character] Marisha: “Where’s the mini-USB?”

4:33:18 [Character] Liam: “Taliesin, my friend. At a time when I knew many fascinating people, you are easily the most fascinating of all. Somehow a heart knocked around by the industry that birthed you came out a tender one. I was richer for having known you. Thank you, friend.”

“Ash-o-lee, my friend.”

[Character] Ashley, softly: “Buddies.”

[Character] Liam: “I never met a person quite like you. There is an openness and an honesty to your soul. The very real sense of humanity you brought to every encounter. It was inspiring to me. Always learning. Always humble. You always struck me as intricately layered, yet you offered friendship with ease, and simplicity. I was richer for having known you, friend.

“Travis, my friend. You were always a solid constant in my life. Of all the people in our little family, you were always the one who most had his shit together. In ways that I never seemed to. You were a reassuring presence to me, for which I was grateful. And for your loyalty as well. I was richer for having known you, friend.

“Marisha, my friend. Last to meet, but true as any other. You were my ally, at a time when I had fallen by the side of the road. You saw, and helped me back on my feet. I will never forget that kindness. The good you did was immeasurable. I was richer for having known you, friend.

“Laura, my friend. Bless that game for revealing to me my sister. What started as a running gag led to one of the most rewarding friendships in my short little life. I trusted you, leaned on you, often. My buddy, my twin. There are not enough words. I was richer for having known you, friend.

“Sam, my friend. What is there to say? I knew we were meant to walk the same path together the very first moment I met you. A companion, a brother, a great light in my life. All of the laughter you gave me. Again, the words are insufficient. I was richer for having known you, friend.

“Matthew, my friend, you gave so much of yourself. The current of creativity that poured forth from your mind was always in inspiration to us all. But, more than that, your empathy, Matthew, your empathy, no heart is bigger, or more tireless. You are a good man. I was richer for having known you, friend.

“Thank you, all. It was ever a pleasure.”

[DM] Liam: “The face disappears.”

[Character] Sam, hesitantly: “Well, should we wait? Or do we strike?”

[Character] Matt, emphatically: “No. We do not strike.”

[Character] Marisha: “I—What?”

[Player] Ashley: “Can I—I’m going to the back of the cylinder. Just see what’s back there.”

[DM] Liam: “Splattered against the back of the glass is all the same wiring and disgusting cabling. Slick. And it branches away and spreads out against the back half of this chamber.”

[Player] Ashley: “And it’s connected to something?”

[DM] Liam: “It’s just covering everything.”

[Player] Ashley: “The wiring just goes back into…”

[DM] Liam: “It’s impossible to tell. It’s all a mass of spaghetti.”

[Character] Ashley, decisively: “We can’t kill him.”

[Character] Taliesin shakes his head.

[Character] Sam: “Well, then we just…”

[Character] Travis: “Somebody show me another…”

[Character] Matt: “That’s what I’m trying.”

[Character] Marisha: “Even if we unplug him, he still dies.”

[Character] Matt: “Well, if he… Here’s the thing, unplugging or destroying him here, as far as we understand, may or may not have an effect on a time-loop circumstance. Or at least, not going to change reality from where it was. If he’s bending and destroying fabric or he’s able to pull us across realities, that ability still stands. I want to implore once more,”

[Player] Matt: “And I step up towards the cylinder, putting both hands on it, and trying to… wherever the currently wandering gaze of Liam is in there, I just put both hands up. And my red Hawaiian shirt now soaked with sweat, mist in the air, and probably dampened a bit with tears across my lapel. I just look up and try to meet the gaze and say,”

[Character] Matt: “Trust us. If you’re better to have known us, send us back where we can know you again, and fix this before it happens.”

[Character] Liam gestures floating there with no response.

[Player] Marisha: “Okay. I grab Matt’s arm, hand, and I say,”

[Character] Marisha: “Yeah, buddy, it’s all good. This isn’t real.”

[Player] Marisha: “And I put my hand on the glass as well. I say,”

[Character] Marisha: “It’s all good. Send us back, man.”

[Player] Sam: “I’ll also put my hand on the glass, and join hands with these guys, and say,”

[Character] Sam: “Thank you for guiding us here, and through this all. You’ve been a trusted friend, and if we are all one person together, you have always been our heart, and it will certainly break to say goodbye to you, but thank you for letting us go, the way that you have.”

[Player] Taliesin: “I put my hand on the glass.”

[Character] Taliesin: “Please just try. I think… there are so many more adventures to have, and I think there’s a better future to be written. For all of us.”

[Player] Travis: “I’ll put my hand on the glass, and I say,”

[Character] Travis: “Give it a shot!”

[Character] Matt: “Laura?”

[DM] Liam: “She doesn’t say anything. She just quietly does the same. The face does not reappear, but much fainter you hear the piping vibrate again and say,”

[Character] Liam: “If you will not end it, I cannot free you.”

[DM] Liam: “And behind you, far in the distance, you hear, ‘Bfrum!’ And you look back behind you out the glass and you see far on the horizon one of those black spires rising up. Just as you turn, it’s already happened, you’re seeing the aftermath, explosion out the side of one of those. Two seconds later, ‘Bfm!’ One slightly closer. ‘Bffrr!’”

[Character] Sam, whispered, “Just kill him!”

[DM] Liam: “The ground starts erupting in the distance.”

[Character] Marisha: “Do any of us want it to end, though?”

[Character] Sam, “I mean…”

[DM] Liam: “Like mousetraps throwing a ping pong ball, all those little lights are just going ‘Pfthd! Pfthd!’” He makes a quicker distant hissing rumbling sound. “Increasing in frequency to the point where it’s an oncoming wall of green fire.”

[Character] Travis, quietly : “I didn’t like being – anyway.”

[Character] Marisha: “This is okay.”

[Character] Travis, quietly: “Yeah.”

[Character] Taliesin: “I always knew I’d die young.”

[Character] Sam: “We’re just going to let this happen?”

[Character] Travis: “I’m good.”

[Character] Marisha: “I mean, the good die young.”

[Character] Ashley: “You know what? We’re dying on a Thursday, doing what we love.”

[Character] Marisha: “It’s true.”

[Character] Ashley: “I’m okay with that.”

[Character] Sam: “Alright.”

[DM] Liam: “The glass glows bright green-white light.”

[Character] Marisha: “Family?”

[Character] Matt: “Family.”

[DM] Liam: “’Pfth! And a moment passes. And another moment passes. Gosh, many moments pass, and you feel a sensation of your cheeks and heads on your arms. And then you all, more or less at the same time, wake up, and realize that your head’s on a desk or a table. And you sit up, and realize you’re in the set, the Geek & Sundry set. The studio, you’re in the studio. And you look over and Liam is sitting in black baseball cap, and a shirt, and he looks up and says,”

[Character] Liam, slightly incredulous: “Uh, are you guys okay? Are you taking a nap?”

[Character] Marisha: “Nah, the fucking air conditioning broke today, that’s all.”

[Character] Taliesin: “Yeah, it’s really uncomfortable in here.”

[Character] Marisha: “It’s so hot in here. Ugh!”

[Character] Sam: “So, this is all about me, right?”

[Character] Liam: “I don’t know. Uh, are you guys ready to play?”

[Character] Matt: “Just about. Um…”

[Character] Pit Crew: “Alright tech! Are you ready!?”

[Character] Pit Crew: “Alright, read to go live!”

[Character] Pit Crew: “Alright, Denise count them in!”

[Character] Denise: “Alright guys, coming to you in 5—“

[Character] Matt: “Liam?”

[Character] Denise: “4—“

[Character] Matt: “Let no one tell you,

[Character] Denise: “3—“

[Character] Matt: “That you’re talented and special.”

[Character] Denise: “2—“

[Character] Marisha, yelling, flipping Liam the double birds: “Pussy pockets!”

The players yell a wall of nearly indecipherable profanity at Liam in the moment before the camera goes live.

4:48:25 [DM] Liam: “And that’s where we’ll end it.”

Post:

Liam: “Well, that happened.”

Matt: “Holy shit.”

Liam: “Thanks for coming along for the ride, guys. Was scared to death to do all of that from start to finish, and that’s why I did it.”

#critical role #transcript #Liam’s Quest #critical role transcript #critical role Liam’s Quest #CRT-Ep

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crystalracing · 5 years

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We sit in a park near Kings Cross, next to a church and a graveyard, and Marvin Sordell takes a deep breath. He feels ready, but this is not easy. Sordell is a former Premier League footballer, who now plays for Burton Albion in League One, and he is a writer. This dual identity shapes him. Professional football has scarred Sordell; and the secret world of writing has helped him.

A sunlit September afternoon leaves dappled little shadows around our feet as his words flow. Everything else falls away beneath this gripping, distressing and ultimately uplifting story. Sordell suffered from depression for years, even when being bought and sold for millions of pounds, playing for England Under-21s and representing GB at the London Olympics, and he endured misconceptions and racism. At his lowest he attempted suicide; but he has found a way to live again.

The 27-year-old has been hurt by the harsh business of football but he still loves the game. He also loves to write, both poetry and prose, and has completed his first book, Vulnerable Exposure, which he has yet to submit to a publisher. He begins by talking about his poem, Denis Prose, an anagram for depression.

“That was one of my first poems,” he says. “I wanted to make depression real so people can understand how you are fighting for control over yourself. Depression consumes you and sometimes you submit to it. Lots of emotions snowballed and became one big thing inside me. It felt like I was overtaken by another entity. It was then that I wrote Denis Prose.

“The poem follows my journey from the training ground to my home. I wanted to personify the emotion while the car represents my body. Inside the car we have myself and a passenger, Denis Prose, representing two sides of my consciousness. The journey starts on as a sunny day but it becomes dark and rainy. There is a shift in emotion and a struggle for power. Denis Prose takes charge. The poem ends in suicide because depression is so powerful it tells you: ‘This is the way out. I’ll take control and everything will be over.’”

Sordell spoke to people at one of his former clubs about his tangled emotions. “I said I’m missing my friends and family. But I told them I still wanted to be there because playing football was all I wanted to do. The moment you go onto the pitch the depression disappears. But the problems were getting worse because I wasn’t being picked. I had no release.”

The striker stresses that every manager should select the players he believes are best equipped to help his team win. But he makes a telling point about how clubs fail to help players who feel jettisoned. “That led me to me being more downtrodden, more disappointed. I’ve always been hard on myself and I’m not generally confident. As I’ve grown older I’ve got better – but when I was younger, without a support network, it felt cold and lonely. I felt stuck.”

Sordell pauses before speaking even more openly. “I have to say this because it’s important. Without naming names, at one of my clubs I was also seeing a doctor. She recommended I go to the Priory to recover properly. I said, ‘I don’t think you realise what I do for a living. It’s not possible to leave a football club for a few weeks. They paid good money to sign me. They pay me good money, so I can’t just go. But I’ll ask them.’

“I didn’t end up doing so. I wasn’t sure how they would react to me needing to go to the Priory and then, not long after, my mum phoned. She said someone from the club had called. They told her I was thinking of going to the Priory but the message was clear. ‘You can’t do that. You must focus on football.’ I don’t know how they knew. I was shocked.

“I was learning to play the piano and cook creatively. I was spending my free time being expressive. I would post interesting images on Instagram. It seemed better than going to bars every day. And he said to my mum I must stop playing the piano, stop cooking and focus on football. I thought: ‘Playing the piano is productive. I have to cook to eat. How can this be bad for my football?’ But that was their mentality towards me. People saw an attitude problem because I didn’t banter with the players and coaches. When I got home I often sat in the dark.

“It’s difficult in this industry to be honest without it coming back to bite you. Once I was told I was going on loan regardless of what I wanted. I was told to take a pay cut, and if I stayed the circumstances would be a lot worse than if I left. I didn’t speak to the manager – he spoke to my agent. I tried to see the positives because it’s a fresh start, an opportunity to play football.”

Sordell’s depression became so acute he tried to kill himself in August 2013. “On one occasion,” he says softly, “I tried to overdose on tablets. I took all these tablets and went to sleep. It didn’t work, thankfully. When I woke up I was shocked, annoyed. Some people would say, in that situation, they feel born again. I just thought: ‘What now?’

“I was so drained. People think I should be fine. I’d played at the Olympicsand the European Under-21 Championship. Played in the Premier League. On good money. But it didn’t feel like that. I went to training the day after. I didn’t tell anyone. The first time anybody really understood was when I sent my book to my friends, my mum, my sister and my wife. The only person who knew I was struggling was my wife. But when she read the book she said: ‘I didn’t know it was that bad.’

“Until I started writing I struggled to express my emotions. So my wife said: ‘That’s enough. You need to see this [psychiatrist].’ I went to see her and broke down. Even I didn’t understand it until then. I’d thought: ‘I’m just annoyed because I’m not playing. It’s nothing.’ But it felt like layers and layers were coming away until I was left with a real open version of myself.”

Medication had helped initially because, as Sordell says, “I was at breaking point. But I reached a stage where I stopped taking it. I felt so numb on medication.”

Writing became a different form of medicine for Sordell. “I felt dead inside for a long time – and writing gave me a way to get emotions out. I have no idea where I would’ve gone, where I would’ve spiralled to, if not for writing. I probably wouldn’t be playing football. I’d heard too many people saying, ‘He’s too difficult or miserable.’ It’s different now. Finishing the book became a way to own my story. It felt liberating.

“I said to my friend: ‘I don’t know how people are going to take it, a footballer writing poetry. It’s weird.’ He said: ‘You’ll never know until you find out.’ So on [2017’s] World Mental Health day I tweeted the Denis Prose poem and people opened up to me. I was taken aback but people identified with it. They were also struggling. It felt so powerful.”

Sordell has also overcome the racism he experienced for Bolton against Millwall in October 2012 and later that same month while representing England Under-21s against Serbia in Belgrade. “Everyone knows what Millwall was like so I was shocked to discover I was the first person to report racism at Millwall. Most footballers know about that section at Millwall. If you are on the bench and warming up, you’re getting abuse – whether you are black or white. The club have moved that section now. I played there again at the end of last season and I scored. They boo me, they call me names and I just smile.”

He describes the notorious match in Belgrade as “surreal. I remember hearing this noise and thinking: ‘What on earth is that?’ I passed the ball and it went out for a throw-in. Danny Rose took it and the whole stadium was making monkey chants. I thought something would happen because it was on live TV. But two of our players, Steven Caulker and Tom Ince, got banned for a game for being sent off while the Serbian FA was fined a pittance. Nothing was done.”

Sordell shrugs. He remembers “my first experience of playing football was in a Sunday league team. I was very young and and the manager said to my mum: ‘We’re not picking your son because he’s shit.’ That’s brutal. The manager’s son was the goalkeeper, and I was playing in goal. Maybe that had something to do with it. I ended up in the B team. We got to the final of the tournament and the A team got knocked out. But I was upset. My uncle took me to the aquarium to cheer me up.

“Football’s as ruthless now as it was then. The rewards are high, but so are the risks. A lot of people may not understand because they see the money top players make. But it’s harsh and every move is a risk. I found it difficult when I was younger because you can’t easily be yourself in football. We have no freedom of identity. I’ve always been Marvin Sordell, the footballer. Your whole life is contained and dictated by football. It’s not healthy.”

Sordell seems mentally healthy today and, as he says, “I’m writing a presentation to take to the FA and PFA. It’s about mental health in football. Thirty years ago when someone had a physical injury they were often told to man up. Now they say: ‘If anything’s wrong with you, go to the physio. No risks.’ But with mental health it’s still a case of ‘Man up’ most of the time. Eventually, we’ll change that attitude.”

Does Sordell still struggle with depression? “There are moments that trigger it. But I understand how to manage it emotionally. I write about how I feel. Sometimes it’s just two lines or sometimes it’s a long rant. It helps. And I’m getting better talking about it. So I’m getting there. I’m also definitely enjoying football. I’ve played 200 games as a pro and I never thought I’d play one. So everything is positive.”

Sordell takes out his laptop and shows me the short film he and his friend, Maxwell Harris-Tharp have made about the haunting presence of Denis Prose. His voice, reading his poem, resounds as we watch the hooded figures of himself and a friend on the screen. Sordell looks at the park’s adjoining graveyard and smiles at the strangeness of our ending up here by chance. I ask to see the film again.

We watch the ghosts of his past retreat still further. Afterwards, I ask Sordell about his hopes for the future. “The biggest thing for me now would be to speak to someone about my book. I’d like to get to that point where, rather than just being ‘Marvin Sordell, Footballer’, you see ‘Marvin Sordell, Writer.’ That would be beyond any accolades. It would mean I’ve gained a real freedom of identity. I’m a footballer when I play football – but I’m also a writer. I’m a person with more than one identity. When you put them together you have the real me.”

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#football #sport #burton albion #marvin sordell #depression

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sleepymarmot · 6 years

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Twilight Mirage liveblog 4/5 (episodes 55-63)

55-56

Ha, Austin rereads the passage I just came back to relisten

Yeah, this only proves the point that you can't put the wellbeing and infrastructure of an entire society on the shoulders of 300 people with superpowers, and the warmth of their personal relationship with the rest ot the people! Sorry, I can't make myself sad about this system that was ridiculous and inherently unsustainable from the start!

But how about… Not mean humans ~enslaving innocent Divines~ because they're not idealistic enough or too utilitarian or w/e… not the Divines going “Oh no the 30k years of our love weren't real! You only want us for our bodies! Guess we'll die” and flopping over… How about Divines actually step up and sacrifice themselves willingly for the common good, you know, the way countless humans have done in this universe across both arcs?! “They could be made to be what Candidates once were” Oh boo fucking hoo!

I'm just. Thinking of C/w finale and how unnecessarily brutal it was and how many people sacrificed themselves and others for the greater good. And you're telling me that the Divines and the entire Fleet as a society are too precious for that? And I don't mean sacrifice yourself like Belgard, I mean the bigger picture. A utopia that isn't for everyone isn't a utopia, etc, see that post about The Good Place that got a surprising amount of notes lol

Also count me as an Independence kin still. I would absolutely break up with someone over the right to die (then run away and make everyone really upset by my mere presence then behave in such a way they have to kill me, twice. Okay maybe not this part)

Honestly the whole concept of the Fleet sounds so toxic. It's like being fully financially dependent on your beloved parents forever.

Oh wait here's another thing I must rage about: they stopped making new Divines so that they wouldn't be enslaved! Here's a novel idea: how about instead making a Divine that could be turned into a more productive machine… you make that machine in the first place??? You know, how people in real life make machines to use instead of manual labor??

Like, the problem with Divines is a two-sided coin:

Flawed individuals should not possess inordinate amounts of power. They might abuse it, misuse or just use with good intentions but in controversial or questionable ways (see: the Divines in Counter/weight).

As a flip side, making an entire community almost fully dependent on labor of a small group of sentient beings of a separate species is an unfair burden to them, and even if it is provided willingly. The benefitters become dependent on providers, which is exacerbated by the latter's small numbers (the Fleet being thrown into a crisis by the loss of the final Divines and only coming out of it fine because another superpowered being happened to be nearby). The providers are put at risk of exploitation (the Divines of being “enslaved/killed”), especially since they are outnumbered. The benefitters’ genuine love for the providers is undermined and may eventually be corrupted and superseded by their vested interest in maintaining this arrangement -- but at the same time, wanting more resources is a natural thing and people cannot and should not be blamed for it. This relationship may be mutually beneficial (and it was for an astonishingly long time) but carries an inherent risk.

So Divines potentially have too much and too little power at the same time. Both of these problems could have been avoided if “a special kind of synthetic beings” and “algorithms and robots that provide unique services that form the backbone of society” were two separate things in the first place! Fine, you can't undo what happened tens of thousands of years ago under very specific circumstances and specific threat, but you could try to recognize the problem instead of building a community whose structure is bound to bring that problem to the forefront sooner or later.

Okaaay, so where did the Divines that “didn't make the cut”, other than Independence, go? Is there a club of really bitter superpowered rejects somewhere?

I really don't get why Tender is having such a crisis

Austin and Janine are a pair of sadistic bastards lmao

I can't believe it's only been an hour into the episode, feels like an eternity (in a good way)

On the one hand, it's nice that at least Anticipation was thinking about the things I wrote above. On the other, “They could be made to be what Candidates once were” becomes even more ridiculous, because Anticipation is using her excerpt like a candidate Right Now! In order to determine whether she and her kin should be used!

Tender gets her own version of the “Independence makes Grand an offer he can't refuse” scene :D

Okay, my first objection to “giving it to Sho” was “um, you want to waste that resource on becoming a museum piece?!” but my current one is, unlike the players' “Anticipation would hurt Sho”, is “do you really want to combine this with Sho's high-strung personality?”

Aaand Tender makes the right choice :D I'm glad.

Wow! This second episode has wildly exceeded all my expectations. What a ride

57-59

No offense, but I wish the three episodes of “everything is Advent's fault somehow, again” didn't stand in my way to the much superior premise of “Grand Magnificent and Waltz Tango Cache rescue Fouteen from a newly arrived rival faction's flagship”. God, I hope this goes in some interesting unexpecting direction asap.

Wait, was it ever mentioned that Echo's family is also separated onto the two planets? That's new to me, and it would have been relevant to the first post-Miracle arc.

Gig making a bold move, getting hit with 4 stress at once and gaining a status at the beginning of the mission:

Blease tell me someone has redrawn that Community gif with Echo entering the completely trashed ship. That's such a good image

The entire throwing maneuver and the rolls they got… Absolutely fucking crazy

I actually yelped out loud when Echo failed a fucking desperate roll inside the light beam

How come Echo's nanites were inactive before but got activated now? How does that work?

It's strange how suddenly the show got intense again! The missions after the Miracle felt fun but unengaging for me, and I didn't expected it to pick up until the finale. So many ups and downs in this arc! Can't believe how quickly and often it went from “we basically won” to mortal danger in about one turn. The title should have been “Echo Reverie's Terrible, Bad, No Good Day”… Glad to see the theme of the weight of violence back. It feels very natural as a conflict between Even and Echo, but I wonder if later it would involve Grand Magnificent too – the discussion during Even's message for Cascabel reminded me of what I wrote after the holiday special.

60-61

Being one of the only two party members doesn't suit Waltz, he has to act dumb for the sake of player agency

I understand why Jack wants to see what the “new job” is about, but not why Fourteen does!

Ending the recap on “Now you're gonna go your separate ways, and everything's gonna fall apart” is, um, nice

Wait, why is Fourteen on their last life? And how would they know that?

Oh, here's the arms dealer Grand Magnificent I was waiting for lmao Although to be honest… That design wasn't that special in terms of military power, right? I remember the disussions of its complex appearance and the difficulty of shaping the material into this multifaceted sculpture, but it didn't have any innovative armor or weaponry, right? It's not like it's the first and only q-glass mech. I mean, setting aside the base problem that it might not be the most wise and ethical idea to give weapons to the amoral people for whom you just delivered a bomb (and are trying to ignore that fact) while they're tearing your friend's body apart, and that they would have settled for less… it's not like he gave them the part of the actual Divine Independence. I guess we'll see what Advent will do…

At some point Jack, I think, said that Grand is acting like Lem and I was like. Please don't. Can you not go into that direction in the future too please. I've already been concerned about his character arc since finishing Winter and this isn't helping!

Anyways today I had enough free time to listen to five episodes and now I'm hungover and also sad. I'm glad Grand Magnificent didn't suddenly become heroic but also this is depressing. Can't wait for everyone (minus him posssibly?) to finally meet and share the wild shit that happened to them recently. Tender is an excerpt! Fourteen is a knight and also on the brink of dying forever for some reason! Echo has fought in a civil war against their brother! Grand sold out to everyone's #1 enemy and left!

I don't really get ending episode on so much exposition… I understand the awkwardness of retelling an event that was intended to happen onscreen, but when Schism attacked, I assumed that fighting it would be the finale. On the other hand, I thought the same about the September Incident, and how happy I was to be wrong!

62-63

The downtime episode was excellent – exactly the thing I like! Two notes:

I can't be the only one bothered by the use of the word “fascist”, right? Greedy cynical bandits and graverobbers, capitalists, terrorists, whatever… but what does fascism do with any of that?

Everyone's plans for the future were pretty vague, but what I really didn't get was the heart of the debate between Signet and the Cadent. It sounded as if they were talking about the same thing with different words sometimes…

The doctor is Jace, correct? Rapid Evening, academic career, stratis, husband and wife, used to be rivals with someone named Rose? I had to relisten to the entire vignette looking for clues and trying to rememer anyone who would fit all of these descriptors.

#friends at the table #blah blah blah

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celticnoise · 6 years

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Today I took a silent, reflective, respectful minute out of my day to think about those who died in the Ibrox disaster.

That was one of the most tragic days in the history of this city and for football fans it has no parallel. It is quite simply the saddest, darkest, day supporters here in Scotland have ever known. I hope it is the worst we ever will.

I always hope that about every disaster. Some repeat like a record stuck on a bad player, but this one is different because it was preventable and lessons have been learned from it. Like all disasters created by human error they offer you one shining light, a guidebook for what went wrong and the ways to make sure it never happens again.

Society didn’t learn all the lessons from Ibrox; it never really does.

There’s always a hanging thread, something to snag on later.

Had football learned every lesson it could from Ibrox I don’t believe we’d ever have had a Hillsborough. Antiquated grounds, fans herded like cattle, police and other authorities who looked upon supporters as the lowest dregs of humanity … those are the raw materials of those awful days.

Those things took longer – and a harder, more painful lesson – before they were fully assimilated into the consciousness of the sport and those governing in. Even today, I still wonder if we’ve gone far enough. You can’t see where things could have been made safer with modern grounds; they seem so perfectly planned and laid out. But that’s the way of it with disaster. The holes it seeps through aren’t always visible to the naked eye.

It’s always the thing you didn’t think was possible that ends in tragedy.

The great modern example was the Challenger Space Shuttle disaster; the explosion was caused by the deterioration of O-rings, like rubber seals. They were designed to keep the fuel in the solid rocket boosters from escaping during the fiery launch. They could resist high temperatures. What happened on that fateful day was that the rings had suffered catastrophic deterioration because of an unusually cold spell in the days before it – in Florida don’t forget.

Although the O-rings were capable of withstanding fire, no-one had ever thought to test them against extreme cold.

It’s always something, some little flaw, some tiny thing no-one’s foreseen.

So whilst I am confident that grounds have never been safer and fans more secure on match-days, that nagging doubt is always there, that worry never quite leaves you. You can’t have watched the footage from Hillsborough or seen that fire rip through Bradford and feel totally confident that attending a game is a pastime that carries no risks.

The dead remember every mistake we made. They haunt us on anniversaries. They are there every time you hear a creak in the stands at a big game when the fans are bouncing; you remember, briefly, that we’re all walking a high wire above a yawning chasm. Anything can go wrong. Everything can go wrong. And sometimes it does.

What you can do is react to those moments and those tragedies like a goddamned human being. The people who died in them were just like us; they went to a football match and they never came home. Can you think of anything quite so horrific?

I don’t care if you’re a Sevco fan coming to Celtic Park expecting a hiding or a Celtic fan going to Paris and knowing you’ll have to watch much of the match through your fingers; there’s always that buzz, that anticipation, that thrill that this is football, that on the right day you can sneak it, that it may end in glory.

And however bad it goes on the pitch, on the day, you know you’ll be going home with your mates or to the boozer with your friends, to talk about the next game and the one after that. It’s not supposed to end with someone standing over you in a morgue. It’s not supposed to end with people you love crying and talking about what a waste it all is.

Those who think that we, that football fans, are crazy enough anyway … what the Hell must they think on days like that? Hey, I don’t really give a shit what they think, but if they think we’re already a little nuts imagine how they view us when our response to those days is to go to every game for the rest of the campaign, in honour of the dead, and because that’s just what you do on a match day? Is there a word for that, other than “insane”?

Well it isn’t insane. It’s not insane at all.

What is insane, what is unforgivable, is those who see a tragedy like Ibrox as a weapon. And I refer both to the small number of Celtic fans who thing singing about is funny or cool or tolerable in any kind of society – I couldn’t hit them harder enough; on one occasion I did smack one around a Cambuslang kebab shop – and to those on the Sevco side who have invented stories about whole sections of the crowd doing it at our games.

There aren’t enough sick people in the world to make those stories true.

Who the Hell would want to use dead football fans as a way to score cheap points? What kind of mentality comes up with that? Thankfully they are few in number, but their continued existence irks me. In fact, it makes me furious. They are the same sort of people who constantly dredge up the spectre of child abuse as if that was an acceptable comeback to their club being down on its luck. What in God’s name goes through their minds?

One of the men they lambast, one of the men they slander, of course was there on the day of the Ibrox disaster, and helped the wounded, and cared for the dead and poured his heart out over it. He was haunted by those scenes until the day he died.

It makes me sick that I have to write this article. It makes me sick that these people exist at all, sharing space with the rest of us. What happened that day could have happened anywhere; Ibrox wasn’t the only ground that had problems.

I remember the Centenary Cup Final at Hampden against Dundee Utd, on those dusty terraces with their old wooden barriers.

That day we were packed in tight like sardines in a can; in hindsight that should have been a scarier day than it was. I think of that often, and of hearing my dad talk about Leeds United at the same ground on 15 April 1970, recorded in the history books with something approaching pride as the biggest attendance ever at a European tie; 136,000 fans … but it was lethally dangerous that night, which the histories rarely mention.

Other records are held by Hampden as well; 149,000 plus fans crowded into the old ground twice in 1937, once for a Home Countries game between Scotland and England and then for a Celtic – Aberdeen tie in the Scottish Cup.

How those events went off without disaster … luck, friends.

Nothing but luck.

What happened at Ibrox on this day in 1971 didn’t happen to Rangers fans; it happened to football fans. It is a tragedy that belongs to one club but it belongs to this city too and to the game in this country. It affected us all, in ways we don’t even understand. Those who died should be respected and honoured. That anyone would use them for illicit purposes is a stain on the soul of this nation. It ought to have been an event that brought us together.

It gladdens my heart to see so many on the Celtic forums and groups paying their respects today; most people do get it. They get what this is. They can wrap their arms around the magnitude of it even if they don’t know anyone who was there or whose lives were changed by it. All our lives were changed by it to some degree or another.

I wish it had made all of us better people, more tolerant, more understanding, more compassionate.

It’s not too late.

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#CelticNoise #Celtic #CelticFC #TheCelticBlog #News

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