#the real question is whether Donnie is doing this on purpose or not | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

kiaxet · 8 months

Text

HOW ABOUT THAT @somerandomdudelmao DISASTER TWIN REUNION, HUH

Went a little feral to the tune of 2.2K words of self-indulgence. What else is new?

~~~~~~~

Donnie can't sleep. More accurately, he won't sleep. Not until he's done. He'd never been one to leave a project unfinished; death and resurrection hadn't changed that.

He taps incessantly, repetitively, on a keyboard and screen, the motions long since past inputting data and now only serving to keep him awake. The repetition is soothing, easy, and - counterintuitively - he finds his head drooping forward into sleep-

And he snaps back upright. No. Not until he can confirm Leo is okay.

Leo is behind him, he knows. Breathing. In bed. Asleep. Very much alive. And-

He jumps and whips around as a thud sounds behind him. "What the-"

Leo is on the floor.

Well, that answers the question as to whether his twin is awake.

For a fraction of a second, part of him wavers uncertainly. He loves his idiot twin. The question he hasn't been able to answer is whether his reaction to Leo waking up will fall on love or idiot twin-

"Leo!"

He can hear the exasperation in his voice, and yep, it's the latter. He takes a knee next to Leo and hauls him into his arms, lecturing him all the while, and if he can hear the annoyance in his voice then Leo sure as hell can. Sleep deprivation for the purposes of keeping his brother's soul alight had done nothing for his temper. "I swear to God, all you had to do was make a sound! Why are you such a difficult patient?"

He deposits Leo carefully on the bed - "Sit still!" - and checks him over, running every scan he can think of and making sure his brother's new body really is in good working order, spouting increasingly irritated commentary all the while. Of course the fall didn't hurt him - Leo is tougher than that, and Donnie does better work than that - but he still can't help the rising anxiety in his throat.

This almost didn't happen.

"-stupid, stupid selfless idiot!"

Donnie almost couldn't save him.

"Grrhh-"

Leo nearly died for real. Permanently beyond Donnie's reach. Well and truly gone-

"Do you have any idea how close you were to having nothing left to save?"

And now here Leo is, in perfect health, sitting on Donnie's bed with a big dopey grin on his face as Donnie chokes on his anxiety and damn near shakes himself apart-

Oh for fuck's sake.

"Hey. Are you even listening?"

Leo speaks up for the first time since he's woken up, voice shaky from disuse. "D-Donnie?"

And that is not a goddamn answer to anything Donnie has been saying, because of course it isn't. It's Leo. He's always had his own priorities. "Yeah. No. You're not fucking listening." Donnie heaves a long-suffering sigh, sinking back into the routine comfort that irritation at his twin provides. "At least you're talking." Small favors. "Although I'm surprised you're not throwing your stupid jokes at me." Even smaller favors.

He stops short as Leo's hand closes around his wrist, drawing Donnie's arm to Leo's plastron. "You're real," his brother breathes, looking from Donnie's hand to Donnie himself with tears streaming down his face. "You're real!"

And then, in the space of a thought, Leo's joy breaks, his smile turning desperate. "Are you?"

For a moment, Donnie stares at his twin, wondering at the sudden change in expression. He takes a breath-

And the part of him that had lain dormant for so long after he'd woken up - the part of him that had been screaming for his twin's safety ever since they'd recovered the few scattered embers of Leo's soul - gasps to life, blooming like a time-lapse video of a flower and reaching to the edges of Donnie's soul. Leo had called it their twin sense, and Donnie hadn't had it in him to argue after a while. Whatever it is, it's back, connected to Leo's renewed presence, and-

Donnie's heart floods with emotions. Relief and joy sprout quickly and are nearly swept away in a tide of exhaustionanxietyfearfearfearfearFEAR-

But down beneath it all, steady against the rising wall of terror, is the little blue spark of hope that his brother always carried. His core. The thing that let him continue on in the face of insurmountable odds, and lent that same strength to everyone around him. A ninja's greatest weapon.

It's Leo. It's Leo-

And Donnie can't leave him alone in his fear. Not when there's no need for it. Not when they're safe.

He lets that breath out, and sits next to Leo on the bed. "Mhm. I'm alive. And you're alive. We're safe. The Krang are gone." That's all the news that's fit to print, or at least the most important parts. What else does he have to say?

Oh.

"I'm sorry I..uh…"

He's sorry he what? Died? Left a mess for Leo to deal with? Didn't do enough while he was alive to keep everyone else alive in turn after he was gone? Kept his brother's soul in a fucking mug, because that was the only way he could ensure he wouldn't break it while Leo was still fragile? All of the above?

…yeah, it's all of the above.

He owes Leo one hell of an apology, and he's never been good at any of this, so instead he shrugs haplessly and leans forward, pulling Leo into his arms and hanging on tight.

It's a matter of moments before Leo has him flat on his shell on the bed and is sobbing into his arms. Normally he'd hate seeing his twin cry, but it's proof of life - proof that Leo made it, that his soul is intact enough for him to still be Leo, that he's alive and awake and here - and Donnie will take it.

And if he's squeezing Leo back pretty hard himself, well, that's fine too. Nobody else needs to know.

~~~~~~~

Donnie is yelling at him.

Donnie is strong enough to have picked Leo up off the ground, well enough to be on his feet without support, running tests and reading Leo the riot act over his latest boneheaded maneuver - in this case, forgetting he was missing an arm and falling out of bed.

Donnie is yelling at him, because Donnie is here to yell at him.

And Leo is smiling, because he couldn't be happier. He lets the words wash over him, draping over his shoulders like a favorite cozy blanket that he'd lost so many years ago, and he basks in the warmth that is his brother's voice and smiles.

It's enough to interrupt the yelling for a question, though he doesn't really hear it - just keeps smiling, and says Donnie's name, and it's so nice to be able to say it with a smile now, because Donnie is here-

-he is, right? This isn't just a dying hallucination on Leo's part, right?

(It couldn't be- he remembers his death, remembers breathing his last, remembers being trapped- but this-)

He reaches out, taking Donnie's wrist in hand, and pulls his brother closer to him. "You're…real…" It certainly feels real - skin and scales, softer than his own, and his fingers barely fit all the way around the wrist instead of encircling them with room to spare - and he stares down at it, tears rolling down his face as he finally looks back up at his twin. "You're real!"

The Krang show you what you want to see.

The thought strikes him unbidden, turning his joy and relief to ice. It's a well-known fact: a Krang infection can show its host what they want to see, visions of comfort and family and home, and extract intel from the host's reactions. He knows that- he knows that, and-

And he'd died surrounded by Krang- and even if he couldn't see or hear or feel, he knows he'd been held captive-

But it's Donnie- he wants this to be real- he needs this to be real- he wants his twin back so badly he can't think, and the idea that this could be a Krang hallucination is almost too much to bear-

"Are you?" He can hear how choked the words are as they leave his lips, but he needs to know-

And Donnie stops, and sits down next to him, and tells him everything he wants to hear - everything he could've ever wished for. They're alive. They're safe. The Krang are gone. It all sounds too good to be true.

And then Donnie offers him an apology and a sad half-smile, pulling him into a strong hug-

And the ice in Leo's mind shatters in a flood of warmth as his twin sense opens for the first time since Donnie's death. He feels his twin's irritation, and deep-seated exhaustion, and a choking wave of guiltguiltguiltguiltguilt-

And beneath it all, steady and strong as ever, the thrum of unending determination, powered by an unfathomably deep well of love. It's the backbeat to the melody of Leo's life, the point-counterpoint to his own heartbeat- it's something he'd never had to live without until he did, but it's back, rushing in to fill the silence he'd known with the strength to go on and the knowledge that he is loved loved loved, strong and overwhelming and all-encompassing in the way only Donnie can love-

It's something the Krang could never imitate.

This is real. This is all real-

He throws himself against his twin, toppling them both over on the bed as he clings to Donnie, unable to stand even a fraction of an inch of space between them, as though he could push their hearts together through their plastrons, and he cries, sobbing out worry and terror and grief and the slow, crushing exhaustion of a losing battle finally lost. He cries as though the world was ending - and it had, once when the Krang had invaded and again every time he'd lost a member of his family, over and over until he'd sent his last hope through a portal that had cost his littlest brother his life and succumbed to death himself.

And now he's alive. Here, wherever here is, with Donnie. Clinging to his twin, and being held in turn as Donnie gently sits them both up, never letting go as Leo cries himself out.

It takes a while - long enough for Leo's gaze to settle into a stare and his thoughts to settle into a comfortable static. He's alive, Donnie is alive, and he has no fucking idea what else is going on, but he's just going to be okay with that for now.

His thoughts rouse enough to inform him of something wrong - the line of tension Donnie is carrying down his neck and over his shoulders. That won't do. Leo could try to massage it out with one hand, maybe try to get Donnie to talk about it, but Donnie never likes to talk about it, and Leo isn't one for slowly soothing away tension when he can just take an axe to the release valve instead. Plus, it gives him something definite to focus on, instead of…this whole situation. Whatever 'this whole situation' actually is.

Donnie had mentioned his stupid jokes, right?

"H-hey Dee?" His voice wavers from disuse, thick with tears, but he pushes through. "Why did- why did the tree buy a camera?"

"What?" Oh, Donnie is not going to see this coming. Excellent.

"To do a photosynthesis." It's nowhere near the level of pizazz he normally uses for a punchline delivery - he's still too tired and frazzled and clinging to Donnie entirely too hard for that - but that beautiful pause of a terrible joke sinking in tells him it had hit home nonetheless. Donnie moves - he can hear the telltale slap of face meeting palm - and then breaks down into helpless laughter, smacking the back of Leo's shell as the tension Leo had felt in his twin's shoulders abruptly relaxes. Good. It worked.

"This is so fucking stupid," is all Donnie manages as his laughter fades, and he slumps fully against Leo with a murmur. That's...abrupt. Sure, Leo had felt Donnie's exhaustion, but he hadn't realized it'd been that bad. He takes hold of Donnie, gently laying him down on the bed to rest-

Remember what happened last time Donnie fell asleep next to you.

He gasps sharply at the thought - not again NEVER again - and keeps his hand steady as he moves, laying both fingers gently against Donnie's neck and feeling for his pulse. It's easy to find, strong and steady and even, like it had been before the infection had taken Donnie's vitality and then his life.

But he's alive, and healthy, and sleeping. He's okay. And Leo-

Leo moves his hand to the side of his own neck. His pulse is also easy to find, quickened with the adrenaline of an unknown situation and multiple consecutive shocks to his system.

Okay. Take stock. Assess. Figure out a plan from there.

He's alive. Donnie's alive. The Krang are gone. And everything else…is a big fat question mark, with no easy answers and no indication as to where to begin looking for them.

Well.

Uh.

"What the fuck," Leo whispers to the room at large, as though the walls could answer.

~~~~~~~

(A world away and still very close, a younger pair of twins cling to one another the way a drowning man clings to driftwood: desperately, clutching tight, as though letting go will spell their doom. Neither of them know where the emotions came from, or why; all they know is that each of them are damn glad the other is alive, and they'll do everything they can to make sure that continues to be the case.)

(What the fuck, indeed.)

#rottmnt #cass apocalyptic series #future leo #future donnie #fic #writing #cw sibling death #mention of it at least #referencing the scrapped movie storyboards because it's too good a beat to pass up #we have fun here #no gods no betas we die like NOBODY BECAUSE DONNIE FUCKING FIXED IT #I GUESS #twin sense shit is my FUCKING JAM #inexplicable mystic bonds between two halves of a whole? sign me the FUCK up #I couldn't decide whose POV to write this from so I just did both #which is WHY it's 2K+ words #it's not perfect but it's Good Enough and therefore it's getting posted #fuck it we ball

1K notes · View notes

j4gm · 3 years

Text

TOGETHER AGAIN SPOILERS

A thread of lore, Easter eggs, episode connections, and background details from Adventure Time: Distant Lands: Together Again! Let me know if I missed anything! This is adapted from my original Twitter thread.

Keep reading ⬇️⬇️⬇️

1. I was expecting them to perhaps do a classic style title sequence for this episode, but I wasn't expecting them to straight up use the original title sequence. The only difference is this final screen saying "Distant Lands".

2. The background of the title cards is also the hill from the title sequence.

3. The ice cream having "50 flavours" and having an image of an enlightened soul is an obvious reference to the 50th Dead World as we see it later in the episode.

4. Continuing with the metaphor, the dirt in the ice cream could be a parallel to the fact that Jake's Nirvana actually wasn't perfect, because his inaction was allowing for injustice to perpetuate.

5. This whole scene feels immediately slightly off. Finn has his Scarlet sword and is out on a classic Ice King adventure, but he speaks in his grown voice and all the slang feels much more forced than it did in the real season one. Turns out this was deliberate.

6. The snow golem speaks with a baby voice like it did in the pilot episode, even though in canon it has a deeper voice. This further hints that something is not quite right.

7. The first major break in continuity is these snow golems resembling Uncle Gumbald and Peace Master, who Finn didn't meet until later in his life.

8. LSP sitting on Finn's head like this is reminiscent of Pen Ward's piece for the 2018 Ble crew zine.

9. Finn being given the choice of helping somebody but ending up helping everybody reminds me of "Memories of Boom Boom Mountain". It's the kind of resolution that wouldn't happen so much in the late seasons of the show, which helps make this scene feel even further out of place.

10. Jake is half frozen by Ice King in pretty much the exact same way as he was in "Prisoners of Love", and even has a very similar line.

11. The Snail is seen here. The crew have said that the Snail has been deliberately left out of previous Distant Lands specials, so its placement here is another very deliberate hint that this whole sequence is "trying too hard" to be like the early seasons.

12. The book "Mind Games" appears a couple of times, as seen in several previous episodes of Adventure Time. The first is as Finn is approaching the library in his dream. It also appears as one of the items in Finn's backpack later.

13. Jake is hurt when Finn fist bumps him with his metal arm, revealing that this scene is not real. This is also a callback to the title sequences of "Islands" and "Elements".

14. A whole bunch of familiar skeletons are seen in the bird's nest: Dirt Beer Guy, Abracadaniel, Me-Mow, Lemongrab, Mr. Pig, and the Snail again. This doesn't necessarily mean that all these characters are dead, since this scene is just a hallucination.

15. Old Man Finn! He's still got the chest tattoo of Jake, and this time we know that Jake is dead, so the theory that Jake died before "Obsidian" seems pretty likely. He looks similar to his old man design from "Puhoy", with the same facial hair.

16. There are several cameos of familiar characters who apparently died at the same time as Finn. The first is this duck, who previously appeared in "Ocarina".

17. The second is Donny, from the episode... uh, "Donny".

18. This goblin guy is an unnamed background character from “The Silent King”.

19. This old lady first appeared in "The Enchiridion", way back in season one. Old ladies are a species in the Land of Ooo, so I guess she wasn't actually very old back then, given she just about outlived Finn.

20. This is the cobbler who first appears in "His Hero". Amazing that he lived so long given all the trouble he got into in that episode.

21. Land of the Dead! This place was first seen in season two's "Death in Bloom", and now we are finally learning its actual purpose. It's a sort of gateway and hub to all of the other dead worlds.

22. There are some more minor cameos at the gates: a house person from "Donny", a soft person from "Gut Grinder", and a wood person from "When Wedding Bells Thaw". And, of course, the gate guardian himself from “Death in Bloom”.

23. Finn completely ignores the gate guardian in the same way he did in Death in Bloom. This also has the convenient effect of not having to reveal how Finn died, leaving it up to the audience's imagination.

24. Mr. Fox! We already knew he would die at some point because BMO had his skull in the finale.

25. Finn has his design from the first Distant Lands poster in this scene. Turns out it's young Finn in old Finn's clothes. But they gave him a shirt in the poster so you wouldn't be able to see the tattoo.

26. The clapping that Finn does while he's looking for Jake is a callback to "James Baxter the Horse", when Jake tells Finn to listen for that same rhythm if they are killed and need to find each other in the afterlife.

27. Mr. Fox talks about a "past life quotient", suggesting that there might be some kind of limit to how many times somebody can reincarnate. Finn's reincarnations are also seen in this scene; a callback to "The Vault", and confirmation that reincarnations share the same soul.

28. Boobafina, the goose who Mr. Fox was in love with in his debut episode “Storytelling”, apparently reincarnated into a tugboat. We've already seen that objects can have souls in the episode "Ghost Fly".

29. Finn is initially assigned to the 37th Dead World, which is the same one that Jake went to when he died in "Sons of Mars". We can only guess at what the other numbers on the ticket mean ;)

30. Tiffany! Despite several lucky escapes throughout his life, Tiffany has finally died. I like the use of this imagery to express Finn's conflicted feelings about him.

31. The 50th Dead World has long been established as the "highest" dead world, and the one synonymous with Heaven within Adventure Time's universe. It was first mentioned in "Ghost Princess" back in season three.

32. It's unclear what happens to souls which are destroyed within the dead worlds. It is a similar question to asking what happened to the ghosts that were killed in "Ghost Fly".

33. Death doesn't speak at all in Together Again because his voice actor, Miguel Ferrer, passed away in 2017 long before production began.

34. Finn phases through New Death when he tries to attack him, just like what happened way back in "Death in Bloom".

35. The 30th Dead World contains Tree Trunks as well as many of her love interests; Mr. Pig, her alien husband from "High Strangeness", Danny and Randy who first appeared in "Apple Wedding", and several more who we don't recognise, including at least one who presents as a woman.

36. Literally yelled when these two showed up. Joshua calls Finn a crybaby, which is a callback to "Dad's Dungeon".

37. The wall of weapons in Joshua and Margaret's house includes the iconic Demon Blood Sword, which was broken in "Play Date", as well as Margaret's auto-loading crossbow from "Joshua & Margaret Investigations".

38. Jermaine is sidelined a few times through the episode, in reference to his attitude in "Jermaine" where he feels that Finn and Jake were always their parents' favourites. I would have hoped things would be a bit better by now.

39. Fern gets name dropped while Finn and Jake are reuniting. A shame he doesn't actually show up in the episode.

40. In this scene, Finn says "What time is it?" This is a very subtle reference to the 2010 cartoon "Adventure Time".

41. In a couple of shots during this fight scene it looks like Jake might have a tattoo. It seems like it only becomes visible when he stretches out his arm.

42. New Death's amulet in this scene resembles parts of the Lich's cape, foreshadowing his influence on New Death.

43. There are several more cameos in the 50th Dead World: Booshy from "High Strangeness", one of the Marshmallow Kids from "Scamps", and Ghost Princess and Clarence, who were seen ascending to the 50th Dead World in "Ghost Princess".

44. Finn didn't interact with Booshy in "High Strangeness", but it seems they must have met at some point before they both died because Finn knows his name.

45. It seems like people in the 1st Dead World are slowly melted away until they become part of the landscape. Nasty.

46. Lots more cameos in this scene: a gnome from "Power Animal", a gnome from "The Enchiridion", a Bath Boy from "The Vault", Blagertha from "Love Games", Maja the Sky Witch, a troll from "Dungeon", Chocoberry, Choose Goose, Wyatt, a spiky person from "Gut Grinder", and possibly more.

47. Tiffany's insults are consistently nonsensical and amazing, as they were in the original series.

48. The Candy Kingdom looks extremely different. Peppermint Butler is wearing the crown so he might be in charge now, which is supported by the kingdom's very magical-looking augmentations. It’s not clear whether Finn and Jake were expecting to find Princess Bubblegum or Peppermint Butler, since both have the initials “PB” and both could be going by the title of “Princess”. Perhaps Peps and Bubblegum share the princess duties now that PB is living with Marceline more of the time.

49. Peppermint Butler has a "Boss" mug, although it's not the same colour as the one from "Obsidian".

50. Jake's ghost has the same design as he did when BMO killed him in "Ghost Fly". I also absolutely love Finn's ghost. This scene establishes that ghosts are just visitors to the mortal plane from the dead worlds.

51. Life has only appeared in animated shorts before now. Namely, "The Gift That Reaps Giving" which establishes her relationship with Death, and "Frog Seasons: Winter". This episode gives her a concrete place within Adventure Time's pantheon: she is in charge of reincarnation.

52. A translation of Life’s angry French dialogue by Shado: “After all I did for that boy. After all I did for him. No, it's not possible. It's not possible no, that... that makes me so mad but it's not possible.”

53. We finally have in-universe confirmation that Shoko's tiger is a previous life of Jake. This was previously confirmed by one of the writers, but wasn't canon until now.

54. I feel like Finn pulled off Shoko's look even better than Shoko did. I wonder whether Finn has gained the memories of his past lives now that he’s dead.

55. No Easter egg here, just want to appreciate this image.

56. There is an elemental symbol on the wall here, as seen in "Jelly Beans Have Power".

57. Tiffany's dramatic internal monologue is a recurring gag, as is his habit of nearly dying from falling into holes.

58. The Jake suit makes a cameo in the fight against New Death. It was last seen in the episode "Reboot”.

59. Finn's backpack contains a few familiar items: the t-shirt with the pocket from "It Came from the Nightosphere", Finn's underwear from "Little Dude" and other episodes, and a copy of Mind Games as I've already mentioned.

60. The Lich's Hand is present in the background of Death's... death scene. This is probably the unseen "friend" who New Death keeps talking about.

61. The Lich's menacing monologues often begin with a single command. Previously they have included "Fall" and "Stop". This time, the command is "Burn".

62. Jake uses the word "boingloings", which is a callback all the way to "Hitman" in the third season.

63. Jake's blue shape-shifter form from "Abstract" appears very briefly during his fight with Finn.

64. Finn's lumpy space person form also makes an appearance. This design was last seen all the way back in the second episode of the entire show, "Trouble in Lumpy Space".

65. Jake steps on the Lich's hand in a very similar way to how he stepped on Ash in "Memory of a Memory", which is itself a Monty Python reference.

66. The credits include a dedication to a few AT cast and crew who have passed away. Polly Lou Livingston was the voice of Tree Trunks. Miguel Ferrer was the voice of Death. Michel Lyman and Maureen Mlynarczyk were both sheet timers on the original series. Rest in peace.

67. The message that Finn and Jake write out on the ouija board is "BUTT", which Peppermint Butler takes as a distress signal. This message is also used as a distress signal by the Hot Dog Knights in "The Limit".

68. Peppermint Butler's reversed dialogue from the scene where he makes contact with Finn and Jake is "Kee-Oth Rama Pancake", the spell from “Dad's Dungeon” for banishing demons.

69. That appears to be President Porpoise with all of Tree Trunks’ other lovers.

70. In this scene, Life is humming part of "Lonely Bones", the song which Death tried to record for her in her debut short "The Gift That Reaps Giving". It's hard to notice because it's so brief.

71. Finn and Jake's cover is blown while in the Land of the Dead because Jake loudly farts, which also happened in "Death in Bloom".

72. The place where Mr. Fox explains the perception mechanics of the afterlife is the exact same location as the River of Forgetfulness from "Death in Bloom", which, as it turns out, was imaginary.

These are sort of out of order at the end because I was adding stuff to the Twitter thread as it got discovered. That’s all for now!

#adventure time #together again #finn the human #jake the dog #lorepost

472 notes · View notes

swanpyart · 3 years

Text

The Short Lived Adventures of RAPH and Casey Jones

This is an old pic that was made for a zine that was never published. So I’ll leave it here. It might not ever be finished, but I think the story is decent enough on its own.

Part 1:

Casey was completely fine by herself.

Sure, her parents never really paid her any mind, but she never needed them to; Casey was a fast learner, and was able to cook, clean, and do pretty much anything the adults could do.

“Look!” Ten-year-old Casey held up an English vocabulary test, with an “100%” written in the corner in cursive. “I passed!”

“Honey,” her mother barely looked at her from her seat at her desk, “One hundred percent is the bare minimum. Anything less means you practically failed.”

There was always an empty space in the bleachers whenever Casey had a hockey game. She would cross her arms as she waited for her parents to pick her up and watched as the people in the audience rushed down and hugged their own children after a game, regardless of whether they won or lost. When her parents finally showed up, she sat in the car quietly as they drove.

Casey spent almost everyday after school at her Granny’s while her parents were at work. The old woman’s house was always warm, mostly because she was always baking; cakes, cookies, and especially her famous brownies - made with a special ingredient.

At twelve years old, Casey had failed a math test for the first time, and burst into tears as she walked through her Granny’s front door. “I’m a failure!”

“Sweetie, everyone fails every now and then,” her Granny wiped a tear from Casey’s cheek and got out an antique mixing bowl, “but I can tell you tried really hard. That’s what matters; that you don’t stop trying your best.”

Afterwards, Casey and her Granny spent the afternoon baking brownies, and that was when she was granted the knowledge of the secret ingredient. She swore her secrecy and never told anyone.

Of course, that was a while ago; her grandmother had passed away sometime afterwards. Her parents reacted with more emotion when Casey had shaved her head than when they attended the funeral.

They also seemed only mildly surprised when, at thirteen years old, Casey was accepted into the Foot Clan and never came back home.

There, Casey promised to herself to show the world just how much of a not-failure she really is! Even if she had to work with the most vile Clan in all the world to achieve it and release the Shredder, the ultimate evil, unto the world. She had worked above and beyond to get where she is, and no one could stop her!

At least, that’s what she thought before the Shredder disappeared, and with him, the Clan’s purpose. And way before those strange, overgrown turtles with no sense of honor or discipline showed up and destroyed their chances, time and time again.

Suddenly, the group she had worked with since she was a preteen, and the closest thing she had to any family, were dragged away by outside obligations she never understood.

Foot Brute and Lieutenant were better parents than her own, but, in the end, they were her bosses and coworkers, and no replacement for a family.

Sure, everyone else may have given up, but she would stay committed to the Clan’s ultimate vision, even if she had to use her dear Granny’s recipe for evil. Grandma CJ’s Brownies were an absolute bust, but she had to try something.

Then, she met this weird, giant, smelly rat with a Japanese accent dressed like a teenager who somehow turned out to be the father of those overgrown turtles.

And, as weird as it was, despite not even being human, he sat next to her and heard what she had to say; and, for those few minutes, it was almost like being next to her Granny again.

“Just because you failed doesn’t make you a failure.”

If she had been smarter, maybe she should have listened a bit harder to what he was saying. If she had been smarter, maybe she would have calmed down and talked to the girl that was beating up the Girl Scouts. There were so many opportunities to just talk.

But then the Shredder was restored, and she really thought it would be the return of her Clan’s glory. Even as she looked at the beaten down forms of her previous bosses. Even as she saw Splinter and his family struggling for their lives. Even as she realized winning would mean the end of everything, including her.

There was no more Clan. She was still alone. She was just alone with a giant evil suit of demon armor.

But, now, she wasn’t.

Even after everything, Splinter offered her an invitation into their...

Family.

------------------------------------------------------

He had invited her to the lair a few weeks after the fight with Shredder.

“I’m working at the Foot Shack. After my former clan disbanded, they got bought out by another company, Splinter, sir.” She squeezed the mug of tea in her hands.

“Just ‘Splinter’ is fine,” Splinter had opened a bag of chips, and was reclining in his seat. The turtles were out with April at the arcade, taking a break from repairing the lair. “Where are you staying? Do you have a place to live?”

“Yes, I actually have my own apartment.”

There was a moment of awkward silence. Splinter sighed. “Listen, Casey, I know that it’s probably hard having to... uh, sort things out by yourself-”

“What?! No, I’m fine!” She flapped her hand dismissively. “My life is fantastic! It’s definitely not in complete shambles after losing everything I know.” She blinked, realizing that she overshared, and collected herself. “I’m doing great.”

“I-I never said it was in shambles,” He massaged his temple with two clawed fingers, his beady eyes squinting in frustration. “Look, all I am saying is that, if you ever need help, or if you ever get lonely and just want to talk, I am here. And my sons would probably say the same thing. You’re a Hamato now, at least in spirit.”

Casey’s eyes widened, then she looked down. “Thank you, but I’m a very independent person. I’ll be sure to not bug you unless it’s an emergency.”

Splinter nodded, but he’d dealt with enough children to see that Casey was a bit lonely. Still, he said nothing.

For a good while, Casey stuck to what she said; she didn’t really come by the lair unless she really felt the need to or if they needed an extra set of hands with repairing.

But… occasionally, she found herself asking questions. She found out Michelangelo loved cooking, and somehow he got her to agree to bake her Granny’s brownies together. She realized that Leonardo wasn’t just annoying in battle, but all the time, and that she started getting more and more used to it, even occasionally laughing along. She found out while playing video games with them, that Donnatello was just as vicious as her, and that April was equally as competitive.

And Raph, well… they didn’t talk very much. But he seemed nice every time they spoke.

But she kept her distance. After all, it was better if she didn’t get too attached.

She occasionally goes down to the local hockey rink and plays a few rounds with total strangers, and usually gets kicked out due to a combo of delinquent children and complaining parents.

So, here she is, lying on her bed, staring blankly at her phone, with a half eaten sandwich laying on her chest, and old sweatpants that she’s been wearing for a week because her clothes are in the laundromat. For a ninja-slash-ex-cult-member, her life had fallen into a fairly mundane pattern.

Everything could always be worse. So why did she still feel like such a failure?

And for some reason, Casey found herself at the sewer grate. She didn’t even know why she came here, really.

She was about to turn back when a feminine voice spoke from behind her. “Hey, CJ, what’s up?”

She spun around. It was April.

“I was just coming to visit.” Casey tensed up. She hadn’t expected to run into someone else.

“Oh, me too!” She opened up the grate, and started climbing down the ladder. “You coming or what?”

Casey gulped. She couldn’t back out now.

------------------------------------------------------

Raph paced the lair, quietly groaning as he tapped his chin.

It had been about six months since the fight with Shredder, but another challenge had presented itself; cleaning up the lair after it had been almost completely demolished. Thankfully, with Draxum’s help and Donnie being able to scavenge some old tech that didn’t get destroyed and whip up some devices for reconstruction, the place was finally fixed up after about a month and a half.

Now what? Well, in Leo’s words, it was the time for “rest and relaxation.”

That was pretty easy for the rest of his family to do.

Leo’s entire existence hinged on “rest and relaxation”; Mikey has an assortment of hobbies to keep him busy; Donnie had a tight schedule trying to repair all of his broken inventions; April was trying to adjust to all of the changes at school due to all of New York recovering from the recent Battle Nexus catastrophe; and Splinter, of course, was parked in front of the TV, finally at peace after the Shredder was defeated, and helping himself to milk and cake.

Raph should be relaxing, or at least recovering from all that’s happened to them. The fight with the Shredder was the most stressful and terrifying time of their lives. They lost their Gram-Gram, and even if she was now able to rest with their ancestors and her father, it still stung.

But it’s been such a long time since he’s been in a real fight, and he can tell he’s going a little bit stir-crazy.

Of course, the turtles would spend a lot of time out of the lair; but whenever Raph gets a call on the phone, he finds himself hoping it’s some kind of an emergency, only to turn out to be Todd calling them about the puppy farm, or Leo pestering Senior Hueso with an order for pick-up. It seemed like even their strongest enemies have gone on hiatus as well; there was no word of Big Mama as of late, and every other major bad guy they fought recently seemed to have been exhausted by the Shredder ordeal as well.

Raph’s usual sparring partner, Frankenfoot, is absolutely wonderful, but fighting him wasn’t exactly what Raph had in mind; it was fun, but couldn’t really be compared to the thrill of a real fight.

“Come on, guys,” Raph stood in front of the screen, blocking Leo and Mikey’s view of a Jupiter Jim rerun while Pops was passed out on the couch, snoring, a bag of chips lying open on his stomach. “We’ve been cooped up in the lair for a million years. Who wants to go wreck some bad guys?” He pounded his fist in his opposite hand for emphasis.

“Raph, I can’t see!” Mikey waved his hand in a dismissive way as he said it, and leaned to peek around his older brother and continue watching the screen.

“Ugh, we’ve been over this,” Leo exasperated from his spot on the ground, on his stomach and his head resting on his propped arms. “No crime fighting while we’re on vacation! This is the time to chillax, my guy.”

“How long are we gonna be chillaxing, exactly?” Raph put his hands on his hips, an inquisitive look on his face, even if, deep down, he knew what response he’d get.

“I don’t know, until some other crazy evil mutant guy tries to take over the city? There’s bound to be another one of those eventually.”

“What, so we just wait until some evil mastermind has some evil plan and gets all of New York in their evil clutches? It’s our job to make sure that doesn’t happen.” Raph tried to summon the energy he usually exudes when he attempts to make a rousing speech, but the rolling eyes and groans from his youngest brothers quickly made its effect futile.

“You know,” Donnie said from the back of the room, the other three having not noticed him walk in, “We did, oh, I don’t know, save all of New York City, take down Big Mama’s Battle Nexus scheme, and, most importantly, defeat our bloodline’s greatest enemy?!”

Raph furrowed his brow, his sharp fang digging into his lower lip.

“We deserve an indefinite break, and I need it, because I actually refuse to do any fighting until I have all my stuff back online. I’d love to fight with only my impeccable mind, but let’s be realistic.” The sandwich in his hand was brought to his face and he swallowed it whole. Donnie knew he had made an excellent point.

“Don’t worry,” Mikey beamed, tucking his arms and legs into his shell, “We’ll get back into the groove of things before you know it!”

“Yeah,” Leo agreed, “Think of it as, like, you know, self-care. Sometimes, you need a break from what you’re used to. Now, can you move out of the way?”

Raph sulked out of his siblings’ view of the screen and sunk into a beanbag, next to the couch their father was snoring in.

------------------------------------------------------

“Hey, guys!” The turtles turn around to see April and... Foot Recruit walk in.

Raph didn’t really know what to think of Foot Recruit, or Casey, as she preferred to be called. Pops insisted that she wasn’t dangerous anymore, but it was hard for him not to be a little wary; I mean, come on, she used to work with the Shredder!

She’d been over only a handful of times over the past few months, usually to speak with Splinter and Mikey.

“Casey! April!” Mikey stuck his hands out of his shell in joy. He ran over and hugged them both. “It’s been a while.”

“Hey, Apes. And, hi to you too, Casey.” Leo kicked his legs up behind him.

“Above ground has been pretty hectic,” April leaned on Donnie’s shoulder as she spoke, “Everyone has been freaking out about disappearing from New York for a few days. Relaxing on a yacht sure beats coming back to the city in shambles. And finding another job is so hard when everyone’s paranoid we’re gonna all disappear again. Ugh, I wish we did, then I’d get another break!”

“Well, if you want a job, you can help me repair what’s left of my s- I mean, S.H.E.L.L.D.O.N. The Shredder tore him apart.” Donnie put his hands on his hips and relaxed his posture to cover his slip-up.

“Aw, your cute robot son isn’t repaired yet?” April teased.

As the two bickered while walking towards the lab, Raph looked back at Casey, who was standing by the entrance, visibly tense.

“Hey, Casey. Um, why are you here?” Raph asked innocently, not realizing how rude he sounded.

“Smooth,” Leo chimed in unhelpfully.

Before he could take it back, Casey spoke, with a glare on her face. “I’m here for the orange one.”

Raph blinked. “Huh?”

“We’re gonna bake brownies!” Mikey clarified, his chest puffed out with pride. “Casey decided that I’m worthy of learning an old family recipe.”

“Yes!” Casey grinned, in a way that was far too menacing for someone talking about brownies. “I decided that, as a new member of your- um…” clan? Group? Committee?

“...Family?” Raph assisted.

“Uh, yes, that,” she turned shy for a few brief seconds, only to return to her previous bravado, pumping her fist in the air, “I will honor you with the knowledge of my grandmother’s most nefarious secret!”

------------------------------------------------------

Raph peeked into the kitchen as Mikey and Casey got to work. Of course, he trusted Mikey; but he had a hunch that Casey might be up to something.

Or maybe the boredom was just making him a bit more paranoid than usual.

Dirty dishes, half-full cups and brownie mix were strewn about the kitchen counter. Whatever this recipe pertained, it must be pretty intense.

“And, now, for the final ingredient. This one was given to me by my grandmother.” Casey pulled a canister of brown powder. She leaned over and whispered close to Mikey’s head. Whatever she was saying, Raph couldn’t hear.

Mikey gasped. “PUMPKIN SPICE?!”

Casey shushed him, then yelled herself. “It’s a secret, remember?!” She poured a generous amount into the mixing bowl full of batter.

The two of them looked so happy baking together, and Raph felt a pit of guilt in his stomach for assuming the worst. He really needed to chill out.

------------------------------------------------------

“Wait, so let me get this straight,” Leo sunk into the bean bag chair, “You’re a fan of Lou Jitsu, right?”

“That is correct.” Casey was sitting stiffly in her seat. Her expressions were intense, like she was about to strangle someone, but Raph had realized pretty quickly that this was just her default.

“You have all of the movies memorized?”

“Of course! I used his guidelines for self improvement in my schemes to take over the world! I mean, that’s not really relevant now, but-”

“And you said you spend almost all of your available money on Lou Jitsu merch?”

“I hide them all so my guests don’t see.”

“And, yet, you’ve never watched a Jupiter Jim film? The Jupiter Jim, his longtime franchise rival and co-star in Jupiter Jim Vs Lou Jitsu?” Leo clutched at his chest, as he held up the DVD case of the movie he was talking about for emphasis.

“Leo,” Raph warned, looking up from his phone, “don’t make her feel bad-”

Leo chuckled. “Oh ho ho, trust me I won’t. I’m definitely putting on a Jupiter Jim Vs. The Galaxy Riders Part 1 and Part 2, and you are going to love it!”

Casey cackled ominously. “You really think this ‘Jupiter Jim-’” She made quotation marks with her fingers for emphasis, “-can measure up to the greatness that is Lou Jitsu? Fine, I guess we’ll just have to see.”

Raph ended up dozing off after the fifth film, and woke up to see Casey and his brother still openly debating whether Lou Jitsu would beat Jupiter Jim if they were both in a desert completely unarmed and at full strength.

------------------------------------------------------

“I’m not scared of much,” Donnie mentions offhandedly one day, while Raph was doing a bicep curl, “but she -”

He points to Casey eating a sandwich like a hyena, while April sat next to her, texting.

“She terrifies me to no end.”

Donnie’s strange relationship with their new friend took Raph a while to comprehend. Then it became clear as day. If anyone could match Casey in moral ambiguity, it was his immediate younger brother.

“I made you a little gift,” the softshell grinned smugly, as he handed Casey what looked like a metal hockey stick.

“Oh, um,” Casey's eyes were wide, and a little watery, and her lips were in a warbly smile. “Thank you… no one’s ever given me something so nice.”

Donnie grinned. “Press the button on the side.”

When she did, the widest end of the hockey stick flipped open like a lighter, and a stream of fire shot out of the tip. Casey’s tears of joy gave way to maniacal laughter. “Those kids at the hockey rink won’t know what hit ‘em!”

Donnie joined her in glee, his eyes and teeth shining menacingly in the light of the flames. Raph watched in mild horror (He was plenty used to Donnie’s antics), at least until the fire alarm sounded and they were all drenched from the sprinklers.

------------------------------------------------------

Another month had passed since Casey started coming around, and Raph seemed like the only one in the lair who hadn’t quite jived with her yet. Sure, his suspicion had pretty much subsided, and he liked her company plenty, but the two of them hadn’t really clicked.

However, he noticed some slight changes over time. Casey’s eyes had bags under them which were more obvious in brighter lights, and sometimes she fell asleep on April’s shoulder (and snored louder than his Pops, somehow). Sometimes, there were hints of sadness on her face, even when she was laughing along with everyone.

Raph didn’t mention it for fear of being rude, but he couldn’t help his concern. After all, if she was upset, she probably wouldn’t mention to him all of the people.

------------------------------------------------------

Hockey wasn’t a sport Raph and his brothers knew much about, but he couldn’t help but get excited as Casey gushed about it, holding tightly onto the treasured tech-hockey stick Donnie had gifted her, wearing a huge grin on her face.

The two humans and four turtles (disguised as humans, of course) were just entering the hockey rink. The hall to the auditorium was cold and echoey.

“I come here every other Friday. The regulars here know my face, and they fear it. It’s ‘cause they know I’ll decimate everyone in my path!” She pumped her fist as she spoke, a sinister grin on her face, before she caught herself and straightened out. “Well, I do until the rink’s supervisors kick me out for making a scene and being mean to children.”

“Don’t sweat it, Casey,” Donnie spoke up, “You’re not the only one whose been kicked out of establishments for scaring kids.”

“Uh huh, exactly!” April agreed a bit too eagerly, and Raph looked back to see the distant, traumatized look in her eyes, and he could tell she was remembering the screams of children and the sinister laughter of animatronics at a certain pizza joint.

The six teens got to the rink’s auditorium, and put their bags down on the bleachers. There weren’t too many people around.

Mikey whistled. “This place is massive!”

As Raph put on a maroon hoodie and pulled on his skates, Casey rolled onto the rink, over to a huddle of teenagers wearing hockey gear. “Hey!”

One of the teenagers - a boy with messy brown hair covering his eyes - responded. “Oh, you again. Guys, look, it’s that crazy girl from last week.”

“The name is Cassandra Jones!” Casey pulled down the hockey mask she was wearing and held up her stick. “I’m challenging you to another round! Did you really think you’d escape my wrath?!”

The kids started laughing. “You challenge us every time we’re here, and you always lose. What makes today so different?”

Casey laughed. “Well, for one thing, I’ve got my own team now, so you better get ready to go crying to your mommy!”

The group hadn’t stopped laughing, even as Casey walked back to the bleachers. Raph raised a brow. “Uh, what was all of that?”

She looked down. “Those are my enemies,” She clenched her fists, “A group of jerks who manage to beat me every time I come here.”

Raph paused for a second. The look on her face was determined, but had a hint of sadness to it. Raph understood how she felt; wanting to fight, but getting beaten down time and time again. He’d realized a while ago that he didn’t have to do it alone; and neither did she.

Raph put an arm around Casey’s shoulders, and cupped a hand to his mouth, shouting to the teenagers from across the rink. “Hey, knuckleheads! You get ready for a match; you’re not just dealing with Cassandra Jones anymore! you’re dealing with the Mad Dogs, now!”

“Yeah, right!” One of the kids, a girl with a ponytail, shouts back.

He turned to face his brothers and April, who were sitting on the bleachers, their attention already on Raph from his shouting. “Hey, those guys over there are saying we’re gonna lose! What do we say to that?!”

“Oh ho ho, I like this energy!” Leo stood up on the bleachers, joining in the hype. April and Mikey stood up beside him.

“Yeah, you chumps aren’t even at our level!”

“Ya’ll ain’t seen nothing yet!”

Donnie stood up slowly, his arms crossed from the cold. “Yeah, we’ll definitely beat you! But-” He switched to his normal volume, “let’s not make promises we can’t keep.”

Raph dismissed him, and looked at Casey, who was smiling. Together, they were able to beat the Shredder. This would be a piece of cake.

------------------------------------------------------

“Are we done? My mom is here to pick me up,” One of the kids, a girl with pigtails, mentioned as she walked towards her belongings on the bleachers.

Raph was gasping for air from his spot on the cold ground. Hockey was hard. Like, really, really hard.

In hindsight, their loss made sense; this was the turtles and April’s first time playing hockey, and even Casey, who’d been playing since she was a kid, wasn’t able to beat these kids. They really were just that good.

“Is that all you’ve got?!” Leo had fallen in front of the goal, two huge purple bruises visible on his face; one on his forehead, and the other under his eye, popping out from his green skin and red birthmarks.

Mikey was crying on his knees, while April patted his shell, cussing out one of the kids who she felt pushed him too hard. Even as the kid was walking away. “And another thing-”

Donnie lay flat nearby, looking like a purple stain on the white shiny floor. He was never good at sports, but he tried. Geez, it was almost more embarrassing, with just how hard he tried.

------------------------------------------------------

They found a vending machine, and after Raph gave Leo a cold soda can to hold over his bruises, he walked past Casey, sitting with her head in her hands.

“Hey,” He placed a hand on her shoulder, and looked around to see if the others were watching. April, Mikey and Donnie were going off about losing the match, while Leo sat dejectedly in the corner, nursing his injuries. “Are you alright?”

She looked up, tears in her eyes, and her lower lip wobbling. She hastily rubbed at her face with her sleeve, her eyeliner smearing. “I’m...I’m fine.”

“Is this about us losing?”

“No, no, it’s not that,” She sighed. “It’s a lot of different things- It’s just…”

She trailed off, and Raph sat down next to her on the bleacher. He realized this had definitely been bubbling up for a while. If only he’d talked to her sooner.

“Ugh, all I’ve ever wanted was to be a success. Taking over the world was everything for me- helping the Foot, working for the Shredder, making that whole brownie pyramid-scheme. But now? I don’t have anything. I’ve hit rock bottom. Now, I’m stuck in a stupid rivalry with a bunch of kids in a hockey rink.”

She began to cry again. “What am I going to do? Am I just doomed to be a failure?”

“Just ‘cause you’re not taking over the world doesn’t make you a failure. Most people just stick to regular, everyday stuff and they turn out fine.”

“It’s not just about taking over the world,” Casey sighed. “I don’t have a purpose. No Clan, no commitments, no future. It’s like everything I do is a failure. I’m a failure.”

Raph felt himself start to tear up, too. What she was saying felt way too familiar. “You’re not the only one whose failed.”

“Huh?”

“My Pops told us we were supposed to die in order to protect the Dark Armor. We failed to do that, but we realized how messed up that was, and we decided to do our own thing. And it totally worked out for us, ‘cause we ended up destroying Shred-face once and for all.”

He stood, wiping the small tears from the corners of his eyes. “Think about it. So what that you don’t got a purpose? I get it, but your ‘purpose’ was handed to you by those Foot-faces. What do you wanna do? What do you wanna succeed at?”

Casey sat quietly for a few moments, thinking, and Raph feared that he might have said something hurtful. He was never as savvy with people as Leo or Mikey.

Then she spoke. “I spent all of my life trying to be the best, even if it meant being the biggest bad guy in the world. Now, I want to be the best good guy!”

Her expression softened. “I guess what I really want - I want to stop people who were like me once. I want to stop evil people who want to control others. But...how?”

Raph thought. Then, an idea struck him. “You and me can team up!”

“For what?”

“I was a vigilante for a little while. I mean, I used to be, but I guess since I was already part of a team, and with the whole Shredder thing, I just sort of stopped. But, since my bros are on hiatus, you and me could fight crime undercover!”

Casey was looking at her lap, her head bowed. Raph cleared his throat. “I mean, only if you wanna, it’s just a suggestion-”

“That sounds amazing.” Casey looked up at him in awe, her dark eyes glossy with unshed tears. Suddenly, she stands up, and pumps a fist into the air. “Raph and Casey, the most feared vigilante duo in all of New York!”

“Yeah, Go big or go home!” Raph pounded his fist into his other hand in excitement.

“Oh me gosh, stop yelling!” The two look behind them to Leo, still holding the can to his face. He turned in the direction of his twin. “Donnie, get me another can! This one’s warm!”

Casey was giving him a big smile, a far cry from her previous mood. Raph smiled back. Finally, he’d be able to go out and fight crime again; and this time, he wouldn’t be at it alone.

#rottmnt #rottmnt raphael #rottmnt raph #rottmnt Casey jones #rottmnt casey #rottmnt foot recruit #Rise of the teenage mutant ninja turtles #rise of the tmnt #teenage mutant ninja turtles

32 notes · View notes

kurlyfrasier · 3 years

Text

The Plan: Step One

Raph x Reader

Synopsis: Reader has a plan to win her favorite terrapin over. Step One: Learn how to fight. Now if only Raph would agree, then everything else could follow.

Warnings: None, really Raph being stubborn and arguing ensues lol

Word Count: 2130-ish

“No,” the word- quiet as it may have been- reverberated through the lair as everyone fell silent, including Mikey.

“What?” I asked, scrunching my brows in confusion. Out of all the brothers I figured Raph would be the one who would teach me how to fight, or at least teach me how to defend myself.

“Ya heard me,” the largest and fiercest (in my opinion) of the brothers stated, sounding annoyed as he crossed his arms over his chest. A tell tale sign that he wasn’t backing down any time soon.

“Why-”

“I’ll teach ya, Dudette,” Mikey stumbled over the pizza boxes on the floor in his rush to get to me, settling a heavy, beefy arm around my shoulders.

“No,” Raph shoved his arm off my shoulders before pushing him away from me. “Ya won’t.”

“I won’t?” Mikey sounded hurt as his shoulders slumped in disappointment- as did mine.

“Why not?” I asked, too confused to be angry about Raph hurting his youngest brother, who only wanted to help- he always wanted to help. My words caused Mikey to gaze up hopefully at his favorite brother.

“‘Cause he won’t take it as seriously as it needs ta be taken. He’ll get distracted too much or make ya do too much too early or somethin.”

“I can teach her,” Donnie piped up, sliding his glasses back up his nose, sending a sweet smile my way. I beamed back at him, nodding excitedly. There was no way Raph could say no to Donnie, he was the most careful of them all.

“Nuh-uh,” Raph shook his head and my heart dropped.

“Bu-”

“Yer too sciencey ‘bout it. All those numbahs and figures and wha’not,” he shook his head again. “It gets confusin’ and that’s not wha’ anybody needs when they’re fightin’ fer their life.”

“I’ll teach you, y/n,” Leo stepped forward from the outskirts of the room, daring Raph to contradict him as the two younger terrapins and I glanced back and forth between them. He was the leader, after all. My heart soared at the prospect. I truly wanted Raph to teach me- for reasons nobody needed to know- but Leo was the only one who could really challenge Raph in a spar. Not to say Donnie and Mikey couldn’t handle their own, but I could always tell Raph took it easier on his little brothers, but always gave his best with the oldest. Whether that was because they were almost always at odds or because Leo was truly more of a challenge was yet to be discovered.

“No,” Raph growled out, his stance shifting from relaxed and in control to tense and barely contained fury in the span of less than a second. It was amazing really- how quickly he could go from one extreme to the other. His green eyes- sharp as the sais glued to his hips- clashed with Leo’s icy blues. I stepped back, knowing better than to interrupt as I silently prayed this wouldn’t come to blows.

“And why not?” Leo smirked, knowing there was no real reason Raph could possibly come up with.

“‘Cause,” Raph surprised us all with a smirk of his own as he continued. “Last I checked, yer girlfriend don’t like it when you spend time with y/n, here. Plus, all that meditatin’ crap prob’ly ain’t necessary for what she wants.”

Leo’s eyes widened a bit and his step faltered, eyes flickering in my direction as if he was worried I didn’t know Layla wasn’t my biggest fan. My stomach dropped as all hope drained out of me.

“It’s okay,” I whispered, gaining everyone’s attention as I gave Leo a tight smile. “I don’t wanna cause any problems between you and Layla. Besides, I know she doesn’t really like me much.”

“Sorry,” Leo started, reaching out for me before I stopped him.

“Don’t worry about it,” I said, wishing to be anywhere but there. “Um- I’ll just head home for the day. I have homework to do anyway.”

~~~~~~~~~~~

Raph watched you leave with a heavy heart. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to teach you per se. It was more like he didn’t want you purposely putting yourself in danger. He knew when you got good enough (which you would, he had no doubt about that) that you would want to help them on patrol, or worse, go fight on your own during the day when he couldn’t be there to keep you safe. And it was that thought- the thought of you getting hurt because he wasn’t there- that kept him from teaching you how to fight. He wouldn’t be able to live with himself if you, of all people, got hurt.

“I’ll go make sure she gets home safe,” Raph quickly stated and followed after you- only to get tugged back by all three of his brothers.

“It’s daylight-”

“So?” He growled, yanking his arms out of his brothers’ grips to no avail.

“You could be seen-”

“I don’t care! She could get hurt!”

“Which is exactly why she should learn how to fight,” Leo muttered under his breath. Raph heard though. Loud and clear. The words forced him to pause, allowing his brothers to drag him back.

“No,” Raph’s voice was quiet before he turned on them with a piercing gaze the moment their grip loosened, pointing at each one with a dare. “None o’ ya betta go behind my back and teach her.”

“Whoa, dude,” Mikey lifted his hands in surrender. “I won’t teach her anything. Promise.”

“Good,” Raph grunted out, looking at Donnie.

“I like my shell in one piece, thanks,” he said, walking off toward his lab.

“And you?” Raph glared at his older brother.

“Fine,” he huffed out. “But I don’t see why you won’t let her learn. It would be good for her, ya know.”

“Doesn’t matta’,” Raph dismissed, marching his way out to the tunnels. He had to make sure you made it home safe.

“She should be able to defend herself!” He heard Leo shout after him. “You can’t always be there!”

Raph barely kept himself from telling his brother that he should worry more about Layla’s insecurities than you, but decided that particular fight wasn’t worth it.

The sun hid behind deep, gray clouds as Raph caught up with you. He cursed under his breath when he noticed you turn down an alley. You had told him yourself that you didn’t like taking alleys and almost always stayed out of them. So why had you taken one that day?

Raph sighed in relief when he saw the alley was empty aside from you and made his way down.

“Why ya takin’ the alley?” Raph asked worriedly, causing you to spin around in shock at the sound of his voice.

“Raph!” You whisper-hissed, eyes watery from unshed tears. “It’s daylight!”

“So? I wanted ta make sure ya got home safe,” he shrugged like it was no big deal if someone saw him and wondered what made you cry.

“Well, I wouldn’t need you to make sure I got home safe if you would teach me how to defend myself,” you stated defiantly, crossing your arms over your chest.

“Ya still on that?” He growled, fisting the hands at his sides.

“Yeah, Raph. I’m still on that,” you fumed, hands now on your hips, causing his gaze to settle on those curves. He wondered what it would feel like to rest his hands on those same hips. “Leo teaches Layla, why can’t I learn?”

“Don’t tell me ya jealous,” he scoffed- a sad attempt to cover up his own pang of jealousy at the mention of his brother’s name. Is that all you wanted? To win over his brother?

“No. I just wanted to- Ugh. Nevermind,” you sighed, dropping her hands before turning around to head home. “It doesn’t matter anyway.”

“It doesn’t?” Raph’s heart tore at your retreat. “Then why’d ya ask in the first place?” His voice taunted you.

“Because, Raph,” you spun on your heel, piercing him with a fury he had never seen before. “I wanted to spend time with you.”

He took a step back as you stepped forward.

“I wanted to not feel like a defenseless little girl.”

Another step as frustrated tears fell from your eyes.

“I wanted to not be so afraid.”

Another had him against a dumpster as you continued forward, poking him roughly in the chest

“I wanted to not be such a worry- a bother to you.”

Raph shook his head, but you ignored him like you did your tears.

“But apparently, that’s all I’ll ever be.”

“Ya not-”

“Or maybe you just don’t think I’m worth the time, huh? Is that it?”

“Y/n,” he grabbed your shoulders, shaking you gently to get your attention- he had heard enough.

“What?” The tears blurred your vision as you let them fall, not caring that he saw.

“Y/n,” he rasped, leaning down to your eye level, cupping your cheeks to wipe the tears away. “Yer not a botha’ and ya don’t have ta be afraid ‘cause yer not defenseless,” he smirked. “Ya got me.”

“Raph,” you all but snarled, frustrated beyond belief as you ignored the way your heart fluttered at those words. You wanted to pull away, but couldn’t find the strength- his hands on you felt so comforting, so right, so- “That’s the point! What if you’re not around?”

“I’ll always-”

“Like right now! You aren’t supposed to be up here!” You couldn’t help but stomp a foot on the pavement. “That’s why I was taking the alley. To maybe get hurt-”

His gentle grip on your face tensed as you realized your mistake.

“You what,” he ground out through clenched teeth, moving his hands back to your shoulders- unwilling to let go, even if you were being unreasonable.

“Well, I- I thought if I g-got hurt maybe you’d teach me to d-de-defend myself,” it all sounded like a question as you second-guessed yourself. It had you wondering if maybe your plan wasn’t quite full proof.

“Lemme get this straight,” Raph stood tall, reluctantly releasing his grip on you. “Ya thought gettin’ yerself hurt would force me ta teach ya how ta fight so ya can purposely find trouble?”

“Well, y-yes and n-no,” your gaze flicked beyond Raph, onto those walking past the alley entrance. He followed your sight to the traffic and, with a heavy sigh, picked you up in his burly arms.

“Wh-”

“The roof,” he stated flatly as he hopped up to the roof, bouncing from fire escape to fire escape before settling you down on a random metal box. “Please, enlighten me,” he demanded, staring you down, eyes sharp and all-knowing as he crossed his arms over his chest. Touching you did distracting things to him and he did not need that while he was trying to figure out your way of thinking.

“Uh,” you gave him a tentative smile as you found your bearings. “I don’t wanna find trouble, I just wanna be able to fight it off.”

“What ya were tryin’ ta do- searchin’ fer somebody ta hurt ya- proves ya wrong, y/n.”

“It was only to make a point!” You exasperated, rolling your eyes, wishing Raph would understand.

“So, if-” your head snapped up at him, looking too hopeful for his taste. “And that’s a big if, Princess.”

“Yeah?” You smiled.

“Do ya promise not ta go lookin’ fer trouble?”

You started nodding your head when he gestured with a hand to stop.

“And don’ ya dare go thinkin’ ya can go on patrol.”

“I promise! I promise!” You hopped up, jumping up and down in excitement. “Please, please, please!” You begged, grabbing an arm and hugging it tight as you rested your head on his bicep- considering you couldn’t reach his shoulder.

“Fine-”

“Yes!” You loosened your grip for a victory pump, but Raph caught it before you could.

“But if I so much as hear ya got yerself in trouble-”

“I won’t! I promise!”

“Good,” he grunted out. “But if ya do, then ya neva’ leavin’ my sight. Got it?”

“Got it,” you beamed up at him before nudging him down enough so you could tip-toe up and give him a peck on the cheek, surprising him. “Now let’s go!” You squealed, running for the ladder to get off the roof.

“Now?” Raph asked, cheeks red from your kiss.

“Yes now,” you rolled your eyes with a smile, excited to spend more time with your favorite turtle, hopeful your relationship will grow into something more than friendship as you proved yourself to him. “I’ve got some fighting to do!”

“I’m gonna regret this,” Raph muttered under his breath, shaking his head as he followed you to the lair.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

part 2

#tmnt #tmnt fanfic #raph x reader #raph #reader #my writing #leo #donnie #mikey #stubborn raph #slight angst #some cuteness #arguing

59 notes · View notes

adevotedappraisal · 3 years

Text

The Carter Trilogy, part three of five

4:44: And you stare blankly into space, thinking about all the time you wasted on all this basic shit

During Fade to Black, the documentary following Jay Zs 2003 farewell performance for a short-lived retirement from rap, this curious thing happens. Between the setups for the performance at Madison Square Garden, and Jay traversing the country to nest with hit producer after producer, a scene appears of Jay, presumably at his Roc-a-Fella records headquarters, asking, actually beseeching, the motley crew of executives, rappers and goons to prod him to talk about the negative effects of drugs and guns in a song, being that he had glamourized them over the course of six or so albums by that point. No resolution to change course was made at that meeting, but the look of Jay Z in that scene was riveting. He looked like a man that wanted some kind, aged woman to hold his face in her hands and tell him to follow his heart. Instead he was surrounded by men only concerned with the bottom line, men he personally chose. “If that’s what they want to hear, then they buy it,” one says.

Then, there’s a moment on the album he traversed the country for, 2003s The Black Album, on the song “Moment of Clarity,” where he says the lines “truthfully I’d rather rhyme like Common Sense, but I did five mil, and I ain’t rhyme like Common since,” once again exposing some type of urge to, I don’t know, tell the world the tumbling and uncovered things washing around in his soul that sounded like the hot whiskey that sloshed around in Nina Simone’s voice, or like Un’s voice that night he was stabbed, or like that trembling awe in Donny Hathaway’s voice when he let go and sang about being free, or that sounded like his wife’s flat voice as she stared blankly into space over the phone. Well that urge, that curiosity, to step outside of the celebrity version that one constructs to present to the world, is found on 4:44.

A stark, bracing look at the life of Shawn Carter, rife with intimacy and triumph are found across these songs, some which show a Jay Z in charge, advising and boasting, and another set of songs that deconstruct the myth of the Rap star at the same time.

Opener “Kill Jay Z” is a series of clear-eyed, accusatory, second person couplets over a panicked muffle of a beat. Confessionals and invective pushed together into lines, not only in the famous Kanye “20 mill” line but also in “you stabbed Un over some records, your excuse was he was talking too reckless,” and “you got people you love you sold drugs to, you got high on the life, that shit drugged you.” It’s the type of shit men say into the shower in tortured litanies the afternoon after a late night bender, a shocking look at a man without his crown coming to terms with himself. The lines come off as strips of ego, revealing a man as used to failing as he is to winning.

Then there is the centerpiece and title track, which along with Cardi Bs “Bodak Yellow,” was one of the best songs a New York rapper released that year, a track that marries captivating lyrics over an equally striking beat.

He uses his voice in subtle ways now, to express shaded emotions, like in “Adnis,” from the set of throwaways-for-a-reason extra CD tracks, where he confesses about his father “you couldn’t kick the habit, wished you had said something,” and over that whinnying vocal sample and those somber piano chords I try to imagine the advice a drug dealer might give to a parent that uses, the karmic kindness he might have met him with.

And on “Legacy” he is limber and reflective, on a coolly lazy chop of some drums and that Donnie Hathaway voice sample I told you about, sounding like Train of Thought-era Talib Kweli. Rapping again about his father, or Father, he says, “I studied muslims, bhuddas and Christians, I was running from him, but he was giving me wisdom.”

First the beat, a joyous chop of some modern Blue Eyed soul from Britain, the swooping runs and hot yelps of the singer swirling into a deep groove, a masterful manufacturing of voice and instrumental bombast that recalls the great beats of J Dilla’s rhythmic juggling of Luther Vandross’ voice in “Airworks,” and Just Blaze’s arresting rendering of Gladys Knights voice on Freeway’s “When They Remember.” The song, and all production here, is handled by Chicago producer No I.D.

He came up producing the first three Common albums with the same multi-bar looping of sounds, with the Common songs focusing on the bassline and guitar of jazz and funk records. But with Jay, his beats has its main characteristics coming from the chopping of the piano, the voice and the soft harmonies of Soul songs, and this song it is said, was done after No I.D. sent him the beat and song to listen to, with Jay listening and then later waking at the titular time to compose and spew his guts out about his marriage and behavior.

Now whether that story is true, or whether it is true for marketing purposes, is immaterial, because the truth and the purported truth both resulted in this resolute, unflinched honesty, these lyrics cutting into not only the mirrored scales of celebrity drama, but into the dermis and flesh of relationships themselves. “I said ‘don’t embarrass me’ instead of ‘be mine,’ that was my proposal for us to go steady,” he says, the admission of a man on top of the Rap world at the start of the millenium, from when he was cocksure and unsure at the same time.

Later, he talks of stillborns, then threesomes and then there is the crushing observation “your eyes leave with the soul that your body once housed,” and then he ends a verse with the prayer of husbands in the quote “I stew over, what if, you over, my shit?”

This is an examination of the parts of a man when he was broken and flailing for control, the myth deflated into an approachable Clark Kent of a rapper, and broken down even more until the mask goes away, until the acknowledgement that Santa Claus is fake, until what results is an aesthetic of honesty, a veteran giving a seamless performance of realness.

There of course is still Jay’s expected brand of braggadocio, the songs that make up the mythical Jay, and that creates the tension of this album. “Smile” finds Jay and his mother rising above their adversaries of career and sexuality over a sweet sampling of a Stevie Wonder classic. “Aw you thought I was washed/ I’m at the cleaners, laundering dirty money, like the teamsters,” he boasts. There’s “Bam” with Junior Gong, where he is at his most alert and violent, surrounded by an angelic cloud of Sister Nancys echoing through the reggae strut. With “Marcy Me,” the rapper is at the top of his powers, each line filled with double entendres and agile flows, the song resonant and dense enough to be the type of track found on a late-nineties DJ Clue tape, and then it starts slowing down and expanding into an epic sprawl, the voices of yesteryear stretched, echoed.

This look at the man behind the throne is what gives a lot of 4:44 its social and emotional push forward. As time has passed though, we see that the album that came with building-spanning pomp and mysterious advertisements, is in reality an insular record, with wisened words cosseted in beats with warm, swirling harmonies. What the Brooklyn, N.Y. rapper manages to do is produce a solid album, not about relishing in cash, money and hoes, but about a life in the wake of those excesses, and about the barbed reckoning in the heart of marriages necessary for them to beat again. I don’t think Jay is haunted by his searching questions from that moment in the documentary. And I don’t think he gets up at four-something in the morning anymore either.

But there’s something that stops me from just calling 4:44 a new classic and an epic comeback like others did upon release. It’s just that, well, I wish this album swung for the fences more. There’s a ton of great album tracks dealing with the knotted distemper of love and of life, but only “4:44” and “Marcy Me” even try to whip any of this up into a frenzy, and I think that is because other than the tangled root of Frank Ocean in “Caught in Their Eyes” and the thick chants of “Bam,” there isn’t much in the way of choruses here.

There is a hermetic groove here, the songs that Jay picked for NoI.D. to chop up included a number of warm Soul records from the seventies. The songs are turned inward most lines, causing him to employ more relaxed tones in his voice, like his drugged, mocking confessions on the foggy “Moonlight.” This works well for some songs to play after some fine Common or Talib Kweli joints, but Jay Z, and his voice, are at their best when they are on top of the world, not coiled and engaging in self-flagellation.

#music review #essay #jay z #444 #rap #hip-hop #Common #thecartertrilogy #Long Read #black creatives

1 note · View note

tmntxreader-fics · 5 years

Text

TMNT Donatello x Reader: Sudden Interest

@mariamonteon97 asked: Hi, could I request a #75 for donnie?

Fair warning, it’s kinda long.

Warnings: Cussing (as usual)

Word count: 2685

You and Donatello have never really been close.

In fact, if you’re being honest, out of all the brothers he seems to be the most unapproachable of the four.

When April had described each of her “turtle friends’” personalities, you had been most intrigued by the intellect she had promised from the mutant who donned a purple bandanna. Upon introduction, however, there was disappointingly minimal interaction and no display of the intelligence you’d been expecting.

Instead, you were appraised for a brief moment, a golden gaze behind ridiculously oversized goggles observing every inch of you in an almost clinical fashion. You could basically see the notes he was probably committing to memory based off of your appearance, to be simply filed away in the miscellaneous sector of his mind. Then, with a polite exchange of names, it was over. Donatello disappeared back into his lab where the only indication of his presence was the occasional muffled curse and distant clatter of metal.

Despite this disappointment, you find that his brothers are easy enough to like; each offering a unique personality to bide your time with.

You learn to hover-board with Mikey and bond over culinary adventures within the kitchen together, though that proves to be quite hazardous to your health at times. The leader of the troupe also occasionally invites you to simply relax with him and talk about mutual interests and individual perspectives.

Though, admittedly, you find it hard to remain at ease with Leo. His ice blue eyes are too intense and penetrate the soul even during the simplest conversations, proving it difficult to extended periods of time in his presence. On the other hand, you find Raphael to be incredibly straight forward with no hidden thoughts smuggled behind his gaze. He’s gruff, uncaring and wields a “charming” sense of humour that can only be redeemed by the depth of his personality.

Despite the observations you make of your new friends, there is one who has evaded examination. Even as the days turn to weeks and weeks to months, Donatello remains a mystery to you.

It almost feels as if he’s purposely avoiding you at this point, though, you can’t for the life of you figure out what you had done. What had you said upon meeting him that offended him enough to steer clear?

It’s only now, seven months later, do you see him for more than a thirty second window since meeting him. Seated at the table with all four brothers, you find yourself precariously perched between Donatello and Leonardo on a rickety stool. There is a weathered game of monopoly set up on the wooden bench and you scowl upon landing on Donatello’s property.

He peers down at the board from behind his glasses, identifying the property name then sifting through his cards to find the cost of rent.

“One hundred and fifty dollars,” he states, gaze shifting from the cardboard in his hand to meet yours. Eyes narrowed, you hand him the pretend cash, fingers lightly brushing his palm. While you grit your teeth at the touch of his skin, he seems unbothered by the transaction. You catch yourself glaring at the board for more reasons than one as Mikey snatches the dice to roll his turn.

As the game rolls on, you notice Raphael begins to grow heated in the battle against his competitors. You quickly remove yourself from the equation by not allowing your ego to be baited by his barbed comments that are thinly veiled as friendly smack talk. Eventually, the hot head doesn’t bother covering his remarks and outright goes for Donatello when he lands on the purple clad turtles’ property with three houses occupying the space.

“Five hundred and sixty dollars,” Donatello grins a rare, toothy smile and you find yourself almost dazzled by the rarity of the sight. He flashes another lopsided quirk of his lips when Raph groans, holding out his hand, “pay up!”

Meanwhile, the resident muscle looks as if he’s about to blow his top. At the sound of another snarl, everyone waits with baited breath in anticipation of his frustration. “You shouldn’t be allowed to play this shit, Don,” Raph snaps, slapping the money into his brothers’ hand.

“And why not?” Donnie shoots back, immediately sorting his new income into the according piles of his money.

“You’re basically a walkin’ computer,” Raph starts, his voice rough in which you initially assume to be frustration. However, when you see the red clad turtle shoot Mikey a mischievous glance, you begin to suspect foul play. “You got numbers, statistics and strategies up in that head and that’s all you know how to do. Playin’ with you is like playin’ against a bot, game might as well be rigged.”

You frown at the comments being made, then you realise that they’re simply being said to bait Donatello. The second the clever turtle bites, he will start to play irrationally, making bold and risky moves in order to both impress and thwart his competitors; that is when his brothers can move in to take the victory.

“What would you suggest I do, then?” Don says dryly, “Should I play blindfolded and plug my ears in order to give you a fighting chance?”

Raphael leans in and you watch the unnerving grin pull at his lips. “Nah,” he snickers, golden eyes appraising his brother in an unsaid challenge, “I want ya to play a little risky. Show me what you got, Don.”

The turtle in question quirks the ridge of his brow bone, shifting in his seat.

“Don’t bite, Donatello,” you mutter before he can retaliate. Though your voice is gentle, the table falls silent at the sound of it. You continue, “they’re trying to throw you off your game, it’s the only way they’ll win against you.”

His narrowed eyes watch you carefully, an inquisitive gleam in his usually neutral gaze. Donatello licks his lips, tilting his head fractionally with a softly spoken, “noted.”

Despite your exchange being brief, all occupants of the table remain quiet and motionless for a moment. You ignore the way Leonardo’s gaze constantly flickers between both Donnie and yourself, scrutinising eyes searching for something unnamed.

“Well, there goes any chance you had of winning the game too,” Raphael rolls his eyes, leaning back in his seat with a salty sneer.

“If I come first thanks to manipulation rather than skill then that’s not a win,” you snark, snatching the dice from their place before him. “Not that you’d know.”

His eyes widen and the sneer that twists his lips evolves into a mean grin, “oh, it’s on Short-Stack.”

The game continues (quite aimlessly) for another half hour, until, the leader sighs deeply and bids you and his brethren goodnight. You tip your head in his direction, brows furrowing as you catch the last glance he sends you before striding from the room.

When Mikey yawns, the jolting realisation of the hour hits you; time has flown and it’s much later than you anticipated. You don’t want to walk the streets of New York City alone in the dark but you also don’t want to burden the turtles to take you home. Raphael and Mikey’s patrol shift is not due for another couple of hours and you’re definitely not going to be able to stay awake until then.

“You can sleep here tonight,” Donatello murmurs, interrupting your spiralling thoughts. You glance up, taken aback by the gracious offer- coming from him, no less! His sight catches yours and he immediately glances away, resorting to reorganising his cards for the third time in a row. “I mean, only if you would like to. We can set you up on the couch; it’s much more comfortable than it sounds.”

You gape at him for a long moment, lingering on the way he stutters over his sudden uncertainty.

“Wow, Don,” Raph remarks dryly, reminding you of his presence. “First girl you invite over and you stick her with the couch.”

You briefly see Donatello’s eyes widen before Mikey croons disappointedly, “yeah, bro. That’s not how you treat a lady. You’re supposed to offer her your bed.”

The purple clad almost chokes on his saliva and your face is burning from both the audacity of the comments and your newfound embarrassment.

“No!” You splutter, catching the attention of all of those who sit at the table. You gather yourself before continuing, “No. It’s okay, the couch sounds great. Thanks, Donatello.”

The turtle in question exhales a little, as if allowing himself to breathe again. There’s a short silence as he regains his composure, his eyes flickering to meet yours with a gentle curiosity.

“You can call me Donnie,” he finally offers, standing to his feet quietly. “I’ll go get you what you need for the night.”

Watching his retreating figure, you assume that he’s talking about a pillow and perhaps a blanket.

“Damn, who knew you were such a killjoy! Let the nerd squirm a bit,” Raph chuckles, letting slip a groan as he stands to his feet. Your narrowed gaze follows his movements, unsure of whether he is being sarcastic or is simply an asshole. He eyes you intently from behind the red fabric of his bandanna, “Don’s real weird about ya so it’s fun to tease him over it- watch him suffer a bit for once since he’s good at most things.”

Just an asshole then.

You try not to dwell on what he means by that, but the connotations were unnerving.

“Don’t worry babe, we’re just having fun,” Mikey shrugs, though his attempt to reassure you has the opposite effect. You try a smile in response but you suspect that it looks more like a grimace, provoking an intense eye roll from Raphael. The temperamental turtle waves his hand at you both dismissively before making his exit, what you assume to be his version of ‘goodnight’.

The chatter that ensues fades into background noise as the remaining excitable turtle leads you to the couch. “Donnie will be back with your stuff, but,” Mikey trails off cheekily, “if you need anything my bedroom is always open.”

You roll your eyes and thank him dryly for the ‘offer’, you know for a fact that if you need anything you will be going straight to Leo’s room. At least the leader wouldn’t suggest that you should share a bed with him, which is what you'd guess to be Mikey’s first response.

The mischievous terrapin shrugs with playful indifference, “the offer stands!”

“Cut it out, Mikey,” a new voice calls from one of the tunnel entrances. Both yourself and the jokester turn to observe Donatello, eyeing the hilariously tall stack of pillows and blankets in his arms.

“Damn. What; is she meant to be making a fort with all that?” Mikey whistles. Turning to you, he adds, “if so, can I join?”

“Mikey!” Your voice is blurred against Donatello’s and Mikey throws his hands up as a sign of surrender.

“Alright, alright, no worries,” he rolls his eyes, “I’m going. Goodnight!”

You bid him good night, ignoring the subtle wink you receive as he turns and leaves the room.

“So, I have here a few things you might need to make your stay here more enjoyable,” Donatello says, setting down the pile of sleeping material onto the couch. You can’t help but snicker at his travel agent choice of wording. He spares you a quick glance at the sound but continues to talk. “So, I know it gets chilly in here at night, hence why I’ve brought four pillows and four blankets. They’re all a different fabric, so you can choose which one you’d prefer to be in direct contact with you and the rest you can organise to your liking.”

Your eyes widen slightly, four different fabrics? The turtle literally wanted nothing to do with you just a few hours ago, now he’s providing an array of blankets to maximise your comfort?

“Thanks, Donatello,” you say, visibly bewildered. He nods his head and places the materials onto the couch.

“I’ve also brought you a bottle of water,” he says, unlatching a clear bottle from where it was tucked on the side of his utility belt. He grips the case lightly in his hands and offers it to you. Staring at him for a long moment you slowly take it with a small nod.

You have so many questions simmering beneath your skin as you both shift around in uncomfortable silence. He doesn't seem to want to leave just yet and you're not sure as to whether you should sit down with him sill there.

"Why are you being so nice to me all of a sudden?" The words blurt from your mouth, each syllable following in quick succession of each other. You almost want to slap a hand over your lips at the rude inquiry, though you refrain if not only to maintain your dignity.

Donatello's gaze hardens slightly, but not out of offence. He gets your confusion; he knows that his behaviour would seem odd to you and he doesn't expect you to understand the trip. Possibly because he doesn't quite know what triggered it himself.

He just simply wasn't expecting such a blunt question.

You almost regret opening your mouth when the silence stretches and you can't help but feel like a bug being observed beneath a scrutinizing golden lense. It's only when his expression softens and he scratches the back of his do you allow yourself to breathe, unsure of why you were so anxious to begin with.

"I realised that I had severely misjudged you. I'm trying to make up for it," Donatello mutters, a timidness to his voice that you have never witnessed previously within him.

Despite his words you can't help the indignation that claws at your chest, eventually climbing out of your mouth and into the air, "you never even gave me a chance.”

The turtle’s mouth closes softly, his silence encouraging you to continue, “You took one look at me and wrote me off completely.”

“I know,” he stammers, “I know I was wrong.”

“Then why?” You question with furrowed brows. What was it about you that repelled him so much? It was the million dollar question.

“I just,” he just about squeaked, casting his gaze downwards. You’d have thought it impossible for someone his size to seem small; yet, Donatello seemed to be shrinking into himself further by the second. “I didn’t know what to expect after my... ‘experiences’ with April; I just figured it would be logical to avoid you to prevent any future problems.”

You stare at him for a long moment, unable to form a coherent response. You had no idea as to what April and Donnie’s history entailed, you find that you almost don’t want to know. It’s clear that the reporter unknowingly had a detrimental effect on the turtle’s life. “What happened?” You find yourself whispering.

He shakes his head, “I guess it doesn’t really matter anymore. What matters is that I had wrongly assumed you to be the same.” Finally he pulls his gaze from the ground to meet yours,.“I’m sorry,” he says quietly.

You nod your head, a strange feeling swelling in your chest. With a small smile you say, “no harm done.”

He shrugs, knowing that your words were a lie. He scuffs a crescent moon shape into the ground with his foot, unsure of how to appropriately change the topic.

You stick your hand out suddenly, watching as he flinches slightly from the energetic movement. He looks up at you, bewildered and confused.

“Let’s start again,” you grin. You state your full name as if meeting him for the first time and gesture towards the outstretched hand. He hesitantly takes it, a goofy smile quirking at the sides of his lips.

“Donatello,” he states, releasing a breathy sound of amusement border-lining a giggle as the entire mood shifts for the better. “It’s nice to meet you!”

You return the sentiment with mirth, buzzed with the opportunity of a clean slate and a prosperous new friendship.

#TMNT #TMNT Donatello #Donatello Hamato #TMNT Donnie #Donatello x Reader #TMNT Donatello x Reader #TMNT Donnie x reader #tmnt 2016 #tmnt 2014 #tmnt 2012 #tmnt 2007 #teenage mutant ninja turtles #tmnt imagines #tmnt imagine

2K notes · View notes

kickstartmyheartmc · 5 years

Text

Revival: Chapter 3

Word Count: 3,646

Taglist: @public-enemy-sixx @fastnfearless @fandomshit6000

Eighteen was a big number for you. It meant legal freedom from anything binding you to your past, and the freedom to move out of Dottie’s apartment without worrying about a cosigner. She helped you get a credit card in order to raise your credit for the very purpose of moving out. She loved having you around, but she missed living alone for the simple things in life: day drinking, eating two bowls of spaghetti without judgement, and the occasional date brought home for fun. She felt constricted with you around, as if she needed to be the best influence upon you and your young life. Once you moved out, she could go back to her destructive habits without a worry.

“Happy birthday, Y/N!” Dottie yelled from the kitchen right before emerging with a two-tier chocolate and vanilla ice cream cake covered in strawberry frosting with little decorative pink sprinkles at the base of each tier. A chocolate ice cream cone was perched on top, tilted to the left, with the ice cream dripping down the side of the top tier.

Your eyes lit up. “Dottie, you’re amazing!” It was beautiful and the best cake you ever saw. The only birthday cakes you had with your family were single-layer chocolate cakes with overly-sweetened fudge icing that would get stuck to the roof of your mouth if you weren’t careful. Dottie put a lot of effort into this cake and the two of you were going to end up in a sugar coma, you just knew it.

The two of you dug in, and it took an entire hour to finish the cake. It wasn’t humongous, but the sheer amount of sugar within one bite took some time to process and finish. The amount of time it took to finish the cake allowed for you and Dottie to have a deep conversation about what you wanted to do with your future.

When she asked the question, you had to stop and think for a moment. “I actually… am not sure. I never finished high school, so in order to go to college I’d have to get my GED.” You shrugged. “I could try to work in advertising or on movie sets, but those require experience, and to get experience I need to go to college, and to go to college I need a GED.” Your head hurt just from thinking about it. “I really don’t know. All I want to do is move out and start my life alone. I appreciate everything you’ve done for me, Dottie, but it’s time I start looking for apartments.” You gave her a soft smile.

She returned the gesture, rubbing your back. “Hon, you’ve been a wonderful addition to my life the past seven months, but I cannot wait to get you out.” You both laughed and started to clean up your messes. “Now that you’re eighteen, I’d be more than happy to show you the ropes as a manager at Donny’s if you want more hours and a higher wage when you’re working hourly.”

You didn’t look back at her, but you replied, “You’re the best, Dottie.”

She was quiet until you walked through the kitchen door to go to your room. “I know.”

You opened the door to your room and Emily came bursting out. “Hi, baby!” You crouched down to let your dog kiss you and cuddle up, happy to see you again after only an hour. “I’m sorry I had to leave you in there; you would’ve tried to eat my ice cream cake if I hadn’t!” You patted her on the back and led her out the front door, taking her for her daily walk. The sun shined down, heating up the cold ground beneath Emily’s feet. It was November 16th, 1977, the day you were waiting on for years. Your eighteenth birthday. Nothing had actually changed, but you felt a new sense of purpose, as if you could actually make a difference now.

Just then, Emily growled and darted away from you. Your fell to the ground and were able to un-loop the leash from your wrist before she dragged you down the Sunset Strip and tore your clothes—let alone your skin—apart. “Fuck,” you muttered, pushing yourself to stand back up. You sighed and watched as she chased someone on a bicycle, almost causing them to fall off and crash in front of a truck. Before she could go anywhere else, someone grabbed her leash and kept her in place. The anonymous hero petted her as she stood up on her hind legs to reach up and lick their face.

“Thank you so much,” you huffed. “She’s never done that before; she caught me off-guard.”

“No problem, Y/N.” The stranger looked up with a small smile, revealing himself to be Nikki.

You were taken aback; it seemed as if you two were drawn to each other by fate, destiny, or luck of the draw—all you know is that whatever it was kept trying to tell you Nikki was supposed to be in your life. “Hi, stranger.” You smiled, taking the leash from him. “Fancy seeing you around.”

Nikki shrugged, popping his collar as if he knew he was cool. “Yeah, well, I get around.”

“I don’t know if that’s something you should be bragging about in that way,” you giggled, crossing your arms. “What’re you up to today, anyway?” You turned your chin upwards a little bit, giving off the illusion of disinterest.

Nikki mimicked the movement. “Just browsing apartments.” He shrugged. “I’m picky, it takes a while.”

Eyebrows raised and lips puckered, you said, “Funny. So am I.” Maybe this was it. “Would you want to, I don’t know, search together?”

“Um… I don’t see why not.” Nikki didn’t think you were going to say that, but he was glad you did. “Where do you want to start?”

You dropped Emily off at Dottie’s apartment and introduced her to Nikki now that you two were “bona fide buddies” (as Nikki described the two of you). The first apartment was a small studio fit perfectly for someone always on the run. The manager just about talked you into buying it right away, but Nikki stepped in and showed you the ropes on how to make a deal. The next complex featured a few one- and two-bedroom apartments that were a bit pricey for your serving job. Nikki grabbed two applications, one for him and you, despite the suggestion from the landlord about sharing one and living together.

“Oh, no, we’re not together,” you nervously protested. “Thank you for the thought, though.”

While you and Nikki strolled towards the last destination, which was right around the corner from the Whiskey-a-Go-Go, he nudged your arm. “You know, I wouldn’t be opposed to living with you. I know we aren’t that close, and haven’t spent, like, any time together, but you seem like the kind of person I could vibe with.” He cleared his throat and rubbed his neck. “Just a thought.”

Your cheeks lit up. “I mean, I’ll have to think about it… but thank you for the offer.”

“Thank you for your time today, uh, Y/N and… Nikki?” The landlord eyed Nikki as if she didn’t believe that was his real name. “I’ll process these papers, get your information in the system, and then you’ll be all set to move in!” She shook both of your hands before you two left.

“I don’t know how you convinced me to do that, but it was nice doing business with you!” You laughed and held your hand out to Nikki, who gladly shook it.

“No problem, Y/N. Now, how about I take you out on a celebratory date?” He swiftly intertwined your fingers with his. “My treat. You’re the reason I’m getting off the street for the first time in three years.”

That was news. It never occurred to you that he was living on the street and that was the reason why he was home-hunting. What else did he keep hidden away from the world? Was he putting on a show to convince you to move in with him just to find a place for his lady loves? These questions crossed your mind as your body reacted in a positive manner to his loving gesture: bright smile, sparkling eyes, a gentle nod. “Of course I will.”

7:13 P.M.

“How do I look, Dottie?” You strutted to the middle of the living room, posing in front of the television she was watching.

That caused her to grumble, “Fine, now move,” and she waved her hand to the side, indicating you to move to the side.

You pouted at her. “Thanks for you support, Dot. Not like I’m nervous or anything. Not like it’s my very first date, like, ever.” You slid on the nicest pair of shoes you had, a pair of black boot heels. “Just going to end up tripping over my own two feet anyway.”

She waved good-bye as you ran out the door, ready for your date at the Whiskey with Nikki. He promised to be there, but he gave you no other details. The blind trust you had in him was phenomenal, and it surprised you more than it shocked him, especially considering everything that happened between Mom and Dad back in Florida.

The cool evening air brought you back to reality. There was a line forming in front of the club, but it wasn’t too long so you were able to get in relatively quickly. The bouncer looked at you for a few seconds, squinting as if he was unsure about whether or not he needed to check your ID. With a small shrug and a quick head tilt, he gestured for you to go inside. You let out a quick sigh of relief. It felt nice being able to get into forbidden places, almost as if it was a secret society.

The atmosphere inside was unlike anything else you’d experienced. There were women with skirts riding as high as the bottom of their ass cheeks. Their breasts swayed to and fro from the lack of support from a bra, and they were dancing alongside tall, handsome men. They ranged in size from under six feet tall to towering at almost seven. There was a wide range of skin tones and body shapes, but each and every one was interesting to you and your inquiring eye. You moseyed over to the bar to order a jack and coke for yourself while you waited on Nikki to arrive.

7:56 P.M.

The blonde woman on the opposite side of the bar top pushed her chest out towards the handsome man she was speaking to. She twirled her fingers in her hair, biting her lip. You ordered your third jack and coke as you observed. Something about her seemed familiar, but you couldn’t quite put your finger on why. When the bartender put the drink down in front of you, a random man slid a $10 bill on the counter towards her. “Keep the change, darlin’.” He winked at the bartender before looking at you. “Hi there.”

You cleared your throat. “Hello.” Hopefully he would go away if conversation was short and snappy.

“What’s your name, beautiful?” He reached his hand up and held your jaw between his thumb and index finger. The feeling of his hand on you didn’t feel right.

“Y/N,” you answered shortly. “What’s yours?”

He chuckled, running his other hand through your hair, causing you to jolt back. His smile faded as he tried to touch your hair again, this time tightening his grip so you couldn’t move as much. “Lizzie Grey.”

You snorted. “It’s original, I’ll give you that.” You reached up and grabbed his wrist, digging your nails into his skin. He hissed and let your hair go.

“Bitch,” he sneered, shoving your face as he let go of your jaw. You watched as he walked away towards the back of the building through a door with “Employees Only” on it. Whether or not he was allowed back there didn’t matter to you as much as finding Nikki was. His absence came as a surprise, especially since he seemed so adamant about the date. It came only as a mild shock but brought more disappointment than expected.

You sighed, downed the rest of your drink, and stood up from the stool. While you flattened out your clothes and prepared for a way to get home safely, a crowd surged past you to the stage that was empty just a few minutes ago. Now that you looked up at it, you saw five men on stage in dark leather clothing with big hair and platform boots. It wasn’t uncommon in 1977 for men to dress in such a way, especially because of the ever-growing rock-and-roll scene; what shocked you was the sight of Nikki on stage with Lizzie Grey, the man that just tried to assault you in public, while holding a bass guitar. If it hadn’t been connected to your head, your jaw probably would have dropped to the floor. No fucking way, you thought. This new information meant that a closer look was inevitable.

9:17 P.M.

Your body swayed to the music, feeling the bass from Nikki and the drummer send vibrations through your bones. Nothing was better than dancing—the freedom to express emotions without words; the ability to show off to anyone willing to lay eyes on such beauty; the raw energy released through such a creative outlet. The drink in your hand helped too… just a little.

You were so wrapped up in dancing all night to notice the diminishing crowd, with less than fifty people left to snicker and laugh as you drunkenly stumbled around. Dancing might have been a creative outlet, but it had no control over how people treated you at your happiest. Fortunately, you did not notice; unfortunately, Nikki did.

As soon as the song ended, Nikki said something into the singer’s ear. The crowd booed, wanting more music. The bassist flipped them off as he left the stage and went through the Employee Only door, only to come back out almost immediately. You didn’t notice him grab your hand until he pulled you to the side of the bar, into a corner where nobody was at in order to get some privacy.

“Hey, Y/N?” he asked, helping you sit down in a booth.

“Hm?” you replied, eyes half closed and glazed over, a wide grin adorning your face. That made Nikki laugh.

“While I normally love getting shit-faced to forget my problems, I think I need to take you home.” He reached to help you stand, but you smacked his hand away from you.

“Don’t fucking touch me,” you growled, accidentally spilling your drink all over your outfit. “Shit.”

Nikki stepped back and looked around. The band got off the stage a couple minutes earlier, deciding they couldn’t continue without a bassist (which made Nikki feel good, he was not going to deny that; it was just odd because this was not how they usually operated). He sighed, pursed his lips, and grabbed a couple glasses of water from the bartender. He gave one to you and made you drink before he sat down beside you. “While you sober up, I guess we can talk about the set. Did you like it?”

You would have loved to answer, but your mind was going a million miles a minute. This was your first time being drunk. The fire that graced every inch of your skin made you feel crazy, as if clothes were unnecessary for survival in that very moment. They would have come off if Nikki didn’t stop you.

He cleared his throat. “While I can’t wait to get you in bed, I would rather you not show every man in here what you have.” It took everything in his power to not rip you from the booth and drag you home.

“The music was supendipular,” you giggled, leaned on Nikki’s arm. Hiccup. “The singer is an asshole.”

“Wait, what?” Nikki sat you back up and held your shoulders so you could look at him directly. “Why would you say that?”

You pouted. “He grabbed my jaw like this—” You demonstrated on him. “—and put his hand like this.” Your other free hand snaked up his neck and behind his head in order to grab his hair and pull it, but he stopped you before it happened.

He was fuming. Before he could get out of the booth, the four other band members appeared to check on him. Lizzie was the first to talk. “Hey, man. Oh, shit! It’s that bitch I was telling you about.” He turned to his bandmates for unspoken backup. “She refused to let me touch her, but now I can see why.” The band laughed, but Nikki was not taking it. He looked at you one last time, winked, and turned back around to stand up and place an untrained punch on Lizzie’s nose. While it didn’t break, he still stumbled backwards and screamed.

“What the fuck, dude?!” He looked at his fingers after feeling his nose only to find blood. “I think you broke my fucking nose!”

One of the guitarists tried to step in and retaliate at Nikki, but the drummer grabbed and stopped him. “It’s not worth it, Randy.” He kept a tight hold of Randy until he promised he wasn’t going to hit Nikki.

“Fuck you,” he snarled. As the singer and guitarist left (per the drummer’s instructions), Lizzie stared Nikki down.

“I don’t know who the fuck you think you are, but you’re fucking fired.” He touched his nose again, only causing it to bleed more.

Nikki clenched his jaw. “Lizzie, you’re a disgusting person. Why don’t you show a little more respect?”

“To who? You or the tramp?”

This time it was the drummer who threw the punch and broke Lizzie’s nose. The man fell to the ground, unconscious.

From the booth, you stared at them in shock. It was only a few moments until you slurred out, “What the fuck was that?”

Nikki turned to his band mate. “You didn’t have to help, man.”

“Of course I did, dude. You’re my brother.” He patted Nikki’s back. “He’s an asshole anyway.”

“Thanks, Dane.” He shot him a smile before turning back to you.

After your declaration of not knowing what the fuck was going on, you slumped over and passed out in the booth, completely worn out.

10:24 P.M.

Nikki knocked on the door to Dottie’s apartment. She opened the door to find Nikki’s shy smile, you slumped on his back snoring, and a few flies buzzing around. She had no idea how to greet him, so she just moved out of the way to let him in. He asked where your bedroom was, and she pointed him in the direction. When he crouched down to let you off his back and into your bed, you woke up.

The world was groggy, and nothing was in focus, but the familiar scent of incense and dog hair was an indicator of home. You groaned and wiped your eyes.

Nikki found that exponentially adorable. “Good morning, sleepy head.”

You stopped in an instant. Everything came flooding back and the pounding in your head became ten times worse. “Oh my god, what happened?” You let your back rest on the wall. The alcohol was still heavily coursing through your veins, intoxicating and addictive.

Nikki kneeled down in front of you and placed his hands atop your knees. “Well, one of my former band mates decided to call you a few not-nice words and I beat the shit out of him.”

You stared at him in disbelief. “I know I’m drunk, but I think I would’ve remembered a full-out brawl. What really happened?”

Nikki sighed and asked to sit by you on the bed, to which you complied. “Let’s just say that I stick up for my friends, and he decided to use a few choice words in front of me. You also told me how he tried to force you to be physical with him.” He clenched his fists and you noticed. “I always felt something was off about him, but I never knew he was that kind of person.”

You noticed the hurt in his eyes. “Nikki, it’s not your fault. Don’t worry about it, I’m a big girl. I can handle my own problems.”

That made him chuckle, but only in an endearing way. “I would love to agree, but your alcohol tolerance is garbage.” That made both of you laugh this time. “How about, instead of me trying to surprise you with my amazing bass skills next time, I take you to a restaurant and we actually enjoy each other’s company? Hm?” He slowly reached up and cupped your cheek in one of his hands, smiling gently.

Your heart began to beat faster, and you could not tell if it was because of the booze in your system or the sweet gesture by Nikki. Either way, there was no way you were going to turn him down.

“Okay,” you whispered. Your hand covered his, slowly intertwining your fingers. “Can I sleep now?” You didn’t need his permission, but it was an open invitation for him to stay the night rather than sleep on the streets again.

“Whatever you want.” He scooted closer to you, as close as he could get, and gently placed a peck on your lips. Your heart fluttered, this time for sure caused by him. You let out a quiet sigh, unsure how to process the affectionate act. However important it was, that discussion would be saved for another day. Headaches don’t go away fast enough; sleep is the only answer now.

A/N: I was so worried this was going to be too short of a chapter, but it’s the longest one yet! I decided to stay up late and get this one busted out because a) it’s been more than a week since chapter 2, and b) I work at a Mexican restaurant and this is Cinco de Mayo weekend, so I literally won’t even be on tumblr on my phone let alone my computer to upload a chapter. Wish me luck, and I’ll see you guys in chapter 4!

#revival #revival: chapter 3 #chapter 3 #the dirt #the dirt fanfic #fanfic #fanfiction #motley crue #nikki sixx #vince neil #mick mars #tommy lee

14 notes · View notes

davidmann95 · 5 years

Note

This weeks comics?

So much to cover, and just so we’re all clear upfront, SPOILERS ahead.

Sideways Annual #1: I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to forgive the cover for simply reading “All-out Action, guest-starring Superman” rather than the declaration of “The Champion of the Oppressed is BACK–JUST WHEN THE WORLD NEEDS HIM MOST!” it demanded, but otherwise what a delightful comic. It’s a mess in so many ways given Morrison’s working with what DiDio laid down for him (which he seems to demonstrate hilarious contempt for when he almost literally drops a bridge on the no-hoper who’d been set up as the arc villain before he can do anything) and jumping on mid-stream to boot, but it’s basically just an extended excuse for him to put dialogue in Superman and the Seven Soldiers’ mouths again and remind everyone how rad his takes on them are, and thereby shame us for abandoning the former. Plus give us a taste of what his voice for Spider-Man would be, which it turns out is a perfectly fine one in spite of his past professed skepticism that he could pull it off. And above all to assure us with a smile and the proper send-off (a particularly satisfying one for me personally given my arachnophobia) we never got before that even if we never see our pal cop-punching, bank-busting, casual Fridays Superman again, he’ll be out there, along with all the other cast-off good Superman ideas, helping out wherever he can.

Also, who else caught the nudge and wink about the Tailor, and how that tells devoted Seven Soldiers fans just how much of role Morrison really played in saving his take on Superman?

Batman #60: Batman is…Batman is weird lately. I honestly don’t have anything else to say about this issue, except that the bit with Alfred cleaning was obviously killer.

The Unexpected #6: So Ronan Cliquet is bad, right? Like, we can all agree that dude is just bringing nothing to the table? I’ve never seen pages so plain look so simultaneously cramped and barren. This book has been such a damn disappointment: clearly promises were made about how much space Orlando would have to work on this that have been entirely broken, he’s cutting past what was clearly intended to be dozens of issues of buildup and fleshing-out of the concept to the grand finale, and he’s already obviously and understandably checked out. This should have been one of those “hey, you never heard of _____, but it was quietly one of DC’s best books for awhile there!” titles you learn about 20 years after the fact, but it was stillborn and unable to explore even the slightest sliver of its potential. It’s almost reached a point where it can make me think its coming conclusion is a mercy killing, but then, said conclusion is the problem.

Justice League #11: The debut of the Super-eyepatch! Otherwise, while it’s definitely not my favorite issue thus far of Snyder’s Justice League, it might be the one that feels the most well-realized in terms of getting his vision on the page thanks to Francis Manapul. I desperately hope he sticks on the book past Drowned Earth, because as much as I absolutely love what Jorge Jimenez and Jim Cheung are doing, his vision feels the most in line with the, as Snyder put it, ‘magisterial’ tone this title is going for a lot of the time.

The Green Lantern #1: Not my favorite Morrison title of the week in spite of its lack of clutter and outside influence, to the point where I’d honestly say it initially left me pretty cold, but much as with Morrison’s last major #1 in Action Comics, a reread did wonders for me once I knew what sort of tone I’d be grappling with. I do think it was oddly structured in a way that didn’t benefit it, leading with the mundane-flavored-with-cosmic with the alien beat cops rather than Hal’s more grounded perspective leading into the awe-inspiring, but given it sets up an immediate contrast with his ‘civilian life’, I’d call it a calculated risk that didn’t quite pay off. Hal himself is interestingly realized, this blunt, bored dude who only really comes alive when he’s on the clock, who’s as hyper-competent at his job as you’d think the Greatest Green Lantern Of Them All would be but almost seems to be sleepwalking through his days. It’s when we reach Oa with the mission statement for the Corps that the book really comes together, meshing up the beautiful design sense, an evocation of some of Morrison’s past recurring themes and elements, and raw high concept into the most powerful evocation of the basic idea of Green Lantern’s Deal I’ve ever read. And Liam Sharp mostly does justice by it; I know some find his style off-putting and his anatomy wonky, but he sells the what-if-GL-was-a-2000AD-strip sensibility, and his work has a framing and structure and a tangible, doughy 3Dishness that recalls the flavor of some of Morirson’s best prior collaborations. Not that, to be clear, I don’t think plenty of those prior collaborators couldn’t have done a much better job with this, but I think this’ll pan out just fine.

On top of that a couple minor notes: I suspect David Uzumeri might have been right regarding the possibility that this could be the book where Morrison delves into the basic question of whether superheroes are by nature cops, and thereby police brutality (Maxim Tox and Hal himself both have some startlingly severe moments in here) and the moral feasibility of the whole business. Rather than rethinking his process in his time away, Morrison’s storytelling tics are as prominently on display here as just about anything he’s ever done. And I was genuinely shocked to see the acknowledgement of Manhattan in here - a landmark chapter in The Last War In Albion in the making if ever there was one - right alongside addressing Snyder’s Justice League, making this to my knowledge the only book in the company’s lineup to acknowledge both contenders to the throne of DC’s current actual Important Cosmic-Scale Story. I suppose Lantern is the place where that makes sense, but both bring interesting elements of their own, as with the Source Wall Morrison’s going right on in and acknowledging how other creators have brought his ideas and spirit to the forefront of the DCU in the last several years, and with Manhattan, having a Grant Morrison DC Comic acknowledge the presence of Watchmen characters as parts of the grand scheme of things makes that whole bizarre business feel real in a way even Doomsday Clock itself hasn’t for me.

Adventures of the Super Sons #4: What a charmer! I harped a lot on Pete Tomasi by and large sucking on Superman, because by and large he sucked on Superman, but put that dude on just the right project to play into his strengths and he absolutely shines.

The Dreaming #3: Wound up in my pull file since I’d unsubscribed so recently, and decided to give it one last chance. It’s pretty and confident in what it’s doing and I’m sure lots of people are rightfully getting a lot out of it, but I’m not one of them and it won’t be getting another shot.

Border Town #3: It feels odd to think this given how much positive attention it’s been getting and how well it’s sold for a modern Vertigo book, but Border Town absolutely still feels like the sleeper hit of 2018. It so feels like the sort of comic that I usually can acknowledge the quality of but doesn’t do it for me personally, so I keep picking it up expecting to not quite gel with a given issue, but each time I’m dead damn wrong. It’s brimming with energy and personality on every level, and it’s still early enough that I can’t possibly recommend enough that anyone who hasn’t given it a chance yet jump onboard.

The Wicked + The Divine: The Funnies: Speaking of titles that I can acknowledge the quality of but rarely do it for me, I’ve followed W + D from the beginning on the understanding that the fairly subdued joys I take from it on a month-by-month basis will be eclipsed by the scale of my love for it on a full reread, as was the case with the team’s Young Avengers. But boy did this one buck that trend, because it was a hoot. Honestly couldn’t tell you which was my favorite short, because like half the book is made up of front-runners.

Death of the Inhumans #5: Because Death of Some Inhumans, But Don’t Worry Not Any of the Good Ones, Other than Maximus wouldn’t have shifted as much copy. Donny Cates is establishing himself as a solid mid-tier superhero writer alongside your Tim Seeleys and James Tynions, and Ariel Olivetti’s a treat, but I have to call this one a miss.

Shatterstar #2: As I expected it didn’t grab me as much as the first issue since the tenants aren’t front-and-center, but I’m still digging it to a truly startling extent!

Marvel Knights #1: Okay? I mean, I liked it (aside from the unbelievably poorly-chosen ‘I can sort of see even though I’m blind’ line - had to be a dozen better ways of putting that), but aside from that it’s gritty and involves some of the characters with notable history in the imprint, I have no idea why this is the Marvel Knights 20th Anniversary book as opposed to just a random Marvel miniseries that I suppose could be published under that imprint if you wanted. The conceit feels so odd for the intended purpose.

The Immortal Hulk #8: This book is SO FUCKING GOOD ALL OF THE TIME AT EVERYTHING AND YOU ALL NEED TO BUY IT AND TELL YOUR FRIENDS ABOUT IT. CHRIST. Still the best super-shit on the stands.

DC Nation #6: Yanick Paquette needs to write Batman explaining science so as to teach us how to better fight crime for as long as he lives, if not in fact longer.

#Grant Morrison #Superman #Green Lantern #The Unexpected #Border Town #DC Comics #Marvel #Liam Sharp #Week's Comics #Opinion

15 notes · View notes

tkmedia · 3 years

Text

How new Hall of Famers Troy Polamalu and Bill Cowher formed lasting bond

7:29 AM ETPITTSBURGH -- More than 6,600 days after Troy Polamalu hesitantly answered the call from a Pittsburgh area code to begin his NFL career, he and the coach who helped make the call will enter the next phase of their storied careers.Former Pittsburgh Steelers Polamalu and Bill Cowher will be inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame on Saturday night (6:30 p.m. ET, ESPN) in Canton, Ohio, becoming the first duo of player and the coach who drafted him, to get in in the same class."You wouldn't take my call when I drafted you because you didn't like the 412 area code," Cowher joked as he interviewed Polamalu after the safety got the famed knock from HOF president David Baker in February 2020."It's attached to bad weather," Polamalu replied, laughing. "Snow in April, you know all that good stuff. I wasn't too excited about that. Little did I know, it became home to me, my family, myself."A working relationship that began when Polamalu was 21 has evolved into a friendship between the coach and his former player, one that makes the dual induction even more special.Catch the 2020 Centennial Class ceremony in Canton, Ohio on Saturday (6:30 p.m. ET, ESPN), followed by the 2021 HOF class induction on Sunday (7 p.m. ET, ESPN):• Peyton Manning changed QBing forever • Jimmy Johnson: 'How 'bout them Cowboys?' • Charles Woodson's legendary path in NFL • Get to know this year's HOF classes • Videos: Watch these HOF moments "He helped develop me and helped me as I matured into adulthood and really played a big father-figure role in my life, much like LeBeau," Polamalu said. "To have that confidence instilled in you, by a Hall of Fame coach. He's also from Pittsburgh, and he really embodies that blue collar mentality, as well. To not only have that sort of influence earlier in my career, it's also an honorable virtue that Pittsburgh stands by, blue collar work ethic."Their bond, though, was hardly instantaneous. Polamalu struggled during his rookie season in 2003 as Cowher tried to put his first-rounder in a variety of roles, at first attempting to shoehorn him into tightly defined positions. Finishing the season without an interception or a start, Polamalu's confidence was low."That rookie season for me was also when I started to question my purpose and whether or not football was for me or not because my rookie season was not enjoyable, nor was it very successful at all," Polamalu said. "So post-rookie season is where I kind of had a real conversation with myself that was like, 'Listen man, either you're going to go all in on this or all out, because if you're not all-in, there may not be a career.'"That was a turning point -- in both his relationship with Cowher and his career."Troy needed a year to develop and adjust to being in the league," Steelers owner and team president Art Rooney II said. "Bill helped him along with that. I know Troy appreciates that and it's part of their relationship."Bill Cowher and Troy Polamalu spent just five years together on the Steelers but have remained friends since and enter the Hall of Fame together. AP Photo/David ZalubowskiThey were together three more years, but Polamalu and Cowher found a rhythm that maximized Polamalu's ability and brought the two men closer together."As humiliating as it was, if I had not gone through the process of that molding, of really being put through the furnace of adversity and doubt and really attacking that in a way that's calculated, methodical, and not in an emotional way," Polamalu said, "it was like, I've got to go about doing this the right way and that paying off. Because that paid off, it set in motion the rest of my career."In 2004, Polamalu earned the starting strong safety job over Mike Logan and exploded for five interceptions and 97 combined tackles. Cowher and LeBeau found the right combination of discipline and freedom that allowed Polamalu to maximize the innate skills that set him apart."I remember the more you got to know Troy, there was a reason behind the things that he did," Cowher said. "... When Troy was on the field, you didn't want to harness him. You wanted to let him play. If he got uncomfortable, that made me uncomfortable. We gave him a lot of leeway, and that's why he's going into the Hall of Fame -- he's a very special player. A very special person."• Troy Polamalu's lasting bond with Bill Cowher • Bosa stoked about Chargers' new defense • Surprise! Harry making plays for Patriots • Can Cowboys' defense improve from 2020? • Texans OC: Taylor has command of offense After a 15-1 season in 2004, Polamalu helped the Steelers to their fifth Super Bowl in the 2005 season. He became known for his flowing locks spilling from beneath his helmet and his ability to transform from a soft-spoken enigma to a ball-hawking predator on the field.Cowher resigned in 2007, and Polamalu continued to build his Hall of Fame resume with another Super Bowl win in the 2008 season and by making seemingly improbable plays -- like the flying superman tackle of Titans quarterback Kerry Collins in 2010 that Polamalu now describes as taking a "calculated risk.""Unbelievable instincts," former Colts and Broncos quarterback Peyton Manning said of Polamalu. "Defensive coaches want you to do a certain thing, right? You're supposed to be in this position, that's the way the defense is set up. Well, with Troy, that was kind of out the window. Even though he was supposed to be here, he could tell the ball was going to go over there. And he ends up over there and I'm like, 'No, he's not supposed to be there.'"From a rocky start to a player who redefined the safety position, Polamalu will enter the Hall of Fame on Saturday as a part of its Centennial Class alongside Cowher during a weekend that will also feature the inductions of three other Steelers -- Alan Faneca, Bill Nunn and Donnie Shell."It helps define my career," Polamalu said of the induction. "I've been surrounded by a lot of Hall of Fame people in my life -- obviously being drafted by a Hall of Fame coach. Having played already with two Hall of Fame football players, it's an indication of my career, as well as that I've been surrounded by Hall of Fame people. And I've been very grateful for that." Read the full article

0 notes

thebigladjake · 4 years

Text

AX3001: CHAPPIES - Graphic Novel Research: The Big Lebowski

A suggestion that Mario had made for research was the film, The Big Lebowski. A film which doesn’t entirely revolve around bowling, but has scenes of the guys just hanging out at a bowling alley. Now, that may not sound like much, but it’s really the kind of vibe that I want to go for.

Story

First off, the plot is a perfect example of how far you can take an idea. Jeff “The Dude” Lebowski gets mistaken for a millionaire, leading to his rug getting ruined in the process. And just like that the entire plot begins because The Dude only wants a new rug. He gets swooped up in a caper far beyond anything he’s ever known as a sort of low life bum just scraping by. It builds and builds and builds and that is a core fundamental of my stories for CHAPPIES.

The Bowling Aspect of The Big Lebowski

The main purpose of the bowling alley in the film is for The Dude to meet up with his friends, Walter and Donny, to talk about the events currently going on in his life. Of course, this isn’t the only place we see the boys hanging out together, but it’s the most common one. We get to see each of their personalities and what kind of friendship they have in the very first bowling scene.

youtube

Firstly, the scene begins with The Dude bringing up the fact that somebody ruined his rug by whizzing all over it. Something we can all relate to because when you meet up with friends, chances are you’re going to bring up the most interesting thing that has happened to you since they last met. Talking with a friend yesterday, we ask each other how’s it been and the first thing I thought of was the isolation period, how my family all seemed to be getting along when we were all trapped here and how it almost immediately fell apart once one of us was allowed back out.

The scene begins, before the YouTube clip actually, with Donny landing a strike and heading back to Walter and the Dude commenting on his successful bowl, only to be ignored and awkwardly shrug it off. Giving us the impression that Donny is a little more timid than the other guys, kind of knows he isn’t cool and doesn’t really stand up for himself, a fact reinforced at the climax of the movie.

He joins mid-conversation and only hears “Yeah man, it really tied the room together”, Donny obviously has no idea what they are talking about and asks about what the Dude’s talking about which the Dude answers because it was a simple question. However, Walter asks whether Donny was listening to his story. Dude mutters to himself, “Walter” as he gets out his bowling ball as in saying “Oh come on don’t do this”, it’s so quiet as a general watcher you might miss it since you’re focused on Donny and Walter’s interaction. But, it sets up Walter being short-tempered before we get the chance to see it for ourselves.

Donny answers with “I was bowling” with Walter immediately firing back with “You have no frame of reference, here Donny. You’re like a child who wanders in-”, with Dude saying his name again in the same tone this time louder than before and when he’s ignored, he chirps up even louder and asks Walter, “What’s the point man?” Setting up that Walter snapping at people is a pretty common occurrence and Dude’s rather chilled and laid back nature clashes with that.

Walter is also the first character to swear in this scene in his next line, “There’s no f***ing reason--”. Typically swearing is used for angry situation when a person wants to drive home the point, so having the short-tempered one being the first to swear is an easy indicator of who the character is.

As Walter tries to make his point, Donny actually turns around and asks, “Yeah Walter, what’s your point?” Showing us a little level of confidence, probably from Dude sort of being on his side in this argument.

Dude then asks again about Walter’s point and is also the second one out of the bunch to swear, showing us that it takes more to anger him then Walter who was getting upset over nothing. Using the same word as Walter did, we see that he isn’t above him.

Walter gets more aggressive before calming himself and says he’s talking about unchecked aggression before Donny chips in with “What the f*** is he talking about?” With Dude saying this is still about the rug and Walter tells Donny that he’s out of his element, going back to his point of frame of reference. Showing Walter’s more arrogant side and that he doesn’t forget the points he has previously made.

Dude stops Walter once again, telling him that he can’t give the guy who peed on his rug a bill so ”What the f*** are you talking about?” With Walter firing back with “What the f*** are you talking about?” Another pretty natural character interaction because sometimes you’re argue with a friend and you kind of forget or just say something so unrelated to the point all you want to say is “What are you talking about?”

Walter then rants about drawing a line in the sand and how the guy is not the issue here before he interrupts himself with telling Dude that “Chinaman is not the preferred nomenclature.” Again, I feel like this is a pretty natural interaction to change the topic to correct someone’s argument even if it isn’t integral to the actual point. It also shows a more considerate side to Walter and how he can flip his anger on and off. With Dude making the point that calling him the Chinaman is not the problem, he’s not a guy that deserves respect with Walter immediately jumping back to the “What the f*** are you talking about?!” this time being much more angry and like “I can’t believe we’re still doing this”

I think Donny’s silence for this brief period also shows a lot of his character too, he doesn’t have much to say and doesn’t want to interrupt the Dude’s and Walter’s conversation. He’s paying attention to the conversation, he’s waiting for a chance to possibly interject and he does right after Dude makes it clear that he’s still talking about the dude peeing on his rug! Donny echoes the Dude’s words with “He peed on the Dude’s rug.” Walter once again reaffirms that Donny IS out of his element and the Chinaman is not the issue here. Finally, Dude responds by asking who is to blame...

Walter finally completes his point by bringing up the millionaire, Jeff Lebowski. Sometimes in arguments I feel we can get so caught up in our points that we don’t let the other person finish and this scene really captures that well. Dude is then the first one to casually swear in a laidback sort of way by claiming “That’s f***ing interesting.” Which feels pretty in character and is pretty realistic because not all people swear only when they’re angry.

Walter brings up his wealth, his resources and goes back to his point that “There is no reason, there is no F***ING reason, why his wife should go out and owe money all over town, and then they come and they pee on your f***ing rug! Am I wrong?” And now we see the argument Walter was truly trying to make, sometimes it takes a little more thought before we can articulate our point enough so that people can understand it. And in a way, the swearing here to drive home the point definitely feels earned.

The use of Walter’s rhetorical questions such as “Am I wrong?” make him seem so much more knowledgeable and confident in his argument. Again, pretty natural reaction for someone who is as heated as he is to do once they realise they’ve made a good argument, challenging them to try and argue with him now. Finishing off his argument with “That rug really tied the room together, did it not?” Once more, using that reincorporation of the first line in the scene as the finishing point of the argument. Using what Dude had said against him... Beautiful.

Donny once more interjects, “And this guy peed on it.” Thinking that he’s helping drive home the point which was pretty much made clear by Walter. In contrast to before and having got his points out of his system, Walter simply says “Donny. Please.” Just a simple, ‘He gets it man’ rather than ‘YOU’RE OUT OF YOUR ELEMENT’, showing that Walter can be calm once he has been heard.

Dude talks about finding this Lebowski guy and making him pay for his peed on rug, with Donny chiming in once more with “His name is Lebowski? That’s your name, Dude!” Showing us that Donny isn’t as aware as Walter is since he didn’t know that before they were talking about a different person, it’s also a rather dumb moment on Donny’s behalf which I think we can all relate to.

The scene comes to an end with Dude deciding on getting compensation from Jeff Lebowski, since his wife galivants around town and owes everyone money and “they pee on my rug?” Again we get some nice repetition from Walter who asks, “They peed on your f***ing rug?” Making it more of a passionate statement which causes Dude to repeat after him, “They peed on my f***ing rug...”

It’s just a real nice character interaction on the whole that makes you realise what these guys are all about. Dude is the relaxed one who just knows how to get by, Walter is the aggressive one who knows what he’s talking about and Donny is a bit of the outsider who mainly takes a backseat when Dude and Walter are out meaning business. You know their dynamic immediately.

Another nice thing about the scene is that it’s an argument between friends, you can tell they are a bunch of guys that can get on each other’s nerves and test their patience. You try and try to talk over your opponent sometimes and when they start making sense, you sit down and listen and acknowledge that they’re right. Friends argue, but it brings them together in an odd kind of way.

Searching around the internet for various clips, I found out that several people had believed this scene and several others in the film to have some sort of improvisation, however this is all scripted dialogue. It feels so natural and the actors just had to act it out which of course only enhanced the great writing. The film was a wonderful combination of good writing and good performances.

Jesus Quintana: The Bowling Rival

Watching the film I didn’t expect this kind of character to appear, since the Bowling Alley was more of a side aspect to the story for the Dude to recoup with his boys and talk about recent events. A cocky, confident and flamboyant rival to our main trio was something I was thinking of going for in Chappies.

Jesus Quintana appears in a scene which we see him prepare himself before going for a bowl, doing such things like licking the ball which gives the audience the impression that he is intimately involved with the sport of bowling and that he takes this hobby very seriously. We see him land a strike, immediately turning around to look at the viewer and dance almost as if he is taunting the audience. Putting us in a position to dislike this character.

We then get reaction shots of all our main guys, the Dude nods like “Yeah, not bad.”

Donny just happens to look back as we pass him with Jesus giving him a kiss gesture causing Donny to look rather confused.

Walter stares at him, unflinching and just staring. Dude admits that he’s a creep, but “he can roll, man.” giving him a little bit of credibility before Walter immediately tears it away by claiming he’s a pervert. We get to see what this character does to our main characters and in Walter’s case, we can tell that he despises him.

When Jesus comes around taunting the guys, Walter shuts up and gives him the same stern expression as before. Again, we get to see a quiet side to Walter’s anger. He doesn’t exchange with Jesus in anyway in this scene suggesting that he doesn’t want to give Jesus a reaction since that’s what he wants. Something interesting Mario discussed was having a character who doesn’t say much, ironically says so much and in an odd way, this interaction is a pretty good example of that.

We also get Dude’s laidback attitude when being confronted by Jesus’ shtick, he doesn’t get mad or feels the need to defend himself. But, his counter argument being “That’s just your opinion man.” suggests to me that he’s not particularly good at arguing and isn’t quick on his feet to think of a rebuttal. And this is pretty much all Jesus does in the whole film.

I thought he was going to play into the plot somehow, but he doesn’t. He’s just an aspect of the gang’s bowling life and we get to experience it just how our characters do. And I think that’s kind of perfect, since this is Dude’s downtime it makes sense. All of the things going on in Dude’s life right now are out of his place of relaxation, all the craziness he’s wrapped up in doesn’t matter now. It’s just the conflict between two competing bowling teams.

Reflection

In conclusion, I really didn’t expect to gain much from The Big Lebowski in relating to bowling and I feel like I’ve got plenty from such small scenes in the grander story. Just how the guys interact to having their own cocky rival, it’s what I planned on having and was extremely useful to watch.

Plus it’s a really good and entertaining film so that’s always a plus.

1 note · View note

malikuna · 7 years

Text

Bad Night - Installment 2

Inst. 1

Here is the next installment. More goodies to come and you wont regret it. Reggie was approaching and I could feel the heat rising in my chest with each step he took. It was like watching the makings of a car crash; only I couldn’t look away because I wanted to stop it from happening.

“She looks preoccupied with Cheryl. That girl can be a lot.” Archie gave up on getting Betty’s attention after one attempt. I don’t think he spotted the vulture stalking its prey either, and even if he did, he probably would’ve seen it as two cubs coming to cuddle instead.

“Yeah. I guess so.” This couldn’t be good but my hands were tied until something caused me to break them free and use them. I looked back at Archie, continuing conversation while a piece of my mind was still operating on watching over that golden hair from the corner of my eye. “Where did you say Veronica was again?”

“She and her mom had to go back to New York for the weekend. Some business with Hiram that needs to be solved. She didn’t tell me much and I don’t really pry because she doesn’t seem comfortable talking about anything having to do with her dad. I just let her open up to me about it when she’s ready, you know?” Archie had reached the point of intoxication where philosophical thoughts run deep; probably questioning whether or not it was ethical to turn a blind eye to Veronica’s pain. If he was asking for advice, he came to the wrong place.

“Yeah, well, sounds like a tough situation.” That was a weak response, coming from me. It didn’t offer an opinion or lead the conversation to a more interesting topic, just reiterated the problem. Archie had continued talking but my brain couldn’t be in two places at once and right now it was with Betty.

Reggie stood two bodies away, leaning against the bar, probably waiting for a drink, but undoubtedly staring down Betty and Cheryl while he did. I could almost see the drool dripping down from his eager mouth. The bartender handed him a glass and he was on the move again, this time, establishing contact. He tapped Betty on the shoulder and as she turned around to face her greeter, he waved to Cheryl whose smile was less than unwelcoming. He guzzled down what was his drink and slammed the glass down on the counter, the noise from impact making Betty and Cheryl jump. Don’t do it. He must not have realized the extreme discomfort, or maybe he didn’t care. Stepping between them, he wrapped his arms around the back of their necks, and pulled them in close, whispering something in Betty’s ear that made her try and pull away. That’s it. Violence is normally not my answer considering strength is not my forte. I don’t know if it was her, the booze, or both, but something was making me feel invincible.

“Hey! Jughead!” Archie was calling after me but his words fell empty before my ears. Rage was steaming out of my lungs and I saw red, all except for the three bodies in my sight.

“Back off, Reggie.” I stood before him, holding my ground even after he rose to face me.

“Hey, look girls. It’s the knight in shinning denim. Come to save the day, huh?” Reggie’s full height was a little more threatening than I would have liked. I almost had second thoughts but then I looked at Betty, her crystal eyes pleading for help, and I felt courage.

“Perhaps you should consider that he’s saving the day from you, Reggie.” Cheryl, as obnoxious as she was, always spoke her mind, and right now, her mind was backing me up.

“I don’t think they’re interested, Reggie. Maybe you should look somewhere else.” I was determined, and that was dangerous.

“Is that so?” Reggie grabbed the scruff of my t-shirt with one had, bringing his face close to mine, and took my drink with the other. “Maybe you should mind your own business, Donnie Darko.” My head felt wet and I realized he poured the remainder of my beer over my head. The liquid dripped down my face, soaking my shirt. I heard cackles coming from the football team watching the whole damn interaction. “Go back to your body guard, Jughead.” He pushed me and I stumbled back a foot or two.

“Right.” I shrugged and let a violent stream of air escape my nostrils as I tightly pressed my lips together. I turned away but something dark took over me and I pivoted back around instead, letting the force of my rotation guide my fist right into Reggie’s face. He didn’t look hurt so much as shocked, and then his face turned into pure anger and I loaded for another punch. I heard Archie approaching and he pulled me back; too bad that only gave Reggie the perfect opportunity for a direct hit. I was knocked out instantly.

When I woke up, I was laying in what I identified as Archie’s bed. My head was pounding and I couldn’t see out of my right eye. When I went to touch it, my fingertips came into contact with a swollen lid that was going to be out of commission for a while.

“Here’s some Advil and water to help with the pain. And an icepack to help with the swelling.” Betty’s voice was soft. She’d been sitting on the bed next to me, I couldn’t tell you for how long.

“Thanks. What happened? And where is everyone?” I looked around with my one eye and the room was empty except for her. I could remember everything up until I was knocked out but a big piece of my memory had been eaten by darkness.

“Well, after you blacked out, Archie got Reggie to back off and leave us alone. Then he picked you up and brought you back here. Cheryl went home, she was too shaken up about the whole thing, and I tagged along to make sure you were ok. Archie is downstairs on the phone with Veronica right now.” I could tell she was trying to keep the description of my rescue short for the purpose of maintaining my pride. Too bad she didn’t understand that my pride wasn’t my priority.

“Oh. Well, thanks.” I responded. She looked at me, confused.

“No, Jughead. Thank you. That Reggie was being a real creep. You really were our knight in shinning denim.” Her giggle sounded like music and she leaned in to kiss my cheek. Warmth erupted on my skin from where her lips touched and I felt better already. She was about to get up and leave, but I had to stop her.

“Betty?” She looked at me, waiting for what I would say next. “Could you stay here for a little while longer? I could use the company.” She smiled as the words left my mouth and her eyes lit up.

“Well, I do live next door. I’m sure I could stay until my mom calls me and then just zip on over there in a second.” I felt a sigh of relief escape my lungs and I decided to test my luck.

“And Betty?”

“Yes, Jughead?” She laughed at my formality.

“Would you want to do something? Some night?” Idiot. I tried to sound nonchalant in asking but only sounded nervous. She paused for a moment, analyzing me, coming to a conclusion that made her beam and made my heart flutter.

“I would love that, Jughead.”

And that is how I got my first date with Betty Cooper.

#bughead #riverdale #fanfic #writer #writing #betty cooper #betty x jughead #bughead fanfiction #jughead jones #fanfiction #bughead au #riverdale fanfiction #the alcoholic witch #bad night

44 notes · View notes

gazzhowie · 7 years

Text

My Top 25 Movies of 2016.

Yes, indeed. It’s that time of year again - This year is going to be a lot like last year unfortunately. I’m going to do another blast through a few films that deserve ‘special mention’, then just lay my Top 25 of 2016 out.

No long introduction. No 50 – 26 countdown like previous years. Let’s just bang straight on. Every film mentioned in the preceding paragraphs is well worth seeking out and experiencing whether it be a comedy, documentary, horror, drama, animation or blockbuster. The Top 25 that follows them though is obviously the one’s I regard as absolute must-see’s!

In terms of comedy I seemed to get a great deal more out of Hail, Caesar than most and was genuinely surprised by how hard a ‘cash-in’ sequel like Bad Neighbours 2 actually tried instead of going down the usual route of phoning it beat-by-beat. I liked Sleeping With Other People a great deal and thought Alison Brie gave easily one of the Top Ten best performances of the year. I thought both Goosebumps and Lazer Team were a great deal more fun than they had any right to be, and I thoroughly enjoyed the mixed-tone of The Mermaid though it was a long way off from the majesty of Kung Fu Hustle.

Unlike a lot of people, I seemed to think it was a strong year for documentaries. Two hit my Top 25 in joint position and then there was the horrifying depiction of college rape cover-up in The Hunting Ground which demands to be watched as part of a double-bill with Netflix’s jaw-dropping Audrie & Daisy. Netflix also had a great year in getting Amanda Knox out there which was an engrossing watch but couldn’t help but feel slight. Both The Barkley Marathon: The Race That Eats Its Young and Man VS. Snake (a sort-of sequel to The King of Kong) both finally landed on UK shores and were more than worth the wait. As did Welcome to Leith which was a staggeringly uncomfortable watch that plays out like a found footage horror film – until you remind yourself that it is 100% real. Finally there was Marathon: The Patriot’s Day Bombing which is every bit as moving and upsetting as you would imagine it to be.

Drama-wise, I was very impressed with Lamb and the performances in it. It skirted a line so deftly you don’t know quite whether to slap the label “paedophile drama” on it or whether that is missing the film’s point altogether. Disorder was an extremely solid if unexceptional home invasion type thriller but excels by proving to be one of the most accurate depictions of PTSD captured on film. I liked Room a great deal and was delighted to see the talents of Brie Larson were finally knocked into the stratosphere. As much as it lost its way towards the end, I had a lot of time for John Hillcoat’s Triple 9 which is filled to the brim with talented actors (and Kate Winslet!) doing strong work amidst some truly tense and well-executed set pieces. Ben Wheatley may make uneven movies here and there but he never makes a boring one and High Rise holds true to that. As chase thrillers go, the indie thriller River is well worth a watch just for its unrelenting sense of pace. The heavily maligned and (production) troubled Jane’s Got A Gun turned out not to be the turkey many envisaged and was in fact enormously watchable thanks to strong work from its cast. Norway took on the disaster movie to great B-movie effect with The Wave, Money Monster was a watchable and fun siege-style movie that shouldn’t be taken as importantly as it wants you to. And finally Goat is well worth seeking out. It’s horribly uncomfortable stuff but needs to be seen just for the double-whammy of an excellent Jonas Brothers’ performance AND a tolerable appearance from James Franco.

On the horror front, I was genuinely impressed with both Under the Shadows and The Witch, the final third of both films are ones that still linger and leave me feeling uncomfortable even now, months on. In a year quite barren for old-fashioned ‘creature features’, I sought comfort in and had a great time with the Aussie killer-dog exploitation-er, The Pack. Mike Flanagan absolutely knocked it out of the park with the Netflix exclusive, Hush, and I look forward to seeing it again. I’m normally no fan of the ‘anthology’ movie and there’s certainly a lot of awful ones out there but I was really taken with Southbound and, unlike a lot of those movies, didn’t find a weak link within it. On that note, I’m no fan of the ‘found footage’ movies nowadays but The Good Neighbour proved to be an effective gem that kept me guessing in terms of where it was going and has a typically strong, stoic performance from James Caan. For its first two thirds I was a genuine fan of Lights Out and thought it was on point to secure its place as my favourite horror of the year. Then it floundered into crassness in its final denouement and the film sadly come undone for me.

Animation wise, I liked both Kung Fu Panda 3 and Finding Dory way more than I thought I would given their purpose as ‘cash-grab lazy sequels’. Both found new ways or ideas to light up what should be tired concepts (the former taking a Seven Samurai style ‘train a village to defend a village’ approach and the latter utilising Ed O’Neill’s octopus character to break up the monotony of a beat by beat re-tread). Finally there was Kubo and the Two Strings whose structural issues in its final third were the only things keeping it from an appearance on my final Top 25. It’s a stunningly beautiful piece of work with some tremendously inventive moments (the face-off with the giant skeleton is one of the year’s best sequences!) and I’ll probably become more forgiving of its flaws with further re-watches.

Finally, on the ‘big’ blockbuster-esque front, I enjoyed Jon Faverau’s The Jungle Book a great deal on a technical level but felt flattened by the young lead actor’s VERY ‘stage school-y’ performance. I also thoroughly enjoyed the return of Jason Bourne and feel churlish for grumbling that it is only ‘very good’ instead of an ‘instant classic’ like the first three. It’s all very same-old, same-old in places but it brings out the big pay-off with its Vegas-set car-meggedon finale. I thought Doctor Strange was a tremendous accomplishment in bringing that particular character to the screen and for the most part I got a lot of entertainment from it, but for me Benedict Cumberbatch and that god-awful accent just didn’t work for me. One of the blockbuster surprises of the year was Star Trek Beyond which – bad writing aside (Simon Pegg tends to write very cloth-eared dialogue) – turned out to be relentlessly entertaining and full of gusto in all the ways the inert second movie was not. Possibly the biggest surprise even over that movie though was The Shallows, which was considerably better than it had any right to be. A big, high concept, one location, survival movie with a transfixing performance from Blake Lively, this plummets into the realms of stupidity in its final confrontation but all that goes before it is an absolute B-movie joy! Deadpool was a delight that hopefully blasted the cobwebs off of the comic book movie subgenre with a lead performance from Ryan Reynolds that finally cements his years of being underrated. Rogue One: A Star Wars Story most definitely came good midway into its second act and slowly evolved into one of the best blockbusters of the year, but what went before it was so unnecessarily choppy and uneven that it took a bit too long to settle in for the ride. Netflix’s Siege of Jadotville was a terrifically enthralling Zulu-type true life war movie that far too few seem to have taken the time to check out and far too little are bestowing praise upon. It’s well worth a look. Finally there’s Kill Zone 2, an – in name only – sequel to the Donnie Yen / Sammo Hung martial arts classic. This time Tony Jaa heads up the cast for a head-spinning action extravaganza involving prison kick-offs, organ trafficking, shoot-outs and so much more. It’s a genuinely brilliant blast of action cinema. You don’t have to have seen the first Kill Zone either by the way. They just slapped that sequel title on this unrelated movie.

And now, without further ado, here’s my Top 25 movies of 2016 that - thanks to some blatant cheating on my part - is clearly a Top 27 as I just could not be drawn to pick between the best documentary and the best horror...

25) The Invitation

I went into this sniffily, half paying attention, just so I could rip the terrible guy from Prometheus a new bum-hole and... boy did it start to slowly grip me. Anyone who says they saw the final act coming is a liar. And that final image? One of they year’s most haunting!

24) Victoria

An entire film made up of one take - no cuts - ends up being one of the most enthralling and technically captivating films of the year. It’s lazy to just call it a ‘heist movie’ when it is offering so much more.

23) Keanu

Utterly disrespected on its UK release, this is a must not just for Key & Peele fans but for fans of legitimately funny, laugh-out-loud comedies. This is the sort of film that you see and start passing around amongst your friends as a sort of “You’ve GOT to see this!” secret gift. It’s all the more a must-see in light of George Michael’s death. You’ll see.

22) Tickled / Weiner

I genuinely could not call it between these two documentaries. Both are astounding pieces of work. Tickled takes you from a place of “I ain’t watching no documentary about competitive tickling!” to “Ok, whah! Hold up! What’s going on?” to actual “What. The. Fuck.” And Weiner? Well Weiner is all the more a must-watch in light of revelations that Anthony Weiner could well have inadvertently taken down Hillary Clinton’s campaign for president. It is a total jaw-dropper of a documentary in the sense that you continually question not just how the makers got this level of access but how they were allowed to carry on filming during some of the scenes presented. The McDonald’s scene could well be both the most degrading scene of the year and one of the year’s best action sequences.

21) The Wailing

One part ‘possession’ movie. One part Korean police procedural. Two parts horror movie. And finally one part ‘mystical battle of good and evil’ epic. This is an absolute blast of a film that grabs you extremely early on and holds you tight for its lengthy running time. You never know what’s coming next and that makes the scares - when they drop - all the more strong. Go in knowing as little as possible, and give yourself over to it completely.

20) Zootopia

There was absolutely nothing about this movie (entitled Zootropolis everywhere but the UK, bizarrely) in its marketing that made me think it was something I a) needed to see and b) had not seen done a hundred times before: Cute Disney animals riffing on some well-worn subgenre of cinema to uneven effect. But this was REALLY something different; playing with the police procedural and the beats of the standard buddy movie, this ends up being an excellent lesson in tolerance, racism and persecution. It’s a joy from start to finish.

19) Everybody Wants Some!!

I went into this under a swell of hype because everything Richard Linklater puts his name to seems to get an immediate seal of high quality nowadays. I was really reluctant towards it because I just thought “M’eh. He’s done Dazed & Confused. How good can this actually be?” And you know what? Believe what you hear. It’s a real delight.

18) Arrival

Ignore the trailers that try to sell you this as some sort of Independence Day type movie. Read up on as little about it as you can. Go in completely cold. Give yourself over to it and pay close attention. This movie will get deep into your headspace, warm your heart and change your perception of how the human mind sees and comprehends structure and storytelling for a long time to come.

17) The Revenant

We seem to have thrown the Oscar at Leonardo DiCaprio and pushed this film to the side but in doing so we forget what an absolute tremendous piece of work it is on a visual and technical level. You cannot conceivably discuss the best cinema had to offer this year and not involve this epic revenge ‘poem’ in the conversation.

16) Sausage Party

I really wanted to dislike this. I did. I saw all the reviews and high word-of-mouth and I absolutely thought half the western world was off their fucking rockers, so to speak. But this really is THAT much fun and it absolutely is that hilarious. Not every joke works and when they clunk they thud. Yet there’s more hits than misses - and you’ll not see a better talking food movie about religion and existentialism this year!

15) Hell or High Water

They’ll sell you on this being an ‘all guns blazing’ heist thriller just to get you through the door. But, in reality, this is a thoughtful spin on the ‘greedy banking crisis’ told as a surprisingly elegant modern western. Chris Pine, Ben Foster and Jeff Bridges are all universally excellent. And the final scene is a slow burning, mature reward for your investment.

14) 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi

Written off as political propaganda upon its release, this is actually one of Michael Bay’s best movies with a remarkable performance from John Krasinski. It’s a bombastic, relentless, gory, engaging and exhilarating piece of work and I think time is going to be kind to this movie, more than people realise. It’s the best war movie of the year but I think it could go on to be considered one of the best modern war movies of the decade.

13) Bone Tomahawk

Quite possibly the best ever bait-and-switch since Robert Rodriguez took his crime thriller to the ‘Titty Twister’, this is a fabulous assured old-school western with superb turns from Kurt Russell, Richard Jenkins, Patrick Wilson and (yes) Matthew Fox. If you know nothing about this already, go in that way and... well... try to survive! Good luck!

12) Spotlight

A good old fashioned procedural movie that plays out like the true life dramas of the 1970s - Pull together a great cast, have them go off a great script based on an enthralling real incident, keep the direction clean and unshowy and just sit back and let the results come together as they should. One of the best dramas of the year. Totally deserved of its Oscar, in my opinion.

11) Eddie The Eagle

Absolutely NOTHING about this movie should work in the least. It’s a true life sporting underdog tale where pretty much 95% of the ‘facts’ are unashamedly fictionalised. It’s got a lead performance that you have to warm to because it takes a while to get past the gurning. It’s apparent Hugh Jackman is only there to help the budget... and yet, within the first few beats of the film’s epically retro soundtrack, you are hooked into one of the loveliest and warmest films of the years. It’s very much an explosion of feel-good cinematic hugs.

10) Midnight Special

A father kidnaps his son from the religious cult he’s been held at the centre of and takes him on an obsessive quest to get to a very specific place at a very specific time. That’s all you need to know right there. Seek out nothing else. Head on into a viewing of this with just that information and lie back in the warm embrace of masterful storytelling.

9) The Hateful Eight

Tarantino’s playful homage to both John Carpenter’s The Thing and Agatha Christie’s storytelling of old is a thoroughly impressive piece of work, lauding over its love of its own dialogue, brazen performances and showy directorial flourishes. It’s a ‘guess who’ that - whilst not as clever as it thinks it is - will certainly have you absolutely captivated. The thankfully short appearance from the painful Zoe Bell is the only flaw this otherwise exceptional chamber-piece offers.

8) The Big Short

The true story of the 2008 banking crisis as told by an all-star cast - in the style of a comedic heist movie? With celebrity cameos used as a glossary index? As told by the guy who directed Anchorman? Come on. This should never have worked. This should never have even been considered seriously. And yet, here it is and here it is as one of the best movies of the year. Don’t worry if you leave your first experience of it angry. You’re meant to.

7) Captain America: Civil War

Quite simply, the best blockbuster of the year by a large margin. In amongst the fast-becoming-impenetrable size of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the Captain America movies have emerged (especially because of the double whammy of this and The Winter Soldier) as the franchise’s lynch-pin and high bastion of quality. This all-star beatdown should have, by rights, been the clusterfuck that snapped the wheels of the MCU. Instead it is one of the most insanely enjoyable blockbusters of the year and - with that airport sequence - the owner of the best action set-piece of the year!

6) Hunt For The Wilderpeople

I was desperate to see this because of my adoration for What We Do In The Shadows and it genuinely did not disappoint. It’s funny, moving and really rather lovely with a very subtle but warm performance from Sam Neill that, by rights, should see him nominated for some awards come that particular season.

5) Don’t Breathe / Train to Busan

I couldn’t call it between these two as the best horrors of the year no more than I could between the documentaries. Train to Busan takes the (frankly exhausted) zombie genre, puts it on the tracks and sends it speeding off through a cavalcade of carnage, scares and truly brilliant action sequences. You’ll rip the arms of your chair and scream out loud watching this one. And Don’t Breathe is a truly exceptional reinvention of the home invasion movie in all the ways Busan reinvigorates the zombie movie. Jane Levy and Stephen Lang do work here that should, by rights, get them nominated for a boatload of awards - but sadly won’t because awards councils very rarely respect horror. Yes, it gets a little daft the higher up the dial they turn the tension but that doesn’t undo the fantastic work done here in setting up one of the geographically cleanest and leanest horror films of the year.

4) Green Room

I love a good siege movie and Jeremy Saulnier most definitely delivers a great one. I was ‘in’ from the outset as I was a huge, huge, huge fan of Saulnier’s Blue Ruin but this more than lives up to expectations. It’s bigger than the ‘punks versus neo-nazis’ longline it hides behind. It is gruelling and gory and exceptionally tense. It is also driven steadfastly by another effortlessly brilliant performance from Anton Yelchin, who died far too young in 2016.

3) Creed

A SEVENTH Rocky movie after the stretch - a lovely stretch, but a stretch none the less - that was Rocky Balboa (aka Rocky VI)? A spin-off about Apollo Creed’s illegitimate son being coached by an aged Rocky? Oh come on! This sounds utterly awful! No better than that dire Rocky VI ‘spec’ script that appeared online in the late 90s with Rocky Jr taking on the son of Ivan Drago. But... But.. BUT, hold up! This film is the real deal. A movie made by die hard Rocky fans for die hard Rocky fans with the actual Rocky up, front and centre giving it his blessing every step of the way. It’s not just a thematic modernisation of the franchise but it is also a pitch perfect spiritual return to the raw, indie-style, rough-and-ready feel of the first classic. Stallone’s Best Supporting Actor nomination was truly deserved. His campaign might have been a little classless but the nomination was earned - if for nothing else that heart-breaking scene in the doctor’s office!

2) Sing Street

NINE separate people recommended this film to me and I ignored every single one of them. I am not a fan of musicals. I’ve not seen Once. I lasted exactly 10 minutes into Begin Again. I watched the trailer for this, saw the lad from Transformers 4 in a bad wig and just thought “Eurgh! No!” Then a lad who’s opinion I legitimately respect pushed hard for me to give it a go and I threw it on as a 99p iTunes rental one rainy Sunday afternoon and... I was left in tears! It resonated hard with me in a lot of ways from my own childhood, growing up in the 80s. It’s really lovely and special and you can clearly tell that the people behind it are coming from a place of honesty and passion about that era and the music. It’s a fabulous little film and I have no qualms in admitting that I was wrong to pre-judge it.

1) The Nice Guys

I am an obsessive fan of all things Shane Black anyway but this truly was the absolute gift of the year for me. Not only was it a truly fabulous return to the well Black has played around in as director with Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and writer with The Last Boy Scout and The Long Kiss Goodnight, it’s a film that will transform your opinion of what Russell Crowe is capable of. Featuring some of the strongest gags of the year, this is a deliberately convoluted shaggy-dog PI tale that slowly mutates from a comedy caper into a genuinely strong shoot ‘em up thriller. I loved it from its opening car crash gag right the way through to its sequel baiting final scene. A sequel that... just like Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, The Last Boy Scout, The Long Kiss Goodnight, etc... we will NEVER GET TO SEE because APPARENTLY NONE OF YOU FUCK TRUMPETS TOOK THE TIME TO SEE THIS!

Rectify that now. “And stuff!”

2 notes · View notes

frabjous-fragment · 3 years

Text

a critique of lesbian discourse from a nonbinary perspective

(saw something that upset me enough to want to get my opinion out there, so here i am, turning to my tum blur dot com poe eh tree blog to engage in lgbt discourse. happy pride)

I am an agender person designated male at birth. I consider myself pansexual with asexual characteristics, but historically, I have mostly been romantically involved with people who could be painted broadly as transfeminine. Because of this, binarism that tries to divide me from the lesbian community has always stuck out to me more. I hope to illustrate to people who will keep an open mind how the dismissal of individuals identifying themselves as bi lesbians is rooted in binarism.

This carrd seems like the most comprehensive and mainstream formulation of the argument I could find, so I'll go down it point by point. Before diving in, though, I want to point out that the author, an asexual and nonbinary dfab lesbian, feels so strongly about this issue that they operate a blocklist of people who identify as bisexual lesbians on Twitter. Bear the fact that people feel strongly enough about the issue to draw lines in the sand through the community in mind, as we dissect the causes, effects, and purposes of this issue's hot button status.

tl;dr: There is no antagonistic conflict of interest between bisexual women and lesbian women.

"Lesbian is not an umbrella term." It's not surprising to me that the carrd opens like this, since the entire argument requires this prior, but the formulation here is actually very weak and even concedes things that weaken it further. "These simplifications of people's sexuality were grown out of as queer people started to create labels and spaces that more accurately described them." Buckle up, because most of the rest of this post rests on this very loaded throwaway sentence. This is a simplification of the truth and overlooks some pretty unfortunate history. The fact of the matter is that bisexual and asexual people were included in the discourse of the gay rights movement from the very beginning. The Asexual Manifesto was written in 1972, and Donny the Punk, founder of the first LGBT student movement, identified as bisexual (recorded in writing earliest in 1972- incidentally, when he discusses his break with elements of the gay liberation movement, due to his treatment after falling in love with a woman in 1970). Therefore, the argument that people simply used weak terminology like "homophile" in the early days because there was not more specific terminology available to people lacks something. The cruder truth is that it was all people needed for compatibility, to go to gay hookup spots, make friends, have sex, and maybe find a long term relationship. Bisexual, transgender, intersex, asexual, and further subcommunities arose with the rise of gay identity politics, and conflicts of interest within it. Who would these conflicts of interest be revised out of our community's history? The answer is simple and unfortunate- sexism. Donny was far from the only individual met with the sentiment that he was a gender traitor- lesbian separatism, an unfortunate reaction to real issues the early gay movement had with representing lesbians, swept through lesbian spaces in the 70s, devastating bisexual and transgender women and bolstering the nascent bisexual and transgender movements. By the end of the decade, TERF queen Janice Raymonds included "testimony" from other bigots against two named trans women existing peacefully in lesbian spaces, in her hate screed The Transsexual Empire, quoting another TERF's writing as saying "I feel raped when Olivia passes off Sandy ... as a real woman." This is an obvious appropriation of the language of personal rights to justify bigotry, judgment, hate, and exclusion. All manner of feminists and lesbians have attempted to whitewash the darker sentiments of this period by dismissing the proponents of radical, genocidal propositions like Valerie Solanas' SCUM Manifesto as "just venting" or "fringe lunatics". (To not get too into it, Solanas went back and forth on whether or not her work was satire, in a manner I find eerily similar to what reactionaries do when they put 'this account is satire' on their Twitters.) This is easy to prove incorrect; non-buzzword, actual, political misandry had reached the highest levels of feminist leadership and academia. Observe what one of the first professors of women's studies in the world, Sally Miller Gearhart, had to say on "the male question": I) Every culture must begin to affirm a female future. "The future is female" is a phrase that has been effectively neutralized and recuperated by less radical elements, which I am all for. It is vague enough to work to better ends than the next two points by itself. II) Species responsibility must be returned to women in every culture. Here it becomes more clear that, in the minds of many prominent feminists of the 1970s, women would have to be supreme over men. There isn't much of another way to interpret the statement that women must bear all responsibility for humanity. III) The proportion of men must be reduced to and maintained at approximately 10% of the human race. How would this be done? The only answer is eugenics through selective abortion imposed by the state, and genocide. Clearly, even from just a perspective of women's rights, this is inadmissible to anyone who is genuinely pro-choice on the

subject of women's bodies, even though this is not a situation we usually think of. The very suggestion of this is fascistic. Make no mistake that the modern sentiment against bi lesbians is not rooted in the same fascist gender essentialism. One denies that "benign" anti-bisexual and anti-transgender sentiments still predominate in lesbian and gay communities at your own risk. Not only are you speaking over the lived experiences of people like me, you are speaking against the statistics. Not only do incredible majorities of 88.5% of gay men and 71% of lesbian women, compared to 48% of bisexual and similar people, still exclude trans people from romantic and sexual considerations due to the subliminal sexism they learn from both mainstream society and their LGBT communities, but surveys show that gay men and lesbian women respectively distrust bisexual men and bisexual women's attraction to them and affiliation with their communities. (Also widely*... couldn't resist pointing out the common eggcorn.) "Lesbian used to be the term that described all sapphics, but isn't anymore, and that's a positive thing. Having more specific labels has allowed for people's bisexuality and pansexuality to not be erased in common language, and was a step towards getting rid of the pressure for people attracted to multiple genders to 'pick a side'. The emergence of terms like 'bi/pan lesbian' and 'bi/pan hetero' reinforces the notion of needing to 'pick a side', and obscures the common definitions of all the sexualities involved" This is that concession that I mentioned earlier. Credit where it's due, it's an elevation of the discourse to actually admit this when other people won't even do that. But it again ignores why these pressures exist, and incorrectly presupposes a demand for terminology that could be argued to be divisive without looking into why such a demand exists in reality. In a world without these terrible and stupid issues of sexism, people would simply say "I am both gay and straight" and everything would be dandy. Nobody has ever called themselves "bi/pan hetero" and I'm almost not even being hyperbolic. It's not an identity community. Proposing this just sets up the writer's argument that the terminology of "bi/pan lesbian" (and its more accurate parallel, "bi/pan mlm", which I have seen- putting aside my qualms with the limitations and binarism of xlx terminology even when the left operator is nb) divides the bi/pan community. This is the same logic battleaxe bisexuals who view the pansexual label as biphobic and attack people they see as bi (and yes, pan people are also bi by definition) use for their argument that the pansexual label divides bi people, when the only people that I see it "dividing" are the same people getting pissy about trifling points of queer theory that nobody else cares about for no proven reason. In real spaces, nobody tries to get bisexual people to line up on one wall and pansexual people to line up on the other. Pan people do not engage in biphobic discourse. The issue is empty; a non-issue. This it shares in common with the bi lesbian discourse, where the issues are not directly with the communities under fire, but instead vague, abstract, unsubstantiated and unfalsifiable notions of "omg you'll make the straights think [blank]!!" It seems like a theme where, even within LGBT, majorities attack their negations and accuse them of being divisive for asserting themselves and asking for some solidarity in return for the solidarity they provide in the community; you see this with asexual and trans people as well, but that's not what this post is about. Since the entire argument is built on this first point, I could honestly stop here, from a logical perspective. But people have strong emotional responses to the subsequent points, and without going through those, people will change "is not" to "ought not to be" and carry on.

"Making Distinct Spaces for Different Sexuality's Unique Experiences is Important." Around here is where the carrd really starts to resort to trying to twist truisms against their opponents, and on the briefest reflection this doesn't work. The idea that the term "bi lesbian" erases the distinction in between bi women and lesbian women seems to me to commit a category error by defining lesbian women as exclusively homosexual women and then pointing out the obvious truth that these women are distinct from bisexual women. The truth is, bisexual women and lesbian women are not categorically different in really any way other than their relationship to heterosexuality, a distinction easily expressed by- you guessed it- the label "bi lesbian". To reiterate and combine into earlier points: There is no antagonistic conflict of interest between bisexual women and lesbian women.

"Woman Aligned Nonbinary People are Included in Lesbian Attraction". Another truism. Let's move on to the single clause of the single sentence that contains the actual argument- "implying otherwise by wanting to separate that attraction into a new label is enbyphobic invalidating lesbian attraction" So, hi! As a woman aligned nonbinary person, I am here to tell you that this is not correct! I think this is a lot easier for dfab nonbinary people and dmab binary trans women to say than is it for dmab nonbinary people like myself to say. When your identity is as arcane as "I am not a woman but I identify with women because I am of a marginalized neutral gender", a lot more people decide not to take you seriously. If you take out the bolded words, this statement becomes correct, so we're going to focus on them. The only people saying anything about non-binary people not being included in lesbianism by default are the antis and the radfems they unwittingly serve, who actually do believe that point and see it as a good thing. But unfortunately, as a dmab nonbinary person who does not get sorted as a woman under binarism, my experience has been that I am already excluded from lesbianism in practice. If you get sorted as a woman under binarism, good for you! But to say that all lesbians do is obviously incorrect, when you consider all the budding trans women who still have beards and face largely similar issues in the lesbian community. To say that this state of affairs is fine is harmful to trans people; to say that this is different from what people like me face is arbitrary, and arguably binarist. Sapphism needs to look deeper than the surface and accept a foundation built on ties of solidarity and identity with no tests of purity.

"Having a Lean or Strong Prefrence Does Not Make You Any Less Bisexual". (Preference*, firstly.) I am not sure what this truism is doing here. Even many bi lesbians would agree that preferring other women is not what makes them lesbians, their membership in the lesbian community is what makes them lesbians. Refer to the above point; each community should be built on nothing more than solidarity and identity.

"Lesbians Don't Have Attraction to Men or Men-Aligned Nonbinary People, Even When on the Split Attraction Model". Here it is, the Big Chungus of arguments in the bi lesbian discourse. This is one that is seen often that people feel very strongly about, and probably the most contentious, since the implication that bi lesbians facilitate abuse of lesbians seems to motivate how a lot of people feel on the subject. Who has the power here? The insinuation that bi women have more privilege than lesbians is silly and biphobic. Clearly, it's the abusive men who have all the power in this arrangement. So how is the presence or absence of bi lesbians going to change what abusive men, who don't believe in sexual orientation, let alone care about it, decide to do? It can only change the excuses they use, which are chosen at convenience. This is a trick that patriarchy has played on us to get us to attack each-other instead of the enemy. For such a common and spicy point of rhetoric, I'm surprised I didn't write more against it here, but I really feel that the argument against it is that simple. I'll add a personal note here, and say that the dismissal of the divergent opinions of people sorted as males under binarism, alleging that we're "rapey" and want to appropriate things that aren't ours rather than participate in solidarity, is incredibly harmful to those of us who happen to be lesbians, even by the strictest trans-inclusive definition.

"Trans Women are Women". Truism. This is by far the weakest point. Nobody is advancing "bi lesbian" as a trans-inclusive label, though as I said above, it's a statistical fact that bisexual people are much more trans-positive than homosexual people, and therefore, as a transgender person, I tend to feel more welcomed around them. Of course, that's not a categorical distinction, but an unfortunate tendency.

"A Lesbian isn't Less of a Lesbian for Previously Dating Men". Truism. This is a stronger point, but only because it is closer to real rhetoric supporting the idea that bi lesbians are "real". Bisexual women will answer the question of "would you be open to dating a man again?" in the affirmative, and homosexual women will answer in the negative. Some members of the lesbian community do not completely rule out the prospect of dating men, even though it is not something they currently pursue.

The above are the reasons why the community should not fall into the bi lesbian discourse, and the refutations to its arguments. In order to be in full solidarity with fringe members of our sub-communities against bigotry, we must not fall into needless categorical division of groups when our interests are the same. There is no antagonistic conflict of interest between bisexual women and lesbian women.

#bi lesbian #pan lesbian #bi discourse #lesbian discourse #pan discourse #lgbt discourse #pride discourse #queer theory #agender #bi lesbian discourse

3 notes · View notes

rebeccahpedersen · 5 years

Text

Days On Market: Do’s And Dont’s

TorontoRealtyBlog

Oh wow, am I ever having a flashback to childhood.

Do any of you know where I’m going with this one? If the title of today’s blog post is any indication, you might recall:

“Don’t do as Donny Don’t does.”

Remember that line from The Simpsons?

Even as a child, I knew that the writers of this show were including just enough cerebral humour and jokes geared towards adults to keep them from turning the channel when their kids were watching.

Confusing, but funny.

So goes today’s blog title, although many of the readers will not find the antics pertaining to days on market all that humourous.

What are days on market?

Simply put, it’s how long a property has been listed for on MLS. We abbreviate as “DOM” sometimes, and yet expect everybody to automatically know what this means. DOM is a statistic that, like many others, has been losing meaning over the last few years. “Sale-to-List ratio” is yet another example, and we have explored this at length before.

Have we ever had a dedicated blog post about DOM? I don’t think so.

And yet I do believe we’re at the point where one is necessary.

So today, I’ll explain some of the current issues with the days on market statistic, specifically how the stat is used, and I’ll ask a series of questions. For those of you that are in the market, or have been recently, and/or those MLS junkies who have their own thoughts and opinions about how things should be done, please feel free to answer the questions as you see fit.

As mentioned in a blog post two weeks ago, a reader emailed me out of frustration and told me that agents were starting to utilize a new technique that allowed them to increase their personal stats: sell a property, and then simply terminate the listing, and re-list new, hence showing zero DOM.

She emailed me the property she was talking about, and it was already on my radar. I had seen this before a few times that week already with other listings.

The major issue we have with DOM is also linked to the issue with “new listings” on MLS, and it has the ability to undermine the integrity of the statistics that the Toronto Real Estate Board publishes. If a property at 789 Smith Street is listed for sale on January 1st, and sits on the market, unsold, for 42 days before it is terminated, and re-listed on February 11th, then not only do the days on market start over at zero, but the listing counts as a “new listing” when it’s not.

Question #1: Should DOM continue to run on MLS with a property, regardless of re-listing?

Answer as you see fit, but this, of course, opens up other doors that we must walk through.

Let’s say that you would argue DOM should act as an easement, which is to say that it “runs with the property.”

In that case noted above, once the property is re-listed, the next day will show as the 43rd day, not the 1st.

But there are several “what if” scenarios.

Question #1a: What if the price has been changed?

Is it really fair to continue the DOM if the price has been changed?

Let’s say that 789 Smith Street was listed for sale on January 1st at $1,199,900, and it was terminated after 42 days as described above. The property was then re-listed at $1,149,900.

Should DOM start over?

The argument for the “no” side would be that it’s unfair to attribute 43 “days on market” to that listing, at $1,149,900, because it surmises that the property has been for sale that long at that price. The consumers might be confused, or led to believe something other than what is fact.

The argument for the “yes” side would be that the property is still for sale, and DOM is merely counting “days on market,” regardless of price.

You decide.

Now another nugget:

Question #1b: What if the listing brokerage has changed?

Do we look at “DOM” in terms of the property, or the listing agent?

Do whom, or what, are we applauding or chastising when DOM is low or high?

From the brokerage perspective, it would be entirely unfair to continue the days on market when a new and different agent takes over the listing. If John Smith of Re/Max has the property listed at $1,199,900 from January 1st to February 11th, the listing is cancelled, and the property is then re-listed with Jane Jones of Royal LePage, then should Jane really “inherit” those days on market?

Perhaps the consumers will say, “I don’t care. Agent statistics are not my concern, and the integrity of the listing and thus the MLS system should come first and foremost.”

I’m inclined to agree, as a consumer. But I would disagree as a broker, and I can see a middle ground here. TREB has, finally, developed a very simple “History” button on our own internal MLS system that allows users to click and have a new browser window open with the entire history of htat property. Would TREB allow something like that for consumers? Haha, that was rhetorical. They never would. That would be way too helpful, after all.

But buyer agents can run searches, and they should be educating their buyers. It’s very easy to email, or send multiple listings, and say, “This has been on the market for 2 days, but was previously listed with another company for 43 days.”

Now what if an agent simply wants to “re-start” the DOM?

You know what I mean, right?

The agent wakes up one morning, sun shining, birds chirping, let out a big yawn with an accompanying stretch and say, “You know what? I don’t like how the DOM are piling up for 789 Smith Street. I think I’m going to refresh that listing.”

Refresh, re-start, recharge, re-do, whatever you want to call it, we know it looks something like this:

Here’s an example from this week where the property was re-listed for the same price, by the same listing brokerage (not shown).

So is there any difference between these two listings?

No. There is not. Same property, same price, same listing brokerage, and yet different “days on market.”

Question #2: Should a listing agent be able to re-list for the same price, and re-start the DOM?

I think this is a spot where most of you will agree the answer is “no,” and personally, I wouldn’t disagree.

This is a blatant end-around the integrity of DOM, and completely undermines what it is, and how it is supposed to help guide consumers.

For all intents and purposes, this house is now on its 27th day on market, no questions asked, no debate. And yet here we see the listing on day zero.

So shall we outlaw this practice? Most certainly!

But then it merely encourages agents to re-list at $1 lower, and we start to play games once again.

On the front of agents’ MLS home pages they all have a customized feature called “Today’s Listings,” as seen here:

I live in this box, really, and truly.

I click those links dozens of times every day, maybe into the hundreds. It’s how I choose to monitor market activity and new listings, and I check every single night at 11:50pm before the new listings reset.

So what are the “updated” listings, you ask?

Those are listings that have been altered in any way. You’d like to think that this reflects price changes (or increases…), removal of “offer dates,” or more important matters. But agents know how to manipulate listings to ensure their listings show up in the “Updated Listings” section, often by simply inserting a single comma into the text section.

My point is that if we were to outlaw the practice of re-listing at the same price, with the same agent, to try to “re-start” the days on market to zero, I believe that agents would think outside the box in that regard, just as they already do with respect to Updates.

Moving on, how do the days on market work with regards to a conditional sale?

Well, if you list a property on January 1st, and the property is sold conditionally on January 10th, but the waivers aren’t all completed until January 20th, how long is the property on the market?

You would argue that the property is on the market for 19 days. Technically 20, but MLS has this notion of “zero days on market,” as we know. Semantics…

When it comes time to input the actual “sale date,” there is a grey area.

Some might believe the property was “sold” on January 10th, and some might believe it was “sold” on January 20th.

And guess what? It’s up to the user to decide. I have add/edit capabilities on MLS, so I can do as I please. See:

Many brokerages have an administrator do this, and many allow their agents to do so.

Bottom line: the actual “sold date” is a grey area, and that affects the days on market.

Question #3: Should ‘days on market’ reflect the total days before a firm sale, or only up to the conditional sale?

The easiest answer is, “A sale is a sale. Use the first date, and as a result, the days on market will be an unintended benefit.”

Okay, sure. But what if the property is sold conditionally on January 10th, then the waivers are due on January 20th but the deal falls through. Then the property is re-sold on January 31st, firm? Wouldn’t that throw the previous methodology out the window? You simply can’t have it both ways.

And for those agents who do believe that the “sold date” is the date on the offer, which date on the offer is that?

a) The offer date b) The date the confirmation of acceptance is signed

An offer written on January 10th might not be formally accepted, conditional or unconditional, until January 12th if there are sign-backs. So in the case where an agent argues the “sold date” should reflect when the property was first sold, ie. conditionally or unconditionally, they might still choose from two dates.

–

As with anything a prospective real estate buyer may see on MLS, whether it’s functionality of the site, layout of the listings, features (or lack thereof), or metrics and/or statistics, there are going to be differences in opinion with respect to what should and shouldn’t be done. We can always build a better mousetrap, and we can also agree that the forces of good and evil will always intersect among the agent community.

I don’t believe that a statistic or a metric has a purpose if it cannot be, a) properly defined, b) properly implemented, c) protected from misuse.

When it comes to the days on market metric, we don’t really know how to define it, we certainly haven’t implemented any standards, and clearly the metric has been misused.

This isn’t quite as bad as reporting sales at $1 back when agents and sellers were rebelling against the Competition Bureau’s ruling that forced TREB to share sale data, but I’m in favour of cleaning up any misuse on the MLS system.

Personally, I think Question #2 proposed above has the simplest answer, but again, there’s also a work-around for those agents who don’t agree.

I welcome your two cents on the matter, if you can spare the change…

The post Days On Market: Do’s And Dont’s appeared first on Toronto Realty Blog.

Originated from https://ift.tt/2YpQNV3

0 notes

jeroldlockettus · 5 years

Text

Extra: Mark Teixeira Full Interview

Mark Teixeira, the retired Yankee first baseman, hit 409 career home runs — No. 54 on the all-time list. The hardest thing to do in sports, he says: hitting a baseball. (Photo: Elsa/Getty)

A conversation with former Major League Baseball player and current ESPN analyst Mark Teixeira, recorded for the Freakonomics Radio series “The Hidden Side of Sports.”

Listen and subscribe to our podcast at Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or elsewhere. Below is a transcript of the episode, edited for readability. For more information on the people and ideas in the episode, see the links at the bottom of this post.

* * *

This is a Freakonomics Radio extra: our full interview with Mark Teixeira, the former baseball All-Star who’s been appearing in our “The Hidden Side of Sports” series. Teixeira retired after the 2016 season, having played 14 years in the big leagues. He hit 409 home runs, won lots of offensive and defensive awards, and helped lead the New York Yankees to a World Series title in 2009.

Stephen DUBNER: Mark, if you would just start by literally saying your name and what you do?

Mark TEIXEIRA: Mark Teixeira, currently ESPN analyst and real estate developer in Atlanta, Georgia.

DUBNER: Very good. How old are you now?

TEIXEIRA: I am 38.

DUBNER: You played for 14 seasons?

TEIXEIRA: 14 years. 15 professionally, 14 in the bigs.

DUBNER: Yeah, all right. Let’s go back. So for people who know baseball, Mark Teixeira is a big big big big name. For people who don’t know baseball — and there are people out there — we’ll expose them to you. Let’s start with you as a kid. Talk about growing up, Baltimore, I believe. Talk about growing up as a kid, your family, your dad was a Naval Academy graduate. Just describe you, your family, and especially sports.

TEIXEIRA: Yes, so I had one of those really cool childhoods where both my parents were around. I had an older sister, my dad being a Navy guy — graduated from the academy — was tough on me, but fair. He really gave me a blueprint of how to act and treating people with respect and keeping my hair short and making sure I said ‘yes sir’ and ‘yes ma’am’ and those type of things — things that he learned at the Naval Academy. I was really lucky to have a family around me that gave me every opportunity to succeed. I played every sport as a kid. We didn’t have the cell phones and all the cool technology back in the day when I grew up in Severna Park, Maryland. So, I went outside and played.

DUBNER: Was baseball your best sport from the outset?

TEIXEIRA: It always was. And I actually enjoyed playing basketball more. I played backyard football. I played soccer, tennis, but I was always good at baseball. So I knew baseball was going to be a sport for my future.

DUBNER: Can you pinpoint the moment, or day, month, year, when you said to yourself, “Oh, I’m way better than everybody else.”

TEIXEIRA: Yes. And most kids grow up being — if you’re an elite athlete you’re going to be the best kid on your team. But you never really think you’re going to make it until you get that first call or letter from a pro scout. And I was a sophomore in high school and pro scouts started showing up to my games. And that’s when I was talking to my coaches and talking to my dad and talking to some of the scouts, saying, “Wow, I could actually play professional baseball. How cool is that?”

DUBNER: Your role model as I understand, it was Don Mattingly. Yes? Was he the one?

TEIXEIRA: My favorite player. My role model was my dad. My favorite player growing up was Don Mattingly. He was a guy — I loved the way he played the game. I loved his sweet swing, so smooth at first base. And growing up in Baltimore — I loved Cal Ripken, loved Eddie Murray, but Mattingly — there was something about Donnie Baseball that just really grabbed me as a young kid.

DUBNER: He was a longtime and beloved and very, very good first baseman for the Yankees, also very good defensive first baseman. You became exactly that many years later. I’m just curious, more of a character issue: you said your dad was your role model and one can see how that worked for you. Mattingly was your favorite player. It strikes me that his character was not that different from your dad’s — keep your head down, right? I’m just curious, what if your favorite player had been Reggie Jackson? Would you have become a different kind of player and person?

TEIXEIRA: That’s a great question. I think I chose somebody like Don Mattingly because of his character. While some of these players today have lots of flash and flair — I like the grinders. I wasn’t blessed with amazing speed and just athletic ability that oozed out of my pores, but I felt like I had a gift to hit a baseball, and I grinded with everything else. Everything else in my career I had to work for.

DUBNER: When you say a gift, there’s this huge debate in everything in life. Anything that involves what we call “talent.” So it could be sports, but it could be medicine, you name it, about the difference between (a) nurture and nature and (b) talent versus work and what’s called deliberate practice, the 10,000 hour rule. Tell me where you come down on that. Obviously, you have yourself as an example, and we know that you were physically talented from an early age. But talk about what it was that got you to be a professional at the highest level.

TEIXEIRA: I think the gift is No. 1. Because without the gift, you can’t take a kid that has zero athletic ability and just happens to be a hard worker and he goes to the big leagues. At any given time there’s a thousand big leaguers out there. But there’s probably 10,000 players, whether in college or amateur baseball or low professional ranks, that are good enough to someday make it.

DUBNER: Talent wise you’re saying.

TEIXEIRA: Yes, there’s 10,000 talented players with a gift. Of those 10,000 players, which are the ones that work hard enough? Which are the ones that figure it out? Which are the ones that get it? That make the right decisions and train the right way, and eat the right way and do preparation for games. Those are the ones that make it. So the gift is first. But then you have to put the time in.

DUBNER: Can you think of a particular player or a group of players who, when you were either in high school or college, obviously we know you were very good but maybe you saw some guys who looked to be on the surface more talented than you and didn’t make it.

TEIXEIRA: Yeah. The most talented player that I ever saw as an amateur was Corey Patterson. And guys that know baseball — he was the fourth or fifth overall pick from the Chicago Cubs. My draft year. And he had a decent big league career. But talent-wise, I would kill for his talent. And he had some injuries and just couldn’t quite make it over the top, but talent-wise there were a ton of guys that I thought had more talent than me, but I thought I figured it out, at a young age.

DUBNER: What do you mean by that?

TEIXEIRA: Figured it out means — in high school, by the time I was a sophomore, and I knew I had a chance, I started preparing. So I started working out, and I actually called the Florida State baseball coach because they were the No. 1 team in the country that time, and said, “Can you please just send me your workout regimen?” I started doing the Florida State baseball workout regimen. I didn’t go to my high school homecoming for three straight years because I was playing fall baseball. I didn’t do a lot of stuff in the summertime. I played 70 games every summer. My friends are going to concerts, my friends are having a good time at the beach and all these things. And I just figured out young how to make it. And that helped me as I went along in the big leagues because you don’t have your ‘A’ stuff every day, or every year even, you gotta figure it out as you go.

DUBNER: So you were a phenomenally talented and bettable, let’s say, high school prospect. I’d love you to tell a story about when you’re graduating high school. I don’t know if you know what you were ranked in the in the country at the time, I’d love to know. And then also this scenario where the Boston Red Sox wanted you but they behaved in a way that was pretty bizarre. So tell us that episode.

TEIXEIRA: Yes. This was the moment that I realized that baseball is a business. And I was the 12th rated prospect in the draft that year, my senior year. For all intents and purposes, I should have been a top 15 pick. Top 15 pick in the first round of the draft. The Red Sox that year had the ninth pick. They called me up before the draft and said, “Hey, we want you to take this signing bonus, it was $1.5 million, we’ll take you this signing bonus, agree to this pre-draft deal, we’ll draft you and you’ll get started.” Well first of all, that’s illegal. You’re not allowed to, at least in those days, you weren’t allowed to pre-negotiate a deal when you’re an amateur. So I said, “That’s not really what I’m going to do right now, so we’ll negotiate later after you draft me.”

DUBNER: Because you were an amateur, or because it was unfair to other teams, that you can’t jump the draft like that and get your guy?

TEIXEIRA: Both. Yes so my agent said, “It’s unethical, it happens, but don’t do this and you’ll get more money later if you don’t sign.” I said, “Okay, you know what? I’ll roll the dice. If the Red Sox don’t draft me, some other team will draft me and I’ll be fine.” Well draft day comes. It was going to be the coolest day of my life — the most exciting day of my life. Not only was I not the ninth pick, but I dropped to the ninth round.

DUBNER: Wow. So that’s around 270 spots or something? 30 teams?

TEIXEIRA: And who drafts me?

DUBNER: Boston Red Sox? Oh boy.

TEIXEIRA: The Boston Red Sox. They called every single team in baseball and said, “Teixeira is not signing and he’s going to Georgia Tech. Don’t draft him.” And you know what? It was a great life lesson for me, because I became a businessman that day. And it actually helped me out for the rest of my career when I was dealing with contracts.

DUBNER: That scenario is what led you to go ahead and go to college, to Georgia Tech. How many years did you stay there?

TEIXEIRA: Three years at Georgia Tech. Best three years of my life.

DUBNER: Met your wife there I understand?

TEIXEIRA: Met my wife there, had a blast. Became a better baseball player. Yeah, one of those moments in life that ‘things happened for a reason?’ Absolutely. This was all meant to be.

DUBNER: You were prepared though, if you’d been drafted let’s say first round — let’s say it was by the Red Sox, and let’s say you had signed for even the deal that they had offered before the draft — would you have taken that and gone pro? Gone straight to the minors?

TEIXEIRA: I would have. Yeah I would have. I grew up with a certain sense of expectations and ethics. And when my agent, my advisor tells me, “This is unethical. This isn’t really the right way to do things. Don’t do this.” I took his advice. I took his counsel. And when a team shows you the business side of baseball, you gotta get smart, and I did.

DUBNER: Your agent at the time was I believe Scott Boras, correct?

TEIXEIRA: Yes.

DUBNER: Who at that time was already a big deal. Would go on to become easily the most dominant agent in baseball. How did you get connected with him?

TEIXEIRA: Yeah, I became a really top prospect before my senior year. So, in my junior summer, before my senior year, I went to a wood bat tournament, which all the top prospects in high school baseball went to this tournament. And I was the only guy to hit a home run. So all the scouts, “Oh my goodness, look at this kid from Maryland, we’ve heard about him but he hit a home run in this tournament. And now he jumps to the top of the list of high school players.” And Scott Boras’ office called me that summer and said, “We’d love to talk to you.” Met with Scott and his group, and they were far and above anybody else in the business.

DUBNER: In terms of professionalism?

TEIXEIRA: Professionalism, their preparation, their knowledge of the market, their knowledge of amateur baseball. They gave you a really good sense of, “Okay, this is the landscape of baseball. This is what your career is going to look like. And this is how you should make decisions based on that.”

DUBNER: So you signed with Boras — we’ll jump ahead now, we’ll come back — you signed with Boras and he was your agent for many years. And he helped you sign, or helped you get, or you got with him, your ultimate deal which was in 2009 coming to the New York Yankees, correct?

TEIXEIRA: Yep.

DUBNER: Eight year, $180 million deal, correct?

TEIXEIRA: Yep.

DUBNER: All guaranteed?

TEIXEIRA: All guaranteed in baseball.

DUBNER: Now interestingly however, you split with Boras a few years into that, and I guess, on the one hand I understand why do you need an agent anymore once you’re signing what’s going to be the last deal in your career? But why did you split? And talk to me about the relationship of an athlete like you and an agent like him.

TEIXEIRA: Yeah, when I split with Boras it was more practical reasons than anything else. It wasn’t — we didn’t have a falling out. There was none of that. But I was in New York and he’s in L.A. And when you play for the New York Yankees and you’re the starting first baseman and there’s all these things that are put on your plate, you need your agent closer. No pun intended, I hired Casey Close who happens to be a New York guy. He’d worked with Derek Jeter and the Yankees for years and years, and so really understood the landscape of the Yankees, and New York, and charity, and marketing, and all these things that happened. It just made me a little bit more comfortable being with an agent — again, I didn’t really need an agent, but just someone that could help me in New York and be closer.

DUBNER: So I guess that gets to the question of what does an agent actually do for an athlete like you at that level? And also maybe help people understand the difference between — in some industries — in entertainment, a lot of entertainers have an agent and a manager and they may have 18 other advisors. When we think of an agent, we usually only hear of an agent with an athlete when they’re negotiating or signing the deal or when something goes wrong. But you’re talking about all the different elements that come with being a major league athlete. So (a) what does an agent do, or should they do? And then (b) what did you get Casey Close involved in?

TEIXEIRA: What an agent does is, he really helps support you from the time you sign your first contract, even before your first contract, and navigate you through the business waters, the professional waters, and all of the things that can happen to you until you’re a free agent. In baseball, you don’t make your living, your career, until you’re a free agent. What Scott Boras did for me — at 18 years old we started our relationship and he taught me so much about the game. Him and some of his associates — Bob Brower was my right-hand man, Mike Fiore — he has a great group of guys around him that said, “Okay, Tex you’re 18 right now. When you’re 26 or 28, you’re going to be a free agent. And these are the things that you have to accomplish in your life and your baseball career to get you to free agency.” That’s where agents in baseball provide the most value.

Once you sign your eight-year deal, you don’t really need them that much. But what Casey did for me when I hired him in 2011, I believe, was, the Yankees — there’s a lot of charity stuff that you are involved in. There’s a lot of off-the-field distractions. I started getting hurt a little bit. And you deal with second opinions, and you deal with general managers questioning, “Hey what’s going on with Tex? And does he need surgery?” That’s where an agent later in your career can really help — is helping you take some of that pressure off your shoulders when problems happen.

DUBNER: And what about business opportunities. Is that their job to help bring some to you or maybe filter out the bad from the good?

TEIXEIRA: Yeah. Marketing opportunities, yes. But, honestly, baseball players don’t have a lot of marketing opportunities, unless you’re Derek Jeter or Mike Trout. I did a handful of deals a year. So I knew I was going to do my Nike deal. I knew I was going to do my deal with Steiner Sports for my autographs. And then a handful of other print or local media type stuff, local appearances. So it wasn’t overwhelming.

DUBNER: What about non-sports related investment though? Where did those — so I know you’re involved in a number of things, some of them predate your retirement a couple years ago — Where do those typically come from? Are are they a la carte, ad hoc, or do you have a way for soliciting and sorting?

TEIXEIRA: Most agents don’t do that for you. What they will do is they will hire somebody or point you in the right direction for financial literacy and for financial help and estate planning. I’m with a group called Winpoint. Joe Geier and his group out of Baltimore — Joe went to my high school at Mount St. Joe, years before me, but had a really great relationship with a lot of ex-Orioles, and current players, and Major League Baseball, and so he’s my business manager. He’s the one that handles all of my estate planning and all of my investments. And I like keeping them separate. If you have all of your eggs in one basket as an athlete, sometimes you’ll make wrong decisions, or sometimes your decision making will get clouded. So I like having that separation of power when it comes to business deals or investment opportunities.

DUBNER: Now Scott Boras encourages people to put a lot of eggs in one basket, yes? In terms of investment and mental guidance?

TEIXEIRA: Yeah. Scott has so many things that you can take advantage of under his umbrella. And investment advice is one of them. But the mental conditioning that he has — Harvey Dorfman was his right-hand man for mental conditioning, literally wrote the book The ABC’s of Pitching, The Mental Game of Baseball. Harvey Dorfman was one of those guys that when I was young, when I was learning how to become a great major leaguer, I leaned on him immensely. And one of the great relationships of my young career was Harvey Dorfman.

DUBNER: Okay, well one more thing about agents before we move on to your playing career. There are those who argue that an inevitable conflict is — especially a very successful agent, Boras maybe being the most, you end up having a roster of a lot of players in your stable. And then you’re dealing with a market where you’re only dealing with a limited number of buyers. There are only 30 teams and for any given player there might be a very limited pool of let’s say two, three, four teams that have the money and the need and so on. So there are those who argue that if you’re with an agent — there may be an inherent conflict of interest in that they may gain leverage by dealing you low, by making a suboptimal deal.

TEIXEIRA: You’re exactly right, and this is where every player needs to take control of his career. If I’m a first baseman and I want to go to a team that is also looking at another player that my agent has in his roster, there might be some horse trading there. “Okay well — take him, but then I gotta find a place for Tex,” and there’s back and forth. Ultimately the player has to take control. And I tell every young player, “Hire a great agent, but also know what he’s doing.”

DUBNER: Right.

TEIXEIRA: And the best agents are good at that horse trading. They’re good at getting their clients the best deal no matter what. But you have to pay attention.

DUBNER: So walk me through the deal that you signed with the Yankees, again, and that was your final deal. That was a massive free agent deal that set you and your family up for life, for generations. So that’s amazing, and congratulations because it’s a great accomplishment. Going into that, you were coming most directly from the Braves?

TEIXEIRA: Braves and Angels.

DUBNER: Braves and Angels. Right. Walk me through that deal. What were the possibilities? I believe the Red Sox were one of those, and I’m curious to know if you would even entertain that after all those years. And then talk about the negotiation of that deal and how you made the decision to come the Yankees.

TEIXEIRA: Well, first of all, free agency is not a fun process. As a major leaguer, I’m glad I only did it once. You feel completely helpless, on one hand, because there’s 30 teams out there. But really there’s probably only five or six that are really interested and really want you. And I had a family. I had two young kids and a wife that I wanted to make sure they were happy as well. So the process for me was not a lot of fun. Ultimately, it came down to the Yankees, Red Sox, Nationals, Angels and Orioles. Those were the five teams that I had face-to-face meetings with. The Red Sox actually came back for a second meeting, and it was a whole new regime. So the general manager, even the owner was new, back from ’98. So I let them know right from the beginning, “Guys I hold no hard feelings towards the Red Sox organization.”

But ultimately it came down to — I wanted to go to a place that had a chance to win every single year. And one of the things that Scott Boras always told me is, “Don’t look at the Yankees current roster, don’t look at their minor league system. This team does what it takes every year to be competitive.” And, playing in New York, putting those pinstripes on, just had too much allure, and it helped that they matched the offer of some of the other teams.

DUBNER: You come to New York. New York loves you even though you’re not a typical — New York has gotten behind a lot of guys who are a lot more aggressive than you, a lot cockier than you, and you were the nice, good, hard-working guy who also happened to be a phenomenal baseball player. Very good hitter and a great defensive first baseman. And then you get here and first season out you go and win the World Series. Talk about setting expectations. Talk about the high and then the inability to win another one after that. What that was like?

TEIXEIRA: My first year in New York in 2009 was a complete whirlwind. I’m getting lost on the way to the ballpark because the new Yankee Stadium was literally, brand new. They opened the doors three days before the season started. So, all the navigation systems — back in 2009, Waze and Google Maps weren’t around, or weren’t as good at least. So I’m getting lost getting into the ballpark in the Bronx. And then you have to worry about hitting 98 mph fastballs at night. So it was a complete whirlwind.

We win the World Series. And before I knew it spring training was around the corner. And when you get to the top of the mountain you want to stay there, the pressure’s always there. But the rosters just weren’t as good. I mean we can look at ourselves and say 2010 was the best chance we had to win again. Thought we had a pretty good team in 2010. By 2011, 2012 we just ran out of gas at the end of the season. We didn’t have the team that could make it that far.

DUBNER: How much of that is age?

TEIXEIRA: A lot of it’s age. We had a team that in 2009 were called old. At 28 years old I was one of the kids on the team. You get here and you win, but then you look at the best players, you look around that that locker room and go, “Man, we have a short window here,” and that window closed in four years. But listen, in those four years we made three A.L.C.S.’s, we won a whole lot of games, and yeah, we didn’t win another one, but not a lot of regrets there.

DUBNER: Your ultimate I guess decline as a player, it’s what happens. Players get older, they don’t keep getting better, except in rare cases like Barry Bonds. And those are usually a little bit chemically aided as it turns out. I’m curious about one thing. So you were a relatively rare power hitting switch hitter. There aren’t a whole lot of them. During your career, more and more teams started using more and more analytics. Some managers used to put a defensive shift on some players who pulled the ball a lot, but it became a lot more common. Now defenses were putting a shift on you from the left side and the right side. And your numbers were going down. Now you were also getting older and declining as a player, no offense, that’s what happens. I’m curious, in retrospect, the degree to which you think that rise in analytics and the use of the shift, and so on, was a contributing factor to your decline and how much of it was just the natural cycle of an aging baseball player.

TEIXEIRA: Yeah it’s probably 70/30, just the natural age. Without analytics I still would be retired. Analytics doesn’t make your wrist blow out. Analytics doesn’t make you tear up your knee. The things that I had to deal with. But I would say that analytics took numbers that should have been better and decreased them. I mean studies show that left handed hitters hit 20 points lower just across the board because of analytics and because of the shift.

But for me, I was lucky enough to have a really great career for the first 10 years. I had a really great 10-year run. I blew out my wrist in year 11, and it just became very tough. I felt like I was playing catch up. I had one more All-Star season that I felt really good about. But for me, it was much more the physical decline, and the analytic side of it — listen if you’re walking, if you’re hitting doubles and home runs, the shift doesn’t matter. And the one year that I did make it back to the All-Star Game, it’s because I was really locked in, physically I felt good and I was hitting doubles and a home runs again.

DUBNER: What are some ways that you benefited from analytics? Did you — I don’t know if you were a tape rat. If you watched a lot of tape. And I’m curious whether you studied pitchers and so on for their tendencies?

TEIXEIRA: I didn’t benefit at all. I was not a tape rat. I was one of those guys — because I was a switch hitter, I had too many things to think about anyway. I had two full swings. One swing is hard to keep up in Major League Baseball. I had two of them. So early on in my career I basically told myself, “I’m not adding more junk to my head and complicating things. I’m going to see the ball, and hit the ball.”

Now, did I watch tape? Absolutely. Did I have positive reinforcement? It’s called our hit tape. So you look back at when you’re good. What are the pitches you’re swinging at, where are you hitting them, where are your hands, and your feet, and your legs, and what do you look like when you’re hitting those balls? So, I used positive reinforcement. But I wasn’t the guy that went up there and said, “Okay it’s two to one. This guy has a 73 percent chance to throw a backdoor slider here, I’m going to look—” No, I never did that. And there’s a whole bunch of players that still don’t look at tape.

DUBNER: Talk about that for a minute. You don’t do that in part, I guess, because you don’t think it’s going to be productive. But I’m curious when you talk about sports where there’s live action, as the batter, you’re reacting to someone else throwing. As a pitcher, it’s a little bit different. You’re generating the action. As a golfer it’s different, you’re generating the action from the ball at stop. And in those cases, we know that the mind can really get in the way, right? When you’re reacting, theoretically to some benefit, because you don’t have the time to quote ‘think.’ But on the other hand, when you’re in the batter’s box and you’re dug in, and waiting for the pitcher — talk for a moment about that thought process and maybe when your mind does get in the way.

TEIXEIRA: I had two different swing thoughts that, depending on the pitcher, was my plan. Everyone says, when you go up to the plate you need to have a plan. And a guy that threw hard, say 95 and above, my plan was get the head of the bat on the ball. Put the barrel of the bat, square the ball up, wherever it goes is a positive. If a guy threw soft, a Greg Maddux-type guy, I looked for a location. I said, “Okay I’m going to look for the ball away here. I’m going to stay on it. I’m going to stay square. I’m going to hit the ball the other way.” Or, say a guy threw a lot of curveballs. Okay, I’m going to wait for a curveball. I’m just going to sit, sit, sit. So that was my plan on fast guys or guys that threw softer.

Where you get into problems was when your first swing against that guy who is fast and it was a bad swing, you go, “Oh wait a second, I’m going to change my plan here. And I think he’s going to throw me a curveball, and I’m going to sit on a curveball,” and he throws another fastball and you break your bat, because you’re late. That’s where your mind gets in the way. When you should be keeping it very simple and reacting, you complicate things and then are slow to react or late to react and then you’re done in baseball.

DUBNER: Did you see great hitters, however, who did think a lot at the plate in a way that you’re describing was not productive for you?

TEIXEIRA: Yes some guys joked, “He’s so dumb, he’s a great hitter.” See it, hit it, react. And there are a lot of great hitters that did that. Then there’s Chipper Jones, just went into the Hall of Fame yesterday. Chipper Jones knew exactly what he was going to do on every single pitch. He looked at the tape — and he was a switch hitter too, so don’t tell me how that worked — but he really looked at pitchers. He set pitchers up. He sat on pitches and it helps that he was so talented. Eye-hand contact. His coordination was just amazing. But he was one of those guys that thought through every at-bat.

* * *

DUBNER: I’ve heard you talk in the past about spring training. So, I’d love you to describe this for people, again, who don’t know baseball but even who do: you’ve talked about every year you’d show up, and it’s relearning — both from a confidence and a physical level — relearning to swing. I find it hard to believe that, but I’d love to hear you talk about it.

TEIXEIRA: When I say that it’s true. Every year I showed up to spring training, I had to learn how to hit major-league pitching again. Because timing is so important, right? If I got into a cage today, I’d still probably look like a big leaguer. Put me on a tee or throw 60 mph softballs to me, I could probably still hit some balls and look like a big leaguer. If you put me in a 95 mph fastball situation with a guy that’s got a slider and a changeup, I would look like I never played the game, because I have no reference point. I haven’t had one in a year and a half — since I retired, almost two years now. I have no reference point to the timing of when I need to start my swing and where that ball’s going to be at the plate. That’s what I mean when I say you have to figure out, you have to re-learn how to hit major league hitting. It’s all about that timing. It’s not like riding a bike. Some guys it is, but for me it wasn’t. Every year my timing — from both sides of the plate — had to get right. And that’s one of the reasons most of the time I had a slow April.

DUBNER: And then for both sides of the plate — you’ve also referred to how your right-hand swing and your left-hand swings were really different. So I’d like you to talk about that. Also, again, for people who don’t know baseball, it’d be a little bit like watching a great basketball player with a jump shot, start to shoot left handed sometimes, when the situation called for it. It doesn’t happen in other sports.

TEIXEIRA: Nope.

DUBNER: In baseball it does, for a variety of reasons, and it’s an advantage obviously, but can you talk about — I would imagine that one swing is a mirror image of the other. I gather however that is not, correct?

TEIXEIRA: It’s not, because of right hand domination. So I throw right-handed. I write right-handed. I do everything right-handed. So as a right-handed hitter my top hand, my right hand, is the steering mechanism for the bat. And because of that, I was a better contact hitter right-handed, because that dominant hand, your top hand steering it, I could steer the bat where I wanted. Left-handed, that right hand, dominant hand, is the bottom hand. And that is my pull, trigger — the bat gets through the zone quick. I hit longer home runs left handed, I hit more home runs left handed. I was a much more power hitter, much more pull hitter left handed.

DUBNER: More strikeouts lefty?

TEIXEIRA: Probably, I’m sure. I’m sure I had more strikeouts lefty. I also hit the inside pitch way better left-handed. Right-handed, you could bust me in all the time. I was not a good inside hitter right-handed because I just didn’t have the bat speed right-handed. That’s why I had two different swings. It’s not by design, I picked up a bat left-handed and I just had a different swing.

DUBNER: What about dominant eye though? I always wondered about this. When I played baseball growing up I was a right-handed batter. But then when I played Wiffle ball I could hit great lefty. And I thought, why was this? Obviously it’s a different ball, everything’s different, and I was an okay switch hitter as a kid but not good enough to actually do it in games. And then I started to wonder, maybe I’m just seeing it better. Or it’s different. I’m curious about that.

TEIXEIRA: You were. You were seeing it better. I am right eye dominant.

DUBNER: How can you tell? I see you holding up your hands here.

TEIXEIRA: So you put your hands in front of you in a triangle, keep both eyes open and point to a spot, get it the microphone or something here. And then close one eye and close the other one whatever you see it with that’s your dominant eye.

DUBNER: Oh yeah.

TEIXEIRA: So I’m right-eye dominant. That being said, I could stay closed left-handed. Right-handed I had to open up my stance and actually point my face towards the pitcher more, so my right eye could see the ball better. But I’m naturally right handed I was able to always have better plate discipline, right-handed. But because I’m right-eye dominant, I was able to become a switch hitter. I’d like to see a statistic on switch hitters that are naturally right-handed that are right-eye dominant. I would probably guess most of them are right-eye dominant.

DUBNER: Now, considering that you figured that out, did you think about training your left eye?

TEIXEIRA: I tried. It’s one of those — when you work out and you feel sore the next day, you know that it worked. What I did in the gym, worked. I don’t know if it works, but I did eye exercises for two months, messing around with it, and I don’t know if it worked. I just I ended up letting it go. Again, I try to keep things simple. Baseball, when you break it down, is a very simple game. They throw a ball at you and you gotta hit it. And I didn’t want to complicate things. I’m not a quarterback in the N.F.L. with 15 different plays or 50 different options of that play. I’m see the ball, hit the ball.

DUBNER: Describe briefly your game day routine. Let’s say it was a home game playing for the New York Yankees. You’ve got your family living in Connecticut. Describe from morning to night what the day was like.

TEIXEIRA: Yeah, so I slept in, because your games are over at 10:30/11:00. You’re not getting home until 12:30 or 1:00. So I slept in until probably 10 or 11, every day. Just hung out at the house. Did nothing usually. Try to spend some time with my kids. When I was on the road, I’d sit in the hotel room or maybe take a little stroll and have breakfast or lunch, but I really tried to conserve as much energy as possible before the games. Leave for the ballpark around 2.

DUBNER: No golf on game days.

TEIXEIRA: No never. I would probably golf once or twice during the entire season. And I love golf, but I just didn’t have the energy to swing a golf club or be outside for four hours and then go play a game. Some guys do it. I could never do that. So, leave for about — leave at about 2. Get to the ballpark no later than 3, and then start the process. Start the process, which is you maybe grab a quick bite to eat because you have a long day ahead of you.

DUBNER: Is this the peanut butter and jelly sandwich, or is that right before the game?

TEIXEIRA: So, yeah, before I became gluten free it was always peanut butter and jelly sandwich before the game.

DUBNER: Okay.

TEIXEIRA: But usually at 3 it was a grilled chicken sandwich or something semi-healthy. But it gets you to that pregame meal. And so, I would do my stretching and get ready for my batting practice session. Take batting practice in the cage. Get loosened up in the cage, which is tee a drill. Do that tee drill for 15 or 20 minutes. Go back. Do all my interviews. Get that out of the way before batting practice. You go out to the batting practice and stretch run, throw, take your ground balls, take your round of BP.

And then it’s an hour of chill time before the game. That’s when you let everything sink in. If you do need to get treatment, on injuries whatever, you do that. If you need to get extra stretching, if you need to watch video, whatever it might be. You do that in between batting practice and the game. Then at about 6 or 6:15, I grab that peanut butter and jelly sandwich — again, before I became gluten free — and then a cup of coffee because it’s a long day and you need a little jolt before the game. And I was on the field by 6:40.

DUBNER: Did you — was there any mental concentration, meditation, prayer or anything like that?

TEIXEIRA: The routine got me locked in. I knew while I was doing my routine, the closer I got to game time — I looked at the clock. And you always knew, there was clocks all over big league clubhouses, right? No one wants to be late for for a stretch, or a meeting, or a game. So there’s clocks everywhere. And as the clock got closer to 7:05, I just slowly got locked in. I didn’t talk to a lot of people before the game. I wasn’t very chatty. I was focused, and I knew every single night that the fans of New York expected me to go out there and make my plays at first, and hopefully get a hit or drive in a run. So, I took that very seriously.

DUBNER: Were you an anthem singer or an anthem hummer?

TEIXEIRA: I prayed during the anthem. That was my time, my Christian faith is very important to me. And if not for the God-given ability that I have, I wouldn’t be playing Major League Baseball. So, always gave thanks to God during the national anthem and said some prayers for my family and friends or people that were struggling or whatever was happening. And that also helped too, because that was a minute or two where I could lock in and get burdens maybe that are on my heart or on my mind get them off my chest and then go out and play the game.

DUBNER: The anthem protests that have become a big deal in football have not hit baseball. And there might be a million different reasons why. I’m just curious your thoughts on that. You’re not only a longtime athlete, now retired athlete, sports commentator, but a bright guy who’s involved in the real world. I’m curious what you make of those protests and especially how it’s affecting professional sports and the perspective that the public has on professional athletes.

TEIXEIRA: Yeah, first of all, I definitely think that players, in leagues all over the world, should speak out, either for or against things that they feel strongly about. The problem is, the Yankees pay me to play first base. They pay me to get hits. They don’t pay me while I am on the field to be a distraction. And whether you agree or you disagree with whatever I’m standing up for, during the game, during the national anthem especially, when we’re honoring the country and we’re honoring those who have fought for our freedom, I just don’t think that’s the right platform. Now after the game, in the offseason, when you’re home or you’re in your own community, in which there’s issues going on, absolutely speak up, because athletes and celebrities have a very strong platform. But whether it’s the Dallas Cowboys or New York Yankees or Golden State Warriors, we are paid to play a sport, and we’re paid to, while we’re on the field, while we’re in the uniform, to respect the rules of that league or that team. And I just don’t think that the national anthem is a time to make that stand.

DUBNER: So I hear that argument. Here’s a counter: some people would say that a pro athlete — it’s a little bit like Cinderella. When you’re in the zone, when you’re wearing the dress, before midnight, you’re a different person. Everyone’s paying attention. When you’re in uniform during a game, that’s when you have the most leverage. And then, no matter how prominent an athlete you may be if you’re doing an interview, even immediately after the game, or during the off-season with your local media or whatnot, and you say, “Hey listen, this is a big problem that I see.” It might be domestic violence, income inequality, police brutality. We know those stories get coverage. But compared to the leverage that you have during the game, it’s one one-thousandth, one ten-thous— taking the devil’s advocate position, I could see why, man, if I’m an athlete I know that the only way I have a chance to really raise hell is to do it right now. And you’re saying that’s inappropriate because you’re essentially there to do one job and—

TEIXEIRA: Well you’re also an employee. I have a really cool job at ESPN. If I took Baseball Tonight tomorrow during the trade deadline show and said, “Hey guys, just stop for five minutes, because I have something I want to talk about.” I’d probably be fired. Because I’m an employee and I have to do what I’m told when it comes to certain rules and regulations — now if the league league says, “Hey, you guys do whatever you want,” then hey, that’s great. Do whatever you want. But the N.F.L. has seen the the protests be a double-edged sword. While they’re proud of their players standing up for certain things or whatever it might be, they also have to understand that there’s a whole lot of people that don’t appreciate it and it’s probably not the best time to be taking a stand right before a game, when they know it’s going to be a distraction.

DUBNER: There’s also obviously a lot of class and ethnic, racial considerations here, and I want to ask you about that on a baseball team. There are scholars who argue that sports teams are among the best institutions — along with the military, by the way — at building what they call social trust. Meaning, you feel someone’s got your back, even if you don’t know them. And they say that sports teams in particular, and again, the military, where people from very different backgrounds come together — you emerge from that as if you’re you’ve got a lot in common. And I’d love you to talk about that for a moment, (a) if you experienced it, and (b) if you think there’s any way to port that over into the real world without making everyone join the Yankees.

TEIXEIRA: I agree completely. During my career I played with black, white, Asian, people from the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, wherever it might be. And we all got along. I mean 99.9 percent of athlete teammates get along. Now they don’t have to be best friends, but get along on the field, why? Because there’s a common goal. In the military, why do people in the military get along? Because there’s a common goal.

And where we can use that in society is: let’s not always harp on our differences. Me and you could spend an hour talking about what we disagree on. That would not be a productive hour, time together. We would rather talk about interesting things in economics, and sports, and life, and things that we we enjoy about life. Happy things in life. Things that are positive. If we continue to harp on negative things in society or the mainstream media, you’re going to have these issues.

But sports and the military, as you said, were always focused on how do we win this game? How do we become a closer team, to win this game for our fans, and for our front office, and our ownership, or whatever it might be? Because let’s not talk about — I’m sure we have differences. I’m sure we don’t agree on every single thing. That’s human nature. But what we can agree on is working hard together and showing up on time and being accountable to each other and working towards that common goal.

DUBNER: Let me ask you this about something you just mentioned about how we focus on the negative. It does seem to be a human trait. It does, however, also seem to be magnified by the current — meaning contemporary landscape — meaning communication media and so on. There are people who will do a comparison. If you look at a European King, in the 17th century, versus the middle billion of the world right now — the life of the middle billion today is better than the king on every ground, except housing, because palaces and castles are hard to beat. But in terms of just about everything else, life has gotten so much better. And yet we don’t talk about that too much and acknowledge it. We do tend to focus on these differences often. And I’m curious: look, you’re you’re an athlete, you’re not a philosopher, a psychologist or whatever. But I’m curious to know if you have a perspective on that.

TEIXEIRA: Yes. It’s a great perspective. One of the things I do when I pray is I thank God for being born the United States. I won the lottery just by being born in the United States. The freedoms that we have, the opportunities that we have. There’s no guarantee. Obviously there’s a lot of pain, and suffering, and poverty, that we’re all trying to to help and fix. But you have the opportunity because of the freedoms that we have in our country. We can sit here and focus on all the negative things in our country, and there’s plenty of them. We could fill a hundred of these podcasts with all the negative things that are happening in our country.

DUBNER: Well we do that most weeks. Just so you know.

TEIXEIRA: But let’s wake up a little bit and be thankful for what we have. Because there’s a lot of places in this world that, if I was born into, I would not be even close to the person I am today or even have close to the opportunity, because you start life with two strikes against you in third-world countries or countries where you have no freedom. I’m lucky to be born here and to live here.

DUBNER: Scholars say another way in which athletes and sports teams produce a social cohesion is that conflict resolution is handled really differently on sports teams. They say that outside of sports and the military, there’s a lot of passive-aggressive. So in an office world, you might send someone an e-mail with some snarky wording as opposed to going up and saying, “Hey listen, you did this, I did that, blah blah blah.” Tell me about a case, or maybe a general scenario, maybe it’s a teammate, maybe it was something — Jeter was famous for being a good captain on a number of dimensions. Talk about a way that you saw a problem get resolved on a team that you think is very different from the real world.

TEIXEIRA: That’s a great point, because I love it when guys bark at each other, real loud for 20 seconds, and it’s over. Because that is way more effective at conflict resolution than a guy for three weeks, or the whole season, being passive-aggressive and then creating this really weird situation around both these players. And then it permeates to the rest of the team. Then you start having cliques. I would much rather — and I’ve done it, with coaches, with players — where we’ve had it out, almost fist fight, and then 20 minutes later you’re fine.

DUBNER: Give me a for instance. What’s the scenario, what do you say?

TEIXEIRA: In 2015, my third base coach Joe Espada, who I love, told me to hold up at third base because I was going to score easily. I ended up getting thrown out. And he just missed — just totally, just botched the situation. And he knew he botched it. And I almost got hurt. I had to half slide, and it looked terrible, and we needed the run and all these things. I went into the dugout and I just started throwing stuff. I just went nuts. I had this rage.

DUBNER: That doesn’t sound very Tex to me.

TEIXEIRA: No, I had this rage inside of me, because I was so mad at the situation. The situation lasted 15 minutes. I told Joe after the game, “We’re all good. Hey, I know you’re trying your best.” And it was done. It was over with. And those type of situations — Tom Brady, one of the best of all time, barking at his coaches, barking at his offensive lineman, barking at his receivers. But guess what, people take less, to go play for the Patriots. Coaches take demotions to stay with the Patriots because they want to be a part of the Bill Belichick, Tom Brady atmosphere that they create there.

DUBNER: My Freakonomics co-author Steve Levitt did some research, and he found that pitchers essentially throw too many fastballs. Okay? So part of this is may be mistaken belief, and part of it is that many people are not good at randomizing, which is a useful trick when you’re trying to in any game theory thing. So let me just read you a tiny bit of this. I’m really curious to know what you have to say. When there are two strikes is when the scenario really happens. When there are two strikes, fastballs generate an OPS, that’s on-base plus slugging percentage, that is more than 100 points higher than non fastballs. The authors calculate that if a team’s pitchers reduce their share of fastballs by 10 percentage points, they would allow roughly 15 fewer runs in a season. About 2 percent of their total runs. Make sense?

TEIXEIRA: Yep. And I agree 100 percent. The issue is you have to take the pitcher’s skill and ability to perform that skill with two strikes. So, the pitchers that can throw curveballs, and change ups, and sliders with two strikes, do it. The guys that maybe bounce that pitch or hang that pitch, are going to throw fastballs. They’re going to get hit. So, the best pitchers in baseball, they throw more sliders and curveballs and change ups with two strikes because they can control it better.

And the last thing you want to do is get a guy down 0-2, throw three straight sliders in the dirt because you can’t control that pitch, and then have to come back with a 3-2 fastball, because the hitter knows that you can’t throw a slider for a strike. You don’t have any confidence. Your catcher doesn’t have any confidence, in you throwing an off speed pitch for a strike. And the hitter’s geared up for a fastball and that’s why those numbers get up there.

DUBNER: So what we need to ask Levitt — and I’m sure this is in the paper, and I don’t have it off the top my head — is whether they controlled for the efficacy of the pitcher.

TEIXEIRA: Yes.

DUBNER: Because you’re saying the good pitchers won’t do it.

TEIXEIRA: I agree. That’s the issue. The best pitchers can execute those pitches. I feasted — my entire career was based on a guy. Not getting me to chase the curveballs and the sliders in the dirt, and having to come with a fastball over the middle of the plate. That was the style of hitter that I was.

DUBNER: So, did you in your mind know, whoever’s on the mound, that they’re the kind a pitcher who doesn’t have the ability to throw the cutting? The off—

TEIXEIRA: Yes. So that was the preparation that I had.

DUBNER: Right.

TEIXEIRA: So I would ask the pitching coach, if I didn’t know this guy. Now, once I was in the big leagues for four or five years, I started knowing the players, and then I would only ask the hitting coach, “Hey this guy’s a rookie, what’s his percentage of off-speed strikes?”

DUBNER: Right.

TEIXEIRA: And if his percentage of off-speed strikes was really low, I’m just sitting dead red fastball. Why would I take into account a slider or a change up or split finger fastball that he doesn’t throw for strikes? I’m going to bet that the numbers hold up. He’s not going to throw a strike with that off-speed pitch, and he’s going to have to throw me a fastball that I can then hammer.

DUBNER: Who were the pitchers that just plagued you during your career?

TEIXEIRA: The guy that I had the worst time against was James Shields. Did not hit him well. Did not hit Justin Verlander well.

DUBNER: Well, join the crowd.

TEIXEIRA: Yeah, and then and then you have weird guys like Aaron Sele, who didn’t throw more — by the time I faced him, didn’t throw more than 86 mph. I just could not hit him. Some really good pitchers had my number. But there are also some guys that weren’t All-Stars every season that had my number as well.

DUBNER: And does it become self-enforcing after a while? A pitcher like Sele, you think, “Man I can’t hit the guy.” And then—

TEIXEIRA: Sometimes it does. Yeah, confidence is huge in baseball. That’s why baseball teams and baseball players are so streaky. You have these guys that hit seven homers in a month and then don’t hit one for six weeks. Or a pitcher that wins 14 straight games and then the last month of the season can’t get out of the third inning, because the confidence to to swing at good pitches, to to get good results, it builds on itself. And you’ve heard, hitting is contagious. Well it’s not physically contagious. But mentally, when I see the three guys in front of me, just got hits, I go up there going, “Hey, this guy can be hit today. He might be an All-Star but this guy is going to get hit because those three guys in front of me just got just got base hits and now I’m next.”

DUBNER: Were you ever totally lost at the plate?

TEIXEIRA: Absolutely. I had stretches, whether it was a week or even a month, where I said, “This might be my last week in baseball. I am so bad right now. There is no way I’m getting another hit in Major League Baseball. I look awful. I feel awful. I can’t get a hit.” But then something just snaps.

And it’s just like in golf when you can’t make a short putt. You go an entire round or maybe an entire week, or you play three rounds, and you don’t make anything within four feet. You just can’t make that putt. Or your driver, you’re snap-hooking everything. And no matter what you do, no matter what you try, you just can’t hit that driver straight.

Happens in baseball all the time because it’s a very hard skill. Hitting a baseball is still the hardest thing to do in sports. And you have guys on the mound that are trying to get you out, and if you’re off a little bit mechanically, mentally, confidence-wise, and he’s on, you can have some bad nights.

DUBNER: So, how do you get back to success? Because I’m sure you’re trying to adjust — you are trying to adjust mechanically, psychically, and so on. What actually works?

TEIXEIRA: Shock the system. So, we talked about tricking the system, shocking the system. So, it’s either taking more batting practice or taking no batting practice. It’s changing your bat. It’s changing the way you stand just a little bit. Altering your stance just a little bit. Maybe just get a hard workout in. Maybe I’m a little too jumpy. I got a little bit too much energy — let me get a hard workout in before the game. I’m going to be a little slower, a little bit tired during this game. Or the opposite. I’m exhausted so I’m going to sleep all day. I’m not going to take batting practice. I’m going to get a massage. And really try to be fresh. It’s just completely changing up your system.

DUBNER: Would you ever change the P.B.J.?

TEIXEIRA: Yeah. I would go honey sometimes. Peanut butter and honey that was m —

DUBNER: Is that your slump food or—

TEIXEIRA: That was the slump breaker.

DUBNER: Yeah, that’s radical.

TEIXEIRA: I’m crazy.

DUBNER: Yeah, you are. For people again who don’t play baseball or know baseball, I’d like you to just describe a scenario — so, you’re a very, very, very good defensive first baseman, which is valuable but not necessarily so appreciated by the casual fan. There’s one aspect to playing in the field that people would love to hear about, which is, what you’re doing in your mind before every pitch.

So I’d love you to describe — pick a scenario. If it’s a real one, all the better. And maybe it’s a tight game. And maybe there’s a runner on first and maybe second. And maybe you’re holding the runner, depending. And then you’re thinking, “Here’s my pitcher. There is the batter. What pitch is going to be thrown. And what do I do if it’s hit to third, to short, to second, to me, on the ground, in the air, and so on.” Just talk about that moment.

TEIXEIRA: Yeah so, when I was at first base, I would actually play the entire scenario in my head. So I would say 2-and-1, one out. Ball hit to me, to my left I’m going to second. Ball hit in front of me, I’m just getting the out — whatever it might be. So I would play the entire scenario ahead of time, and I would actually position myself and then look to my right and left and maybe sometimes even behind me and say, “Okay, well if the ball’s hit this way I’m going to do that, if the ball’s hit like this I’m going to do that.” So I got bored during games, and so I started doing this probably five or six years into my career, where I would actually play the game in my head in between pitches. And it kept me from getting bored, but it also had a really nice result that I actually was prepared for when those different balls were hit to me and it actually worked out.

DUBNER: Now, doesn’t everybody do that? I mean I remember learning that in Little League. I mean that’s—

TEIXEIRA: Well everyone’s supposed to do that but a lot of guys don’t.

DUBNER: Really?

TEIXEIRA: A lot of guys completely space out. I mean, listen, when no one’s on it’s pretty easy. But when there’s guys on base, it kills me to see fielders going to the wrong base, not being prepared for different situations, outfielders not hitting the cutoff man. These are little things in baseball that I learned when I was young that I don’t think get taught anymore. You have a lot more players that are worried about analytics and don’t spend the time on the nuances of baseball, and the skills, and the subtleties that make you a great player.

DUBNER: We recently interviewed Lance Armstrong on the show and he argued that he and his team started taking E.P.O. because everybody else was doing it. And that if they didn’t they were, they were goners. That there was just no way to compete. You played in an era that was the end of the big steroid era, in which some of the best home run hitters in history were turned out to have all — many of them, doping. Mark McGwire, Barry Bonds. And then a few of your very prominent teammates, great baseball players, Alex Rodriguez, Robinson Cano, Melky Cabrera also were found to be doping. I’d love to talk — I’d love to hear about — first of all let’s start with this. Did you ever use performance enhancing drugs?

TEIXEIRA: No. Never. And I told myself — I got offered my rookie year. And I told my—

DUBNER: What did you get offered?

TEIXEIRA: I don’t even know what it was — I mean I don’t know what the name — some pill. I don’t know. I’m not sure what it was. And—

DUBNER: Who offered?

TEIXEIRA: A teammate — I’m not going to say who offered—

DUBNER: But I mean was a teammate?

TEIXEIRA: A teammate. Yeah. And he said, he said, “Tex you can’t play this game on milk and cookies.” And I just told him, flippant self at 22 years old. I said, “Well I am going to try.” And I told myself right then and there, if I have to take drugs, illegal steroids, to play this game I’ll retire. It’s — it’s not something—

DUBNER: Why?

TEIXEIRA: That’s the way I was I was brought up. It’s wrong. I can’t stand people that make excuses for breaking the rules. Our union has made rules and agreed to rules because it’s for the betterment of our entire union and for the betterment of the game of baseball. We agree to these rules. If you knowingly break those rules you should be punished to the utmost degree. And I don’t think our punishments are hard enough. We should have much stricter enforcement of the rules and much stricter punishments.

One of the the highlights of my career is I can look at kids — I speak to kids all the time. I speak to kids in Harlem and the Bronx and at home in Baltimore or wherever it might be. And one of the things I’m proudest to say to them is, “Yeah, I had a nice career, but I didn’t have to take steroids to make it. And you don’t have to cut corners.”

Because what kind of message am I telling kids or telling my own children. I have a 12-, 10- and 7-year-old. What kind of message am I telling them, “Hey kids it’s okay to break the rules. It’s okay to cheat. It’s okay to lie. It’s okay to steal.” These are just terrible things that we’re teaching our children. That you can go do these things in professional sports and get away with it. And really just get a slap on the wrist.

DUBNER: As I said, you had a very, very good career. Way better than solid. Some people say about different players, career was solid — it was a long and very good career. There was a World Series, there were a lot of individual honors, you hit very, very well. You fielded great. The Hall of Fame — it’s a funny thing — election these days is contentious in part because the baseball writers, who elect the Hall of Fame candidates, they’ve decided they don’t want steroid players in the Hall. Which is controversial. So there are a lot of guys who are not going in. I’m curious to know your feelings about it. Obviously you want to get in. I’m curious to know whether you feel you deserve it. I know you’re a humble guy and you’re probably not going to say yes, but I’d love to know what that thought process is like as you’re in this period right now between the end of your career and when you’re eligible.

TEIXEIRA: Yeah, I think about it. Definitely. But I don’t think I’ll get in. I think that I had a great career under different metrics. I do believe that some of the steroid guys are already in, and there are some guys that have taken P.E.D.’s that are in the Hall of Fame. Everyone knows that. But you’re going to start seeing some of those players get in. And I just think that under those metrics—

DUBNER: And that’ll keep you out, you’re saying.

TEIXEIRA: I’m not a Hall of Famer, yeah. 400 home runs, when guys were hitting 50 a year, my 30 a year didn’t look so good.

DUBNER: Don’t you think they might redo the metrics and a little bit and give extra points for playing clean?

TEIXEIRA: I hope so. If that’s the case I have a much better chance. But it’s not something I think about more than a few times a year, when we have these type of conversation. But it’s not something that I think about all the time.

DUBNER: Did you lead the league in P.B.J.’s or were a lot of guys doing that?

TEIXEIRA: I’m sure I did. And I also — one of the cool stats that I do own is most hit-by-pitch, in my career, by a switch hitter.

DUBNER: Oh nice, yeah.

TEIXEIRA: So I got that. I got that hanging, and one of the things I’m most proud of is hitting 30 homers and driving in a hundred runs for eight straight years. Because the first time I did it, I had to pinch myself. I was a second year player, playing for the Rangers, and I said, “Oh my goodness, I just hit 30 homers and drove in a hundred R.B.I.’s,” and being able to do that eight straight years is the thing I’m most proud of.

DUBNER: Yeah. It was a great career. As a New Yorker, I enjoyed watching you with the Yankees and I especially enjoyed getting to talk to you today. So thank you so much.

TEIXEIRA: Thank you.

* * *

Freakonomics Radio is produced by Stitcher and Dubner Productions. Our “Hidden Side of Sports” series was produced by Anders Kelto and Derek John, with help from Alvin Melathe, Matt Stroup, and Harry Huggins. Our staff includes Alison Craiglow, Greg Rippin, and Zack Lapinski. The music you hear throughout our episodes was composed by Luis Guerra. Our show can also be heard on NPR stations across the country — check your local station for the schedule — as well as on SiriusXM, Spotify, and even your better airlines! Thanks for listening.

The post Extra: Mark Teixeira Full Interview appeared first on Freakonomics.

from Dental Care Tips http://freakonomics.com/podcast/mark-teixeira/

0 notes