tim and bernard who break up and it's nothing big, no one cheated or anything. it's just their lifestyles didn't work out well together. tim cannot give up vigilantism currently and bear cannot handle the level of danger tim puts himself in. and on the other hand, tim cannot handle the fact that bear chooses to run into danger as an emt bc he already worries about everything but now he has to worry if he'll find his boyfriend convulsing from fear gas in a random alley but also bear who felt the life drain out of darla cannot stand the thought of not helping people and runs headfirst into dangerous situation after dangerous situation hoping that every person he saves can somehow make up for the fact that he could not save darla.
(he very pointedly does not think about the fact that there was nothing he could do because if he thinks about that, he'll spiral until they have to lock him in arkham too)
and so they break up but they were tim & bernard in high school and when they started dating they balanced out the worst of each other and they became tim&bernard. and everyone who knows them, knows that they're better together but they cant be together, they refuse actually because they cannot lose another person to the violence of gotham and by the time they figure out that they cant work together as long as the other is an emt or vigilante, it's too late for both them. they've already left too many pieces of themselves in each other.
tim still knows what bear means when he says "tim" in that exasperated voice. tim still goes boneless when he hears bear say "baby" in that firm tone. bear can still read tim like a book. he still knows the right way to massage tim's neck so that tim can go to sleep. everyone at the first responders gala knows not to bother ceo drake-wayne and senior emt dowd when they're talking.
(and if they're standing a little too close to each other than what is normal, who are they to judge? everyone knows that dowd and drake-wayne have history)
and if everyone on the night shift has caught red robin with his head tucked into the crook of emt dowd's neck as emt dowd runs a soothing hand up and down the vigilante's back, well then, they just quietly back away.
(after all, dowd's one of like, five, emts that can get the bats to receive medical treatment so if turning a blind eye to whatever the fuck they have going on is what allows them to give back to their heroes, then the night shift will do it every time)
and of course, tim and bear are practical people. they loved (love) each other sure, but when your lives are fundamentally incompatible, well, you cant get too stuck on the what-ifs, that's for sure. and so they do find love with other people and yeah, maybe it's not what they expected love to be when they first fell in love with each other. it's not the bubbly, stomach-swoopy, cant stop grinning, feeling that permeated tim&bernard's early days or the i Know you/you Know me that was their middle or the quiet despair that was their end but it is contentment. and in a life with as many losses as theirs, contentment is something they hold dearly
and they're happy! truly! but sometimes, at galas when they're making each other snort champagne out their noses or in darkened alleyways when their clothes are both stained with blood or at rallies for stricter gun regulations in gotham where they both sit too close to each other, fingers enclosed around each other in a death grip, when the presenters inevitably bring up grieves
(worst school shooting in gotham in decades, there's blood on their hands and blood in their mouths and darla is dead in between both of them and there is a chasm so wide that they are screaming to get their voices across and she will always be dead and maybe this had always been the problem that she is dead and there is no coming back from that and that there is blood on their hands and blood in their mouth and blood on their han-)
but sometimes, most especially on opposite sides of the street, as life pulls them in different directions, just sometimes, they see each other and just for a second, nothing too long, the flap of a hummingbird's wings, the time it takes to blink, an electron's orbital, they look at each other and for the briefest moment, blue on brown, a barely noticeable stutter in their steps, the space between heartbeats, because this is all they will give themselves because they do not dwell on what-ifs or what-could-have-beens, or what-should-have-beens, or delusions of a softer world, their eyes meet and they think to themselves, god, in another life, i would have really liked just doing laundry and taxes with him.
105 notes
·
View notes
after reading the one hundred and one millionth inane quote about how Loki is such a pRiViLeGeD pRiNcE while Sylvie is just a poor baby who had no real childhood and had to learn to fend for herself from a young age, I feel the need to point out that even the ONE thing we know about Sylvie's past, the thing that's supposed to be her mAjOr tRaUmA and set her apart from him somehow, was literally stolen from Loki.
this is how Tom described Loki's experience post-suicide attempt back in the day while doing press for Avengers:
“I think he went, like with everything else, to a sort of… it was just like, the worst place imaginable. I think he went to all of the darkest recesses of the universe. I’m sure he had a brush with—several brushes with death. I think he ran into the shadiest characters you can find in the Nine Realms. I think he had to rely on his wits to protect himself. It was really, really, really unpleasant, I think. I don’t have any frame of reference for that, except for imagining what it might be like to be kidnapped by a terrorist or something and have to survive a very, very frightening and precarious existence. But whatever it was, it was important when Loki came back for The Avengers, that whatever compassion he had left was absolutely shriveled to a minimum because of the experience that he had. Harrowing, I think, and scarring for life—in a way that Thor and Odin and Frigga find very, very difficult to understand.” [source]
and now the show pretends that Loki teamed up with Thanos completely of his own will, even though Marvel had JUST confirmed that the sceptre was influencing him throughout Avengers, and they hand that traumatic backstory that was Loki's off to their precious OC.
230 notes
·
View notes
Because @maltheniel has enabled me, I'm going to tell you about William Henry Seward.
If you had the American history education that I had, you might have heard of a thing called Seward's Folly--also known as Alaska. Seward was the Secretary of State who was mocked for buying America territory in what appeared to be a barren wasteland, until he was vindicated by the discovery of oil and gold and a jillion other useful natural resources. If you had the education that I had, this is the only thing you heard about him, but the more I look into the Civil War, the more baffling this is, because this guy is everywhere in the political scene of the time.
Seward was an extremely vocal anti-slavery Whig from New York. He started as a US Senator in 1849, and he became part of President Zachary Taylor's inner circle, influencing him to support measures to keep slavery out of the new territories. After Taylor died, the question of slavery in the territories dominated politics for the next decade, with the conflict getting more heated and the positions getting more polarized. The Whig Party fell apart because of disagreements over the issue; Seward held on for as long as he could, but eventually joined the newly-forming Republican Party, and became well-known for his eloquent speeches against slavery.
When it came time to choose the Republican nominee for the 1860 presidential election, Seward was by far the top candidate. All but a shoe-in. Unfortunately, some of his anti-slavery speeches were a bit too eloquent, and gave him a reputation for being much more radically anti-slavery than he was. A significant portion of the party doubted he could win a nationwide election when slavery was such a divisive issue. This gave Lincoln's team a chance to pitch him as a less-radical option, which allowed him to come from behind and win the nomination.
Seward was extremely gracious about the loss, immediately publishing letters announcing his full support of Lincoln as candidate, and putting his own campaign manager to work getting Lincoln elected. Privately, though, he was seething. He had been in politics for decades, helped to build the party, and then lost his chance at the presidency to a guy who'd been working as a backwoods lawyer for the last twelve years.
But he knew his politics, and knew it was better to support the party's candidate than to oppose him. Lincoln offered Seward the prime Cabinet position of Secretary of State--he was qualified for it and deserved it--and Seward accepted. Seward hoped that he'd be able to help select the other Cabinet members, so he could pick people from his own faction who he'd work well with. Then he, with his extensive connections and political experience, could be the real head of the administration, with Lincoln as a compliant figurehead.
Lincoln was having none of it. He listened to Seward's suggestions, but he'd basically already chosen the people he wanted for his Cabinet, across all factions of the party. While he made use of Seward's expertise and trusted him as Secretary of State, he was going to be head of his own administration and be the one making all the final decisions. After a rocky start, Seward came to recognize that Lincoln had a shrewd mind and good judgement, and he became Lincoln's loyal supporter and a good friend.
But there was a persistent idea that Seward was the real power behind the throne, sparked partly by the prominent role he took in Washington between the election and the inauguration. States started seceding almost as soon aa Lincoln was elected, and Seward was the one who had to hold things together in Washington while Lincoln was tying things up in Illinois. He was getting reports from informants, watching out for Southern spies, and keeping Lincoln abreast of what was going on. He gave a stirring speech to Congress urging the Southern states to keep the Union together, offering all sorts of concessions to mollify them, such as amendments preventing the federal government from interfering with slavery. It was a highly controversial speech, and his wife, Frances, raked him over the coals for it. She understood, earlier than almost anybody, that this crisis would turn into a long war about slavery, and that they couldn't afford to bend on that issue, even to keep the Union together. (Lincoln privately approved of several measures Seward talked about, but publicly said little, preferring to see the public's response to Seward before taking official positions.)
Seward was a little bit like a Civil War version of Evil Chancellor Traytor. Under both Lincoln and Johnson, rumors persisted that Seward was the shadowy figure who was really in charge, secretly manipulating the president into making unpopular decisions, even though most of the time, Seward had nothing to do those decisions, and often disagreed at least partially with what the president chose to do.
Best example of the effects of this misconception is the time Seward came under attack during the middle of the war. The war was going badly, and since people couldn't directly attack the president, they started going after Seward. Chase, the Treasury Secretary, told some members of Congress that Seward was the reason the Cabinet couldn't get along, and that he was always trying to take control. These senators wanted to meet with the president and force him to get rid of Seward. When Seward heard about this, he gave Lincoln his letter of resignation, not wanting to cause problems for the administration. Lincoln responded by allowing the senators to join in a Sewardless Cabinet meeting. When confronted with both the senators and the Cabinet, Chase was forced to admit that his stories had been exaggerated, and the other Cabinet members rallied to Seward's defense, resenting Congress' meddling. Lincoln refused to accept Seward's resignation, and Seward returned to the Cabinet, having been saved by Lincoln's political acumen.
I'm going to skip ahead so I can tell you the craziest part of the story. Four days before the Civil War officially ended, Seward got into a carriage accident that left him bedridden with a broken jaw and a bunch of other injuries. When told of Lee's surrender on April 9th, Seward said (through a broken jaw, after barely surviving a painful accident), "For the first time in my life, you've made me cry." (Which is both touching and an incredibly badass claim, given what he's just suffered.)
Five days later, John Wilkes Booth shot the president at Ford's Theater. Everyone knows (or should know) that part of the story. What I didn't know was that his conspiracy also called for Seward's assassination. Booth knew his Shakespeare and didn't want to leave Seward alive as a Marc Antony to eulogize the dead tyrant. (He also wanted to kill Andrew Johnson, but that assassin chickened out, and it's not really important to this story).
While Booth was at the theater, his co-conspirator went to Seward's house under the pretense of delivering medication. When Seward's son wouldn't let him go upstairs, the assassin tried to shoot him and broke his skull with the gun. The assassin then made his way to Seward's bedroom--where, I need you to remember, Seward was still bed-ridden--and stabbed him five times in the face and neck. Like, sliced away flaps of flesh. The only reason Seward didn't die was because the splint for his broken jaw deflected the blade away from his jugular vein. And because his other son and bodyguard made it into the room and forced the assassin to flee.
Chalk this one up in the "Parts of American History I'm Furious No One Told Me About" column.
While Seward was recovering, they hid the president's death from him, thinking he wouldn't survive the shock. But he figured it out three days later when he saw the flags at half-staff through his bedroom window, and realized that if Lincoln were alive, he'd have been the first to come see Seward after the attack.
Of course, Seward survived (badly scarred) and went on to buy Alaska. Which is an interesting story. But not half so interesting as all the stuff that came before it.
187 notes
·
View notes