✨The Touch of Sunlight Comic Book✨

This short romance is an enchanting tale of warmth, choice, and of breaking bonds.

🌑🌘🌗🌖🌕🌔🌓🌒🌑

Our story begins with Nulo, a night-bound fae who emerges from a well every full moon to grant wishes. They withstand the solitude by the short contact they have with their guests, and the trinket each leaves behind for a brief moment. But what should happen, when a guest wishes for something they don't even understand? What does it mean, when she says she wants to know… how are they?

🌑🌘🌗🌖🌕🌔🌓🌒🌑

Newcomers to this tale, you're in luck! If you want to see what emotions are in store for you, you can read it in full, in its premiere Webtoon form right here.

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At last, we are live!!! This project marks my entry into offering standalone, physical merch. If you've ever wanted to have some of my art in your hands, here's your chance~ Alongside the book itself, there will prints and stickers. And if we meet the stretch goals, even more!

There is also a special tier where you can receive a little traditional doodle I'd make with copic markers, but be aware that those are first come, first serve.

That said, I've added a lot more to the kickstarter version to make it sing like:

50+ additional panels 📝

small emotional sequences 💖

A nine page epilogue for those who wanted a little more touch in the touch of sunlight 👩‍❤️‍💋‍👩

If all goes well, I'm hoping that this kickstarter will help me get my footing to start making comics full time, something that I've always, always wanted to do.

If you have read this far, Thank You. It means a lot for this even to be seen, and I'm truly grateful for any and all support. That's a form of sunlight all on it's own to me.

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The campaign will run from April 28th to May 28th!

Tl;dr: The heavily revised physical edition Dreams of the Dying, my novel set in the Enderal universe, is now available for pre-order via Amazon via my website. Special early bird prices are $32.99 for the hardcover with an illustrated appendix, $12.99 for the paperback, and $2.99 for the eBook. It’s a prequel featuring Jespar, but, for reasons outlined below, opens up a new canon. Amazon.de has yet to pick up the listing for the physical editions, but they are incredibly slow—I’m working to get that done.

Hey guys,

This is Nicolas, the writer of Enderal speaking. As some of you may know, I’ve been working on an Enderal novel, Dreams of the Dying. First released as a web version, I spent the past year completely rewriting and improving the book, adding and removing chapters, revising characters arcs, and improving plotting, worldbuilding, and style. In total, I rewrote the web edition three times from cover to cover. Well, it’s finally time: Dreams of the Dying is now available for pre-order on Amazon!

The English version of Dreams of the Dying will release on October 20. A German (and perhaps Russian) translation will follow as soon as possible.

Please note that this is a rendering and that the actual hardcover looks slightly different, with same format but a matte dust jacket and a matte, laminated case. A big shoutout to Dominik Derow for the cover artwork, Johanna Krünes for her cover design, and Joyce, for her tips, patience, and help with this product shot.

Jaaros Oonai, magnate, visionary, and master of coin, doesn’t muse about whether the glass is half empty or half full—only about ways to fill it.

Jespar Dal’Varek, drifter, mercenary, and master of avoidance, doesn’t muse at all. He’d rather just drink the damn wine.

Two lives that could not be more different intertwine when a strange contract leads Jespar to the tropical island empire of Kilay, the wealthiest nation of the Civilized World.

The mission turns out to be as bizarre as it is lucrative: Jaaros Oonai, the country’s merchant king, knows something that could stop a catastrophe, but he has fallen into an inexplicable coma. Together with an ex-priestess and a psychic, Jespar must enter Oonai’s dreams and find this secret.

What should have been a fresh start rapidly turns into a nightmare, as Jespar slides into a spiral of disturbing dreams, political intrigue, and clashing ideals, where not only the fate of Kilay but his own sanity are at stake. It’s not long before he learns that only a spider’s thread divides the sleeping and the awoken.

And that there’s no greater enemy than one’s own mind.

The hardcover edition comes with an appendix that includes additional lore, such as an illustrated bestiary, a guide to Kilayan fashion, illustrations of the (re-envisioned) seven Light-Born, a short guide to the Makehu language, and much more.

Even though Dreams could be considered a prequel, I didn’t write this as an expansion or fan service but rather as my debut, and a book that stands on its own. This edition differs vastly from the web version, and, though it is up to you to judge, I’m a million times happier with it.

If you’re on the fence and would like to wait for reviews—here’s hoping I get enough—I fully understand. However, if you would buy the novel, you’d do me a great favor if you considered pre-ordering. One of the biggest challenges as an indie author is exposure; since Amazon registers all pre-orders as Day 1 sales, a lot of Day 1 sales would give me a chance to climb in the novel’s category and boost visibility for readers outside the Enderal community. To make this worth it to you, the book will sell for a special early bird price of $32.99 for the hardcover with the illustrated appendix, $12.99 for the paperback, and $2.99 for the eBook, as opposed to $37, $16, and $5. Just follow the link to my website and click pre-order—it will take you right to your local Amazon marketplace.

Unfortunately, Amazon.de has yet to pick up the listing for the physical editions, but they are incredibly slow—I’m working to get that done.

I’m aware the hardcover is in the upper price range, but it uses the best materials, and the illustrated appendix cost a lot to produce. It’s also the only edition where I make a more solid revenue, so see it as a way to support my work, if you wish.

If you’re a patron and pledged $110 or more since October 2018, I’ll be in touch a few weeks before launch to send out your signed hardcover copy right away. Thanks again for your support, Dreams became a far pricier project than I anticipated, and your patronage helped me immensely in covering the cost.

Lastly, a word of warning before you pre-order: For the paperback edition, I took the drastic step to separate Dreams and all future Enderal novels from the game canon. There are two good reasons for this. First, the Vyn games were created over 17 years, the earliest one being Myar Aranath in 2003. Fascinating as this idea may be, it also means that the lore of the Vyn universe was created by a myriad of different authors (the latest and current one being me when I joined the team in 2011). As a result of this, the lore of Vyn has always felt a little disjointed and inconsistent; I initially took these differences as challenges to conquer, but the longer I wrote, the more I realized how much these inconsistencies bothered me and how hard they made it to write the story and the universe I envisioned. Let me assure you that this decision wasn’t easy and does not reflect a lack of appreciation for the work of the previous workers. I stayed faithful to the lore whenever possible.

The second reason is a trickier one: Jespar. This character has been in my mind for nine years now, and I love him with all my heart. Still, the more I immersed myself in the story of Dreams, the more I grew aware of how incredibly constraining it was to write a story where the end is already written; because Jespar is alive in 8234 a. St. (1234 P.L. in new canon lore), you all know he will never be in real danger. Again, there is undoubtedly an intriguing challenge to writing such a “safe” story, but—similar to the lore, I increasingly felt like I was writing with fetters on. 

So, what does this mean? Aside from the fact that anything can now happen, the consequences aren’t that drastic. Enderal is still Enderal, and Jespar is still Jespar, albeit thirteen years younger and at another point in his life. I changed and expanded details about his backstory, but his essential conflicts are still the same, only refined. Major changes include modifications to the Light-Born (their aspects, how they came to be, when and how they disappeared, and the societal consequences of that disappearance), the time frame of the different eras, and a complete rework of the magic system. Minor changes include dates, the spelling of names and locations (Kilay, not Kilé), and others details I tweaked for consistency and worldbuilding coherence.

And that’s about it. I’m aware and grateful for the love many of you have for this world, and believe me, I did my best to honor it; I just realized I cannot tell a good story with one arm tied behind my back. If it’s any solace, I can promise you that new book canon is ironclad – I’m pathologically obsessive about consistency and cohesive worldbuilding, but without a solid framework, that’s a recipe for frustration and disaster. See it as a different but nearby eventuality: details and fates may differ, but the soul of the world remains the same.

If all that didn’t scare you off, pre-order away! I also set up a Goodreads page for the book, so you can add it to your To-Be-Reads or even recommend it to your friends – this is an indie project by all means, so I’m grateful for every bit of support. Please keep in mind that the Goodreads is for the revised edition, not the web edition, so if you’re planning to leave a low rating, I’d be grateful if you waited to read the actual book in October 20. It’s a different experience.

Last but not least, a big thank you to everyone who supported me on Patreon, created fanart for Enderal, or just let me know they enjoyed this game and were looking forward to the novel. This novel was meant to be a 6-month stint but, boy, did it turn into something more. It sounds sentimental, but this last year has been rough personally, and your support and encouragement kept me going.

I hope this story will live up to your expectations.

Best,

Nicolas

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Wait, what does give a piece of media staying power? how does an individual perform such witchcraft as to create a fandom? What sorcery is this?

disclaimer: I definitely don't have a degree in Why Media Is Popular or anything. I'm just a random 19 year old who thinks fandom is a weird and interesting phenomenon. someone with a degree could probably give you a much better answer. this is also pretty strongly based on the tumblr format of fandom.

I don't actually know what jumpstarts a fandom. I think that there's some degree of random luck involved. there are factors, of course -- how well something ties in to current trends, how well-known a creator is, how well they're able to market, how easy it is for fans to organize and find each other -- but there are LOTS of really, really good works that are made by popular creators that never really get a big fandom. it's not a pretentious thing like "oh the masses don't know what's actually good." some shit just doesn't capture that lightning in a bottle. quality doesn't have much to do with it.

that said, I define "staying power" as the lasting impact a work has on cultural consciousness. essentially, it's how long a fandom, once started, can stay around, continue to grow, and make people aware of its presence. it also has to do with the impact the work leaves on its fans. staying power is a lot easier for me to make statements about, because I have a pretty good idea of why some works have a strong staying power and others don't.

I would argue that the staying power of a work depends heavily on how well a work speaks to its audience, and how active that audience is in talking about the work. again, it's hard to define a rule of thumb of how to make a work that speaks to its audience, but I think a common thread tends to be "does this work operate with at least a basic idea of what its audience wants." I've noticed, with works such as GoT and Lost, that the staying power almost completely evaporated after the finale of each show, because the creators reneged on the promises of their narratives. the audience was unsatisfied, and so the audience left. those are the bigger examples of a show losing its staying power, but there are tons of examples of media losing popularity because they didn't do what the audience wanted.

(I think that for a lot of fandoms, another thing that helps the staying power is "does this work offer room for fanwork and fan analysis." I think there's a lot of fandoms out there that aren't centered on very good works, but since those works spark a lot of imagination in people, those fandoms stay alive because they don't really think about the disappointments of their chosen canon.)

the audience participation is a lot easier to define. works like harry potter and homestuck got and remained popular because so many people, many of whom had large platforms of their own, were discussing it. sure, professional marketing can definitely do this as well (think of the MCU) but all the marketing in the world can fall flat if the audience isn't interested in boosting that marketing. if a work touches many members of an audience deeply AND those fans are very vocal about building a fan community, you can get fandoms that are still large and active decades after the work has finished. this goes double if the work did something fairly unique and spawned a lot of new trends. lotr is still around, and new people get into it every year, mostly because it completely changed the course of the fantasy genre. it has immense staying power.

as a side note, I think in this current age, the most critical audience members to building a tumblr-specific fandom, outside of the people who spread word-of-mouth, are probably the fanartists. fan analysis and fanfiction help keep the community alive, and the work itself has to pull a lot of weight in order to stick with the audience, but it's almost always the fanart that makes me intrigued with a new piece of media these days. all of you are really neat and i appreciate your hard work.

so yeah, that's my piece on staying power. sorry it's so vague. i can point to a specific piece of media and come up with theories about why that in particular is popular, but it's hard to define larger trends without being vague. folks who study this shit for a living can probably give a much more coherent analysis.

Witch!Kurt #42: The Calm Before the Storm

As promised, I got back to work on this.  :)

~*~*~*~*~*~

Adam hummed as he moved through the kitchen, fetching plates, cups, and cutlery from their cabinets and drawers before dishing up the two servings of eggs and sausage links he’d just finished cooking.

He pulled a large orange from the refrigerator and cut it into halves, placing one on each plate. He really preferred grapefruit, but Kurt hated even the scent of them, so he compromised by purchasing a large bag of Mandarins on his last shopping trip. It made him feel better, since Kurt had ceased purchasing his own former staple of strawberries once he had discovered that Adam was allergic. Adam had insisted that there was no need for Kurt to give up a favorite food, and Kurt had made a noise of agreement but Adam had noticed soon afterward that their grocery list never had that particular fruit on it anymore. The bottle of strawberry pancake syrup that had formerly graced their little condiment shelf had also mysteriously vanished. It was the sort of sweet gesture that his husband tended to make without thought, and Adam was determined to show that he appreciated it in just as subtle a fashion. He refused to be another one of those people in Kurt’s life who took his generous nature for granted.

Pouring a steaming cup of tea for himself and coffee for Kurt, he smiled at how delightfully domestic this was. Other than company, the thing he had missed most during his seemingly endless span in the emptiness of the Void was simply having something to do. Getting his hands on some small chore and keeping busy with it. Adam had never been an idler, never one to just sit quietly with his hands folded and wait for something to come along. From earliest childhood, he had been a doer, taking satisfaction from playing games, cooking meals, scribbling notes, inventing choreography, learning some new skill, or sorting out an activity for others. He and Kurt had that in common, along with having work and living spaces that tended to stay tidy and well organized, though neither took it to neat-freak levels. Adam had missed being able to set his hand to a thing and see it completed, and a small part of him thrilled at the mundane little task.

It bothered him more than he liked to admit that he was still slightly off his game when it came to getting his nerve up for comings and goings beyond the loft, even after six months back in the real world, but having a full time stay-at-home job now helped immensely. Most of his daylight hours were kept busy making calls, booking online appointments, and sorting out talent for various casting calls about town. It made him feel useful again, and after only two months on the job, he was already earning praise from his employers and glowing reviews from their clients. That little boost to his self-esteem was making him bolder about going outdoors and meeting people again. Now that winter was over, greenery was beginning to pop up everywhere and the days were becoming mild and pleasant, beckoning him to take a nice walk through the park, or down to Bui’s for a spot of tea on his lunch hour. He no longer worked for Mrs. Bui, having given up his position as stock-boy to an eager young high schooler once his schedule with H&B had been set, but he still liked to pop round for a hot cup, two or three delicious chocolate biccies, and a nice gossip.

And then there was Kurt. How lucky he felt each day to wake up to the sight of that beautiful face on the pillow next to his, to phone him at lunchtime to say ‘how are you’, ‘what would you like for dinner’, and ‘I love you’. Such simple words, but so full of delight to them both. And he liked to be here, finishing up his work for the day, or bustling about getting the evening meal when it was his turn to cook, having it ready when Kurt came home from work or school, and seeing his face light up with joy at the sight of him.

“Hello, husband,” Kurt would say, with that loving look in his beautiful eyes as he came forward for a kiss and a fond embrace. “How was your day?”  

Kurt took positive delight in that greeting, and Adam enjoyed hearing it just as much. He supposed over time the shiny newness of being married would wear off, but for now it was still great fun.

Adam buttered four newly popped slices of toast and once again divided them between the waiting plates, adding a quick smear of marmalade to his own half and a dribble of honey to Kurt’s. He added a bit of honey to his tea as well, then used the spoon he’d stirred it with to mix a helping of nonfat creamer and a packet of sweetener into the coffee. He took a small sip of the latter to test the level of sweetness, and then grimaced, wondering what he’d been thinking as he took a quick swig of tea to banish the taste. Kurt had grown up drinking Burt Hummel’s noxious brew, and he still preferred his coffee strong enough to degrease an engine or melt the spines off a cactus.

“Breakfast is ready, husband of mine,” he said, setting a plate and the coffee on Kurt’s side of the breakfast table just in time to greet him with a kiss as he wandered out from the bathroom, wearing a towel about his waist, skin fresh and still ever so slightly damp after showering.

Kurt kissed him back with a smile and immediately went for the cup, taking an experimental sip followed by a large happy slurp. “Mmm, this is great!” he said. “You used hazelnut creamer, didn’t you?”

Vaguely amused at his enthusiasm, Adam said, “I did. I used that cocoa infused espresso you bought last trip, and I thought hazelnut would be a nice complement to it.”

“Nutella in a cup,” he sighed blissfully, belting back another swallow. He kissed Adam again, on the cheek this time and said, “Be right back.”

Kurt disappeared into the bedroom, and Adam had just enough time to top up his cup and add another good dollop of creamer before Kurt emerged again wearing a smart new outfit of gray checked trousers, black shoes and belt, and a shimmery green, patterned button down. Now that he had truly got the hang of using his assorted magics, Kurt could get himself dressed for the day in the literal blink of an eye. The only delay would be in choosing which outfit to wear. It was the one power that Adam envied him, though he doubted that even being able to instantly don and discard clothing would give him the impeccably chic and polished look that Kurt always had.

After all, even his own power to whisk his hair into order with a thought did not give him the ability to look sexily tumbled when rising from his pillow of a morning the way Kurt typically did. Adam usually looked as though he’d received electric shock until he got himself under a hot shower, and he knew he could potter around in his closet for a good half hour trying on assorted items and still look like he’d just escaped from a harrowing ride through a clothes dryer. Lucky for him that Kurt found the rumpled look attractive.

“What’s funny?” Kurt asked, sitting down to breakfast. He hadn’t been gone long enough for the food to grow cold and he tucked in with an appreciative appetite.

Adam just waved a hand. “Oh nothing. Just musing about how unfairly gorgeous you are for first thing in the morning.”

Flattered, he blushed a bit, his eyes sparkling at the compliment. “You look nice too.”  

And he did. Adam had a video call with a producer this morning, someone his agency had landed for casting of a big-budget film. Adam’s job was simply to take down the particulars of cast size, shooting schedule, and what sort of roles they were looking to fill, and then he would take down their availability and set up a second meeting with one of H&B’s more senior casting agents. But even that required a bit more spit and polish than usual.

He told Kurt as much. “I must let them see that Hanover & Bradley is a posh firm, even down to the lowliest of booking clerks.” He straightened his black and gold striped tie before lifting his nose in the air and sticking his pinky out with extreme dignity as he took a sip from his teacup.

As he had expected, Kurt laughed. “Well, I’m sure they’ll appreciate it. I wish it wasn’t considered unprofessional to suggest casting yourself. I glanced at the script spec you were reading last night and that movie sounds right up your alley.”

Adam smiled. “Appreciated, but I don’t think I’m quite ready for the chaos of a film set yet. Though I must admit that I have been growing bolder of late. I’ve been considering scraping the rust off of my acting skills and joining the Lightning Circle for one or two evenings a week.”

For a moment Kurt looked blank, but then he brightened as the name clicked. “That’s the Improv group that your friend Joey runs, isn’t it?” At Adam’s nod, he clasped his hands. “Adam, that would be amazing! It’s a perfect way to stick a toe in the water and find out whether or not you’d be comfortable on stage again. Joey was an Apple, so he’ll totally get it if you’re not quite ready to get out in public yet. You two were really close during my freshman year, so I imagine it would be like slipping into a favorite pair of shoes to work with him again. It won’t even matter if you’re rusty, because figuring your way around an awkward moment is the whole idea of Improv.”  

Adam beamed at his support. “Exactly right. I had a talk with Janice during my last session about wanting to take baby steps back toward my aborted career. She suggested testing the waters in some small way, then reporting back on how it went. I was thinking Community Theater, or joining the Lexington retirees for one of their in-house productions, or a sketch comedy night somewhere. Then I recalled Joe telling us at the last Apples get-together that he’s renting a space in the Village. His troupe rehearses a few nights a week and performs on Sunday evenings. They write sketches, work out the framing, and then sort of fill in the blanks before an audience. I know for certain that I’m welcome to join.”

Kurt was grinning. “Then you should totally do it. Maybe we could start by attending a performance on the weekend, just to see what it’s like. That way you can make an informed decision about whether or not it’s something you want to do. I think it would be so good for you, honey. I know how refreshing it can be to put your problems aside and just be someone else for a little while. Plus it sounds like a lot of fun!”

Pleased at how easily Kurt had not only accepted the plan but dove straight in with his support, Adam said, “So, it’s a date then?” 

Privately he was thinking that if this worked out, it might be a bit of fun they could do together. The others always asked after Kurt, and seemed quite interested in his progress at NYADA, so they would be glad to have him.

“It’s a date,” Kurt confirmed. Munching the last bite of his breakfast, he glanced at his phone on the table beside him and made a startled sound. “Oh, gosh! Is that the time already? Isabelle asked me to help choose the summer dress selections for the website today and I don’t want to be late.”

Adam nodded. He needed to get himself ready for the meeting soon as well. “Have fun and I’ll see you this afternoon. Is it your turn for dinner tonight?”

“It was, but I’ll do it tomorrow. Brittany called earlier and asked if she, Santana, and Tubbington could join us. They’ll pick up something from the Golden Lotus on the way here.”

He was used to this. Members of their witch family dropped by at odd hours all the time and usually brought food with them, so Adam nodded. “I’ll text and ask them for an order of sweet and sour, or maybe some General Tso. That pineapple and green pepper concoction they picked out the last time was revolting. I was belching peppers for two days straight.”

Kurt laughed. “I already asked. Santana likes that stuff, but Brittany agrees with you, and of course Tubbington would probably stage a revolt if they didn’t get his beloved Kung Pao Chicken, so nobody balked at my request to add Pork Fried Rice and General Tsao.”

Taking one last swig of coffee, Kurt took his dishes to the kitchen, then hurried to the bathroom to quickly brush his teeth. Giving his husband a minty kiss goodbye, Kurt grabbed his bag and a light jacket and was out the door.

Adam stared fondly after him for a moment, then willed the magical ward back into place and went to his own work.

~*~*~*~*~

“What’s happened?” Adam asked when Kurt came through the door without his usual cheerful greeting. 

The buoyant mood Kurt had left home with this morning had transformed throughout the day into a feeling of tense foreboding that had been palpable the moment he walked in the door. Before that, actually. A more tamped-down version had been singing along their emotional bond for the past couple of hours. 

Adam found himself wondering if their idyllic breakfast this morning had just been the calm before some great storm. Whatever it was, he suspected that their Sunday theater plans had just been cancelled. “Is something wrong in Ohio?”

“No,” Kurt said, speaking the word with a hint of hesitation. He made an impatient gesture with his hands as he amended it to, “Not exactly. Nothing’s really wrong, but I had a text from Sue Sylvester today and I suspect it’s no coincidence that she sent it to me on the same day Brittany and Santana suddenly decided to drop by for dinner.”

Adam agreed that this was unlikely. Sue had kept her promise to keep tabs on the Blaine situation for them, but she wasn’t the ‘just dropping a friendly line’ sort of person. “What did it say?”

Pulling out his phone, Kurt showed him the message. ‘Red Alert. Paddington has taken a flea dip.’ “What on earth?”

“Sue always codes her messages,” Kurt explained. “She thinks satellites are sharing them with the C.I.A. or something. Paddington is the nickname she gave to Dave Karofsky after he came out as gay. Y’know, as in a baby bear.”

Adam snorted, picturing the hulking young man he had briefly glimpsed on his aborted surveillance trip to Lima dressed in a duffel coat, red hat and wellies. “So in her own peculiar way, she’s telling you that Dave has rid himself of a certain pest?”

“That’s how I read it,” Kurt agreed. “He must have broken up with Blaine. Either he shook off Blaine’s persuasive influence somehow, or he just wasn’t as taken in by it as we assumed. I’d be interested to find out what happened. The important thing for now is that if Dave is gone, then Blaine doesn’t have anyone handy to power-dump his stolen magic into. That might make Blaine vulnerable.”

“Or it might make him more of a problem,” Adam reminded him, willing away the shiver of apprehension that skittered down his spine at Kurt’s words. “If Blaine has suddenly found himself alone and forced to return to what Santana colorfully calls the ‘snatch and splooge’ technique of transferring power, he could be extremely dangerous.”

Kurt shook his head. “That’s assuming he hasn’t stored power in half the innocent Standards in Lima. He was always unnaturally good at swaying a crowd to his side, long before the soul-polluting began. He’s a lot easier to deal with one on one than with a pack of supporters behind him. Especially ones who are convinced against all logic and evidence that he can do no wrong.”

Reading his meaning in that, Adam said flatly, “You are not going to face him alone, Kurt.”

“Well, I’m not sending you to spy on him again,” Kurt countered with a trace of heat. “I don’t want you going anywhere near him.”

“Nor I you, so if you think I’m going to just sit here safely on the sidelines while that nasty blighter attacks you, then …”

“Adam, I’ll be at twice as much risk if I’m worrying about what might happen to you,” Kurt interrupted. “I’m not an idiot. I know how dangerous he can be, and that you both want and deserve to be with me when I face him, but he nearly killed you once, and then just seeing him for an instant all but paralyzed you! The last time you two were face to face, you were at full strength and he still nearly destroyed you. What if he finds out that you’re not only still alive, but that I’ve married you, and once and for all torpedoed his plans for me? He’ll go berserk and I don’t want to risk him taking that out on you. If I put you in his line of sight, I might as well be pulling the trigger on you myself.”

Adam wanted to argue back that he would be equally devastated if Kurt were to face their enemy alone and be killed or sent to the Void. Which might well be the same thing, since none of their group might be able to find and rescue him if he were to be banished to that place without an anchor. But Kurt would resist such reasoning. For all his instinctive mother-henning of loved ones, he could be remarkably blind when it came to his own well-being.

“Darling, what with all the Lima people who came to our reception, I highly doubt that Blaine has remained oblivious to my miraculous return from the great beyond. I’m safer with you, and the members of our coven, than I ever would be alone.” He struggled to keep his voice calm, even though he suspected that his emotions were broadcasting loud and clear anyway. “I may not be as physically strong as I was the first time I encountered him, but magically I’ve grown stronger. One of the upsides to being part of a good coven. Since Joining with you, I’ve gained new levels of control. But what you’re forgetting is that neither one of us is in this alone. We have a group of excellent witches and Familiars at our back, as well as friends and family. It may turn out that Blaine has put together an army of brain-washed sycophants, but if the Intelligence we’ve received thus far is true, then we also have Coach Sylvester’s magically-inclined Cheerio squad to counter them.”

As he had hoped, Kurt responded to the logic of this statement. “That’s true,” he said slowly. “I hate the idea of putting kids at risk, but I’d put my money on the Cheerios over Blaine’s personal Fight Club any day of the week.”

“I wouldn’t discount Sebastian’s influence over his former prep-school peers either,” Adam pressed. “Or for that matter Finn and Sam’s influence over your old Glee Club, which might even have countered Blaine’s a bit. Just because you’ve been left with that self-enamored tosser as your sole responsibility in the past, doesn’t mean you still are. You were a lone ship on a stormy ocean once upon a time, Kurt, but now you’re the captain of a veritable armada, and the rest of us are just waiting for an order to fire a shot across Blaine’s bow.”

Kurt’s mouth, which had fallen open during Adam’s impassioned speech, clicked shut and he gave him a wan smile. “I’m not sure you aren’t being just a little too optimistic here, but you have a good point.” The smile widened. “You like to claim that you’re not much of an orator, but you give a darned good rallying speech.”

“I think so too,” Santana said by way of greeting, making the two of them jump in surprise as she opened the door and walked casually into their discussion. Kurt had dropped the ward as he came inside, and left it down knowing his friends would be arriving right on his heels. “And he’s right, oh Captain my Captain. If you go back to Lima and cut us out of all the fun after keeping us waiting for months to kick Anderson’s bubble butt, we’ll disown you and elect a new coven leader. I hear Drumsticks has his eye on the spot.”

“Johnny? But he never…oh,” Kurt said in chagrin, laughing a little when he realized she was teasing. “I guess I’m being kind of stupid.”

“Never bothered us before,” she replied, a wicked twinkle in her eye. “I take it you heard from Sue?”

Brittany and Tubbington, who had come in behind her, put their sacks of food down on the kitchen island and Brittany said, “She sent us a message this morning before I called. I wasn’t sure if I should say anything then.”

“Paddington?” Adam queried, wondering if they’d got the same text Kurt had.

Tubbington gave him a frown and said, “Dawn Patrol”.

Not as familiar with Coach Sylvester’s unique personal code as the rest of them, Adam said, “What does that mean?”

“Be on alert because it might be time to come to Lima and get Blaine out of everybody’s way,” Santana translated casually.

Seeing his confusion, Kurt said, “Dawn. You know, as in the dish-washing soap that’s supposed to be extra good at clearing away greasy messes? It … never mind. The point is that Blaine has been dumped, and Coach thinks it might have him off balance enough for us to make our move.” He looked at their guests and said, “Adam was reminding me that we’re a team and that Blaine is no longer just my problem.”

“He’s right, Junior,” Tubbington garbled as he pulled a steaming box and a pair of chopsticks out of the nearest bag and stuffed a large bite of food into his mouth while he spoke. “I been keeping tabs on your family through Sebastian and he tells me that Blaine has already started sniffing around your house now that Sam is living there again.”

“What?” Kurt said in alarm, jumping up from the chair he had just taken.

Brittany patted his arm. “Don’t worry, nobody is in danger. That’s part of what we wanted to tell you tonight. Your dad has Fam, that’s what Sam and Finn call themselves when they’re not being individuals, did you know that? Anyway, Burt has made them wear that cologne Adam made for him at Christmas, just to be safe. He offered some to Sebastian too, but a Familiar can’t be influenced by Wild Magics so he didn’t need it.”

“I should mix them up a fresh batch if Burt is sharing,” Adam mused, already considering ways he might beef up the recipe while still keeping the cologne smelling pleasant. Having been victim to Blaine’s venomous influence once, Sam and Finn might be more than usually vulnerable, and that wasn’t a risk he wanted to take. “Perhaps I could mix it into a deodorant, so there would be no danger of anyone forgetting to wear the potion. ‘Magical Musk for Men’, or some such.”

“You should do it,” Santana agreed, shrugging when she saw that nobody was bothering with food except for the always voracious Lord Tubbington, and going for plates and forks, which she spread around the table before helping herself to a serving of fried rice. “The old stuff does its job, though. Sebastian reported to L.T. that Blaine showed up at the house last night, God only knows why, and Burt met him at the door with a wicked set of hedge-clippers in hand.”

She cackled at the thought and everyone else had to grin at the picture it painted when Brittany added, “Your dad told him he’d had a feeling that it was time to prune away the obnoxious weeds that were in his yard. Then he clacked the blades just a couple of inches from Blaine’s crotch and stared him down until he ran off.”

“Didn’t stop moving until he hit the Lima Bean, from what I hear,” L.T. said with satisfaction, treating them all to a window-shaking belch as he picked a stray vegetable from his beard and popped it into his mouth. “Damn, that’s great. The Lotus must have a new chef.”

Kurt, no longer surprised that his father hadn’t reported the visit, sighed and sad down, taking a spoonful of rice and another of steaming beef & broccoli. Adam and Brittany likewise sat down and helped themselves to a serving of mouthwatering entrees. Adam happily sailed into the box of spicy chicken, also accepting a spoonful of beef & broccoli when Kurt shook the box with an inquiring look. Santana pulled out a second container of Kung Pao, having known from experience that nobody else would have a chance at the initial serving of Tubbington’s favorite, and passed it around.

“If Blaine is already trying to get in good with Sam again,” Kurt mused after a moment, “then it really does support the idea that losing Dave must have come as an unpleasant shock. To his ego if not his magic-stealing. There’s no way he could know that Sam isn’t alone anymore, right?”

“No,” Adam said, “I’m sure he doesn’t know. After all, he believes that he murdered Finn, just as he thinks he did to me. But if he’s seen him around Lima, then even without Sight he must realize that Sam is suddenly a good bit healthier than he was when their friendship was broken off. I could see so clearly, and I don’t even know the poor fellow well.”

Brittany nodded. “We went to visit my folks a couple of weeks ago and I looked in on Fam. Sam’s almost back to his old self again. You did a really good thing for him when you joined him with Finn.”

“Technically that was Sebastian’s idea,” Kurt said, giving credit where it was due. “And all of you helped.”

“Yeah, but you’re the one who actually did the heavy lifting,” Santana countered, having no patience for self-effacement. Not when it came to an act of combined delicacy and power, not to mention personal risk, that had left even her cynical self in awe. Sounding baffled by her next words, she added, “And Finn is happy riding around in the back of Sam’s brain. I thought sure he’d be going crazy by now, given how much he liked being the center of attention back in high school. Instead he seems to think he’s some kind of secret agent. As long as Sam lets him take the wheel and do what he wants a couple of times a day, he doesn’t seem to give a flying fuck that nobody else knows they’re taking to Finn Hudson, ex Lima superstar.”

“I suspect without the influence of power-hungry girlfriends, he’s actually happier out of the spotlight,” Kurt said dryly. “He liked being part of the Quarterback-Head Cheerleader power couple, until it became more pressure than fun. Then he hooked up with Rachel and she was a cattle prod in the backside as far as the craving for fame and popularity went. It wasn’t until they went long-distance and Finn didn’t have anyone to give him orders, or any independent direction of his own, that he kind of crashed.”

Brittany nodded. “And Sam always felt more comfortable having an image to hide behind, so he probably likes being able to sit back and let Finn take over some of the time.” She smiled gently. “I think the people who used to know them both are a little confused, though. People never seem to see things clearly without a map.”

Remembering some of the mind-bending leaps of logic this woman had taken in the years he had known her, Kurt had to agree. Brittany always saw things clearly, it was one reason she had the most powerful gifts of Sight and magical intuition he had yet encountered, but unfortunately her idea of clarity rarely matched up with anyone else’s. At least not without a lot of practice in translating her thoughts. He had become far better at ‘speaking Brit’ over this past year than he had ever done when they were schoolmates.

“Makes sense,” he said. “Okay, so assuming my family is safe, Fam’s secret is still intact, and Blaine is beginning to lose control, how much time do you think we have to deal with this?”

“Not long, I would say,” Adam said, brow furrowing in thought. “When I confronted him two years ago, he panicked and went into immediate attack mode. Same with your brother. If he’s reeling from the insult of being dumped, and possibly from the withdrawal of whatever power he’d stored up in your friend Dave … well, I fear we’ve left this kettle boiling too long as it is.”

Tubbington cut in, “Oh, he’ll be feeling it, I’m sure of that. I don’t know if that other kid is still in town or not, but if he broke off their relationship it’s a cinch Dave’s not willing to let Blaine cozy up for a nice easy power withdrawal. Whatever magic had been stored in him would have started draining away almost immediately once he was at a safe distance.” 

At Kurt’s querying noise, Adam said, “As you know, magic has a shelf-life. We can only do so much before we’re either starving or exhausted from having used up our reserves. Storing magic in a prepared object allows it to stay viable for a while, like storing perishables in the freezer. But storing it in a person would mean using their physical reserves. Like storing those perishables in a hot garage. The power would begin to ‘go bad’ in a very short amount of time, and while the vessel could be damaged in the long term, they could also be helped by it in the short.”

“In what way?” Kurt asked, resting his elbows on the table and pressing his lips to steepled fingers as he unconsciously adopted a studying pose.

Santana answered, “Like, if Sam had been critically injured and Blaine had siphoned a portion of his own power, his own life-force, into him to keep him alive until they could get medical help, that would be okay. Noble, even. Not that something that selfless would ever occur to him.”

Tubbington agreed, “I’ve been around long enough to see that happen a couple of times, but before the human litter-box came along, I’d never even heard of a witch, regular or Wild, stealing magic from other witches without their knowledge and power-dumping it into some poor unwitting Standard. Only to steal that power back for their own personal use with no thought as to how much damage they were causing. That he did it to supposed loved ones?” He made a sound that suggested he was about to reject the box of Chinese food he had just inhaled.

“The sorts of things we can do as witches gives us an advantage over the majority of society,” Adam resumed. “And it is widely accepted throughout the community that that sort of privilege gives us a firm ethical responsibility to not misuse our power, nor go mucking about in the lives of Standards. I have wondered from time to time if the general bias against the weak, uncontrolled power of most Wild witches hasn’t led to the rest of us dropping the ball there. After all, if one never knows they’re a witch, how is one to develop the ethical foundation that is, quite frankly, expected of us? Blaine Anderson is an extreme case of self-aggrandizing moral decay, but I doubt he’s alone in it.”

“Well, there’s a cheerful thought,” Santana said sourly. “You’re saying all this is somehow our fault?”

Surprising them all, Kurt who said, “No. I spent months, years even, blaming myself for all the crap Blaine pulled when we were together. I’ve finally accepted that I wasn’t responsible for his actions or responses, only for my own. I’m not going back to thinking otherwise. Blaine was hypocritical, oblivious to other people’s feelings, and painfully self-absorbed long before he and I first started having problems. I was just too infatuated at first, and too emotionally beaten down later, to actually see it. I suspect from certain things he’s told me about his childhood that he always has been that way.”

Adam nodded. “True, and we’re speaking of Blaine as though he were a child, with no ability to recognize how destructive his behavior has been. He’s not.”

Brittany nodded. “There are a lot of bad people out in the world who got there without any help from magic. People who commit terrible crimes every day. Blaine is just doing his the easy way.”

Making a frustrated motion with his hands, Kurt said, “If the magical community is at fault in any way, it’s in not actually behaving as a community. NYADA is as much a school for witches as a school for performing artists, but you’d never know it until something goes wrong.”

“Do you know they actually had the nerve to send us a sternly worded letter after our wedding, admonishing us for performing a Major Working without a senior coven official present?” Adam said to Santana, Brittany, and Tubbington in response to his husband’s disgusted tone. “Basically they scolded us for not asking permission. Kurt was ready to go down to NYADA on the spot, likely leaving a few scorch marks in his wake, but I convinced him to not ruin a promising academic career, and to take a different approach.”

Smiling slightly, having come to appreciate Adam’s occasionally twisted sense of humor, Santana said, “What did you do to them?”

He blinked at her with calculated innocence in his too-wide blue eyes. “I merely passed the letter over to Gran, with a gentle hint that she wasn’t being properly respected for her status as a Senior level witch, and reminding her that Carmen and her crew never did apologize for their laxity in my own rescue.”

She laughed, “Oh, you are evil!”

Kurt laughed as well. “We got another letter that same week advising us to ‘please disregard the former missive’ and congratulating us on our wedding and a ‘difficult job well done’.”

“Honestly it was as close to groveling as I ever expect to see from the Almighty Carmen,” Adam chuckled. “Gran must have given them a tongue-lashing they’ll never forget.”

A sigh came from Kurt. “That’s what’s so frustrating, though! If powerful coven leaders like Madame Tibideaux, whose business is supposed to be education, would only make it their mission to trade information, help those who need it and make sure nobody falls through the cracks the way Finn and I almost did, and assessing and training those with power without treating those with unusual types of magic as second-class or unimportant, the world would be a much better place. They have the power, and they could make sure that cases like Blaine’s wouldn’t happen, because someone would always have their eyes open to step in and redirect someone who’s going the wrong way before they turn into a complete disaster.”

A swift interested chain reaction of glances and nods passed between his companions. Every good coven eventually developed a higher purpose, something beyond mere friendship and the occasional Major Working. Kurt had, without quite realizing it, just hit upon theirs. Their peculiar mixture of powers and creative problem-solving, Adam’s interest in the history of witchcraft, Johnny’s fascination with the mechanics of spell crafting, the unexpected co-mingling of Animagus and Purebred Familiars, Kurt’s own seeming magnetism toward all manner of people, both magical and Standard, drawing even Wild witches and the extremely rare Magic Dampers into his sphere; all spoke to the blending of a wider, more open overall community.

Oblivious to their silent communication, Kurt went on, “I guess that’s why I still feel like confronting Blaine is up to me. Or rather, to us.”

“Well, you know you can count me in,” Lord Tubbington said. “I’ve wanted to flex my claws on that ugly little scratching post since the first time I saw him.”

“Mine too,” Brittany said with no trace of irony. “I knew he was up to something bad the first time he came to Glee Club dressed like male Rachel.”

Still smirking a bit, Santana said, “I’ve been waiting to kick his ass since last Thanksgiving. What do you say, Kurt?”

He nodded. "Let’s get Dani, Johnny, Monica, and Elliott over here. I think it’s time we put together a plan.”

THE END

Fanfic Commissions Open!

Hey all! I’m in a bit of a bind this month and I’ve decided to open commissions. You pick a word count, a ship (if applicable), and send me a trope/prompt/line/song/whatever your heart desires and I’ll write you a story based on what you want! You can message me here or email ([email protected]), slots are first come, first served, turn around time based on length of fic and spot in queue.

PRICE TIERS:

Under 2K - $15

2K-5K - $30

5K-8K - $45

8K-10K - $60

Add $5 for smut

Add $10 for rush order under 5K, $15 for over 5K

FANDOMS (with applicable ships, bolded I am extremely comfortable with):

Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Spike/Xander, Willow/Tara, Buffy/Angel, Fred/Gunn)

Marvel (Clint/Bucky, Eddie/Venom symbiote, Steve/Tony, Frank/Matt, Eddie/Anne, Eddie/Flash, Kate/America, Bucky/Sam, Frank/Karen, Tony/Pepper, Peter/Wade, Remy/Rogue, Eddie/Bucky, Eddie/Clint, Anne/Dan, Steve/Natasha, Flash/Peter, Carol/Rhodey, Carol/Maria, Quill/Gamora, Eddie/Clint/Bucky, Eddie/Flash/Venom symbiote

Supernatural (Dean/Castiel, Sam/Amelia, Sam/Eileen, Sam/Rowena)

Final Fantasy/Kingdom Hearts (Squall/Cloud, Sora/Riku, Axel/Roxas)

WHAT I WILL WRITE:

Slight AU (canon divergence, fix-it, no powers, what if, etc, if in doubt just ask! Mostly I try to do AU in which the characters are obviously recognizable as those characters but I’m open to hearing out ideas)

Any characters within the fandoms, ships only what is listed.

Any ratings/genre

Mild-moderate kink (spanking, power play, bondage, blindfolds, dom/sub, edging, again, if in doubt, just ask!)

Any version of canon – comics/shows/movies/any game

Gen fic/no ships

WHAT I WILL NOT WRITE:

Underage

Incest

Noncon

Major Character Death

ABO

Severe AU (no flowershop/coffee shop/high school/fantasy/college etc, if in doubt, discuss it with me and we’ll see what we can work out).

RPF

Hate or bashing fic

Self insert or reader x or main OCs (side character OCs are fine)

Extreme kinks

Polyships unless listed above

Sub Castiel. Don’t ask. No other limits for any other characters, I’m just weird like that.

If you have any ideas/thoughts, please detail them out and I will do my best. If you have an idea and aren’t sure if it’s something I’ll write, ask! I promise I don’t bite. If it’s something I am not comfortable doing, I’ll do my best to discuss with you something that will work. Please do not send payment until I have confirmed details including turn around time with you (please note, my regular email is NOT my paypal email). Thank you guys in advance, shit hit the fan this month and I don’t have any other skills to offer other than words. Signal boosts are immensely appreciated as posts with links don’t show up in tags!

My AO3 is feathers_and_cigarettes, the link will be reblogged so check the comments!

Things Change, pt. 1

requests: “ellie x reader enemies to friends to lovers PLEASE” + “negasonic x reader enemies to friends to lovers PLEASE.... the more angst and then attraction and then gay kissing the better” + “May I possibly request a yukisonic fic where ellie and the reader initially hate each other, but the reader and yukio hit it off immediately, and ellie ends up falling and is the first one to confess?? God, I love run on sentences, I promise I'm better than this, but it is 3:40 am where I am and I'm delirious at this point. Anyways, LOVE YOU!! happy bday again!! -🧸” + “Omg Ellie and Reader fic where at first Ellie and Reader don’t get along but then they both keeping having dreams where they’re in love with the other one and making out and it leads to friendship and then LOVE”

author’s notes: okay, I tweaked the requests a little bit because I’ve been looking for an excuse to incorporate ellie’s original power of psychic dreams. ok so remember how wade called her sabrina in dp2? I think it’d be interesting if she’s actually a witch, which would explain why she has the dreams, but then also has the fire power. that’s not entirely relevant to this but it’s my personal hc for her so I thought I’d share! thank you so much for your requests!

warnings: light smut, internalized mutant-phobia(?) due to lack of parental acceptance

Ellie doesn’t like you, doesn’t like the way you pull a laugh so easily out of her girlfriend, the way your eyes sparkle, and the way she feels a twinge of something she’s convinced herself is jealousy when she sees you, even when you’re not around her girlfriend, even though she has those dreams about you.

You don’t like Ellie, either. You don’t like the way she makes a snide remark every time you make a mistake in training, the way her devilish smirk heats up your cheeks, and you definitely do not like her lack of appreciation for Yukio - who you personally would treat like a princess if she was your girlfriend.

But she’s not, and it sickens you how you didn’t get up the courage to ask her out before that asshole Ellie did.

“Honestly, I don’t know how Ellie can watch these kinds of movies, I always get so scared. Like, I know that the stuff isn’t real, but some of it is based on legit folklore! We’re going to see The Curse of La Llorona tonight and I’m so nervous, the commercials alone made me anxious.”

“Just make sure you go to the bathroom beforehand,” you tell her, and she giggles at your joke. “How come you and Ellie never go see movies you like, anyway?”

“Oh, well… I don’t know. After she refused to see Ralph Breaks the Internet, I kinda just gave up and decided I’d just start doing my best to like the movies she does. It’s okay, though, she’s super sweet and holds my hand.”

“Yeah, when you’re not in front of people,” you mutter.

“Come on, Y/N…” Yukio groans. “You two have so much in common, I don’t see why you can’t just be friends.”

Because we have too much in common, you think, but you just sigh.

“Me either. But she’s a bitch to me, so I’m a bitch to her. I’ll stop when she does,” you tell her, and that’s the truth as well. Ellie’s the one who started the music, even if it does take two to tango.

“I can understand that, but do you think that you could just try to get along? It’s kinda stressing me out,” Yukio requests. The fact that she’s mentioning it at all, you know, is because it’s really stressing her out.

“Of course, anything for y- A friend,” you reassure her, and that’s when Ellie comes strolling up. The two of you are sitting at a table in the courtyard with a deck of cards - you’d meant to play, but got carried away with conversation. “Hey, Ellie,” you greet your mortal enemy. “Wanna play some rummy with us?”

The girl eyes you skeptically before answering: “No, thanks. I just wanted to see if Yukio wanted to walk with me to dinner, since we’re heading out for our date right after.” You know she’s onto you, she’s been onto you since the day you two officially met. It means nothing, though, because she’s jealous of you and that insecurity leads to her thinking that if Yukio knew your feelings, she’d choose you.

“You should go ahead, Yukio,” you tell your best friend, for her sake. “If you get too scared, though, I can pick you up. I know Ellie’s looking forward to seeing the movie, I’d hate for her to have to leave.”

“Thank you, Y/N, that’s so sweet!” Yukio cheers as she stands up, buying your passive-aggressive remark towards Ellie as an attempt at kindness. Ellie, though, clearly understands. She takes Yukio’s hand rather roughly and the two go off to dinner.

You begin to set up a game of Solitaire, and your new academic adviser plunks down in front of you, shaking the table a little with his lack of grace.

“Can I help you, Mr. Wilson?”

“You know, you can totally take that little shit in a fight. I mean, I love her, but she’s such a little shit. Also, don’t call me that.”

“How did you even get this job? The academic advisers are supposed to discourage violence.”

“Well, I created a team, known as X-Force-”

“I know that part, Yukio’s in it,” you cut him off, and he releases a dramatic sigh before cutting to the chase.

“Right, right, okay, so, basically, Russell goes here. And I’m Russell’s mentor. And also they want me to stop killing, so they gave me one of the paid academic adviser positions, because academic advisers are just assigned parental figures, because all your parents hate you or at least aren’t around, for the most part.”

“Right,” you respond, drawing out the i before grumbling: “I miss Wolverine. He’s probably smoking a cigar in his mancave-slash-office right now, and all he would be doing right now if he was still my academic adviser is just shooting me a text asking why my Econ grade dropped to a C.”

“Aw, come on, don’t you enjoy a more personal touch? A more hands-on approach?”

“I don’t want your hands anywhere near me! How do you wash gloves after going to the bathroom, or handling money, or-”

“Okay, I’m a dirty weirdo, point taken! God, you’re so mean, it’s surprising that you don’t just date both Ellie and Yukio, considering you and Eleven are so similar.”

“That’s such a terrible idea it’s not even funny,” you scoff, rolling your eyes and hoping you’re not blushing. What?! You’re a simple bottom, a hot girl is mean to you and you develop a small crush no matter how much you dislike her at the same time.

“It wasn’t a joke, weirdo. Come on, go to dinner, and sit with Russell if you don’t mind. It’d boost his street cred around here.”

“Fine. Later,” you agree, scooping up your cards and putting them away in your bag before heading off. You grab some food and sit with Russell, whose head snaps up immediately.

“What are you doing? Wait, I mean- Don’t go.”

“I’ll be honest with you,” you tell him. “Our buddy Wade put me up to this. But, I’d rather sit with you than Negasonic Teenage Bitch. You can never have too many friends, anyways.”

“Thanks,” he says. “What are your powers?”

“You can’t just ask people that, dude. Not everyone likes to talk about it.”

“Oh. No wonder I haven’t been makin’ any friends,” he realizes, looking even more down.

“It’s okay, you didn’t know. I have a healing factor.”

“That is so cool. That’s why they made Wade your academic adviser instead of Logan, ‘cause he has a better healing factor and can help you!” His enthusiasm pleases you, but it also makes you miss Yukio’s own enthusiasm; the way she reassures you that you’re not a monster when you’re down on yourself. Your eyes dart over to where she sits - looking rather bored - before you return your attention to Russell.

“Aw, one of these days you’ve just got to make your move, Y/N,” the boy insists.

“My move?” You ask, skeptical.

“Come on, it’s so obvious you like Yukio.”

“Doesn’t matter. She’s made her decision,” you tell him. You may like her, but you know Yukio, and that even if she were to leave Ellie for you, she’d feel immensely guilty for hurting the girl. You’d rather be miserable than have her be miserable.

“But-”

“No ‘but’s, little man,” you tell him. “How was your day?”

Russell chats animatedly about his day while you listlessly eat your dinner. Once he’s done, you deal with your dishes and go to your room, flopping onto your bed and trying to pretend like things are okay. Your phone buzzes.

Wade Wilson: Parent teacher conferences are tomorrow!!!!!!!!! Are Mr n Mrs L/N going to be there

Y/N!!!!: What the fuck is wrong with you?

Wade Wilson: ???

Y/N!!!!: Never mind. They won’t be there

You sigh, slide off your shoes, and stretch out before plugging some earbuds - and your charger - into your phone and watching some Netflix. You stay up a little later than you should, both hoping and not hoping Yukio will text you, before doing your nighttime routine and going to sleep.

~

Ellie and Yukio get back late, but not quite past curfew. Ellie’s surprised, almost disappointed, that you’re not sitting on the love seat by the entryway, watching the doors like a hawk. If there’s anything Ellie appreciates about you, it’s that you’re so protective of Yukio. (Also, you’re really fucking hot, but she doesn’t like to think about that.)

The girls head to their dorm, undressing and redressing, brushing their teeth and washing their faces before cozying up in bed together.

“Y’know, Ellie, Y/N said something interesting to me today.”

Ellie - too tired to censor her expressions - glares at her girlfriend.

“She said she’s only mean to you ‘cause you’re mean to her. Do you think that you could try not being so mean? It would really make me so happy if you two got over your differences and became friends.”

Ellie sighs.

“Come on, I go see a scary movie with you every time you ask and even pay for half and you can’t do this one little thing?” Yukio pleads.

“I hadn’t even answered yet. I was going to say fine. But since you proceeded to ask so nicely… I’ll say yes.”

“Ha. Ha,” Yukio replies, spooning her girlfriend, and the two eventually drift off.

Except, Ellie doesn’t drift off to dreamland. Her prophetic dreams feel different, almost lucid but with no control. She realizes this one is from her perspective quickly, seeing her own outfit and feeling like she’s in her own body.

She’s also in her own room, but the furniture is rearranged. There’s another bed under the top bunk of the bunk bed, and she’s lounging with two other people on the futon next to it, watching a movie on a TV, which is on a nightstand she doesn’t recognize.

Her arm is around someone, but there’s a head in her lap, a head she strokes the hair of tenderly. She looks to her side and sees Yukio. She looks down, and it’s you. Future You turns, wriggling around until you’re facing her.

“Movie’s getting kind of boring,” Future You tells her almost silently, pupils blown wider than usual due to the dark room and maybe something else. She continues to fondle your hair.

“Uh-huh…” Future Ellie hums teasingly. “She likes it, though.”

“We could entertain ourselves… Quietly,” Future You suggests.

“You think so? How?” Future Ellie’s fingers slip from your hair to the smooth skin of your neck, caressing it.

She watches your cheeks darken in the light of the TV.

“Maybe a kiss or two?” you suggest, and Ellie feels Future Ellie’s lips curl into a smirk, feels her heart speed up.

“Then give me a kiss or two,” Future Ellie replies, and Future You swiftly straddles her. Ellie can feel the perfect movements of your lips against hers, and vice versa; feels her hands ball up in your shirt. Your hips rock against hers as the lip-locking continues, and Future Ellie’s hands move, one sliding under your shirt to rest firmly against your back while the other tangles in the hair at the back of your head.

You moan into her mouth and she feels herself pull tighter, tipping your head back to ravish your neck.

“Quietly,” Future Ellie reminds you in a whisper against your neck as she cuts her eyes over to Yukio, whose attention towards the TV is wavering. “The movie’s still going.”

Ellie wakes up with a start - and with a wet cunt - as Future Ellie sinks her teeth into Future You’s neck.

“Fuck,” she sighs out. This isn’t the first time she’s had a prophetic dream like this, about the three of you dating. She’s not sure what changes. She’s not sure she wants to know. Was it yesterday, when you offered her a place in your game of cards? 

Maybe it’s the fact that Yukio asked her to be nicer to you - Yukio probably asked the same of you as well. What about parent-teacher conferences, this evening? Will seeing your family give her a different perspective of you?

“Morning, honey,” Yukio sleepily says, curling around her girlfriend tighter. “You excited for parent-teacher conferences? You’ll finally get to meet my dads…”

“Great,” Ellie snickers, kissing her girlfriend on the head. “Two shovel talks.”

“Oh, come on, it’ll be great. They’re looking forward to meeting you… Speaking of, I know I asked last night, but it’s really important you play nice with Y/N today. They really like her.”

“Of course they do,” Ellie replies, rolling her eyes. “We should head to breakfast a little early, I know you’ve got all that Welcoming Committee shit to do.”

“Yeah…” Yukio agrees, releasing Ellie from her cuddling before stretching out and getting ready for her day.

Maybe playing nice is what will change things.

Training is always an interesting experience for Ellie. It’s one of the few times she’s around you when you’re not interacting with Yukio, typically training with Wade and sneaking glances at Ellie’s girlfriend that are the only reason he’s able to beat you, nowadays.

The two of you are whacking sticks against sticks already, and that’s not an innuendo. The clack of wood against wood - which sounds even worse - is typically one of the noises Ellie often uses to ground herself while practicing smaller blasts.

However, this time, she doesn’t practice her own abilities. Instead, she just watches you and Wade. It looks almost choreographed, the way you two flow together, and she realizes it’s because Wade’s the one who’s really taught you how to fight. Logan may have trained you while he was your academic adviser, but because Wade is teaching you in his own way, now, you’re learning to fight as he does.

Dirty, Ellie thinks, but then sucks in a breath through her nose, snapping out of her thoughts for a moment.

It’s intriguing, she’s able to admit to herself. You’re intriguing. 

Your eyes keep being drawn to her, though, realizing she’s staring, and Wade eventually manages to overtake you. Ellie’s always wondered what you could do - what your mutation is - and part of her’s terrified to find out, considering she’s never seen it.

“Longer than usual without Yukio in here to distract you, good job. Go see your other girlfriend,” Ellie hears Wade say.

“She’s not my fucking girlfriend, weirdo, she fucking hates me. Look at how she’s glaring.”

Not staring, but glaring, you said, and Ellie realizes that her resting bitch face is probably part of the reason you two have never gotten along.

“Well, go see her regardless of your romantic attachments. I wanna pester Nathan, you need a training partner, and hers is busy being president of the Come Join Our Cult Committee. Go, little bird.”

You flip him a bird that’s not little, walking over to Ellie.

“I assume you heard that,” you say, and she nods.

“I wasn’t glaring,” Ellie replies. “Just have resting bitch face.”

“Then why were you staring, Phimister?” You ask.

“Because, I think the way you two spar is interesting. It’s… Fluid.”

“I get what you mean. That’s what he wants. Get caught up in the pattern, and he’ll trip you up by going outside of it. But at this point, I anticipate that too,” you tell her.

“That’s impressive,” Ellie admits, because it is. Wade Wilson is a world class mercenary and you’re nearly on par with him? There’s no way she can spin that into an insult.

“Seriously? You never-” You look almost happy at what Ellie said, but then your expression falls. “Right, Yukio probably put you up to this. Whatever, we should probably get to it, then. What’re you looking to do today?”

“We could spar, too. My powers aren’t exactly low-range.”

“Show-off,” you remark. “Well then, let’s get to it.” The two of you get on some gear better suited to hand-to-hand sparring before going at it.

It’s a few minutes of back and forth, with you mostly dominating. She can hear Nathan and Wade’s pestering in the background before suddenly-

“Ellie, look out!” Your head cuts to the side and you shove her away before absorbing a shot from Nathan’s gun. You’re knocked down, and Ellie gasps like she was the one that was shot.

“Y/N!” Ellie cries out, rushing over to you. “What’s going on, what do I do? Why did you do that?!” Ellie’s not a very anxious person, but she can feel herself begin to panic. “Oh my god, oh my god, why did you do that?!” She tears up, realizing that there’s a very low chance you’ll survive.

“Ah, fuck, what are you freaking out about?” You groan. Nathan and Wade jog over.

“You- You’re going to die! You just fucking saved my life and you’re going to die!”

“Uh-“

“I’m- I’m sorry, kid,” Nathan says, also kneeling beside you. “Should’ve held tighter to the gun, but that prick jostled it outta my hands.”

You can’t help it. You crack up. Wade does, too.

“You should see the look on your faces. Jeez, El, I didn’t know you cared so much,” you manage to get out before more laughter erupts. You feel the internal damage slowly repair itself, the tissues of ruptured organs reattaching. “Fuck, stop crying, I can’t laugh anymore, it hurts.”

“This- This isn’t funny. I know I’ve said some mean things before, but-“

You laugh even harder, cutting her off. Eventually, you look at your torn gym clothes and realize that despite the (already fading into a scar) burn, you’re ready to get up. The damaged organs will continue to heal themselves.

You reach up for Wade’s hand, and despite his laughter continuing, he manages to take it and support you.

“Oh, fuck, that hurt. Whew! Asshole.” You give Wade a punch to the arm.

“I- I don’t understand, you- You have a healing factor, you bitch!” Ellie realizes, wiping her face. “You scared the shit out of me!”

“I don’t know what for, it’s not like you care for me very much,” you tell her. “Just consider it revenge for all the horror movies you make Yukio watch.”

“But you saved my life. I mean, you still did.” Do you think she wants you dead? Ellie can’t help but feel bad for the way she’s acted towards you, even if it was only a little more hostile than she is towards other people.

“And? Mine isn’t exactly going away anytime soon.” The scar on your midriff fades, leaving smooth skin exposed that Ellie’s eyes are drawn to before they flick up at you. “So does this mean we have a truce or something, now?”

“No shit, Sherlock,” she responds.

This might be what changes things.

Against empathy 17

“Finally, empathy is related to compassion and concern, and sometimes the terms are used synonymously. But compassion and concern are more diffuse than empathy. It is weird to talk about having empathy for the millions of victims of malaria, say, but perfectly normal to say that you are concerned about them or feel compassion for them. Also, compassion and concern don’t require mirroring of others’ feelings. If someone works to help the victims of torture and does so with energy and good cheer, it doesn’t seem right to say that as they do this, they are empathizing with the individuals they are helping. Better to say that they feel compassion for them.”

But what’s compassion? In the neuroscience it seems to be “empathy + motivation to help” or sometimes, if the study is noting thei differences, something like “awareness + motivation to help.” Which would make compassion something more than a feeling?

I’m not as wedded to this, most common usage suggests compassion is a feeling. But If it is... if it’s com with + passion suffering/intense feeelong, that sounds a lot like affective empathy. So ???? What is

“But this claim about the relationship between empathy and certain good traits is an empirical one, something that can be tested using standard psychological methods. For instance, you can measure someone’s empathy and then look at whether high empathy predicts good behaviors such as helping others. Now this is easier said than done. It’s hard to accurately measure how empathic a person is. But there have been various efforts, and it turns out that the relationship between empathy and goodness is weak. In fact, we’ll see that there is some evidence that high empathy for the suffering of others can paralyze people, lead them to skewed decisions, and often spark irrational cruelty.”

Oo! Data! Forthcoming data, at least.

“If it turned out that the first fact follows from the second—that the nastiness associated with psychopathy is due to an empathy deficit—that would be an excellent case for the importance of empathy. But this is also the sort of thing that you can test in the lab, and it turns out to be unsupported. As we’ll see, the problems with psychopaths may have more to do with lack of self-control and a malicious nature than with empathy, and there is little evidence for a relationship between low empathy and being aggressive or cruel to others.”

Oo! Data! x2!

Very interested in what a malicious nature is, and whether it includes responses to others emotions. Nonconsensual sadism, for example, seems malicious and also seems like a response grounded in emotion. “I feel happy re your pain” vs “I feel sad re your pain”

“Think about your judgments about throwing garbage out of your car window, cheating on your taxes, spraying racist graffiti on a building, and similar acts with diffuse consequences. You can appreciate that these are wrong without having to engage in empathic engagement with any specific individuals, real or imagined.”

But those are bad because they upset or harm other people. Being aware that they do is part of why I don’t do them. Have we established that not wanting to upset or harm others is distinct from empathy? You assert that it is but I’m still not sure what you’re saying the mechanisms are. To the data!

“But, again, it’s easy to see that this is a mistake from everyday examples. I see a child crying because she’s afraid of a barking dog. I might rush over to pick her up and calm her, and I might really care for her, but there’s no empathy there. I don’t feel her fear, not in the slightest.”

Do you have to literally feel her fear to empathize with her? Or is it enough to, say, wince when she cries?

“Then there is all the laboratory evidence. We’ll see research from the lab of Tania Singer and her colleagues showing that feeling empathy for another person is very different from feeling compassion for that person—distinct in its brain basis and, more important, in its effects.”

That will help.

“We’ll learn about research into the effects of mindfulness meditation suggesting that the boost in kindness that this practice results in part because meditation allows one to stanch one’s empathy, not expand it.”

So will that. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen studies claiming the opposite. Huh.

““Reason,” David Hume famously said, is the “slave of the passions.” Good moral deliberation requires valuing some things over others, and good moral action requires some sort of motivational kick in the pants. Even if one knows the best thing to do, one must be motivated to do it. I believe this—I’ve never heard a good argument against it.”

Dances in the end zone.

“But it’s a mistake to see this as an argument for empathy. The “passions” that Hume talks about can be many things. They can be anger, shame, guilt, or, more positively, a more diffuse compassion, kindness, and love. You can be motivated to help others without empathy.”

Once again, I’m wondering how you define more diffuse here, but if you dohave data, I concede you may be right.

“He considers empathy but then rejects it as too weak: “it is not that feeble spark of benevolence which Nature has lifted up in the human heart.” Instead he pushes for some combination of careful deliberation and a desire to do the right thing.”

Where does the desire to do the right thing come from? That’s the dispute we’re having, or part of it anyway.

“I agree with this as well. Empathy can be used to support judgments and actions that, when we reason about them coolly, are morally virtuous. If the right thing to do is to give food to a homeless child, then empathy for the suffering of the child can motivate this giving. If the right thing to do is to expand our moral compass to include members of a once-despised group, empathy for members of that group can bring us there.”

Are you me? Because this is what im saying, that we have feelings and we check them against our reason and then act.

Sometimes we don’t have to check them against our reason, though, and that’s where we disagree. If my friend is sad, I can generally assume I don’t have to doubLe check whether I should comfort them (though I might ask if they’re a hugger) because daily life involves lots of shortcuts and they’re not alwTz bad.

“I have a personal example of this. When I was a graduate student, I read an article by Peter Singer arguing that citizens of prosperous countries should direct most of their money toward helping the truly needy. Singer argued that choosing to spend our money on luxuries like fancy clothing and expensive meals is really no different from seeing a girl drowning in a shallow lake and doing nothing because you don’t want to ruin your expensive shoes by wading in to save her. I was moved by this argument and would repeat the analogy to my friends, often when we were in bars and restaurants, and it suddenly occurred to me that we were engaged in the moral equivalent of killing children.”

I’m... I’m glad you don’t do something you believe is evil but that doesn’t hold at all.

“In Larissa MacFarquhar’s recent book, Strangers Drowning, she talks about the lives of do-gooders or “moral saints.” These are people who devote their lives to others. They know that there is immense suffering in the world, and unlike almost everyone else, they can’t direct their attention elsewhere; they are driven to help. Some of the individuals she profiles are deliberative and rational, similar to Zell Kravinsky.... But others who are profiled by MacFarquhar are individuals of feeling; they are emotionally moved by the suffering of others. This sensitivity often makes them miserable, but it can also push them to make a difference in ways that most of us would never even contemplate.”

Thanks for poin ting this out. It’s fascinating for one, but for two...

I do not at all consider myself a moral saint, but I do think I attempt to do good for the second reason. I suffered a great deal as a child and I feel strongly that the buck stops with me. I can’t save everyone, but the thought of anyone going through what I did if I can stop it revolts me, so I act.

When you tell me this revulsion SHOULD NOT motivate me, I don’t know what to do with that, sir.

Because I suspect you would approve of the actions I take or try to, but I don’t know that I can promise you I will keep doing them if I try to somehow force myself not to imagine the suffering of disabled kids like me.

THAt is why I disagree with you. Because I literally can’t promise I’ll keep going if I ignore the way I feel. And I know you’d rather I be mr. Kravinsky because you’re a singer fanboy

But I’m not.

“Or consider a recent study by Abigail Marsh and her colleagues, of people who choose to donate their kidneys to strangers. Consistent with my argument, these exceptionally altruistic individuals do not score higher on standard empathy tests than normal people. But they are different in another way. The researchers were interested in the amygdala—a part of the brain that is involved in, among other things, emotional responses. Their previous research had discovered that psychopaths had smaller than normal amygdalae and lessened response when exposed to pictures of people who looked frightened, so they predicted that these do-gooders would have larger than normal amygdalae and greater than normal response to fear faces. This was exactly what they found.”

I’ve heard that too but I heard that having the big amygdala IS associated with high empathy. Which I figured stood to reason because higher abilitgy to pick up fear from faces is reading emotions and parsing people’s emotions is necessary to vicariously feel them.

Interested to look that one up.

“Our bias shows up when we think about the power of fiction to stir up our empathy. Many, including myself, have argued that novels like Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Bleak House prompted significant social change by guiding readers to feel the suffering of fictional characters. But we tend to forget that other novels push us in different ways. Joshua Landy provides some examples: For every Uncle Tom’s Cabin there is a Birth of a Nation. For every Bleak House there is an Atlas Shrugged. For every Color Purple there is a Turner Diaries, that white supremacist novel Timothy McVeigh left in his truck on the way to bombing the Oklahoma building.”

This I agree with. I just think it’s important to use both empathy and reason because of this thing.

“The good news is that there are other ways to change people’s minds. We can, for example, use the truth. I know, that’s very old-fashioned. But consider An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore’s documentary about climate change. That film did a huge amount for the environmental movement, all without making up a single lovable character or a single line of witty repartee.”

Okay but are you sure no one is empathizing with victims of climate disaster when watching it?

“But there is a continuum here. On the one extreme is empathy. This is the worst. Then somewhere in the middle is compassion—simply caring for people, wanting them to thrive. This has problems as well but fewer of them, and we’ll see that there is experimental evidence—including both neuroimaging studies and research on the effects of meditative practice—suggesting that compassion has some advantages over empathic engagement.”

A definition! Stop hiding those in walls of text, bruh.

Still interested in how caring doesn’t ultimately come from emotions about others also. To the data!

“Reason is subject to bias—we are imperfect beings—but at its best it can lead to moral insight. It is reason that leads us to recognize, despite what our feelings tell us, that a child in a faraway land matters as much as our neighbor’s child, that it’s a tragedy if an immunization leads to a child getting sick or if a furlough program leads to rape and assault—but if these programs nonetheless lead to an overall improvement in human welfare, we should keep them until something better comes along.”

Agree.

“I don’t mean to rag on my colleagues, but there is a certain lack of self-awareness about this point. It is one of the ironies of modern intellectual life that many scholars insist that rationality is impotent, that our efforts at reasoning are at best a smoke screen to justify selfish motivations and irrational feelings. And to make this point, these scholars write books and articles complete with complex chains of logic, citations of data, and carefully reasoned argument. It’s like someone insisting that there is no such thing as poetry—and making this case in the form of a poem.”

I’ve noticed that too. But I’m not sure this is totally fair. What I see (that I think makes sense) is the argument that we are more emotion driven creatures than we admit, and that often we hold to the idea that something is rational if we THINK we haven’t emoted about it.

I think this is often untrue, and that were actually less likely to err if we are reflective enough to admit “my emotions and my reason seem to concur on this point.”

“To take a specific case, I will argue that our empathy causes us to overrate present costs and underrate future costs. This skews our decisions so that if, say, we are faced with a choice where one specific child will die now or twenty children whose names we don’t know will die a year from now, empathy might guide us to choose to save the one. To me, this is a problem with empathy.”

Not a utilitarian, so unsurprisingly I don’t automatically agree. If I kill someone and explain I meant to save others in the next generation, cool motive. Still murder.

What Happens in Xing

I recently hit 100 followers which was super exciting for me! I really appreciate everyone who follows me and/or takes the time to like, reblog, or comment on my writing. It’s a huge motivator and seriously boosts my writerly self-esteem, such as it is.

Anyway this work takes place in my Price of Life/Portrait of a Family AU and so while that context will add to the fic (particularly the last time) it can also be read on its own. 

Read on A03

The royal palace in Xing’s capital city was nothing like Riza had ever seen. It was massive - at least the size of a city block, she thought upon first seeing it, but after walking the perimeter one humid afternoon she figured it would be big enough for the entirety of the small eastern town she grew up in to fit comfortably within its walls. Sections of the palace were clearly older, and at least one wing was walled off altogether, in need of repairs. When she’d asked their guide one day he told her that the palace had stood for at least a thousand years, although maybe not in its current form.

It didn’t escape her notice that she and General Mustang were given rooms several floors higher than the bulk of the Amestrian party; one floor higher even than Major General Kent, who was the other officer overseeing the diplomatic treatises and trade agreements they’d come here to discuss. Ling never came out and said as much, but she was certain that their rooms were some of the nicer ones in the gigantic palace: her room boasted a bed that could have fit three of her, a huge claw-footed tub, and a floor-to-ceiling window that gave her an impressive view of the city. She’d made a point, several times, to get up early and watch the sun rise over the sloping buildings so different from those at home.  

To her immense surprise the official business had been wrapped up around four days into the weeklong trip, at which point General Kent and his men promptly packed up and took the next train out.

“I suppose we’ll be leaving tomorrow as well?” Riza asked General Mustang as they stood on one of the massive balconies that overlooked the city. Nights brought some relief from the wet heat of the day; a gentle breeze blew over the wide river and across the city, making the heavy woolen uniform seem less oppressive.

“Of course not, Captain,” he said mildly. “Our train doesn’t leave for days; it’s far too late to change it now. You might actually have to take some time for yourself and relax a little. I hope that won’t prove too much of an inconvenience.”

Riza didn’t think she’d had a moment to herself to sit and read a book for close to a year and a half now what with the business with the Homunculi, Ishval, and now the Xing excursion.

“Not at all, Sir,” she said crisply, but she was smiling as she met his gaze.

The next few days they drifted around as civilians, generally together as holiday or not she was still his bodyguard, but the amount of Xingese bodyguards lent to them by the Emperor meant that Riza felt comfortable occasionally acting as ships in the night. After all, the museum of alkahestry didn’t particularly appeal to her and the General was none too interested in seeing the wing devoted to the development of gunpowder. At one point Riza looked up from her book across the  sunroom - a space with a glass roof to let light in, and a large fountain bubbling away in the middle that had quickly become one of her favorite haunts - to see Mustang in his shirtsleeves, heavily engrossed in something he’d borrowed from the Imperial library, a cup of tea in his hand. Occupying the same space as him and seeing him rested, at ease, living again was a gift she didn’t deserve but would value anyway. As though he felt her staring he’d looked up and offered a small smile. She blushed and ducked her head to go back to reading her book.

It was the morning of their last full day in the country: tomorrow they would be on the noon train heading back to Amestris. They were originally scheduled to go back yesterday- in fact the bulk of their accompanying military personnel had left - but she and the General, with a handful of soldiers, had stayed. She was standing straight-backed at Mustang’s right shoulder, thinking that if she’d been any worse a soldier she would have snuck a peek at her pocket watch already, when the reason for their delay finally entered the imperial throne room.

It was still strange seeing Alphonse Elric as a human and not as a suit of armor, but it was refreshing to see him looking robust and healthy, not like the frail wisp of a thing he’d been when they put him on the train, barely strong enough to walk on his own after The Promised Day. He and May Chang, now a young woman, made their way up the long carpeted entryway and bowed to the young emperor. Ling rose from his seat, inclined his head, and the ceremony seemed to be over.

“They certainly like processions,” the General murmured, soft enough that only she would be able to hear, while Ling and May said their informal hellos, which seemed to involve quite a lot of teasing, she noted with a smile. There was going to be a parade in a few hours, ostensibly as a homecoming for May, who had been traveling for the better part of a year, but realistically as an excuse for Ling to throw another lavish feast.

“I don’t see the harm,” she whispered back.

“Six feasts since we’ve been here, and this is the third parade,” he muttered. “It’s a little much.”

“Colonel - Oh sorry, it’s General now right? Brother mentioned in one of his letters,” Al said as he approached, offering a hand shyly but not looking at all upset when the older man pulled him into a hug instead. Not something he would have tried in-uniform but technically they were using vacation days for this last leg of the trip. With the exception of the parade later on they were dressing and acting like civilians.

“Hi Captain Hawkeye,” May said a little shyly, and Riza turned to smile at the younger woman.

“Hello May. You’ve gotten so tall,” she said. It was true; though still on the shorter side, May had grown half a foot since Riza had seen her last.

“And pretty,” Mustang added, ever the charmer. Al came over to wrap Riza in a hug and she was struck again by how much things had changed. He was taller than her, broad-shouldered and with a striking similarity to his brother, although even nearing twenty Alphonse’s face remained cherubic. She’d changed too, of course: there were lines by her eyes that hadn’t been there five years ago, and she’d cut her hair off and grown it out again, so that it now sat a little below her shoulders. Recently the heat had her thinking about cutting it as short as she’d had it when they first moved to East City all those years ago. The General was pulling something out of his pocket; a book wrapped in ribbon, and handing it to May. “I brought you something,” he said.

“Oh that wasn’t necessar- OH, General Mustang! Where did you get this?”

“You can call me Roy, and there’s certainly more where that came from, my connection is very reliable.”

“He’s talking like he got that book off the black market,” Riza said to Al, who just grinned.

“He might have; it was banned thirty years ago for the author’s, ah, unconventional ideas.” He wilted immediately under the look she gave him and put his hands up. “Nothing all that bad, promise, he was just before his time where some aspects of medical alchemy were concerned. His ideas are really interesting, if you-” Riza held a hand up.

“I’m afraid anything else is going to go over my head,” she admitted, still eyeing the book. The cover was roughened leather that still bore traces of gold leaf, and everything about this, from May’s reaction to Al’s explanation spoke to the book being very hard to get ahold of and also very expensive.

“How did you know?” May was squealing, arms clamped tightly around the General’s waist, her precious new book in her hands. Alphone grinned broadly as he pried her off of Mustang, standing with an arm casually slung over her shoulders as she turned the book over in her hands.

“I have my sources,” the alchemist revealed, with a wink at Al. “I do try to stay in touch, even though your brother and I have this game where he hangs up on me the first time and I have to wait for Winry to answer the phone and make him take the call.”

“But this must have been so… I mean, thank you very much,” May said. Riza knew enough about nonverbal communication to know that something in the look Al gave her told her to drop the subject. Her own sharp look at the General was met with careful avoidance. There was of course nothing wrong with bringing a gift to an eager young scholar, she reasoned, and let the matter go.

-x-

This was the third parade, but Riza was no less unsettled than she’d been at the first. Parades were liabilities, plain and simple; you might as well paint a target on the back of every person of interest who set foot within a hundred yards of the garish floats and ostentatious musical pavilions. She would have far preferred being a spectator; they milled around eating thornapples and skewered meats and waving miniature pinwheels. She realized suddenly that she hadn’t really been to an event in years that didn’t involve her acting as bodyguard.  

“Stop dancing around me, Hawkeye,” the General muttered after the fourth time she switched from his right side to his left.

“We aren’t properly staffed, Sir,” she replied. “I want to be sure I’m able to spot any possible threats.” He waved a hand dismissively.

“We’re in the center of a platoon of soldiers.”

“And the only ones in Amestrian uniforms in this section of the procession,” she pointed out. “We’re sitting ducks.” Mustang ignored this, tugging at his collar.

“I wish we’d get a move on, it’s sweltering .”

She had to admit it was; wool uniforms and humid summer air didn’t mix particularly well. They’d been in Ishval earlier this year overseeing reconstruction plans but it had been spring and they only had to contend with the dry heat that was more typical of the desert. Here there was no escaping the damp summer air. At long last the parade started moving, snaking its way through the city. They would loop around the outskirts of town and then end up back at the palace. The whole thing would last over an hour.

They were situated at the front of the same float they’d adorned for the previous two parades; a burnished gold monstrosity that Riza supposed was supposed to be a fish. Only this time instead of their military escort they were standing with a handful of Ling’s soldiers, with May seated on an ornately decorated chair reminiscent of a throne that was situated on the dais and Al just below. May had looked slightly uncomfortable at first, but soon adjusted, smiling and waving to the crowd as they trundled along.

With less people there was more surface area and therefore more blinding gold to contend with. Riza resisted the urge to shield her face with her hand as the sun danced across the multifaceted surface. The General looked to be concentrating deeply on something, but as she followed his gaze she didn’t see anything amiss.

“Cenz for your thoughts, Sir?” she asked and he seemed surprised.

“I’m thinking that the second we get back to the palace I’m getting a pitcher of iced wine and sitting next to one of those massive indoor fountains,” he said, and flashed her a grin. “You’re welcome to join me of course.”

She opened her mouth to say that actually they had some reports they could stand to go over and should probably pack as well when there was a sudden flash of movement overhead, and something hot and bright burst inside their float. Instinctively Riza flung her body sideways, into the General, forcing him to the floor and shielding his body with her own. For a few harsh moments she was far away, both in time and place, in a different desert, with a different threat, following the same man. Her breath caught in her throat as she willed herself back to the present, to Xing and the Parade. A few moments of relative silence passed, and she hesitantly looked up to see Alphonse and May also climbing to their feet, May’s ornate chair merrily burning under the ruins of a massive Xingese firework. There was a snort beneath her and she looked down to find that she was nose to nose with Mustang.

“A rogue firework,” he said, regarding the object. She couldn’t tell what exactly he did but a second later the flame was snuffed out, starved of oxygen.

She got to a sitting position, looking around at the crowd, but everyone seemed to be carrying on as usual, the spectacle over. With the sheer amount of explosives Xing boasted this can’t have been the first untimely detonation they’d ever seen. May was standing at the front of the float waving as though nothing had happened, Al at her side.

“You can probably let me up now,” he remarked dryly and Riza looked down to find she was still straddling his midsection. She got to her feet and offered a hand to help him up and he smoothed his uniform down. Was it the heat of the uniforms, or were his cheeks tinged pink? Hers felt hot too and she looked away towards the crowd. How many times had she pushed him aside, or covered his body with her own in times of danger, and yet she had never been as thrown off-kilter by the feeling of their bodies pressed against each other. Even through two sets of uniforms it was a sensation that made her breath catch somewhere behind her sternum.

Stoically she moved a half-step behind him, and the parade went on.  

-x-

After a very long and very convoluted feast, they walked back to their rooms in a comfortable silence.

“You know Captain, I’ve got a bottle of nice Xingese wine and a balcony, if you’d like to watch the fireworks,” he offered. She considered a moment; as the senior officer, his room was nicer. Hers was next door and had a nice large window, but no balcony to speak of.

“All right,” she said, surprising him as well as herself. “Let me change out of my uniform and I’ll be right over.”

She stopped in her room long enough to change into a soft knee-length skirt and hesitated before putting on a lightweight sleeveless shirt she would normally only wear to sleep in, because the top of her tattoo could be seen peeking out of the top. Her hair covered it, however, and the night was warm enough that she’d be glad to wear less fabric. She padded to the connecting door and knocked lightly.

He’d also changed, into a button down and slacks, and handed her a glass of deep purple-red wine as she walked in, which she sniffed at before sipping; they were fond of fortified wine here and so the vintage was peppery with a hint of berries and nutmeg that burned pleasantly on the way down.

“I think they’re about to start-” Mustang was saying, but was interrupted by a loud pop , and a bright display of color and crackling out over the city. Mesmerized, Riza drifted through the room and out the open glass doors to what was admittedly a very nice patio. It was large, with a iron-wrought table and chairs near the doors, a few potted plants, and an actual sofa towards the other end. Bypassing the furniture entirely, she walked to the rail and settled her elbows on it to wait for the next eruption.

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” she breathed, as Roy came to stand next to her, elbow barely brushing hers.

“I have,” he replied. “Not for years - they used to set off fireworks in Central every year on New Year’s Eve. But they stopped around the time I went to learn under your father.”

“No wonder you weren’t impressed by the sparklers we got from the village,” she mused, lips quirking upward in a smile. He had the grace to look embarrassed.

“I really was quite the insufferable city boy, huh?”

Two more glasses of the heady Xingese wine and they sat on the couch, her leaning up against the pillows with her legs bent over his lap, him sitting upright, absently tracing a finger around the bruising on her knee that had appeared after the scuffle at the parade.

“That was close, earlier,” he said finally, and she looked up.

“I don’t think I’ve ever been attacked by a firework before,” she said dryly. “They’re very loud up close.” A warm feeling had settled somewhere in her stomach, courtesy of the wine, the fireworks, and the General’s proximity. The General’s proximity which was… entirely too near, now she stopped to think about it. She made to swing her legs off the couch so they wouldn’t be so entwined, but the weight of his arm across the bend in her legs stopped her.

“Don’t, please. Just… don’t. Let’s enjoy this.”

Normally she would protest out of some sense of country and duty but the wine and the warm summer air had affected her in equal measure, so she sat back against the pillows without another word. His hand that was tracing her bruises drifted up her thighs to trace the end of her skirt, however, and she cleared her throat.

“That was nice of you, to get that book for May. What made you think of it?” she asked, believing that to be an innocent, diffusing question. Diffusing of what, she didn’t quite know, she just had a vague sense of something needing to be doused. He chuckled, and the warm burning in her belly intensified.  

“You’ll think I’m being sentimental but I kind of feel like I owe her one.” At her puzzled look he shrugged. “On The Promised Day, if she hadn’t jumped in to heal you when she did… she saved your life.”

“So shouldn’t I be the one giving her presents?” Riza asked, amused. His eyes were oddly intense, and her smile quickly vanished.

“I almost lost you,” he said seriously, and he reached out, seemingly without meaning to, and caught a strand of her hair between his fingers, and it occurred to her how close they were sitting. “So no, it’s me who owes May Chang a debt I can never really repay.” a firework went up, and popped into the inky black night, illuminating them and for a moment time stood still.

“I’ve always been ready to die in pursuit of our goals,” she breathed, not knowing what else to say, unable to tear her eyes away from his.

“And if that’s what it takes to reach the top, I don’t want it,” he told her firmly. His hand was now resting gently on her chin, and she was surprised to find her own fingering his collar. She wasn’t sure if he was leaning in or if she was, but their noses lightly bumped together and he froze. “Tell me not to,” he said softly, like a prayer.

This was an order she couldn’t obey. She closed the distance between them and pressed her lips to his, just as another firework crackled overhead.  This was dangerous, she thought as she slid down on the cushion, using her hands on his collar to pull him down with her, something he was all too eager to comply with, sliding a hand behind her knee to hitch it over his hip. His body was a comforting weight on hers, and made this moment seem weighty and real, a culmination of what she had come to accept as pointless longing for something that needed to remain forever out of reach.

She ran her hand up through the back of his hair, tugging lightly as she kissed him hungrily. He ground his hips against hers and she gasped at the contact, hand resting lightly on the side of his face as he pulled gently away. For a moment they just looked at each other, and she found she was able to read the question in his eyes as easily as ever. Her lip quirked and at her silent response, he bent to trail kisses down her throat.  

She wasn’t sure how they’d managed to make their way back into the room, stumbling into door frames, shucking off clothes as they went. How strange that she’d known him for so many years, through so many triumphs and failures, but yet there was apparently still so much to learn. There was a particular sound he made when she grazed his neck with her teeth that was new, and so enticing she half-laughed as she brought her lips once more to his. Her naked back hit the cool silk of the sheets on his bed and she sighed as he kissed his way down her body.

The light from the fireworks lit the room through the open patio doors, but they hardly noticed, engrossed in each other with the heady desperation of people who were seizing an opportunity that may never come again.

-x-

Riza’s first thought upon waking was that she’d had too many glasses of strong Xingese wine. Her second was that there was an arm securely wrapped around her waist. Her third was that she was completely naked. She made to sit upright but the arm was utterly unyielding, so she settled for covering her face with her hands.

“Oh no,” she said out loud, and the body behind her snorted slightly, shifting under the thin topsheet that covered them.

“Wh- Hawkeye?” for there could be no mistaking her for anyone else he might have taken to his bed; he was face to face with her scarred back. She winced, thinking about the rude awakening that must be.

“Good morning, Sir,” she said tightly. The most embarrassing thing was that they hadn’t had all that much wine. Yes they’d been tipsy and she now felt like she needed to drink a whole pitcher of water, but she remembered everything. Oh how she remembered. She felt heat rush to her face as she rolled over, his arm still around her waist, to look at him.

“Good morning,” he said, eyes meeting hers and then drifting lower. She cleared her throat, studiously avoiding looking anywhere but his face.

“So this was a colossal fuck-up,” she said. “Sir.” He sat up on one elbow, leaning over her as he swept her bangs out of her eyes and leaned in to brush his lips to her neck.

“Mmph,” he said, and she took that as assent. The arm that had been situated across her hips withdrew, and his fingers ghosted over her hips, around to her stomach, and dipped lower, brushing between her thighs. She caught his wrist delicately and pulled his hand upward.

“We can’t,”

“We most certainly can,” he told her, kissing her hotly below her ear, “and have.” She sighed. Well the damage was done, it seemed early enough, and the way he was nibbling her earlobe was causing a familiar warmth to pool behind her navel. Using her legs and the element of surprise she rolled him over onto his back. He ran his hands up her thighs to her hips, grinning up at her wolfishly.

“Once more couldn’t hurt, I suppose,” she acquiesced, and bent to hiss him.

After, as she lay in his arms, both of them covered in a fine sheen of sweat, the panic really began to set in. He cleared his throat, apparently, and as usual, thinking along the same lines she was.

“What now?” he asked, seeming to echo her thoughts. “Do - should we figure out how to continue this when we’re back in Central?” She sat up on one elbow and regarded him seriously, tucking her hair behind her ear.

“Do you want to?” she asked. He turned pink and avoided her eyes.

“More than anything in the world, but -”

“Not more than anything,” she finished for him. “I’m glad we agree. We’ve come too far; we’ve lived through too much to risk it.”

“Riza,” he said, and her name on his lips was both foreign and so familiar it made her chest ache and for a moment she couldn’t meet his eyes. “You have to know that I-”  she leaned down and kissed him soundly, her hair falling in a curtain as though to hide this brief moment of weakness on both of their parts from the world.

“Please don’t say it,” she said softly. “It’s going to make it so much harder to forget this.”

“But you know,” he breathed, and she nodded, blinking hard.

“I do. And… me too.”

-x-

Six weeks later Riza stood up from the bathroom floor, wiping her mouth, feeling as though a cold bucket of water had been upended onto her as she thought hard, counting weeks and sinking further and further into a certainty tinged with wild panic. This wasn’t the first time she’d been sick lately, and she had a suspicion it wouldn’t be the last.

She washed her hands robotically, thinking hard.

They had been so concerned with bureaucracy following their… indiscretion, that she hadn’t even stopped to consider biology. That there could be ramifications beyond losing their jobs. Since returning to Amestris they’d been particularly careful not to spend time alone, and a touch formal, and sometimes he looked at her in a way that made her face heat up, but everything had gone back to more-or-less normal. She had thought - they had both thought - that they’d gotten away with it, and they could put it behind them with nothing but a pleasant memory to remember it by.

She pressed a hand to her still-flat lower stomach. What would people say?

Well of course they’d say the obvious. She hadn’t caught wind of rumors regarding her and her commanding officer in years, but that didn’t mean that they weren’t there, simmering gently despite no evidence. They had been very careful never to act improperly towards each other. She would have to come up with a plausible story, and furthermore she would need to make sure that the General reacted in a way that spoke of his innocence in the matter.

Riza eyed herself in the mirror; a hard-eyed soldier stared back at her. As much as it made her feel like a hand was clenching around her heart, this child wouldn’t be able to know its father. Riza would do this alone because she had no other choice. She needed to protect him. She needed to protect them both.

-x-

“Hawkeye you have to talk to me.”

It was four days after her in-office revelation, something she had done specifically not to arouse any suspicion, and yet here he was, on her doorstep in the middle of the night, and she had a strong hunch that he’d been at his aunt’s newly reestablished bar. Riza wasn’t sure what she had expected but he hadn’t been taking the news well, she could see it in the lines beneath his eyes in the office today, in the flat quality to his voice when he spoke to her. She opened the door further and waved him inside to avoid making a scene where people might see.

“You’ve been avoiding being alone with me for days, please,” he said, standing in the middle of her living room and looking utterly lost, dark eyes wide and hair mussed.

“I haven’t…” she trailed off - denial was no good, not with him. “I haven’t known what to say to you. It’s a setback, to be certain.”

“A setback , try a disaster! I can’t BELIEVE we didn’t- That I didn’t - ”

“There’s no use blaming yourself. We can’t exactly take it back now” she said quietly, and brushed past him to put the kettle on. When she turned back around he’d sunk down onto her couch and was running a hand through his hair.

“What do we do now? Do we run away to Xing? We could, you know,” he said, looking up but not at anything in particular. “Ling would find a place for us, you could be his bodyguard and I could be Royal Alchemist or Official Firework-Starter, or-”

“Don’t be ridiculous. We stay, and we work, and I… I’m going to raise the child of a random Xingese courtier who shall remain nameless.” A knot had settled somewhere deep in her chest and she doubted it would come undone anytime soon. “And if the rumors get to be too much and they threaten your career, I’ll disappear.”

“With my child? Like hell you will,” he said, voice rough. This gave her pause. The clock on her mantle had never sounded so impossibly loud in the stillness of her apartment Slowly, she walked to the couch and reached out, not quite touching, fingertips grazing the fabric at his shoulder.

“You realize it can never be your child,” she told him softly. He put his head in his hands.

“I’m aware.”

She sat next to him and hesitated, before wrapping her arms firmly around his shoulders. He leaned into her, and she let her head fall to gently rest against his. For a while all they did was breathe together, in and out, soothing each other by sheer virtue of being present. A heaviness settled over them and Riza doubted they would have another moment together like this again. She turned her face into his shoulder; she would not cry, not now, not in front of him. There would be time for that weakness later.  

“This is going to be a nightmare,” he said after a moment.

“We can make the most of it.”

“Can I just ask you for one thing?” he looked up at her. “It might be a bad idea under the circumstances but the baby… if it’s a boy, can we name him after Hughes?” This was a bad idea, she thought. It would be the obvious choice for a child of Roy’s. But she had known and loved the man as well, and it couldn’t be seen as that unusual that she would choose to honor a fallen comrade when naming her firstborn. She nodded, running a hand down his arm and lacing her fingers through his.  

“I think we can do that.”

It was a girl, but they named her after Maes anyway.  

The 2021 BMW M4 is always down to clown

New Post has been published on https://appradab.com/the-2021-bmw-m4-is-always-down-to-clown/

The 2021 BMW M4 is always down to clown

First impressions matter, so, let’s look at the nose a little later.

Andrew Krok/Roadshow

Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. Yes, the 2021 BMW M4 carries some unique styling notes that generate buzz on both sides of the aisle. But by laser-focusing on something so trivial, you might gloss over an important point: The M4 is really, really, really good. Better than BMW‘s bread-and-butter sports coupe has been in years, in fact, no matter what they call it.

Like

Punchy inline-6 power

Brilliant handling

Excellent manual transmission

Don’t Like

Tire noise

Weird optional bucket seats

Acquired-taste styling

Driving is the point

The 2021 BMW M4 is an absolute hoot to drive, full stop. It’s an aperitif that washes away the mediocre taste left in my mouth by its predecessor, which featured a frustrating ride quality and an engine note that wouldn’t have cleared the first round of American Idol. That’s all been ironed over and replaced with a car that only ever left me wanting to drive it more.

Under the hood, the base M4’s 3.0-liter turbocharged inline-6 delivers 473 horsepower and 406 pound-feet of torque, routed to the rear wheels through a six-speed manual transmission. While there’s a little bit of acoustic electro-trickery piped through the speakers, the straight-six sounds great, especially at higher revs. And there’ll be plenty of opportunity to take in that noise, because with peak torque arriving (and staying put) between 2,650 and 6,130 rpm, it’s easy to become addicted to plunging my right foot into the firewall. The M4 just goes and goes and goes, and it’ll keep going well beyond the upper bounds of the speed limit, signs passing by in a blur. Need to stop? Drop $8,150 on BMW’s carbon ceramic brakes and you’ll get predictable, strong stops on the regular.

BMW has one of, if not the best manual transmission on the market inside the M4. This slick six-speed evokes the feelings of the Bimmer manuals of yore, its slightly rubbery movement between well-placed gates feeling not much different than it did way back when in the E46 M3. The clutch has a well-defined pickup point, making footwork a breeze, and its standard rev-matching system generates pitch-perfect downshifts if you’re not the king of heel-toe.

Like other modern BMWs, the 2021 M4 has a litany of vehicle settings that can be adjusted individually or bundled together by way of the two bright red M buttons atop the steering wheel. Hit the Setup button on the center console and the screen fills with customizable options, letting me tailor the throttle, steering, suspension and braking. The standard mode for each is still plenty engaging, but if you’re a sucker for tight throttle or brake response, the options are available. Throwing everything into Sport eliminates whatever smidge of body roll ever existed in the first place, although I’d recommend leaving Sport Plus for the track or only the most perfect pieces of asphalt. Drop $900 on the M Drive Professional upgrade, and you are given multiple traction control modes that can let you get a little drifty before reining things in.

For as sharp as the M4 is when the going gets twisty, it’s impressively compliant in daily use. Southeast Michigan’s roads are… not ideal for sports cars, let’s say, yet the M4 is never shaken out of sorts. Bumps are dispatched with just a bit of jostling to the cabin, and even the harsher divots never result in a suspension thunk. With the M4 in its softest settings, it’s a perfectly adequate vehicle for commuting, errands and all the little daily-life stuff in-between — so long as you don’t mind the noise from its wide Michelin Pilot 4S summer tires.

Is it efficient? Not really. The EPA slaps the 2021 M4 with a rating of 16 mpg city and 23 mpg highway. In my experience, city mileage is about there, but staying out of the boost and keeping the overall speed appropriate (since there’s only six forward gears) can push the highway economy closer to 25 or 26, if not a smidge above that.

BMW’s interior design language isn’t my favorite at the moment, but everything is sufficiently sensibly laid out, and build quality is top-notch.

Andrew Krok/Roadshow

Shut up about the sun! Shut up about the sun!

Most conversations about the latest iteration of M4 will always go back to one thing: That cursed nose. Frankly, I don’t mind it all that much. Maybe that has to do with how it looks on my Portimao Blue tester, the dark grille devoid of chrome feeling way less flashy than on other 4 Series variants. Maybe it’s because, once you see the bumper bar crossing the divide, your eyes can visually separate the grilles into upper and lower components. Maybe I just don’t care that much. Is it my preferred design? Goodness, no. But is it some affront before man and God? Hardly.

The rest of the M4, inside and out, looks pretty solid. Its long, low silhouette is basically a miniaturized 8 Series at this point, with most of the aggressive bits reserved for the front and rear bumpers. The tailpipes may look proportional to the rest of the body in pictures, but in real life, I can assure you that they look like cannons hanging out of a galleon.

Yep.

Andrew Krok/Roadshow

Inside, the general layout is pretty much bone standard 4 Series, with an inoffensive dashboard layout that, in M4 guise, is wrapped in some seriously smooth leather. For $950, you can shellack about half the surfaces with carbon fiber, but I feel like that trend is pretty played out already. What isn’t overdone, though, is the absolutely batshit blue-and-yellow color combination playing out across the seats and door panels. While it wouldn’t be my first choice, I appreciate the ability to rock some expressive colors that aren’t derivatives of the usual blacks, whites and tans.

And then there’s the seats themselves. These $3,800 M carbon bucket seats are immensely supportive, with high bolstering for torsos and thighs. That said, they’ll be a tough sell for folks who aren’t skinny minis, since they are tight. There’s also the manner of the large protrusion toward the front of the seat cushion; I’m sure there’s some reason for that in motorsport, but in daily use, it feels unnatural and largely just annoying.

These optional bucket seats are supportive as heck, but that little bump on the bottom gets weird after a while.

Andrew Krok/Roadshow

iDrive still good, maybe not great

BMW’s iDrive hasn’t undergone any major revisions recently, so what’s here in the 2021 M4 is the same ol’ bit of telematics that we Roadshow editors have been using for the last couple years. I wouldn’t take it over Mercedes’ MBUX, but in a vacuum it’s more than sufficient, with plenty of responsiveness and a home screen that does a great job of delivering all the right info with minimal distraction. Don’t want to use the touchscreen? No worries, friend, because there’s a dial on the center console. USB charging comes by way of a USB-A port by the cup holders and a USB-C port under the armrest. Wireless Apple CarPlay, Android Auto and embedded navigation are all standard. The M4 also has a digital gauge display that is basically the same one you get on nearly every other BMW these days, and it’s fine.

Unlike many other dedicated performance cars, BMW still equips the M4 with plenty of active and passive standard safety features. No matter the spec, your M4 will roll off the factory line with parking sensors, forward-collision warning, automatic emergency braking, blind-spot monitoring, lane-departure warning and automatic high beams. None of the systems are very intrusive, and the settings menu lets me dial them back a little further if needed, so most of the time I can’t even tell they’re there. Best of all, you don’t need to shell out additional simoleons for any of it; it’s all standard from the get-go.

iDrive is fine, so long as you never bother to fiddle with gesture control.

Andrew Krok/Roadshow

Down to brass tacks

It should come as no surprise that the 2021 BMW M4 is expensive, but man, this expensive? The starting price of $72,795 (including $995 for destination) is innocuous enough, but my tester gloms on the options. The paint is $550, the wild interior is another $2,550, the wheels are $1,300 and the bucket seats ask for another $3,800. The upgraded brakes yeet another $8,150 out of your wallet, and if you’re feeling particularly spendy, you can drop $2,500 on the M Driver’s Package that does nothing but bump the speed limiter and offer a one-day class at a local BMW Performance Center. In case your eyes have glossed over at the sight of all these addons, I’ll do the final math for you: This BMW costs $93,795. Lord have mercy. And this isn’t even the freaking Competition variant! 

Yet, at the same time, the BMW M4 possesses so much character for a performance coupe that it’s hard to even look at anything else. Competitors like the Mercedes-AMG C63 and Audi RS5 are a little long in the tooth and due for replacements, while the Alfa Romeo Giulia QV is only available as a sedan, and it’s a little harsh for daily use. That puts the M4 in quite the sweet spot, offering incredible performance without forgetting that day-to-day life shouldn’t be a punishment. You’ll get used to the front end, I promise.

Climb in the driver’s seat for the latest car news and reviews, delivered to your inbox twice weekly.

PEACE OF MIND AMIDST THE CHAOS IN THE WORLD

Source: The Breck Life

The coronavirus pandemic drastically changed the way we live life. We don’t get to interact with friends physically that much anymore, and we hear negativity everywhere. From the moment we open our phone and log in on social media, we get bombarded with the chaos happening all around the world, from the growing number of COVID-19 cases, issues of social, racial and gender inequality to brewing disagreements between two countries. It affects our mental health negatively, and our spirit may be deflated much as a result, leaving us to think that there is little hope that there will be a time where peace rules over the world, and that there might be no room for change in our society. With that being said, it is now more important than ever that we need to boost our morale, and keep ourselves mentally and spiritually healthy as the front-liners search for a vaccine and a cure to this seemingly never-ending misery. Although we need to have faith, just as the others say, because it is essential to keeping a spiritually healthy mind, we also have to show it through our actions, particularly in various routines, because it usually represents how you value your wellness as a human being. In this blog, I’ll talk about some of the things that I do daily, that helps me balance my time and health this quarantine, and maybe you can take note of one of the things in my routine, and apply them in yours too.

MONDAY – 7:30 AM

NEW WEEK, NEW SET OF BIBLE VERSES

Source: history.com

Since the new normal classes started, I woke up at 7:30 every morning, to prepare myself for every class, synchronous or self-paced. As soon as I’m awake, I usually pray, to thank God for giving me another day to live, since this year made us realize that life is too precious, and that nothing is promised, not even tomorrow. I thank Him for giving me all the things that I am able to enjoy today, and I also ask for His guidance in every aspect of my life. It may be making decisions that may affect my future, or my character. Afterwards, I read some bible verses that help keep me on track and stay unfazed from the negativity that I see whenever I open my social media accounts.

After everything else, I then get to reflect on all the blessings that I received, and it made me appreciate all the little things even more. I admit, one of the biggest mistakes I’ve made in my life, is that I took some things for granted. Waking up early in the morning and going to school is something that I really took for granted, something that I wouldn’t thought I’d miss it soon enough. Another, is going out everyday after school for a short bike ride around the neighborhood, or perhaps playing basketball with my friends. For now, I have to wait a bit longer before I get to do these again, like the normal days. I’d also reflect on the dreams that I get last night, if I can recall them. They do symbolize things sometimes, and it may be referring to you, your situation in life right now, or what you need to do in order to get yourself past a difficult situation, if you’re facing one currently. Also, they have hidden messages, which are usually about what you feel towards a certain situation. I’d go for a few reps of some exercises after, to make sure that I’m fit, since this is the right time to invest more of your time in exercising to stay fit.  Alright, it’s time for me to start my classes. I’ll write again tomorrow, but until then, I must finish everything I need to do for this day.

TUESDAY – 10:03 PM

ONE RAINY NIGHT

Source: depositphotos.com

Another day, yet today is rainy unlike yesterday. It’s my favorite weather, because for some reason I find it relaxing, and it allows me to focus more on what I’m doing, much like how praying to God everyday realigns my focus towards everything I do for the day. Pairing it with hot chocolate and doughnuts probably would be what I call a great start to a rainy morning, that would eventually last until evening. I still have a lot to do today, since there are still assessments and tasks that I didn’t get to finish yesterday. I’ll carry on with my usual routine after that, taking a bath, then maybe taking a break from all the school stuff that I’m working on. I often play games and watch anime after I finish several tasks. Maybe I’d watch about 5 episodes, then do another set of tasks again. I’d also listen to music, depending on what genre I’d like to listen to in a day. It helps me focus, although I admit I’d be singing it at some part. But hey, if it’s effective, why not?

         Anyways, I’m tired right now. I sleep late like almost every day. I never forget to pray before I sleep though, because when I was still a 9 year old kid, I frequently had nightmares whenever I forgot to pray before I sleep, which would then be my routine every night. Alright, I’ll write again tomorrow. I’m hopeful that tomorrow will be an another opportunity for me to be better emotionally, spiritually, physically and mentally than I am yesterday.

WEDNESDAY – 8:00PM

DE-STRESSING IN THE MIDDLE OF SCHOOLWORKS

Source: verywell.com

It’s already Wednesday, and things are kind of getting stressful enough. It’s hard, especially for me, considering that I still have tasks to do, and that I have a schedule of learning how to code after classes. I usually finish some difficult tasks around 4PM, and I get to unwind from all the stuff that I’ve been doing. Usually, I watch anime or play games with my friends. I even read some bible verses to keep my faith in God strong. However, this day was different. I just wanted to take a nap, considering that I slept late because of my daily late-night talks with my dad, who’s working abroad. I somehow did, I prayed before sleeping and now I’m energized enough to continue doing the tasks that were unfinished now.

         I think now is the time to take care of ourselves mentally more than ever. That’s why I’m doing everything one step at a time. I unwind when I feel like I need to. I constantly get reminded of that too, because sometimes I could spend the whole day just working on schoolwork, without taking a break. I’d give myself an hour to refresh my mind, make sure that it stays healthy when I continue to study and do tasks. A lot of us are already stressed today, with the immense pressure that the pandemic gives us, as we hear a plethora of news with one common subject: the coronavirus. I don’t want anything to add up to it, that’s why I try to finish everything that I can possibly do in a day. I was taught once in Grade 4, that what you can do today, do it now. Tomorrow is never promised, so do everything that you need to do today, when you have the time and the resources. It avoids us from rushing to finish something on time, with only little time left. Despite all of that, it is also important to relax once in a while, since the challenge that the pandemic has brought to us today is not only being healthy physically, but testing our mental toughness, which I believe is the key to keeping ourselves productive this quarantine.

THURSDAY – 10:38 PM

LESS STRESS, MORE ENJOYMENT

Source: pushsquare.com

It’s Thursday already, and I’m feeling a bit too excited because it’s almost weekends. I still have a lot to do, but I’m making good progress. I’ve already finished almost two-thirds of what I need to do, and it’s only a matter of time before self-care week is around. Today is just another usual day for me, the typical unwinding through playing games and talking with friends. It’s like I can’t miss a day without communicating with them, and it has been a part of our routine ever since. I just finished praying, and as I was about to take a spoonful of my food, I suddenly remembered one moment in my life where I was showing a bit of ungratefulness towards everything I have, and it was me being ungrateful about the food that was served on our table.

         That gave me time to reflect again, on how I developed and matured as a person, and participating in Bible Studies that our neighbors held really helped in molding me into the person that I am today. I really appreciate the fact that I’m surrounded with the right people, who lead me in the right path. I also appreciate my relatives letting me join them with every religious practice and seminar that they attend to. It really helped me strengthen my faith in God, which I keep on recalling whenever I notice myself being stressed or losing faith in God. If it weren’t for them, who knows what may happen to me? My parents might get a call saying that I got into trouble for any mischievous stuff that I did in school or someplace else. The book that my mom bought for me that allows me to point out my bad habits, and how to replace them with the good ones certainly helped. But the main reason why I am what I am right now, is because of my upbringing. My parents never spoiled me with expensive stuff, and although there was a point where I wished I have them, I just focused on the ones that I have right now, because it’s still a blessing, and I am still fortunate enough, unlike other children who had a rough childhood. I don’t get to appreciate them unless if those things were taken away from me. It’s a privilege, and I’m grateful enough for that. Alright, that’s it for now. We’re about to pray together as a family, and we’ll continue to pray that this pandemic finally ends, and we could all go back to our normal lives.

FRIDAY – 9:59 PM

THE POWER OF ONE PRAYER

Source: foxnews.com

Praying every day doesn’t really consume that much of your time. I know I’ve reiterated this over and over in my past entries, but one of my prayers got answered, and it’s related to the wellness of my family. I kept on praying that my dad is going to be alright, considering that he becomes anxious sometimes, and the only thing that could make it go away is when he talks to us. I’m also grateful that he’s my dad, because he still spends time communicating with us. Along with that, I’m glad that my mom didn’t contract the disease, because she constantly goes out to buy food and other stuff. I also recited one bible verse from the Book of John 3:16 which is “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” It reminds us that everything in the world happens for a reason, and that God has a plan for each and every one of us. Despite all of the chaos happening in the world, I’m sure He’s letting us try to realize something through those happenings, and that is being grateful for getting a chance to live, since many are already suffering from the disease the COVID-19 virus brings. Before I move on into the weekends, I usually reflect on what I did this week, to determine whether I have been productive or not. I try to stay productive in anyway possible, and for the upcoming self-care week, I plan to practice more in playing the piano, because I plan to pursue music too, and it’s what I love. I just find joy in playing instruments, and I could go as far as making my own covers and my own compositions too. I also want to read books related to the economy, the stock market and finance, since I also desire to become an investor someday, just like my dad, although his job is really an Electronics Engineer, he also invests in the stock market whenever he has time, along with the family time he spends with us.

         These are my routines every day, and although it may not that much, I’m sure it’ll give you something to do to remain productive during these days. Our mental and spiritual health is now more important than ever, and it’s only fitting to do these. In praying, it could be before and after meals, waking up and before going to sleep. As for the bible verses, you could incorporate them into your schedule once a day. It’s not enough though, if you don’t really apply the lessons that the verses convey in your life. Such example is when we encounter a situation that’s left us with uncertainty to decide on something. God and the Holy Spirit will surely help us provide the strength and wisdom, to do what’s good and proper. Reciting one also helps us calm down and think through it wisely. We have to be ready for these situations in life, and this quarantine provides us plenty of time to do so, for our character development and our decision-making skills, because one wrong decision later on in life will really change everything, which will then cause us to regret doing it.

BREAKING:Decimation of Boko Haram, Prominent Northern leaders disagree with Buhari, Air Chief

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BREAKING:Decimation of Boko Haram, Prominent Northern leaders disagree with Buhari, Air Chief

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AT a time the polity is awash with lamentations over insecurity in the country with calls for the sack of service chiefs, President Muhammadu Buhari and the Chief of Air Staff, CAS, Air Marshal Sadique Abubakar, yesterday, insisted that Boko Haram insurgents have been decimated. The duo spoke at the commissioning of two Nigeria Air Force Agusta 109 Power Helicopters and MI-17 E Helicopters at the Eagle Square, Abuja.

While thanking the Armed Forces for their efforts towards the decimation of Boko Haram, President Buhari assured Nigerians that the promise of ending terrorism would be realised.

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The comments of the President and Air Force chief did not strike the right chord with some prominent Nigerians who expressed doubts that the Nigerian leader could say so at a time like this.

A top politician from Borno State said the era of blame games, claims and counter-claims over the insurgency was gone. “All we want is for our people to be able to move around. Saying that Boko Haram has been decimated is not what people want to hear.

Let there be peace, let normalcy return,” he said. While Second Republic lawmaker, Dr Junaid Mohammed, said he would take the comment with a pinch of salt, former Speaker of the House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara, said the North had become the epicentre of violence in the country. Alhaji Tanko Yakassai, former Liaison Officer to late President Shehu Shagari in the Second Republic said it was for Nigerians to agree or disagree with the security claims.

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Also former governor of old Kaduna State, Alhaji Balarabe Musa, said security has not improved. This came as the pioneer chairman of the Economic & Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, Nuhu Ribadu, denied claims he said President Buhari, and Kaduna State governor, Nasir Ahmad El-Rufai, were the chief sponsors of banditry in the North.

Buhari salutes Air Force While commissioning the Agusta 109 Power and MI-171E helicopters into the Nigerian Air Force inventory, Buhari said: “About a year ago, we commissioned two Agusta 109 Power helicopter gunships which were procured from Italy.

“The platforms were subsequently inducted into the Nigerian Air Force inventory to boost the operational capacity. This was necessary to improve the delivery of robust airpower in support of our counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency efforts. “It is on record that these additional platforms have contributed immensely to the Air Force’s successes and decimation of Boko Haram insurgents.

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“The Nigerian Air Force since its establishment in 1964, has been playing critical roles in national security as well as in peacekeeping operations on the African continent. “Your contributions in internal security, peacekeeping and humanitarian operations in places like The Gambia, Guinea Conakry, Mozambique, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Mali, Guinea Bissau and Cameroon have not only been a source of pride to us as a nation but has also projected us as a reliable regional power.

“This is indeed most commendable as our Air Force, alongside other services, continues to play its unique role in the counter-insurgency operations and other operations, particularly in the North-East and the North-West where our officers, airmen and airwomen, soldiers and ratings are performing gallantly.

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“I promised to put an end to Boko Haram insurgency, kidnapping and other forms of criminality that have bedevilled our country during my inaugural speech as President. “You will all agree with me that the successes we have achieved so far have restored our pride and honour the world over. Consequently, I want to sincerely thank Nigerians for believing in our government, in spite occasional outrages, coming together as a nation, irrespective of political, religious and ethnic affiliations, in our strive to bring this menace to an end.

“I want to, once again, salute the resolve of our Armed Forces and the invaluable contributions of all security agencies for their efforts towards the decimation of Boko Haram. “It is noteworthy that professionalism, capacity building and adequately equipping the Armed Forces and other security agencies are a major policy thrust of this administration. We promise to re-professionalize and re-equip the Armed Forces and security agencies to effectively discharge their duties to our nation.

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“I have no doubt that the deployment of these Agusta 109P gunships and the M-17IE helicopters would add impetus to the combat efficiency of the Air Force in combating our contemporary security challenges. We are committed to taking the right steps in achieving the desired results. The acquisition of these aircraft amongst other military equipment despite our budgetary constraints is an expression of our commitment.”

NAF expecting 17 aircraft from U.S Speaking in like manner, Chief of Air Staff, Air Marshal Sadique Abubakar, disclosed that Nigerian Air the Force is expecting 17 platforms from the United States of America, including 12 Super Tucanos, to boost its inventory in the fight against insurgency and terrorism. He added that so far, the government has procured and inducted 22 aircraft into the NAF inventory.

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He said the NAF in synergy with surface forces has substantially decimated the insurgents from their previous positions of strength, forcing them to abandon their so-called caliphate headquarters in Gwoza. Abubakar said the terrorists are currently operating in small groups in ungoverned spaces in the North-East where they take advantage from time to time to attack soft targets. “Similarly, the NAF has flown 8,559 hours in the non-traditional missions of aid to Civil Authority and Civil Power, using the same platforms acquired by this administration.

“These are appreciable improvements, even as we recognize that much more still needs to be done,” he said. Minister of Defence, Major-General Bashir Magashi (retd), expressed happiness for being part of the historic event. He noted that in 2019, Buhari had inducted two NAF aircraft during the NAF 55th anniversary.

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“I am particularly elated because the President since assumption of office prioritized national security at the top of his agenda and part of it involves re-equipping the armed forces to enhance their operational effectiveness,” he said. Some of the high points of the ceremony were the Unarmed Combat Display and Troop Insertion and Combined Fast Rope by NAF Special Forces and the K9 display. The unveiling, inspection of the NAF Helicopter, Research and Development (R&D) and presentation of souvenirs also featured at the occasion.

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Win Your Ex Back Valentines Day

Something To Share

Allison pulled into street parking and huddled by the warmth of her heater. Taking the last sip of iced Green tea her fiancé Darius brewed the night prior, she braced for the gusts of winter air. The wind came crashing violently, whipping against her face, blowing her hair back. Digging through her purse, she strung together some loose change to feed the meter. Walking frantically, she reached the front door of her coffee shop. Having forgotten her gloves at home, her hands were brittle, seizing. Rifling through her brown leather bag for the keys to her store (which she deliberately kept separate from her personal set) she heard the faint echoes of footsteps. The echoes came to be less distant as she discerned a figure shrouded in darkness, moving around the unlit lobby. The shape, imposing and massive, lurched forward. The noise was in her ears. She sensed the oncoming fear, panic gripping her like a vise. What if this figure, seen only in shadows, was knocking the place over? All her capital gone in a flash. Then, she wondered, what if the shape was even more malevolent? The lights flicked on and she let out a gasp, noticing the overnight Baker Josh who rushed to the door, opening it gingerly. Josh chuckled at Allison's chattering teeth and shuddering frame. Guttural noises escaped her stiff, blue lips.   “You okay, Ally?” he asked. Josh stood six five, weighed two thirty (a combination of fat and muscle,) and was dressed in tattoos from neck to knuckle. He’d always appreciated the job and kindness offered by Ally, who was a friend to his cousin Robert. Josh found it best to keep his hands busy, worried about the eventual trouble he might get into if granted the luxury of time.   “I’m good,” she huffed. “Thanks. I should get my keys stitched to my hands, huh?”   “Yeah,”  Josh chuckled politely. “Be a good idea.”   “You’re almost done back there?”   “Uh, done twenty minutes ago. Just waiting on the bus and the check-out from the opening manager. Which is you.”   “Which is me. Did ya get your two pastries?”   “Uh, yes. So, I was . . .”   “Walk with me, talk with me?”   “I was talking to Jackie about getting cross-trained to up my hours.”   “Yes. Uh, no, I love that idea. Put you in front of house. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let me get you through your ninety days, go from there.”   “Right. She mentioned that. Uh, it’s day ninety-six, actually.”   “No shit.  So, I’ll tell you what, I’ll look at your availability, get you some opening shifts, couple closing. Can’t promise you won’t have a few bake shifts here and there, but I’ll move you around.”   “Sounds great.”   “Sound good?”   “Yes, ma’am. You have a good day, Ally.”   “You do the same, Mister Josh.” Allison ran through the opening checklist, ticking off empty boxes before shelving the cookies, muffins, and scones on wax paper-lined sheet pans in the freshly cleaned display cases. The chairs resting seat-to-table were placed with their leg to the hardwood paneled floor, the tables lovingly organized in geometric harmony. Taking a few breaths, she walked around the shop and appreciated the work that no one else would. She admired a wall of misspelled, sloppily written quotes and declarations, written by young cliques caught in the bubble of their own scene. Statements and aphorisms that would seem juvenile in the space of three years, but when it was written, appeared to hold the most immense profundity that a bastard child of middle America could articulate. Allison took stock and felt pride for willing this into existence. She was the bedrock, the one responsible for maintaining stability, ensuring success or withstanding failure. This was her house, achieved through her unflappable determination and enviable ambition. Her stamina and effort ensured that Allison’s Coffee and Books would flourish. And it had. She made a communal pillar where paintings and sketches from local artists hung freely on the walls, amplifying the voices of the muffled and marginalized.     The sun rose and burst through the windows, ribbons of gold shining through on the floor, the bricks of gold text signage on the windows casting imperfect shadows. Her crew members—Clara, Sam, and Jharrel—arrived and stood in the doorway, shivering while clouds of breath floated freely in the air. Allison walked to the door and unlocked it, eager to attack the day with them. “J! Clara!” She contorted her face into a mock-serious expression, affecting a gruff voice. “Morning Sam,” she bellowed.   “Morning Ralph,” he replied. The interaction was a reference to a Saturday morning cartoon they both knew very well. Silly as it was, their joke was something they shared, and that thought always brightened her day. “Who’s on barista?”   “Taylor’s gonna be on barista,” she replied. Clicking her tongue, an indicator that Allison was ready to shift subjects, she turned to Clara. “Mama, I talked to Jackie. Told her the night crew needs to start cleaning everything, especially the toaster ovens. I checked it today, it’s looking good.  Let me know if I’m not here and they try to get slick. I’ll correct that shit so fast, mama.”:   “Thanks,” Clara replied.     “Lizzy,” Jharrel began. Lizzy was his nickname for her, though only he was to call her that, she made clear. It was something else to share. “Your girl Taylor kinda trash.”   “She’s new, J.”   “Lizzy. We know that’s a diplomatic way of saying she’s hot garbage.”   “J, it’s a diplomatic plea for you to be patient. Besides, I think my gal’s gonna kill it today.”   “Uh, and you’re basing this on what?”   “The fact that I got you two studs,” she teasingly pointed at Sam and Jharrel, “training her. Also, we gotta open this stand. Let’s get to it, boys and gal.”   They went through their opening duties: sweeping the lobby, filling buckets with time sensitive cleaner-infused water, wiping the wooden green borders of the door.  The clock’s hand hit seven fifty and they had to get the lead out.   “Who’s got the needle this morning?” Allison asked. Having the needle was a practice in the store which meant, essentially, getting to soundtrack their shift by gaining access to the aux cord.   “That’d be me,” Sam replied, wiping the sleep from his eyes.  He shuffled through his mp3 player, before finally asking “Is it too early for Neil Young?”   “No,” Allison confirmed, a sly grin unfurling. “Turn it up.” Out On The Weekend began to play through the speakers and the already healthy morale was boosted. They were going to have a good day. There were considerable gaps between the first few customers, hour one being idle, almost tedious. Half past nine is when business gained traction, a wealth of guests flooding through, promising to keep everyone on all ten toes. Suffering belligerent and fickle guests, Allison pushed everyone through to the other side with sly digs and silly jokes. A few minutes late, Taylor rushed through the door, putting on her hat, out of breath.  “I’m so sorry I’m late, Ms. Allison,” she lamented, her voice straining.  “Mama, I’m gonna need you on cash.”  “I thought I’m barista today. Are you mad?”  “Mama, Sam’s getting weeded right now, please help him out on cash.”  “Yes, ma’am.”  “Thank you.” Stress occurred differently to Allison. Certainly, she could be found struck with the pangs of frustration and annoyance, but she kept her game face on. She felt compelled to be a beacon of levity and verve in the presence of tedium and fatigue.     The rush subsided, everyone catching their bearings. Allison ran through the multiple refunds she had to put on the damage log. Clara advised Taylor with notes to increase efficiency, which she dutifully noted. Jharrel compiled his receipts into a straight stack, forcing it into a paper clip. Sam deviously smiled, approaching Jharrel. “Hey, dude. Got a question for you.”   “Sam, I’m telling you right now.  Whatever it is, you gon’ keep it to yourself.”   “Jharrel, would you rather...”   “Nah, dawg.”     “See, you don’t even know what I’m gonna say.”   “Last time you were talking about some—"    Allison looked sternly at the two. “Hey, Sam, J. You guys have some kinda protein deficiency?”   “Nah?” Jharrel held a quizzical expression.   “Then tell me now why you’re dragging ass on my clock.” The one trait Allison could not abide was laziness. It put everyone in their own way, unable to proceed due to a complacency to remain static. This was a trait she considered to be beneath them.  It showed a lack of faith in one’s self, and they all held such potential that it would be a shame if that slothful tendency wasn’t shaken now, while they were young and active.   “There’s no guests. What are we supposed to do?” Sam wondered, with more than a little force behind his voice.   “You can catch up on your side work. I don’t need you leaving that for night crew. Playing Would You Rather? Above and beyond, boys.” She clicked her tongue. “Clara!”   “Yes, ma’am?”   “I’m gonna steal Taylor, call me back if you need me.”   “Uh, yeah. Uh, my out time is at four, do you need me to extend?”   “And your relief is Gavin?”   “Yeah.”   “We, uh, well . . . “   “Play it by ear?”   “Yes, great idea. Uh, thanks so much, really appreciate it.”  Taylor and Allison walked to the back office, where Taylor was somewhat taken back by the sign hung above Allison’s desk which read: Comfort Is the Killer of Kings. Offering her a seat, the two sat eye to eye. “So, how are you liking it here, Taylor?”   “I feel like it’s good. I think I’m doing okay.”   “You do? Good, great. Uh, so, you’re not in trouble, this is just me going over Clara’s performance review of your first week. So, she said you were very efficient.  You apparently exceeded expectations as far as guest interactions. So, that’s all very positive.”   “Great.”   “Yeah, you’re doing great, mama. So, right here, she mentioned that you only needed improvement as far as communication goes.”   “Okay, yeah, no, I’m sorry.”   “No need to apologize. We’re here to help you out, so, please, if you need help, you gotta let us know. If you aren’t sure about something, please tell us. We’ll make sure to get you as clear an answer as possible.”   “Great.”   “Is, uh, is that something you find you have difficulty with?”   “I know you’re the one that has the standard and you determine whether I’m up to snuff or not. I’m just . . . I guess I’m anxious that I’m gonna look dumb. That I’m gonna slow everyone down. But if I’m too anxious, I feel like that prevents me from asking honest questions. And like, that’ll slow us all down as well.” She proceeded to collapse into herself, covering her face as tears flowed. Allison offered a bottle of water and a tissue, both of which Taylor graciously accepted. “I’m sorry, miss Allison.”   “We all have our days here. You know, when I opened this place, I cried for days on end. I couldn’t sleep, I was a wreck. I didn’t know if I’d be good enough, if people would take me seriously. That’s why my name is on the front door. Cause they can’t take that away from me. I’m Allison. This is Allison’s. It’s mine.”  “Queen,” she chuckled, admiring her fierce boss.  “But look, I don’t see a lot of room for improvement. Certainly a little, but there always is. What I see is a lot of potential. Could you give us a chance?”  “Of course, Ms. Allison. I appreciate you.”  “So, tomorrow’s your big day. You excited?”  “It is?”  “You get the needle! How are you gonna start the day tomorrow?”  “David Bowie. Let’s Dance. Do you know that one?” Allison closed her eyes and put her hands to her chest, ecstatically crying “Let’s Dance? Cat People? Modern Love? Ah! Mama!  Ugh, you’re after my heart.” She clicked her tongue. “Go finish out your shift, check out with Clara, she’ll make sure you’re good to go. Looking forward to working with you, Miss Taylor.” Allison found coverage for call outs, issued breaks, transcribed the damage log into a word document, and verified shift swaps, debriefing Jackie on the goals for the night.  Allison clocked off and drove away in her car. Muscles hardened, stomach like concrete, motor functions on autopilot. She walked into her apartment, a savory smell deeply wafting through the apartment. Steam emanated from inside the kitchen, where she saw Darius wearing an apron, stirring a large pot of food, adding seasoning whenever he felt it was necessary. She took off her shoes, kicking them into the living room. She unbuttoned her blouse and let it fall limply to the ground, dressed now only in her red lace bra and black slacks, stained with powdered sugar and flour.  Walking up behind Darius, she wrapped her arms around his torso. He lowered his hands and rubbed her forearms, fully accepting her warm embrace She stood upwards and kissed him on the back of the neck before he craned his neck back and the two pecked each other on the lips. She knew now she was home.   “Hey, baby,” he groaned, welcoming the loving his woman was bringing home to him.   “Hey, yourself, handsome.” He turned around, hoping to get a few full on kisses. Noticing her unconventional mode of dress, he asked, “Ah. Been that kinda day?”   “Better now I get to see your pretty face.”   “Pretty,” he considered, chuckling.  Darius pulled out a spliff which they shared, their bodies adopting an alien rhythm, their clothes nestling against their skin felt weird. They felt light, like poison was draining from their bloodstream. Elated, he removed the lid from the pot of yellow rice and pigeon peas and scooped out two generous helpings on two separate plates. He then took out the jerk chicken and placed the pieces on their plates. They ate ravenously, drinking wine from mason jars, their stomachs expanding.   “We gotta get some healthier eating habits,” Allison grunted, unbuttoning her pants.   “We’ll start tomorrow,” Darius assured her, scooping another spoonful of rice into his mouth.   “You know, I saw Patty at the bodega the other day.”   “You call my mom Patty?”   “Oh, dude. Me and Patty go WAY back. Tight as fuck.” She crossed her fingers to illustrate her point.   “Bunch of troublemakers?” he playfully asked.   “Yeah.” She clicked her tongue. “She uh, she says she misses you, babe.”   “You know I’m busy lately, babe.”   “Yeah, it’s just . . . she’s your mom, you know? And it’s, you know, it’s not like your relationship’s bad.”     “I’ll stop by to see her before work tomorrow. Promise.”   “You promise?”   “I promise.”   “Mmkay, cause that’s twice you promised me, and you don’t want to break one, much less two promises to me. You know I keep a grudge.”   “You busy tonight, troublemaker?”   “Nah. Was thinking we could watch that one baking show.”   “Yeah, I mean, you don’t want to watch a movie?”   “Let’s go and pick something.”   “Sounds good.”   They shuffled with sore muscles and aching bones to the couch, before Darius impulsively grabbed Allison by the hips and dragged his teeth across her neck. They kissed passionately, gripping each other’s bodies, pushing one another against the living room walls before sauntering to the couch and Darius kissed Allison’s breasts, tracing the geography of her midsection with his lips before unzipping her pants and sliding her panties to the side so he could go down on her. Allison ran her hands through his braid twists and wrapped her legs around his back, crossing them at her feet which reached just above his ass. After coming a few times, he emerged from in between her legs to kiss her again. She took off his pants and they began stroking one  another, tussling, clumsily hitting the floor. Negotiating his way out of his briefs, his swelling penis alarmed her, unsure if she’d ever seen that much blood collected in it.   “Wow,” she whispered, grabbing him to meet her and they began to fuck on their carpet. The rug burn was a problem for tomorrow. Now, they were being careless and vital, making passionate love, dying rapturously in each other’s arms like young people do.

World: America's bikers are divided over Trump's war with Harley-Davidson

STURGIS, S.D. — Gary Rathbun rumbled into South Dakota to attend the United States’ pre-eminent gathering of motorcycle enthusiasts atop his Harley-Davidson, a 2009 Ultra Classic that brought him 800 miles from Idaho.

Like many of Harley’s most loyal customers, Rathbun was enraged by the company’s announcement this summer that, because of the Trump administration’s trade fight, it would begin manufacturing the bikes it sells in Europe outside the United States.

His anger echoed that of President Donald Trump, whose public denouncement of Harley’s decision has put one of the country’s most iconic brands in the uncomfortable position of clashing with a president who is immensely popular with most of its customers.

“I’m riding my last Harley,” said Rathbun, 67, a retired truck driver whose bike rally essentials included a steel knife nestled in his belt, a saddle bag stuffed with a Ruger pistol and a small bottle of Jack Daniel’s cinnamon whiskey. “It was American-made, and that’s why we stood behind them.”

Harley took a public relations risk to protect its bottom line when it said it would skirt European Union tariffs aimed directly at the industry in retaliation for Trump’s steel and aluminum levies. Rather than eat the cost of the tariffs or raise prices on the bikes it sells in Europe by $2,200, the company said it would move some production overseas.

In a warning to other companies that might follow suit, Trump described Harley’s decision as an act of corporate treason, declaring in a Twitter post in June: “If they move, watch, it will be the beginning of the end — they surrendered, they quit!”

It was a sentiment shared by many of the hundreds of thousands of motorcycle enthusiasts who converged this week upon the Black Hills of South Dakota, most of whom developed a relationship with their Harleys well before Trump became president. Still, as leather-clad baby boomers revved engines, drank beer and swayed to classic rock ballads, Trump’s influence was palpable.

Like Trump, Gary Panapinto, 63, a machinist from Illinois, had doubts about Harley’s true intentions, believing that the company was planning to offshore the bulk of its bike production, and, like Trump has intimated, he suggested that Americans would be forced to buy a product that was made overseas. While Trump has fanned that perception, Harley has said it will shift production only for bikes it sells in Europe and that American bikes will still be made in the United States.

“They need to keep them here in the United States, especially if they’re going to sell them here,” Panapinto said. “I think Trump is just trying to protect jobs in the U.S.”

Oliver Lapointe, a retiree from New Hampshire who rides cheaper Japanese bikes, said he used to aspire to own a Harley but could never afford one. Now he thinks they are not worth it because they are filled with foreign-made parts and, he said, increasingly made overseas. Like several Trump administration officials, he accused the company of using the tariffs to justify a decision that it already had in mind.

“They’re always advertising that they’re made in America, so I don’t think they should do it,” Lapointe, 70, said. “They’re greedy.”

The company declined to comment, but it pointed to a July interview in which its chief executive, Matthew Levatich, defended the decision. He denied that he wanted to shift its manufacturing, noting that it would not take up to 18 months to execute the plan if it were in the cards all along.

“We’ve worked very hard to be apolitical in how we approach our business and our consumers everywhere in the world,” he said. “We have to do what we have to do based on the facts and circumstances before us, and we’re doing that.”

Some hard-core Trump supporters said they understood the economic rationale behind Harley’s decision. Few complex machines are fully sourced and assembled in the United States these days, and even the riders who are devoted to the ideal of a fully American-made product said they understood that companies must compete globally.

Bikers have been among the groups most loyal to Trump, as motorcyclists in the United States tend to be predominantly working-class men older than 50 and veterans — demographics that comprise the bulk of the president’s base. Trump has embraced that allegiance, saying recently that “I guarantee you everybody that ever bought a Harley-Davidson voted for Trump.”

On Saturday, Trump invited hundreds of bikers from the New Jersey Bikers for Trump chapter to visit him on vacation in Bedminster, New Jersey. He praised them as “people who truly love our Country.”

Some who are generally pleased with Trump said he was wrong to bully the motorcycle maker merely for trying to make a profit, but they remained loyal to him nonetheless.

“You’ve got to take it with a grain of salt. He’s hot one day and he’s cold the next,” Bill Schaner, an electrical supply salesman from North Dakota who has owned seven Harley bikes, said of the president. “If they’re going to make bikes in Europe and sell them in Europe, let them go. We’ll take the bikes made in America.”

At a souvenir stand selling Trump memorabilia off the main drag in Sturgis, Larry Rich said that, as a businessman, Trump should understand that Harley is doing what it can to stay profitable.

“I don’t like everything he says, but I don’t like everything my wife says,” said Rich, 72, who used to ride Indians — another U.S. brand, made by Polaris — before giving up the hobby.

For his part, Trump has been good for business. Rich was busy selling shirts printed with an image of the president blazing past the White House on a Harley-Davidson with Stormy Daniels, the pornographic film actress who claims to have had an affair with Trump, falling off the back. The tryst that Daniels — whose real name is Stephanie Clifford — says took place in 2006 has not turned off customers.

“Well, he was a Democrat back then,” Rich said with a smile.

Veterans of the Sturgis bike rally, which is in its 78th year, said that the hardships facing Harley-Davidson go beyond Trump’s tough words and stem from years of declining ridership in the United States.

Leslye Beaver, owner of The Beaver Bar in Sturgis and several other biker bars across the country, said that Harley and other U.S. motorcycle manufacturers are at a crossroads because their products have lacked appeal to young people in the United States. She pointed out that the trade disputes have increased their raw material costs and hindered their ability to export to Europe, which is a growth market.

“I think they’re doing what they have to do to stay in the game,” Beaver, who lives in Georgia and supports Trump, said while patrolling the parking lot of her bar in a golf cart. “It’s human for people to be mad because Harley is so American, but I think they want to be here.”

For years, Harley-Davidson’s sales in the United States have been steadily declining as the Milwaukee-based company grappled with an aging population, a vibrant secondary market and the changing tastes of consumers. Recently, it has focused on marketing its motorcycles to women, selling branded clothing and boosting international sales as a way to grow profits.

The average cost of a Harley is about $20,000, and they top out at about $40,000, making the motorcycles a luxury item for people who do not use them as their primary mode of transportation. In 2017, the company’s U.S. retail sales fell for the third consecutive year to 147,972 motorcycles, while sales in international markets have been climbing slowly or holding steady, with more room to grow. In the past five years, Harley’s stock price has fallen by nearly 25 percent, even as the stock market has been on a tear.

Harley is also under pressure from more intense competition. In the 1990s at Sturgis, Harley riders would torch so called “rice burners” — a pejorative term for Japanese bikes — or tie them to the back of their all-American motorcycles and drag them down the streets. Although Harleys continue to be the most popular ride, foreign brands such as BMW, Honda, Yamaha and Kawasaki are increasingly common.

The greater appreciation for foreign-made bikes was on display at Buffalo Chip, a sprawling 600-acre campground 3 miles east of Sturgis. At the campground, Michael Lichter, a Colorado-based photographer and curator, puts on exhibitions of specialty motorcycles from around the world as a way to make the rally less Harley-centric and broaden interest and inspiration beyond American bikes.

“People need to be exposed to more,” said Lichter, who hopes to put on a show of all Japanese bikes next year. “If you’re buying just because it’s American, I don’t think that’s a good thing.”

He added: “It means there’s no pressure on American manufacturers to build better.”

To the president’s most ardent admirers, there is nothing better than American-made.

Chris Cox, the founder of the Bikers for Trump group that has organized demonstrations for Trump across the country since he was a candidate, was using the Sturgis gathering this year to drum up more support for Trump and to mobilize opposition to Harley. He wants shareholders and riders to come together and petition the company to promise it will give generous severance packages to workers who might get fired as it moves manufacturing to other countries.

Like Trump, Cox is furious with Harley’s chief executive, Levatich, whom Cox says has “ties” to Europe and wants to make the company less American.

Levatich, who has been with Harley since 1994, has held senior roles overseeing its European operations, including the management of the Italian motorcycle business MV Agusta that Harley acquired in 2008.

“We’re not going to sit back on a hope and a promise that they’re going to do the right thing,” said Cox, who brought with him a leather jacket autographed by Trump at the White House when he was in Washington for a recent visit with some bikers. He said that Trump insisted that he visit the Oval Office because his group has been so supportive and loyal.

Explaining the importance of domestic production, Cox said that Vietnam War veterans who joined motorcycle clubs after the war were disappointed decades later when the new brake pads they needed to buy were made in Vietnam. He said that many bikers he knows are now wearing long sleeves to conceal their Harley tattoos.

But even Cox, a South Carolina chain saw artist who carves trees and other objects, could not escape the realities of global supply chains and the high cost of making some products in the United States. While he used to sell American-made T-shirts, the $20 Trump shirts he was selling outside his recreational vehicle were made in Haiti. The American-made shirts proved to be a hard sell.

“If I get a T-shirt made in the USA, it’s going to cost about $8 more,” Cox said. “I looked far and wide to try to get a shirt made in America, it’s just they get you, they gouge you.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

Alan Rappeport © 2018 The New York Times

source http://www.newssplashy.com/2018/08/world-americas-bikers-are-divided-over_12.html

The 8 Limbs of Yoga and How They Help With Addiction Recovery

If my friends and family members met me for the first time around a decade ago, they wouldn’t recognize me. In fact, some of them are still awestruck at the changes I have gone through these past 10 years. You see, I used to be an addict.

The term is thrown around loosely nowadays, yet people forget about the seriousness of addiction as a mental health issue. That’s what it is, in reality. Addiction is an uncontrollable urge which was recognized as a disease by The American Medical Association in 1956.

If you manage to pull yourself out of your addiction abyss (some people never do), you’re confronted with a whole new set of challenges. For me, I had a difficult drug detox period while in prison. Then, one relapse after I got out, and endless moments when the cravings were so bad I was ready to say screw it and give in. Although I’m better at suppressing those cravings now, they never seem to go away in the end.

People deal with recovery in different ways. Some seek comfort in their friends and family, others go to therapy, a long-term residency at rehab, outpatient programs, and so on. Rehab centers have been immensely successful. Yet, there are people who have a difficult time coping with their new lives after they are released and sober. This has led to the development of holistic approaches to post-rehab.

While none of these methods should be considered as your one and only solution in recovery, they can be effective when combined with a proper program. Methods include acupuncture, meditation, massage, reiki and yoga among others.

When I set my eyes on yoga as a holistic method, I was drawn tothe fact that it’s a way to exercise. Working out was highly recommended post-rehab. After doing research, I put it into practice and was fully satisfied with the results. Yoga can help you control your emotions, which in turn helps you control your cravings. It allowed me to build self-control, which was very important in the recovery process. I used yoga to replace the artificial high from drugs and alcohol with the natural one from breathing and meditation.

Yoga is split into 8 different paths, also known as limbs. When people think of yoga they think of breathing and stretching, when in reality those are only a small part of it. In this article, we will look at how these limbs benefit your recovery. Let’s get started:

1. Yamas

Yamas are the first limb, and they deal with the behavior that one should have when practicing yoga. They consist of 5 different practices that we promise to ourselves when we begin yoga. The idea behind the Yamas is that we treat others the way we would like to be treated:

Ahimsa: the promise of non-violence.

Asteya: the promise of non-stealing (whether it be objects or the time of others).

Satya: the promise of truthfulness.

Aparigraha: the promise of non-greed or non-possessiveness.

Brahmacharya: the promise of self-control.

The five Yamas lay the groundwork for becoming a person who treats others with respect. Forgiveness and treating others well was a massive part of my recovery program. When I connected Yamas with the concept of acting with kindness, I felt more fulfilled and at ease with myself.

2. Niyamas

Similar to Yamas, Niyamas are the guidelines to our own ritualistic process. The way we nourish our mind, spirit, and body are the core standards for the Niyamas, which work in accordance with Yamas. They are:

Saucha: cleanliness of the inner and outer body. Proper nutrition, elimination of sugar, fats, drugs, and alcohol are part of keeping your body clean. Your mind must also be kept clean, removing feelings of anger or stress.

Santosha: contentment with oneself. Being mindful and appreciating the present moment, finding joy in the everyday instants of life.

Tapas: the fiery desire to improve your life with self-discipline. This relates to the motivation we have to live a better life.

Svadhyaya: to study your own body and mind. Using this you will know yourself inside and out, understand who you are, and accept yourself.

Ishvara Pranidhana: to surrender yourself to God. While this may seem difficult to accept for those who don’t believe in God, it can be interpreted as giving yourself to a higher purpose.

The 5 Yamas in combination with the 5 Niyamas are your ten keys to success in the practice of yoga. You will adopt the traits necessary to complete your journey, while also applying those very same stages to your life in recovery.

3. Asana

Asana is the practice that you will see in any studio. People stretching, doing poses and breathing. The benefits of this limb are that you get to exercise your body while enhancing your spirituality. Your circulation is also improved with Asana, which means that your vital organs get that extra boost of blood they need to recover and detox.

Asana reduces stress and negative feelings. If you didn’t already know, challenging emotions are among the top reasons why people relapse. When you exercise through Asana you lose weight. This boosts self-confidence and provides a general feeling of self-satisfaction.

4. Pranayama

This limb focuses on the control of your breathing. It is an essential step in yoga, where different techniques can improve circulation, heart health, and mental health. A strong mind is vital in addiction recovery. Pranayama allows you to build that strength through breathing.

5. Pratyahara

Recovery can be hectic. You might stress, feel depressed and overwhelmed with the second chance you’ve received at life. Sometimes you want to get away from it all, and in fact, it’s important to withdraw from daily struggles every now and then. Pratyahara does exactly that. It’s a form of meditation which provides a well-needed rest while you restore your energy to continue on the path to recovery. Focus on each of your senses individually from touch to taste, and appreciate the moment. You will replenish your energy.

6. Dharana

The Dharana stage follows Pratyahara, and is translated to “concentration.” You use this stage to proceed with deep meditation after the initial steps of the previous stage. These two limbs combined are especially important when fighting the anxiety that may affect you in recovery

7. Dhyana

As you continue through the limbs of yoga, Dhyana builds upon Asana, Pranayama, Pratyahara, and Dharana. Dhyana is the step when full concentration is reached. People who manage to reach this level end up introspecting and gaining self-knowledge. Understanding who you are and setting clear goals for your future plans are main key points of a successful recovery.

8. Samadhi

Welcome to the stage of transcendence, where you have arrived at the high point in your practice. People in the Samadhi stage feel themselves ascend into conscious freedom, and the natural high that comes from yoga is unleashed. Recovering addicts often compare this feeling to the one they would have if they were to completely eliminate addiction from their lives.

Those are the 8 limbs of yoga, and the ways they connect to and aid in your recovery. Holistic practices are plenty, with researched benefits. Yoga has been my favorite because I saw amazing results and it pushed me to maintain my sobriety. I am now 10 years sober, and I have reached heights in my life that I never thought previously possible. Hopefully, yoga will have the same effects on you as it did on me.

Has yoga helped you recover? How? Let us know in the comments!

—————–

Editor’s note: This is a guest post by Andy Macia, a recovering drug addict/alcoholic with over 10 years sober. He was born in Bogota, Colombia, but raised in Los Angeles California. He is an avid rehab blogger and digital marketing entrepreneur. 

Photo credit: Brian Crawford Photography on Instagram

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STURGIS, S.D. — Gary Rathbun rumbled into South Dakota to attend the United States’ pre-eminent gathering of motorcycle enthusiasts atop his Harley-Davidson, a 2009 Ultra Classic that brought him 800 miles from Idaho.

Like many of Harley’s most loyal customers, Rathbun was enraged by the company’s announcement this summer that, because of the Trump administration’s trade fight, it would begin manufacturing the bikes it sells in Europe outside the United States.

His anger echoed that of President Donald Trump, whose public denouncement of Harley’s decision has put one of the country’s most iconic brands in the uncomfortable position of clashing with a president who is immensely popular with most of its customers.

“I’m riding my last Harley,” said Rathbun, 67, a retired truck driver whose bike rally essentials included a steel knife nestled in his belt, a saddle bag stuffed with a Ruger pistol and a small bottle of Jack Daniel’s cinnamon whiskey. “It was American-made, and that’s why we stood behind them.”

Harley took a public relations risk to protect its bottom line when it said it would skirt European Union tariffs aimed directly at the industry in retaliation for Trump’s steel and aluminum levies. Rather than eat the cost of the tariffs or raise prices on the bikes it sells in Europe by $2,200, the company said it would move some production overseas.

In a warning to other companies that might follow suit, Trump described Harley’s decision as an act of corporate treason, declaring in a Twitter post in June: “If they move, watch, it will be the beginning of the end — they surrendered, they quit!”

It was a sentiment shared by many of the hundreds of thousands of motorcycle enthusiasts who converged this week upon the Black Hills of South Dakota, most of whom developed a relationship with their Harleys well before Trump became president. Still, as leather-clad baby boomers revved engines, drank beer and swayed to classic rock ballads, Trump’s influence was palpable.

Like Trump, Gary Panapinto, 63, a machinist from Illinois, had doubts about Harley’s true intentions, believing that the company was planning to offshore the bulk of its bike production, and, like Trump has intimated, he suggested that Americans would be forced to buy a product that was made overseas. While Trump has fanned that perception, Harley has said it will shift production only for bikes it sells in Europe and that American bikes will still be made in the United States.

“They need to keep them here in the United States, especially if they’re going to sell them here,” Panapinto said. “I think Trump is just trying to protect jobs in the U.S.”

Oliver Lapointe, a retiree from New Hampshire who rides cheaper Japanese bikes, said he used to aspire to own a Harley but could never afford one. Now he thinks they are not worth it because they are filled with foreign-made parts and, he said, increasingly made overseas. Like several Trump administration officials, he accused the company of using the tariffs to justify a decision that it already had in mind.

“They’re always advertising that they’re made in America, so I don’t think they should do it,” Lapointe, 70, said. “They’re greedy.”

The company declined to comment, but it pointed to a July interview in which its chief executive, Matthew Levatich, defended the decision. He denied that he wanted to shift its manufacturing, noting that it would not take up to 18 months to execute the plan if it were in the cards all along.

“We’ve worked very hard to be apolitical in how we approach our business and our consumers everywhere in the world,” he said. “We have to do what we have to do based on the facts and circumstances before us, and we’re doing that.”

Some hard-core Trump supporters said they understood the economic rationale behind Harley’s decision. Few complex machines are fully sourced and assembled in the United States these days, and even the riders who are devoted to the ideal of a fully American-made product said they understood that companies must compete globally.

Bikers have been among the groups most loyal to Trump, as motorcyclists in the United States tend to be predominantly working-class men older than 50 and veterans — demographics that comprise the bulk of the president’s base. Trump has embraced that allegiance, saying recently that “I guarantee you everybody that ever bought a Harley-Davidson voted for Trump.”

On Saturday, Trump invited hundreds of bikers from the New Jersey Bikers for Trump chapter to visit him on vacation in Bedminster, New Jersey. He praised them as “people who truly love our Country.”

Some who are generally pleased with Trump said he was wrong to bully the motorcycle maker merely for trying to make a profit, but they remained loyal to him nonetheless.

“You’ve got to take it with a grain of salt. He’s hot one day and he’s cold the next,” Bill Schaner, an electrical supply salesman from North Dakota who has owned seven Harley bikes, said of the president. “If they’re going to make bikes in Europe and sell them in Europe, let them go. We’ll take the bikes made in America.”

At a souvenir stand selling Trump memorabilia off the main drag in Sturgis, Larry Rich said that, as a businessman, Trump should understand that Harley is doing what it can to stay profitable.

“I don’t like everything he says, but I don’t like everything my wife says,” said Rich, 72, who used to ride Indians — another U.S. brand, made by Polaris — before giving up the hobby.

For his part, Trump has been good for business. Rich was busy selling shirts printed with an image of the president blazing past the White House on a Harley-Davidson with Stormy Daniels, the pornographic film actress who claims to have had an affair with Trump, falling off the back. The tryst that Daniels — whose real name is Stephanie Clifford — says took place in 2006 has not turned off customers.

“Well, he was a Democrat back then,” Rich said with a smile.

Veterans of the Sturgis bike rally, which is in its 78th year, said that the hardships facing Harley-Davidson go beyond Trump’s tough words and stem from years of declining ridership in the United States.

Leslye Beaver, owner of The Beaver Bar in Sturgis and several other biker bars across the country, said that Harley and other U.S. motorcycle manufacturers are at a crossroads because their products have lacked appeal to young people in the United States. She pointed out that the trade disputes have increased their raw material costs and hindered their ability to export to Europe, which is a growth market.

“I think they’re doing what they have to do to stay in the game,” Beaver, who lives in Georgia and supports Trump, said while patrolling the parking lot of her bar in a golf cart. “It’s human for people to be mad because Harley is so American, but I think they want to be here.”

For years, Harley-Davidson’s sales in the United States have been steadily declining as the Milwaukee-based company grappled with an aging population, a vibrant secondary market and the changing tastes of consumers. Recently, it has focused on marketing its motorcycles to women, selling branded clothing and boosting international sales as a way to grow profits.

The average cost of a Harley is about $20,000, and they top out at about $40,000, making the motorcycles a luxury item for people who do not use them as their primary mode of transportation. In 2017, the company’s U.S. retail sales fell for the third consecutive year to 147,972 motorcycles, while sales in international markets have been climbing slowly or holding steady, with more room to grow. In the past five years, Harley’s stock price has fallen by nearly 25 percent, even as the stock market has been on a tear.

Harley is also under pressure from more intense competition. In the 1990s at Sturgis, Harley riders would torch so called “rice burners” — a pejorative term for Japanese bikes — or tie them to the back of their all-American motorcycles and drag them down the streets. Although Harleys continue to be the most popular ride, foreign brands such as BMW, Honda, Yamaha and Kawasaki are increasingly common.

The greater appreciation for foreign-made bikes was on display at Buffalo Chip, a sprawling 600-acre campground 3 miles east of Sturgis. At the campground, Michael Lichter, a Colorado-based photographer and curator, puts on exhibitions of specialty motorcycles from around the world as a way to make the rally less Harley-centric and broaden interest and inspiration beyond American bikes.

“People need to be exposed to more,” said Lichter, who hopes to put on a show of all Japanese bikes next year. “If you’re buying just because it’s American, I don’t think that’s a good thing.”

He added: “It means there’s no pressure on American manufacturers to build better.”

To the president’s most ardent admirers, there is nothing better than American-made.

Chris Cox, the founder of the Bikers for Trump group that has organized demonstrations for Trump across the country since he was a candidate, was using the Sturgis gathering this year to drum up more support for Trump and to mobilize opposition to Harley. He wants shareholders and riders to come together and petition the company to promise it will give generous severance packages to workers who might get fired as it moves manufacturing to other countries.

Like Trump, Cox is furious with Harley’s chief executive, Levatich, whom Cox says has “ties” to Europe and wants to make the company less American.

Levatich, who has been with Harley since 1994, has held senior roles overseeing its European operations, including the management of the Italian motorcycle business MV Agusta that Harley acquired in 2008.

“We’re not going to sit back on a hope and a promise that they’re going to do the right thing,” said Cox, who brought with him a leather jacket autographed by Trump at the White House when he was in Washington for a recent visit with some bikers. He said that Trump insisted that he visit the Oval Office because his group has been so supportive and loyal.

Explaining the importance of domestic production, Cox said that Vietnam War veterans who joined motorcycle clubs after the war were disappointed decades later when the new brake pads they needed to buy were made in Vietnam. He said that many bikers he knows are now wearing long sleeves to conceal their Harley tattoos.

But even Cox, a South Carolina chain saw artist who carves trees and other objects, could not escape the realities of global supply chains and the high cost of making some products in the United States. While he used to sell American-made T-shirts, the $20 Trump shirts he was selling outside his recreational vehicle were made in Haiti. The American-made shirts proved to be a hard sell.

“If I get a T-shirt made in the USA, it’s going to cost about $8 more,” Cox said. “I looked far and wide to try to get a shirt made in America, it’s just they get you, they gouge you.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

Alan Rappeport © 2018 The New York Times

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