The Incredible Hulk (1968) #177

Here is a request for slashers if they're open. My brain does a thing where I am affectionate w a person but if I get nudged away (even if it's just to readjust the position), it goes "oh no. They don't want u to touch them. Do not touch ever again or they will get mad at u. U disgust them." Even tho touch is my love language & it hurts, I just won't touch. If confronted, I will get confused & panicky cuz "u didn't want me to touch? Im respecting ur wishes? Did I miss something?" Its a mess.

Requests are indeed open, I’m sorry I take foreverrr to do these but i hope u enjoy! I don’t know what to call this tho. For simplicity’s sake I’m calling this nervous reader lmao, idk what else to call these.

Slashers x gn nervous Reader

Jason Voorhees:

Jason can very much relate to the feeling. When he first meets you, he’s sure that you’re frightened. He restrains from being too close to avoid coming off as overbearing, doesn't want to touch you because if you flinch he’ll be so hurt. He just assumes he disgusts you. Based on the reaction all of his other victims have when they see him, he’s sure you’ll probably be the same.

Once Jason is sure that you don't feel that way, he’s a cuddle monster. He wants to be close all of the time, holding hands, letting you sit in his lap, you name it. He’s so starved and quickly decides that touch is his love language too. He’s not even sure how he’s lived this long without it.

The only time I can see Jason maybe gently sort of setting you down elsewhere and walking off is when he senses strangers on the property of what once was Crystal Lake. He’s out the door before he can even see your hurt expression, Which is worse because this might lead you to jump to conclusions.

If you distance yourself from Jason, he immediately is thrown off. He can’t directly ask you if he’s done something wrong and when he tries to initiate affection with you and you don’t reciprocate whole heartedly, he’s at a loss.

He’ll get on one knee while you sulk on the couch and give you a silent plea to tell him what's wrong. You can panic and try and avoid it but he is certain there's something going on and he wants so badly to know what he’s done to put you off. You tell him and he immediately is shaking his head no, he could never be mad at you, never be disgusted with you. You’re the most breathtaking person he’s ever had the pleasure of holding, the first, most likely.

Jason nods because he understands how you feel. In the future, he’s persistent about how you feel when he untangles himself from you, making sure you’re ok.

Michael Myers:

In the later stages of your relationship, Michael is insatiable when it comes to being in contact with you. For a long time, towards the start of your relationship, he didn’t like it. It felt weird. All of the touch he's experienced prior was so clinical and sterile that he doesn’t quite know how good touch is supposed to feel. He’s so touch starved that he’s almost positive he doesn't even need it.

Slowly, he builds a tolerance for it, much like one does with alcohol, constantly checking his boundaries and letting him control the situation and he’s all for movie night, huddled up on the couch, or waking up with his head on your chest. His own personal pillow.

There are, however, moments when his need to make someone tremble with fear and then blodgeon them to death with a can opener from their own kitchen becomes too strong, so he tries to keep away from you. In the past, he might have used you to satisfy similar desires of a sexual nature and may have really hurt you but he knows that it’s not always enjoyable to you.

Then, you stop touching him. Much like Jason, he starts to think you’ve become sick of him. Sick of his coldness, his muteness, his withdrawn demeanor. Maybe you’ve moved on and he tries to tell himself he doesn’t care but he doesn't think he can see himself touching anyone but you now.

It gets to the point where he comes home one day and you look heavily troubled, expressions he’s seen on your face before, only in the event that something terrible has happened. You ask to speak to him and he obliges.

You explain that you don’t think this relationship is working, that you’re pretty sure he’s disgusted with you and how difficult this event is because you didn't even want to talk about it but it's been hurting you for too long.

His response is to stand up very slowly, pick you up and lay down with you over him, simply laying there. Hopefully, knowing you’re the one person he would ever allow to participate in this intimacy is enough to show you that you mean more than you think you do to him.

RZ Michael Myers:

This Michael is more perceptive to your touch than his counterpart, your touch sends little shivers down his spine and as soon as he gets pretty used to it, he’s eager for more. This also takes some time but significantly less. He’s enamored with the idea of returning to a somewhat normal life. Your affection grounds him in that fantasy as much as being a murderer might take him out of it.

As he establishes a relationship with you, he may even be the one to start touching you instead of the other way around. He’s read books and always wondered what it might feel like to have someone genuinely touch him without fear in their eyes. Without malice.

An unsuccessful ‘day at work’ might have Michael feeling a little het up though. He can be moody and more rageful. Neither you nor his hobbies can calm him. He seems colder than usual in these states and can come off as very standoffish.

So when you try and touch him and he shrugs your hand off his shoulder, he can’t or isn't in the state of mind to address your frown and worried look. Michael, instead stomps off somewhere to be alone for a while; maybe take his anger out on something else. Some unsuspecting soul or maybe even a poor animal in the wrong place at the wrong time.

After he’s calmed down some, he returns and almost forgot about that sad little gleam in your eye before he left. Michael remembers when he sees you blankly staring at the TV, pointedly avoiding his gaze even as you utter a weak welcome home. It’s not very welcoming. He sits stiffly beside you, watching you from the corner of his eye. You’re closed off from him and he doesn't like it at all.

Migrating towards you slowly, he eases you into a familiar hug, his big bear hugs that are a little tight but inviting all the same. His huge torso and long arms seem to swallow you in his warmth. You hardly reciprocate. You look a little surprised. Though he never addresses it verbally, (which is probably better for you) Michael offers a single glance that communicates everything he needs to say. Don't ever think that again.

Thomas B. Hewitt:

Thomas’ self esteem issues and self image are not good. He honestly doesn’t like to imagine what he looks like to other people unless it can be as a threatening man you don’t fuck with. Meeting you, he realizes that it’s good to protect his family but he’d rather you not see him as someone only capable of harm. Tries his best to get the point across that while Hoyt may be adamant that horrible things happen to you, he’s not going to let them.

Thomas has received affection but always a familial affection. A pat on the back from Monty, proud claps to his shoulders from uncle Charlie, and hugs and kisses from his dear Mother. Nothing so foreign as a strangers touch over his arm or a soft embrace.

Unfortunately, Thomas can get reactive when you attempt to touch him without his mask on. He’s absolutely settled on the false reality that you’ll see his face and immediately decide that you never want to touch him again. Interacting with you with his bare face? That's a no for Thomas.

He puts on his mask that covers the scarred skin over his face and you look dejected. He was preparing for you to pressure him but instead finds himself trying to find out why you won’t touch him now. It’s not his face, is it? You respond with your reasoning. Thomas is so confused. How could you think that you disgust him? That he doesn’t want you to touch him?

He’s quicker than the others and immediately sweeps you up into his arms and holds you as close as humanly possible. Feeling disgusting and like some sort of burden is a feeling he’s so familiar with and if he can take it away from you, he will.

Will aggressively initiate touch with you for the next week or so just to solidify the fact that he cares about you and won't reject you just as you didn’t reject him.

Bubba Sawyer:

Bubba is a great cuddle buddy and partner. Hugs are his favorite and he hugs his brother all the time, lifting both Nubbins and Chop Top into the air for some brotherly love. If you’re smaller than them he’s all about picking you up and perhaps a little rough housing with you. He’s careful though or at least there are attempts made to be careful

Bubba, though he could easily spend the whole day doing nothing and everything with you, has work. Chores, butchering. Cooking, and tending livestock. Plenty to do at the sawyer house and he does most of it. Suffice to say there are times when you want to lather attention all over him yet he has to go back to work.

So caught up in work that he doesn't get what's going on til way later, when you’ve had time to stew in your emotions, firmly telling yourself that Bubba is annoyed by you probably. He’s baffled and confused at your silence, your crossed arms. The little furrow in your brow. He can already tell there’s something upsetting you.

Honestly, Bubba is so affectionate I can’t see him being the kind of person even capable of alluding to the fact he might be disgusted by you. How, if all he wants to do is love you? You may bring it up as a joke that you thought he didn’t like you and he almost seems offended. Not like you?

Bubba can squash any feelings you may have about that and then some. He will not let you drown in insecurities, not on his watch. This man will do everything in his power to make you feel beautiful because you really are.

I’m sorry these are super long but thanks for requesting!

Merciless Haze - Part 1/3

Summary:  In the back of her mind she thought she heard someone screaming, torturous and raw and distraught.  It sounded animalistic, nothing short of an encapsulation of all of the pain a person could possibly feel, every nerve alive and striving to make its own body suffer.  Sophie just barely registered that it was her own screams.

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

Warnings:  Mentions of blood, death, wanting to die, detailed pain, vomit, and fatal injury.

Word Count: 1.9k

Pairing: Nate Sewell x f!Detective (Sophie MacNamara)

Note: So... turning, eh?  This is my perception of how I think the process of turning will go and it’s not pleasant.  Each part of this story will explore a stage in the process and the warnings will be adjusted as needed, so consider this Stage 1.  Hope you enjoy :)

    She didn’t know how many times she’d been hit, how many bullets had ripped through her flesh.  The only thing she knew was that she was falling, and it felt like ages before she finally hit the ground.  Her shoulder slammed against the earth with a sickening thud, her heart pounded in her ears, a warm wetness pooled below her, and she was suddenly reminded of how horribly human she was.

    Human.  Sophie had come to hate the word. It had become nothing more than a reminder of how fragile she was.  How disposable she was, in the grand scheme of things.

    “Sophie!”, she heard Farah scream from a distance, followed by a short “Fuck.” from Morgan.

    The mission could not have gone worse, Adam and Nate were on standby at a facility over 30 kilometers away, not impossibly far for them to run in if backup were needed, but would arrive far too late to help Sophie in her current condition.

    Adam had been less than keen to send the three of them alone, and Nate had looked like he was damn near ready to flip the table during the argument with the Combat Director. She had rarely seen him genuinely angry, the heat of the words he could say likely burning the tip of his tongue. He had instead chosen to keep his mouth shut, letting those fiery words sit silently in his eyes. She wished he had spoken.  She wondered if he did too.

    The Agency had insisted that it was only a few trappers that needed to be dealt with, maybe five in total, and they needed Adam and Nate’s advisement on another mission.

    They had been wrong. Upon approaching the base, the trio had realized how terribly outnumbered they were.  Worse yet, their comms had gone out due to an unexpected satellite disconnect, according to the robotic voice in their earpieces, leaving them with no way to call for backup, to call for Adam or Nate.

    Nate.  Sophie felt her stomach sink.  Her fears were being realized, that she may never see him again, that he wasn’t by her side right now.  That she was likely going to die here.

    She felt soft hands hold the back of her head up to place in a lap.  She looked up, army green eyes meeting a panicked amber, Farah.  She tried to ground herself by speaking her name, knowing it came out as more of a hum, as she felt her reality begin to slip.  The young vampire she had grown so close to, someone who had taught Sophie that perhaps being more sociable wasn’t the worst thing to be, and, for whatever reason, thought that she was a fun person to be around.  Her dear friend, who was now on the verge of crying out of fear, wet eyes creating a deep contrast to the bubbly spirit Sophie adored.  

    She felt another pair of hands grab onto the neckline of her t-shirt to rip it open.

    “Holy shit.”  Morgan, again.  Sophie tried to meet her eyes, but her vision was deteriorated, leaving her unable to make out anything more than two identical blurred shapes of the woman at her side.

    “How many?” Farah’s typically cheerful, boisterous voice came out as more of a whimper.

    “At least six.”  From the tone of her voice, Sophie couldn’t tell if Morgan was angry or scared.

    Six.  An entire round, that fucker had hit every single shot.  He had been one of the last too. They could have been walking back to the facility ready to raise hell when they got back.  Ready to cuss out every person who approved this mission plan despite Adam and Nate’s protests, choosing to brush off their expertise.  She could have ripped the Agency’s priorities to shreds, she could have forced them to acknowledge their own stupidity, but she would not be able to.

    Even in her muddled state Sophie knew she was a goner.  She would bleed out before backup arrived, especially if the searing pain in her left thigh was an indication of a possible artery hit.  She had minutes, maybe even seconds.  

    She heard the tearing of fabric once again, in between distant words that she was probably meant to respond to, before feeling a tight pressure wrapped around her stomach and thigh.  They were trying to stop the bleeding.  Sophie knew they would fail, the cloth was probably already soaked through.

    Even in her dying moments, she remained ever the pessimist.

    “What do we do?” Panic had now overtaken Farah’s voice.  There were a few beats of silence, then a breathy “Oh.”, trailed by another pause.  Sophie felt Farah’s hands place themselves softly on her cheeks, and another, third hand firmly grip her arm.  “You’re gonna be okay, yeah?  You know you can trust us?” She almost sounded pleading.  The most Sophie could muster was a single, weak nod.  

    She wasn’t sure what she was trusting them with.

    “Keep your eyes open.”  Morgan’s voice was stern and deadly serious, she was giving her an order.  Sophie wasn’t sure if she would be able to follow through.  She felt like she was being pulled down through an endless blackhole, and that inky darkness was beginning to surround her.  Sophie squeezed her eyes shut, then opened them again, willing them to refocus, to ground her in her body again.  Her vision could not stay straight, she felt her eyes wanting to roll into the back of her head, and it took all of her strength just to look at the sky.  The soft blue was beginning to blush orange, indicative of the setting sun, of the purple-tinted dark that would inevitably set in.  

    An autumn breeze brushed through the air, and she was suddenly aware of just how cold she was.

    It was then that she felt four, stinging points enter her body.  Farah’s hands had moved to her shoulders, gripping her tightly and almost apologetically, her coiled hair brushing against Sophie’s paler-growing face, her fangs settled in her left collarbone.

    Morgan was at her thigh, one hand holding down her knee, the other gently grasping her right hand.  Sophie couldn’t think of a time where Morgan had ever been gentle with her, her body always in a stance meant to stir intimidation and her tongue sharply candor. Sophie knew that despite the moody persona she carried, Morgan cared for her, they had an unspoken declaration of friendship and their own ways of showing a genuine concern for one another.  But this was a physical form of comforting her, and Sophie wasn’t sure if there was anything more terrifying than the prospect that she was so deep in the shit that Morgan felt the need to let her know that she was there and she was trying to help.

    Help came in the form of her own two fangs settled in the center of her right thigh.

    It was indescribable, the pain that followed, part of it made her feel like she was on fire, like every inch of her body was being licked by the very flames of hell, trying to pull her even deeper into a void threatening to consume her.  Yet there was another part of it, something far more pleasant and almost ethereal in how light it made her feel, and in the back of her mind Sophie wondered if this was it, if this is what dying felt like, that the flames that were nearly swallowing her whole were keeping her from reaching a final place of comfort where she would not hurt anymore, where there would not be anymore pain.  She longed for that feeling so deeply, but as the fire continued to burn it took all sense of comfort with it, and that heavenly sensation she wanted nothing more than to reach out and pull close to her was burning away with it.

    In the back of her mind she thought she heard someone screaming, torturous and raw and distraught.  It sounded animalistic, nothing short of an encapsulation of all of the pain a person could possibly feel, every nerve alive and striving to make its own body suffer.  Sophie just barely registered that it was her own screams, her own mouth pleading for it to stop, to God, please, make it stop.  She would do anything.

    Just let me die, she wanted to cry out, to grab Morgan by her hair and rip her fangs out of her thigh, to slam her hands against Farah’s head to get her to let go, to make the wildfire release her and let her slip away.  In that moment she wanted nothing more than for death to embrace her, than to let that void cover her.

    Then she thought of those soft deep brown eyes that always pulled her from the brink, even in the worst of situations.

    Nate was a gift she never deserved, a man far more genuine and kind than any person Sophie had ever met before.  Someone who had been through so much pain, perhaps the exact same pain she was experiencing now, and still held his head high and greeted everyone with a smile.

    She couldn’t let go, she didn’t want to go anywhere without him, never again.  She wanted to feel his warm hands on her waist, to feel those same hands run through her long ginger hair while he kissed her softly in his candle lit bedroom.  She craved to hear him whisper sweet nothings in her ear in languages she hardly knew or had never heard at all.

    He had always been so gentle with her, knowing that, despite her naturally intimidating appearance as a 6’1”, muscled Irishwoman, all tattoos and harsh lines, she craved the delicate intimacy he offered.  As selfish as it was, she wanted to feel wanted and Nate never displayed or provided her with anything less.  She had never loved a person so deeply before.  She had never been held like he held her, never had love made to her in the way he did, never felt so desperately loved in return.  There was no one like her Nathaniel.  Her Nathaniel.

    The pain was still racing through her, she couldn’t tell if it had been minutes or hours.  What she could tell was that Morgan was now looking directly at her, hand still gripping hers, and somehow Sophie found herself able to focus through the fire and catch those grey eyes.  She looked terrified and nigh feral, blood dripping from her teeth to her chin and down her neck.  Sophie broke her gaze, looking up to see Farah, who appeared to be in a similar state, a sight that could have shattered her reality had she seen it out of the context of their current circumstance.  She hadn’t felt them let go of her, and she still couldn’t feel anything but that same hellish pain that continued to overtake her as she began to convulse.  

    Somehow it had worsened, she felt like every bone in her body was breaking only to immediately repair itself and break again.  She felt Farah push her onto her side as she began to vomit, the acid stinging her throat and bittering her mouth.  It was too much, everything was too much, every little sound, touch, and taste was overwhelming in its proximity to her.  Her world was spinning, her vision edging black once again, and this time she knew she would not be able to fight it.  

    Despite the pleas of her teammates, distilled to just echoes of voices that sounded distant and foreign as they bounced around her head, she let her eyes roll back, and as the dark brought her into a close embrace, she swore she could hear footsteps thundering through the forest that surrounded them.

    She swore she could hear Nate calling her name.

Keigo Takami ღ Hawks x Reader 3/4

Buy me a coffee!! <3

Parts 1 / 2 / 4

"I'll take her back with me. We…we lived together anyway." A little white lie couldn’t claim to be quite so harmful - not now.

In order for his beautiful baby bird to flourish once more, she would require round-the-clock attention, provided by someone knowledgeable of her life, someone who would willingly offer her unbridled love and protection…someone who vowed never to force a sense of abandonment upon her. Never again. The doctor neglected to question this, thankfully saving him the embarrassment of being coerced into further conversation with a voice that shivered from heartache.

In that instant, a previously-dormant determination ignited inside his chest. He would rebuild your life together, your sweet romance. If he didn’t even try…well, perhaps that would be the universe's way of plaguing him with evidence of his worthlessness - if he didn’t at least attempt to repair the foundations of your relationship, whether by curing your amnesia or just starting from scratch, then he didn’t deserve you. If he wasn’t prepared to venture to the extremes for you, then he would concede that he wasn’t good enough, that he couldn’t hold a candle to your grandeur. He would cut himself from your life. You didn’t remember him, so you probably wouldn’t mourn. Gods…that thought alone killed him. To think, after one dreadful decision, after a single moment of weakness…he could suddenly mean nothing to you…

I'll set work aside for now. The Commission can say what they want, but I'm not letting her go. Not again. Not so soon.

You giggled, the sound seeming to caress away any stray tears dripping down his face. "We lived together? Are we related or something? Oh, you're not my brother, are you?"

How much did she forget?

"I-I'm your…" The words caught in his throat.

No - he would spare everyone the overly-emotional display, the unsightly waterworks. He was a hero, for gods' sake! He couldn’t act so goddamn vulnerable in public! The only person who ever managed to detrude his masque of confidence was you, and you would often tell him how special it made you feel. So even now, even when you had no memory of him…he would reserve his innermost feelings, solely for you. A small sniffle was all he allowed, because it became impossible to stop. Shortly thereafter, the two of you were dismissed. Hawks was adamant about flying you bridal-style to his house, which, following your inclusion, would morph from a lonely bachelor pad to a home filled with warmth and comfort. He wished to be consumed by excitement, as he should have been...but this was all wrong. The series of events, the manner in which you were to be confined…he would barely even receive any welcome, since his comings-and-goings would be less frequent.

He was resolved to stick by your side, like superglue.

He refused to let you hide from his watchful gaze, until the time was right.

The minute he touched down, a phone was pressed against his ear. It was a little confusing at first, but you could hear a few curt words. He was being reprimanded, but his expression betrayed no concern. At least, not for them.

With a dejected sigh, he settled you on your feet. "Well, dove…I'm taking some time off work to look after you. This is…this is our house. Do you remember it?"

You hated to shatter the ounce of hope bleeding from his voice, but it couldn’t be helped. "Um, no…sorry. It's really big, though. How'd you afford it?"

"…So you don't remember my job, either?...Is there anything you do remember?" He led you inside, careful not to startle you as he closed the door.

"Yep!" You sung, and although Hawks' heart should have swelled with rapture, it instead sunk further into a chasm of despair - he knew that he was no longer your missing puzzle piece, the thing you had been searching for constantly, until you met. "I remember my childhood, and apparently everything up until I turned nineteen."

Did I traumatise her that much, her mind purposefully erased me?

He gulped, anxious to scrabble back into your life. "We met…just after your nineteenth birthday."

"Really?" You sounded happy - happier than he could recall you in a while. "Hey, uh…I'm sorry I don't remember you, but I still don't know your name."

"It's…It's Keigo. Takami Keigo. I'm a…pro hero." Usually, pride would coil around his voice when this information was given, but it was nothing more than embellishment; it couldn’t have reflected his heart any less.

I gotta smile, right? Otherwise…she'll end up miserable. I can’t do that to her. I can't take away that happy look. Not now. I'm such a bastard for ever letting my mission get in-between us.

Throughout this entire interaction, Hawks had remained nigh-silent, any last trace of alacrity dried up. Thus, an extremely sudden shift in character bewildered you beyond words. A smile might have graced your lips, had you not been gifted with such sharp perception. You didn’t believe, not even for a second, that he had overcome that intense sorrow. Yet, you couldn’t risk triggering something. You were directed to a large couch, while one of those gorgeous, crimson feathers floated towards you, carrying what appeared to be a book. For more specificity, it was a photo album. It weighed down his feather, but he wasn’t paying attention. You wanted to laugh, to explain how weird this was, when phones and social media existed, but…that look, that glint of upset intertwined with hope…

...It muted you.

As he flicked through the pictures, often lingering on the most heart-warming scenes - the two of you sitting lip-locked underneath the stars, weaving flower crowns for young hero fans, your utter devastation upon dropping an ice cream...and the next one was Hawks sharing his own - you watched his hands. He had started lovingly stroking the pages, as though yearning to relive those precious moments. You refused to glance up, to get sucked into the kindling fire of his eyes; you knew, somehow, that you wouldn’t escape their dreamy sheen.

If only you had enabled yourself to drown in those golden pools, to explore them for an eternity. Hawks was desperate to lay claim to you again, before someone else lured you away. This prospect terrified him, and his wings rustled as the fear shot around his whole body. Couldn’t you see, couldn’t you understand how much he treasured you? More than fame or money, even the photo album! He needed you - the real you, climbing back into his arms. Forcing his self-restraint, Hawks closed the book. If his tear ducts turned into dams, he wouldn’t be capable of battling the flood. He would succumb to the glacial water, and then who would you run to for shelter? If you fell into the homeless population, or the callous hands of a villain…

I thought we would last forever. That we would still be together, even after we died. We made a promise, didn’t we…? Don't drop me like I never meant anything to you. Please, don't drop me…

The subsequent days brimmed with bliss.

At least…for you.

Hawks was a surprisingly adept cook, but take-out was on the menu every other day. He tended to your needs with a sweeping devotion. He never failed you, not even once. You also had the opportunity to wander the perimeter of his house, but your rebellious streak compelled you further, far past the invisible barriers erected for your own safety.

"Hey, I've been meaning to ask…" You began, while Hawks traced circles on your arms. "These scars…did you - did you do something to me?"

His recovering heart plummeted, and he spent a few minutes just staring, eyes glazed over with shock, hurt and a touch of guilt. When he finally responded, his voice was hoarse. "W-Why would you…think that I…? T-That I…hurt you?"

"Ah, I'm sorry! I was just wondering. I didn’t think you'd done anything, but I had to make sure. Can't exactly stay with an abuser…right?" Although you endeavoured to laugh it off, your words did nothing to console him.

His head drooped, as he whispered and sniffled all at once. "R-Right…"

"Oh yeah!" You giggled, as though the storm had been quelled.

I've always adored her voice, but right now…I can't bear it…

"I met someone today!"

[Word Count: 1393]

Slow Hands

Pairing: Bucky X Reader

Words: 1987

Warnings: Bucky’s hands.

A/N: This just came to me out of nowhere and I had to write it when it was still fresh and I wasn’t hit by writer’s block. Enjoy. There may be a second part I don’t know.

Next Part

You weren’t sure how this started or when you had this obsession. All you knew was that it was sudden and you could think of nothing else but this. It sort of freaked you out too because in your mind, not many people took notice of such a thing. You tried to hide it and you thought you were doing a pretty good job. But then Natasha started smiling at you and shaking her head every time she walked by you, and you realized you weren’t as subtle. No one else noticed though so you blamed her perceptive nature for finding out your secret.

As long as he didn’t know, you had no problem. Well, that wasn’t true. You had a huge problem, this problem being one beefy as fuck super soldier who was comfortable enough to walk around in short sleeve shirts. You wished you could hate him but it warmed your heart knowing he was getting a little better day by day. But every god damn day was too much at times and you knew it was only a matter of time before others noticed your lingering gazes over the man.

But it wasn’t that you stared at him for too long that was the issue. It was where you constantly looked. No matter what he was doing, your eyes seemed to always admire, yeah that’s the word, admire his hands. You thought it was like any other person you’ve been attracted to before but this was different. It would have made sense if you were staring at his arms. He was a specimen, him and Steve, with their upper body strength and triceps constantly flexing under severe workouts. It’s not like people didn’t notice them you know. Every human, whether or not they are attracted to muscular bodies, find them at least pleasant to look at.

Anyway, the point is, it wasn’t his arms you liked to stare it. It was his hands. And what made it worse was you didn’t prefer one over the other. You just liked looking at both of them. When he was doing a minimal task such as writing in his notebook, you’d take in the blue veins shifting as he applied pressure on the writing tool. You’d notice your breathing pattern shift when he’d drag his wrist across the paper and stop writing, leaving his arms facing to the side and giving you the perfect view of the veins continuing up this arm. Your eyes would ignore the biceps flexing, gaze focusing on his rugged, long fingers tapping at the paper or remaining still as he thought of what to write next. You wished you could touch his fingers and trace the knuckles to his wrist, pulling them to your lips and leaving soft kisses to make him feel better.

But then there were days when you’d want to look at nothing else but his metal hand. You’d watch when he made breakfast or carry something with Steve, the metal plates shifting and creating that lovely whirring noise you’d grown fond of. It was your luck day when you caught him at the gym, lifting god knows what with ease and without breaking a sweat. You’d watch as his metal fingers wrapped over the bars and gripped them tight enough to carry but not too hard to break them. He’d somehow known how much pressure to apply on different textured objects and you’d wondered what it was like if he wrapped those same fingers around your neck as he kissed and licked and bruised every inch of your skin. You wanted nothing more than to kiss the tips of his metal fingers and trace the grooves and plates down to his wrist, telling him how beautiful and complex they were and making sure he understood how amazing he was.

You almost banged your head against the door shelf when Natasha snapped her fingers in front of you, sighing when you spilled your drink and scattered to clean it up quickly.

“What’s wrong with you?”

“N-nothing. Nothing at all. Why would you ask that? I am perfectly fine. Nothing to ask about here.” You mopped the juice away and chugged down the drink, leaving it in the sink before heading downstairs.

You walked into the lab and immediately regretted it. Bucky was on one of the chairs, smiling and waving at you when he saw you enter.

“Hey doctor, you needed me?” You nodded towards Bucky and tried to ignore your heart wanting to leap out of your chest like a fucking alien from those movies.

“Yeah you’re just in time. I need to fix something in his arm Tony isn’t here.” Bruce motioned for you to walk towards them.

“And you asked me? I’m not sure I’m the best option here. Maybe Nat or Steve would be better i-“

“No you’re helping me. It’s nothing, I just need you to hold this while I work on his inner arm. Come on I don’t have all day.” Bruce brought you around and stood you right next to Bucky. You smiled at him and tried to ignore his cologne but it was impossibly hard to distract yourself from the man who seemed to tower over you even when he was sitting down.

“Sorry Y/N,” Bucky apologized and you wished you could hug him and tell him he had nothing to apologize about and you’d only dreamt of touching his hands from the first moment you saw him.

“No biggie.” You chuckled, mentally kicking yourself over the stupid response. You asked Bruce where he needed you to hold and he placed one hand over the wrist while the other remained at the bicep. Bucky shivered when he felt your skin because even though it wasn’t his flesh and blood currently attached to his shoulder, he could still feel sensations from the vibranium endings attached to his nerves. Shuri was brilliant and it scared him how much he sometimes felt his arm when he performed mundane tasks.

He watched as you remained still, his heart fluttering when he noticed you were absolutely fine with touching him and you weren’t put off in the slightest. Bruce got to work and continued to speak to the two of you about some scientific break he had and you tried your hardest to focus on him but you couldn’t, not when your fingers were doing what you’ve wanted to do for so fucking long. So busy on trying to catch up to Bruce, you didn’t notice when Bucky’s fingers closed over your forearm that was right above his palm. Your eye widened and you tapped your feet out of nervousness. The cold of his fingers felt so good wrapped around your skin and you’d gotten flashes of what you were thinking of earlier.

You looked up, only to find Bucky staring right at you, pupils dilated and jaws clenching when you licked your lips. He’d seen your reaction and focused on the increased heart rate, misunderstanding you and immediately letting go of your arm before looking away. You realized he thought you were probably inconvenienced by this situation and were about to say something when Bruce told you he was finished.

“Thanks Y/N,” Bruce said, lightly pushing you away so he could finish up with Bucky’s arm. You wished Bucky would look at you so you could say something but he found the floor much more interesting. You made your way silently through the hallways, completely ignoring Steve when he’d asked if you’d seen Bucky and groaning at Sam when he tried to talk to you about the movie he watched with Clint.

It was hours later when you walked out of your room and headed to the kitchen for a midnight snack. You wanted to forget what happened earlier desperately but all you remembered were Bucky’s disappointed eyes when you looked at him.

“I detect above-average levels of cortisol in your nervous system Ms. Y/N, do you require assistance with anything?” Friday broke the silence and you hated how aware she was of everyone in this building.

“I am a nervous system Friday.” You laughed at the stupid joke and whispered ‘never mind’ to the AI. “That’s okay Friday, my problem can’t be solved by anyone except the man himself.” You opened the bottle of water and looked for the Oreos Sam always hid from you.

“Perhaps I could request this person’s presence? If it will help.” You started to grow tired from Friday and wished you could just tell her to shut up.

“Oh god no I would die of embarrassment Friday. I’ll get over it soon trust me.” You rummaged through the bottom drawers and sighed in annoyance when you didn’t find them. Remembering where you saw him earlier today, you decided to climb the counter and look at the top shelves you were too short to reach. “Besides, it’s not like I can just ask him to wrap those beautiful metal fingers around my throat as he fucked me into Valhalla now can I? Ahaa…oh ffuck-” You found the Oreos but didn’t see the plastic bag on the counter, already anticipating the pain from the fall.

But you never hit the ground. In fact, you never hit anything. All you knew was that you were currently held against a firm chest with a cold sensation hitting your thighs while a warmer one was wrapped around your waist. You looked up and saw Bucky staring at you like he’d just seen a ghost. You blinked at him and swallowed the lump in your throat, watching as he mirrored your action, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down before it returned to its place. It was quiet for a few moments before he placed you down, refusing to move away from you even when you’d thanked him.

He said nothing, not bothering to respond to your nervous rambling. He only stared because he was sure he misheard you. There was no way you’d just said to the fucking AI of all things that you wanted to feel his metal fingers choking you as he fucked you. He had to have been imagining. Right?

You forgot why you were in the kitchen and quickly thanked him before sprinting to your room. As soon as you walked in, you shut the door and crawled under your covers. Now that you knew what both his hands felt like on your skin, you were sure there was no sleep coming anytime soon. You wanted to feel them again. Now. On your flushed body. But that wasn’t going to happen so you did the next best thing. You stripped to nothing and fucked yourself to the thought of Bucky’s hands roaming your body and pinching your nipples and fingering your cunt. You’d screamed your release over and over again, crying into the pillow one orgasm after another.

The problem was, the walls were thin and your next-door neighbor could definitely hear those little sighs and whimpers. Bucky walked to his room and shut the door, repeating what you said over and over again. And when you began touching yourself, he thought he was going crazy. He listened as you pleasured yourself for hours with his name falling from your lips time and again. He looked down at his hands as you begged him for release with whatever hand he wanted to use on you and he genuinely thought he’d died and gone to heaven. You weren’t disgusted by his hand, you were turned on by it. It explained so much: the increased heart rate, the dilated pupils, the sweaty palms, the nervous tapping, and finally, those ragged breaths he wanted to feel on his cheek.

He went to sleep that night with a smile on his face, already coming up with a plan to drive you crazy until you couldn’t take it anymore. This was going to be fun.

Love and Loss in the Mountains

Love and Loss in the Mountains

CHRISTOPHER SOLOMON

Christopher Solomon (

@chrisasolomon

) is an Outside contributing editor.

Aug 2, 2021

“You always think you’ll save the ones you love when the moment comes. But he didn’t save her.”

How do you keep going when you’re convinced you can’t?

When the mountains that brought you joy now echo with your grief, how do you return to them?

Adam Campbell thinks about these questions every day. At 42, he has experienced more hurt and loss in high places than most who spend a lifetime there. His body has been smashed. He lost his wife.

He has a story he wants to share, about what life looks like afterward. It does not offer Five Easy Steps to Bury Your Pain. He knows how deeply loss can cleave a person. But he also learned that we need other people to help pull us clear of the wreckage.

Campbell, a lean and chatty Canadian who lives in the mountain town of Canmore, Alberta, was a podium athlete in the outdoor world. If it was sweaty and hard, he excelled at it. He was a member of five Canadian national teams, in sports such as ski mountaineering and trail running, and a national champion in duathlon. In the summer of 2014, he made international news when, on the summit of a fourteener during Colorado’s famously grueling Hardrock 100 trail race, a lightning bolt knocked him and his pacer off their feet and fried Campbell’s headlamp. The duo picked themselves up and scampered over the pass. Campbell finished third.

It was typical of Campbell, who was in many ways puer aeternus, eternally youthful—that species of smiling mountain man endemic to North America’s high lonesome places, most often glimpsed moving fast over big country and more comfortable out there than back here. Out there was simpler, stripped down, hard, and gratifying for its hardness. “Suffering in beautiful places”—that was his mantra.

In 2015, Campbell met Laura Kosakoski. They started dating. She was remarkable, he told me—beautiful, athletic, so smart that she applied to become an astronaut with the Canadian Space Agency and survived the first few elimination rounds. Kosakoski was also deeply empathetic: after years studying to become an anesthetist, she chose a lower paying position with a family practice instead. “She wanted to feel that she was able to help people in their day-to-day life,” Campbell says. Like him, she chose to live in the lap of the mountains.

It took the two men 45 agonizing minutes to uncover her face, which was blue and unresponsive. To keep Campbell focused, Hjertaas lied to him and said that she was still breathing.

One January morning in 2020, Campbell and Kosakoski met up in Banff with friend Kevin Hjertaas for a quick ski tour in nearby Banff National Park. The weather was stormy and grim, but the trio were experienced. Hjertaas is a ski guide and a former avalanche forecaster. Kosakoski and Campbell had both completed numerous avalanche courses and done lots of back­country skiing; Campbell sits on the board of directors of the Avalanche Canada Foundation. For the day’s final run, the three stood above a small bowl. Kosakoski went first. Hjertaas waited, then followed. Above them, Campbell edged forward onto the ridge, keeping an eye out. Right then, the world cut loose beneath his feet.

The avalanche was enormous. It ran for more than a third of a mile, was deep enough to expose the mountainside, and threw a massive cloud of snow skyward. When the slide ended and the air cleared, Campbell could see Hjertaas, who had avoided the onrush of debris, but Kosakoski was missing. The men immediately started searching with their avalanche beacons. What the devices told them was horrifying: she was buried more than 12 feet below the surface.

This was so deep that they couldn’t dig straight down from their position above her on the steep slope, but had to start shoveling 30 feet away and at an angle.

It took 45 agonizing minutes to uncover her face, which was blue and unresponsive. To keep Campbell focused, Hjertaas lied to him and said she was still breathing. It took another 45 minutes to extract her body ­completely. Doctors later revived a weak heartbeat, but Kosakoski died the next evening.

There was grief—the staggering sadness of losing a wife and partner. And then, too, there was the deep violence of the moment, having to reckon with that experience. The group had made errors in judgment, the men later agreed. Moreover, Campbell believes he kicked off the avalanche that buried Kosakoski. Which brings us to the guilt—of surviving and of not rescuing her. You always think you’ll save the ones you love when the moment comes, Campbell told me. But he didn’t save her. Whether this judgment of himself is fair doesn’t really matter. He lives with it.

When multiple traumas occur ­together, they layer atop one another and accrete under pressure. The effect is geologic. Mountains are built of such layers. Continents sink. Experts call it complex PTSD. What does a person do under weight like that?

There is no simple answer to this question, no easy way through.

Campbell would find ways to cope in what might seem like an unexpected place: a moment that nearly killed him three years earlier, another instance that rearranged how he saw the world around him.

In August 2016, he was blazing through the Selkirk Mountains of British Columbia with fellow trail-running stars Dakota Jones and Nick Elson. The three were attempting to scramble the multi-day Horseshoe Traverse mountaineering route above Rogers Pass in a single day. As Campbell climbed up a subpeak called Sulzer Tower, a handhold popped off in his palm. He remembers the mountains turning upside down as he tumbled 200 feet. By the time his body stopped falling, he had broken four vertebrae, smashed his ankle, and sheared off the top of his hip bone. A mountain-rescue crew happened to be working not far away and saved his life. At the hospital, his digestive system shut down for three days. Doctors inserted metal rods throughout his body.

Campbell lived, but he was changed. The day before, he was one of the best athletes on the planet. The day after, he says, “I literally couldn’t wipe my own ass. I was relying on strangers.” Nearly dying changed something else about him. The accident erased his perception—his delusion—that he was a strong, self-reliant athlete who didn’t need others. For years, whenever life had gotten complicated, he had run away, headed for the hills.

“The more chaotic my life got, the bigger the goals I would chase,” he says. Some of his biggest accomplishments occurred during times of personal turmoil, when he fled rather than faced his problems, including an early divorce from his first wife, before he met Kosakoski. “I was just numb, like fully numb,” he says of those years. “I could run hard and fast all the time, and it didn’t impact me at all. I didn’t feel tired ever.” He was not happy, though. “I was emotionally dead, and I also didn’t get any real satisfaction from it.” That pattern of running away continued well into his relationship with Kosakoski.

One reason Campbell was on the traverse that day was that he and Kosakoski had hit a rough patch. Instead of facing the challenge and repairing things, Campbell took off. Out there he was independent, and confronted only with entanglements he knew how to deal with. Mountains were easy. People were hard.

Now, as he lay in a hospital bed in the small hours, too battered to sleep, he saw through the long lie that he was totally self-sufficient. The doctors and nurses who had saved his life came in and out of the room. Family members who had flown in from all over the world circled his bedside. Kosakoski was there too, of course; she took a month off work to help him. He had always been propped up by others; he simply chose to ignore it. “It broke that shell that I put around myself,” he says. And then something amazing happened. “The more vulnerable you allow yourself to be, the more vulnerable people are back to you,” he says, “and that allows you to have even deeper, more intimate connections.” He and Kosakoski grew closer than ever. They married a year later.

Don’t misunderstand: no wisdom, however steep its price, can prepare you for losing the person you planned to spend your life with. In the year since her death, the grief has hit Campbell in waves, receding one minute, overwhelming him the next. A few days after the accident, while walking over a railroad trestle, he looked down and thought how easy it would be to tip over the side, the water below it cold and embracing. But he didn’t. He thought about other people. He thought about the pain it would cause them.

If he learned one thing through all this, it’s that friends and family are a gift—their profound grace, and the solace that can be found in them. “The biggest thing for me is allowing myself to be open with others, to share what I’m going through and let them try to help,” he says. They call. They check in. People want to be there if you’ll let them. Campbell calls now, too, which he never would have done before. He leans on those he loves. He’s honest.

The changes Campbell underwent while dealing with his grief represent a shift in awareness that’s growing in the outdoor world. Mountain towns, and the risk-takers who populate them, long responded to loss with a hardman approach—­stoically, on their own, perhaps with a whiskey or three while seated at the end of the bar. Survivors of deadly events would often feel isolated. And even the caring communities where they lived didn’t know how to reach them. Hjertaas says he knows longtime ski patrollers who have seen so much tragedy that they can no longer even respond to accidents.

But that reaction is changing. Maria Coffey’s 2003 book Where the Mountain Casts Its Shadow is about people left behind after such deaths, and it helped open the conversation. So, too, has acceptance of the truth that grief is not weakness, nor is it necessarily a plea for help. Tim Tate, a psychotherapist in Bozeman, Montana, began seeing mountain athletes in 2018 and now works with members of the North Face team, who sometimes visit him in person for intensive four-day sessions. Last year the American Alpine Club started the Climbing Grief Fund, which includes small grants for climbers in need of counseling services. The fund had ten applications in its first 24 hours.

Now, as he lay in a hospital bed in the small hours, too battered to sleep, he saw through the long lie that he was totally self-sufficient. “It broke that shell that I put around myself,” he says.

Late last year, Campbell began helping out with a new group called Mountain Musk Ox, the brainchild of a few Canmore residents, including Janet McLeod, a clinical psychologist who specializes in trauma treatment, and mountaineer Barry Blanchard, who has lost several friends and clients in the mountains over his storied career. (The group’s name refers to the tough-as-nails musk ox and its instinct to encircle vulnerable members of the group when threatened.)

The program is a series of group sessions for men and women who have experienced gutting loss in hard circumstances—it’s a chance to talk openly about their trials and to work through them. Hjertaas is involved, too; he told me that people keep contacting him, saying they wish the program existed when they went through hell. In time, organizers hope to expand to other mountain communities.

There is no road map to a quick exit from grief, though. Others can help—can be there to hold up a lantern in the limitless dark—but in the end, each must find their own way out. “You have to be really, really gentle on yourself,” Campbell says. “Ultimately, the person you were before the accident kind of dies along with your partner, because you’re just so deeply changed by it. And you have to accept that and learn what your new life is like.

“You have to be reborn.”

Campbell isn’t angry at the mountains. He doesn’t hold them responsible. He quotes Reinhold Messner: “Mountains are not fair or unfair, they are just dangerous.”

Last summer, Campbell returned to the site of the accident. When he located his wife’s ski in a creek, he fell to his knees. But the mountainside was not windswept and cold. It was alive with bouquets of wildflowers and the thrum of running water. “I ultimately find my comfort and joy in nature,” he says. He has been among high peaks, skiing or climbing, almost every day since. His priorities have changed, though. Time outdoors is no longer about big goals. In part, this is because his body is no longer the same. But neither is his mind. He simply relishes being outside with others in a way he didn’t fully appreciate before. “The conversations I have with people out in nature are some of the best conversations I have. They’re the most honest and raw,” he says. “I find that that is where people are their genuine selves.”

One day over the winter, Camp­bell shared a story online about kintsugi, the centuries-old Japanese art in which cherished items that have been chipped or broken, such as a vase or a teakettle, are mended with a lacquer that includes gold dust. The result highlights the fissures that have been repaired. The analogy appealed to him.

“It treats breakage and repair as part of the history of an object,” he wrote, “something to celebrate.” Those breaks help define us, and they give us a hard-won beauty. When we show them, and the ways we’ve healed and grown stronger, he says, we know where one another are coming from, what we’ve all been through. And our community is healthier for it.

https://www.outsideonline.com/outdoor-adventure/exploration-survival/avalanche-tragedy-adam-campbell-laura-kosakoski/

via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

Welcome to FiveThirtyEight’s politics chat. The transcript below has been lightly edited.

sarah (Sarah Frostenson, politics editor): President Trump may still not be out of the woods with his coronavirus diagnosis — he is back at the White House now after three days at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center and still receiving treatment — but the vice presidential debate is moving ahead as planned.

There are a number of new precautions in place for the debate, too, given the renewed focus on the coronavirus, including a hotly disputed plexiglass barrier to separate the candidates and no handshakes upon arrival.

We have less of an idea this time around about which topics Vice President Mike Pence and Sen. Kamala Harris will debate, but without a doubt the coronavirus will be front and center — in fact, it might be hard for other topics to break through in the 90 minutes they have.

So let’s start there.

We know from our poll with Ipsos before the last presidential debate that the coronavirus is the most important issue to voters here in 2020, and that most voters think Biden is better on the issue.

On COVID-19, almost everyone prefers Biden

Share of people who named each issue as the most important one facing the U.S., and whether they think Trump or Biden would handle that issue better, according to a FiveThirtyEight/Ipsos poll

Who’s better on the issue… issue share TRUMP biden COVID-19 31.7% 19.5%

–

78.8%

–

The economy 21.6 79.1

–

19.6

–

Health care 7.9 22.0

–

76.1

–

Racial inequality 7.4 8.4

–

86.6

–

Climate change 5.2 2.6

–

96.4

–

Violent crime 4.8 79.3

–

17.7

–

The Supreme Court 4.5 50.7

–

47.8

–

Economic inequality 3.0 15.1

–

76.8

–

Immigration 2.8 70.1

–

29.9

–

Education 2.6 52.1

–

45.9

–

Abortion 2.3 96.0

–

2.1

–

Gun policy 1.9 66.9

–

30.3

–

Other 1.6 55.1

–

43.5

–

Respondents who didn’t name a top issue are not shown.

Data comes from polling done by Ipsos for FiveThirtyEight, using Ipsos’s KnowledgePanel, a probability-based online panel that is recruited to be representative of the U.S. population. The poll was conducted Sept. 21-28 among a general population sample of adults, with 3,133 respondents and a margin of error of +/- 1.9 percentage points.

How do you see the conversation around the coronavirus playing out tonight? What will be Harris’s stance? Pence’s? This will be the issue tonight, right?

meredithconroy (Meredith Conroy, political science professor at California State University, San Bernardino, and FiveThirtyEight contributor): Yeah, Sarah, there’s little doubt that coronavirus will be the issue tonight. After months of Trump trying to downplay the virus, Pence will be forced to grapple with it more directly, given the president’s recent diagnosis.

nrakich (Nathaniel Rakich, elections analyst): I would be shocked if the debate doesn’t kick off with the coronavirus and spend a substantial amount of time on it. And I am really curious to see whether the share of Americans who say that the coronavirus is the most important issue to them rises in our Ipsos poll. I haven’t seen the new data yet, but it will be available to you, dear reader, on the live blog tonight!

Specifically, I’m curious to see whether the share of voters who back Trump and prioritize the coronavirus rises. There was a big partisan split on the issue last time, with Democrats far more likely to say it was their top issue.

meredithconroy: That will be interesting to see. I think it’s possible it is still below the economy for Republicans in the poll, though. The administration hasn’t really changed its tune on the severity of the virus, despite the president’s diagnosis, right? In fact, you could argue their messaging is even more reckless?

nrakich: Right — in fact, the president has downplayed the severity of the virus in the last couple days, tweeting “don’t be afraid of Covid” and taking off his mask when he returned to the White House.

sarah: Does Pence lean into that messaging, then?

nrakich: I kind of think he will try to walk it back. Pence is kind of the ticket’s “what the president meant to say was …” ambassador.

meredithconroy: Right. And Pence comes at this from a somewhat different position than Trump — he is charged with leading the White House Coronavirus Task Force. I’m not sure that means he echoes guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or corrects his boss’s recent tweets and messages, though.

In fact, perhaps foreshadowing what to expect, Pence’s spokesperson, Katie Miller, already chided Harris’s camp for asking for more precautions at the debate, saying, “If Sen. Harris wants to use a fortress around herself, have at it.”

nrakich: A more interesting question might be, how hard does Harris attack Trump for this? She has a lot of material to work with (e.g., not wearing a mask, not taking the proper precautions to prevent spread among White House staffers), but will it come off in bad taste?

perry (Perry Bacon Jr., senior writer): Doesn’t seem too hard for Harris to say, “I wish the president good health,” but then harp on his failures in dealing with the virus.

And I don’t expect Pence to walk back a ton of what Trump has said or done. The kind of non-Trump Republican position on the coronavirus has been: “We can’t shut down the country in fear of this virus, kids need to go to school, our economy can’t be closed,” and I assume Pence will say versions of that throughout the debate. It’s a more polite version of what Trump says, but not necessarily all that different.

meredithconroy: Yeah. I think you’re right, Perry.

nrakich: I don’t know about that, Perry. The polls suggest people are really turned off by Trump’s blasé attitude toward the virus.

I think Pence will want to counter the perception that Trump isn’t taking it seriously — which by definition I think involves telling people to, well, “worry about Covid” (though of course not in those exact words).

meredithconroy: I think it’s possible they’re past that now, Nathaniel, given that Trump is doubling down on downplaying the seriousness of the virus.

sarah: If anything, Pence might want to actively pivot away from conversation on the coronavirus as much as he can, because this is something Trump has consistently gotten poor marks on:

nrakich: That would kind of be the strategy we saw at the Republican National Convention? Try to change the subject to something like the pre-pandemic roaring economy or democratic socialism. It’s harder to do in a debate, though.

meredithconroy: Yes. I think Harris would want to keep the focus on the coronavirus and those most affected by it. Plus, she’s a good messenger for that. More women than men are facing job losses, and Black communities account for a disproportionate number of deaths.

sarah: But if you’re Pence, maybe pivot to something like talk around an upcoming vaccine, or the upcoming Supreme Court nomination?

meredithconroy: Speaking of messengers … Pence is a great spokesperson for the SCOTUS nomination, as a religious liberty conservative.

perry: A debate with a lot of focus on COVID-19 will be bad for Trump-Pence. So I would assume the moderator, to show balance, will harp on some subject that is designed to make Harris look bad. My assumption is this will be about abolishing/defunding the police. Also, Biden kind of non-answered on abolishing the filibuster and adding seats to the Supreme Court in the last debate, so I would assume that is a subject that Harris will be pushed on, too.

sarah: That’s a good point, Perry. And I can see how a debate around the Supreme Court could possibly back Harris into a corner, too, if Pence is adamant about the GOP’s timeline to confirm Amy Coney Barrett before the election, which might push Harris into saying something about increasing the number of justices on the court.

nrakich: Harris is also on the Senate Judiciary Committee and was a big Brett Kavanaugh opponent. Pence may try to accuse her of obstructing Republican-appointed judges out of hand.

But again, the polls are not on Republicans’ side here. Most Americans think the Senate should wait until after the election to confirm a replacement for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

perry: Only 32 percent of Americans support adding justices to the Supreme Court, compared to 54 percent opposed, in a recent ABC News/Washington Post poll. At the same time, a 6-3 court might strike down Biden’s entire legislative agenda. So I would assume Harris wants to stay vague on that issue, as Biden has.

nrakich: Why do you think they are being coy on that, Perry? I don’t really get it.

Even in a dream Democratic scenario, there won’t be enough votes in the Senate to pack the court anyway. And as Perry said, polling shows most people are opposed to it. So saying “we oppose court packing” seems like the politically expedient answer.

perry: Because I think a 6-3 court will be open to striking down any Democratic legislation even on the flimsiest of grounds, so I think they have to keep the idea open.

nrakich: That’s fair. And I don’t think court packing is high on voters’ radar. I just thought it was a weird unforced error by Biden to dodge the question at the last debate.

perry: The Democrats’ actual position is probably closer to: “A Supreme Court that strikes down Obamacare, Roe v. Wade and the Voting Rights Act with Barrett and Gorsuch in the majority is illegitimate, in our view, and we would take action to address that.” I just don’t know if Harris can say that right now.

sarah: I’m surprised either candidate got in anything substantive in the last debate with all the interruptions. But speaking of debates … even though we’re pretty skeptical that debates move the needle all that much (although we did see a slight uptick for Biden following the first debate), do you think this debate might have more of an effect just given the uncertainty around the last two debates actually happening?

Trump has said he plans to debate next week, but is it possible the debate commission won’t let him because of his diagnosis?

nrakich: I don’t see next week’s debate happening as planned. If Trump insists on going, I don’t think Biden will go.

I do think that makes today’s debate more important than a vice-presidential debate usually is (which is not very important).

Also, I think Trump’s diagnosis has highlighted, erm, shall I say, the fragility of both presidential candidates, which might have voters taking a closer look at their No. 2s.

perry: I am really skeptical the debate commission stops the sitting president from debating. The people in charge of these debates didn’t force his staff to wear masks or stop him from interrupting every 10 seconds in the last debate.

sarah: But at the very least, they’ll make him take a COVID-19 test and if it comes back positive … I think they’d have to stop him, or at least that’s what their guidelines seem to suggest.

perry: I don’t think they have the power to make the sitting president take a COVID-19 test and reveal the results. I might be wrong. But this is a really interesting test of power.

And I think Trump will not back down.

meredithconroy: I don’t want to speculate, but depending on Trump’s health, he may hope they do cancel the debate. We’ll just have to wait and see.

But another reason this debate might be more important than a typical VP debate is simply that more people are paying attention right now, right?

sarah: Or more seriously considering who is in the No. 2 role?

nrakich: Not sure about that, Meredith. The TV ratings for the first debate were down from 2016, just like they were for the conventions. (Insert obligatory caveat about how TV ratings are falling across the board and it’s possible people just switched from watching the debate on TV to streaming it online.)

perry: So focusing on this debate, I actually think this debate matters electorally. Some of these polls have Trump in the low 40s, down by double digits. I assume that means some GOP-leaning voters are undecided right now. So if Pence kind of reminds those people that they really hate the Democrats, even if they aren’t that into Trump, that is helpful for the GOP side.

meredithconroy: Yeah, I think that’s a possibility, Perry. I think a lot of people — maybe more moderate people or the less politically engaged — came away from that first debate saying “Wow that was chaos, and American politics is a mess,” but not necessarily attributing the chaos to the instigator (Trump). If Pence can assuage those feelings, I think people on the fence might, for now, stay on the fence instead of deciding to stay home or vote for Biden.

sarah: Trump’s approval rating has slowly been ticking back up, too, even though his standing in the national polls hasn’t improved …

How do you take into account Trump’s approval rating when thinking about his standing in the horse race? Is this some of the upside Pence could possibly tap into tonight?

nrakich: We at FiveThirtyEight are skeptical about weighting polls by partisanship, but it’s at least possible there’s a touch of nonresponse bias (i.e., demoralized Republicans don’t want to take polls right now) in the polls immediately following the first debate.

Do you hear that sound? It’s the partisan non-response alarm going off https://t.co/0ENKBW2kov

— G. Elliott Morris (@gelliottmorris) October 6, 2020

So a more, er, conventional performance by Pence could correct that.

But I wouldn’t read too much into Trump’s approval rating. We’re less than a month until the election; head-to-head polls have fully come into their predictive power. Plus, it’s not like Trump’s approval rating has improved to 50 percent or even 45 percent. It’s at 43 percent — right around where it’s been for most of his term.

sarah: OK, to wrap. Tonight we see the other half of the ticket. What case does Harris need to make for Biden-Harris? And what case does Pence need to make for Trump-Pence?

perry: Biden is winning. Harris’s job is to do no harm. To me, Pence can’t fully explain away Trump’s handling of COVID-19. So he needs to hammer other issues (the police, the Supreme Court, taxes) where Republicans are stronger.

nrakich: I don’t think voters decide who to vote for based on the bottom half of the ticket. So I think Pence and Harris need to successfully argue that their running mates are the best choice for the country.

But voters already know Trump and Biden so well — very, very few have no opinion of them in polls — that I’m not sure the candidates can say anything to change their minds. Honestly, maybe what Pence needs to do is create some highly newsworthy moment that distracts from what is frankly a terrible news cycle right now for Trump.

meredithconroy: Ha! Interesting theory, Nathaniel. But has Pence ever driven the news cycle?

I anticipate that Pence will use the debate to tie Harris to the “far/radical left,” like Trump attempted to do to Biden in the debate last week. And I am going to risk being very wrong and speculate that Pence also doubles down on Trump’s recent messages around the coronavirus and tries to play down its seriousness.

nrakich: “But has Pence ever driven the news cycle?” –> No.

And that’s the ballgame.

Well-Met

Summary:

It's been several years since the Gyumaoh Revival was put down and the Minus Wave reversed. Now the Sanzo party tends to travel more out of habit than actual pressing need. As a result, they stop at a bar and separate for their own goals. Hakkai is watching from the sidelines when someone catches his eye.

Hakkai had been watching her all night. She was refreshingly different from the women who had tried to approach him during the outing he had been roped into. For one, those lovely muscles robed in scarred flesh added lovely valleys and hills for the lights in the bar to travel down. Golden hair fell in a waterfall from a ponytail near the top of her head and swayed with her movements as she danced. He reluctantly tore his eyes away from her to check on the rest of the party. Gojyo's lap was occupied by a lovely dark-haired beauty seemingly worshiping him and whispering lewd things into his ear if his ever reddening face was to be believed. He spotted Goku gleefully dancing with an excited brunette out near the stage the band was on. Sanzo was chatting quietly with a silver-haired woman at the bar, for once not getting into a drunken argument. Hakkai tore his eyes away from his blonde friend to meet with acid green as the woman he had been watching slowly made her way through the crowd to join him at the small table he had commandeered near the beginning of the night. Three thick scars slashed down from the crown of her head over her eye socket down to her upper lip, distorting her wicked smile. Her body boldly moved with the music as she made her way to him, emphasizing those lovely curves in a way to make his mouth go dry. Something warm coiled low in his belly as she slid in next to him as though she belonged there. Hakkai vainly tried to keep his eyes above her neck, even if the low plunge of her neckline tempted him with a wonderful view of her cleavage. “So, are you here on your own or with a group like I was?” she boldly asked with a husky purr in her voice. “I... Excuse me?” Hakkai asked, his brows coming together in surprise. “Well, the way you were looking around made me think you were part of that quartet that came in earlier or you were just scoping the place out. Am I wrong?” “Oh,” Hakkai breathed with a sheepish chuckle. “I'm sorry. I was expecting you to ask me something else entirely.” The blonde's grin rivaled the Cheshire's. “I see. Were you hoping I'd ask you to dance with me or...maybe something more...primal?” she asked, resting a burning hand atop his. Hakkai swallowed thickly as his heart sang through his ears. “I'd love to hear your name first. I could....give you mine in exchange,” he offered as he leaned in a little closer. The blonde practically purred in delight. Hakkai noticed a familiar sheen on the rings of silver and gold adorning her middle fingers and fought down his initial instinct to be on his guard and pull away. The Minus Wave had been a few years ago and there was no reason to believe she'd been on the opposite side. This particular town hadn't been touched by the demons who had gone rabid. Plus....times and people changed. Perhaps it was time he did too. “Kiyomizu Chiaki. I can't wait to hear yours.” “Cho Hakkai.” Chiaki looked surprised for a moment before sliding right back into her grin. “One of the heroes who ended the Minus Wave? I'll have to show you my thanks.” “You've heard of us.” “Any demons who weren't driven mad knew the people who ended that madness,” Chiaki replied. “Well, anyone paying attention to the papers at least.” “I see. How is it you weren't affected?” He asked, studying her. “I'm...not entirely sure? My group is three-fourths demonic and the other two weren't affected either. Well, so long as the limiters stayed on. Which we still don't take off by choice. One guess our human friend, Mao, thought was that maybe it's because we're all of mixed breeds. I'm a mix of water and cat demon, my friend Star is dragon and fire, and the youngest member Akemi is wind and fox,” she explained, resting her head against her opposite hand. “That does make a lot of sense,” Hakkai stated thoughtfully. “It's one theory. Otherwise, we kinda don't have anything else?” she responded. Hakkai smiled at her. “I doubt that,” he responded. “But... What did you have in mind by approaching me in particular? Most women normally go for my redheaded friend, Gojyo, first.” “Just women?” Chiaki asked, cocking a golden brow at him. “Because if that's the case, your friend is in for something startling if he's that drunk.” “How so?” “The guy in his lap is Star. And he's VERY male,” she answered, gesturing with a thumb at the young man hoisting Gojyo to his feet and drawing him down for a heady kiss. “Unless that was just your guess from behind? He is kind androgynous from that angle.” Hakkai buried his red face in his hands. “I'm so sorry. I didn't... I shouldn't have-” “Relax,” Chiaki responded, resting a hand on his shoulder and grinning. “Like I said, he's very androgynous from behind. I made that mistake when I first met him too.” Hakkai smiled a bit nervously. “So....” she said with a smug grin. “What brought me to your attention?” “I'm...sorry?” he responded as he felt his cheeks heat up. “I'm pretty perceptive. I'd have to be pretty dense to not notice you staring at me most of the night,” she replied, looking like the cat who'd eaten the canary. “I was wondering...” Hakkai's eyes dropped to her hand, which was starting to slide along his arm and go back up to rest on his chest. He swallowed nervously, feeling every slight shift of weight along his clothed skin intensely. He wondered if she could manipulate energy like he could because her touch gave off a sort of tingle, probably similar to what the others claimed to feel when he healed their wounds. “If....you would like to do something about what you saw,” she drawled, boldly meeting his gaze. “If you're interested, anyway.” “I...” Hakkai swallowed hard, gathering his composure. “...You know, I would love to.” Chiaki beamed. “I don't live too far away. Follow me.” The blonde kept Hakkai's hand tight in hers as she led him to the inn a block from the bar. Hakkai was torn between pursuing the blonde or drawing it out over a much longer time. While he had less to worry about than he did while on the journey, he still wasn't much used to nor cared for one-night stands, which this was looking like it was heading to become. Chiaki headed to a room on the first floor of the inn and pulled him down into a ravenous kiss. The slow sensual feeling of her tongue stroking his sent bolts of fire down his veins as he pressed her against the door. A soft moan slipped from her throat as she buried a hand into his soft locks, pulling him into her as she arched into him. Hakkai pulled back from the kiss to nip and nibble along her jawline. Chiaki's head lolled back to grant him further room to work, fumbling to get the key into the lock behind her to open the door. He reached a hand down to take the key and insert it for her, opening the door and following her inside. A rush of hands pulling clothes free from their person. Chiaki purring and nibbling along every revealed inch as she stripped him. Hakkai fought to return the favor only for her to draw him in for a kiss every chance she got. Once he managed to slip her bra off and drag his mouth lower, she fought him less. He peppered kisses from her breasts down her sternum to nip and nibble the valleys of muscle her abs left, sinking his teeth into her hip as he slid her underwear off. She bent and kissed him, drawing him up as she fished something out of her khakis pocket and rolled it onto his semi-hard dick. She urged him backwards, Hakkai struggling not to fall until the back of his knees hit the mattress and he collapsed onto the bed and she mounted him. Chiaki pressed urgent kisses into Hakkai's throat, hips rolling in waves against his shore as she pinned him to the bed. The promise of fangs against his Adam's apple tore a strangled groan free. His hands roamed her firm sides restlessly, desperate for more contact. “How do you want to do this?” Hakkai seized onto the question like a drowning man clings to driftwood in a storm. “I-ah! Please! I...I can't focus with you doing that,” he cried through moans as she nipped and nibbled along his pulse and kept her hips moving. Chiaki's movements slowed. “Sorry, too intense?” Hakkai gulped for air and nodded, sweat beading along his forehead. “It's been....a very long time is all.” He buried his face in her neck and trailed kisses along the line of her throat. “Hakkai~” Chiaki sang softly into his ear. “I need you to answer me. How do you want to do this?” “The way we are is fine,” he responded finally, meeting her molten gaze. She pressed gentle kisses on his forehead, soothing the worry lines out as he allowed himself to relax into the touch. One of Chiaki's hands blindly groped into her nightstand drawer. Hakkai was more concerned with suckling dark marks into her collarbone and along her throat to notice anything until a slick tight fist enveloped his condom-clad dick. His breath hissed through his bared teeth as he fought the urge to buck up into it. “Sorry,” Chiaki murmured as she spread the lube along his length. “I....thought you might appreciate a smoother ride.” “Gods yes,” he panted. She smiled and rose above him. Hakkai managed to keep his cool at her removal while she whimpered at the loss of contact. He smiled up at her, admiring the faint moonlight tracing along her muscled form as he rested steadying hands on her hips. Hakkai arched up, his head lolling back as Chiaki lowered herself onto him. It took every ounce of self control to not blindly thrust up into that molten heat. Once fully seated, she rolled her hips in small circles, drawing small cries and whimpers out of his throat. Gods, it had been so long. Almost too long. Shit, if she didn't stop, he was going to drown in sensation and go mad. She seemed to notice and her hips stopped their sanity draining circles. Her hands drew soothing patterns along his panting form. Small kisses littered his face, attempting to draw him back into himself. “Are you alright?” she asked when he finally opened his eyes. Her eyes had their pupils blown wide, her acid green eyes a sliver of color surrounding the black. A hand on his cheek drew his attention from her eyes. “Hakkai, I need you to talk to me.” “I'm here,” he slurred. “Sorry it's....been ages since.... I forgot how overwhelming it can be sometimes,” he confessed with a sheepish smile. A small smile quirked her mouth, her scar tugging it crooked. “I was afraid you were losing it or something. Can't say I've met someone with that reaction to me.” Hakkai stared up at her in blank shock. “How... You are amazing. How can other people be so blind?” Her scar tugged her sweet smile awry. “You're incredibly sweet,” she stated. She leaned down and kissed him slow and deep, leaving Hakkai feeling drugged off of her taste. A hand rested on his cheek and offered an anchor to focus on. Chiaki leaned back. “Are you ready?” At the nod from the man beneath her, she took his hands and placed them on her hips. “I'll let you set the pace.” Hakkai nodded in acknowledgment, tightening his grip. She slowly began to move, easing into the pace Hakkai set. He watched her muscles ripple as he moved, leaning up to drag his tongue up them. As the speed increased and the tension built, he leaned up to take a nipple into his mouth and earned a soft moan as a reward. Chiaki buried a hand into his hair, the other teasingly grazing nails over his skin. Hakkai leaned his head further up and raked his teeth over the skin of her sternum. Chiaki's head lolled back as he nipped and sucked along her collarbones, offering her throat to him. He grinned and accepted, pulling her down to rake his teeth against her skin and add more marks to her collection. Hakkai had been meeting Chiaki eagerly thrust for thrust. The blonde had started making soft mewling noises as the pace further built. She pulled him to her for a hot hungry kiss. “F-faster,” she begged. “Gods please. I'm so close,” she whimpered, clinging tightly to him and nails bit into his skin. Hakkai growled deep into his chest as he pulled her quickly up and down his length and buck into her harder and faster. He slipped one hand down between them to press against her clit. She yelped in surprise. “N-not that directly,” she moaned. She reached down and guided him to press the base of his palm against her. “There,” she whimpered. Hakkai bit down onto the crook of her shoulder, careful not to break the skin. Moans broke free of her as her orgasm took her, clenching tightly around him and trying to milk him dry. He fought to hold out but moaned into her skin as he spilled into the condom. The pair fell back onto the bed, panting hard. Hakkai carefully withdrew from her, knotted the used condom, and got up to throw it away before rejoining Chiaki and settling in close. She drew his head down to rest on her chest, absently stroking and playing with his hair. “This....may sound awkward,” Hakkai began. “Only if you let it be,” she teased. Hakkai looped an arm around her and dragged a hand up and down her side aimlessly. “Could....Could we meet again?” “In general or for....like more of this?” “A bit of both. If you're interested.” “Only an idiot wouldn't be,” Chiaki proclaimed with a yawn. “Sure. I'd love to meet up again.” Hakkai's sleepy smiled widened. “Excellent.”

“Why Nier: Automata is a masterpiece: details that you may have missed”

Found this on Reddit and thought I should share here. Some good observations about the game!

[Link to post]

Heavy spoilers of course:

Thinking about the story for the past 2 months, I have discovered a lot of little details in the story of Nier: Automata that I believe are often overlooked. Therefore, I decided to make a post compiling what I’ve found. The first part is about the not-so-obvious foreshadowing of 2B’s identity, and the second will list everything else. Note: this will spoil some parts of the novellas as well, so please go over here and read them before you proceed.

These are the hints I have found about the 2E plot twist throughout the game:

When flying down to Earth together after the prologue, 9S wondered why a combat unit like 2B would be sent on a recon mission, the kind of job for an S-type. This is an early hint at 2B being there for something else, and also showed the curious, perceptive nature of 9S.

9S is the only one whom 2B tried to keep the “emotions are prohibited” act with. Even when she responded coldly towards 6O’s talk about nice weather and romance, she never even once told 6O to keep her emotions in check or stop the meaningless chatter. It doesn’t take much to notice that 2B keeps the uncaring act exclusively to 9S, while barely even try when it comes to pretty much anyone else, such as when she showed concern about the resistance shopkeeper with the bad leg, or said “Poor thing… You’re going to be fine, don’t worry.” to a YoRHa member knocked out by Grun. Furthermore, 2B seemed unusually attached to this one unit that she specifically try to put up an act for. This shows that she doesn’t care much for the whole “emotions are prohibited” thing, but rather have something to hide regarding 9S.

The first definite proof of 2B’s real identity is the archive “YoRHa Body Storage Record”, acquired when 9S hacked into the Bunker server near the end of route B. In the document, 9S is marked with “n”, indicating that he is not in storage and is active, even if he’s in maintenance. However, 2B is marked with “y”, which makes no sense… unless it’s the real 2B that is in storage, and the 2B we know is someone else. From “Amnesia” quest, we already learned that type E disguise themselves to approach their target, and “YoRHa Betrayers” had 21O telling 9S to “be careful” when he tried to ask for more details, as if digging more would actually be dangerous to him… In other words, you have enough evidence to guess that 2B is 2E as early as the end of route B. This may very well be how 9S figured out 2B’s identity.

Even more obvious clues are shown after A2’s battle with Hegel. The hacking segment after the fight gave some fragmented conversation between the commander and 2B, with the commander saying "Normally you'd be called... but... calling you 2B for the time..." and "Continue to observe the situation, and dispatch... if necessary." Seems so obvious now when looking back, yet I don’t think anyone saw it coming.

Hopefully that would make your minds blown a bit, but there’s more to this game’s hidden implications than just the 2B/2E twist:

The version of the “City Ruins” soundtrack played in route A is called “Ray of Light”. It’s “ray” instead of “rays” because there is only one – 2B is the sole ray of light in 9S’ life. Now, don’t call it a stretch in logic yet: In route C, a different version called “Shade” is played in the Flooded City when you play as 9S, because with 2B gone, so is the ray of light, and all that’s left is shade. What’s more, the full version of this played just before 9S entered the Soul Box, which is probably when 9S truly lost it.

The weapons Virtuous Treaty, Virtuous Contract, and Cruel Blood Oath are the only ones that don’t have stories with definite characters and events, because their stories are instead told in the game itself. One example is “as close as possible, yet eternally distant”, which referred to 2B’s situation of being by 9S’ side, but unable to be close to him at the same time. I made a more detailed post about that here.

Also, their names are reference to the novella Memory Thorn. As per 9S’ wish, 2B promised to keep killing him so that he could meet her again and be happy, despite the anguish each of his death caused her. It is a treaty/contract/oath that is both virtuous and cruel, and it’s paid in blood.

2B is not that chatty but she usually says something near the end of quests. One of the few times when she’s dead quiet is the end of the “Wandering Couple”... because she’s seeing herself in the despicable resistance woman perhaps? Even though their motives are completely opposite, they are doing the same thing: wiping the memories of the men who loves them, with the results always being the same: they will fall in love every time, and then get their memories wiped every time.

In the novella, 9S had 2B promise to keep killing him so that they could meet again. She fulfilled this promise till the very end, even after death: in ending D, it was 2B’s sword with her memories in it that killed 9S one last time.

All the notable machines, except Adam and Ever, are named after philosophers. What’s more, many of them are quire ironic. For example, Grun the philosopher believed community is essential to human’s survival, while Grun the machine boss is abandoned and isolated. /u/Krivvan made a fantastic post about this topic here.

Speaking of Adam and Eve, kudos to the designer of Adam. If you look carefully, you can see that he wore his tie as a bow, while putting his belt outside of the belt loops – he imitated human fashion, but didn’t really understand what the items were for and how to properly wear them.

The machines’ heads look like Emil. Hegel had the same form as the Emil’s clones. Hegel is a weapon that has adapted to the desert, and Emil is a weapon that can adapt to any environment. There’s a pretty good chance that the aliens made the machines based on Emil to fight Emil.

Of course, this is by no means everything to be discovered about the game. I’m sure there are many other subtle details waiting to be discovered in the game. Let us know if you find other interesting secrets!

okay i’m going to go through piece by piece and talk about how i interpreted some parts in the dlc as to how it concerns mathilda and her attitudes towards those around her. ( i’m probably going to be bitter for a long time that she didn’t get supports or any interactions with forsyth and python and lukas but at least her memory prism with fernand shows that her entire life doesn’t just revolve around clive.........sort of. i’ll make do with what i’ve got. )

part 3 : flight from the ruins

“you fought poorly today. you held back. i thought perhaps you might be ill.”

part of my headcanons for mathilda are that she takes a lot of responsibility for those around her and under her care; she’s extremely perceptive as to the state of other people, and takes initiative on supporting others, possibly without them even knowing. i’d talked about how this comes from her having four younger siblings that she grew up help taking care of; it’s given her a keen eye for these kinds of things. it’s emblematic, of course, that she then treats clair the same way in particular, since she’s literally going to be another sister to her. she’s on her way to her tent in the middle of the night to check up on her, likely offer to bring her something if she’s feeling unwell. i believe this is something she’d do for anyone she cared about, but it’s especially sweet with clair because caring for younger sisters is something she’s accustomed to.

“you don’t truly believe you’re going to find some ring from a faerie tale?”

“do you name my nursemaid a liar, madam!?”

“yes! i mean, no, i mean....look, what does that have to do with — ”

her ready dismissal of clair’s quest despite seeing the ruins in front of her eyes i think clearly demonstrates that mathilda is someone who believes in what she can immediately see and touch in the world around her. i’d headcanoned that she’s much more of an S — she doesn’t really have the patience for stories, rumors, and theories, and rarely believes in something unless there’s hard proof. also, it’s nice to see her being so blunt about calling clair’s nursemaid a liar. mathilda’s response both demonstrates her initial preference towards truth even if it’s callous, and the social obligation ( especially towards women ) stating that one should carefully tailor their words. it’s a neat, small moment that depicts the contrasts between two sides of her personality and upbringing.

“clive would never forgive me if i did that. it would break his heart if something happened to you.”

i expected something along this line here, but i admittedly was expecting her to just say that she couldn’t leave clair here by herself because it’s too dangerous; the fact that she brings clive’s name into it supports one of my ideas about her personality, being that something she can’t understand is when people only see their actions as self-centric and self-affecting. she is always thinking about the bigger picture — how what one does is not just about themselves, but about everyone else around them. people don’t exist in a vacuum, and there are always consequences. she sees that here, and tries to teach clair about it too. but she likely is used to clair’s attitude, too, coming from her household; it’s a distinctly younger sibling thing. ( notably, it’s also something conrad tries to get across to celica. )

“you can apologize to me later. now keep your eyes open!”

“never mind that. what’s done is done. i was the one who chose to go with you, remember?”

forward-thinking. it’s not that mathilda doesn’t appreciate apologies; in fact, if clair hadn’t tried to apologize at all, she probably would have been more adamant about demanding one. but because clair has shown that she realizes her mistakes, mathilda isn’t one to dwell on sorry’s and things that could have been different. she behaves the same way with clive when he apologizes for not rescuing her sooner, and she dismisses it, saying that she’s not interested in either hearing his apologies or having a ‘who’s fault was this’ debate. all that matters is that they’re safe, they’re together — and whatever comes next. she expects people to learn and grow from mistakes, but has no interest in hanging on the past in any capacity. 

( interestingly, in this sense, she shares a whole lot with lukas in terms of life outlook; the conversation that lukas has with clive at the end of part 4 sounded like something mathilda could have also said to him, to me. the focus on moving forward, especially. in a lot of ways, their personalities are similar. )

“clive doesn’t require such baubles. he has something better to protect him . . . a little sister who loves him very much. now stop worrying him by running off on these fool adventures!”

again, showing us that she relies a lot more on the known capabilities of those around her rather than unknown trinkets or divine protection. not that she completely eschews those, since she still seems eager for clair to have not lost the ring, but she places a lot more stock in man’s strength, and anything else is just icing on the cake rather than something she would actively pursue. ( and once again, teaching clair consideration for other people — she might have thought this was a selfless adventure, but mathilda is quick to remind her how worried clive would be to hear she had put herself in danger, even for his sake. )

“of course it is! no one knows your brother better than i.”

dat self-assurance girl i love it. also literally this entire ending conversation is wonderful and hilarious and wow i love.

part 4 : siege of zofia castle

the opening conversation with clive is just about the only further indication of their relationship besides their in-game supports, and i think we see a fair bit of the way they navigate each other even from this brief interaction, especially if we take a look at what the rest of the dlc has to say regarding lukas and clive and fernand. 

it’s no surprise off the bat that mathilda has skill and confidence in her military planning. the plan is basically castle defense 101, and it’s easy to guess that her father also taught her some strategy when he trained her to be a knight. 

also, “flattery will get you everywhere.” please you guys. y’all are so gross. but aside from that, it’s cute to see that this is how mathilda feels comfortable joking around clive, and that she knows what he means when he praises her, and he knows how she’s liable to respond. it’s interesting coming from her because i imagine that she’s not unaccustomed to empty flattery — and she knows when it’s happening. she talks in their new memory prism about how she hates being “paraded around like a pretty bauble” in a dress in the castle for balls, so i’m sure she has a sensitivity towards flattery. even so, she first of all knows that clive is sincere about his praise, and is comfortable enough with how they talk to each other that she’s able to make light of something that, thematically, has always annoyed her throughout the rest of her life. i think this says a good deal about how well they know each other and also how comfortable clive makes her feel when she’s always been at odds with other men, or just other people, which is something else i’d headcanoned. 

but the part that really interested me in this moment — and its undercurrents through the rest of the map — was that clive is clearly keeping the plan to have lukas take hostages a secret from even mathilda. as a couple that ( presumably, at least on mathilda’s part ) are very transparent with each other typically, it felt strange to me that they wouldn’t tell each other everything. i believe that mathilda knew, in this conversation, that he was keeping something from her; she knows him so well, and clive also says in-game that other people see through him very easily. so when she asks him what’s wrong and he says “nothing. just thinking how lucky i am to have you. your confidence gives me strength”, she tosses out the cute line about flattery, but i’m willing to bet she knows instantly that he’s hiding something.

at first, this troubled me, because i just couldn’t see her not having an issue with him keeping things from her considering how quick she is to confront others about interpersonal miscommunications ( see fernand’s memory prism, later ). but the more i thought about it — in conjunction with lukas’ line at the end to fernand about how he kept this a secret from mathilda too and she didn’t have any complaints —, the more i realized that it actually shows precisely how much they trust each other.

after all, this isn’t something about their personal relationship that clive is keeping secret from her; it’s part of their public life, their roles as members of the deliverance who have a job to do. thus, it doesn’t shed any light on how well they communicate with each other about their private relationship, which i still believe they’re very good at doing, if their in-game a support is any indication. mathilda, more than most, is adept at separating her public sphere from her private sphere, and in this role, he is her captain more than he is her fiance, and the fact that she doesn’t continue to pry for his secrets nor is she bothered that he never told her the plan shows that she trusts his ability to make sound decisions for the army. she trusts him enough to know that if it were important enough, he would tell her, and that if he is keeping something from her, it must be for a good reason. 

and i think, even though the dlc doesn’t explicitly tell us so, that her faith in him and understanding of him is something clive is grateful for. lukas says that the reason clive kept the plan from most people was because it was a plan that could only work if very few people knew about it, and i think clive appreciates that mathilda knows him well enough as both a man and a commander to not be upset. it doesn’t mean that he loves or trusts her any less, and i think she also knows that.

memory prism — mathilda & clive

“you do not know? boys the kingdom round whisper your name before they go to sleep. i fear my friends and i were no exception.”

first of all, bruh. clive my dude you were such mantrash when you were younger i’m howling. anyway, i think it’s interesting that mathilda’s response to this is surprise. even if this is positive attention that we might not think of as necessarily the kind of attention she would want ( after all she’s still being objectified, even if she’s also being admired ), the fact that she seems pleasantly surprised by the knowledge shows us just how little positive attention she’s gotten from men in general over the course of her career, even if she’s being recognized for her beauty rather than her skill, here.

and she recognizes that, too! she responds to clive’s line “what do you think it is that lights the fires of a boy’s heart? a stoic old man... or a beautiful woman?” with “ha ha! the fires would sputter out if the lads actually saw me in combat” clearly indicates that she knows what he’s talking about and that she knows what to expect from men, considering her past experiences. as soon as they see her on the battlefield, as a soldier and not as an object of beauty to be adored, they’ll feel emasculated. but! on the contrary, clive tells her “certainly not! you are never more beautiful than when you ride across a battlefield. the dresses and dour looks you wear in court only obscure your radiance.” 

aside from the fact that it was totally obvious from day 1 that clive is into ladies who could step on him, this is something that mathilda is clearly not used to hearing. to be considered beautiful and radiant while on the same playing field as men, not only encroaching into their social space as soldiers but also besting them at it? this, coupled with his remark at the beginning that he’s training in hopes to someday be as good as her, is probably the first time mathilda has actually heard a fellow knight look up to her for her strength and skill, rather than in spite of it.

“i don’t remember how to dance! this is going to end with me crushing his toes into paste.”

i’m laughing because i definitely think she did learn how to dance. i don’t think that she was never taught, or that she shunned traditionally feminine expectations, but the reality is that since becoming a knight, she just hasn’t been in that circumstance for years, and probably really has just forgotten the steps. bless her heart.

also, though it’s hard to pinpoint an exact moment that depicts this, i get a general feeling that mathilda in her younger years was more.....fiery? than she’s depicted in-game, which looks to be at least half a decade later, if not more. she’s feels more fire than she does in-game, where she’s more composed, calmly self-assured, and at ease. i think it makes sense, given that the memory prism takes place when she’s likely still struggling with her place among the knights as a woman, and hyper-aware of being viewed a certain way by the others around her. she still acts like she has something to prove to everyone, or is always ready to have to justify herself. i do think that being with clive has helped her shed this unconscious tension a lot; she’s never had to prove anything around him, and his constant, unprompted reassurance over the years has likely helped her mellow into a woman who no longer feels like she has to prove herself, because by the time SoV rolls around, she already has.

also, clive skipping?? i’m crying they’re literally so cute.

memory prism — mathilda & fernand

“are you certain? it seems every time i talk to you, you refuse to look me in the eye. if i did something wrong, tell me. i don’t want you to hate me.”

as i’d mentioned before, we can see that mathilda is really proactive about interpersonal relationships, and is good at recognizing and navigating other people’s feelings. she’s not afraid to confront someone if she thinks there’s a problem, and also is unafraid to take responsibility for anything she might have done. it’s from this, and from her a support with clive, that i saw that she’s really good at — and really values — healthy communication in her personal relationships. as usual, mathilda doesn’t think just thinking about a problem is going to solve it; she’s ready to take issues into her own hands and figure out a concrete solution to address it.

“oh, if only you knew. i adore talking with him, but... well he doesn’t know how to loosen up. he’s very self-conscious. i want to hear about his misadventures. not just what he thinks i want to hear.”

i’m so happy omg i had all these headcanons about clive being a rather high-strung, stressed out person who’s very cerebral and lives a lot in his head and overthinks things and tends to work himself into mental ruts. and that being something that mathilda criticizes him for. and it’s true! i don’t think mathilda’s ever had this problem; it just doesn’t come to her to think about things too much; she’d rather do something. and of course this says a fair bit about clive too, and how conscious he is of the fact that he has an image, and he’s hyper-aware of how he presents to other people. 

i also think it’s really funny that like, fast forward to the deliverance supports and he’s telling forsyth to loosen up. somewhere, mathilda is like “and if clive is telling you that.....”

“i can tell how happy it was for the two of you to grow up together. it’s a type of affection he and i will never have.”

i really don’t think this is a moment of envy for mathilda, actually. she sounds much more like she really does treasure fernand’s relationship with clive, and truly appreciates him for the companionship and love he can provide for clive that she can’t. it’s a different kind of love, and equally as important, and she recognizes that and knows it for its value. it’s really nice to see her acknowledge the importance of relationships beyond romantic ones, especially seeing how sappy she and clive are when they’re together. and the fact that she’s really happy and eager to be involved in those relationships — being friends with fernand, and wanting to see all of clive’s old haunts when they were young — says a lot about how she views relationships; she wants to be involved not only with the other person as they relate to her, but in all of them and every facet of who they are.

supports — mathilda & clair

“i hope that i might learn from your courage.”

“and i from your kindness.”

i’m really interested in the idea that mathilda believes she can learn from clair’s thoughtfulness towards others, given how she’s demonstrated that she has a great capacity for consideration already. i think it might speak to something i mention offhandedly in my bio where i state that mathilda is aware that her calm, poised demeanor has led others to believe her to be cold before, or perhaps insensitive. indeed, there are times — such as when she doesn’t realize that her constant asking about clive might have upset fernand — where she can be a little more obtuse than her usual compassion would suggest. in this way, i think she’s really happy to see that clair has grown up to think of others and to put others before herself, which leads nicely into their b and a support.

“do you recall the last time we spoke like this? you were so compassionate. recently, i’ve taken note of how you look out for everyone around you. you’re there for them before they even think to ask for help.”

it’s really suiting that mathilda’s measure of how much clair has matured is based around her level of consideration for others, and her ability to take initiative on behalf of other people. she places a lot of weight on taking on that kind of responsibility, and specifically lauds clair for moving out of her previously self-centered mindset. it makes a lot of sense, as i mention before, since she comes from a background where she was always looking out for younger siblings as the oldest of five, and has a lot of experience with watching said younger siblings grow from only thinking about themselves to being able to consider other people.

“just because you see the world for how it is doesn’t mean you have to give up.”

i think this line really nicely sums up mathilda’s character and her outlook on life. she’s extremely pragmatic and realistic — even more so than clive at times — and is always thinking about the next step. she does tell clair that leaving behind some of your idealism is a vital part of maturing. but she also emphasizes that ideals are important, and it’s not right to cast them aside, nor should one lose hope completely. “it’s true that things don’t always turn out the way we want them to. but we can still find other ways to realize our desires.” it’s good to see that she’s still optimistic — and even idealistic — while also being practical. the kind of person who hopes for the best while simultaneously preparing for the worst.

it’s neat that the dlc paints mathilda’s and clair’s relationship in the way they do. i’d been thinking a lot about how mathilda must feel a kind of kinship with clair, both of them being women who eschew social expectations, are considered to be bold and rebellious, and go on to be knights. she must see a lot of her younger self in clair, and i wish this was something they talked about in-game. it’s clear that mathilda wants to be closer to clair — she ends the conversation saying that clair shouldn’t be afraid to lean on her more. given that she says that clair doesn’t usually come to her for conversation, it’s probably more a reflection on clair and how she envisions her relationship with mathilda that they aren’t closer. as with fernand, mathilda is clearly someone who wants to be involved in every aspect of clive’s life. i like to believe that they hopefully get to know each other better — it’s clear that clair still sees mathilda as something of a threat, so they’ll have to move over that hump first.

Echoes In The Forest - Chapter 9

None of Unit Bravo know what to expect when they're sent overseas for a mission. Surprises await them in the Black Forest, but perhaps Adam stands to find out more about himself than he's ever bargained for.

Rating: Explicit Pairing: Female Detective/Adam, Female Detective/Mason Word Count: ~3k Warnings: None

You can find this chapter on AO3 here. Start from the beginning here.

--

She’s barely slept, between worry for Felix and her mind going over and over what has happened between her and Adam over the past few days Jordan finds that her mind just won’t shut off for more than a few minutes at a time, leaving her with a broken sleep that makes her feel worse than if she’d just pulled an all-nighter with Unit Bravo.

She’s been laying there listening to the three of them talking for close to an hour. It started as a calm enough discussion but it’s now nearing full blown argument territory and she sighs to herself as she sits up and begins pulling her clothes on.

She shuffles tiredly out of the tent and the three of them turn to look at her. Adam has his arms folded over his chest and Mason stands only inches away from him, the scowl on his face giving away the fact that the arguing she’d heard was mostly between the two of them. Nate looks every bit the peacemaker, standing beside the both of them with a hand on either of their shoulders. It’s strange to Jordan to see Mason and Adam facing off like this; it’s usually Adam and Nate having a difference of opinion and more often than not Mason takes Adam’s side. She knows that Mason’s worried about Felix, but it seems as though this mission is changing almost everything about the dynamic within the Unit and she’s not sure how she feels about it.

“Will you please tell him that we can’t just leave Felix out there on his own?”

Mason looks at her almost pleadingly, and it’s just another strange occurrence to add to the list; Mason needing help from her enough to ask for it so desperately.

“We are not taking a vote. We stay put until this afternoon, and if by then Felix has still not returned we will discuss it again.”

Adam responds firmly before Jordan has a chance to get any words out, and both her and Mason glare at him. 

“I guess the master has spoken.”

She mutters as she turns and heads away from the three of them. She’s had far too little sleep and there’s far too much worrying her at the moment for her to be able to muster the energy needed to deal with Adam at his bossiest.

She tries not to think about what Felix might have encountered in the woods by himself all night, trying to reassure herself that Adam’s right. He’s the fastest and the most perceptive, there’s no reason to think anything untoward will have happened to him.

--

Adam watches her go, a strange sensation making his stomach knot up as she does. He feels… guilty. He doesn’t like that he has disappointed her, or upset her, or whatever it is her ‘whatever’ means that he has done. And he doesn’t like that he doesn’t like it. He cannot be a real leader if he’s going to worry about one member of his unit not liking a decision that he has made. On top of that he’s not used to being bothered by what people think of him and the way he conducts himself and he can’t help but wonder why he’s so affected by her.

Except that he’s not really wondering, is he? He knows exactly why her opinion of him matters to him, but knowing it and being okay with it are two very different things and he is very much not okay with it.

A noise in the bushes beside them draws his attention and he notices both Mason and Nate readying themselves as he turns and does the same, just in time to see Felix jogging through the branches towards them, a grin on his face.

“Miss me?”

He asks as he comes to a stop in front of them, and before anyone can answer Mason punches him hard in the shoulder.

“What the hell?”

Felix laughs, rubbing half heartedly at his shoulder.

“I love you too, buddy.”

Mason growls and pulls a face before stalking off, muttering insults directed at Felix under his breath on the way. Before Felix can get too far or explain anything though Jordan flies back up to him, wrapping him up in a tight hug before pulling away and shoving him hard enough to make him stumble backwards.

“Do not do that again.”

“Do what? Run off after the bad guy in an attempt to save a damsel in distress?”

Jordan rolls her eyes and hits him again, this time a light slap across the face.

“Yeah, that.”

“Did you find anything out at least?”

Adam cuts into their conversation, trying his hardest to ignore the glare that Jordan shoots at him.

“Really? Do you even care that he was gone all night?”

“Of course I care.”

“Got a funny way of showing it, Commanding Agent.”

He lets out a frustrated sigh and tears his gaze away from her to face Felix properly.

“Are you alright, Felix?”

“Yeah, yeah. It’s her soul.”

Felix waves away the question and Adam bites back the urge to point out to Jordan that his expression of concern had been unwarranted.

“Her soul?”

He asks instead and Felix nods, his eyes darting nervously to Jordan for a split second.

“He said that he’s been waiting for her, and that he knew it was her as soon as he smelled her.”

“According to legend, the only souls of use to the Erlking are that of children or virgins. Pure souls.”

Nate interjects, giving Jordan an apologetic glance which she shrugs away.

“He said hers is ‘unique’ and it…”

Felix trails off, seeming unwilling to continue his sentence in front of Jordan.

“And it what?”

Adam asks impatiently. There is no time to be sensitive to what they say in front of one another if they’re to have a chance at stopping this supernatural. He fears that things may have already gone too far by the fact that Erlking has been successful in luring Jordan out of the tent at night more than once. It could only be a matter of time before the pull is too strong for any of them to stop her.

“It uh, it would sustain him for years.”

“He wants to eat me?”

Jordan exclaims, crossing her arms around herself and somehow shrinking herself further into her coat.

“Your soul.”

Adam corrects unhelpfully, and Nate frowns at his friend in exasperation before turning to Jordan.

“You’re safe with us, though. We won’t let anything happen to you.”

“Not being able to see him does present a challenge.”

Adam continues on, barely noticing Jordan’s discomfort and the look that Nate is giving him.

“Oh, about that. I can see him because I have a pure soul as well. And you guys don’t. Human born and all that.”

Felix cuts in.

“So there is no reason to think that Detective Mills won’t be able to see him if she were to wake up as she approached him?”

“Well, I don’t know. He said that her soul is unique, not pure. Are you pure?”

Felix turns to Jordan with a small smirk on his face, and she grins in return and shrugs casually.

“This is not a joke!”

Adam raises his voice just slightly and they both turn back to him, their smiles fading.

“Regardless of whether she is able to see him or not, I’ve already stated that she will not be used as bait. We will have to find another way.”

“But I could-”

Adam holds a hand up to cut Jordan off before she can finish her sentence.

“We will find another way.”

“If one of you-”

“I said, we will find another way.”

Jordan just stares at him for a moment and he can tell that she’s fuming over being disregarded with such finality, but she seems to know any further argument on the matter would be pointless. Just the thought of deliberately sending her into harm’s way on the off chance that it could help them catch Erlking makes his stomach twist into a knot. He knows it’s probably the best shot they’ve got, but he finds that he’s completely unwilling to even entertain the idea enough to think it through properly.

Jordan eventually rolls her eyes and turns to walk away, linking her arm with Felix’s and dragging him along with her. Adam knows what’s coming before Nate even speaks and lets out a heavy sigh in anticipation.

“We may not think of another way. We may not have a choice.”

“There is always a choice.”

“I suppose, the other option would be to return home empty handed and explain to Agent Mills that we were unable to do what was necessary to complete our mission.”

“And you think she would approve of her daughter being used as a lure instead?”

“I can’t help but wonder Adam, if you are protective over Jordan because you don’t want to disappoint her mother or for a different reason altogether.”

Nate says quietly before patting Adam’s shoulder lightly and walking away. Adam watches after him with a frown on his face; not because he disagrees, but because it has suddenly dawned on him that this is why he was unwilling to acknowledge whatever feelings he may or may not have for Detective Mills in the first place.

--

Adam is finishing another patrol around their campsite just as the sun is beginning to set when the rest of Unit Bravo meet him beside the tent, Jordan tagging along behind looking oddly hesitant. He eyes the four of them warily and waits for one of them to speak.

“We’ve had an idea.”

Felix breaks the tense silence and Adam raises an eyebrow.

“We?”

“Jordan and me.”

“Jordan and I.”

Nate corrects, and even Adam gives him a somewhat annoyed look at the interruption.

“Anyway, we were thinking-”

Felix begins but cuts himself off short, throwing Nate a helpless glance. But before the other vampire can speak Jordan straightens, takes a deep breath, steps forward and finishes his thought for him.

“We were thinking one of you could, you know. Feed. On me.”

“Excuse me?”

Of all the things he’d thought she was about to say, of all the insane plans that Jordan and Felix could have come up with, this one hadn’t even entered his mind.

“Absolutely not.”

He answers before anyone can explain themselves and he sees Felix’s shoulders fall but Jordan seems to stand up straighter beside him.

“You could at least hear us out.”

Adam raises an eyebrow at her and crosses his arms over his chest.

“Fine. Explain your reasons to me.”

“She’s got the blood.”

Mason points at her with a nod, and Adam realises that they must have already discussed this between them while he was checking their surroundings.

“I am aware.”

“So, if one of you feeds, maybe there’s a chance it’ll give you enough of a boost to be able to see what Felix can see.”

Jordan finishes explaining and Adam shakes his head, repeating his first response.

“Absolutely not.”

“We thought you could start. Being the almighty leader or whatever.”

She adds, ignoring his refusal.

“Start?”

“Well, we thought if it all goes to plan with you, then…”

She pauses and looks around at Nate and Mason, who both avoid looking at both her and Adam.

“Well, then these two could, you know.”

Felix chuckles nervously, shifting his weight from foot to foot.

“You’re kind of making yourself sound like a keg.”

“We are absolutely not doing this. End of discussion.”

He shakes his head in disbelief that they would even suggest such a thing and starts to walk away from them, but a hand gripping onto his wrist stops him. He looks down at Jordan’s hand then back up at her just as she looks over her shoulder at the rest of them. Nate nods and leads Mason and Felix away, leaving them alone for a moment.

“You already have my answer, Detective.”

“Can you just stop being you for a minute and listen? This could help and you know it.”

“Whether or not it could help is irrelevant. I will not allow you to be used in the way that Murphy intended any more than I will allow you to be used as bait.”

He notices the shift in her posture, her mood, her everything at the mention of Murphy but she shakes it off and determinedly holds his gaze.

“This is completely different.”

“How?”

“Because I trust you. And because I’m asking you to do it.”

“You would trust me not to go too far and kill you? You would trust all of us that much? Literally with your life?”

“Yes.”

He studies her eyes carefully for a long while, trying to find a sign that she may be lying. He finds nothing but he can’t shake the unease that’s crawling through him at the thought of the three of them feeding from her.

Though at the same time, that same thought makes his eyes shift to her neck, the temptation too overwhelming for a split second for him to be able to hear anything other than her heartbeat for just a moment.

“You know it could help. You know we’ve got just as much chance with this as we do with anything else.”

“That is a last resort, and we are not at that stage yet.”

He replies after a slight hesitation, and then turns and walks away from her before she can say anything else to try and convince him. He cannot do this, he will not do this. The risk of one of them accidentally hurting her is too high, and none of them can be sure what effect Jordan’s blood will actually have on them. What if the boost in abilities brings with it an alteration of personality? What if the effect is not long lasting enough to do any good anyway, even if it works in the way they’re thinking it will. There’s no guarantee that it would make any of them be able to see Erlking.

He’s made the right decision, he’s sure of it.

--

It’s barely even a surprise to Jordan by now when she wakes up outside, half naked in Adam’s arms again with Mason, Nate and Felix shouting amongst each other in the distance. She slumps in Adam’s hold and he loosens his grip, his hands sliding to her waist to steady her as she stands to hold her own weight before slipping away entirely. Before she can turn to face him his arms are wrapping his coat around her and she snuggles into it, looking over her shoulder at him. He’s already watching her, concern written all over his face before an especially loud shout draws his attention up to the woods around them. Felix and Nate are yelling frantically and Mason is running towards them.

“Felix got him!”

He calls from a slight distance before turning and running back, presumably to help. Jordan lets out a long sigh of relief at the realisation that their mission is most likely over once Erlking is in Unit Bravo’s custody, and perhaps they can go home soon and everything can get back to normal.

Adam takes a few steps away before turning to look back at her, and she can tell that he’s itching to go and help but torn between wanting to be of use to his team and not wanting to leave her alone.

She opens her mouth to tell him that she’s fine and he can go when suddenly everything goes quiet and he turns away again with a frown on his face.

“Nate?”

He calls hesitantly, and there’s no answer but a moment later they can hear footsteps and Nate, Felix and Mason are trudging back towards them looking utterly dejected.

“He’s strong, and fast. He got away.”

Felix mutters and Jordan thinks for a moment that he actually looks as though he’s about to start crying.

“We have to try something. This isn’t working, Felix being the only one that can see what we’re supposed to be getting hold of.”

Mason looks pointedly at Adam who shakes his head, still sticking to his resolve.

“We can come up with something else.”

Even Jordan can hear how much weaker the statement is now than when he said it earlier. She sees her opportunity and takes it, spinning around to face him and wrapping his coat around herself more tightly against the cold.

“I want it to be you. But if you’re going to keep refusing, I’m going to get Mason to do it anyway.”

“You cannot-”

“I can, and I will. It’s my blood, it’s my neck, it’s my life. I think I should be where the buck stops, don’t you?”

“You don’t know what it is that you’re agreeing to.”

“No? You think I was just doodling in the back pages of the books all that time Nate had me cooped up in the study?”

“Excuse me?”

“I read up on this after Murphy, Adam. I know the risks, I know what I’m agreeing to.”

“Why would you have felt the need to research this at all?”

She scoffs out a laugh and gestures around them.

“In case something like this ever came up! I’m gonna tell you one more time, I want you to do this.”

“Perhaps it would be best for Mason-”

“No. I want you to do this.”

Adam looks away from her, his eyes searching the rest of his teammates for their reactions and Jordan looks over her shoulder at them to see them watching him hopefully. She’s not stupid, she knows that it’s something none of them probably want to do, but at the same time something that they’ve probably all thought about doing at one time or another.

She knows that he’s starting to cave, she knows that the temptation that they’ve all spoken of is probably immense and is clouding his decision. He’s probably well aware of how much her blood could potentially help the mission, only making the temptation greater. But she knows that he also prides himself on the control that he has over his own urges so this is probably an incredibly difficult situation for her to put him in.

“We need something, and it is entirely possible that this could help.”

Nate pipes up from behind her and she’s relieved that at least one other person seems to openly have her back on this and is willing to help her convince Adam. Finally he sighs, resignation all over his face as he gives a stiff nod.

“You need to rest. You need to sleep on this and we’ll make a decision in the morning if you still feel that this is the path you wish to take.”

He tells her quietly and she gives him a small smile before shrugging his jacket off. She hands it back to him and retreats into the tent to try and get the rest that she now knows she’s probably going to need desperately in preparation for tomorrow.

She isn’t sure why she’s so insistent that it be Adam who does this, but he was the first person she thought of when Felix had first (mostly jokingly) brought up the idea. He’s an asshole, there’s no question of it in her mind, but she’s only just realising that despite that he’s the one that she trusts the most out of Unit Bravo.

--

Tags: @admdmrtn @mmerengue @adamdumorpain @masonsfangs @oxjenayxo @bravomckenzie @daisydumortain Thanks for reading! Let me know if you’d like to be removed from/added to the tag list!

Soraya Roberts | Longreads | February 2019 | 8 minutes (2,357 words)

Halfway through Dirty John, the Bravo series based on the life of sociopathic con artist John Meehan, the titular character’s first wife, having discovered her husband of several years has been cheating and shooting up, meets one of his friends in a diner. Sitting stone-faced across from her husband’s grinning college buddy, she learns how “Dirty John” got his nickname through an ever-expanding laundry list of scams his classmates witnessed: being a “dog” with women, conning old people, credit card fraud, insurance fraud. She says nothing, but it’s clear from her face that she is getting progressively more enraged at this man for having repeatedly stood by and watched as the father of her children mistreated a succession of people. At one point, it seems to kind of dawn on the guy that the fruits of his failure to act might in fact be sitting right in front of him, so he issues a half-assed mea culpa: “I lived with him that year and we had good times, or whatever, but he never talked about things and I never asked.”

This is not the classic Bystander Effect, but it’s a variation that has become progressively pertinent within the current movement against sexual harassment and assault. The original Bystander Effect is a phenomenon that was named by social psychologists John M. Darley and Bibb Latané after the killing of Kitty Genovese in 1964. She was the 28-year-old New Yorker who became a symbol of urban apathy after The New York Times reported that 38 witnesses did nothing while she was attacked twice on her way home early one morning. The number of witnesses and their lack of response was later found to be exaggerated, but the story spurred Darley and Latané to stage a series of experiments publish their results in Journal of Personality and Social Psychology in 1968 under the headline, “Bystander intervention in emergencies: Diffusion of responsibility.” They observed that in the presence of an emergency, a person who does not intervene is not making a firm choice, but instead vacillating between the costs of helping — embarrassment, harm, time — and the costs of letting the victim suffer. When a group of people were observing the emergency, they discovered, the response was even worse — the more observers, the less likely any one bystander would respond. In the words of Darley and Latané, “given the presence of other onlookers whose behavior cannot be observed, any given bystander can rationalize his own inaction by convincing himself that ‘somebody else must be doing something.’”

But what if the onlookers aren’t strangers? What if they are friends of the perpetrator? Or the victim? This was the scenario with John Meehan, but also musician Ryan Adams, and a number of other men who have been accused of abuse over the past few years. While the “classic Bystander Effect” focuses on diffusion of responsibility, the version in which the victim or the perpetrator are known to the bystanders is a lot more complicated, according to Victoria Banyard. A psychology professor at Rutgers School of Social Work, she has been studying the response and prevention to interpersonal violence for more than 25 years. Colleges like hers have acted as incubators for bystander intervention training programs, boosted by the 2013 United States Campus Sexual Violence Elimination Act. And while sexual harassment training has proven to be largely futile (the men most likely to be perpetrators are the least receptive) engaging the community in bystander intervention training has been tremendously effective. “We are all responsible,” says Sharyn Potter, executive director at The University of New Hampshire’s Prevention Innovations Research Center. This is a paradigm shift, one she compares to the drunk driving initiatives of the ’80s, which suddenly flipped the onus from the driver onto the people around them: “It’s really getting to those people that changes the culture.”

***

Last week’s New York Times exposé on indie musician Ryan Adams had several women, including singer-songwriter Phoebe Bridgers, accusing the “To Be Without You” singer of emotional abuse. Bridgers told the Times that when she ended their brief romantic relationship, Adams flaked on his offer for her to open for him and withheld the music they recorded together. “Ryan had a network too. Friends, bands, people he worked with. None of them held him accountable,” she wrote on Instagram a few days later. “They told him, by what they said or by what they didn’t, that what he was doing was okay. They validated him. He couldn’t have done this without them.” Two days after her post, Adams’ guitarist, Todd Wisenbaker, apologized for his complicity. He explained, also on Instagram, that he “chose to believe [Adams’] insane version of the truth because it was easier than believing that anyone is capable of being this much of a monster.” It was reminiscent of the facts that later came out about Kitty Genovese’s neighbors: that very few of them saw what was actually happening, that many of them thought they were hearing a garden-variety lovers’ quarrel. In both cases, the perception was that there was no immediate cause for concern so there was no need to cause a fuss.

There are three main reasons bystanders don’t intervene: They fail to recognize the situation, they don’t feel a sense of responsibility, and they don’t feel they have the skills to effectively handle a problem if there is one. Wisenbaker’s reaction gets to the first one. “All of those things that contribute to the silencing of victims also can make bystanders go, ‘Hm, I don’t really know if this is a problem,’” says Banyard. There seems to be a particular blind spot with respect to sexual matters, the taboo around meddling in private matters mixed up with patriarchal holdovers about gender and consent. Not to mention the systemic disregard of abuse victims, which introduces a fourth reason for not intervening: fear of retaliation. “If survivors of sexual violation were believed and valued, across culture, society, and law, that in itself would be a major transformation,” feminist and legal scholar Catharine A. MacKinnon told The New York Times last year. The problem was exemplified in a study of the U.S. Army published that same year, which revealed that most soldiers intervened in some way when it came to suicide or substance abuse, but only half responded to sexual harassment. “Despite the many efforts made by the military to address sexual assault and harassment, 58% of those who report a sexual assault also report being retaliated against, and only 4% of cases result in conviction,” the CEO of the Service Women’s Action Network told CNN.

In this economy, it wouldn’t be far-fetched for employees to question whether it is within their job description to intervene, or if they should just keep their head down in an already precarious job market — while physical safety is a concern on the street, in the office there is the added concern of economic safety. In the Times’ feature on the complicity machine around Harvey Weinstein, Amy Israel, who worked as a head of acquisitions at Miramax, addressed this catch-22: “As a spectator to the abuse you were silenced by the fear that you would become the next target. The only alternative seemingly was to quit — to throw away everything you had worked so hard for and walk out the door.” Even though research shows that letting perpetrators get away with small infractions can lead to larger ones, in an environment that privileges hierarchy over safety there is clearly more motivation to keep quiet than to speak up. Then there are the intersectional factors — are you the only person of color accusing a white boss in an environment surrounded by white colleagues? Are you the only woman accusing a man in a world surrounded by men — what happens then? The experience of Predator star Olivia Munn provides an answer to the second: when she spoke out about working with convicted sex offender Steven Wilder Striegel last year, her male castmates bailed on her. Then there was Jessica Walters, drowned out during a Times roundtable by her male Arrested Development co-stars while discussing Jeffrey Tambor’s abusive behavior towards her. It was noteworthy — and perhaps predictable — that the only person who intervened on Walter’s behalf, Alia Shawkat, is a woman too.

Bystander intervention training involves teaching a person how to identify situations that require it, the various ways to intervene in said situations, and, finally, practicing the strategies that work for that particular person. Sharyn Potter of Prevention Innovations Research Center, which has provided violence prevention training for colleges and the military, says that intervention strategies change according to context. For instance, the way you would respond as a college student (maybe flicking the lights at a party, but not calling the cops because you’re drinking underage) would not be the way you would respond in the office as an adult (maybe by directly confronting a colleague). In both cases, training involves finding a way to intervene that is the most comfortable. “Not everybody can jump into a situation with a superhero cape,” Potter says, “but most of us can do something subtly.” This conjures the image of “Snackman,” the 25-year-old New Yorker munching on a bag of chips who went viral for wordlessly placing himself in the middle of a physical fight on a New York subway in 2012.

While Snackman appeared to be a natural at intervention, training can work just as well. In one study analyzing 6,000 college students across the U.S., participants reported two more instances of intervention in the months after being trained than those who were not. Rutgers’ Baynard thinks part of the reason for the increase is that trainees finally have the tools to be able to follow through. Still, for intervention to be really effective, the entire structure has to be changed. “It’s not enough to just go and train bystanders and say, ‘now you know what to do, go do it!’” Baynard says. “You have to also be training leadership, you have to be changing policy and you have to be changing those organizational norms.” This includes not only acknowledging the abuse of power — see Dirty John scamming retirees — but no longer normalizing it, so that our impulse is not to stand by and giggle at its violation, no matter how minor, but to feel responsible to stop it at source so that it doesn’t proliferate. Summing up the model scenario, Baynard provides a tangible goal for every workplace: “The person who’s going to step in is someone who recognizes the situation, sees themselves as having a sense of responsibility in that situation, has confidence and some degree of skill of what they might do, and is in a context where there are social norms that say helping and everyone taking a role in prevention is important and supported and retaliation against bystanders will not be tolerated.”

***

Towards the end of Dirty John, John Meehan’s first wife — the one who met with the friend who rattled off his scams — now divorced, takes her ex’s stash of stolen drugs to the police. The officer she meets is honest about how it looks, like she is a spurned spouse trying to pin a crime on an innocent man. “If you do look into John, you’ll see what this is, who he is,” she argues. “And if you don’t, well, he’ll just keep doing what he’s doing, but at least I’ll know I tried to stop him.” He does look into it and she returns again later to find out what he has uncovered. The cop proceeds to reel off several individuals who have already reported her husband. “Yep, a lot of people knew something was up with John Meehan,” he says, “the bad news is a lot of other people apparently kind of decided it wasn’t their problem.”

It’s the same dynamic that we are currently reckoning with — while Banyard confirms that bystander intervention is more common than generally believed, a lot of other people decide it’s not their problem. Some of these people, who failed to intervene before our recent cultural awakening around sexual violence, have retroactively apologized like the friend in Dirty John (though with far more sincerity). Besides Ryan Adams’ guitarist, there was the high-profile apology by screenwriter Scott Rosenberg, who worked with Miramax from the early ‘90s and admitted in a Facebook post that he and many others knew something about Harvey Weinstein (if not everything) and still did nothing. “Doesn’t being a bystander bring with it the responsibility of telling the truth, however personally disgraceful it may be?” he wrote in 2017. “You know who are. You know that you knew. And do you know how I know that you knew? Because I was there with you. And because everybody-fucking-knew.”

In the case of Weinstein and Bill Cosby and R. Kelly and Michael Jackson and so many other powerful men, suspicions were muffled by money. But even where there is no immediate gain, even if the perpetrator is a relatively small potatoes musician or a little-known con man from Orange County or even one of your coworkers who is not famous at all, it is always more comfortable not to risk being the one who ruins the party, the one who interrupts the passionate date, the one who is labeled the office rat. You’re not the one making the problem, so it’s not your problem, right? This is where a societal shift awaits: Instead of seeing yourself as an isolated individual and intervening as a way of potentially compromising yourself, you must see yourself as what you really are — a member of society, in which intervening is a way of saving not just on person, but all of us. And, anyway, you don’t have to act like a superhero, you just have to act in some small way. “In a way people wouldn’t even really notice,” says Potter, “but the person who is in the situation whose about to be victimized — or being victimized — will notice.”

* * *

Soraya Roberts is a culture columnist at Longreads.

Adam Stott cars

Coaching for Success

Coaching is perhaps the most efficient method of boosting efficiency available to supervisors, team leaders, and colleagues. This article specifies coaching and details a process for efficient coaching.

Coaching Specified

Coaching is maybe one of the most reliable technique of boosting performance offered to supervisors, team leaders, as well as colleagues.

If you desire to boost the abilities of your staff members, you have to intend to observe them and also provide them with responses. If you resemble many supervisors or supervisors, you have limited time as well as are seeking employees to become skillful-- and independent-- much faster.

Entelechy's Coaching Model is developed in order to help you do just that!

The Coaching Design is appropriate for establishing the abilities of employees if the worker agrees to boost. Coaching must not be utilized as a softer, gentler version of restorative action; if a performance problem occurs, you will certainly want to make use of the Problem Resolving design.

The Coaching Model is based on a number of crucial concepts:

1. There are 2 primary goals to coaching:

• To enhance efficiency.

• To assist employees obtain the ability to self-assess.

2. It is essential that the coaching sessions follow a foreseeable process. This will certainly assist the coachees really feel much more comfy and also unwinded, which will certainly help to guarantee they proactively take part in these sessions. It is because of this that we suggest that you share the coaching design with your workers prior to coaching.

3. Coaching is a organized advancement procedure and also ought to not be a shock.

4. The way you open the discussion sets the tone for what will adhere to.

5. After we open the conversation using our preliminary probe, we discuss positives initial and also locations for improvement last. Starting with positives first is motivational as well as achieves the following:

• The objective is to have staff members enhance their performance. If they are not in a favorable frame of mind, they will certainly not be open to this adjustment.

• Enhances good behavior and alleviate into the coaching session.

• Develops self-esteem.

6. Ending the coaching session with a conversation of areas for development guarantees that they are concentrating on those areas.

7. Always offer the coachee a chance to self-assess prior to you supply your understandings. Encouraging self-assessment declares for several factors:

• It urges improvement even when you are not coaching.

• It allows you to identify why the staff member might not be performing as wanted; they may unknown that they're doing something incorrectly.

• It builds self-confidence.

• It boosts the chances that habits will transform.

8. Reinforce correct self-assessment.

9. Delay or reroute improper or wrong self-assessment.

10. We focus coaching on only 2 staminas and two locations for development. Limiting the conversation is important and accomplishes the following:

• Boosts the coachee's capacity to get to effectiveness.

• Focuses on the most essential issues.

• Various other problems can be addressed after some development has been made on the most vital issues initially.

11. If an worker is not identifying locations that you determined (or has recognized them inaccurately), usage significantly details inquiries to allow the staff member to self-assess ideally. This enables you to determine if the employee doesn't know exactly what's expected, doesn't have the ability, or simply selects not to show the ability.

The Coaching Design at the workplace

Currently let's transform our focus on Entelechy's Coaching Design in practice.

Action 1: Open Up the Conversation

The coach opens up the discussion with a general inquiry; this helps the coach get a sense for the precision of the coachee's self-assessment. If the coachee responds with, "that was the most effective telephone call ever before" and you thought that the call was poor, you recognize that you'll need to readjust your coaching discussion.

Step 2: Probe of what Went Well

The coach asks the coachee what went specifically well and listens for the reactions. By identifying what worked out initially, a positive tone for the coaching session is set. We want to make certain that the coachee proceeds doing these things. This additionally compels the coachee-- NOT THE COACH-- to recognize superior efficiency.

Step 2a: Reroute or Delay

Sometimes the coachee will certainly raise a unfavorable when you're talking about positives. You will intend to defer that conversation until later in the coaching conversation by saying, "I want to speak about that more later on. What else went particularly well?"

Various other times, the coachee will certainly assert something as a favorable that-- in your point of view-- was an location that needs development. You will certainly want to redirect their understanding by explaining exactly what you saw that aided you wrap up that it was less than preferable. "Oh, really? Did you occur to see John's face when you went over the item's features? That's right, he appeared to lose interest when you started speaking about us instead of concerning him ...".

Step 2b: Support and also Build.

When the coachee correctly examines his performance-- both toughness as well as locations for development-- sustain the assessment by stating, "I concur." Construct from their conclusions to strengthen the precision of their self-assessment. This way, you are reinforcing among one of the most beneficial abilities anybody can get: the ability to examine and boost their own efficiency.

Action 3: Probe for Locations for Development.

The 3rd step is to ask the coachee what he would change if he can do it once again. Clearly, if the coachee understands exactly what could be improved as well as recognizes how to boost it, he will not take advantage of YOU informing him! As well as by emotionally rehearsing exactly what he will certainly do differently, the probability of him in fact executing the improvement is enhanced.

Many professionals concur that two or 3 areas for growth suffice for any individual to work on. Working with a laundry list of things to alter is irritating and futile. Focus on the areas of biggest demand.

When recognizing areas for advancement, the coachee could not have identified the one that you assumed was crucial. Once again, you can reroute their perception by determining what you saw that they might not have actually that enabled you ahead to your verdict. "I agree that the two areas that you determined would certainly had actually made the call go better. Just what do you assume the effect of your item function discussion got on the client? Why? What might you do in a different way the next time ...?".

Step 4: Summarize and also Assistance.

Even though you could have limited the coaching to a couple of strengths and also a pair areas for advancement, you will wish to briefly summarize the conversation, particularly just what the coachee will certainly do in a different way the next time. This recap will certainly trigger one of the most vital things to continue to be fresh in memory. You will likewise want to support the adjustments by claiming something like, "I think those changes will certainly make your following phone call go also better.".

Comply with these 4 actions to assist your employees and also coworkers enhance their efficiency. In the next problem we review the best ways to give feedback within the coaching structure.

( This info comes from Coaching for Performance, a component in Entelechy's High Performance Management program. Look into this component as well as our 40 various other components, training devices, and eGuides at www.unlockit.com.).

Adam Stott coach

Adam Stott cars

Coaching for Success

Coaching is possibly the most efficient technique of enhancing performance offered to managers, group leaders, and also associates. This short article specifies coaching and also lays out a procedure for reliable coaching.

Coaching Defined

Coaching is perhaps one of the most effective technique of boosting performance offered to supervisors, team leaders, and also associates.

If you desire to improve the abilities of your workers, you must intend to observe them and offer them with responses. If you're like the majority of supervisors or supervisors, you have restricted time and are trying to find employees to become proficient-- and independent-- much faster.

Entelechy's Coaching Model is created in order to help you do simply that!

The Coaching Design is appropriate for creating the abilities of workers if the staff member agrees to boost. Coaching needs to not be made use of as a softer, gentler variation of restorative action; if a efficiency trouble occurs, you will certainly want to use the Problem Resolving version.

The Coaching Design is based on numerous important concepts:

1. There are two primary objectives to coaching:

• To enhance efficiency.

• To assist employees get the capability to self-assess.

2. It is necessary that the coaching sessions comply with a foreseeable process. This will aid the coachees feel more comfortable and kicked back, which will certainly help to guarantee they actively join these sessions. It is for this reason that we suggest that you share the coaching design with your employees prior to coaching.

3. Coaching is a organized growth process and ought to not be a shock.

4. The way you open the discussion sets the tone for what will comply with.

5. After we open the conversation using our initial probe, we discuss positives very first and areas for improvement last. Starting with positives initially is motivational and also achieves the following:

• The goal is to have workers raise their performance. If they are not in a favorable mindset, they will not be open to this modification.

• Enhances etiquette and also reduce into the coaching session.

• Develops self-worth.

6. Ending the coaching session with a discussion of areas for growth makes certain that they are concentrating on those areas.

7. Constantly offer the coachee a possibility to self-assess prior to you use your understandings. Encouraging self-assessment is positive for numerous reasons:

• It motivates improvement also when you are not coaching.

• It permits you to determine why the staff member might not be carrying out as desired; they could unknown that they're doing something improperly.

• It builds self-esteem.

• It increases the opportunities that habits will certainly alter.

8. Reinforce appropriate self-assessment.

9. Defer or reroute inappropriate or wrong self-assessment.

10. We concentrate coaching on just 2 toughness as well as two areas for growth. Restricting the discussion is necessary as well as completes the following:

• Increases the coachee's ability to get to proficiency.

• Concentrate on one of the most crucial issues.

• Various other issues can be resolved after some progression has actually been made on the most crucial concerns initially.

11. If an worker is not determining locations that you identified (or has identified them improperly), use significantly certain questions to permit the employee to self-assess when possible. This allows you to identify if the worker does not know what's expected, doesn't have the ability, or merely selects not to show the ability.

The Coaching Model at Work

Currently allow's transform our focus on Entelechy's Coaching Model in practice.

Action 1: Open the Discussion

The coach opens up the discussion with a general concern; this aids the coach get a sense for the accuracy of the coachee's self-assessment. If the coachee responds with, "that was the most effective phone call ever before" and you thought that the call was poor, you understand that you'll have to change your coaching discussion.

Step 2: Probe wherefore Worked Out

The coach asks the coachee what went especially well as well as listens for the reactions. By identifying just what worked out first, a favorable tone for the coaching session is established. We intend to make sure that the coachee proceeds doing these points. This also forces the coachee-- NOT THE COACH-- to determine superior performance.

Action 2a: Redirect or Defer

Sometimes the coachee will raise a adverse when you're reviewing positives. You will want to delay that conversation till later in the coaching discussion by saying, "I 'd like to speak about that more later on. What else went particularly well?"

Other times, the coachee will declare something as a favorable that-- in your viewpoint-- was an area that requires advancement. You will wish to reroute their understanding by pointing out what you saw that assisted you wrap up that it was less than desirable. "Oh, actually? Did you take place to see John's face when you discussed the item's attributes? That's right, he appeared to lose interest when you started talking about us instead of regarding him ...".

Step 2b: Assistance and Develop.

When the coachee properly examines his efficiency-- both strengths as well as areas for growth-- support the assessment by stating, "I concur." Construct from their final thoughts to reinforce the accuracy of their self-assessment. By doing this, you are reinforcing among the most beneficial skills any individual can acquire: the ability to evaluate as well as improve their very own performance.

Action 3: Probe for Locations for Development.

The third step is to ask the coachee exactly what he would alter if he could do it once more. Obviously, if the coachee recognizes what could be enhanced and knows how you can improve it, he will not benefit from YOU telling him! And also by emotionally rehearsing what he will certainly do differently, the possibility of him actually carrying out the renovation is boosted.

Most specialists concur that two or 3 areas for development suffice for anyone to work with. Dealing with a laundry list of points to alter is aggravating and also futile. Focus on the areas of biggest requirement.

When recognizing locations for development, the coachee could not have identified the one that you thought was most important. Once more, you can redirect their perception by determining exactly what you saw that they might not have actually that allowed you to find to your verdict. "I concur that both areas that you identified would certainly had actually made the call go better. Exactly what do you believe the impact of your product feature discussion was on the consumer? Why? What might you do in a different way the following time ...?".

Step 4: Summarize and also Assistance.

Even though you could have limited the coaching to a couple of strengths and a couple areas for advancement, you will certainly want to briefly sum up the conversation, specifically just what the coachee will certainly do in a different way the following time. This recap will certainly create one of the most vital points to remain fresh in memory. You will additionally wish to support the changes by stating something like, "I assume those modifications will certainly make your following call go also much better.".

Follow these 4 steps to assist your employees as well as coworkers enhance their efficiency. In the next issue we go over ways to provide feedback within the coaching framework.

( This information comes from Coaching for Efficiency, a module in Entelechy's High Performance Administration program. Look into this module along with our 40 various other modules, training tools, as well as eGuides at www.unlockit.com.).

Big Cars

It was a bizarre example of modern politics overlapping with pop culture: The president quote-tweeted Kanye West, saying it was “very cool!” that the entertainer had called Trump “my brother” and that he thought the two shared “dragon energy.”

The moment was especially confusing for those who’ve followed — or have tried to follow — West’s zigzagging political allegiances since 2005, when he criticized then-President George W. Bush’s response to Hurricane Katrina, saying Bush “doesn’t care about black people.” West’s comments came a year after he achieved fame with the release of his debut album, “The College Dropout.”

West only recently returned to Twitter after nearly a year away and brought renewed attention to himself by voicing his feelings about the president. On Wednesday, the entertainer told his Twitter followers that he was fond of Trump — the president who called African countries “s—holes,” among other things  — writing that “you don’t have to agree with trump but the mob can’t make me not love him.”

“We are both dragon energy,” West wrote. “He is my brother. I love everyone. I don’t agree with everything anyone does. That’s what makes us individuals. And we have the right to independent thought.”

[Kanye West’s late registration of support for Trump has his fans watching the throne]

The cultural icon then scaled back a bit — but not too far back — after explaining that his wife, Kim Kardashian, had suggested he “make this clear to everyone.”

“I don’t agree with everything Trump does,” West said in the tweet. “I don’t agree 100% with anyone but myself.”

He tweeted a picture of a red “Make America Great Again” hat signed by Trump. (Trump liked that tweet, too.) Then he tweeted a picture of his phone displaying a screenshot of Trump’s tweet, which had been posted on Instagram.

He also tweeted a possible explanation for his admiration of Trump.

“Obama was in office for eight years and nothing in Chicago changed,” he wrote.

West has long been politically vocal. That’s clear from his song lyrics:

“I say f— the police, that’s how I treat ’em / We buy our way out of jail, but we can’t buy freedom.” (“All Falls Down,” 2004)

“I know people wouldn’t usually rap this / But I got the facts to back this / Just last year, Chicago had over 600 caskets / Man, killing’s some wack s—” (“Everything I Am,” 2007)

“And I’ll never let my son have an ego / He’ll be nice to everyone wherever we go/ I mean I might even make him be Republican / So everybody know he love white people” (“New Day,” 2011)

“Hands up we just doing what the cops taught us / Hands up we just doing what the cops taught us” (“Feedback,” 2016)

What’s not so clear is what, exactly, his ideologies are. He grew up with a left-leaning foundation, as his father was a former Black Panther, and his late mother was a professor at a historically black college. But his recent tweets suggest he’s become increasingly right-leaning, making him a target of the left.

Here’s a look at some of his past entanglements with politics:

2005: West suggests Bush is a racist

On Sept. 2, 2005, about four days after Hurricane Katrina ripped through New Orleans, West gathered with celebrities Leonardo DiCaprio, Claire Danes and Lindsay Lohan for “A Concert for Hurricane Relief,” televised on NBC, which raised a reported $50 million, according to Slate. West, frustrated by the government’s failure to help the hurricane’s victims, looked straight into a camera and said on live TV, “George Bush doesn’t care about black people.”

[embedded content]

West stood by his statement for several years, until, 10 years later, Bush called it the “all-time low” point of his presidency. West subsequently apologized to Bush, who forgave him.

The show’s producers told Slate in 2015 that West going off script was a historic moment. But that’s not how they viewed it back then.

“I remember hearing the words that were coming out of his mouth and looking down at the script and [thinking], ‘This is not — this is not going well,’ ” Frank Radice, the show’s senior producer, told Slate. Radice then had a second thought. “I remember saying [to someone], ‘It was good TV.’ ”

2009 (and again, in 2012): Obama calls West a ‘jackass’

Former president Barack Obama dropped the epithet not once, but twice. The first time was after West famously stormed the stage at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards, interrupting Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech for her Best Female Video win to say that Beyoncé should have won instead. Obama called West a “jackass” behind the scenes of a CNBC interview, a video of which was leaked and went viral on YouTube.

[embedded content]

Kanye responded a year later in an interview with “XXL.”

“Obama has way more important stuff to worry about than my public perception. He was trying to pass the health-care bill. And if he said that to relate to the room or lighten the room up and the whole mood, then I’d be more than happy to be the butt of all of his jokes if it in some way helps his overall mission,” he said.

“I’m a soldier of culture. I’m resilient. I’m sure I’ll still beat him in basketball,” he added.

Then, in 2012, Obama again called West a “jackass,” after Atlantic Monthly reporter David Samuels asked him during an interview, “Kanye or Jay-Z?”

“Jay-Z,” Obama told Samuels. “Although I like Kanye. He’s a Chicago guy. Smart. He’s very talented.”

Samuels then asked, “Even though you called him a jackass?”

“He is a jackass,” Obama answered. “But he’s talented.”

2016: West’s wife endorses Hillary Clinton

In 2015, West’s wife, Kardashian, declared her allegiance to Clinton via selfie. A year later, reports emerged that the reality TV star was thinking of voting for Trump instead after Caitlyn Jenner — who was married to Kardashian’s mother and spoke at the Republican Party’s convention — encouraged her to reconsider.

But Kardashian stuck with Clinton, who she said supported the issues Kardashian cared about, such as “gun control and protecting women’s rights to safe and legal abortion.”

“I’m with her,” Kardashian wrote on her website. “I believe Hillary will best represent our country and is the most qualified for the job. This year, I’m not just voting for myself, but also for my children, and I took that into careful consideration when I made my decision.”

Saturday: West embraces Candace Owens

Less than a week after returning to Twitter, West appeared to endorse red-pill YouTuber Candace Owens, an African American Trump supporter who regularly criticizes Black Lives Matter. When activists protested a speech she gave last week at the University of California at Los Angeles, she accused them of embracing victimhood by focusing on slavery and the systemic racism of the past, according to The Washington Post’s Eugene Scott.

“It’s embarrassing. You’re not living through anything right now. You’re overly privileged Americans,” she said.

She later tweeted about the protesters: “They’re a bunch of whiny toddlers, pretending to be oppressed for attention.”

West on Saturday tweeted, “I love the way Candace Owens thinks.”

I love the way Candace Owens thinks

— KANYE WEST (@kanyewest) April 21, 2018

“It is not clear what West’s intent was in voicing support for her,” Scott wrote. “But if the hope was that West’s endorsement would grant her worldview some validation among black voters, particularly millennials and those who supported the South Side Chicago native long before he moved to Southern California to join forces with Kim Kardashian, perhaps it was misplaced.”

On Sunday, West tweeted nine videos from Scott Adams, who became famous for creating the cartoon “Dilbert,” and who also claimed that rape is a “natural instinct” of men and that society is a “virtual prison for men’s natural desires.”

Wednesday: Wait! West loves Hillary, too

Soon after West posted his initial tweet supporting Trump on Wednesday, he decided to give a shout-out to Hillary Clinton as well.

If your friend jumps off the bridge you don’t have to do the same. Ye being Ye is a fight for you to be you. For people In my life the idea of Trump is pretty much a 50 50 split but I don’t tell a Hillary supporter not to support Hillary I love Hillary too.

— KANYE WEST (@kanyewest) April 25, 2018

But West continued to praise Trump. If his pro-Clinton tweet was an attempt at toeing the line, it didn’t appear to work.

Read more: 

Rapper Kanye West calls Trump ‘my brother’ — ‘very cool!’ Trump responds

‘The mob can’t make me not love him’: How Kanye West joined the pro-Trump Internet

Kanye West’s 6 ridiculous Twitter eras, from water-bottle hate to ‘Stop playing chess with life’

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‘We Are All Responsible’: How #MeToo Rejects the Bystander Effect

Soraya Roberts | Longreads | February 2019 | 8 minutes (2,357 words)

Halfway through Dirty John, the Bravo series based on the life of sociopathic con artist John Meehan, the titular character’s first wife, having discovered her husband of several years has been cheating and shooting up, meets one of his friends in a diner. Sitting stone-faced across from her husband’s grinning college buddy, she learns how “Dirty John” got his nickname through an ever-expanding laundry list of scams his classmates witnessed: being a “dog” with women, conning old people, credit card fraud, insurance fraud. She says nothing, but it’s clear from her face that she is getting progressively more enraged at this man for having repeatedly stood by and watched as the father of her children mistreated a succession of people. At one point, it seems to kind of dawn on the guy that the fruits of his failure to act might in fact be sitting right in front of him, so he issues a half-assed mea culpa: “I lived with him that year and we had good times, or whatever, but he never talked about things and I never asked.”

This is not the classic Bystander Effect, but it’s a variation that has become progressively pertinent within the current movement against sexual harassment and assault. The original Bystander Effect is a phenomenon that was named by social psychologists John M. Darley and Bibb Latané after the killing of Kitty Genovese in 1964. She was the 28-year-old New Yorker who became a symbol of urban apathy after The New York Times reported that 38 witnesses did nothing while she was attacked twice on her way home early one morning. The number of witnesses and their lack of response was later found to be exaggerated, but the story spurred Darley and Latané to stage a series of experiments publish their results in Journal of Personality and Social Psychology in 1968 under the headline, “Bystander intervention in emergencies: Diffusion of responsibility.” They observed that in the presence of an emergency, a person who does not intervene is not making a firm choice, but instead vacillating between the costs of helping — embarrassment, harm, time — and the costs of letting the victim suffer. When a group of people were observing the emergency, they discovered, the response was even worse — the more observers, the less likely any one bystander would respond. In the words of Darley and Latané, “given the presence of other onlookers whose behavior cannot be observed, any given bystander can rationalize his own inaction by convincing himself that ‘somebody else must be doing something.’”

But what if the onlookers aren’t strangers? What if they are friends of the perpetrator? Or the victim? This was the scenario with John Meehan, but also musician Ryan Adams, and a number of other men who have been accused of abuse over the past few years. While the “classic Bystander Effect” focuses on diffusion of responsibility, the version in which the victim or the perpetrator are known to the bystanders is a lot more complicated, according to Victoria Banyard. A psychology professor at Rutgers School of Social Work, she has been studying the response and prevention to interpersonal violence for more than 25 years. Colleges like hers have acted as incubators for bystander intervention training programs, boosted by the 2013 United States Campus Sexual Violence Elimination Act. And while sexual harassment training has proven to be largely futile (the men most likely to be perpetrators are the least receptive) engaging the community in bystander intervention training has been tremendously effective. “We are all responsible,” says Sharyn Potter, executive director at The University of New Hampshire’s Prevention Innovations Research Center. This is a paradigm shift, one she compares to the drunk driving initiatives of the ’80s, which suddenly flipped the onus from the driver onto the people around them: “It’s really getting to those people that changes the culture.”

***

Last week’s New York Times exposé on indie musician Ryan Adams had several women, including singer-songwriter Phoebe Bridgers, accusing the “To Be Without You” singer of emotional abuse. Bridgers told the Times that when she ended their brief romantic relationship, Adams flaked on his offer for her to open for him and withheld the music they recorded together. “Ryan had a network too. Friends, bands, people he worked with. None of them held him accountable,” she wrote on Instagram a few days later. “They told him, by what they said or by what they didn’t, that what he was doing was okay. They validated him. He couldn’t have done this without them.” Two days after her post, Adams’ guitarist, Todd Wisenbaker, apologized for his complicity. He explained, also on Instagram, that he “chose to believe [Adams’] insane version of the truth because it was easier than believing that anyone is capable of being this much of a monster.” It was reminiscent of the facts that later came out about Kitty Genovese’s neighbors: that very few of them saw what was actually happening, that many of them thought they were hearing a garden-variety lovers’ quarrel. In both cases, the perception was that there was no immediate cause for concern so there was no need to cause a fuss.

There are three main reasons bystanders don’t intervene: They fail to recognize the situation, they don’t feel a sense of responsibility, and they don’t feel they have the skills to effectively handle a problem if there is one. Wisenbaker’s reaction gets to the first one. “All of those things that contribute to the silencing of victims also can make bystanders go, ‘Hm, I don’t really know if this is a problem,’” says Banyard. There seems to be a particular blind spot with respect to sexual matters, the taboo around meddling in private matters mixed up with patriarchal holdovers about gender and consent. Not to mention the systemic disregard of abuse victims, which introduces a fourth reason for not intervening: fear of retaliation. “If survivors of sexual violation were believed and valued, across culture, society, and law, that in itself would be a major transformation,” feminist and legal scholar Catharine A. MacKinnon told The New York Times last year. The problem was exemplified in a study of the U.S. Army published that same year, which revealed that most soldiers intervened in some way when it came to suicide or substance abuse, but only half responded to sexual harassment. “Despite the many efforts made by the military to address sexual assault and harassment, 58% of those who report a sexual assault also report being retaliated against, and only 4% of cases result in conviction,” the CEO of the Service Women’s Action Network told CNN.

In this economy, it wouldn’t be far-fetched for employees to question whether it is within their job description to intervene, or if they should just keep their head down in an already precarious job market — while physical safety is a concern on the street, in the office there is the added concern of economic safety. In the Times’ feature on the complicity machine around Harvey Weinstein, Amy Israel, who worked as a head of acquisitions at Miramax, addressed this catch-22: “As a spectator to the abuse you were silenced by the fear that you would become the next target. The only alternative seemingly was to quit — to throw away everything you had worked so hard for and walk out the door.” Even though research shows that letting perpetrators get away with small infractions can lead to larger ones, in an environment that privileges hierarchy over safety there is clearly more motivation to keep quiet than to speak up. Then there are the intersectional factors — are you the only person of color accusing a white boss in an environment surrounded by white colleagues? Are you the only woman accusing a man in a world surrounded by men — what happens then? The experience of Predator star Olivia Munn provides an answer to the second: when she spoke out about working with convicted sex offender Steven Wilder Striegel last year, her male castmates bailed on her. Then there was Jessica Walters, drowned out during a Times roundtable by her male Arrested Development co-stars while discussing Jeffrey Tambor’s abusive behavior towards her. It was noteworthy — and perhaps predictable — that the only person who intervened on Walter’s behalf, Alia Shawkat, is a woman too.

Bystander intervention training involves teaching a person how to identify situations that require it, the various ways to intervene in said situations, and, finally, practicing the strategies that work for that particular person. Sharyn Potter of Prevention Innovations Research Center, which has provided violence prevention training for colleges and the military, says that intervention strategies change according to context. For instance, the way you would respond as a college student (maybe flicking the lights at a party, but not calling the cops because you’re drinking underage) would not be the way you would respond in the office as an adult (maybe by directly confronting a colleague). In both cases, training involves finding a way to intervene that is the most comfortable. “Not everybody can jump into a situation with a superhero cape,” Potter says, “but most of us can do something subtly.” This conjures the image of “Snackman,” the 25-year-old New Yorker munching on a bag of chips who went viral for wordlessly placing himself in the middle of a physical fight on a New York subway in 2012.

While Snackman appeared to be a natural at intervention, training can work just as well. In one study analyzing 6,000 college students across the U.S., participants reported two more instances of intervention in the months after being trained than those who were not. Rutgers’ Baynard thinks part of the reason for the increase is that trainees finally have the tools to be able to follow through. Still, for intervention to be really effective, the entire structure has to be changed. “It’s not enough to just go and train bystanders and say, ‘now you know what to do, go do it!’” Baynard says. “You have to also be training leadership, you have to be changing policy and you have to be changing those organizational norms.” This includes not only acknowledging the abuse of power — see Dirty John scamming retirees — but no longer normalizing it, so that our impulse is not to stand by and giggle at its violation, no matter how minor, but to feel responsible to stop it at source so that it doesn’t proliferate. Summing up the model scenario, Baynard provides a tangible goal for every workplace: “The person who’s going to step in is someone who recognizes the situation, sees themselves as having a sense of responsibility in that situation, has confidence and some degree of skill of what they might do, and is in a context where there are social norms that say helping and everyone taking a role in prevention is important and supported and retaliation against bystanders will not be tolerated.”

***

Towards the end of Dirty John, John Meehan’s first wife — the one who met with the friend who rattled off his scams — now divorced, takes her ex’s stash of stolen drugs to the police. The officer she meets is honest about how it looks, like she is a spurned spouse trying to pin a crime on an innocent man. “If you do look into John, you’ll see what this is, who he is,” she argues. “And if you don’t, well, he’ll just keep doing what he’s doing, but at least I’ll know I tried to stop him.” He does look into it and she returns again later to find out what he has uncovered. The cop proceeds to reel off several individuals who have already reported her husband. “Yep, a lot of people knew something was up with John Meehan,” he says, “the bad news is a lot of other people apparently kind of decided it wasn’t their problem.”

It’s the same dynamic that we are currently reckoning with — while Banyard confirms that bystander intervention is more common than generally believed, a lot of other people decide it’s not their problem. Some of these people, who failed to intervene before our recent cultural awakening around sexual violence, have retroactively apologized like the friend in Dirty John (though with far more sincerity). Besides Ryan Adams’ guitarist, there was the high-profile apology by screenwriter Scott Rosenberg, who worked with Miramax from the early ‘90s and admitted in a Facebook post that he and many others knew something about Harvey Weinstein (if not everything) and still did nothing. “Doesn’t being a bystander bring with it the responsibility of telling the truth, however personally disgraceful it may be?” he wrote in 2017. “You know who are. You know that you knew. And do you know how I know that you knew? Because I was there with you. And because everybody-fucking-knew.”

In the case of Weinstein and Bill Cosby and R. Kelly and Michael Jackson and so many other powerful men, suspicions were muffled by money. But even where there is no immediate gain, even if the perpetrator is a relatively small potatoes musician or a little-known con man from Orange County or even one of your coworkers who is not famous at all, it is always more comfortable not to risk being the one who ruins the party, the one who interrupts the passionate date, the one who is labeled the office rat. You’re not the one making the problem, so it’s not your problem, right? This is where a societal shift awaits: Instead of seeing yourself as an isolated individual and intervening as a way of potentially compromising yourself, you must see yourself as what you really are — a member of society, in which intervening is a way of saving not just on person, but all of us. And, anyway, you don’t have to act like a superhero, you just have to act in some small way. “In a way people wouldn’t even really notice,” says Potter, “but the person who is in the situation whose about to be victimized — or being victimized — will notice.”

* * *

Soraya Roberts is a culture columnist at Longreads.

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