#even though I don’t entirely blame Jill either
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BEST FRIENDS COUSIN
part 2 here!
sidney prescott x fem!reader
summary: you and jill decide to sneak out during a sleepover at her house, however, sidney’s been extra protective with ghostface on the loose. this causes some pent up feelings between you and sid to be let out.
warnings: swearing, age gap (readers 18-22 and sid’s 32), a little suggestive towards the end but nothing more than that,
It was another Saturday night spent at your best friend, Jill’s, house. However, this time was different. Jill’s cousin was staying at her house until the new ghostface was eventually killed off again. You didn’t mind it that much but Jill wouldn’t stop brooding about being a prisoner in her own house.
You couldn’t blame Sidney for taking the extra precautions, she was just trying to look out for her cousin and everyone involved, but you and Jill wanted to go out and have some fun.
It was far after sunset so you both knew that Sidney wouldn’t be checking on you both for another couple of hours if she wasn’t already sleeping. Leaving the house wouldn’t get you killed. You weren’t safe staying in the house either anyways; ghostface always gets in if he wants to.
You and Jill climb out of her window and jumped down, landing in a bush. It wasn’t too far of a jump. Unfortunately, you and your friend didn’t currently have a car, so walking was the only option.
“If Sidney finds out that we snuck out she’s going to throw a fucking fit,” Jill said, however, not seeming as if she cared too much about being caught.
“She’s just trying to look out for us. It’s…nice.”
Jill looked over at you and smirked, then looked away and rolled her eyes. She looked completely amused by what you said, but you were utterly confused. “What?”
She shook her head, smiling.
You nudge her shoulder and continued with the nagging, “Jill, what?”
“You are so in love with my cousin it’s becoming insufferable,” she laughed at the thought of the entire situation. Maybe Jill had realized your feelings for Sidney before you even had. Either way, you were too embarrassed to ever even admit how you felt.
“Shut up! Am not!”
As you both playfully argued with each other, headlights hit you both from behind as you walked. You hardly even had a second thought about it.
“You pretty much said it yourself at dinner just with your eyes! Or maybe; You’re so brave, Sidney. I loved your book Sidney. Sidney, Sidney, Sidney,” Jill continued to tease, and just then did a very familiar car pull up beside you both.
You both looked over into the vehicle and your heart fell to your ass when you saw the woman inside. Sidney, Sidney, Sidney.
“Girls, what the fuck! Get in the car.”
Jill rolled her eyes in a typical teenage manner. She didn’t seem too worried about being caught. And maybe you wouldn’t have either if it weren’t for the need to stay on Sidney’s good side.
You both hopped in, both deciding to sit in the back to make it far less awkward. She turned the car entirely around and began to drive back home.
It was silent for a few minutes, and all you wanted to do was get back to the house and get to bed, avoiding this situation until the morning. Eventually, though, Sidney began with her scolding, “Did you guys not witness your own friend being murdered just the other night. Did that not phase either of you?”
“Don’t start overreacting again,” Jill mumbled under her breath. The entire car still heard it.
“Sorry that Sidney fucking prescott is overreacting when a serial killer with a ghostface mask is going around killing again,” she sighed, and you noticed that her grip on the wheel was tight. Her hands seemed shaky. “Who knows what could’ve happened if I hadn’t picked you guys up right now.”
A huge part of you felt terrible. You just wanted to go out and have some fun. You hadn’t even thought about the consequences of it.
The excruciatingly long car ride -that was truly only 5 minutes but felt like hours- finally came to an end. You all safely made it back into the house. When you and Jill tried running back upstairs, you were specifically stopped.
“Y/n, stay here for a minute. Jill, go to your room. And stay there.” Jill went back up with a huff, not wanting to argue and make the situation worse. However, your heart started racing so fucking fast and your hands began to sweat. Sidney Prescott makes you so nervous in the best ways.
“Really y/n? I didn’t expect this from you. Jill…maybe, but you?” This wasn’t your first day meeting Sidney. You’ve been friends with Jill forever and have met the older woman on multiple occasions. She knew you well.
“I just wanted to go out and forget about all this shit. I really didn’t even think about ghostface or how we could’ve been attack. I’m sorry.” your apology sounded truly genuine. After seeing your friend get murdered from Jill’s bedroom window, you didn’t even want to think about any of it.
Sidney didn’t say anything. She slowly walked closer towards you. So close that you could feel her body heat, could hear her soft breathes and feel it against your face. It was certainly taking a lot of self control to not just pull her even closer.
“Are you really sorry?” she asked, and now she was smirking. She didn’t seem too angry anymore. “Or are you just trying to please me?”
How could you answer that when your words got caught up in your throat? When your ability to breathe was somehow ripped away from you?
“Answer me, baby,” she put her fingers beneath your chin so you really couldn’t look away now. “Are you sorry, or do you just want to make me happy?”
“No. I’m not sorry,” you finally said, strongly. Your voice is surprisingly confident. “What are you going to do about it?”
She stared intently in your eyes. She really didn’t give a fuck about what happened tonight anymore. All she wanted was you right now.
She leaned forward and finally kissed you. And that’s why, you realized, she wanted Jill to go upstairs. To get you all alone. To finally have a chance to have you.
The kiss was hungry and passionate, filled with so much desire shared between the both of you. It just felt so right. You could feel her body slowly moving against your and her fingers getting tangled in your hair.
You let out a whiny whimper when she lightly tugged on a strand of your hair. So gentle but she made everything feel so good. She finally pulled back. You didn’t want her to stop but you noticed that you really needed to breathe when you were both panting.
She got closer to your ear. So close that her lips brushed against it as she spoke and your entire body trembled, “Now are you gonna be a good girl for me?”
#scream#sidney prescott#sidney prescott x reader#neve campbell#neve campbell x reader#wlw#lesbian#scream fanfic#jill roberts#jill roberts x reader#scream 2#scream 3#scream 4#scream 5#scream 6
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TUA Season 2 Thoughts
Okay, I know I’m extremely late to the game here, and I’m sure a lot of people have already touched base on the good and bad moments of this season; so I promise that the bad points that I do touch upon, will be short cause I do want to focus on what I loved.
First and foremost, I want to say that I did love season 2 with my whole freaking heart! I was ooooooh so very wrong with a lot of my predictions (and right in others *cough* Lila *cough*) but as I continued watching, I couldn’t bring myself to care (not too much anyway, there were a few things I was mad at, but meh).
I loved seeing Hazel and I loved that the big oaf at least got 20 years with Agnes before she finally passed on. While I wish we could have seen snippets of that life and love rather then just flash backs to them in season 1; I’m still happy that Hazel got to live his life the way that he wanted to live it. Sure, I wasn’t happy that they killed him off, but for plot purposes it made sense—but on a lighter note, at least he could cross over into the afterlife and be happy with Agnes again. Right?
Elliott is a hoot and I feel so bad that he died. All that poor man wanted was validation that he wasn’t crazy (which he got) and for someone to eat his damn Jell-O (I love ambrosia btw, but even I wouldn’t eat that ambrosia he made… sorry Elliott).
The sibling interactions between ALL OF THEM!!! JUST AHHHHHHHHHH!!!!! It’s everything I could have hoped for and then some!!! The slap fight between Klaus and Ben on the street, Ben’s “You’re so independent, you fight your own damn battles”. Five and Luther reuniting “She’s too young for you” “Dad should have left him on the moon” (I snort laughed at both of these sentences). Then there’s Klaus and Allison reuniting, Allison not even hesitating to jump into the pool to hug her brother. OR THE WHOLE FAMILY REUNION!!! That Vanya and Allison hug! That hug as Klaus joined in and planted a kiss on the top of Vanya’s head!!!! The whole interaction between Allison and Diego “Can’t say Hi to anyone?” just omg, I could go forking on and on with this, because the banter and snappy comments from all of them are just total sibling culture and I relate sooooooooo much to it. (best believe I will jump on someone’s back like a damn spider monkey to protect my siblings, but I’d also sooner shank them too)
RAYMOND AND ALLISON!!!!! I’m ALLLLLLLLL FOOOOOOR THIS RELATIONSHIP!!!!! LIKE OMG!!!!!! WHY DIDN”T SHE TAKE HIM WITH HER!!!!! THEY ALREADY SCREWED THE TIMELINE UP ENOUGH BY JUST EXISTING THERE IN 1963 ANYWAY!!!! Like seriously, I’m actually upset that she didn’t take him with her, and now it looks like her daughter doesn’t even exist either… like omg Allison, sweet heart. Nooooooo.
I LOVE Luther’s development this season, the fact that he goes to apologize to Vanya, and actually takes blame for what happened, just makes me happy to know that the big lug is trying. Yea I know he took the gun with him, but honestly, I can’t blame him either. He was obviously scared and didn’t know what he would walk into, would she try and kill him again? Like we know the gun wouldn’t do sh*t to help him, but Luther wasn’t sure of that. Plus he never actually pulls it, his hand is constantly on it, but he never pulls it out, which shows that hurting her was not the end game. He wanted to actually apologize and he hoped that his sister would hear him out enough to allow him to do it.
I loved sissy and vanya. The friendship that turned to romance was cute, and while I’m still iffy with it because Sissy was married, I also understand to a small degree that Sissy truly felt stuck. Even without Vanya’s interference, I highly doubt Sissy would have been able to get a divorce and manage to keep possession of her son. Carl is an absolute bag of d*cks, and with Carl having a brother in the police force, who’s to say that they couldn’t spin something that would allow them to take Harlan away from her? I honestly can see a divorce between these two getting messy and none of the outcomes working in Sissy’s favor. She would have never been happy inside or outside of her marriage. But Vanya gave her the hope that she might actually find it. (IDK, I’m still really on the fence with it, and the infidelity, but I can’t say I didn’t enjoy Sissy/Vanya’s cute little moments while it lasted…)
Also, can I just say, Sissy blowing the scent of coffee into Vanya’s sleeping face, was truly and utterly adorable and such a dorky thing to do and I loved it.
ALL OF THE KLAUS AND ALLISON INTERACTIONS!!!! ALL OF THEM!!!
THAT SALON SCENE!!!
THAT DANCE AT THE SALON!!!
Also, not going to lie, Odessa was a bad ass b*tch and I love and will protect that woman as much as I will love and protect Raymond Chestnut. I don’t even care that Odessa was only in a few episodes, that woman stole my damn heart and I truly would have loved to see more scenes with her and Allison and the friendship they had.
The elevator ride going up to the light supper, the freaking conch shell, and the siblings’ interactions during the whole thing (Allison rumoring Diego to punch himself, and Vanya’s cheeky “oops” after showing off her powers, just *chefs kiss*).
Ben and Vanya!!! I FORKING CRIED!!! I had to bloody pause the damn episode because my tears were getting in the way of me watching!!!! (trust me, there was a long moment of silence for Ben after that.)
All of them piling into Vanya’s car on her way to save Harlan. That entire scene was a masterpiece “Child get in the back” followed by Klaus just flopping on top of Diego and Allison, like OMG!!! And Luther… poor Luther “If I hear one fat joke, I’m out”
Everything to do with Five and Older Five was hilarious. I’m sorry call me immature, but the fart jokes were funny (even if they did start to get old after a while). Also, poor Luther, once more. We stan one lousy spotter but a brother who tried his forking best anyway.
Luther being a big (little) brother and covering Allison AND Klaus during the hail of bullets.
Klaus being observant and noting things long before anyone else. Like even at the end, when Vanya was taking her power back, everyone else was watching her but not Klaus. He kept glancing around himself while also taking in the scene periodically. There is something there, I can forking feel it. Between that pill scene in season 1, him looking up to the moon with no reason to do so, him spotting The Handler and Lila, him knowing/guessing that Lila can only mirror one power at a time—despite never actually fighting her himself—it all has to add up to something??? RIGHT???
I didn’t think I would like the Swedes… yet here I am putting them in this column. Still mad that they killed Hazel (but as Five told Lila, the job was a job, it was never anything personal). They hardly had any lines at all but their personalities alone and the little things we saw were just… what the hell but I still loved it. haha.
I CAN”T WAIT TO SEE IF WE LEARN MORE ABOUT THE OTHER CHILDREN MYSTERIOSULY BORN!!!!! Like I wanna see the sparrow academy kids, but I hope we might learn about a few others too. Like how many of those kids didn’t make it? How many of those kids were born with a twin? Were their any triplets??? Like can you imagine that poor woman who had to give birth to not one child, but two that she didn’t have an hour ago??? (and possibly three even though I doubt there were any triplets… but what if there forking was!!!)
SPARROW BEN!!!! WHAT THE HELL!!!! I mean, I’m glad Justin is staying on the show, he’s awesome and I do like Ben, but I’m a bit sad that this won’t be the Ben we’ve seen in the last two seasons (I’ll still eat it up, don’t get me wrong, cause I’m curious to see this alternate Ben, but I’m still sad).
Also that Vanya and Diego interaction at the end, neither of them having to say anything but still leaning on each other for support, just AHHHHHHHH
The sibling bonds that have begun to form between all of them is what really killed me this season and I loved each and every second of it!!!
All the one-liners were pretty good too, like the “Ikea mafia” “Think of Batman than aim lower” “Is it too late to be un-adopted?” just efgjoiwengjowegnwrjngwe
Vanya actually using her powers to save someone, and Ben solidifying that fact by telling her she isn’t a monster.
the music choices!!!!
I’m sure I will add more to all of this in another post, I’m still forking reeling over here and can’t get all of my thoughts straight, but goddamn I loved this season! Dysfunctional idiots—the lot of them. But at least they were making dysfunctional decisions together XD
Okay, now for the things I didn’t like…
Again, I’ll be brief cause I know that there are probably plenty of people who have touched on this already and I’m sure you all are sick of seeing or hearing it by now (so feel free to skip over it all together).
Klaus not telling his family SEVERAL TIMES that Ben was there.
Ben possessing Klaus without his consent (and Ben breaking the rules that Klaus had put into place as Ben nearly got frisky with Jill)---like I can’t even say I’m mad that he possessed Klaus at the light supper. I didn’t like it, it made me uncomfortable, but from Ben’s perspective I understood it. to Ben, he felt like he didn’t have a choice, Klaus had constantly taken Ben’s choice away by not telling the family he was there, so if Klaus wasn’t going to tell them on his own, Ben had no choice but to try and do it himself. I get that, I did. But the whole “Burrowed” scene in the elevator made me cringe something fierce.
The fact that we get Klaus looking badass in the first five minutes of the season, and then Klaus basically being useless the rest of the season, pissed me the ever-loving fork off. I mean, come on!!! EVERYONE ELSE FOUGHT LILA!! WHERE THE HELL WAS HE!??? I’m hoping this is all just setting Klaus up to be something greater in the next season, that maybe now that Ben is gone Klaus will have no choice but to relay on himself and tap into that “Potential” that Reginald had hinted at in season 1 (my fingers are soooo crossed that this is the case)
Not getting their reactions to Ben sacrificing himself (I needed more then just seeing Klaus lying forlornly on a bed, I’m sorry, but I definitely needed more than that). Klaus and Vanya’s interaction in the car did not make up for any of it either.
I don’t know where to put my thoughts on Lila and Diego. While I liked them in the beginning, their relationship kinda lost me the moment she spiked him and basically kidnapped him. I like Lila, don’t get me wrong, but that scene made me really uncomfortable too.
The interactions with the Handler and Five. Like okay, I get that the Handler isn’t treating him like a child because basically Five is supposed to be 58, but it’s still forking creepy to see her swaying her hips behind Five who is stuck in his 13-year-old body. Just… no.
The fact that we only see Allison mentioning her daughter 2 times. Like sure, she’s had 2 years to grieve, but I want to see that grief!!!!
How the show tied Sissy and Vanya’s story line up, and how they tied Allison and Raymond’s story line up… like nooooooo. How the hell would Sissy be safe in the past???? Carl’s brother was a forking police officer??? Does she seriously think his brother isn’t going to come after her when he learns his brother is dead????? Also how is Raymond supposed to explain that he suddenly doesn’t have a wife anymore???? These things don’t just fix themselves!!! Like I understand Five saying they couldn’t come, that it could change things beyond repair, but all seven of them existing in 1963 in the first place has already forked everything up enough as it was.
(Ignore me, I’m just salty that we won’t be get any more Raymond/Allison interactions…)
Anyway, negatives pushed aside, I can’t stress enough how i did love the season!!! And I can not wait to see where season 3 goes!!! I HONEST TO GOD CAN NOT WAIT!!! In the mean time, I will be attempting to write several things for season 2… fix-its, in between moments, whatever I can think of. Let’s see where that goes.
#tua#the umbrella academy#tua spoilers#tua s2 spoilers#spoilers#my thoughts#likes and dislikes#i'm late to the game#oof#but at least i still watched it
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Roller Coasters and Popsicles
So, I’m back. This is the first story I’m going to be posting today. Keep sending me requests. I’m getting all of them and I’m working on them. I’ve got most of the ones that are in my inbox jotted down into my notebook. You guys can send me ones for certain players too. I get a lot of requests for baby R on the USWNT, and I love those, but I don’t want you guys to feel like that’s all I write.
prompt: I love your writing my dude!! If you don’t mind could you write one where Reader is the youngest on the USWNT and also the smartest and goes to Harvard. She’s always ranting about random stuff to the team and one day after a hard practice she’s ranting about something random. But someone snaps at her and so she never does it again. Flash forward and everyone notices she doesn’t talk as much and they all feel bad cuz they were just tired and didn’t mean to make their baby feel bad.
warnings: Swearing.
words: 1879
(Y/N) POV
It was weird being for me to actually be preparing for the World Cup. I had been with the national team since I was 17, but it was still hard for me to grasp now that I was an 18-year-old soon-to-be 19-year-old. The team was really easy to get along with for the most part. I was sure that it was mainly because the team saw me as the baby and they just loved being overprotective.
With a family as big, weird, and dysfunctional as we were, it wasn’t too surprising to me that they loved to be overprotective. The whole team could be that way with all of the younger players. Because of that, I always had to remind them that I didn’t want them to go easy on me.
“Come on, Sonnett. You haven’t been able to stop me all day,” I ran past the defender after getting another ball into the goal. I was aware that it wouldn’t be this easy to get a goal at the World Cup.
Sonnett grumbled as we both ran to get set up again. Jill had us scrimmaging today and I wanted to take advantage of going up against the women who made up the best team in the world. Especially since I was the only one on the team that was in college. It was why I had to give every practice everything I had, and I couldn’t allow the others to go easy on me.
Practice never got harder when I went against Sonnett and it didn’t completely surprise me when she had to stay back and talk with Jill. I waited around for her since we normally sat together on the bus. When Sonnett got out of the shower, I joined her side as we were the last two heading to the bus.
“You should get a popsicle,” I said causing Sonnett to look at me. “I eat popsicles all the time after I have a rough practice or game. Always helps me. I guess that’s why I keep eating them.”
“I don’t want a popsicle, (Y/N),” Sonnett said. I slowly nodded and I didn’t blame her. I only had popsicles after I had rough games or practices because it was something my Dad had started to do with me.
“Did you know that popsicles were created by complete accident?” I asked as I knew my eyes had to light up like they always did when I got to tell anyone about the facts that I knew. “A boy named Frank Epperson created the first one on accident in 1905 when-”
“I don’t care about your stupid facts, (Y/N)!” Sonnett cut me off as I looked at her. “I don’t care that you know everything that you do, (Y/N)! I don’t care that you go to Havard! And I don’t care that you’re the smartest one here! If I wanted to know the fucking history behind popsicles, I would have asked Siri instead of you. At least she isn’t as annoying.”
I ducked my head down as I refused to let her see the tears that the harsh words were brought to my eyes. Sonnett stalked on ahead of me as I wiped at my eyes before pulling my headphones out. I pulled them on so that the others on the bus wouldn’t talk to me on our way back to the hotel. Sonnett climbed onto the bus before I did and I saw her sitting by Lindsey, so I slid into a seat by myself upfront.
I was the first one off of the bus when we pulled up to the hotel. I kept my head down as I headed into the hotel with my headphones still on. I just wanted to get to my room to take a nap before we went out for team dinner.
Tierna POV
I sat next to (Y/N) throughout dinner, but it seemed like I was the only one who she would talk to. She stayed pretty quiet throughout dinner. The most surprising was that we hadn’t gotten any of her weird facts that we normally heard from her.
“You ok?” I nudged (Y/N). She looked at me a little confused but nodded. “Haven’t heard any facts from you tonight.”
“Guess I’ve just run out,” (Y/N) shrugged. I furrowed my own brow in confusion as (Y/N) turned back to listen to what Pinoe was saying. I couldn’t help through the rest of the night as I paid a bit more attention to (Y/N). She wasn’t even talking a lot much less telling anyone her little weird facts we had started to know her by.
I stuck close to the younger college player when we headed back to the hotel. I noticed that she was also hesitant to hang out with the rest of us. She did drift closer to Tobin and even A.D. throughout the night. It wasn’t entirely surprising since (Y/N) was closer with the Thorns players on the team since she grew up in Portland so she was in Portland all the time when she wasn’t at Harvard. It was a little surprising, however, that (Y/N) avoided Sonnett and, by extension, Lindsey.
Eventually, Alex forced (Y/N) to head to bed. Alex turned to have me make sure that (Y/N) got to bed since we were sharing a room this camp. I had assured her that (Y/N) would get to bed before 1:00 am. (Y/N) didn’t even seem like fighting the bedtime that Alex had set for her. (Y/N) just seemed off.
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“Has anyone else noticed the change in (Y/N)?” I asked as I sat down at the large table to eat breakfast. It was our day off and (Y/N) had decided to sleep in today so, I was leaving our room when she was getting up. It was the best time to bring up the unusual behavior from (Y/N) last night. Everyone turned their attention to me.
“What are you talking about?” Kelley asked. I was a little surprised that Kelley and Alex hadn’t noticed the change in (Y/N). The two of them had named themselves as (Y/N)’s moms on the team.
“She didn’t talk a lot last night,” A.D. pointed out.
“So, (Y/N) didn’t talk last night, that’s not unusual,” Crystal said. I rolled my eyes because it seemed that no one else had noticed the change in (Y/N).
“I didn’t hear a fact out of her any last night after dinner,” Tobin said.
“She didn’t say any during dinner either,” I added to draw the attention back to me. “When I asked her about it, she said that she had run out of facts.”
“(Y/N) ran out of facts to tell us?” Kelley asked causing me to nod my head. “Impossible. She’s like the encyclopedia of weird facts.” Alex put a hand on Kelley’s shoulder so that Kelley would lower her voice.
“So what happened?” Alex asked. Sonnett winced when that question was asked, and I wasn’t the only one to notice.
“What did you do?” Kelley turned to Sonnett. It was a little weird to see Kelley trying to get to Sonnett. She would have if Alex wasn’t holding her back. We were all looking at Sonnett. But Sonnett seemed like if she wasn’t sure if she would tell us what had happened or not. “What did you do, Emily?”
“I didn’t mean to. It just happened,” Sonnett defended. Alex let go of Kelley so that the older defender could get into Sonnett’s face.
“What did you do?” Kelley’s voice dropped and we could hear the anger in Kelley’s voice.
“I had a bad day yesterday and I took it out on (Y/N),” Sonnett said. Most of us were throwing glares at Sonnett. Kelley opened her mouth to probably ask Sonnett what exactly had happened, but she didn’t need to. “I couldn’t stop her yesterday at practice and afterward she told me that I should get a popsicle before trying to tell me how popsicles were created.”
“What did you say?” Alex asked with a glare pointed at Sonnett. It was obvious how much Kelley and Alex cared about (Y/N).
“I told her that I didn’t care about her facts or that she went to Harvard,” Sonnett ducked her head down. Some of the others launched their food at the defender in question.
“You’re a dumbass,” Ash called out. Ali slapped Ash’s shoulder but kept a glare pointed at Sonnett.
“You can’t just fucking tell someone that, Emily,” Pinoe added. The others were nodding in agreement. Some that were closer to Sonnett, made a point to hit the defender.
“You’re going to fix this,” Kelley hissed. Sonnett looked up at the older defender. “I don’t care how, but (Y/N) better be her normal self by dinner.”
(Y/N) POV
Today had been a little weird as most everyone on the team had come through to spend some time in mine and Tierna’s room until the past hour. There was a knock on the door and I was going to ignore it, but whoever it was wouldn’t stop.
“I’m coming,” I called out as I rolled out of my bed. I opened the door without looking through the peephole, and I tried to shut the door when I saw who was on the other side. Sonnett stopped me from shutting the door.
“I’m sorry, (Y/N),” Sonnett immediately said. I was still trying to shut the door as she was pushing to keep it open. “I brought you some popsicles since you probably had a bad day after what I said.”
I stopped pushing the door and leaned my head against the door. I groaned but I held my hand out for the popsicles. Sonnett put the box in my hands and I looked at it. Sonnett stayed outside the door. I pulled the door open some more so that Sonnett would come in.
“I shouldn’t have said what I did yesterday,” Sonnett started. “Your facts are stupid and I do care about hearing them. I do care that you go to Harvard. You’re probably the smartest person on this team, you know.”
“Why did you say those things?”
“I had a rough day yesterday. You were just easy to take it out on,” Sonnett looked away from me. I couldn’t help but think that I was the cause of that as well, though. I shut the door as I turned and got back into my bed. I opened the box of popsicles and held one out to Sonnett. Sonnett took the popsicle before joining me on the bed. I smiled before picking out my own popsicle.
“Tell me something.”
“You know how roller coasters were created?” I didn’t have to wait for Sonnett’s shake of her head because I knew that she didn’t. “They were invented to distract Americans from sin.”
Sonnett shook her head in disbelief. I smiled because she seemed like she really wanted to know about the fact. I couldn’t help but tell her about the history of roller coasters before going back and finishing the history of popsicles as we ate through the box of popsicles.
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How often had Chihiro been mistaken for a girl by futas or other guys? Have they tried breeding him?
More times than you think; and more times than the programmer could actually recall. Not that he could actually blame any of them. Since it was entirely his choice in wanting to dress up and act like a girl. How could people not assume he was of the opposite gender?
One of the said futas was none other than Toko, or rather, Genocide Jill herself. Who refused to believe in a sense, that Chihiro was a boy. Even after the boy himself had shown his dick out of desperation. Claiming that he was nothing more than a small dick futa. And that ‘she’ should be punished for trying to lie to her like that.
Before Fujisaki knew it, he was pinned down to the ground. Held in place by Jill’s scissors. The mass-murdering psycho was quick to tear off Chihiro’s skirt and panties despite the programmer’s protest. Though any other words were silenced by the woman’s massive cock flopping down on the femboi’s petite, yet shapely rear. The heat radiating off it was enough to send shivers up Chihiro’s spine. A sense of panic filled his chest as Toko began rubbing her length between his asscheeks, knowing full well what was coming next. Any pleas that he tried to spew fell on deaf ears; feeling Jill spread his ass wide. He gnashed his teeth, his eyes shrinking with agony as Jill’s cock plunged into his tight little asshole. Barely a few inches made its way into the programmer and already Chihiro felt like his ass was being split in to from the sheer girth. Before the boy could even catch his breath, Jill started moving. Driving her hips down on the boy, each violent thrust forcing more and more air out of Fujisaki’s lungs as his insides were being rearranged. Any attempt to scream or beg for her to stop was replaced by a choked cry and sob of agony. His own cock, hard from the unwanted stimulation, flopped back and forth, smacking against the murderer’s heavy balls while Jill had the boy pinned down by his shoulders. The arched position allowing the futa to pump her cock deep into his depths as much as she wanted. “Damn, I gotta say, out of all the petite girls I’ve fucked. Your ass is by far the tightest.”
The boy couldn’t answer, focusing more on breathing and not passing out from the intensity of the brutal assfucking. Clawing against the ground, drool ran down his chin, as his eyes started rolling into the back of his head. A stab against his prostate enough to send the boy over the edge as a cry managed to tear out of her throat. Echoing throughout the entire room as he came. Shooting his load all over the floor, his cock twitching and spasming uncontrollably. Jill couldn’t hold back either, once she felt the boy’s ass squeeze around her cock, it was over for her as well. Trapping the supposed girl in a headlock as she erupted with her own torrent of hot creamy spunk. Letting out a blissful sigh as her cock throbbed with its release, Chihiro’s ass milking it nice and perfectly.
“Fuck~ yeah, you’re TOTES better than all the other girls I’ve fucked.” Jill moaned out, “I don’t know what’s your secret, but I think I’m gonna keep ya around for my own little fun from now on.”
Pulling out, she allowed Chihiro to slump to the ground, spewing the last of her jizz all over the boy’s small back.
Jill winked at the unconscious programmer. “See ya around cutie, hope you learn your lesson about lying about your gender.”
With that, the Mass Murderer left, leaving an unconscious to stew in her own sauce and hilariously ironic statement.
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I Miss My Lover Man
@pranking-masters
Jillian sat with her knees pulled up to her chest in the corner of her ratty old couch, watching the smoke slowly rise from the half smoked cigarette between her fingers. She had smoked a few times here and there when she was younger but she had stopped when Harry was born, wanting to think of his health and be careful around him. But with Harry gone and most everyone she loved dead, why should she care for her health? She had picked the habit back up about a week after James and Lily died, having been too distraught up until then to even remember what a cigarette was. Remus tried to talk her out of it, to tell her that Lily had been so proud of her when she had quit. Her response, as she had so eloquently put it on that cold November day, was ‘Lily’s dead, it doesn’t matter anymore...nothing matters anymore.’
She often wondered if that statement had been part of why Remus had left, wondered if he had gone away because he didn’t think he mattered to her at all anymore. It wasn’t that she stopped caring about Remus that day, it was the opposite in fact. She adored him so completely, he was all she had left, but it felt so much easier to cut herself off from the world that day. Lily died, James died, Peter died...and Sirius was to blame for it all. And not only had he betrayed their dearest friends, put their god son in danger, but he had killed all those muggles in the process. If he did it at all. No, he had to have done it. The Ministry had been so sure of it, especially Barty Crouch Sr. Well, then again, he wasn’t all there, was he?
Barty Crouch Sr was a man hell bent on revenge, though she wasn’t quite sure what crime had been committed to make him so hell bent on such a mission. He was a wizard drunk on his power and authority in a time of extreme chaos. Hell, the man had even locked away his own son under the accusations of having been involved in the torture of Alice and Frank Longbottom. God, that was an entire other can of worms she didn’t want to open. Alice and Frank were her friends, and even thinking about them or hearing their names made Jillian’s chest feel tighter. When they had been attacked she knew the world had truly fallen apart, since even the fall of Voldemort had not ended the pain to their people. Damn the LeStrange family. And to think, if her mother had gotten her way, she would have been married to Rabastan as soon as she graduated. Thank Merlin for her rebellious nature. But...it wasn’t that alone that saved her, was it? No, it had been Lily and James, it had been Peter and Remus. It had been...it had been Sirius.
Jillian swallowed thickly and took another drag of her cigarette, a long one that lasted so long she was surprised the entire thing didn’t burn out. She held the smoke in her lungs for so long it made her chest burn, preferring the physical pain in her body over the pain in her heart and in her soul. She sniffled softly, another tear rolling down her cheek as she flicked the ashes off of her cigarette into the tray she had balancing on the arm of the sofa she sat on. “You were doing so well,” she heard from the corner of the room. Jillian tensed at the sound of the overly kind voice ringing in her ears. It wasn’t real, it wasn’t true, it was all in her head. “You promised me you wouldn’t do this anymore,” the voice said again, a flash of red hair catching Jillian’s attention. She turned her head to see Lily standing in the corner of the room, her arms behind her back as she leaned on the wall.
“And you promised me you would be safe. Guess we’re both liars,” she said bitterly, watching as Lily sighed heavily and shook her head. Lily always accused Jillian of being the dramatic one, which was mostly true, especially when she and Sirius got together. But Lily was partial to her own form of dramatics as well, she just wasn’t as theatrical about it as Jillian and Sirius were, not even as much as James really.
“I didn’t do that on purpose. This, this you are doing on purpose,” Lily said, pushing herself off the wall and slowly walking over to the sofa before sitting on the other side, Jillian not hesitating to take notice of the fact that she didn’t feel the weight in the sofa cushions shift. “Jilly...you have to stop punishing yourself for what happened.”
“I can’t,” Jillian responded quickly, not daring to look at Lily as she stared at the dwindling cigarette in her hand. “I should have been able to save you. To save James and Peter and Harry...to stop Sirius,” she choked out. “He was my responsibility, just like James was yours. I...I should have been there. It should have been me, not you.”
“Jilly Bean…” Lily whispered softly before Jillian cut her off.
“No! It's true. You were always more useful to the Order than I was. Your potions were stronger than mine, you were better with people than me, you were a better soldier than I was...you were smarter than me. And if I was smart like you, you would still be,” she said softly.
“That isn’t how it works and you know it,” Lily said firmly, causing Jillian to glance over at her. She was exactly how she remembered her. A face full of freckles, hair as fiery as her heart and green eyes as piercing as a sword. She wouldn’t have it any other way. “Even if you had been there, you couldn’t have saved me. You couldn’t have saved James. And Peter, well I wasn’t there for that but if all those muggles didn’t stand a chance then neither did he, so don’t you go feeling responsible for his death either,” she chastised.
Jillian stiffened as Lily talked about Peter, his sweet face flashing behind her eyes as she slumped further into the couch. “And as for Harry...well it turns out he didn’t need saving,” Lily said. And even though Jillian wasn’t looking at her, she could hear the smile in her voice. “That little boy made it out of the impossible. And he is going to be the strongest of us all someday. And if you don’t quit smoking, if you don’t take care of yourself and get out of this hell hole for a little while, you won’t be there when he needs you. Because Jill, he will need you. He will need you to guide him and love him, to protect him and take care of him because his father and I can’t,” Lily reasoned.
Jillian shifted as if uncomfortable, like she was trying to curl in on herself to keep away from Lily because she thought touching her might make her vanish. “I miss you,” Jillian said softly, barely above a whisper. “I miss talking to you.”
“We’re talking right now, Jilly,” Lily pointed out with a tilt of her head.
“You’re not real. You’re in my head...a figment inside my mind.”
“Well, of course I am,” Lily said, her smile brightening a bit as she spoke, making Jillian turn her head in confusion. “But why should that mean it isn’t real anyway?”
Jillian felt tears balancing on her lower lashes before shaking her head, laughing softly. “I hate you,” she said.
“No you don’t,” Lily responded smoothly. Just like old times.
“No...I don’t,” Jillian agreed, leaning her head back on the couch as she watched Lily. “I still miss you though.”
Lily smiled, knowingly almost, like how a mother would look at a child. “I miss you too.”
Jillian watched Lily with an ache in her chest, wishing she could just reach out and grab her hand. Lily always had soft hands, she wasn’t sure why she remembered that. Maybe it was because it fit so well with her gentle nature. Just like how she remembered James always had the best hugs and Peter always had the biggest appetite. “Jilly,” Lily said, causing Jillian to look up from her hands to her face. “We aren’t all gone, you know.”
Jillian sighed and nodded “I know. I don’t mean to push Remus away I just...it's so hard to be a person around him when I worry maybe he blames me too. Even if he did, he would be too kind to say it,” she pointed out.
Lily shook her head “He doesn’t and you know it. You two need each other, you should call him,” she pointed out. Jillian nodded but didn’t say anything, almost ashamed to know that she was right. Remus wasn’t the only one at fault here, she was too. “And Sirius isn’t dead you know...he can still come home.”
Jillian flinched at the sound of his name as something tickled her mind, her head shaking “He betrayed you.”
Lily shook her head and sat up a little bit better “You’ve been in love with him since we were fifteen years old, you know there isn’t an evil bone in his body. It's just me and you here, you can be honest...do you really believe he did it?” she asked slowly.
Jillian swallowed thickly as her mind fell back to every beautiful moment she had ever had with Sirius, every moment where he had ever made her feel loved and beautiful. Each kiss, every time they made love, the way he whispered in her ear, even down to the look in his eyes when they held each other at night. That man wasn’t evil, that man wasn’t heartless, that man wasn’t a murderer. That man would never betray his friends. Jillian’s lower lip trembled as she shook her head “N-No,” she admitted. “I-I think it just...it’s easier for me to blame him. To say he did it rather than to think he...to think he is suffering in there for no reason. To think you...whoever betrayed you will never be brought to justice.”
“But do you still trust him?” Lily asked plainly.
Jillian felt a sense in her stomach that told her the answer to that one clearly. “W-With my life.”
“And do you still love him?”
That one was easy. “Always.”
Lily slowly smiled again and nodded once, standing up from the couch, as if she was going to leave. “Then stop smoking. Because when Sirius gets out of prison, and that stubborn ass will get out, he will need a healthy girlfriend to take care of him. One that will fight by his side to get my son back. It’s going to be a long road, you should travel it with him. I wouldn’t have traveled the road I went down without James. Don’t go down this one without Sirius. Or without Remus. Harry will need all of you.” Lily nodded her head once and turned as if she was walking away towards the hall, causing Jillian to sit up quickly and press her cigarette into the ashtray, moving it to sit on the coffee table.
“Lils!” she said hurriedly, standing up but not following her because it wouldn’t do any good. She watched Lily turn around, catching those green eyes again. “What if I’m wrong?” she asked. “What if I’m wrong and he did it and I love him still?”
Lily smiled warmly, shaking her head as if she had said something silly. “I know you better than anyone. You wouldn’t love a monster. And you adore him. You’re not wrong. He didn’t do this to me. But he is the only person who can help you find whoever did. He needs you, and you need him.” And like that, Lily seemed to fade right in front of her eyes. Jillian felt an ache in her stomach as she whimpered, holding her stomach as she fell back onto the couch, curling her legs up underneath of her. She was crying too hard to hear the front door opening, and even if she had heard it, she didn’t think she would believe it was real at this point considering her dead best friend just came to give her relationship advice.
No, none of it mattered now. And as Jillian cried into the couch, her body trembling and her heart broken, she realized that at the end of it all nothing had changed. She was all alone.
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Resident Evil Revelations Review
For this review I'm going to be referring to this game as "ReRe".
Let's get one thing out of the way, this was a game made for the 3DS then was ported over to other systems so it's obviously going to be smaller scale making a lot of the stuff not really something to blame it on, it's the core that I'll be judging as if I were playing it in its intended way.
I really only have Resident Evil 2 Remake and a little bit of Resident Evil 4 to go off of for reference but this was one of the ones that I was most interested in, which is kind of ironic but oh well. I finished RE2 and was craving more RE and I found the demo for ReRe on Steam. Imagine my surprise when I heard Michelle Ruff as Jill, I was already sold on the game, the question was "What platform?" Because I could get the ReRe 1 & 2 bundle on Switch, but I tried the RE5 demo on there and I didn't like the control scheme and I really don't like the control scheme for it on Steam, it was the same with RE4, I even tried plugging in my PS4 controller and it thought left was up and up was left, I couldn't change any of it in the settings either, just the keyboard and mouse ones, so here I am with a PS4 copy.
As you probably know, this game is split up into episodes, similar to that of Alan Wake. Each episode has its own levels, so you could start as Jill then go over as Chris for example in order to display different sides of the stories. I actually kind of like this because with RE2, I always felt like I NEEDED to do the next thing in order to save, it works for a game like this, better than Alan Wake especially considering that you only played as Alan and it was only one side of the story. But it's not so split up that it resets your inventory, you keep your herbs and your ammo (or lack thereof).
A lot of people complain about the scanner and how it gets repetitive and that it should've just stayed on the 3DS but let me say that I love when a game uses the controller, whenever you use it, the controller makes little robotic sounds, same with when Parker calls you on the com, I adore it. It makes me feel motivation to try and get that S rank at the end of each mission because it's basically the same as taking pictures. On top of that, it's night vision, so you can just use it to look around, sometimes you find hidden handprints, it's really neat. And the stuff that you scan, nets you percentage points so whenever you scan a specific type of enemy, it'll register it and once it reaches 100 then you geta herb! Which is a cool system, different from previous games with the mixing and such, here, there is just one type of herb and you can still pick it up on its own if need be.
(concept art)
Let's talk about the setting. The idea that this is "Resident Evil on a ship!" sounds intriguing but limited, given the background of the early games but I beg to differ. I really like the idea of a ship being your environment, there are chapters where you play in other places at different times too so it never feels too familiar. It isn't just aimlessly walking, trying to get in the next room either, there are set objectives and it shows you where to go (not that it's all that hard to find anyway) because it's split up into sections, normally you'll only explore one or a few sections per episode so yeah it is easier in that sense but I'm fine with that. It goes away from the formula but the elements are still there, just not as much, there are still keys to rooms that you have to unlock and then you have to backtrack. I really like the ship itself too, I was in awe when I got to the Clock room, I love it, I'm a bit of a nerd for pirates and stuff so it's right up my alley (apparently there are even pirate skins you can unlock!). Just look at the way the helm spins whenever the next door unlocks and takes you down that elevator.
They even have a solid level just dedicated to swimming, which sounds pretty bad but the swimming controls are actually good and I found myself immersed and tilting with the camera. Now those pirate skins are unlocked using Raid Mode. What is that? Well, you go around various stages of the game just shooting, take out as many enemies as you can, balls to the wall. The bonus stage unlocked after beating the campaign is the "Ghost Ship" which is basically the entire ship that you speedrun in order to unlock the pirate skins I mentioned (why is it always so difficult...) In a way, I have to appreciate this mode because while I might not be as handy aiming with a PS4 controller versus a mouse, it's kind of fun to run around, choosing your own weapons, infinite ammo and just wailing on enemies (I don't like that for any campaign but for a bonus mode it's fine.)
Now some of the characters because you can actually play as a lot of them here.
I've never got the chance to play as Chris before but now I'm really glad I did, I completely understand. I always hear that he's the butt end of a joke but people still like it. He's a muscle-headed Chad, that only thinks about the mission, he's not a character, he's a tool but dang does that make him likable. At one point, he’s trying to unlock a door through a computer and I’m like “You sure HE’S the one that should be doing that?) I think Jill ends up doing it anyway, Jessica is well aware of his obliviousness though, it actually makes for an interesting dynamic.
Parker isn't my favorite. He's there to be there really, sometimes I need support and he'll shoot that last zombie but that's about it. Raymond...for some reason, I like Raymond?? I mean, he's like a red-haired Casey Neistat.
Jessica is kinda funny because she's half and half like Chris. I thought she'd be super serious but "Parker better get me dinner!" Also speaking of half and half, she has one pant leg, the other one is bare?? Ok? The characters are cheesy, much like a tv show but I love them. I would've liked a little more Rachel though.
The final boss is actually pretty dumb, he has a weak point but he lasts way longer than he should, the previous chapter's boss was much more fun. As for the alignment of a survival horror game versus an action game, this one is more closely aligned with an action game but I would beg that it's more connected to survival horror than others such as RE5 or 6. The game isn't terribly long, my play-through was a little over 5 hours but I enjoyed it for what it was and again, it's a 3DS game.
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I Always Knew
Steve Rogers X Bucky Barnes
Steve laughed bitterly, taking off his glasses to wipe away the tears that had begun to slide down his cheeks. Bucky wanted to reach over and wipe them away for him, to show him that he wasn’t completely alone.
a/n:this is my submission for @capcountdownchristmas, i got the quote “You’re being ungrateful!” hope you guys enjoy!
tw:alcoholism references, cheating, fluff at the end at least!
Steve was known to go over the top with decorations, they were usually scattered around the apartment he shared with both Sam, and Bucky. The other two men didn’t mind so much, as long as it didn’t affect them personally. So when they came home and found the apartment clean, with absolutely no decorations whatsoever, it was quite a shock. Surely Steve knew that it was after Thanksgiving, and that he was allowed to decorate.
“Do you think he forgot or something?” Sam looked around the living room, as if he could find the answers there.
“We’ve known the man since we were kids Sam, he didn’t forget that Christmas is a few weeks away.” Bucky stepped over to the fireplace, electric as it was cleaner than an actual fireplace, noticing a few things were missing.
Steve had put a picture of himself with his mom, and Peggy, back before she’d lost her battle with cancer and left Steve to be on his own. A loud crunch echoed in the otherwise silent apartment as Bucky turned to face Sam. The frame had been thrown onto the ground, glass shattered against the dark wood.
“What the hell?” Bucky knelt down, pushing aside the broken glass to pull the photo out of the now broken frame.
“Isn’t that the last picture Steve had with his mom?” Sam abandon his search and headed over to where Bucky was, glancing over his shoulder.
“Yeah, so why the hell was this on the floor?” Bucky knew damn well that it couldn’t of magically fallen off.
The frame was sturdy on top of the mantle, they’d done enough stupid shit in the past that could’ve easily knocked it off, and nothing had, so what changed? Luckily the photo inside looked to be completely fine, except for the fact that Peggy was no longer in the photo.
“Oh shit.” Bucky handed the torn picture over to Sam, sighing more to himself than anything.
It was obvious what had happened, and this wasn’t something either of them were trained to handle properly. Bucky had seen Steve go through nearly everything in his life, had been the one to help pick up the pieces when his mother passed. This though? Bucky wasn’t ready to deal with it just yet.
“It doesn’t sound like he’s home, he probably left after he threw the frame, and tore the picture up.” Sam shook his head, setting the photo down onto the coffee table.
Alpine, Bucky’s little furball of a cat, had perched himself in the middle of the couch, curled up in a comfortable ball, watching the two adults try and figure out what to do.
“We need to talk to him, figure out what happened.” Bucky could already feel a headache forming, running his hands through his hair with a long sigh.
“Trust me, I know, but I’m afraid of how he’s going to react to all of this.” Sam merely shrugged, stepping around to go into the kitchen.
Alpine perked his head up, meowing softly as Bucky reached over to pet him gently. Sometimes he wished he could talk to Al, figure out what he should do with his life so he didn’t feel so lost.
“Buck, I don’t think he left.” Sam’s voice, although quiet, was loud enough to gain his attention.
Bucky headed over, picking up the sound of what seemed to be someone sobbing. Shit, had Steve been home this entire time? Listening to them discuss what was going to happen when they had to confront him?
“Give him some space for now, if we go in there he’s gonna be pissed, and I’m not gonna be on the receiving end of Steve’s anger.” Sam had a point, whenever Steve was upset he tended to cry first, and get unbearably angry second.
It wasn’t going to be easy though, not if Bucky planned on trying to figure out what even set Steve off in the first place. If this had anything to do with Peggy, Steve was going to be a wreck for a while. They were inseparable, and it seemed like things hadn’t ended as pleasantly as everyone had expected.
“I gotta do something Sam, I can’t just let him wallow in his own self pity, he’d hate us for letting him do that.” Bucky frowned, watching as Sam’s brow rose nearly to his hairline.
“I’m sorry, did you just say you wanted to go help Steve whose most likely having a mental breakdown? The man will kill you with his bare hands without a single thought.” Sam had a point, but damnit, Bucky needed to help his friend.
Which is exactly what he didn’t do. Bucky had tried to knock nearly five times, chickening out each and every time he was outside the door. He knew better than to try and get Steve to open up when his wounds were too open and raw. Instead, he headed down to his own bedroom and turned on netflix, letting Alpine climb onto his stomach and relax.
And it was perfectly fine for the night, he wasn’t entirely sure when he’d managed to fall asleep, the sun peeking through the blinds letting him know that it was morning. Al was still perched on his stomach, sleeping as contedly as ever. Man, what Bucky wouldn’t give to feel that kind of relaxation.
Unfortunately, when he managed to get out of bed and head out to get some breakfast for himself and the little feline, he noticed that Steve was already gone for the day. He always went for a jog in the morning before heading down to work. Except it was a saturday, so he had the day off.
“Have you seen Steve?” Bucky looked over to where Sam was busy typing on his laptop, brow furrowed in concentration.
“Nope, he was gone before I even got up, and you know I don’t sleep very late anymore.” Sam had gotten into the habit of waking up at the ass crack of dawn, and it hadn’t stopped him for a while.
“Shit, do you think he’d answer if I called him?” Sam gave Bucky a ‘you really can’t be this stupid’ type of look.
Bucky, on the other hand, happened to be quite stupid when he wanted to be. Which ended with him calling Steve approximately three times, and texting him five before finally giving up. He wanted to be left entirely alone, and it was glaringly obvious.
“Maybe I could call Peggy, see what’s going on.” There was clearly tension in the air, something had happened that Steve refused to share.
They’d broken up years ago, fortunately there was no ill will towards the other, or at least no one could sense that. Sam noticed an open envelope, addressed to Sam, Bucky, and Steve. He was expecting some kind of invitation to another wedding, or a jack and jill for one of their friends that were getting married. What he wasn’t expecting to see was Peggy’s wedding invite, falling on the exact date of Sarah Rogers’ death.
“Buck.” Sam felt his blood run cold, fear racing through his veins as he stared at the other man.
“Please tell me that’s a joke.” Bucky took the invite from him carefully, noticing that some of the ink seemed to be smudged.
Steve must’ve checked the mail after he’d gotten home and seen the invite when Bucky, and Sam were still at work. This wasn’t something they could handle easily, Steve only ever really had his mom growing up, and to have this thrown in his face.
The door swung open harshly, slamming into the wall with a loud bang. Bucky jumped, spinning around to face the incomer. Steve looked horrible, from his rumpled clothes, bloodshot eyes that looked far too red from where Bucky could see them. The smell of whiskey seeped into the air, almost choking Bucky where he stood across the room.
“Steve, what the hell?” Bucky was ready to start yelling, to demand answers to the questions burning in his mind.
“Leav’m alone.” Steve stumbled down towards his bedroom, falling into the wall as he struggled to stay upright.
Sam could only watch with horror, the man he’d called his best friend for so long was degraded to nothing, a shell. He was so strong, had been named the Star Spangled Man With A Plan when they were all in the army together. That had been a joke, a way to keep everyone’s spirits up when they got home sick. This though? This was Steve at the lowest point he could be in.
“He did the same thing when mom passed, blamed himself for not making sure she was seeing her doctor regularly.” Bucky and Sam had practically dragged him to a rehab center for his drinking, and he’d come out of it healthy.
It had been almost nine years since her passing, they always took the day to remember Sarah for the woman she was, making promises to be the type of people that would make her happy.
“You’re his sponsor, it’s not really a surprise on why he didn’t bother talking to you.” Bucky sighed, running a hand through his hair.
He was tempted to follow Steve, to see how truly broken he was over this entire mess. That wouldn’t do any good though, not unless he wanted to have the wrath that was pissed off, and drunk, Steve Rogers coming after him.
He could really only do so much.
“I’m gonna talk to him.” Bucky puffed his chest out, taking a deep breath before heading down to Steve’s room.
Sam wished him good luck, cause he was definitely going to need it right now.
The door was unlocked, and partially open when Bucky made his way down the hall, standing outside as his nerves took hold. What would he even be able to say that wouldn’t set off the blonde? ‘Oh, sorry to hear that your ex is getting married on the anniversary of your mom’s death, what’d you wanna do for dinner?’. Bucky couldn’t do that without losing his head, even if the words were simply to break the tension in the room.
“Steve?” Bucky stepped into the room slowly, unsure as to what sight would greet him.
Steve was curled up on his bed, all six feet, and two hundred forty pounds, looking as small as he had when Bucky and he were kids. How could someone manage to look so small with shoulders wider than most doorways? Now’s not the time to think about something like that.
Steve’s shoulders were falling and rising slowly, as if he was asleep. He kept his footsteps quiet, leaning over to check on his best friend. Steve wasn’t sleeping, much to Bucky’s disappointment. His cheeks were splotchy and red, streaked with tears, knuckles torn and bloody. So not only had Steve gone out and gotten beyond drunk, he’d also managed to get into a fight with someone, the cops would be showing up when Bucky least expected, he could feel it.
“She was there when it happened, saw my mom take her last breath, and this is how she decides to spend her wedding?” Bucky frowned, stepping closer to the edge of the bed.
Tears were sliding down Steve’s cheek once more, jaw set harshly as he glared a hole into the wall, well, tried to at least.
“Steve, you can’t get mad at Peggy for moving on and getting married when you were too much of a chicken shit to ask her, she has her own reasons for choosing that date.” Bucky knew his words were harsher than intended, and it wasn’t going to put him in Steve’s good graces.
The blond lunged off his bed, nearly knocking over the lamp that sat on his bedside table, his glasses were hanging precariously near the edge. How the hell had Steve managed to walk around town without them on? Or had he taken them off at some point while he was out getting drunk?
“I’m not mad that she moved on, I’m pissed off that she chose the day my mom died to get married! She knows how fucked up that date made me feel, and if you’re going to side with her, you can get the fuck out.” Bucky furrowed his brow, shocked at the words spewing from the other man’s mouth.
“You’re being ungrateful!” Bucky glared at the other man, arms crossed over his chest.
Steved laughed bitterly, throwing his head back as if he’d heard the most hilarious joke in the world.
“I’m being ungrateful? For thinking my ex is being a little pessimistic and choosing a day I try not to think about because it drove me to alcoholism? I thought I knew you better, but clearly there’s things I don’t know about you.” Steve’s voice was abnormally calm, expression smoothing over into a smooth mask.
Bucky knew exactly what it meant, he’d served alongside Steve for nearly five years, this was the persona he’d taken on when he’d been promoted to Captain.
“Get out Buck.” Steve hadn’t moved an inch, body tense as he stared the other man down.
Bucky didn’t wait any longer, storming out of the room and down to where Sam was nervously pacing. It was a habit he’d picked up from being in the army, waiting to hear news about friends that were on their own missions.
“Leave him be, he’s in one of his moods right now, and I’m not about to be lectured by someone who was called Captain America.” Bucky scoffed, plopping down onto the couch with a groan.
Sam didn’t bother to ask, he knew better than to acknowledge the sudden change that seemed to shift in the air.
“Why don’t we go out and get something to eat, let him be pissy all he wants.” Bucky couldn’t deny the offer, it seemed too tempting to go out and stuff his face for the next hour.
And that’s exactly what he and Sam did. Well, Bucky only stuffed his face a little, he didn’t want to overdo it in case Steve wanted to talk when they got back. Well, Bucky knew Steve like the back of his hand, and there was no way he would be willing to talk.
Sam stepped into the apartment first, listening for any kind of noise that would let him know where Steve was. Alpine was perched on his cat bed, relaxing in the midday sun as he slept peacefully. Bucky wanted to run over and get a picture before the ball of fur woke up from his nap. He couldn’t do that though, not when he and Sam noticed that Steve had made his way out to the living room, in what Bucky could only describe as a blanket burrito.
They looked at one another, unsure of what their next step should be. Would Steve be angry that they were back at the apartment? Or would he simply pick himself and head back down to the solace of his room?
“Steve?” Sam held his hand out, slowly walking over to where the other man was currently laying.
“Bucky’s right, I am being ungrateful.” Steve’s voice sounded so hollow, void of any and all emotion as he glanced over to where the photo of him and his mom currently sat.
He’d tried to fix the frame before slipping the photo inside, grimacing at how the glass seemed to be cracked the most over his mother’s face. He’d taken the last photo he had of her, and ruined it out of his own selfishness.
“No wonder she finally gave up and left.” Steve muttered softly to himself.
“Steve, that’s not true.” Bucky frowned, standing beside Sam who’d kept a few feet between himself and Steve.
“I developed a drinking problem that nearly killed me Buck, I didn’t get into the army because I needed something to do to pass the time.” Steve laughed, the sound sodarnic and bitter.
Bucky and Sam had already enlisted by the time Steve had followed close behind, saying that he needed a new perspective on life. He’d moved up quickly, passing Bucky within the first few months before he’d been made a Captain. To know that he’d wanted to die on the battlefield, it left a sour taste in his mouth.
“Wait a second, you’re telling me when you ran into the burning building, you weren’t planning on coming back out alive? Steve, what the fuck!” Bucky was furious, his best friend was suicidal in a place where people tried to keep themselves alive at all costs.
Bucky wanted to scream at him for being so stupid and reckless, why hadn’t he said anything to Bucky or Sam? Why bottle everything inside to the point that he was ready to risk everything?
“She had been seeing Daniel before we broke up, said that I wasn’t emotionally there for her anymore, so she found someone who could do it for her.” Steve smiled to himself, it seemed disproportionate on his face.
“I had buried my mom a week before she told me, and I think the only reason she said anything was because I caught them,” Steve’s eyes welled with tears, this wasn’t something Steve had talked about before.
“God, I begged her to stay, that I could do better for her.” Bucky glanced over to Sam, forcing to keep his own emotions in check.
This wasn’t something they could easily talk about, not without opening old wounds that had healed so long ago.
“You know my mom was the only person who knew I was bisexual? I tried not to let it show, like I needed help instead of telling everyone the truth. Peggy ended up finding out after the funeral, she found a journal I’d started writing in, that was a screaming match from hell.” Steve ran a hand through his hair, grimacing at the greasy feeling.
“Said there was something wrong with me, that I shouldn’t be having feelings for anyone else, that I was a freak.” Bucky’s jaw had hit the floor, Steve had already been going through enough, and to be attacked so harshly?
Bucky felt terrible suddenly, guilt washing over him like a tidal wave as he realized he’d of reacted the same way all those years ago.
Not about Steve of course, but about himself.
“She didn’t like that you were figuring yourself out, so she wanted to make you hurt.” Sam sounded so much like a therapist that it bothered Bucky more than it should.
He’d come out to his family when he was fifteen, telling them that he was gay, and they’d been supportive of him. Of course things between him and Steve were a little tense when he’d started getting out into the dating world, but he assumed it was because he was getting into the dating pool. Steve was still tiny, overlooked by everyone around him while Bucky was pulled in every direction.
People would ask why they were friends, Steve wasn’t worth his time, Bucky could clearly do so much better. He didn’t want to though, he and Steve were best friends from childhood, and no one could change that about them. It wasn’t until Bucky had gotten together with his first boyfriend that their friendship was nearly torn apart.
Jordan Wilson was a good kid, he and Bucky were what most people would’ve considered the perfect couple, but Jordan was accepted to a college out in Cali. Bucky had told him to do what was best, so they broke off their relationship. There wouldn’t be any bad blood between the two, something Bucky was grateful for.
Except he worried about Steve more and more, the man was drinking nearly three bottles of vodka every weekend. It escalated to everyday soon after, Steve stumbling drunk wherever he went. Bucky was terrified his friend was going to get himself killed, so he sent him to rehab.
“She always told me that I’d end up alone if we broke up, I guess she was right.” The room felt thick with tension, Steve’s shoulders slumped forward as he stared at the coffee table.
“That’s not true and you know it.” Bucky sat down next to Steve, giving the other man enough space to keep him comfortable.
Steve laughed bitterly, taking off his glasses to wipe away the tears that had begun to slide down his cheeks. Bucky wanted to reach over and wipe them away for him, to show him that he wasn’t completely alone.
“Who would even want me Buck? I’m barely making ends meet, I’m a recovering alcoholic, I can’t stand the thought of the spring because it reminds me of my mom, add the PTSD from being in the army, who the hells gonna want that?” Steve didn’t turn to look at him, wiping his glasses off with the end of his shirt before sliding them back on.
Bucky could either let their conversation die where it was, or admit something he’d held in his heart ever since he was barely thirteen years old.
“I’m in love with you.” It felt like word vomit, Bucky couldn’t stop the words even if he were actually trying to.
It sounded as if everyone in the room had stopped breathing, Steve’s eyes were wide behind the lenses of his glasses. Sam was staring at him incredulously, and Bucky was more shocked he’d finally admitted it.
“It took you long enough to admit it.” Steve didn’t sound angry, more amused than anything.
“What?” Bucky felt flabbergasted, Steve knew?
Bucky glanced over to where Sam was, noticing that he looked just as confused and shocked.
“I’ve been kinda obvious about how I felt, but you never showed any interest so I backed off.” Steve glanced over at the brunette, raising a brow.
“You’ve had feelings for me?” Bucky wasn’t entirely sure how his jaw was still working, it felt almost as if it had fallen off.
“Remember when we were playing spin the bottle, well you were playing and I was sort of sitting on the side, over at Micky’s place?” Bucky nodded dumbly.
It brought a smile to Steve’s lips, he snickered under his breath.
“Well, when it landed on me and they kept telling you to kiss me cause they were kids and assholes, well I thought about that kiss all the time. I didn’t want to say anything and make stuff weird between us, but yeah.” Steve shrugged as if he hadn’t just dropped a bomb on Bucky.
Sam slowly walked out of the living room, clearly trying to gather his thoughts on how to even approach what was going on.
“So, would you like to get coffee sometime?” Steve’s smirk snapped Bucky out of his trance, bringing him back down to earth.
“Yeah, I think I’d like that.” Bucky smiled softly, cheeks darkening with a blush.
The holidays didn’t seem so bad anymore.
#steve rogers fic#bucky barnes fic#bucky barnes x steve rogers#stucky fic#stucky#steve rogers imagine#steve rogers angst#steve rogers and bucky barnes#steve rogers au#steve rogers fanfiction#steve rogers one shot#bucky barnes au#bucky barnes angst#bucky barnes fanfiction#bucky barnes feels#bucky barnes fandom#tw drinking#tw depression#marvel#captain america
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Season 6B as it should have been: with Belle.
I’m sorry, I just CANNOT stop with this. It would have been so easy to give Belle the presence she deserved--which the story NEEDED--in this arc. Without interfering with the other characters’ arcs or adding a ton of screentime.
So I’mma do it. I’m a little handicapped because I only watched half the episodes (which is three times as many as for 6A and more than in S5 entirely), so cut me some slack where needed.
Under a cut because it got long as fuck.
6.11: Keep the cut scene in which David and Killy betray Belle by siccing Zelena on Gideon, and Belle does something to save him. This is the scene referenced in Rumbelle’s well conversation when she talks about fighting for Gideon and trusting the wrong people. I’d also make this the scene where Zelena loses her magic--Gideon takes it to defeat her. I’m not sure what could have been cut to fit this in; the Boozer Hook scene in the Wish!Verse stands out as filler, but it was pretty funny. Probably some of the August stuff could be condensed. The cut scene was so important since it showed (or would have) that Belle would compromise her principles for her son, and would set up the Charmings vs. the Stiltskins (and align Rumbelle, and show Belle how much Killy is NOT her friend) right off the bat.
6.12: This was the David/Killy ep? I’m fine leaving Belle and Rumbelle out of it.
6.13: I’m honestly okay with an ep that focused on Rumple’s relationship with Gideon...considering that he had none in 6A, it needed building. But Belle shouldn’t have been left wandering in the woods for all of it. They could have fit in 20 seconds of a scene between her and Blue where Blue apologizes for losing Gideon and Belle forgives her and expresses her guilt, saying Gideon’s fate is all her fault. And then after Rumbelle meet in the woods, Belle could say she was going to the library to research, or whatever--something that made it clear she was being active in the quest to help Gideon.
6.14: I didn’t even remember what happened in this--it was the Split Queen resolution. So I looked it up, and it was pretty packed--Rumbelle can stay out of it. My change would be to make the Queen and Robin together kidnap Zelena to hold for ransom (instead of the Queen kidnapping Robin). That allows for Zelena to have a scene where she expresses regret for what she did to our Robin, and the sisters become closer when Regina rescues powerless Zee. (And Zee does something useful, whatevs, I don’t care.)
6.15: Killy ep. A big part of my rewrite is cutting Killy’s excellent adventure completely. In 6.14 he chickens out (no help from Gideon) and leaves with Nemo; in 6.15 he has his centric that goes pretty much the same, and he decides to go back and ~~fight for his wuv~~. Jaladdin wish him back to SB with a parting gift of whatever doohickey he eventually was handed by Tiger Lily. Emma doesn’t fall into his arms and tell him it’s her fault he lied, either. Something something (who cares), they’re not re-engaged; they’re going to work on it. (I don’t care how they get together--barf--but I’m not cleaning up the whole season by getting rid of CY altogether. That’s a bigger project.) Belle and Rumple have a tiny scene when they are also seen at the bar for two-for-one night. (It’s NOT a date, they both agree; but they’re exhausted and need to eat; that’s it; 20 seconds in which Bobby and Em have more sexual tension and longing than CY do in a year). Belle is a witness to Gideon stealing Emma’s tear for some stupid reason (was that ever explained?) and is horrified. Belle/Gideon 10-second exchange of angsty eyes. (I will NEVER EVER EVER get over Belle not having a single one-on-one scene with her baby boy when he’s all grown up and destroying people.)
6.16: Gideon ep. Since we’ve gotten rid of Killy/Blackbeard we have about six minutes to play with to split between Belle’s and Zelena’s plots. (So Zee helps Regina with Henry’s author problem. Mills family bonding. Zee can express remorse for killing Henry’s father.) Belle doesn’t just hang out in the shop while Rumple goes to the mansion looking for Gideon; she’s with him every step of the way and sees that Gideon is a betraying betrayer and Rumple is a Big Damn Hero who saves Emma. At the end when Emma tells Belle her kid is dead meat, Belle has seen exactly how bad Gid can be but she defends him all the same. Room for a longer Rumbelle bonding scene.
6.17: Again, no Killy gives us time for Belle and/or Zelena. Since Moe was around filming for (cut, of course) flashbacks for this ep, we finally get the (present-day) scene where Belle confronts him for abandoning her in the sleeping curse, and Rumbelle/Rumple fans get Belle’s realization that Rumple was the only person to fight for her and the baby when she was under the curse. Belle tells Moe that Rumple is a much better father than he will ever be (stand up and cheer moment). Killy does something useful to support Emma (who cares) so their engagement’s back on; Regina still saves Snowing by having the town take the curse; Belle and Moe are among the townspeople who drink the potion along with Archie, dwarves, Zee, and randos. Big but quiet beat between Belle and Regina because Belle is helping the people who are still determined to kill her child if necessary. At the end, Belle is with Rumple when he tells Fifi that he knows she has Gid’s heart; Rumbelle stand united against her, but Fi dismisses Belle and tells Rumple THEY will be a family. Belle is troubled; her face asks, Can she trust Rumple? Will he choose her or Fifi?
6.18: This is the big one. Sorry, Zelena. It’s a Belle centric in which she finds a way to get to the Dark Realm, and she and Rumple go to try to rescue baby Gideon, or get some deus ex mechanism that would allow them to save him (maybe his heart’s back in this realm? I dunno; I can’t plot worth crap but no one is paying me $$$$ to do it either). Flashbacks: Baby Belle and her mommy, and why Belle can speak/read fairy. (Maybe the BlF made a play for Belle when she was a child.) We also find out the plot of Her Handsome Hero: the knight Gideon faces an evil sorcerer; to defeat him he has to go on a quest for a lot of doodads; he’s aided by a woman who turns out to be the evil sorcereress; Gideon and the sorceress respect and forgive each other for the past; he saves her from vengeful and misguided villagers (a mob with a Gastonish lead) by talking them around, and thus becomes her handsome hero. (This is my version of reconciling what Belle said about the book in H3 with the bit she read to Jack and Jill’s kid in 6.9.) Present: Rumbelle work together all the way, but whatever they try to do fails (of course) and Belle basically loses it and has an “I failed” breakdown, blaming herself for everything. This is the big apology scene that some people want, but it’s more about Belle’s long-term inferiority complex finally coming to the fore. Rumple supports her completely, takes the blame for what he did, and tells her that she’s his hero (echo of the Miller’s Daughter phone call). At the very end, Rumbelle realize that some random thing they discovered in the Dark Realm can protect Gideon from being controlled, but only in his dreams. (This fixes the plot point of whether the BlF can control Gid in dreams, and if she can’t, why he was being such a dick in the first place, trying to break up Rumbelle and engineer his own kidnapping.) Belle thanks Rumple for not giving up, and he says, “When you find something worth fighting for, you never give up.” (Cue sobs from Belle and us.)
6.19: Plays out almost exactly as it did. Belle giving Rumple her trust has much more weight now, though, because we’ve seen him earn it back onscreen. (And maybe they both decide to “kidnap” Emma to the dream world because they can’t trust her.) The main difference is that Belle is the one who saves Regina from the BlF by running out into the street (the fight takes place ten seconds from the pawnshop) and braining Fifi over the back of her head with Her Handsome Hero. (Stand up and cheer moment.)
6.20: Snow mentions at the bachelorette party that Belle sent the dresses but couldn’t come because she’s spending time with Gideon. Two seconds of communion between Snow and Emma how weird and hard and yet somehow cool it is to have a child your own age, and how they hope that Belle and Gid can become as close as Emma and Snow are. (Or a little more bittersweet, acknowledgment that maybe Emma and Snow have not always been as close as they want to be. Big hug. Uses Belle and Gid as a springboard for a Snow/Emma beat.) Cut the Rumple/Killy scene, which only served to make Killy into a vengeful asshole on his wedding day and make his vows to Emma look like lies. Replace with Belle and Gideon on the Jolly Roger, packing up Belle’s stuff because they are both moving into the Pink Palace. We can leave the mystery in this scene about whether Rumple has filled them in on his plan, or whether he’s actually working with the BlF and is a betraying betrayer who is keeping them in the dark. Belle shows Gideon some of the stuff she bought for his baby self (the teddy bear, some little onesies), and plays him the tape Rumple made of the poem. They are so happy to be together now, but aching because of what they’ve lost and what Gid’s childhood turned out to be. Very very bittersweet; ends with Belle singing a few lines of a lullabye (her contribution to the musical; maybe she starts singing along with Rumple’s voice on the tape). Cut to Gideon’s tears and mine.
6.21/22: Since Belle has had so much more presence through the REST of the season, it’s actually okay with me if she’s offstage for most of 6.21 (as she was).to keep the mystery of whether Rumple has his memories. But it feels as if their scene in the murder house was definitely cut short; so weird for Rumple to just nope out with a “Okay, sorry to bother you, just keep cowering back there, never mind me.” So continue it for a minute or so, with Rumple gently coaxing cursed Belle out, giving her the courage to come meet her son. He takes her to the pawnshop with him, to Fifi’s horror. Angsty moment and tears between cursed Belle and cursed Gid. (Possibly she kisses him and breaks his personal curse, the way he did for her in 6.1?) Fifi then shows the whole family that Gid is under her control, with agony for all that he is being forced to blacken his soul despite everything they’ve all done to save him; maybe Gideon actually says something like he wishes he’d never been born. (Or something else so we know grown Gid is okay with being rebabyfied.) Fifi poofs him off to kill Emma, and makes her offer to Rumple that he can have this family and also Baelfire. Belle witnesses Rumple choosing reality and killing his mum. Then everything proceeds as in the real ep. Rumbelle go to the mines to find Gid’s heart. I’m a little torn here because I love the fact that Rumple (like Regina and UNLIKE a certain other someone) always resists temptation and does the right, heroic thing WITHOUT someone pointing him in the right direction and waving pompoms to cheer him on. So keeping his scene between him and his DO imp private would be good. I guess Belle doesn’t sprain her ankle, but they split up because the mines are labyrinthine and they’re trying to cover more ground. Rumple does the right thing, but it fails. He goes back to meet Belle, they comfort each other in their darkest moment, and then baby Gideon appears--only this time there’s some callback to SOMETHING they did in the Dark Realm rather than it just happening out of the clear blue sky. And we’re back to the episode as written.
(via @belle-gifs)
See? WAS THAT SO HARD? With the exception of adding Belle’s centric, most of these changes would give her only about a minute or two more per ep--but they are significant minutes.
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Business What year is it, exactly? 2020 arrives early
Business What year is it, exactly? 2020 arrives early Business What year is it, exactly? 2020 arrives early http://www.nature-business.com/business-what-year-is-it-exactly-2020-arrives-early/
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(CNN)It’s the midterms of 2018, so why was Elizabeth Warren — presidential hopeful, class of 2020 — swamping the news cycle?
The November 6 vote is rolling in fast — the first chance since 2016 to answer President Donald Trump at the ballot box. It’s a moment that will either solidify the GOP’s total grip on power in Washington or — to hear the Democrats tell it — halt the country’s slide into authoritarianism.
But as a possible reordering of the political universe gathered, readers were riveted to see Warren — rising to the Trumpian bait, seemingly out of the blue — with her DNA test and video, meant to erase a negative issue and answer for all time: Native American or not (or just a little)?
Not helpful just now, said many Democrats.
Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton was talking about her husband, Monica Lewinsky and #MeToo.
Please stop talking
(for now), said
Michelle Cottle,
in The New York Times.
“This close to Election Day, discussing hot-button issues in national interviews is nothing but problematic for her party — and, ultimately, her own legacy,” she wrote.
Warren walks into it
“On the first day of her unofficial presidential campaign, Sen. Elizabeth Warren
showed exactly why
President Trump is such a powerful political opponent,”
Julian Zelizer
warned. “He can twist his opponents into knots as they dive deeper and deeper into a political abyss,” drawing them “into conversations they never intended to have.” That would be the one about Warren’s attempt to get Trump to stop calling her “Pocahontas” (
no luck
) by producing
a DNA test.
Democrats fretting about the midterms were not thrilled. And
Kate Maltby
wrote that Warren was absolutely entitled to hit back at Trump,
but she is “mistaken
if she thinks Trump’s America is a place where an emotively scored promo video can change the tenor of a racial debate. If she thinks she’s the best Democratic candidate to take on Donald Trump in 2020, she’s even more mistaken.”
And there’s hypocrisy
, argued
Simon Moya Smith
, an Oglala Lakota and Chicano journalist: “Elizabeth Warren, where the hell have you been?”… during the Dakota Access Pipeline fight, the long history of “police brutality in Indian country,” and myriad issues affecting Native Americans. “I’d take Warren in a hot minute over a petulant President Trump … but the revered senator has a lot to apologize for — or at least explain. When we needed her, she didn’t lace up.”
Meanwhile, back in 2018 …
Cue the uproars across the land.
President Trump crisscrossed the country whipping up Republicans’ anxiety about immigration, with warnings about a migrant caravan moving north through Central America. He paused in Montana to praise Greg Gianforte, who pleaded guilty after assaulting a reporter last year (and was elected to Congress a day later). “Any guy who can do a body slam … he’s my guy,” said the American President. “Even at his most paranoid, Nixon never solicited violence against journalists,” wrote
Samuel Freedman. Trump’s words should chill
an America “where the MAGA hat defiles the First Amendment, and practitioners of a free press feel ever more the peril that ultimately swallowed up Jamal Khashoggi.”
(
What does context matter,
though, for Trump?”
Eric Lach
pointed out in the New Yorker. “In Montana, on a stage, he felt that endorsing the assault of a reporter ‘might help.’ So he did it.” )
The President had another strategy, too
: Abandon issues and simply brand Democrats as “dangerous,” “wacko” and “an angry left-wing mob,” wrote
Noah Berlatsky
. Don’t ignore this, he warned, “once you start delegitimizing one sort of protest,” you’re headed to an “authoritarian state, in which repression of dissent is justified to preserve order and keep dangerous, disloyal elements out of power.” Example? Putin’s Russia.
But Trump and Republicans
have a good reason for banging away at immigration i
n a politically polarized country, wrote
Thomas Edsall
in The New York Times. Data show that “men and women opposed to immigration are much more likely to vote Republican on the issue than supporters are to base a vote for a Democratic candidate on a pro-immigration position.”
Midterm mix
In Georgia, the Republican candidate for governor, Brian Kemp (who is also the secretary of state, in charge of elections) was accused of trying to suppress the black vote by stalling 53,000 voter registrations. (“
How’s this for an axiom that is especially self-evident,
” asked the NAACP Legal Defense Fund’s
Janai Nelson
: “An elected official should not oversee an election in which he is a candidate.”)
Kemp, locked in a close race against Democrat Stacey Abrams, denies the voters put on hold under the state’s “exact match” system have anything to do with his run. This is a system, noted
Eugene Scott
in the Washington Post, that
“would put someone named Beyoncé Knowles-Carter
on the ‘pending’ registration list if her voting application said Beyoncé Knowles Carter.” In other words, “the latest offensive in the renewed campaign against minority voting rights,” said
Nelson.
Sen. Ted Cruz declined, but CNN held a town hall anyway on Thursday with his challenger, Rep. Beto O’Rourke, “the Irish descendant from the Hispanic borderlands of Texas” political writer
James Moore
called him, “who has given the state’s Democrats a
gift they have found too surprising to completely unwrap.”
The gift? Hope. So far O’Rourke is losing, said a CNN poll, but Moore thinks he is now on the national stage to stay. And if Hispanics, middle-class women and millennials come out, he may have a chance.
Khashoggi: Saudis try to explain the horror
By week’s end, Saudi officials, bending to intense pressure, confirmed the death of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul, fired a top military official and detained 18 Saudis, but blamed it on a fistfight that got out of control.
Nic Robertson
wrote that the “rogue-operation”-gone-wrong narrative, rather than a culpable crown prince in a friendly oil kingdom,
“beggars belief.
But Trump chose not merely to buy it, but endorse and propagate it, too.” “Trump is already giving us a curtain raiser on his intent, tilting toward a pass for his autocratic ally in the Middle East,” he wrote.
It’s in keeping with the President’s “instinctive affinity for authoritarian figures,” wrote John Avlon, and his cynical read on American exceptionalism: “The biggest difference with Donald Trump is that he’s been quick to condemn America’s past policies not from an idealistic human rights perspective but from a cold realism that is quick to call the United States morally equivalent to other countries, like Russia. No other US president would refuse to condemn Putin’s extrajudicial killings by saying ‘you think our county’s so innocent?’”
Nick Paton Walsh
suggested that
Trump’s “we won” mantra
“set the tone for this year’s spate of attempted assassinations or failed abductions — and, possibly, a new era of impunity. Be it on a door handle in Salisbury, England, or inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul … the essential message is the same: We don’t really care if we get caught.”
Elites may not like it, observed
Damon Linker
in The Week, but “
the President views international relations in transactional terms.”
Khashoggi’s killing “would be a crime worth lamenting and condemning,” but “for the first time in a very long time, the man occupying the Oval Office appears to be almost totally unmoved by moral appeals in dealing with the rest of the world” — and that is welcome.
And in a
prescient final column for the Washington Post,
received by his editor the day before he disappeared,
Jamal Khashoggi
himself lamented the death of the Arab Spring. He gave as an example the Egyptian government’s seizure of the entire print run of one newspaper: “These actions no longer carry the consequence of a backlash from the international community. Instead, these actions may trigger condemnation quickly followed by silence. As a result, Arab governments have been given free rein to continue silencing the media at an increasing rate.”
Here come ‘The Conners’
Make it stop, pleaded
Clay Cane.
The matriarch of the family has overdosed on opioids, went the storyline in the “Roseanne” reboot that premiered Tuesday. “Clearly, ABC wants to maintain the cash cow” without its former star’s racist baggage.
Enough.
“We must stop moving backwards. We must stop wading in nostalgia … from our television shows to our old guard politicians.”
But “The Conners” is very much about now,
argued show runner,
Bruce Helford
, in the Hollywood Reporter. “I wanted a respectful sendoff … one that was relevant and could inspire discussion for the greater good about the American working class,” he wrote, like “the unbowed Conners as they deal with the economic inequalities of life in lower-income America with love and humor.”
Melania and misogyny
Jill Filipovic
thought
the T.I. video that went viral this week
put the rapper in the same “piggish, unrepentant misogynist league” as the President. In the video, “a Melania Trump lookalike strips in the Oval Office, dancing for T.I.’s pleasure after the President leaves the White House,” Filipovic wrote. (Melania Trump’s spokeswoman called it “disrespectful and disgusting”) Spare us the outrage, wrote Filipovic: “the T.I. video is sexist and shameful. But if Melania’s team and Trump administration supporters want to boycott the sexist and shameful, they need to start at home, with the man in the White House.”
Finally, high time for Canada
First the bad news:
Pot can raise your “risk of psychotic illnesses”. The good news, at least for Canada? In “making it legal to buy, grow and own weed,” this week, noted science writer
Tom Chivers
, and in “imposing draconian penalties on people who sell to minors,” Canada takes the industry out of the hands of drug cartels. And that, he said, will “make it easier to keep the drug out of the hands of children.”
Read More | Pat Wiedenkeller, CNN,
Business What year is it, exactly? 2020 arrives early, in 2018-10-21 15:03:34
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Business What year is it, exactly? 2020 arrives early
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Business
In a new series of weekly columns (available soon as a newsletter), we’re looking back at the strongest, smartest opinion takes of the week from CNN and other outlets.
(CNN)It’s the midterms of 2018, so why was Elizabeth Warren — presidential hopeful, class of 2020 — swamping the news cycle?
The November 6 vote is rolling in fast — the first chance since 2016 to answer President Donald Trump at the ballot box. It’s a moment that will either solidify the GOP’s total grip on power in Washington or — to hear the Democrats tell it — halt the country’s slide into authoritarianism.
But as a possible reordering of the political universe gathered, readers were riveted to see Warren — rising to the Trumpian bait, seemingly out of the blue — with her DNA test and video, meant to erase a negative issue and answer for all time: Native American or not (or just a little)?
Not helpful just now, said many Democrats.
Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton was talking about her husband, Monica Lewinsky and #MeToo.
Please stop talking
(for now), said
Michelle Cottle,
in The New York Times.
“This close to Election Day, discussing hot-button issues in national interviews is nothing but problematic for her party — and, ultimately, her own legacy,” she wrote.
Warren walks into it
“On the first day of her unofficial presidential campaign, Sen. Elizabeth Warren
showed exactly why
President Trump is such a powerful political opponent,”
Julian Zelizer
warned. “He can twist his opponents into knots as they dive deeper and deeper into a political abyss,” drawing them “into conversations they never intended to have.” That would be the one about Warren’s attempt to get Trump to stop calling her “Pocahontas” (
no luck
) by producing
a DNA test.
Democrats fretting about the midterms were not thrilled. And
Kate Maltby
wrote that Warren was absolutely entitled to hit back at Trump,
but she is “mistaken
if she thinks Trump’s America is a place where an emotively scored promo video can change the tenor of a racial debate. If she thinks she’s the best Democratic candidate to take on Donald Trump in 2020, she’s even more mistaken.”
And there’s hypocrisy
, argued
Simon Moya Smith
, an Oglala Lakota and Chicano journalist: “Elizabeth Warren, where the hell have you been?”… during the Dakota Access Pipeline fight, the long history of “police brutality in Indian country,” and myriad issues affecting Native Americans. “I’d take Warren in a hot minute over a petulant President Trump … but the revered senator has a lot to apologize for — or at least explain. When we needed her, she didn’t lace up.”
Meanwhile, back in 2018 …
Cue the uproars across the land.
President Trump crisscrossed the country whipping up Republicans’ anxiety about immigration, with warnings about a migrant caravan moving north through Central America. He paused in Montana to praise Greg Gianforte, who pleaded guilty after assaulting a reporter last year (and was elected to Congress a day later). “Any guy who can do a body slam … he’s my guy,” said the American President. “Even at his most paranoid, Nixon never solicited violence against journalists,” wrote
Samuel Freedman. Trump’s words should chill
an America “where the MAGA hat defiles the First Amendment, and practitioners of a free press feel ever more the peril that ultimately swallowed up Jamal Khashoggi.”
(
What does context matter,
though, for Trump?”
Eric Lach
pointed out in the New Yorker. “In Montana, on a stage, he felt that endorsing the assault of a reporter ‘might help.’ So he did it.” )
The President had another strategy, too
: Abandon issues and simply brand Democrats as “dangerous,” “wacko” and “an angry left-wing mob,” wrote
Noah Berlatsky
. Don’t ignore this, he warned, “once you start delegitimizing one sort of protest,” you’re headed to an “authoritarian state, in which repression of dissent is justified to preserve order and keep dangerous, disloyal elements out of power.” Example? Putin’s Russia.
But Trump and Republicans
have a good reason for banging away at immigration i
n a politically polarized country, wrote
Thomas Edsall
in The New York Times. Data show that “men and women opposed to immigration are much more likely to vote Republican on the issue than supporters are to base a vote for a Democratic candidate on a pro-immigration position.”
Midterm mix
In Georgia, the Republican candidate for governor, Brian Kemp (who is also the secretary of state, in charge of elections) was accused of trying to suppress the black vote by stalling 53,000 voter registrations. (“
How’s this for an axiom that is especially self-evident,
” asked the NAACP Legal Defense Fund’s
Janai Nelson
: “An elected official should not oversee an election in which he is a candidate.”)
Kemp, locked in a close race against Democrat Stacey Abrams, denies the voters put on hold under the state’s “exact match” system have anything to do with his run. This is a system, noted
Eugene Scott
in the Washington Post, that
“would put someone named Beyoncé Knowles-Carter
on the ‘pending’ registration list if her voting application said Beyoncé Knowles Carter.” In other words, “the latest offensive in the renewed campaign against minority voting rights,” said
Nelson.
Sen. Ted Cruz declined, but CNN held a town hall anyway on Thursday with his challenger, Rep. Beto O’Rourke, “the Irish descendant from the Hispanic borderlands of Texas” political writer
James Moore
called him, “who has given the state’s Democrats a
gift they have found too surprising to completely unwrap.”
The gift? Hope. So far O’Rourke is losing, said a CNN poll, but Moore thinks he is now on the national stage to stay. And if Hispanics, middle-class women and millennials come out, he may have a chance.
Khashoggi: Saudis try to explain the horror
By week’s end, Saudi officials, bending to intense pressure, confirmed the death of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul, fired a top military official and detained 18 Saudis, but blamed it on a fistfight that got out of control.
Nic Robertson
wrote that the “rogue-operation”-gone-wrong narrative, rather than a culpable crown prince in a friendly oil kingdom,
“beggars belief.
But Trump chose not merely to buy it, but endorse and propagate it, too.” “Trump is already giving us a curtain raiser on his intent, tilting toward a pass for his autocratic ally in the Middle East,” he wrote.
It’s in keeping with the President’s “instinctive affinity for authoritarian figures,” wrote John Avlon, and his cynical read on American exceptionalism: “The biggest difference with Donald Trump is that he’s been quick to condemn America’s past policies not from an idealistic human rights perspective but from a cold realism that is quick to call the United States morally equivalent to other countries, like Russia. No other US president would refuse to condemn Putin’s extrajudicial killings by saying ‘you think our county’s so innocent?’”
Nick Paton Walsh
suggested that
Trump’s “we won” mantra
“set the tone for this year’s spate of attempted assassinations or failed abductions — and, possibly, a new era of impunity. Be it on a door handle in Salisbury, England, or inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul … the essential message is the same: We don’t really care if we get caught.”
Elites may not like it, observed
Damon Linker
in The Week, but “
the President views international relations in transactional terms.”
Khashoggi’s killing “would be a crime worth lamenting and condemning,” but “for the first time in a very long time, the man occupying the Oval Office appears to be almost totally unmoved by moral appeals in dealing with the rest of the world” — and that is welcome.
And in a
prescient final column for the Washington Post,
received by his editor the day before he disappeared,
Jamal Khashoggi
himself lamented the death of the Arab Spring. He gave as an example the Egyptian government’s seizure of the entire print run of one newspaper: “These actions no longer carry the consequence of a backlash from the international community. Instead, these actions may trigger condemnation quickly followed by silence. As a result, Arab governments have been given free rein to continue silencing the media at an increasing rate.”
Here come ‘The Conners’
Make it stop, pleaded
Clay Cane.
The matriarch of the family has overdosed on opioids, went the storyline in the “Roseanne” reboot that premiered Tuesday. “Clearly, ABC wants to maintain the cash cow” without its former star’s racist baggage.
Enough.
“We must stop moving backwards. We must stop wading in nostalgia … from our television shows to our old guard politicians.”
But “The Conners” is very much about now,
argued show runner,
Bruce Helford
, in the Hollywood Reporter. “I wanted a respectful sendoff … one that was relevant and could inspire discussion for the greater good about the American working class,” he wrote, like “the unbowed Conners as they deal with the economic inequalities of life in lower-income America with love and humor.”
Melania and misogyny
Jill Filipovic
thought
the T.I. video that went viral this week
put the rapper in the same “piggish, unrepentant misogynist league” as the President. In the video, “a Melania Trump lookalike strips in the Oval Office, dancing for T.I.’s pleasure after the President leaves the White House,” Filipovic wrote. (Melania Trump’s spokeswoman called it “disrespectful and disgusting”) Spare us the outrage, wrote Filipovic: “the T.I. video is sexist and shameful. But if Melania’s team and Trump administration supporters want to boycott the sexist and shameful, they need to start at home, with the man in the White House.”
Finally, high time for Canada
First the bad news:
Pot can raise your “risk of psychotic illnesses”. The good news, at least for Canada? In “making it legal to buy, grow and own weed,” this week, noted science writer
Tom Chivers
, and in “imposing draconian penalties on people who sell to minors,” Canada takes the industry out of the hands of drug cartels. And that, he said, will “make it easier to keep the drug out of the hands of children.”
Read More | Pat Wiedenkeller, CNN,
Business What year is it, exactly? 2020 arrives early, in 2018-10-21 15:03:34
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Text
Business What year is it, exactly? 2020 arrives early
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Business
In a new series of weekly columns (available soon as a newsletter), we’re looking back at the strongest, smartest opinion takes of the week from CNN and other outlets.
(CNN)It’s the midterms of 2018, so why was Elizabeth Warren — presidential hopeful, class of 2020 — swamping the news cycle?
The November 6 vote is rolling in fast — the first chance since 2016 to answer President Donald Trump at the ballot box. It’s a moment that will either solidify the GOP’s total grip on power in Washington or — to hear the Democrats tell it — halt the country’s slide into authoritarianism.
But as a possible reordering of the political universe gathered, readers were riveted to see Warren — rising to the Trumpian bait, seemingly out of the blue — with her DNA test and video, meant to erase a negative issue and answer for all time: Native American or not (or just a little)?
Not helpful just now, said many Democrats.
Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton was talking about her husband, Monica Lewinsky and #MeToo.
Please stop talking
(for now), said
Michelle Cottle,
in The New York Times.
“This close to Election Day, discussing hot-button issues in national interviews is nothing but problematic for her party — and, ultimately, her own legacy,” she wrote.
Warren walks into it
“On the first day of her unofficial presidential campaign, Sen. Elizabeth Warren
showed exactly why
President Trump is such a powerful political opponent,”
Julian Zelizer
warned. “He can twist his opponents into knots as they dive deeper and deeper into a political abyss,” drawing them “into conversations they never intended to have.” That would be the one about Warren’s attempt to get Trump to stop calling her “Pocahontas” (
no luck
) by producing
a DNA test.
Democrats fretting about the midterms were not thrilled. And
Kate Maltby
wrote that Warren was absolutely entitled to hit back at Trump,
but she is “mistaken
if she thinks Trump’s America is a place where an emotively scored promo video can change the tenor of a racial debate. If she thinks she’s the best Democratic candidate to take on Donald Trump in 2020, she’s even more mistaken.”
And there’s hypocrisy
, argued
Simon Moya Smith
, an Oglala Lakota and Chicano journalist: “Elizabeth Warren, where the hell have you been?”… during the Dakota Access Pipeline fight, the long history of “police brutality in Indian country,” and myriad issues affecting Native Americans. “I’d take Warren in a hot minute over a petulant President Trump … but the revered senator has a lot to apologize for — or at least explain. When we needed her, she didn’t lace up.”
Meanwhile, back in 2018 …
Cue the uproars across the land.
President Trump crisscrossed the country whipping up Republicans’ anxiety about immigration, with warnings about a migrant caravan moving north through Central America. He paused in Montana to praise Greg Gianforte, who pleaded guilty after assaulting a reporter last year (and was elected to Congress a day later). “Any guy who can do a body slam … he’s my guy,” said the American President. “Even at his most paranoid, Nixon never solicited violence against journalists,” wrote
Samuel Freedman. Trump’s words should chill
an America “where the MAGA hat defiles the First Amendment, and practitioners of a free press feel ever more the peril that ultimately swallowed up Jamal Khashoggi.”
(
What does context matter,
though, for Trump?”
Eric Lach
pointed out in the New Yorker. “In Montana, on a stage, he felt that endorsing the assault of a reporter ‘might help.’ So he did it.” )
The President had another strategy, too
: Abandon issues and simply brand Democrats as “dangerous,” “wacko” and “an angry left-wing mob,” wrote
Noah Berlatsky
. Don’t ignore this, he warned, “once you start delegitimizing one sort of protest,” you’re headed to an “authoritarian state, in which repression of dissent is justified to preserve order and keep dangerous, disloyal elements out of power.” Example? Putin’s Russia.
But Trump and Republicans
have a good reason for banging away at immigration i
n a politically polarized country, wrote
Thomas Edsall
in The New York Times. Data show that “men and women opposed to immigration are much more likely to vote Republican on the issue than supporters are to base a vote for a Democratic candidate on a pro-immigration position.”
Midterm mix
In Georgia, the Republican candidate for governor, Brian Kemp (who is also the secretary of state, in charge of elections) was accused of trying to suppress the black vote by stalling 53,000 voter registrations. (“
How’s this for an axiom that is especially self-evident,
” asked the NAACP Legal Defense Fund’s
Janai Nelson
: “An elected official should not oversee an election in which he is a candidate.”)
Kemp, locked in a close race against Democrat Stacey Abrams, denies the voters put on hold under the state’s “exact match” system have anything to do with his run. This is a system, noted
Eugene Scott
in the Washington Post, that
“would put someone named Beyoncé Knowles-Carter
on the ‘pending’ registration list if her voting application said Beyoncé Knowles Carter.” In other words, “the latest offensive in the renewed campaign against minority voting rights,” said
Nelson.
Sen. Ted Cruz declined, but CNN held a town hall anyway on Thursday with his challenger, Rep. Beto O’Rourke, “the Irish descendant from the Hispanic borderlands of Texas” political writer
James Moore
called him, “who has given the state’s Democrats a
gift they have found too surprising to completely unwrap.”
The gift? Hope. So far O’Rourke is losing, said a CNN poll, but Moore thinks he is now on the national stage to stay. And if Hispanics, middle-class women and millennials come out, he may have a chance.
Khashoggi: Saudis try to explain the horror
By week’s end, Saudi officials, bending to intense pressure, confirmed the death of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul, fired a top military official and detained 18 Saudis, but blamed it on a fistfight that got out of control.
Nic Robertson
wrote that the “rogue-operation”-gone-wrong narrative, rather than a culpable crown prince in a friendly oil kingdom,
“beggars belief.
But Trump chose not merely to buy it, but endorse and propagate it, too.” “Trump is already giving us a curtain raiser on his intent, tilting toward a pass for his autocratic ally in the Middle East,” he wrote.
It’s in keeping with the President’s “instinctive affinity for authoritarian figures,” wrote John Avlon, and his cynical read on American exceptionalism: “The biggest difference with Donald Trump is that he’s been quick to condemn America’s past policies not from an idealistic human rights perspective but from a cold realism that is quick to call the United States morally equivalent to other countries, like Russia. No other US president would refuse to condemn Putin’s extrajudicial killings by saying ‘you think our county’s so innocent?’”
Nick Paton Walsh
suggested that
Trump’s “we won” mantra
“set the tone for this year’s spate of attempted assassinations or failed abductions — and, possibly, a new era of impunity. Be it on a door handle in Salisbury, England, or inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul … the essential message is the same: We don’t really care if we get caught.”
Elites may not like it, observed
Damon Linker
in The Week, but “
the President views international relations in transactional terms.”
Khashoggi’s killing “would be a crime worth lamenting and condemning,” but “for the first time in a very long time, the man occupying the Oval Office appears to be almost totally unmoved by moral appeals in dealing with the rest of the world” — and that is welcome.
And in a
prescient final column for the Washington Post,
received by his editor the day before he disappeared,
Jamal Khashoggi
himself lamented the death of the Arab Spring. He gave as an example the Egyptian government’s seizure of the entire print run of one newspaper: “These actions no longer carry the consequence of a backlash from the international community. Instead, these actions may trigger condemnation quickly followed by silence. As a result, Arab governments have been given free rein to continue silencing the media at an increasing rate.”
Here come ‘The Conners’
Make it stop, pleaded
Clay Cane.
The matriarch of the family has overdosed on opioids, went the storyline in the “Roseanne” reboot that premiered Tuesday. “Clearly, ABC wants to maintain the cash cow” without its former star’s racist baggage.
Enough.
“We must stop moving backwards. We must stop wading in nostalgia … from our television shows to our old guard politicians.”
But “The Conners” is very much about now,
argued show runner,
Bruce Helford
, in the Hollywood Reporter. “I wanted a respectful sendoff … one that was relevant and could inspire discussion for the greater good about the American working class,” he wrote, like “the unbowed Conners as they deal with the economic inequalities of life in lower-income America with love and humor.”
Melania and misogyny
Jill Filipovic
thought
the T.I. video that went viral this week
put the rapper in the same “piggish, unrepentant misogynist league” as the President. In the video, “a Melania Trump lookalike strips in the Oval Office, dancing for T.I.’s pleasure after the President leaves the White House,” Filipovic wrote. (Melania Trump’s spokeswoman called it “disrespectful and disgusting”) Spare us the outrage, wrote Filipovic: “the T.I. video is sexist and shameful. But if Melania’s team and Trump administration supporters want to boycott the sexist and shameful, they need to start at home, with the man in the White House.”
Finally, high time for Canada
First the bad news:
Pot can raise your “risk of psychotic illnesses”. The good news, at least for Canada? In “making it legal to buy, grow and own weed,” this week, noted science writer
Tom Chivers
, and in “imposing draconian penalties on people who sell to minors,” Canada takes the industry out of the hands of drug cartels. And that, he said, will “make it easier to keep the drug out of the hands of children.”
Read More | Pat Wiedenkeller, CNN,
Business What year is it, exactly? 2020 arrives early, in 2018-10-21 15:03:34
0 notes
Text
Business What year is it, exactly? 2020 arrives early
Business What year is it, exactly? 2020 arrives early Business What year is it, exactly? 2020 arrives early http://www.nature-business.com/business-what-year-is-it-exactly-2020-arrives-early/
Business
In a new series of weekly columns (available soon as a newsletter), we’re looking back at the strongest, smartest opinion takes of the week from CNN and other outlets.
(CNN)It’s the midterms of 2018, so why was Elizabeth Warren — presidential hopeful, class of 2020 — swamping the news cycle?
The November 6 vote is rolling in fast — the first chance since 2016 to answer President Donald Trump at the ballot box. It’s a moment that will either solidify the GOP’s total grip on power in Washington or — to hear the Democrats tell it — halt the country’s slide into authoritarianism.
But as a possible reordering of the political universe gathered, readers were riveted to see Warren — rising to the Trumpian bait, seemingly out of the blue — with her DNA test and video, meant to erase a negative issue and answer for all time: Native American or not (or just a little)?
Not helpful just now, said many Democrats.
Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton was talking about her husband, Monica Lewinsky and #MeToo.
Please stop talking
(for now), said
Michelle Cottle,
in The New York Times.
“This close to Election Day, discussing hot-button issues in national interviews is nothing but problematic for her party — and, ultimately, her own legacy,” she wrote.
Warren walks into it
“On the first day of her unofficial presidential campaign, Sen. Elizabeth Warren
showed exactly why
President Trump is such a powerful political opponent,”
Julian Zelizer
warned. “He can twist his opponents into knots as they dive deeper and deeper into a political abyss,” drawing them “into conversations they never intended to have.” That would be the one about Warren’s attempt to get Trump to stop calling her “Pocahontas” (
no luck
) by producing
a DNA test.
Democrats fretting about the midterms were not thrilled. And
Kate Maltby
wrote that Warren was absolutely entitled to hit back at Trump,
but she is “mistaken
if she thinks Trump’s America is a place where an emotively scored promo video can change the tenor of a racial debate. If she thinks she’s the best Democratic candidate to take on Donald Trump in 2020, she’s even more mistaken.”
And there’s hypocrisy
, argued
Simon Moya Smith
, an Oglala Lakota and Chicano journalist: “Elizabeth Warren, where the hell have you been?”… during the Dakota Access Pipeline fight, the long history of “police brutality in Indian country,” and myriad issues affecting Native Americans. “I’d take Warren in a hot minute over a petulant President Trump … but the revered senator has a lot to apologize for — or at least explain. When we needed her, she didn’t lace up.”
Meanwhile, back in 2018 …
Cue the uproars across the land.
President Trump crisscrossed the country whipping up Republicans’ anxiety about immigration, with warnings about a migrant caravan moving north through Central America. He paused in Montana to praise Greg Gianforte, who pleaded guilty after assaulting a reporter last year (and was elected to Congress a day later). “Any guy who can do a body slam … he’s my guy,” said the American President. “Even at his most paranoid, Nixon never solicited violence against journalists,” wrote
Samuel Freedman. Trump’s words should chill
an America “where the MAGA hat defiles the First Amendment, and practitioners of a free press feel ever more the peril that ultimately swallowed up Jamal Khashoggi.”
(
What does context matter,
though, for Trump?”
Eric Lach
pointed out in the New Yorker. “In Montana, on a stage, he felt that endorsing the assault of a reporter ‘might help.’ So he did it.” )
The President had another strategy, too
: Abandon issues and simply brand Democrats as “dangerous,” “wacko” and “an angry left-wing mob,” wrote
Noah Berlatsky
. Don’t ignore this, he warned, “once you start delegitimizing one sort of protest,” you’re headed to an “authoritarian state, in which repression of dissent is justified to preserve order and keep dangerous, disloyal elements out of power.” Example? Putin’s Russia.
But Trump and Republicans
have a good reason for banging away at immigration i
n a politically polarized country, wrote
Thomas Edsall
in The New York Times. Data show that “men and women opposed to immigration are much more likely to vote Republican on the issue than supporters are to base a vote for a Democratic candidate on a pro-immigration position.”
Midterm mix
In Georgia, the Republican candidate for governor, Brian Kemp (who is also the secretary of state, in charge of elections) was accused of trying to suppress the black vote by stalling 53,000 voter registrations. (“
How’s this for an axiom that is especially self-evident,
” asked the NAACP Legal Defense Fund’s
Janai Nelson
: “An elected official should not oversee an election in which he is a candidate.”)
Kemp, locked in a close race against Democrat Stacey Abrams, denies the voters put on hold under the state’s “exact match” system have anything to do with his run. This is a system, noted
Eugene Scott
in the Washington Post, that
“would put someone named Beyoncé Knowles-Carter
on the ‘pending’ registration list if her voting application said Beyoncé Knowles Carter.” In other words, “the latest offensive in the renewed campaign against minority voting rights,” said
Nelson.
Sen. Ted Cruz declined, but CNN held a town hall anyway on Thursday with his challenger, Rep. Beto O’Rourke, “the Irish descendant from the Hispanic borderlands of Texas” political writer
James Moore
called him, “who has given the state’s Democrats a
gift they have found too surprising to completely unwrap.”
The gift? Hope. So far O’Rourke is losing, said a CNN poll, but Moore thinks he is now on the national stage to stay. And if Hispanics, middle-class women and millennials come out, he may have a chance.
Khashoggi: Saudis try to explain the horror
By week’s end, Saudi officials, bending to intense pressure, confirmed the death of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul, fired a top military official and detained 18 Saudis, but blamed it on a fistfight that got out of control.
Nic Robertson
wrote that the “rogue-operation”-gone-wrong narrative, rather than a culpable crown prince in a friendly oil kingdom,
“beggars belief.
But Trump chose not merely to buy it, but endorse and propagate it, too.” “Trump is already giving us a curtain raiser on his intent, tilting toward a pass for his autocratic ally in the Middle East,” he wrote.
It’s in keeping with the President’s “instinctive affinity for authoritarian figures,” wrote John Avlon, and his cynical read on American exceptionalism: “The biggest difference with Donald Trump is that he’s been quick to condemn America’s past policies not from an idealistic human rights perspective but from a cold realism that is quick to call the United States morally equivalent to other countries, like Russia. No other US president would refuse to condemn Putin’s extrajudicial killings by saying ‘you think our county’s so innocent?’”
Nick Paton Walsh
suggested that
Trump’s “we won” mantra
“set the tone for this year’s spate of attempted assassinations or failed abductions — and, possibly, a new era of impunity. Be it on a door handle in Salisbury, England, or inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul … the essential message is the same: We don’t really care if we get caught.”
Elites may not like it, observed
Damon Linker
in The Week, but “
the President views international relations in transactional terms.”
Khashoggi’s killing “would be a crime worth lamenting and condemning,” but “for the first time in a very long time, the man occupying the Oval Office appears to be almost totally unmoved by moral appeals in dealing with the rest of the world” — and that is welcome.
And in a
prescient final column for the Washington Post,
received by his editor the day before he disappeared,
Jamal Khashoggi
himself lamented the death of the Arab Spring. He gave as an example the Egyptian government’s seizure of the entire print run of one newspaper: “These actions no longer carry the consequence of a backlash from the international community. Instead, these actions may trigger condemnation quickly followed by silence. As a result, Arab governments have been given free rein to continue silencing the media at an increasing rate.”
Here come ‘The Conners’
Make it stop, pleaded
Clay Cane.
The matriarch of the family has overdosed on opioids, went the storyline in the “Roseanne” reboot that premiered Tuesday. “Clearly, ABC wants to maintain the cash cow” without its former star’s racist baggage.
Enough.
“We must stop moving backwards. We must stop wading in nostalgia … from our television shows to our old guard politicians.”
But “The Conners” is very much about now,
argued show runner,
Bruce Helford
, in the Hollywood Reporter. “I wanted a respectful sendoff … one that was relevant and could inspire discussion for the greater good about the American working class,” he wrote, like “the unbowed Conners as they deal with the economic inequalities of life in lower-income America with love and humor.”
Melania and misogyny
Jill Filipovic
thought
the T.I. video that went viral this week
put the rapper in the same “piggish, unrepentant misogynist league” as the President. In the video, “a Melania Trump lookalike strips in the Oval Office, dancing for T.I.’s pleasure after the President leaves the White House,” Filipovic wrote. (Melania Trump’s spokeswoman called it “disrespectful and disgusting”) Spare us the outrage, wrote Filipovic: “the T.I. video is sexist and shameful. But if Melania’s team and Trump administration supporters want to boycott the sexist and shameful, they need to start at home, with the man in the White House.”
Finally, high time for Canada
First the bad news:
Pot can raise your “risk of psychotic illnesses”. The good news, at least for Canada? In “making it legal to buy, grow and own weed,” this week, noted science writer
Tom Chivers
, and in “imposing draconian penalties on people who sell to minors,” Canada takes the industry out of the hands of drug cartels. And that, he said, will “make it easier to keep the drug out of the hands of children.”
Read More | Pat Wiedenkeller, CNN,
Business What year is it, exactly? 2020 arrives early, in 2018-10-21 15:03:34
0 notes
Text
Business What year is it, exactly? 2020 arrives early
Business What year is it, exactly? 2020 arrives early Business What year is it, exactly? 2020 arrives early http://www.nature-business.com/business-what-year-is-it-exactly-2020-arrives-early/
Business
In a new series of weekly columns (available soon as a newsletter), we’re looking back at the strongest, smartest opinion takes of the week from CNN and other outlets.
(CNN)It’s the midterms of 2018, so why was Elizabeth Warren — presidential hopeful, class of 2020 — swamping the news cycle?
The November 6 vote is rolling in fast — the first chance since 2016 to answer President Donald Trump at the ballot box. It’s a moment that will either solidify the GOP’s total grip on power in Washington or — to hear the Democrats tell it — halt the country’s slide into authoritarianism.
But as a possible reordering of the political universe gathered, readers were riveted to see Warren — rising to the Trumpian bait, seemingly out of the blue — with her DNA test and video, meant to erase a negative issue and answer for all time: Native American or not (or just a little)?
Not helpful just now, said many Democrats.
Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton was talking about her husband, Monica Lewinsky and #MeToo.
Please stop talking
(for now), said
Michelle Cottle,
in The New York Times.
“This close to Election Day, discussing hot-button issues in national interviews is nothing but problematic for her party — and, ultimately, her own legacy,” she wrote.
Warren walks into it
“On the first day of her unofficial presidential campaign, Sen. Elizabeth Warren
showed exactly why
President Trump is such a powerful political opponent,”
Julian Zelizer
warned. “He can twist his opponents into knots as they dive deeper and deeper into a political abyss,” drawing them “into conversations they never intended to have.” That would be the one about Warren’s attempt to get Trump to stop calling her “Pocahontas” (
no luck
) by producing
a DNA test.
Democrats fretting about the midterms were not thrilled. And
Kate Maltby
wrote that Warren was absolutely entitled to hit back at Trump,
but she is “mistaken
if she thinks Trump’s America is a place where an emotively scored promo video can change the tenor of a racial debate. If she thinks she’s the best Democratic candidate to take on Donald Trump in 2020, she’s even more mistaken.”
And there’s hypocrisy
, argued
Simon Moya Smith
, an Oglala Lakota and Chicano journalist: “Elizabeth Warren, where the hell have you been?”… during the Dakota Access Pipeline fight, the long history of “police brutality in Indian country,” and myriad issues affecting Native Americans. “I’d take Warren in a hot minute over a petulant President Trump … but the revered senator has a lot to apologize for — or at least explain. When we needed her, she didn’t lace up.”
Meanwhile, back in 2018 …
Cue the uproars across the land.
President Trump crisscrossed the country whipping up Republicans’ anxiety about immigration, with warnings about a migrant caravan moving north through Central America. He paused in Montana to praise Greg Gianforte, who pleaded guilty after assaulting a reporter last year (and was elected to Congress a day later). “Any guy who can do a body slam … he’s my guy,” said the American President. “Even at his most paranoid, Nixon never solicited violence against journalists,” wrote
Samuel Freedman. Trump’s words should chill
an America “where the MAGA hat defiles the First Amendment, and practitioners of a free press feel ever more the peril that ultimately swallowed up Jamal Khashoggi.”
(
What does context matter,
though, for Trump?”
Eric Lach
pointed out in the New Yorker. “In Montana, on a stage, he felt that endorsing the assault of a reporter ‘might help.’ So he did it.” )
The President had another strategy, too
: Abandon issues and simply brand Democrats as “dangerous,” “wacko” and “an angry left-wing mob,” wrote
Noah Berlatsky
. Don’t ignore this, he warned, “once you start delegitimizing one sort of protest,” you’re headed to an “authoritarian state, in which repression of dissent is justified to preserve order and keep dangerous, disloyal elements out of power.” Example? Putin’s Russia.
But Trump and Republicans
have a good reason for banging away at immigration i
n a politically polarized country, wrote
Thomas Edsall
in The New York Times. Data show that “men and women opposed to immigration are much more likely to vote Republican on the issue than supporters are to base a vote for a Democratic candidate on a pro-immigration position.”
Midterm mix
In Georgia, the Republican candidate for governor, Brian Kemp (who is also the secretary of state, in charge of elections) was accused of trying to suppress the black vote by stalling 53,000 voter registrations. (“
How’s this for an axiom that is especially self-evident,
” asked the NAACP Legal Defense Fund’s
Janai Nelson
: “An elected official should not oversee an election in which he is a candidate.”)
Kemp, locked in a close race against Democrat Stacey Abrams, denies the voters put on hold under the state’s “exact match” system have anything to do with his run. This is a system, noted
Eugene Scott
in the Washington Post, that
“would put someone named Beyoncé Knowles-Carter
on the ‘pending’ registration list if her voting application said Beyoncé Knowles Carter.” In other words, “the latest offensive in the renewed campaign against minority voting rights,” said
Nelson.
Sen. Ted Cruz declined, but CNN held a town hall anyway on Thursday with his challenger, Rep. Beto O’Rourke, “the Irish descendant from the Hispanic borderlands of Texas” political writer
James Moore
called him, “who has given the state’s Democrats a
gift they have found too surprising to completely unwrap.”
The gift? Hope. So far O’Rourke is losing, said a CNN poll, but Moore thinks he is now on the national stage to stay. And if Hispanics, middle-class women and millennials come out, he may have a chance.
Khashoggi: Saudis try to explain the horror
By week’s end, Saudi officials, bending to intense pressure, confirmed the death of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul, fired a top military official and detained 18 Saudis, but blamed it on a fistfight that got out of control.
Nic Robertson
wrote that the “rogue-operation”-gone-wrong narrative, rather than a culpable crown prince in a friendly oil kingdom,
“beggars belief.
But Trump chose not merely to buy it, but endorse and propagate it, too.” “Trump is already giving us a curtain raiser on his intent, tilting toward a pass for his autocratic ally in the Middle East,” he wrote.
It’s in keeping with the President’s “instinctive affinity for authoritarian figures,” wrote John Avlon, and his cynical read on American exceptionalism: “The biggest difference with Donald Trump is that he’s been quick to condemn America’s past policies not from an idealistic human rights perspective but from a cold realism that is quick to call the United States morally equivalent to other countries, like Russia. No other US president would refuse to condemn Putin’s extrajudicial killings by saying ‘you think our county’s so innocent?’”
Nick Paton Walsh
suggested that
Trump’s “we won” mantra
“set the tone for this year’s spate of attempted assassinations or failed abductions — and, possibly, a new era of impunity. Be it on a door handle in Salisbury, England, or inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul … the essential message is the same: We don’t really care if we get caught.”
Elites may not like it, observed
Damon Linker
in The Week, but “
the President views international relations in transactional terms.”
Khashoggi’s killing “would be a crime worth lamenting and condemning,” but “for the first time in a very long time, the man occupying the Oval Office appears to be almost totally unmoved by moral appeals in dealing with the rest of the world” — and that is welcome.
And in a
prescient final column for the Washington Post,
received by his editor the day before he disappeared,
Jamal Khashoggi
himself lamented the death of the Arab Spring. He gave as an example the Egyptian government’s seizure of the entire print run of one newspaper: “These actions no longer carry the consequence of a backlash from the international community. Instead, these actions may trigger condemnation quickly followed by silence. As a result, Arab governments have been given free rein to continue silencing the media at an increasing rate.”
Here come ‘The Conners’
Make it stop, pleaded
Clay Cane.
The matriarch of the family has overdosed on opioids, went the storyline in the “Roseanne” reboot that premiered Tuesday. “Clearly, ABC wants to maintain the cash cow” without its former star’s racist baggage.
Enough.
“We must stop moving backwards. We must stop wading in nostalgia … from our television shows to our old guard politicians.”
But “The Conners” is very much about now,
argued show runner,
Bruce Helford
, in the Hollywood Reporter. “I wanted a respectful sendoff … one that was relevant and could inspire discussion for the greater good about the American working class,” he wrote, like “the unbowed Conners as they deal with the economic inequalities of life in lower-income America with love and humor.”
Melania and misogyny
Jill Filipovic
thought
the T.I. video that went viral this week
put the rapper in the same “piggish, unrepentant misogynist league” as the President. In the video, “a Melania Trump lookalike strips in the Oval Office, dancing for T.I.’s pleasure after the President leaves the White House,” Filipovic wrote. (Melania Trump’s spokeswoman called it “disrespectful and disgusting”) Spare us the outrage, wrote Filipovic: “the T.I. video is sexist and shameful. But if Melania’s team and Trump administration supporters want to boycott the sexist and shameful, they need to start at home, with the man in the White House.”
Finally, high time for Canada
First the bad news:
Pot can raise your “risk of psychotic illnesses”. The good news, at least for Canada? In “making it legal to buy, grow and own weed,” this week, noted science writer
Tom Chivers
, and in “imposing draconian penalties on people who sell to minors,” Canada takes the industry out of the hands of drug cartels. And that, he said, will “make it easier to keep the drug out of the hands of children.”
Read More | Pat Wiedenkeller, CNN,
Business What year is it, exactly? 2020 arrives early, in 2018-10-21 15:03:34
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Text
notes for my friend for hire mix is she promised to the night
#abuse #death m
this won’t make a lot of sense if you haven’t read friend for hire. even if you have, i wrote that story back in ‘13 and made the playlist at around the same time and it’s ‘18 now and i don’t exactly remember what was going through my head when i put this together, so this might be a less enlightening mix notes post. regardless, here we go.
only happy when it rains / garbage
one of the things i figured out very early on about jack is that she’s pretentious and melodramatic and on some level enjoys having something to complain about. after all, what kind of fifteen-year-old runs an overly verbose vent blog filled entirely with lengthy personal posts about some girl her parents are paying her to befriend? well, probably someone who likes to wallow in it a bit. friend for hire is, i guess, something of a tragedy, but it’s also being told by a character who has a tendency to revel in being sad.
seventeen / marina and the diamonds
growing pains. teenage angst. more establishing material for who jack is.
about a girl / nirvana
this is definitely a song jack likes — i’m pretty sure i alluded to her fondness for 90s grunge at least once. nirvana songs are hard to analyze because kurt cobain was the sort of lyricist who mostly didn’t give a fuck about what his lyrics actually meant; regardless, the way i read this song is that it’s about being too hung up on someone who isn’t that level of hung up on you, who has a life outside of you. an unbalanced relationship, broadly speaking, which is what jack and luna’s thing was from the get-go because of the money jack pockets for it and the three-year age gap between the two.
crushcrushcrush / paramore
i think i put this on there more for the mood than for any specific lyric. this is a story about angsty teenagers. it definitely calls for some paramore.
down today / jonathan coulton
this dude can write a passive-aggressive song like no one’s business. i mean, if you haven’t heard this song, it’s about how someone (maybe an ex, from context) is attempting to go off on you but you don’t even give a shit because you’re having a good time with a nice girl now. also: did jack make friends with luna to spite her mom? one hundred percent yes she did.
summersong / the decemberists
song about taking it easy because it’s summertime and summer comes and goes quickly. the main events of this story happen over the course of one summer — that’s about a three-month time frame. that’s quick. but a lot can happen in a single season, especially if you’re young.
summertime / my chemical romance
abandoning the rest of the world to run away with someone. this song is off mcr’s concept album set in a dystopia, so relating it to a much more mundane occurrence (two adolescents becoming friends) helped set the overdramatic us-vs-them teenager mentality mood i wanted the story to have.
born to die / lana del rey
more moody shit, plus the line “you like your girls insane” for a little nod at the mental illness themes i was working with. and a little mild suicidal ideation, why not?
kimberly / patti smith
i don’t know what the fuck patti smith is on about half the time, i’ll confess, but i love the imagery in this song; it’s weird and surreal and grand and apocalyptic and ends with the narrator gazing “into your starry eyes, baby” for the rest of the song. more “the two of us against the rest of the world” / “all we have is each other” kind of stuff, in context.
4 o’clock / emilie autumn
so we’ve mostly been from jack’s perspective in this playlist till now, but here’s a bit of luna. she’s an insomniac, and when she does sleep, she sleepwalks. for a girl named after the moon, she’s learning to dread the night pretty well. i confess that this bit of luna’s character is also based off of my first depressive episode in part because i kept myself awake at night until sunrise because paranoia made me fear the dark.
asleep / emilie autumn
luna again, big surprise. pretty self-explanatory. wanting to sleep but it sounds an awful lot like wanting to be dead at times, too.
is she weird / pixies
yes, she is weird. this is where i got the title of the mix from.
monster / paramore
again, us vs. rest of the world stuff. drowning imagery in this one too. i don’t remember my writing process for this story too well but i’m pretty sure the foreshadowing was far from subtle.
girls! girls! girls! / emilie autumn
i think i referred to this song explicitly in the story. this is victorian notions of female madness / hysteria stuff, which is a theme i hope i explored at least a little because it was a big influence while writing this thing. iirc i had jack reference this song which is sort of getting at jack’s gender issues i guess, not seeing herself as a girl and all that.
fear of dying / jack off jill
i love foreshadowing apparently. also sort of a “i don’t want to die and leave you behind (but if we died together it’d be alright)” thing here.
northern star / hole
more night imagery. also a really moody track, sort of apocalyptic-sounding. it’s hole so i’ll be damned if i know what the lyrics are supposed to mean but the tone fits. i think i had this one associated in my mind with a specific scene i wrote where luna shows up at jack’s house unexpectedly.
how strange / emilie autumn
don’t remember which of my main characters i associated this one with but i wanted to get some early emilie autumn in there and this song is basically a passive-aggressive “you don’t know me like that” track. also the chorus talks about dreams which naturally were an important part of this story.
if you feel better / emilie autumn
abuse victim anthem am i right. the lyrics for this one are basically like “you can blame everything on me and treat me like i’m just a heartless person taking advantage of you if it helps you to do that because i’m past fighting you on it” and, again, you can definitely read it as passive-aggressive but i’m not sure you have to either because this is 100% the mentality abuse victims commonly adopt during their abuse. could work for jack and luna or for jack and her mom.
the killing type / amanda palmer
the narrator of this song constantly asserts a nonviolent, pacifistic nature but is clearly willing, if not eager, to resort to violence to fix a broken relationship. if that ain’t a mood, i guess. i think this is more of a luna track, except she’s like twelve and ends up directing violence at herself instead of towards anyone else.
i want my innocence back / emilie autumn
given the ages of my protagonists, loss of innocence is in the thematic mix, and i think luna in particular (who is just moving out of childhood into adolescence) wants to go back to how she was before losing some vestige of innocence... another violent song too, but not angry, the violence here is matter-of-fact. a means to an end. luna’s basically dealing with the onset of mental illness symptoms (i never decided what she might have, but definitely some measure of psychosis) and doesn’t know what’s happening but wishes things could return to “normal” for her.
time for tea / emilie autumn
my main reason for including this track, i think, was because luna would like it. it’s about girls exacting bloody revenge, what’s not to love?
eloise / the damned
given jack’s overall musical taste (which i don’t think i discussed too much in canon, but i alluded to it more than once), i’m sure she’d like this song. the angst makes it fit. also like... doing everything you can think of to keep someone happy and then losing them anyway.
liar / emilie autumn
god i really put a lot of emilie autumn on this one huh. this is another track that could work for jack’s relationship with her mom (i think when i had her review opheliac in a blog post, she mentioned liking this song; that’s why), but it’s more relevant to jack and luna’s relationship ultimately, especially once luna finds out jack’s been getting paid to befriend her.
when i am queen / jack off jill
extremely a luna track, the chorus is even about suicide by drowning for fuck’s sake. not sure there’s much more to say, the relation of this one to the story is probably very obvious.
shallot / emilie autumn
very pretty song about being imprisoned and escaping it in order to die free, or something. also a lot of water/night imagery. very luna.
where is my mind? / pixies
water imagery again, also losing your mind or realizing you never had one to begin with. most applicable to luna but jack is probably the one who likes this track.
come away to the water / maroon 5 ft. rozzi crane
the title is probably enough explanation but this is about children being taken to be slaughtered, so. there’s that.
4 o’clock reprise / emilie autumn
if friend for hire was a movie i’d want this to play the night luna drowns. that’s all i gotta say on that.
redondo beach / patti smith
this song is about a woman who has a fight with her girlfriend and then goes looking for her; along the way she sees a commotion on the beach, where a girl has just washed up dead, but ignores it to keep search for her gf, not realizing till the end of the song who the dead girl on the beach is. obviously i picked it because it’s about someone drowning herself following a fight with a loved one.
dear prudence / siouxsie and the banshees
the narrator of this song implores the titular prudence to come outside and play, but i’ve always thought prudence sounded... well, dead, the way the narrator keeps imploring her to open her eyes. i’m not sure if that’s like a “valid interpretation” of the track but in my mind prudence is absolutely not alive. at this point in the story neither is luna, so.
if i burn / emilie autumn
friend for hire concluded with jack realizing that even though luna’s dead, she’s never going to be rid of her. this track is about someone asserting that even if she dies, her killer will never be rid of her memory and will be haunted by her forever.
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