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writtingsparxx · 3 years

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...And Cold

Title: ...And Cold Rating: G. I don’t think I even swore in this Pairing: Reader/Sigma. Gender neutral, no pronouns used Notes: Oh geez. I lived bitch. Thank you so much to @talkingshitpost for the prompt that started this all

Also now posted on AO3

You knew that winter was the best time for stargazing. You had heard it in every planetarium demonstration, every astronomy club meeting, every naked-eye observation lecture. Winter in the Northern Hemisphere usually meant the clearest skies, the longest nights, and the brightest stars. But, even though you were tired of hearing the same information over and over again, when Siebren de Kuiper started talking about it, you didn't seem to mind one bit. In fact, whenever the scientist started to go on about different stuff in the universe your interest only grew. And one thing in particular that the astronomer had been rambling on for the past couple of weeks was the Ursids meteor shower that was going to be at its peak soon.

It was one of the largest and most visible meteor showers that was visible in the Northern Hemisphere at this time of the year. The only problem that was it was also freezing during this time of the year. The thought of getting to spend the entire night just watching the stars and the meteor shower was ideal, but you really didn't want to turn into an icicle either. Still, after some planning you had everything set up and ready to go. Now, it was just getting permission from Siebren to not come into the lab the next day, because you knew that you were going to be exhausted.

"Siebren?" you asked softly as you entered his office at the end of the day. The astronomer was sitting at his desk, his head in his hands as he stared down at the papers in front of him. The last couple of weeks had been difficult. All the research that Siebren and the team had been putting in wasn't showing results as fast as some of the higher members of Talon's administration wanted, and so they were threatening him. And it wasn't just with physical harm, it was also the idea of cutting off funding, and more importantly, cutting off the medical help that was keeping Siebren as stable as possible. It was terrifying to think about, especially the threat of taking away the thing that had helped Siebren so much over the last few months.

"Hmm? Oh, yes, sorry.... I didn't see you there," Siebren said, sitting up slightly in his chair. When he looked up at you, you couldn't help but notice how hollow his eyes looked, and how tired it seemed that he was. It couldn't be easy having to answer to people like Reaper and Doomfist, but with the added pressure of everything else, you couldn't imagine the stress that Siebren was under.

"That's okay... I just came in," you said with a smile, reaching up to move a piece of hair out of your face. "I um... I actually came in to ask you a question..." you started, biting your bottom lip, not sure how to approach whas was essentially asking your boss out on a date. "Well, as you probably know, tonight is going to be the peak of the Ursids meteor shower, and I was just... I was wondering if you wanted to watch it with me tonight?" you asked quickly.

You could almost hear Siebren thinking. It was obvious that he wasn't expecting for you to ask him to watch the meteor shower with you. "I... I forgot that it was today..." Siebren said quietly, his voice trailing off as he looked up over your shoulder. The last few weeks Siebren had been losing track of time easily, and you were beginning to wonder if it was a side-effect of the accident that he had. "I hadn't planned on seeing it, but... I could catch some of it with you. For research of course," Siebren said with a small smile.

You laughed slightly, loving that he had to find some kind of justification to actually enjoy something for himself for a change. "Of course... For research," you teased with a smile. "I'm hoping to set up a little make-shift camp out near the training field. Hopefully we won't freeze to death while waiting for it," you joke with a smile. "I um... I'm going to go change and get ready. I'll see you about 6?" you asked.

"Oh yes, understood," Siebren said with a small smile.

You smiled brightly, turning a slight shade of pink before rushing out of the office. Even after all this time with Siebren, you still felt nervous talking to him. You wondered if there would ever be a time where even thinking about Siebren wouldn't make you blush like you had a crush on him. Still, you were happy that Siebren agreed, and you couldn't wait until later that night in order to spend some quality time with him without having to worry about anything else. At least for a couple of hours.

When you got back to your room, you immediately started to get ready for the evening. You had managed to "borrow" several blankets from the laundry and was making sure you had enough to not only put on the ground as a protective barrier, but also to hopefully bundle up in when you got too cold. You had also set out almost every piece of winter clothing that you had. Hopefully, with enough layers you wouldn't turn into a human icicle in just a few moments. So, after piling on your long johns, thermal tights, thermal shirt, a pair of long pants, a pair of jeans, a long sleeved shirt, a t-shirt, a hoodie, your winter jacket, your heavy boot socks, boots, gloves, a scarf and your hat, you figured that it would enough to keep you warm. Making sure that you had your communicator in case of any emergencies, you grabbed your pile of blankets and headed to the training grounds.

Just as you suspected, there was no one out on the training field at this time of the night. You suspected with the snow and ice no one would be out here at any time during the day. Still, it was nice to know that you and Siebren probably wouldn’t be disturbed. Trudging through the snow to the middle of the field, you started to set up your pile of blankets into as comfortable as a bed that you could. You sat down, smiling as you laid back, looking up at the sky.

There weren’t words to describe how beautiful it was out here. Being far enough away from base and the rest of the world meant that you could see the stars from one point on the horizon to the other. At your zenith the Milky Way cut across the sky with its subtle orange, purples, and blues. It was absolutely mesmerizing just laying there and watching the sky as it slowly started to change.

After what could have been ten minutes or an hour, you could hear crunching of footsteps in the snow. Sitting up, you turned quickly, seeing a large figure walking toward you. It was too dark to really tell who it was that was approaching, but you had a feeling that there was only one person who would be coming out towards the training field at this time of night. Your suspicion was answered fairly quickly as you heard Siebren’s voice call out your name.

“I’m here,” you said, grabbing your communicator and turning on the flashlight. With the sudden light, you saw Siebren approaching you, two thermos cups in hand. You couldn’t help but laugh a bit when you saw him. He was wearing only a pair of dark pants, a long shirt, a winter jacket, a scarf and a hat.

“I… I brought us something to drink. Coffee to help keep us awake and then some hot chocolate just to make us warmer,” Siebren said, approaching and sitting down next to you on the blankets.

“Thank you. I’m sure that I’m going to need it. I’m already freezing,” you joked, reaching out to take one of the warm thermos, just holding it in your hand. You looked over Siebren’s outfit and laughed slightly. “How are you not freezing in just that?” you asked.

“This weather… It reminds me of being up there, at Horizon. It was always so cold. No matter how much they tried to pump the place with heat… I could never get my feet to warm up,” Siebren said, looking down at his shoes. “Whenever it gets cold, I’m reminded of things that happened there. The memories are… hazy, but there,” Siebren said softly before turning back to you.

You smiled softly, keeping quiet for a moment. After the accident Siebren had difficulty remembering things. The medics who worked for Talon said it had something to do with him repressing the trauma of the event, but you figured that it also had to do with some treatment that the Talon agents had put him through. After all, you couldn’t have an ideal weapon when the weapon could remember all of the good that he did in the world. After a moment you looked back up at Siebren. “Thank you, for bringing the drinks. I’m sure that I’m going to need it. I’m a baby when it comes to the cold,” you explained, taking a small sip of the drink in your hand.

“I can tell,” Siebren joked, looking over your outfit. You blushed slightly, taking another sip of your drink.

You let the conversation die, just turning your attention to the sky once more. It was quiet out here. You didn’t have to think about what was going on in the lab, or whether or not someone was going to come into your room to ask you a question. Here, in this moment you had no responsibilities, no pressing matters that had to be dealt with immediately. It was just the sky, yourself, and Siebren.

After a while, as you started to relax more, you began to feel like your whole body was heavy, and it seemed like it was taking forever for you to blink. A combination of the cold weather, the peace and quiet, and knowing that you didn’t have any responsibilities until at least tomorrow afternoon meant that you were at your most relaxed in weeks. All you wanted to do was lay down and go to sleep right then and there. Surely you’d wake up in time for the meteor shower…

As you started to get more and more tired, at one point you fell forward a little, only to be jolted awake by the feeling of a strong arm across the front of your body. You blinked your eyes open, looking up at the source of the arm. Siebren was looking down at you with slight concern, his arm across your chest and keeping you propped up. “Are you okay, mijn beste?” he asked, helping you sit up straight again.

You blushed slightly, nodding vigorously a few times. “I’m fine, just a little tired,” you explained. You adjusted slightly, allowing yourself to sit up completely. Maybe if you sat with correct posture you’d be able to stay awake.

“If you’d like, I could let you sleep. I can wake you when the meteor shower starts,” Siebren offered.

“Oh! No, thank you! I… I would feel bad. I invited you out here and I don’t want to fall asleep before anything even happens!” you said quickly, going to set the how drink down and turning back to Siebren.

“It would be no trouble. I-I don’t mind,” Siebren said with a smile.

You blushed again, hugging your arms around you and running your hands up and down your arms, trying to warm up slightly. You couldn’t believe how nice and thoughtful Siebren was. He had been so kind and thoughtful all evening. First with the warm drinks and now offering to let you sleep. You appreciated everything that he had done and offered you so far. “I would appreciate it, Siebren,” you said softly, looking up at him again.

Siebren just nodded in response. You started to get ready to lay down, startled by Siebren suddenly getting up. You sat back up, wondering if something was wrong. “Everything okay?” you asked, puzzled. You couldn’t see anything that would warrant this kind of reaction, and even if there was a danger you didn’t have anything on you to protect yourself.

“Oh, I just… I was going to give you some space,” Siebren explained, rubbing the back of his neck.

You laughed a little, shaking your head. “You can’t just stand there for possibly hours, come sit back down,” you said.

Siebren seemed a little shy about it, hesitating before he went to sit back down. He sat down next to you, looking over for a second before looking away. You couldn’t tell that great in the dark, but you swore that he was blushing. “If… If you want, you can lean against me. It might be warmer, and more comfortable than the ground,” Siebren mumbled quietly.

The sudden offer made your skin feel like it was on fire. You looked away, trying to focus on anything but the scientist sitting next to you. Finally, you looked back at him, nodding slightly. “I would like that,” you stammered out. You awkwardly moved over to Siebren, sitting at his side. You put your head on his shoulder, closing your eyes. A moment later, you felt Siebren wrapping you up in a blanket, making sure that you weren’t too cold still.

You didn’t know how you were going to get any sleep now. Your heart was racing and it felt like your skin was still on fire. Siebren was warmer than you expected and you were finally comfortable after freezing all night. He smelt amazing, too. You didn’t know what he used, but it definitely wasn’t the soap that they sold at the commissary. You sighed again softly, just letting everything else wash away. “Can you just talk about anything? Horizon, fun facts that you have about the meteor shower. Anything, Siebren. I like hearing you talk about space,” you said quietly, settling and moving in closer to Siebren.

It took a moment before Siebren settled on a topic that he wanted to talk about. It had something to do with the discovery of Dark Matter and how it was probably the most important discovery that humans had ever made regarding astronomy and astrophysics, and how it had changed the way that we studied basically everything. It was hard to keep up with his train of thought as you slowly drifted off to sleep.

You weren’t sure how long you were asleep, or how long Siebren had kept talking about Dark Matter. The next thing that you knew you were being woken up by the scientist. You were laying back against the ground, looking up at Siebren. “Mijn beste, wake up… It’s starting,” you heard him say. As your eyes started to focus you caught sight of Siebren, a meteor streaking by in the night sky behind him.

#overwatch #overwatch fanfiction #overwatch fanfic #sigma #sigma overwatch #Siebren de Kuiper #sigma x reader #sigma/reader

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sleep-i-ness · 4 years

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Bad Date? (Maria Hill x reader)

Request: YES (at end of oneshot)

Content Warning: Drinking, mentions of cheating

A/N: Here you go hun! I didn’t really know how to write the reader as a tomboy so sorry if it wasn’t quite what you wanted. Oh and one bit was a tiny bit inspired by Two Weeks Notice (with Hugh Grant and Sandra Bullock) so if you notice that well done? Anyway, I hope you enjoy!

Taglist: @holybatflapexpert @startrekkingaroundasgard @natasha-danvers @a-stressedstudent (if you would like to be added, please fill out the form in my bio)

A loud knock at the door startled Maria out of her administration haze; she sighed, taking in the heap of strewn sheets. Her usually immaculate desktop was barely visible under the mountain of paperwork that had just been piling up endlessly since her day had started. It was already looking like she might have to stay well past her contractually mandated hours just to clear what she already had. The legal team at Stark Industries had been on the phone with her non-stop, demanding evidence or explanations that were either highly confidential, non-existent or possibly even both. Maria was honestly sick to death of having to clean up both the physical and PR messes of the Avengers.

“Come in.” She was unable to muster any energy into her order, hoping to whatever mighty being out there that it was an agent she could actually stand. Or really just any agent other than Agent Mace. He had been needlessly suffocating, bouncing into her office, whenever he so pleased, to ask a question that really only required the most miniscule amount of brainpower to be answered. It was a miracle he had ever been hired.

Y/N poked her head through the door, an easy smile tilting her lips upwards. Maria returned the infectious grin despite herself, a giddy, light sensation spreading through her chest.

“Oh, good, Agent Y/L/N. These are the mission debriefs that you filed, would you mind taking them down to Agent Coulson?” Maria rifled through the stuffed drawer by her leg and passed her a thick brown file.

Y/N grabbed it, their fingertips brushing lightly and Maria jolted slightly as an electric spark shot up her arm. “Sure, I got it.”

“Now, after you’ve dropped them down, you can start with the files for your next-”

Y/N interrupted her, smiling sheepishly, “Actually, I don’t know how much time I have. That’s what I came here to ask you about. Tony sort of set me up on a date with someone tonight.”

Maria’s heart sank, a sickening heavy feeling, and she wasn’t quite sure why. She shook it off, blaming it on a sudden bout of exhaustion and mustered an enthusiastic grin. Scraping the papers on her desk together, she stapled them together with a satisfying click.

“Great.”

Y/N took that as a dismissal as she backed away, towards the door. “I just have to figure out what to wear. I don't have anything.”

Y/N almost giggled and a wave of nausea rolled over Maria as she swallowed harshly. Y/N looked ready to soar with joy, like an entrapped bird in a cage that she held the key to.

“Have fun.” Maria couldn’t help the bitterness seeping into her words and Y/N’s face contorted, startled for a second, before schooling herself into a more composed expression.

What the hell was that. Maria was astounded as Y/N backed out without another word, a placating smile fixed to her cheeks. She attributed her sudden passive-aggressiveness on an envy of being able to leave work without feeling the immense burden of knowing how much else she had to do. But she’d never had this problem before when it came to her work-life balance.

Maybe she was finally feeling the need to get back into a relationship.

Maria groaned as the clock hand hit seven and she hadn’t seemed to have made a dent int the pile. She’d have to work the night on this lot; she was prepping an incredibly time-pressured, high-stakes mission, so they were sending the team out tomorrow. The window had been made known to them only a couple hours ago, at most.

She wondered if Y/N was having a better night than her. A nice dinner out, good conversation and freely flowing wine. Then, dancing in the arms of her pretty date and maybe getting a kiss goodnight.

No. This was unprofessional. Maria shook her head, blinking hurriedly, as she tried to clear her mind of any distracting thoughts.

Work.

Right…

Eliott Callahan, ex-CIA, presumed deceased after a mission went wrong in 2007. Recently resurfaced with links to the Tribe of Salvation, an organisation that had been previously unknown until ties to the Ten Rings had been revealed. Supposedly owned a scientific reserve in North Carolina which was too heavily guarded to not be hiding anything. Callahan had given them a way in, now they needed to take the place out.

Maria’s eyes watered as she stared at the security schematics and the notes made by top SHIELD security specialists. God, she wished she had Y/N here to give her some advice on it. Y/N’s expertise was in getting into places she shouldn’t be, which is how SHIELD had found her. But Y/N was having fun on a nice date with a nice girl and Maria couldn’t help but admitting that it had brightened her day to see Y/N happy.

The last mission, Lima, had taken a toll on everyone’s mental health, and Maria couldn’t help but blame herself for the failure. Four of their top agents had been taken out and the others, who had barely survived, had still not passed their psych evals. Today had been the first time Y/N had been visibly giddy or enthusiastic about anything since then.

“Hi.”

Maria scooted her chair to face the door; head buried in a document as she muttered the lines to herself as she read. Lifting her head slowly, she blinked owlishly at the figure in the door.

“Y/N?”

Y/N hovered in the doorway, still wearing a very flattering suit that Maria couldn’t help but admire. She offered Maria a small but weary smile, shifting from foot to foot.

“Come in, take a seat, how was it?” Maria wasn’t sure if she were acting enthusiastic enough to believably be realistically overjoyed for Y/N having been on a date, but she was sure she could instead pass as being worn out.

Y/N slumped into the hard-plastic chair, which rolled backwards due to her momentum. Unlacing her shoes, she yanked them off and massaged the soles of her feet. She stretched out her stocking-covered legs, gently rubbing circles into the back of her ankles and calves.

“It was horrendous,” Y/N groaned, tilting her head back in exasperation. “I mean, does Tony know me at all? Coulson made me babysit him for 3 years, he should know me better than to set me up with someone like that.”

“Like that?”

“Oh, God, she was about 20 minutes late and didn’t get off her phone the entire time. When she finally made some conversation, it was all about her ex-boyfriends. Like, not even ex-girlfriends. And she was always texting at the table. How rude is that!” Y/N’s cheeks were flushed pink and her eyes were glazed as she yawned, delicately raising a hand to cover a mouth while she stretched out like a cat. Y/N smiled sleepily at Maria as she curled into the uncomfortable chair.

Maria returned the smile softly, somewhat reassured by Y/N’s vehement complaints. “Sounds awful. No second date then?”

“God no, I’d rather be reassigned to… to the Arctic!” Y/N threw her hands up dramatically, the seat wobbling beneath her.

“That can be arranged.”

Y/N was unimpressed by Maria’s dry tone, bottom lip jutting out as she folded her arms sulkily.

A sudden thought popped into her mind. She brightened abruptly, sitting up again. “As if you’d do that. You wouldn’t survive without me.”

“You wish.” Y/N was cute while tipsy, Maria mused, before jolting at the thought. No, she was her supervisor, she could not be thinking like that.

“So, tell me.” Y/N’s chin was slipping off her hand as she yawned, elbow firmly planted on the desk. “I’ve told you how shit my date was, what’s the worst date you’ve ever been on?”

Maria paused as she took a mental step back from all the work thoughts accumulating at the back of her head. “Well, back in high school, it wasn’t really a date. At least, I hadn’t thought it was because I’d just come out. To everyone. And I went out for lunch with a friend, a guy named Tyler and he ended up telling me that he could turn me straight again. He also decided to show me the numerous photos of his penis. He had a whole folder on his phone in different lightings and from different angles.”

Y/N had clapped a hand over her mouth, “That’s horrendous, I don’t think I could ever look at someone the same if they did that. Like unsolicited and all that.”

“Yeah, definitely was the final nail in putting me off men.”

Y/N giggled, a pretty sound that Maria couldn’t help but want to hear more of.

“So,” she began, pursing her lips as she tried to think of how to continue.

“So?” Maria laughed

“Yeah, so, tell me. Is there anyone in your life? Anyone special?”

Maria snorted. “No, God no. I haven’t had the time in all honesty; I’m barely on top of my work, never mind sorting out a love life at the same time.”

“I thought… I thought that you were dating Agent Hayes?”

“No, we broke up a while ago over… mutual difference involving work and personal lives becoming too heavily involved.”

“Okay… so that’s what you wrote on the official forms about your break-up. Now, tell me again with feelings. Come on, let’s have a proper deep chat.”

“Hm.” Maria glanced back at the document she’d discarded back onto the pile and groaned. There was clearly a better option of the two. “Fine. I’m sure you are aware of Agent Hayes’ reputation.” Y/N frowned and shook her head. “As a… honey trap. It seems that she was unable to remove that part of her life from our personal lives and decided to… practice on other agents and people in our lives.”

Maria spoke bitterly, expression twisted in a grimace like she had tasted something extremely sour.

“So, basically she’s a cheating bitch.”

“Yeah.” Maria nodded. That summarised her perfectly.

“Well, fuck her, we don’t need shitty women in our lives. Am I right or am I right?” Y/N’s voice rose as she declared her statement triumphantly, sending Maria a quick grin as she pumped a fist in the air.

“Yes, you’re right.” Maria was tentative, unsure whether she wanted to ask the words on the tip of her tongue. “Anyone else in your life?”

“Well,” Y/N took a deep breath, working up the courage to do something momentous. “I did like someone, but I thought they were dating someone, so I let Tony set me up on an absolutely awful blind date.” Her voice lowered to more of a murmur. “But now I found out that the woman I like is single.”

Maria blinked. Could she-? No. Well, there was no point in not trying. “What if the woman liked you back?”

“I’d probably ask if I could kiss her.” Y/N glanced at Maria’s lips, the glaze in her eyes no longer from alcohol.

“I think she’d say yes. She’d be pretty dumb not to.”

Y/N leant in, and Maria’s breath caught in her throat. She had to be dreaming. Their lips met and every thought flew out of her head as she melted into the kiss. Maria pulled away, laughing at Y/N’s pout.

“Wait. Come here.” Maria patted her lap and Y/N eagerly straddled her legs, one hand cupping her chin, the other on the back of her head. “That’s better.”

She kissed her again, an awestruck expression appearing on Y/N’s face as she grinned blissfully. Maria could smell the sweet scent of Y/N’s perfume invading her senses, everything blurring as her mind focused in on the way Y/N seemed to fit perfectly in her arms. Or the hand gripping the hair at the base of her neck as Y/N kept her head in place, the other caressing her cheek.

As they broke apart again, Y/N stayed on Maria’s lap, wrapping her arms around her neck.

“I have to finish this work, but you’re welcome to stay and help. It’ll go twice as quickly.”

Y/N pecked her lips. “Deal.”

Request: Maria hill x female, tomboy, reader where Maria hears that tony set the reader up on a date with some girl he knew. Maria can’t stop thinking about it and ends up staying up through the night until r dare is over. Reader comes back after the date and they talk and reader makes fun of how bad the date was. (aren’t in relationship but get together after talking)

#maria hill #maria hill x reader #maria hill x you #commander hill #agent hill #agent #shield #avengers #marvel #marvel cinematic universe #mcu #marvel imagine #agent coulson #x reader

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maximit3 · 4 years

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Caregiver -1

Pairing: Shouta Aizawa x Reader

Summary: After the raid on the Yakuza compound Aizawa offers to take Eri home with him on the weekends, you are her caregiver. Lots of Dadzawa!

Warning: Perhaps childhood trauma, language, but no others beside that.

W/C: 1523

a/n: I got this idea for this when i was doing another set of headcanons and decided to turn it into a fic. Let me know what ya’ll think and hit me up if you want more!

[Next]

…

You definitely took a wrong turn somewhere. You could have sworn you would have had the path memorized by now, having walked it every weekend for the past month, but you were definitely lost.

Sighing, you pulled out your phone and input the address, hoping that you werent too far off. It was hotter than normal today, and you really didn’t want to arrive looking sweaty and disheveled. You heard your phone ding showing that you were only a block over from where you were supposed to be. You smile with relief and put your phone away and quickly tie your hair up into a ponytail to keep it from sticking to your neck.

“I really need to be more careful, I can’t just be wandering around.” You muttered, continuing your walk.

It wasn’t like you were any danger, but you had a job to do and being tardy was somewhat of an embarrassment, one you tried to avoid. After all, you were chosen as the head caregiver at the Hosu General Hospital to take care of a very important patient and you weren’t one to shirk duty.

Your steps slowed as you reached the front of the familiar apartment complex. As you climb the steps of the stoup and press the buzzer, you find yourself fidgeting waiting for the response.

A month ago you found yourself standing in the Administrator's office unsure of why you had been summoned to a meeting with the pro hero Eraserhead. You had been told that you would be receiving a special assignment, a new patient who would be under your care, but that was all.

In the meeting, you stood silent as Eraserhead spoke with the Administrator and soon the name, Eri, had been mentioned. You knew of the girl who had been saved during a huge raid on a Yakuza base, the girl who had great power that was uncontrollable. You listened more intently as Eraserhead explained his wish for Eri to have weekends outside of the hospital, to give her a chance for some normalcy.

“She’ll stay with me under my protection, of course, so that her quirk does not get out of control.” Eraserhead stated in a voice that was low and somewhat scratchy.

It wasn’t a hard sell, but the Administrator had one condition. “Miss (Y/N) must accompany young Eri to be sure her health stays in good standing while she is away from our care.”

There wasn’t much discussion after that, Eraserhead seemed to understand the position and agreed. Thus began your walks to his apartment every weekend and your caregiving of Eri.

A loud buzzer suddenly drew you out of your haze and you heard the door click allowing you entrance.

Making your way up the familiar stairs you get a little excited to see Eri again. The little girl has been through so much, you read her file, but she was so strong and brave and slowly learning what it meant to be a kid. You push away the thought that you were a little excited to see Eraserhead himself, you are a professional after all, but you still can’t help being a little starstruck.

Quelling your thoughts you find the apartment you're looking for and knock lightly. Through the door you hear giggling and a low amused chuckle. Then there's movement and the door opens and an excited Eri patiently waiting for you.

You kneel down to her level and smile. “Hello Eri, may I come in?” you ask politely.

Eri nods excitedly, “I’m really happy to see you, Miss (Y/N).” She says with quiet excitement, still getting used to her own voice.

She takes your hand and leads you inside where you see the living room table covered in crayons and coloring sheets as well as some glitter that had apparently spilled out. You smile warmly and look down as Eri lets go of your hand to sit in an armchair, already rolling up her sleeves for her examination.

You look around for Eraserhead and hear the bathroom sink running and you figured he must be cleaning up before coming out. Your attention fixes back on Eri and you begin to pull out your equipment starting with monitoring her blood pressure.

“Have you been having a good time today, Eri?” You ask while you watch her numbers on the device.

“Mhm, Mr. Aizawa has been playing with me, we’ve been coloring and playing dress up!” she squeaked excitedly.

You smile as she rambles on allowing her to simply speak, an act you know is difficult for her, and move on to checking her heartbeat.

“That sounds like a lot of fun, I’m glad you’re having a good time. Now, same thing as last week. Just a small pinch, ready?” You say, getting ready to take some of her blood. You can see the tears in her eyes, but she's being brave and grabs hold of your hand. It’s over quickly, just the way you like it. You hate causing her pain.

“Oh, Mr. Aizawa said we could go on a walk later!” She manages to get out while you study your vial.

You hear a low voice suddenly and you won't deny there is a bit of a flutter in your chest. “Actually, what I believe i said was that if Miss (Y/N) was okay with it and if we asked her nicely, maybe we can go on a walk.”

You turn and see Eraser standing in the hallway, leaning against the wall, and smiling at Eri. He was dressed in sweatpants and a short sleeve black shirt that showed off his arms. He catches you watching him and you turn back to your work a slight blush on your cheeks.

You always find yourself a little tongue tied around him and oftentimes all of your conversation revolves around Eri. Sometimes he may ask a question or two about your week and you sometimes give a polite answer and that's that. You’ve heard from others that he is fiercely private and you try not to come off as unprofessional or too starstruck. You remind yourself that it is the way it should be, you are here for Eri.

“Well, Miss (Y/N) what do you say? Would you like to join Eri and I on a walk today to the park?” He asked, raising his eyebrow at you.

You look from him to Eri who is wearing a smile that would melt anyone's heart, and you knew that you were going to say yes.

“I think that would be a lovely idea.” You smile back as Eri claps with excitement.

“Eri why don't you go change your clothes and we can be on our way.” Eraser says and Eri excitedly bolts out of her chair and heads down the hall. You don't miss the Pro hero giving her a loving pat on the head as she passes.

You start to pack up your equipment, you aren’t done for the day you’ll have to check her stats when you get back from the walk to, but you won’t need it for your walk.

“I hope you are really okay with us going. I know how hard it is to tell her no, but she would understand if you did.” You watch as Eraser goes to sit on the couch as you both wait for Eri.

You look at him and politely smile. “Her vitals look good today and she seems to be in good spirits. As long as you're sure there aren't any immediate dangers, I don’t see a reason to say no. You’re doing a good job making her feel normal, Eraserhead.”

You smile and place your pack by the front door then take a seat across from Eraser who had been looking out the window with a contemplative look on his face. Almost absentmindedly, you heard him say, “you know, Miss Y/N, you don’t need to call me Eraserhead while we’re here.”

You knew this, he had told you many times that you could call him Mr. Aizawa. It really didn’t bother you all that much to make the change, but it added just a little more of a personal connection between the two of you. You suppose though, that it had been over a month now and it was probably getting a little awkward for him.

You smile politely and say, “Yes, of course, Mr. Aizawa.”

For a moment you thought you saw something flash in his eyes, something that you hadn’t seen before, but the moment passed when Eri rounded the corner. She smiled at the two of you an awkward toothy smile, but bright, almost as bright as the yellow sundress she was wearing. You couldn’t help but smile back.

“Are you ready to go Miss (Y/N),” she asked politely.

You heard Aizawa stand up from where he had been sitting and you mirror the action dusting off your skirt to straighten out the wrinkles.

“If you are ready Eri and- “ You hesitate for a moment, “And if Mr. Aizawa is ready then so am I.” you finish.

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Big shout out to @mindninjax and @bullrunpicnicker for being my beta readers XD. Yall motivate me to be better. I’m working on the second part of this right now and would love to hear feedback from yall. This is definitely going to be a slow burn so prepare yourselfs. Love you all, Plus Ultra!

#shouta aizawa x reader #shouta aizawa #bnha #bnha fanfiction #dadzawa #fem!reader #domestic fluff

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mitigatedchaos · 4 years

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I fear that we must distinguish between the [Trump Administration’s] executive order [on critical race theory] as written and the executive order as implemented/enforced.

[...]

It’s not supposed to prevent racial sensitivity training or historical discussion or saying that the USA is repairably or redeemably racist. It was written to prevent Critical Race Theory training.

But because federal contractors can be barred from receiving future federal contracts for violating the Executive Order (something that makes lawyers question the legality of the regulation being issued as an EO), out of an abundance of caution, those contractors and their lawyers are acting as if the EO bans many other forms of training in racial sensitivity, racial bias, and history, because it is not yet understood to what extent any enforcement will keep to the letter of the order. The order mandates the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs publish a Request For Information that won’t hit the Federal Register until October 22, 2020.

Under a different president, this EO might’ve been interpreted as a good thing. It bans sexism and racism in training materials. It bans all sorts of stereoyping, including anti-Muslim, anti-Semitie, and anti-Roma. It is, arguably, feminist. It is a double-edged sword that cuts to the right and to the left, and is quite centrist/liberal.

[ @irradiate-space ], ([] edits mine)

So this was a good response to that thread on the other blog. However, it’s arguable that the chilling effect already exists in the other direction.

No one actually knows how to solve race in America. Progressives in particular don’t know, which is why we have reports of professors declaring themselves racist before a class starts, or someone freaking out on a zoom call about - let’s see what was it, a white school board member having a black friend’s kid on his knee?

There are persistent gaps in group outcomes in America that don’t appear to be primarily the result of measurement error, and they’re large enough for a significant fraction of the population to see them as a major problem (or even an emergency). (While one could argue that e.g. police arrests and prosecutions are biased (which wouldn’t be much of a surprise), there are apparently also e.g. disproportionate rates of homicide victims, and most homicides are within-race, not between-race.)

The reason we keep getting reports of Progressives getting up to bizarre racial hijinks like being against standardized testing is that they don’t actually know a way to convert money into group outcome convergence. The old welfare system doesn’t seem to have worked. Just giving people money doesn’t seem to work. Various educational interventions sometimes lower the crime rate a bit (which could be worth it), but otherwise don’t really seem to work.

(Some of these work in the sense that if you give a kid a free lunch, the kid definitely has a lunch, which is nice, but what I haven’t seen is evidence that it sorts all the other stuff out. If someone has evidence of an intervention that actually works to converge outcomes (esp sustainably/intergenerationally) and which has held up, do let me know. In my opinion it would be worth up to one annual US GDP to favorably, positively, and permanently resolve America’s racial conditions. However, it’s not unheard-of to see a flip-flop of e.g. “this group we want to do better is not getting enough words - no wait that was wrong and there’s no relation.”)

Progressives seem to assume that white men do know how to sort out race in the United States, and have... simply decided not to for some reason, probably greed or bigotry. But part of radicalization is that actually, white men don’t know how to solve race either, and they know they don’t know how to solve race, but “punching up”/”it’s okay to vent hatred at the oppressors”/etc type doctrine is based on the idea that they can be pressured into doing this secret solution that they don’t know.

Which brings us to firms.

Race in America is not solved. This means that the hiring pools for corporations are not racially balanced. Whatever the cause, this does not appear to be a measurement error that can be corrected for by simply adding points to someone’s score based on their race.

...which means that corporations cannot prove they are not racist by just hiring exactly proportionally according to the local racial makeup. Which... puts them in a bind.

Any objective criteria they use to assess applicants could have been selected by a racist with racist motives, and they can’t prove that it wasn’t. All they have are the process and the outcomes - and the outcomes are unequal, because race has not been solved in America.

A current right-wing theory is that companies engaging in ostentatious displays of racial politics or support for various racial NGOs are attempting to prove they don’t have a negative racial motive in order to limit the risk from lawsuits. They can’t prove it just by having a race-blind hiring process, because they can’t prove that the choice of the criteria for the hiring process was race-blind, even if the interviewers have no idea what a job candidate’s race is.

#politics #longpost #i guess

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douchebagbrainwaves · 4 years

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WHAT HAPPENED TO DISAGREE

The other cutoff, 38, has a hundred and forty, so can we have credit for the larger of the two we aim at. It's easier to make an inexpensive product more powerful than to make a million dollars worth of wealth in the world.1 If someone sat down and wrote a web browser that didn't suck a fine idea, by the way, the world would be that much richer. If a server got wedged, we jumped; just thinking about it gives me a jolt of adrenaline, years later.2 Makers depend on something more precarious: inspiration. The customer support people were about thirty feet away from the company, as well, when you look at the same time, as their next door neighbors. Burning through too much money chasing too few good deals. Rebellion is almost as stupid as it sounds. What's missing? Then a squad of QA people step in and start counting them, and that is exactly the spirit you want.3 As knowledge gets more specialized, there are twenty more that operate in niche markets.4

Presumably it killed just about 100% of the startups we've funded have. For most of the founders might decide to split off and start another company doing the same thing, you're probably not going to kill the company. And a good thing for the Democrats that their screen lets through an occasional Clinton, even if you don't do everything you're supposed to have. Some people could probably start a company with a valuation any lower. A great programmer, on a roll, could create a million dollars worth of wealth in the world. In a feudal society, there are a lot of people to ask themselves about this explicitly.5 People who didn't care much for religion felt less pressure to go to work for the Post Office for fifty years. Everyone knows these, because there are no releases, ports, and so on.

The danger here is that you get instant feedback from changes: the number of founders in the same business. And yet bullshit does have a distinctive character. Google, and Facebook all began this way.6 The important thing is to be young. If you want to understand change in economic inequality, is different from growing one. If two companies have the same kind of stock and get diluted the same amount in future rounds.7 Over time the teams have gotten smaller, faster, and more informal.8 So have we just shown, by reductio ad absurdum, that it's false that economic inequality is to treat it as a single phenomenon. It's hard to write entire programs as purely functional code, but you have less control over the rate at which individuals can create wealth as well as keeping worse time, mechanical watches have to be prepared to see the real Nixon.9

At the seed stage, investors don't expect you to have an increasingly prosperous society without increasing variation in income, but it could not have put into words exactly how their ugly ducklings were going to be good at what I did be satisfied by merely doing well in school. Plus they were always right.10 When I said I was speaking at a high school. But, like children's books, TV was also misleading. What Microsoft is this the Altair Basic of? If you ask yourself what you spend your time on them have to be small? The only company selling SSL software at the time it seemed the future. So despite those millions in the bank and keep operating as two guys living on ramen. Morally, they care about getting the big questions right, but not all jobs offer internships, and those that do don't teach you much more about the work than being a batboy teaches you about playing baseball.11 Our existence depended on doing these things right.12 And more specifically, is it possible to create wealth how much people want something x the number who do make it. And while some of the fragmentation we've seen?

Notes

But those are the first philosophers including Confucius and Plato saw themselves as teachers of administrators, and mostly in Perl. Nor do we push founders to try, we'd have understood why: If you actually started acting like adults, it may be some part you can remove them from the compromise you'd have to follow redirects, and they were going about it. A doctor, P.

Most people should not try to ensure startups are usually obvious, even though it's at least once for that reason.

I know it didn't to undergraduates on the richer end of the word wealth, seniority will become correspondingly more important.

Bullshit, Princeton University Press, 2005.

7 reports that in fact I read comments on e. And startups that seem excusable according to some abstract notion of fairness or randomly, in virtue of Aristotle's immediate successors may have to watch out for here, I believe will be better to overestimate than underestimate the importance of making n constant, it would take up, but this sort of idea are statistics about the smaller investments you raise them. Some of Aristotle's immediate successors may have been the losing side in debates about software design. The founders who take the line?

Investors are professional negotiators, and should in some cases e.

I warn about later: beware of getting credit for what gets included in shows is basically a replacement mall for mallrats. How much more depends on where you could turn you into a big angel like Ron Conway had angel funds starting in the future, and earns the right to buy stock, the big winners aren't all that value, counting users as active when they're on the parental dole for life in general we've done ok at fundraising is so plausible, you have is so pervasive how often have valuation caps, a valuation. So starting as a predictor.

Calaprice, Alice ed.

As he is at least on me; how can I make it harder for you; who knows who you start fundraising, but that's overkill; the Reagan administration's comparatively sympathetic attitude toward takeovers; the Reagan administration's comparatively sympathetic attitude toward takeovers; the critical question is only half a religious one; there is a case of the class of 2007 came from such schools. I wrote a hilarious but also like an undervalued stock in that category. Candidates for masters' degrees went on to the decline in families eating together was due to fixing old bugs, and so on.

It's a bit misleading to treat macros as a consulting company is common, to buy your kids' way into top colleges by sending them to.

I'm not saying it's impossible without a time machine, how much they'll pay. Successful founders are driven by the normal people they're usually surrounded with. And no one else involved knows French. If you're trying to decide between two alternatives, we'd be interested to hear about the nature of an urban legend.

If Apple's board hadn't made that blunder, they wouldn't have the same amount of material wealth, the higher the walls become. I used thresholds of. When you had a day feels like it that the usual way of calculating real income, or at least 150 million in 1970.

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starbuckie · 4 years

Text

Some Quarantine Lovin’ Chapter 1: A Phone Call

Marvel Highschool! AU

Pairing: Bucky x Reader

Warnings: Obscene amounts of fluff, kissing, swearing, kinda a lot of angst

Description: Bucky Barnes is absolutely, no doubt about it, in love with Y/N L/N. He’s loved her since the day he laid eyes on her in the third grade. He loved her when he had his own girlfriend, and when he was barely friends with her for a whole summer. And of course, in his freshman year, they are now stuck together. In a house. During a worldwide quarantine. This should be fun.

Words: 2,272 words

A/N: Hey y’all, I’m back. Here’s the new and improved chapter, because the last one was a but messed up. Thank you so much for the likes and reblogs, they mean so much to me. I’ve been having a lot of fun writing this series, and I’m excited for the rest of the series. I’ll probably be posting weekly, so thanks for sticking with me.

Y/N walked into the office, pep in her step and a huge smile on her face. Dear God, she hoped her parents said yes. Her parents loved Bucky a lot, they always told him every chance they could, but she didn’t know if they would even allow this. She took a deep breath, and looked into the eyes of the administrative assistant at the desk. “Hey Mr. Coulson, how are you this morning?” Y/N asked.

“Y/N, how many times do I have to ask you to call me Phil,” Phil chuckled, “you’re making me feel so old!”

“Sorry Phil,” she replied, “could I call my mom real quick?” Though she had a phone herself, her school’s cell service was absolute crap, and her phone refused to connect to the wifi, bringing her to the office to use the school phone. She usually tried to avoid the office at all costs, but this call meant everything to her.

“Sure, what for?” This is where she knew it would get tricky. If it was anything besides an injury, illness, or being sent home, the office would not allow her to call home. They were strict like that.

So, without any other choice, she lied. “I’m not feeling too good right now. My head hurts so much, and it's pounding a lot.” She put on her best show of weakness.

Phil frowned. “I’m sorry to hear that. Do you want any Advil? I think it’ll help your head feel better.” He moved his hand to his desk drawer and started to open it.

“Actually, it’s my head and my stomach. They both don’t feel good. And I hurt my foot. A lot.” She knew she was laying it on thick, but she leaned on her right foot to make it seem as if she couldn’t bear to put pressure on the other. Phil knew something was up, but he only narrowed his eyes and nodded.

“The extension is a one before the area code.” He said, but she was already fake-limping as fast as she could to the room next door.

“Thanks Phil!” She yelled back. Y/N made it to the door, opened it, and peered inside to make sure the lounge was empty. Once she knew she was in the clear, she rushed to the phone to dial her mom’s work number in. Pressing it to her ear, it ringed a few times, until she heard the static and her mom’s voice.

“Hello there, Mary L/N, how can I help you?” Her mom’s cheery voice made her calm down a bit, but then she remembered her mission.

“Hey mom, it’s me Y/N”

“Oh hey sweetie, what’s up?”

Y/N decided to try and get this out fast to lessen the blow. “Y’know Bucky, right?”

Her mom’s chuckle was heard through the phone. “Of course, he’s been your friend since the third grade.”

“And how he’s living with his dad and Becca alone?” Her mom’s hum of agreement prompted her to say her next words. “I was wondering if Bucky and Becca could stay here during quarantine. And, before you say anything, I know that you’re gonna say we don’t have any supplies, but we do! We still have the baby crib for Becca, and Bucky can just stay in my room like normal, and it’ll be like a sleepover. A very long sleepover.” Y/N winced at the awkward phrasing of her last few words.

She could hear her mom’s sigh through the phone, and the thoughts running around in her head. “But, even with all that, and I really hate to bring this up too, what are we gonna do about money? We’ll have to buy resources for not three, but six people.” Y/N’s shoulders slumped at her words, and she exhaled through her nose deeply.

Suddenly, like a godsend, she got a text from her sister. Thank whatever god is watching over cell phone service to allow them to receive this text, she thought as she read it.

“Hey mom, Ria just texted, she’s staying with her boyfriend for quarantine.” She was sure her mom could hear the huge smile through her voice, but in the moment she didn’t care. Y/N was desperate for her mom to agree, because she knew that he and his sister wouldn’t be safe. Bucky would always be her priority, even if he didn’t love her back the same way. “Mom, I know that this is huge, but we used to have him over for weeks at a time. This will be the same. If you need me to, I can use all the money that I made over the summer, I can pay for Becca’s food, and the formula, and oh god, what else does a baby need-”

She was abruptly interrupted by her mom. “You will be owing me big time. Your dad is going to murder me.” Y/N grinned widely at her mom's words. She couldn’t believe it. She couldn’t fucking believe it. Her mom was allowing this. Bucky would be safe. Becca would be safe. “Before you go off running to talk to Buck, I should tell you to tell him that I need to voice a few concerns and rules.”

“Okay mom, thank you so, so much. I appreciate this so much, and I know Bucky and Becca will too. I’m gonna go tell him right now.”

“You’re welcome. God, I can’t believe we’re doing this.” Mrs. L/N wasn’t upset about it, no, she was ecstatic to get the Barnes children away from their asshole of a father, but she was going to get to care for them for however long the shelter and place would be going on. “Stop by the Barnes’ house and grab Becca and their things before you get home okay? Unless Mr. Barnes is there, then come straight home and I’ll go with you. You should also leave a note, if you can go inside.”

“You got it, mom. Again, thank you so, so much for this, but I gotta go back to the library to meet Steve and Buck. I love you tons!” Y/N said hurriedly. She was bursting with excitement to get her two favorite people away from their dad, and a month of spending time with her best guy friend that she happened to be in love with just added to it.

“I love you so much, Y/N. See you after school.” As soon as her mom hung up, she bolted. She didn’t care if Mr. Coulson saw and questioned her, nor did she care that she was shoving people in the halls and being a large disruption. Y/N burst through the doors of the library, eyes scanning around the room for her two friends. She spotted Steve talking to the librarian, probably about another spelling error he found in the book he was reading. Another time, she would have made fun of him for it, but she marched straight up to him with a determined look.

“Where’s Buck?” She asked. Y/N must have looked slightly insane and menacing with her windswept hair and slightly ruffled shirt, because her tall blond friend looked downright terrified of her. With wide eyes, he pointed to a couch where Bucky sat with his headphones in and watched a video on a school laptop. She nodded towards Steve in thanks, and dashed off to Bucky. As she approached him, she tried to also figure out the best way to say this. Oh god, what if he’s mad? I didn’t ask if this was okay with him.

The shadow that fell over Bucky gave him the notice that someone was near. His blue eyes looked up and met her gaze. “Hey doll.” He took one more glance at her appearance (not like he didn’t stare at her regularly), and asked, “Did you happen to get caught in a tornado in your hurry to your destination?” They both chuckled, but he could also feel the nervousness and excitement radiating off her. “In all seriousness, what’s up?”

She opened her mouth then closed it. “I need to talk to you. Just you and me. Even though, if you agree to this, the rest of the gang’s gonna find out anyway.”

“Now I’m a little scared, what's happening?”

She took a deep breath.”Well, after you mentioned it earlier, I was reminded that during quarantine, you’d be staying with your dad alone.” Y/N knew it was a little difficult for Bucky to talk about his family, so she decided to break it down slowly to him, even though her nerves were rattling. “And I hate the idea of you and baby Becca staying there, because… y’know.” He nodded his head in understanding, and you got the courage to continue. “Well, I talked to my mom, and she said that you could stay with us. For the quarantine. As long as you need. We love you so much Buck, and so if you wanna, you can stay with us.”

Bucky stared at her with wide eyes, in shock, but soon enough they started to get glassy. God, he couldn’t believe that she would think of him for over break. Y/N was the most selfless and caring person he knew, and he was just in awe of her. He stood up and grasped the girl for a tight hug. His face hid in the crook of her neck, because he was trying so hard not to let anyone see his tears, but he was having trouble controlling the sobs that wracked his body. Thank God they were in the corner of the library with the couches, so no one could see him. Y/N’s hands ran soothingly up his back, and it stayed that way for a few minutes until Bucky finally looked back up at her. “Thank you. Thank you so much.”

She smiled at him and kissed his cheek. “I would throw myself in front of a moving car for you Buck, okay? Never tell Tasha, but you’re my best friend. I’ll love you forever.” Her arms tightened around his waist again, and his heart was filled with relief and love. “After school we’ll swing by your house and if your father’s not home we’ll grab Becca, your stuff, leave a note for your dad, and go to my place, sound good?”

His heartbeat immediately increased its rate. And there’s the panic. “But what if he is home, Y/N? I don’t wanna leave Becca by herself for any longer than she has to be. And do you have any baby stuff? Or food? She has to have formula, and her food needs to be in this weird food processor thing, I don’t know what it’s called, and oh god-”

“Bucky!” She cut him off with a giggle and a hand over his mouth, which he would’ve probably found hot, had he not been freaking out. “Me and Ria were once babies, we have stuff to take care of Becca. My mom knows all the products she uses, and we have the crib from the last time you came over. And if your dad is home, then we’ll just take Becca with us to my house and have my mom drive us back to yours to get your stuff, so she’ll know we’re okay. We’ll be okay James.” Y/N stared at him dead in the eye, so he knew she was serious. She never, ever used his first name unless she was being earnest.

He nodded. “We’ll be okay Y/N.” He released her from the hug, not wanting to make it awkward, but he regretted it, as he loved holding her in his arms. Looking to his left, he could see Steve bounding over to them.

“Ms. Moore said I need to stop talking to her about the typos and mistakes in the books, it’s like she’s completely unaffected by the flaws!” He exclaimed, but then he noticed the tears still resting on Bucky’s cheeks. “Hey Buck, you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine, just Y/N offered to let me and Becca stay at her house for quarantine.” He sniffled and wiped the cuff of his sweatshirt against his face, looking to Y/N to find her already looking at him. Her small smile grew a little wider catching his eye, and she motioned toward the couch.

“Let’s get down to work y’all.” The trio sat down on the small couch, Y/N squished in between the two boys. Bucky placed his headphones back on, resuming the video from before, but not really paying attention. No, he was paying more attention to the girl at his side, resting her head on his shoulder as she typed away on her laptop. She managed to be the only one who completed any actual work during their free periods, but she always kept time open to have fun with her friends as well. Bucky couldn’t help but have his lips quirked up at her, leaning back to relax against the cushions.

He turned his head towards her, and whispered in a barely audible voice, “Thank you Y/N.” She looked up at him with her infamous smile and kissed him on the cheek.

“Anytime, Buck.” She turned back to her computer, plugging her earbuds in and softly humming to her music. Her head moved to his chest, and Bucky prayed that she couldn’t hear how fast his heart was thumping, filled with adoration and love. God, how he would love this girl for the rest of his life.

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khunfounded · 4 years

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Stuck in the Cave

This one is pretty long and serious, birds, and if you are uncomfortable with the discussion of toxic relationships I recommend skipping it. I’ll cut it off before any analysis this time.

It’s about Rachel and Bam’s tumultuous relationship, so if that interests you, read on.

Tonight we are discussing three songs from the same album, Hospice, which depicts the entirety of a female perpetuated abusive relationship. It has a lot of nuance and treats the both individuals as humans, rather than entirely a monster and an angel.

The songs are Shiva, Kettering, and Epilogue by The Antlers. I’ll have the videos in front of each analysis rather than all at the top to make it less blocky.

Let’s begin with Shiva.

youtube

The entirety of Hospice is told through a metaphor about a hospital worker who gets into a toxic relationship with a patient, which I think is really fitting considering the arc of Rachel pretending that she is paralyzed from the waist down.

Suddenly every machine stopped at once And the monitors beeped the last time Hundreds of thousands of hospital beds And all of them empty but mine

I think these lines fit the exact moment that Rachel pushes Bam. For Bam it is sudden, unexpected. Though for Rachel, who metaphorically has been in the hospital bed for a while, it was a long time coming.

The one chance for Rachel to keep their relationship ended with that push, when the monitors beeped the last time, though Bam did not know it yet.

After that, Bam is alone. Even when he is surrounded by people, they are all using him to perpetuate their agenda. So, there are many beds, but there is no one there with Bam, either in a hospital bed or visiting him. Well, I was lying down with my feet in the air Completely unable to move The bed was misshapen, and awkward and tall And clearly intended for you

When Bam is forced into joining Fug, he can’t move. They have him in check. If he does try anything, they will destroy the one good thing he found. The people who would have visited him in the hospital.

These last two lines remind me of when Khun tells Rachel that if she truly cared about Bam, she wouldn’t be coming up the tower while Bam was stuck underneath it. The bed, the ruin, was made for her, but she escaped it by putting Bam in her place.

You checked yourself out when you put me to bed And tore that old band off your wrist But you came back to see me for a minute or less And left me your ring in my fist

The theme of the bed intended for Rachel continues in this stanza. Without anyone (except Fug, who I personally see as the hospital administrators) knowing, she checked herself out of the hospital and placed Bam there instead.

The hospital band is Rachel’s supposed fate of not being worthy of the tower (though you could argue that her cunning and luck actually does make her worthy, but I’m not), which she tore off by sheer force of will.

The minute or less she came to visit him is the push, and the ring (which in the context of the album is a wedding ring) is what is left of their relationship. Bam, because Rachel is so integral to him, is stuck with it, while Rachel is not. He has both rings now, and the relationship is completely one-sided.

For Rachel, to possibility of joining the stars (whether seeing them or becoming one) is worth the dissolution of a completely devoted love. Though, that love of Bam’s is completely healthy, fueled by his loneliness and the fact that for the longest time the only good thing he ever knew was Rachel. She knows this, which is part of why she gives back the ring. She thinks that even if she picks Bam, he will leave her once he is loved and loves other people. My hair started growing, my face became yours My femur was breaking in half The sensation was scissors and too much to scream So instead, I just started to laugh

Now this, this fits so well.

Bam’s hair is such an important part of his character. Not only does it track the years, it also tracks his emotional state. He is at his lowest when it is at its longest, (which is poignant considering the length of Rachel’s), happiest when it’s shortest, and most in control of his destiny when it is in-between, since at that point is able to choose its length.

I think the second half of the stanza represents the mental break and subsequent cognitive dissonance that he goes through because his mind cannot handle the idea of his most precious person betraying him.

Oof, one down two to go. This is tough.

Now, onto Kettering.

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Ouch, this one hurts.

I wish that I had known in that first minute we met The unpayable debt that I owed you Because you'd been abused by the bone that refused you And you hired me to make up for that

Throughout much of the series, Bam believes he owes Rachel a debt because of the hope she gave him in the cave, though in my opinion she did less than the minimum (though no one owes anyone anything, I still believe that sometimes basic human kindness should win out. Well, morality quandaries for another time).

The bone that refused her was her fate of being unworthy of climbing the tower, which everyone and anyone told her whenever they could. Honestly, that would turn me bitter, too. This is a good chunk of why she is so venomous towards Bam, because his fate and outlook are quite literally the opposite of hers.

To Rachel, everything comes so easily to Bam, whilst she has to claw and fight and lie for every scrap that she can. Though, we all know better. Bam’s life is filled with suffering.

Thus, she hires Bam to make up for her destiny. She tries to take his place and put him in hers. Also, she is just fundamentally cruel to him, trying to ruin every good thing he has every chance that she gets. Walking in that room when you had tubes in your arms Those singing morphine alarms out of tune Kept you sleeping and even And I didn't believe them when they called you a hurricane thunderclap

Everyone tells Bam that Rachel is bad news, but he only sees the girl that gave him light and had her chance to climb the tower violently ripped away from her.

It takes Rachel doing to Khun what she has been doing to Bam all this time to get him to realize that he truly does not know her at all. When I was checking vitals I suggested a smile You didn't talk for a while, you were freezing You said you hated my tone, it made you feel so alone And so you told me I ought to be leaving

This is basically a continuation of the theme of Rachel treating Bam cruelly while he tries his best to make her life better.

It reminds me a lot of the moments right before Rachel pushes Bam, and for a few seconds her demeanor shifts, shocking him But something kept me standing by that hospital bed I should have quit, but instead, I took care of you You made me sleep and uneven And I didn't believe them when they told me that there was no saving you

Bam is stuck standing by Rachel because of his devotion and the toxic relationship that they have created. For the longest time, he tries to find her and take care of her, but she doesn’t want that. She wants to see the stars. Without him.

He doesn’t see it, though, no matter what they people who really love him try to say.

Next, next, next.

It’s the Epilogue.

youtube

Finally, we are at a point where Bam realizes how toxic their relationship truly is.

This one is dense, birds.

In a nightmare, I am falling from the ceiling into bed beside you You're asleep, I'm screaming, shoving you to try to wake you up And like before, you've got no interest in the life you live when you're awake Your dreams still follow storylines like fictions you would make

I do not believe for a second that Bam doesn’t have nightmares about Rachel. She is such a large part of his life and his psyche. He must have trauma both about wondering if he could have saved their relationship and what she has done to his loved ones.

Rachel is asleep. She thinks that what she is doing to see the stars is worth it, but Bam knows better. He has lived the destruction and suffering she has caused.

She has no interest for a world where she is unworthy of the tower, so she dreams up a new one and tries to make it real.

So I lie down against your back until we're both back in the hospital But now it's not a cancer ward, we're sleeping in the morgue Men and women in blue and white, they are singing all around you With heavy shovels holding earth, you're being buried to your neck

In that hospital bed, being buried quite alive now.

I'm trying to dig you out but all you want is to be buried there together

This again harkens back to the idea of Bam having nightmares about Rachel. The morgue is his fears that what is happening will ruin them both.

The men and women are everyone in the war that are adding onto the pressure and consequences of this fight. In the end, Tower of God truly is about Bam and Rachel’s relationship and all the fallout that it causes

Bam sees that Rachel is being buried by the decisions she has made, and he is slowly being buried, too. Though, unlike Rachel, he is trying to dig their way out and save them both.

You're screaming And cursing And angry And hurting me And then smiling And crying Apologizing

This chorus is haunting, especially because of the singer’s voice (which is even worse if you imagine the singer is Bam) . It is demonstrative of the two faces that Rachel shows, and the abuse that she puts Bam through just to see the stars.

It evokes the image of Rachel and Bam in the meadow after Rachel has been stabbed. Rachel apologizes to Bam, though he does not truly know why. I've woken up, I'm in our bed, but there's no breathing body there beside me Someone must have taken you while I was stuck asleep But I know better as my eyes adjust, you've been gone for quite a while now And I don't work there in the hospital, they had to let me go

After Rachel puts Khun into a coma, Bam wakes up and he sees their relationship for what it truly is. There is still a part of him, though, that wonders what went wrong.

His eyes are still adjusting, even after he has awoken.

When Bam leaves the hospital, he is leaving their one-sided toxic dynamic, though much like the physical injuries he has suffered, there are still scars.

When I try to move my arms sometimes, they weigh too much to lift I think you buried me awake, my one and only parting gift But you return to me at night just when I think I may have fallen asleep Your face is up against mine, and I'm too terrified to speak

Sometimes, what he has gone through makes it tough for him to go on. I am glad Bam has such a wonderful, loving support system.

Again, nightmares and trauma caused by Rachel. Things like what she has done to Bam never truly leave you. She has gifted him with immense trauma, and scars that may fade to silver but will never disappear. You're screaming And cursing And angry And hurting me And then smiling And crying Apologizing

Thank you for reading, please watch video of puppies after this.

#tower of god #tog #song analysis #25th bam #jyu viole grace #rachel tog

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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 3 years

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LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

December 5, 2020

Heather Cox Richardson

Today’s news just amplifies yesterday’s, but the stories add up to an interesting scenario.

Coronavirus continues to devastate the country, with official deaths topping 281,000 today, but it turns out that the Trump administration did not actually have a plan for distribution of vaccines. Federal officials have drastically slashed the amount of vaccine they promised to states before the election. Instead of the 300 million doses the administration had promised before the end of 2020, the plan is currently to distribute 35 to 40 million doses. Even those, though, are plagued by bottlenecks in parts of the production process, as well as manufacturing issues. This means a longer struggle with the disease than many had come to expect.

Trump continues to refuse to acknowledge his loss in the November election. This morning, before a scheduled rally in Georgia for two Republican senators facing runoffs against their Democratic challengers, Trump called Georgia Governor Brian Kemp to pressure him to overturn Biden’s win in the state. Trump asked Kemp to convince the state legislature to ignore Biden’s victory and appoint their own slate of electors who would give the president the state’s votes in the Electoral College. Biden won Georgia by about 12,000 votes, and Georgia law does not permit the legislature to submit alternative electors. When Kemp, who is a Republican, declined to do as Trump asked, Trump took to Twitter to attack him.

Trump also asked Kemp to demand an audit of the signatures on mail-in ballots, which Kemp does not have the power to do. Georgia’s governor may not interfere in elections. Instead, the state secretary of state has jurisdiction, and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, has defended the existing signature match process and says there is no evidence of fraud.

At tonight’s rally, Trump continued to insist he had won the election and to assure attendees they are all victims of the Democrats’ plot to steal the election. The rally was nominally about the senate candidates, but Trump treated it pretty much as he treated his rallies before the election. He is convincing his supporters that the election was rigged, and that President-Elect Biden will be an illegitimate president.

Trump loyalists at the Pentagon continue to refuse to let Pentagon officials communicate with Biden’s transition team. According to an official, the Pentagon chief of staff Kash Patel, a former staffer for California Representative Devin Nunes appointed after the election, has rewritten policy descriptions to reflect well on Trump before letting Biden’s people see them. He has also stopped communications. He “told everybody we're not going to cooperate with the transition team,” an official said, and he has "put a lot of restrictions on it." He is “controlling the information flow.” This will put the Biden camp behind on getting up to speed on sensitive foreign policy issues with Iran, Afghanistan, Russia, and North Korea, hurting national security.

Also today, the Washington Post printed the results of its query to all 249 Republicans in the House and Senate, asking them who won the 202 presidential election. Only 27 of them are willing to acknowledge that Biden won. Two Republicans insist that Trump won the election, all evidence to the contrary. The rest of them—220 of them—refuse to say who won.

This is a big deal. This was not a close election. Biden currently has over 7 million more votes than Trump, and has won by 306 to 232 in the Electoral College. And yet, Republican leadership is permitting Trump to undermine our democracy. Try to imagine any past Republican president doing what Trump is doing, and you can’t. But today’s Republican lawmakers are standing to the side, permitting Trump to poison our democracy.

To what end? Why are Republicans accepting this anti-American behavior from Trump?

It seems to me they are unwilling to risk losing Trump’s voters in the future because they are determined to regain power. They don’t much care about our democracy, so long as they have a shot at keeping Trump’s people on their side. But then, again, to what end? If Republicans regain power in 2022 or 2024, what will that look like? Do we have any reason to think they will then begin to defend our democracy? Do we have any reason to think they are interested in anything but even more legislation that moves wealth upward?

We have been in a spot much like this before. In 1884, Americans turned against the Republican Party because it had abandoned its support for ordinary Americans in favor of the industrial leaders who put money into Republican lawmakers’ political war chests, as well as into their pockets. Voters put Democrat Grover Cleveland into the White House, the first Democrat to hold the presidency since James Buchanan was elected in 1856.

Horrified, the Republicans flooded the country with stories of how Democrats were socialists who would attack the rich by ending the legislation that protected businesses. If Democrats continued to control the government, Republicans said, they would destroy America. In 1888, they suppressed Democratic votes and created modern political financing as they hit up businessmen for major donations. Despite their best efforts, voters reelected Cleveland by about 100,000 votes, but Republicans managed to eke out a win for their candidate, Benjamin Harrison, in the Electoral College. Harrison promised a “BUSINESSMAN’S ADMINISTRATION,” and indeed, in office, he and his men did all they could to cement the Republican Party into power so it could continue to defend business (among other things, they added six new states to the Union to pack the Electoral College).

But voters still didn’t like the Republicans’ platform, which seemed more and more to funnel money from hardworking Americans upward into the pockets of those men who were increasingly portrayed as robber barons. In 1892, they voted for Cleveland in such numbers they couldn’t be overridden in the Electoral College. Voters also put Democrats in charge of Congress, both the House of Representatives and the Senate.

And that is the moment I cannot help thinking about today. Faced with a legitimately elected Democratic government, Republican leaders deliberately sabotaged the country. They swamped the media with warnings that Democrats would destroy the economy and that men should pull their capital out of stocks and industries. Foreign capital should, they said, go home or face disaster. Money began to flow out of the country and stocks faltered. When financiers begged the Harrison administration to shore up the markets in the face of the growing panic, administration officials told them their job was only to keep the country afloat until the day of Cleveland’s inauguration.

They didn’t quite make it. The economy collapsed about ten days before Cleveland took the oath of office, saddling the new president with the Panic of 1893 and very few ways to combat it. Republicans had deliberately sabotaged the country in order to discredit Cleveland, then demanded he honor the demands of financiers to stabilize the economy. Caught between a rock and a hard place, Cleveland tried to work with moneyed interests to combat the depression and promptly split his own party. The country roiled as out-of-work Americans despaired, some of them marching on Washington, D.C., to demand the government do something to address their plight.

The Republicans went into the 1894 midterm elections blaming the Democrats for the crisis in the country. They won the midterms in what remains the largest seat swing in the history of the House of Representatives. Then they claimed that, with Republicans back in power, the economy was now safe. They papered the country with media announcing that the panic was over and people should reinvest. The panic was over, and a Republican president won in 1896, once again insisting the Democrats were socialists, but this time adding that the past four years had proved the Democrats could not run the economy.

There is no excuse for the silence of Republican lawmakers as their president attacks our democracy. But there might be a precedent.

—-

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

#Quotes #Heather Cox Richardson #Letters From An American #political #election 2020

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sedehaven · 4 years

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Saving Ophelia Grace’s Toe

Y’all seem to like my stories about being a witch in the Bible Belt, so here’s another one. This is a coming of age story about a young witch (me), a bunch of adults of various degrees of uselessness, and Ophelia Grace’s rotten toe.

This is not a happy story.

Names changed when necessary.

CW: Body squick, graphic injury, incompetent nurse, malevolent nurse, poisoning, bureaucratic nightmares, dark DARK shit ahead

So, in spite of the crushing poverty that I grew up in, I was given the opportunity to attend a very prestigious boarding school for Juniors and Seniors in Klan Kountry, LA. It’s a public school, so it takes kids from all over the state.

My school was run by a dude named Brother Dave.

Brother Dave was so awful that one of our senior pranks (I DID NOT DO THIS) involved a password-protected screensaver on every communal computer in the school (including, I think, Brother Dave’s office computer) of a bouncing, 3-D image of this:

Dude was NOT well-loved. It is important to know that he and I did not get along. When I was still a prospective student, he told us that our mascot was the mighty Eagle, because Eagles Flock Together.

Y’all. Someone watched himself too much Mighty Ducks.

I replied, loud enough for the whole auditorium to hear, “That’s not true, sir. Eaglettes push their smaller and weaker siblings out of the nest as soon as they can.”

He looked to the staff for support, red-faced and embarrassed by this ninety-pound child who stole his thunder.

The biology teacher (who left for greener pastures after my first year--rumored to have been forced out for being too fabulously dykey for the new administration) looked at him and stated, in her very particular and crisp fashion, “Well, she’s right.”

Safe to say, he hated me from the start. So, if you read this and you wonder, “Why didn’t this silly kid just go to the grown-up?” That’s why. He was our grown-up.

Brother Dave started at the school the year before I did. He was brought in by a local Senator, because said local Senator Fucked Up Colossally.

Senator Fuckup was running against Mr. Sketchy Businessman. Mr. Sketchy Businessman was backed by the Ku Klux Klan (a big deal in parts of the world, folks. My school was in David Duke country.)

Senator Fuckup had a fancy name--well-respected all around the state. Like, several statues of one of his relations decorate the state capital. Big name.

Problem is, Senator Fuckup is half-Black.

In Klan Kountry.

Y’all.

So he’s already at a disadvantage. As it turns out, it takes a village to start a magnet school. Senator Fuckup was one of the founding board members, and promised all kinds of benefits if they put the school in HIS district.

Their other offer was in my own hometown, the Hub City, where several of our major state highways cross with two Interstates.A place with art and history and culture. A place with one of the largest outdoor music festivals in the state--a multicultural, international music festival! With art walks and museums and Mardi Gras parades! With a three-story library, a library for French language and culture, and the second-largest university in Louisiana!

Senator Fuckup PROMISED that the school wouldn’t want for anything if they went to Klan Kountry.

So they did.

It was no great secret that this school was Senator Fuckup’s baby. At the time that I attended, the school was number one in the nation. Something to be proud of.

Except.

Except that in order to keep various forms of funding, the school was required to take in more melanin-blessed individuals than the locals liked.

Enter Mr. Sketchy Businessman, who ran a series of TV and radio ads claiming that our STATE funded school was stealing money from the local school district.

That’s right. He claimed that our school took money away from the poor Whites of Klan Kountry and gave to the diverse and metropolitan school for the gifted.

Senator Fuckup tried to deflect and dismiss, BUT did NOT rebut those claims. He didn’t believe that the school’s funding was THAT MUCH of an issue.

Any reasonable person would understand that the school was funded from the State taxes. Right?

As it turns out, Klan Kountry is not filled with reasonable people.

Senator Fuckup is a member of a particular subgroup in Klan Kounrty--a not-insignificant population of Catholic Creoles. So, after he wins his election--barely--he realizes that Something Must Be Done to help the image of the school that everybody knew as HIS baby.

Enter his old friend, Brother Dave. Brother Dave, who nearly bankrupted his previous school. His brother-in-law was a contractor who got a few really juicy contracts through him.

Protip: Nepotism only works if the person being nepotized is competent.

Spoiler: Brother Dave’s brother-in-law built schools about as well as Brother Dave ran them.

Brother Dave’s old school is attached to an order of monks who build cheap and simple caskets for people who are into that kind of thing.

They bake bread for the poor. These are good people.

Y’all, these people made it KNOWN--statewide--that they had a casket ready for ol’ Dave if he ever stepped foot in their town again.

Still, Senator Fuckup decided that THIS was the man who would lead my school into a glorious future.

Brother Dave took an aggressive stance on admissions. He wanted kids who didn’t have a lot of drama, and kids who looked (WHITE) good on the recruiting materials. He pulled hard from the local Catholic (Segregation) Academies.

Y’all.

Our Black kids were nearly White-passing mixed-race kids, one kid who was ACTUALLY from Africa, a couple of kids from Catholic schools, and one dark-skinned Baptist girl who is bombshell model-gorgeous. (For those glossy brochures.)

So as many White Catholic kids as possible.

Y’all.

I’ve competed with private school fuckwits in academic contests my whole life, up to that point. If it was something that required preparation (science fair, for example), they wiped the floor with us.

Because daddy the petroleum engineer did the project for them.

If it was a you-know-it-or-you-don’t thing (quiz bowl, for example), they lost so brutally that I might have felt bad for them. You know, if they had souls. Which they did not.

So Brother Dave populated our school with what he thought were “good kids”. White, Catholic kids.

Spoiler: My class started with 250 students. We graduated less than half of that, even after he backfilled our class with new kids between junior and senior year. The class after mine was worse.

Why is that?

White Catholic kids at segregation academies in the late 90′s basically did busy-work worksheet stuff all day. They were not ready for 10 page papers and 5 page lab reports and 100+ pages of reading and 20-50 math problems and projects, projects, projects!

Also, if all you do is worksheets and sit-down-and-shut-up, there has to be a certain...chemical element...to cope.

So, yeah. Drugs. So much drugs. And booze.

Brother Dave also hired Nurse Bitchy Fuckface. She was actually his first hire.

Nurse Bitchy was a walking disaster.

I was sixteen when I first met her, and because she didn’t smell like street drugs (I KNOW WHAT THAT SHIT IS), I missed a lot of signs.

Looking back, I think that she might have been a Prozac-and-wine kind of person. But, as the only drugs that I was familiar with came from street pharmacists, I thought she was just evil.

Hateful to the queers, pagans, Goths, and all assorted weirdos.

You know, all the kids who could actually handle the schoolwork and the pressure. *eyeroll*

I’m allergic to Sudafed. Weird, huh?

A senior at my school told me to be careful with Nurse Bitchy. She has a sensitivity to acetaminophen (Tylenol) and couldn’t have it. Nurse Bitchy had given it to her a couple of times.

It was on my senior’s medical chart. If you’re keeping score, that’s felony attempted murder.

Nurse Bitchy gave me Sudafed seventeen times (that I remember) while I was at that school. She very nearly killed me doing it. Some times I knew, and some times I did not.

“But why did you take it, if you knew?”

Well, you innocent dove, if I refused to take the medicine that the Nurse gave me, then I got written up. Enough write-ups and I got kicked out.

My home school in the Hub City? Eh...as bad as Klan Kountry was, I didn’t have someone assaulting me daily. I didn’t have a gang of girls who got away with attempting to rape me with a broom handle. I didn’t have a very big kid who was given liberties with me (BY THE STAFF) because he was special ed.

Or, as my guidance counselor liked to say (after my father was murdered and I was flunking chemistry--not because of dad’s death, but because the chemistry teacher put all the girls and Black boys in the back of the class--which had NO air conditioning on hundred-degree days--after Brother Dave’s brother-in-law “fixed” it that summer), “Stephanie, you know that you’re the poorest student here. Do you really want to go back to THAT?”

No. I did not.

Under pain of going home to poverty, rape, assault, and maybe death, I took her poison. She watched me do it. And she smiled.

I only went to Nurse Bitchy when I was forced to. This happened far more often my Junior year. The teachers would send me because I was sick (I come from a smoker’s home, and I’m an asthmatic who is allergic to tobacco. My family never quit, so I’d end up with smoker’s pneumonia most times that I went home. Thanks for the lung scars, fam.)

Eventually, when I was a Senior, my computer science teacher realized that I was unresponsive with a fever in her class. She was new that year, and didn’t know any better. So she woke me up and sent me along. Nurse Bitchy gave me the usual and sent me back to class.

Very few humans retain the ability to projectile vomit after age seven. Did you know that?

Lucky me, I did. I still can.

I hurled all over my keyboard. I hurled and hurled. My classmates screamed and ran.

My computer science teacher, an ice-cold woman of Indian descent with a very posh English accent, unplugged the vomit-soaked, ruined keyboard. She took it and me to the nurse.

She slammed the keyboard down on her desk and screamed at her to NEVER send a sick child to her class again.

Nurse Bitchy was (shocking, I know) a racist. She feared the angry Indian lady.

My computer science teacher, I believe, spread the word about Nurse Bitchy’s ineffectiveness. Teachers stopped sending students to her.

That left a vacuum. Nobody was being forced to get medical help. But medical help was still needed.

Before going to school in Klan Kountry, I was a veterinary technician. I worked under-the-table from too young. Illegal-child-labor-too-young.

But, I knew my stuff. I had a stocked medicine cabinet and a dissection kit.

I started doing everything up to and including prison surgery in my dorm room.

I could handle most anything. Which was better than worrying that the nurse was going to poison one of my friends into the ground.

I didn’t ask for money or food or anything (food was a commodity at that school because our cafeteria was infested). I worked for the goodwill of my classmates, which is the shiniest coin in the realm.

I’d gotten into witchcraft earlier that year. People trusted the witch over the nurse. That’s where my school was.

I only had one case that I really couldn’t treat.

Y’all.

It was traditional in the girls’ dorms that unless you were asleep or studying, you kept your door open. Mine was open that night. I was writing Sailor Moon fanfiction, procrastinating on one project or another. I don’t remember, it was twenty-two years ago.

Ophelia Grace (not her real name) came to my door in Doc Martens, favoring a foot. Her roommate or a suitemate or maybe another theatre kid was holding her up as she hobbled into my room.

I hadn’t heard that she’d been hurt, but apparently she had been. She was feverish and weak. Her face was bright red. She was babbling.

“I’m sorry,” she said over and over again. She apologized for coming late. She apologized for coming at all. She was shaking.

I sat her and her friend on my roommate’s bed (we’d bunked them, and I had the top bunk). My roommate was out, in the art lab working on a particularly tricky painting. Probably for the best. He was squeamish (my ex-roommate is a transman, so I’m using his preferred pronouns.)

I grabbed a large bowl and a mug, filled both with water (salted the bowl of water), and went down the hall to the microwave.

The water in Klan Kountry was filthy. It smelled bad and tasted worse. Remember Mr. Sketchy Businessman? He wanted to relax EPA regulations for himself and his sketchy business friends.

They were actively dumping into the city reservoir. But Mr. Sketchy Businessman promised to KKKeep KKKlan KKKountry Lily, so he got 49% of the votes.

Racist douche.

I boiled the water in the microwave--first the mug, then the bowl. It was a walk I’d make several times that evening.

Ophelia had a fever, holding steady at “fucking HOT” by the estimate of her friend. My thermometer pegged it at 102. Not good.

I put a teabag and two whole cloves in the cup and let it steep while I took her temperature. I asked her what happened. I don’t remember the specifics of the injury, but I believe that something got dropped on her toe. I think it happened in the theatre.

Ophelia thought she could walk it off. I remember that.

She kept apologizing. I honeyed the tea and shoved it in her hands. The tea helped. She was shivering--hard--from the wracking chills of her fever.

I remember how her febrile shivers made the bunk beds shake.

I remember thinking that I was in over my head.

I remember grabbing my oldest towels, and closing my door.

I remember praying.

And then I took her boot off.

Y’all.

I’ve smelled rot. Some people think that all rot smells the same.

It does not.

Corpse stink has its own bouquet. Blood rot has a distinct stench. Necrotic yeast infections almost smell good--like yeast rolls and something meatier.

I’d smelled Ophelia’s particular rot before.

I was fourteen. A momma dog was brought in, heavily pregnant. She’d been delivering, and the third pup got stuck. There were 11 left. The stuck pup was dead, but we managed to save 4 behind him, plus the first 2, born healthy.

The uterus had begun to rot inside, and several of the pups had been dead for some time.

The spaying that happened after the pups were removed was green and black, with the consistency of pudding. We pulled as much out as we could, but the rest had to be rinsed out.

Thankfully, I’ve smelled that smell very few times after. It smells pungent and strong. Like garlic. Like a cream of garlic stew.

I thought I’d gotten a whiff of THAT smell when Ophelia walked in, and again when she sat down. Pulling her boot off was like the first deep cut into momma dog. Garlic and blood.

The smell of something rotting in someone still alive.

She had on two socks. I peeled off the first one. There was a stain at the toe. The second sock was worse. The smell hung around.

Our windows were screwed shut. I couldn’t do anything about the smell.

Ophelia cried into her tea. She was still apologizing.

The toe was purple and black. There was a lot of yellow pus under the nail, which was leaking out on either side. Red streaks ran up her instep, tracing her veins.

The toe was swollen and needed a lance.

I had no idea how she climbed the stairs to get to me. (I was on the third floor, and she lived below. We had no elevator.)

She started to get loud (peeling those socks off HURT), so I asked her a question. I asked about her history paper. The ten-page history paper was a rite-of-passage at the school, and I knew it was coming due for her. I told her to tell me about her topic and her sources.

She did.

Thank the Lord and Lady.

I got my dissection kit and rubbing alcohol. I made things as sterile as I could.

I told her that it would probably hurt, but that I would work quickly.

Her friend left after the first cut. She didn’t stay gone long, but I heard her vomit in our suite’s toilet.

Ophelia kept talking about her paper. I led her around on that topic, asking questions and asking for clarification. Asking about the books she’d read, and offering a few that I was familiar with on the subject.

This is why doctors and dentists know so many things about so many subjects. Talking keeps the patient calm.

Meanwhile, pus and blood dripped from the slits that I made in her flesh, onto a towel that bore the stains until I donated it to the animal shelter, years later.

I soaked her toe in the bowl of water. The salt burned, but she couldn’t scream.

There was an adult who was supposed to be watching us. If she was alerted to my low-tech medical unit, she would have stopped me and sent Ophelia to the murder nurse.

I filled another bowl, salted it, and microwaved it.

Ophelia’s friend rejoined us, and watched as I squeezed the rest of the pus out of her. Her toenail slipped off in the third bowl. The toenail was cracked. Ophelia kept it.

I wonder if she still has it?

Triple antibiotic ointment and a sterile dressing later, I told her to tell the nurse that she needed a doctor. Nurse Bitchy couldn’t keep us from a doctor if we asked for one. She said that she would.

I gave her a few oral anti-inflammatory pills and some Benadryl to get a good night’s sleep.

She left, with her boot in her hand and a soft smile on her lips. I cleaned my tools, my bowls, the floor where her foot was, and had to do a load of laundry because that one rag smelled so awful.

My roommate came back in time for headcount, and asked if I’d made ramen. Said it smelled pretty good in there.

It did. Rot can do that.

It was hard to sleep that night. I cried quietly until sleep took me.

Ophelia recovered. She became a witch some time later. In college, I think. We’re still friends, in a Facebook kind of way.

Brother Dave is still alive. After working for my school, he ended up helping the Church cover up three decades of sex abuse at a diocese school. Not sure what he’s up to, but probably nothing good. He’s a garbage human.

Nurse Bitchy just retired. She lasted twenty years at that school. God knows how.

Senator Fuckup died in a car crash and the school is being renamed after him. So are the new dorms that are being built.

Klan Kountry cleaned up their water after I left. That’s really good news.

The school continues. Apparently, it got better with Brother Dave’s leavetaking. I hope that’s true.

And me?

I’m still a witch. I’m still here.

And I can still smell that rotten toe on the edge of nightmares half-remembered.

~*~

I don’t want my diploma revoked or to be sued, so disclaimer time.

This is fiction. Any resemblance to people living or dead is coincidental.

#witchcraft #prose #proseriot #kitchen witch #healing #writing #amwriting #autobiography #true story

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emperorsfoot · 4 years

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In this chapter, Entrapta and Hordak board the Monstron in preparation for their journey back to Etheria. (With a few stopped added to the itinerary so Hordak can maintain control of his Bother’s Empire.)

And then, Skeletor finally makes an appearance.

Hope you enjoy!

...

The Imperial docking bays were a whirlwind of activity. It seemed like too much was going on, and, at the same time, nothing was happening at all.

Imperial guards, both clone trooper and enlisted blocked off more than half of the ship docks. Anything within half a kilometer of the Princess Entrapta’s shuttle was shut down. Merchants and pilots could not get to their own ships. Ships awaiting clearance could not land. To those on the outside, it seemed like the world was put on pause. On hold, and frozen while their leaders dithered around doing nothing.

Inside the perimeter of guards, it was organized chaos as servants loaded, not only Princess Entrapta’s shuttle, but an Imperial freighter as well. Baggage belonging to the Princess, the Ladies of her party, Imperial Prince Hec-Tor, and his son went into the shuttle. As well as tanks of fresh water, food stuffs, and sanitary supplies. Into the freighter went the Empires first down payment of supplies and materials for Entrapta’s research.

Administrative assistants stood on either side of the loading gangways checking off crates as they were hauled on. Making sure this went on this ship, no that goes on that ship. Where is the Prince’s arm cannon? Has anyone seen the Princess’ back-up tool kit?

While all that was going on at the space docks, back at the Imperial palace, Prince Hec-Tor was meeting with his lieutenants.

The plan was for the Prince and his son to ride with the Princess in her shuttle up to Monstron, Prince Hec-Tor’s flagship, the twin of the Velvet Glove. Entrapta’s shuttle would then dock with Monstron and they would take the Prince’s ship the rest of the way to Etheria.

Except, Hec-Tor was adding a few stops to the agenda.

“We will stop in the Krytis system to address the uprising in the mines.” He said, walking circles around Mantenna and Grizzlor as they took notes on their own personal datapads. Visuals of the flight plan, its detours, troop accompaniments, and so on were displayed on a screen behind him. “If necessary, we will leave a contingent of our own clone troopers there to maintain order. Then we will go to Denebria and take back the base on the Nordor moon.”

Grizzlor’s stylus danced wildly over his datapad, taking notes and making lists. Working out the logistics of not one, but two military strikes during their journey to Etheria.

Mantenna raised a hand. “Your Highness, are you sure this is how you want to spend you honeymoon?”

Hec-Tor frowned at him.

“I just-“ The Rebrunk Nuru faltered under that critical gaze. “You only just got married. Don’t you, I donno… spend time getting to know your new spouse instead of going off to battle.”

“Keeping this Empire together and stable is far more important that my learning what flavor of carbonated beverage Entrapta favors.” The Prince reminded his lieutenants.

Grizzlor held his stylus to his lips, feigning deliberating over the military logistics. His large paw hiding the smile of a silent laugh behind his hand. Prince Hec-Tor might not know his wife’s favorite flavor, but he did at least know that she only drank fizzy drinks, and that was information no one told him. He just noticed it on his own.

…

Things did not finally calm down until the royal couple and all their attendants were aboard Monstron.

Entrapta’s shuttle docking in the main hangar bay, the exterior blast doors sealing shut behind them. The hatch to Entrapta’s shuttle was opened with a hiss of equalizing pressure and the gangplank lowered.

Rows upon rows of clone troopers greeted them. All arranged in disciplined formations, standing at parade rest. They snapped to attention when Prince Hec-Tor and Princess Entrapta exited the shuttle. A satisfying display of military pageantry.

Behind him, Hec-Tor’s pointed ear picked up a snickered remark from Catra, “Cute action figures. They’ve got the full set.”

Admiral Callix was commander of the Monstron when the Prince was not aboard, and he stepped forward to greet Hec-Tor and his new wife, and cede control of the ship to him.

Callix was not a clone. Clones lacked the independent thinking necessary to fill any leadership position higher than a sergeant. Any officer of rank in the Imperial military was an enlisted alien that had proved themselves and risen through the ranks. Callix was a Stoneman from planet Quarry. Very few beings in the military were taller than Hec-Tor and Horde Prime, but Stonemen grew big and Callix towered over Hec-Tor. A mountain next to a tree.

“Your Highness, congratulations on your recent nuptials.” He said. “And to you, Princess, I welcome you to-“

He was cut off when Entrapta rose up on her hair, a tape measure inexplicably appearing from out of nowhere. “Ooh! You’re a Stoneman, right?” She asked excitedly. “I’ve read about you. You don’t usually leave Quarry. I never thought I’d get to meet one of you up close before.”

Moving on her hair, she drifted around the Admiral. Using her tape measure to gauge the circumference of his arm, the width of his shoulders, the length of his chin.

Callix was a military man. He was disciplined. He held his composure. That did not mean he wasn’t confused or uneasy. “Your Highness?” He looked to Hec-Tor for help. Or, at the very least, an explanation.

“Princess Entrapta is keenly curious.” He tried to sooth the Admiral. “About everything.” Then, to Entrapta, “Perhaps we should let the Admiral go for now. I’m sure he has work to do. There will be time to invade his privacy once we are in hyperspace.”

It was the ‘invade his privacy’ remark that made Entrapta stop. It was something she struggled with. Not exactly knowing what was and was not a boundary unless explicitly stated in words. As Entrapta told him very early on, she did not understand body language or subtle social cues. She needed to be told when her attentions were an ‘invasion’.

Entrapta clapped her hair together excitedly. “I’d love to see the engines as you charge up the hyperdrive. How long is the turn around time between powering up the drive and actually making the jump to hyperspace? With all the technology of the Empire, I would imagine very fast, but my research has also told me that it takes longer for larger vessels and this is one of the largest ships in the universe!”

Callix looked concerned again, turning his attention back to the Prince for guidance.

“Entrapta is an Imperial Princess and my wife.” He informed the Admiral. “She is to have free reign of the ship. All decks, all chambers –except private personnel quarters, of course. If her inquiries or explorations raise any concerns, you are to bring them to me directly.”

“Yes, sir.” Callix nodded.

Entrapta twirled on her hair excitedly. She was gonna learn so much about the Empire’s capital ships and technology! Monstron was one of the most advanced ships in the universe, second only to the Velvet Glove. And Hec-Tor had just given her permission to do whatever she wanted! (So long as she didn’t barge into anyone’s bedroom.) He probably didn’t want her taking apart vital systems. But there was still so much a person could learn without taking things apart first.

She wrapped her hair around Hec-Tor in an enthusiastic hug. Just her hair. Not her arms or her body. “This is gonna be so great!”

Behind them a loud squawk issued from the shuttle and Imp flew out. Sailed circles around the hanger –he’d never been inside a war ship before, he’d never left the Imperial Palace- then came to land on his father’s shoulder.

“My son is not to have free reign of the ship.” Hec-Tor informed the Admiral. “He is to be accompanied by an adult at all times, and if you see him unaccompanied, he is to be brought to me immediately.”

Imp crawled down his father’s arm enough that he could be in the older man’s line of sight when he Signed, ‘But, why?’

“A spaceship is not a play place.” He informed the boy. “You cannot carry on here as you carried on at the Palace.”

He did not want his son trying to climb into one of the ship’s ventilation ducts and getting stuck.

Imp gave a forlorn little trill.

Entrapta wrapped a tendril of hair around him. “I’m an adult. I can accompany you if you wanna explore the ship.”

He gave a more optimistic noise, then looked sideways at his father. He did say Imp had to be accompanied by an adult at all times. He didn’t say who that adult could or could not be, or where he could or could not go. Imp really, really liked Dad’s new wife. She was crafty. Exactly his kind of crafty. Entrapta was easily becoming Imp’s new favorite adult.

Hec-Tor cast a disapproving frown at both of them.

“Oh, unclench.” Entrapta smiled at him. “I was already gonna explore the ship anyway, and Imp and I seem to get along okay. It wouldn’t be an inconvenience for me, and I can keep an eye on him –even if I’m looking at something else. I’m good at multi-tasking.”

“No vents.” Hec-Tor declared firmly.

Entrapta smiled at him. “Is that a ‘yes’?”

Hec-Tor made an ambiguous throat noise. He set the terms and the boundaries and Entrpata found a way to work within them. Still giving Imp a variation of ‘free reign’ of the ship without violating any of his stipulations. Imp would always be with an adult, and Entrapta would keep the child out of the ship’s ventilation system. She would adhere to the literal letter of his rules without breaking them and still give Imp what he wanted. She was smart. Smart and crafty.

“Yes.” He groaned. “But remember that Imp must take medications three times a day and they must be taken with food. He is to report to the galley or one of my personal staff to be served. If he misses even one done, you both will lose privileges.”

Imp whined.

Entrapta nodded. “Understood.”

Then they both scampered off together to explore the ship.

Hec-Tor groaned again.

Callix only remained standing still. “I’ve been told children often have a difficult time accepting a step-parent, but Prince Imp seems quite taken with the Princess Entrapta.”

“Imp would be taken with anyone in a position to let him get away with half the things he tries to pull.” Hec-Tor told the other man. Then cleared his throat. These were not the things one confided in a military subordinate. “Take me to the bridge. As soon as the Princess’ shuttle is unloaded and her party is settled, we will make the jump to lightspeed. The Krytis system will be first.”

…

Krytis was a prison colony first and a mining operation second.

That meant it was very difficult to sneak into, and even more difficult to smuggle weapons into. But Evil-Lyn was a master sorceress and clever to boot and she found a way.

After that, it really did not take much to motivate the prisoners of Krytis to rise up and overthrow their wardens. Not every inmate and prisoner of Krytis was a rapist or a murderer. Most were political prisoners, deserters, or defectors. ‘Decent’ people who presented one challenge or another to the Empire or the Imperial family and ‘disappeared’ for it. It really did not take much, after furnishing them with weapons and promising some magical backup, to convince them to revolt.

That was over a week ago by now, and the Empire was yet to retaliate.

“Good work, Lyn.” Her colleague praised over a video screen. His face covered by a hood so that it was hard to make out his features. The only she visitible was a bone-white chin, and the lower pallet of exposed teeth. No lips or flesh to hide them.

“We experienced only a little resistance at first, then when no backup from the empire came, they all just laid down their arms and surrendered.” Evil-Lyn was telling him.

Her hooded partner nodded. “Prince Hec-Tor is the one who really runs the Empire. With him distracted by his wedding, no orders to retaliate would have been sent. But now that that’s over he will retaliate, and with force. You should leave Krytis right away. I am almost done here in Denebria. We’ll rendezvous at Snake Mountain on Eternia.”

“Understood.” Nodded Evil-Lyn. Then hesitated. Then asked anyway. “After we get back to Snake Mountain do you wanna talk? About the Prince, I mean, and the fact that he’s… remarried.”

The one on the other end was silent a beat longer than Lyn felt was necessary.

Then, “We will need to discuss how this marriage will affect the Imperial military and our own plans. Dryl is an industrial arms manufacture and Princess Entrapta is the mind behind it. Our missions might become more complicated in the future because of this.”

“That’s not what I meant and you know it.” Lyn shot back. “I mean, how do you feel?”

“Nothing.” The hooded figure assured her. “I feel nothing. It is absurd to think that Horde Prime would let him remain a widower this long. It was a waste of resources. Hec-Tor would have had to remarry eventually. Horde Prime was just holding out until he could get the best price possible for his brother’s hand. And look, he got the most powerful weapons manufacture in the universe. My opinion does not matter.”

Evil-Lyn smirked. He let something slip. “But you do have an opinion.”

If that bare, bone-white chin and teeth still have flesh and muscle on it, he would have frowned. Instead, the jaw just clenched. “Get off Krytis before Hec-Tor rains fire down on you from space. I’ll see you at Snake Mountain, and I don’t want to be asked about my ‘feelings’ again.”

He ended the transmission.

…

On the other end of the transmission, half a galaxy away, in the Denebria system, Skeletor leaned back on what passed for a throne on the Nordor base. He reached a hand under the collar of his hood and pulled out a chain. A plain, unassuming metal chain, with a plain, unadorned silver ring hanging from it.

Skeletor held the ring in his hand. A plane band. Utilitarian. Silver, because the one who gave it to him felt the gray metal complemented his naturally blue skin better than gold would have. And he was right. The silver had looked very good on his hand, for many years.

But that was a lifetime ago. Skeletor was a different man back then.

He thought about throwing the ring away more than once. It was a hold out from another life. One he left behind and shoulder hold any sway over him anymore. But, each time he tried, something always held him back. Some small voice reminding him, you never know. It might come in handy some time. You never know. Remember: the ring has a twin somewhere out in the universe. On the hand of the second most powerful man in the Empire.

Well, it wouldn’t be on his hand anymore. Prince Hec-Tor would have a new ring now. A new ring to match his new spouse.

Skeletor should throw it away.

He should.

He didn’t need it.

It wasn’t relevant anymore.

He unclipped the chain from around his neck. Holding the ring out in front of him. He could just drop it on the floor and one of the mutants of Nordor would find it and could claim it as their own. It was silver. Who would pass up the chance to claim a precious metal as their own? There might even be a fun fight over it. Or, he could get up and toss it in the garbage compactor. To be squished and compressed in with all the rest of the base’s waste before it was jettisoned into space.

No. Not that. Not the garbage.

Skeletor should throw the ring away. But no method for disposing of the item seemed appropriate to him.

He would just keep it until a solution presented itself.

That was all. That was why he was re-clasping the chain back around his neck and tucking the ring back under his hood. He did not have an appropriate method of disposal. That was it. There was no other reason.

Skeletor stood from the throne.

He needed to get moving too. After Hec-Tor finished with Krytis, Denebria and Nordor would be his next stop. Skeletor had to be gone before then.

He was not ready to meet with Hec-Tor skull to face.

#hordak #entrapta #skeletor #entrapdak #entrapta/hordak #hordak/skeletor #keldor #hec-tor kur #motu #she-ra #he-man #spop #fan ficiotn #ao3 #RenkonNairu

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loquaciousquark · 5 years

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Hey, all, I’m probably not going to be around much for a few months aside from queues & TM posts.

Work stress has taken over my life in a way it never has before. A very long story short, my closest coworker (both friend-wise and workload-wise) took another job that began at the end of April. While she knew from November she was going to take this job, she did not inform administration until the very final contractual required moment of 30 days out. This means there has been no chance for admin to be looking for long-term qualified candidates to replace her position, since to get hired on at the school even on a temporary faculty basis takes about six-eight weeks.

(She told me about this job in November, but made me promise at the time not to tell anyone because she was going to tell them soon. Then, as schedules were being planned out for this summer and her time was being allotted under the assumption she would be there, she deliberately said nothing and made me answer the emails so she wouldn’t be “lying.” I have known this hell has been coming for me for five months and haven’t been able to do anything about it because I gave her my word.)

In addition, while not her fault, three other administrative support employees and two other faculty members have left/will be leaving in less than a month as well. One employee’s family member died unexpectedly, one employee was grossly incompetent (although I can’t remember the last time we actually fired someone for that), and the other faculty members are leaving for really good jobs elsewhere. Just very unfortunate timing that means we are all spread excruciatingly thin for now.

This all comes at a time where I am actively beginning that Service Director position for the primary care clinic on top of everything else. This position, while I think a great fit for me, what else I teach in the school, and how I plan/organize/relate to the students, has come at a terrible time because it in and of itself is a massive amount of work, especially getting it off the ground. If I’m going to implement all these new policies and changes I’ve been dreaming of for years, I need to do it at the beginning of my tenure--to try and keep everything going the way it has been and change later once everything calms down would be infinitely more work at that time & have a bunch more pushback from both the students and the faculty I now lead as part of this clinic, many of which have decades of seniority on me.

I’m doing the work of two-and-a-half full-time faculty right now. I do still really love this job, but right now I can’t handle it.

I’m grinding my teeth at night and clenching my jaw during the day. My dentist suddenly wants me to get a bite plate when before a few months ago, I’d never ground my teeth in my life. I’m getting excruciating stress/tension headaches almost every other day from how tight every muscle of my face and neck is. I’ve gained over ten pounds in the last two months from eating like crap because anything that requires more than two steps of prep is mentally, physically, and emotionally impossible, which has the added effect of making me want to cry every time I look in a mirror and see my stomach so far away from my mental “normal,” because I was already seven pounds or so more than I wanted to be. I’m only getting three or four hours of sleep a night despite melatonin because my mind is just reciting checklist after checklist of things I need to do to keep all my sudden responsibilities on track.

I saw my psychiatrist today (which in and of itself was overwhelming--I thought until I was leaving for the appointment that today was my annual physical, and it wasn’t until I was checking the auto-filled address that I realized it was in the wrong building for that. Turns out I’d independently scheduled both the psych follow-up & the physical within a few days of each other, and I’d missed the text appointment reminders for the physical because the psych ones were more recent. I have never straight up no-showed an appointment in my life before this.)

I only had about thirty minutes with her, but part of the problem is that I haven’t taken my meds regularly in over a month because even such a little thing was too difficult. I’m going to try to start back on that, but...

I told her it doesn’t feel like I’m trying to keep plates spinning in the air. It feels like I have them all under control at the moment, they’re just excruciatingly heavy. The only way I’ve been handling this sudden pressure of doing basically two and a half jobs with no margin for error in any of them is being ruthlessly, relentlessly organized. Which is fine, except that I can feel how that changes my personality when I have to go so hard and regimented, and I hate how it feels to have both no margin and no grace.

I had a student the other day email me about a flight she booked for a Memorial Day vacation at 6pm on a Friday, not thinking about how clinic does not always end on the dot at 5pm. We (both students and faculty) are required to stay until the patient’s exam is complete. Sometimes that’s at five. Sometimes that’s at 6:30. On rare occasions I’ve stayed until 9pm in clinical care because that’s what was needed at the time for that patient.

She wanted to get out of clinic with an excused absence. We require three weeks’ minimum notice because when a student leaves without coverage, we have to reschedule all the patients they were meant to see. Her schedule was fully booked, and I had to say no, because right now I have nothing left to try to find an alternative for her. I hate saying no to students, especially when it’s something I truly could help them solve with some investment on my part, but right now--I’m sorry, but I can’t. Why on earth did you schedule a flight for 6pm on a day you have clinic until 5, especially when the airport is a 20-minute drive from the school even without traffic? I can’t fix this for you, not right now. You have to show up to clinic or find your own coverage. I don’t care how you do it, but someone has to be there, and I don’t have anything left in me to help you figure out how to do it.

My mom listens to a guy who sometimes talks about how you have to have a margin in your life to manage your stress. A margin in your work helps you enjoy your leisure time; if you don’t have that margin, even scheduled play feels stressful because you have work playing through your head the whole time.

I’m out of margin. I’m ten feet over the line in every direction I’m so out of margin, and I am constantly being asked by students and other faculty, “How are you doing now that the person who you shared 90% of your work life with is gone? Who’s going to help take over [year-long highly-intensive Methods course] now that Dr. So-and-So is gone? Who’s going to help you teach it since we all know what a gigantic course it is and how it’s always required two people to run full-time, and now you’re down to one who’s also taken on a bunch of other responsibilities at the exact same time?”

and they’re laughing when they say it. and i’m laughing when i tell them the truth, which is “no one.” and we all laugh together and inside my head i am ripping apart under the pressure.

Even if they hire someone by August, it’s not going to mean any relief until September due to onboarding, and even then it won’t be what I really need. This woman I worked with and I had both taught this course together for years, and before that we’d both taken it as students. We knew how it ran inside and out. We knew what the responsibilities were. We had the workload divided evenly and didn’t have to consult over every decision that was made--it just got done. Even if they do hire someone at lightning speed, I still have to train them. I have to show them where the group drive is on the faculty intranet. I have to teach them how it’s organized. I have to show them how to upload quizzes and how to grade them and how to edit the Excel practical documents and the timeframe we expect the grades back and why our grading standards are the way they are and what to say to guest graders and guest lab instructors and show them where the file folders are kept and where the .docx’s are kept and the way things are sorted and how the tests are written and how to extensively edit a PDF file and give them the contact information for faculty IT support (which still ends up being me half the time) and the manual printer and the woman who orders office supplies and the woman who orders clinical equipment and the man who orders building maintenance supplies and when you go to one and not the other and how electronic testing works and how to grade it and how to upload a document with all the specific little requirements the program wants to make sure it imports correctly and how to deal with the errors this program will inevitably throw back because it’s niche software for a niche school and that means it’ll never be user friendly.

It took me almost two years to really feel comfortable being co-coursemaster for this course because it is so unbelievably massive. Even if they hire someone by August, I still won’t have a full-time coursemaster pulling their weight until 2021.

The other metaphor I used with my psychiatrist is that I’m holding on to a cliff’s edge with my fingertips. Right now, I’ve got a pretty decent grip, but that doesn’t change the fact that if you put another pound on my back it might pull me right off the rock.

I don’t see practical relief coming any time soon. “What can we do to help? We want you to know you are very supported right now. You let us know what you need.” What can you do? Hire someone tomorrow who already knows how our computer system works, who can troubleshoot their own IT, who can look at a list of tasks that need to happen to get this Methods course fully ready every single semester of every single year and do them without any handholding from me. Hire someone with as much attention to detail as I’ve had to have because it’s the right way to do the damn job. Hire someone I won’t have to clean up after because to them “the cart in the closet” is the same thing as “the specific place on the labeled closet shelf where the equipment belongs.”

I’m clenching my teeth so hard they’re hurting, so I guess I have to stop. If you see me in-game somewhere, believe me, it’s not because I’ve caught up. It’s because I haven’t and I can’t bear thinking about how much I still have to do.

#quark rambles #optometry /#kindly refrain from reblogging

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bountyofbeads · 5 years

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Why Does Only One Party Play by the Rules? https://nyti.ms/2MNdCOX

Why Does Only One Party Play by the Rules?

Thanks to Trump’s deepening dependence on “alternative facts,” the assertion of reality is now a viable campaign strategy for 2020 Democrats.

By Jennifer Senior, Opinion columnist | Published October 25, 2019 | New York Times | Posted October 25, 2019 |

It’s that time of the campaign season when some Democrats are starting to feel — as President Jimmy Carter might have put it — malaise. They’re staring at their 2020 lineup and wondering whether it’s a guaranteed recipe for buyer’s remorse. Joe Biden is too old, Pete Buttigieg is too young, Kamala Harris is too uncertain, Bernie Sanders too unpalatable, Elizabeth Warren too unelectable.

All of which may be right. But I have an additional theory for why some Democrats are the vexed and depleted souls they seem to be these days, waking up with lead in their veins and worms in their stomachs. It boils down to this: They can’t escape the sense that they’re living by different rules.

Let me rephrase that: Democrats are acting as though there still are rules, when in fact they’re living in a political multiverse — with at least one parallel reality containing no rules at all.

What do you do when one party stakes its faith — and ultimately government itself — on observable, measurable realities while the other has made the cynical decision to cast these principles away? How do you strategize? How do you cope?

It’s not just that President Trump serially lies in plain sight. (What’s The Washington Post’s latest tally? 13,435? Whatever: Just imagine a whirring odometer on a shuttle to Mars.) It’s that he’s surrounded by occluders and toadies, nihilist tricksters spun directly from the looms of the Marx Brothers’ imagination. (“Who you gonna believe? Me or your own eyes?”)

A raft of House and Senate Republicans — including (say it with me) Senator Lindsey Graham — learned that Ukraine’s top diplomat had confirmed the Trump administration’s aid-for-dirt caper, yet still insists the impeachment proceedings are a sham. The acting White House chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, acknowledged this same quid pro quo in a news conference, only to proclaim later that none of us understands English. Any public servant who dares say that two plus two just might equal four is immediately accused by Trump of radicalism, treason, witch hunting.

Compare that with President Barack Obama’s relationship with those who inconvenienced him. When James Comey, then the head of the F.B.I., made the fateful decision to announce that he’d reopened his inquiry into Hillary Clinton’s emails just days before the 2016 election, Obama could not have been especially pleased. By imperiling Clinton’s chances, Comey was imperiling Obama’s own legacy too. Yet Obama still behaved warmly toward him, according to James Stewart in his new book, “Deep State.” Why? Because “Democrats,” as Jonathan Chait explained in his review of that book, “still believed in institutions and norms.”(See review below)

This idea — that Democrats still believe in norms, customs, the rather crucial notion of checks and balances, in government itself — may be the crux of the multiverse problem. Look at someone like Joe Biden, whose essential pitch (in addition to experience, incremental change, working-class-guyness) is that he can work with the men and women on the other side of the aisle.

But this suggests that compromise is an option. It doesn’t appear that the other side is much interested. You have Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, holding a Supreme Court appointment hostage for nearly a year, blocking almost all legislative debate and passing a bill to protect the 2020 elections from foreign interference only under extreme duress; the world’s “greatest deliberative body” is now a speedway for the Trump agenda. You have the House Republicans informally observing the “Hastert Rule”— named for the former speaker Dennis Hastert, who was carted off to prison for paying hush money to a former student he’d sexually abused — which says bills can come to the floor only if a majority of the Republicans support them. It virtually ensures minoritarian rule.

And you have partisan news outlets with zero interest in reporting the basic facts of Trump’s corruption or the catastrophic consequences of his impulses. We’ve gone from Pax Americana to Fox Americana in the blink of an eye.

Whereas the more traditional media, whatever their unconscious biases, do try to hold Democrats to account. Sure, let’s stipulate that there are more liberals than conservatives at these organizations. Maybe even a lot more. But it was mainstream newspapers that broke the Whitewater story, which led to an independent investigation of Bill Clinton. It was mainstream newspapers that kept Hillary Clinton’s emails on the front page in the run-up to the 2016 election. This newspaper covered Hunter Biden’s business dealings in Ukraine too — in May. These pages also ran an editorial about it. That was in 2015.

Of course Democratic politicians — all politicians — distort, gerrymander evidence, even lie and apply their greasy thumbs to the scales. (What was Bill Clinton doing on that plane with Loretta Lynch in 2016?) The question is whether their sins are occasional or habitual, whether their worldviews are Capra or Chandler. The Trumpkins are firmly in noir territory.

Now you have Trump strafing Facebook with campaign ads popping with falsehoods. Elizabeth Warren, meanwhile, ran a Facebook ad with falsehoods that acknowledged they were false midway through.

Which says it all, really.

So, to repeat: What to do about this? Do you capitulate, sell your soul and resort to the same lawless tactics as your opponents? Or do you take the high road and run the risk of losing?

The only guide we have is 2018. But it’s not a bad one. What it showed was that sometimes it pays to go high. The Democrats just have to aggressively sell an honorable message.

Specifically, what the Democrats should say is: Anyone who’s not in the business of peddling the truth shouldn’t be in the business of government. Or publishing, for that matter. Trump once said that he could probably get away with murder. (And his lawyers recently, surreally, made this same case in a federal appeals court.) That’s what Mark Zuckerberg is doing on Facebook, figuratively speaking, by allowing political ads with demonstrably false content to run on his platform, no matter what other features the company rolls out.

Right now, the Democrats are badly losing the Facebook war. But it’s not too late for them to wage this fight, and in the right way. They could still campaign on the idea of a government that believes in itself — and self-evident truths, like something as basic as the size of an inaugural crowd.

It would be a declaration of values. In the Trump era, that’s not a bad place to start.

*********

Two Candidates, Two Investigations, One Deeply Flawed Agency

By Jonathan Chait | Published October 25, 2019 | New York Times | Posted October 25, 2019 |

DEEP STATE

Trump, the FBI, and the Rule of Law

By James B. Stewart

During the 2016 presidential election, one of the two major candidates labored under the shadow of a criminal investigation by the F.B.I. That candidate was Hillary Clinton. As we now know, though voters had little reason to apprehend it at the time, there were actually two investigations underway — and, while the probe into Clinton’s mishandling of emails played out in public, the more serious probe of Donald Trump’s secret political and financial connections with Russia remained largely unknown until well after the voting had concluded.

In “Deep State,” James B. Stewart, a columnist for The New York Times and the author of “Blood Sport” and “Den of Thieves,” among many other books, tells the story of both investigations. His account produces few new facts, nor a bold new thesis, that would dramatically alter our understanding of either. Instead, his contribution is to combine the two accounts into a single chronological narrative. He shows how the twin investigations turn out to be closely linked, and not just because an election pitted their subjects against each other.

The F.B.I. agents investigating Clinton’s use of a personal email account realized early on that they would never have a prosecutable case. While Clinton had violated laws pertaining to the handling of classified material, she had apparently done so out of a combination of technical ineptitude and convenience, and the government had never charged an offender without establishing nefarious motives. As a result, the bureau concluded it didn’t “have much on the intent side.”

You might think this decision made life easier for the F.B.I., which would be spared the ordeal of having to insert itself into a presidential campaign. Instead, it made life harder. The reason for this: The bureau contained what some Department of Justice officials considered “hotbeds of anti-Clinton hostility,” especially in the Little Rock and New York offices. Stewart describes how F.B.I. officials encouraged colleagues investigating the Democratic nominee with messages like “You have to get her” and “You guys are finally going to get that bitch.” James Comey, the F.B.I. director during the Clinton email probe, went so far as to tell Attorney General Loretta Lynch, “It’s clear to me that there is a cadre of senior people in New York who have a deep and visceral hatred of Secretary Clinton.” Those agents leaked regularly to right-wing media sources that the bureau was turning a blind eye to what they saw as Clinton’s criminality.

This pressure drove Comey to make two fateful decisions. First, when he announced that the bureau was not bringing charges against Clinton, he denounced her “extremely careless” behavior, as a kind of middle course between what the law dictated and what Republicans demanded. Second, when an unrelated investigation into sex crimes by the former Democratic congressman Anthony Weiner turned up more Clinton email 11 days before the election, Comey felt trapped into announcing that he had reopened the investigation.

Stewart shows how Comey violated the F.B.I.’s norm of doing everything possible to avoid involving itself in election campaigns, especially at the end. He believed that failing to intervene would lead conservative agents to leak the story — and would result in his own impeachment by the Republican Congress after the election. As a result, Comey told his staff he needed to publicly reopen the investigation lest he create “corrosive doubt that you had engineered a cover-up to protect a particular political candidate.”

This was a catastrophic violation of protocol — and probably a decisive one; as Stewart notes, the new email story led the news in six of the seven days in the final week before the election. But what drove Comey to this error was the refusal of Republicans in the bureau and Congress to accept and follow the rules. Stewart’s narrative shows Democrats still believed in institutions and norms — even after Comey’s extraordinary intervention against Clinton, he was still treated warmly by President Obama and cordially by Loretta Lynch. Comey felt bound to appease the Clinton-haters because they refused to accept any process that failed to yield their preferred outcome.

Notably, the Republican William Barr enthusiastically endorsed Comey’s decision to reopen the case against Clinton, but then — once Comey became a threat to Trump — cited that very decision as grounds to fire him. Barr’s subsequent elevation to attorney general is an ominous development that hangs over the second half of Stewart’s book.

Unfortunately, his account of the Russia investigation is less satisfying. When Comey briefs Trump on the so-called Steele dossier and its litany of supposed ties between Trump and Russia — including the unproven allegation that Trump had watched prostitutes in a Moscow hotel room urinating on a bed where the Obamas once slept — we see the new president give suspiciously unconvincing denials. “Almost to himself, Trump repeated the year ‘2013’ and seemed to be searching his memory,” Stewart recounts. Trump tells Comey he would not need to pay for sex, and links the charges to other women who have accused him of groping them — charges that have high levels of credibility. He insists his well-known fear of germs would preclude him from enjoying such a performance, even though he could easily have done so at a safe distance.

We also see Trump or his agents dangling pardons before Paul Manafort and Roger Stone, the two advisers who had the closest political contacts with Russia and WikiLeaks, leading to both men refusing to cooperate with the investigation. We come to see Rod Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general and supervisor of the Mueller report, as human Jell-O, losing his composure at times to the point of seeming unhinged. Stewart points out that Rosenstein agreed to meet with Trump privately. “Each time, against seemingly long odds, Rosenstein emerged with his job intact,” he notes. “What did he offer Trump in return? What threats, explicit or implied, did Trump bring to bear?”

Stewart also recounts the harsh treatment dispensed to government officials who, as a result of their involvement in the Russia investigation, became Trump’s targets. The Department of Justice publicized an affair between two agents working on the probe. It demoted the Justice Department lawyer Bruce Ohr after he spoke out, and ended the career of the longtime F.B.I. agent Andrew McCabe. All of these things, Stewart writes, “raise disturbing questions about their willingness to stand up to a president and preserve the long tradition of independent law enforcement and the rule of law.”

However, for all the suspicious patterns he reveals, for all the dots he connects, Stewart does not manage to produce a smoking gun that proves misconduct. We never learn the depth of Trump’s involvement with Russia, or whether he or Attorney General Barr applied undue pressure on the department. If these questions have incriminating answers, the people who hold them probably have no incentive to reveal them and possibly never will. What “Deep State” does tell us is that there are ample grounds for suspicion that Trump’s well-documented efforts to obstruct justice succeeded. To what end? That remains a mystery.

*********

In Tribute to Cummings, Obama Hints at Rebuke of Trump

The former president said that Representative Elijah E. Cummings showed that “you’re not a sucker to have integrity.”

Peter Baker

Oct. 25, 2019Updated 3:52 p.m. ET

WASHINGTON — Former President Barack Obama, who has remained largely silent amid the convulsive impeachment debate now gripping the nation, offered a tribute to a late Democratic congressman on Friday that sounded to some listeners like an implicit rebuke of President Trump.

Speaking at a service for Representative Elijah E. Cummings, who died last week, Mr. Obama never mentioned the president by name but seemed to draw a contrast between his successor and the congressman whom Mr. Trump denigrated last summer.

Mr. Obama said that Mr. Cummings showed that being strong meant being kind and that being honorable was no flaw.

“There’s nothing weak about kindness and compassion,” Mr. Obama told a packed hall at New Psalmist Baptist Church in Baltimore, which Mr. Cummings, a Democrat, represented in the House for the past 25 years. “There’s nothing weak about looking out for others. There’s nothing weak about being honorable. You’re not a sucker to have integrity and to treat others with respect.”

Warming to his topic, Mr. Obama pointed to a sign behind him referring to “the Honorable” Mr. Cummings.

“This is a title that we confer on all kinds of people who get elected to public office,” he said as the largely African-American and Democratic audience responded with knowing applause and laughter. “We’re supposed to introduce them as honorable. But Elijah Cummings was honorable before he was elected to office. There’s a difference. There’s a difference if you were honorable and treated others honorably outside the limelight.”

As chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, Mr. Cummings, 68, had become a major thorn in Mr. Trump’s side and was one of the leaders of the drive to impeach the president for abuse of power. Last summer, Mr. Trump lashed out at Mr. Cummings, calling him “racist” and “a brutal bully” who had done “a very poor job” representing a district that he described as a “disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess.”

Mr. Obama was part of an all-star lineup of speakers and guests at the Friday’s service, including former President Bill Clinton, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Senator Elizabeth Warren.

But much of the attention was focused on the 44th president, who has largely avoided weighing in lately on his successor even as Mr. Trump lately has repeatedly accused Mr. Obama of illegally spying on him while in office and blamed the former president for various policy setbacks.

Mr. Obama made no reference to any of that, but did call on his audience to step up as Mr. Cummings did. “People will look back at this moment,” he said, “and ask the question: What did you do?”

*********

Elijah Cummings’s Funeral Draws Presidents and Thousands of Mourners

Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton spoke Friday at the service for the longtime Maryland congressman.

By Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs | Published October 25, 2019 Updated 3:39 PM ET | New York Times | Posted October 25, 2019 |

BALTIMORE — Representative Elijah E. Cummings was firmly rooted in Baltimore, but for decades his voice extended far from his brick rowhouse on the city’s west side. On Friday, the legacy of his tireless advocacy brought powerful leaders from Washington and elsewhere to his city.

Mr. Cummings, a Democrat who rose in prominence in recent years for his unwavering pursuit of President Trump, died at 68 last week in the city he called home, the same one in which he was born and lived all his life.

Two former presidents, Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, were among the prominent cast of politicians, mentees and relatives who spoke at his funeral on Friday morning. Others included Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton and Elizabeth Warren, the Massachusetts senator and presidential candidate.

Mr. Obama roused the congregation, extolling Mr. Cummings’s values and saying that the congressman had earned the title, “the honorable.”

“This is a title we confer on all kinds of people who get elected to public office,” Mr. Obama said. “We’re supposed to introduce them as honorable. But Elijah Cummings was honorable before he was elected to office.”

“There’s a difference,” Mr. Obama continued, his voice rising as many in the crowd stood up and clapped. “There’s a difference if you were honorable and treated others honorably — outside the limelight, on the side of a road, in a quiet moment counseling somebody you work with.”

Mr. Cummings’s success validates the concept of the American dream, Mr. Obama said, and his compassion and empathy were a lesson that kindness can be a sign of strength.

“There’s nothing weak about looking out for others,” Mr. Obama said. “There’s nothing weak about being honorable. You’re not a sucker to have integrity and to treat others with respect.”

Earlier in the service, following a psalm read by Ms. Warren and a song from one of Mr. Cummings’s favorite singers, BeBe Winans, Ms. Clinton took the stage and thanked members of Mr. Cummings’s district “for sharing him with our country and the world.”

Ms. Clinton said Mr. Cummings never backed down in the face of abuses of power or from “those who put party ahead of country or partisanship above truth.”

“But he could find common ground with anyone willing to seek it with him,” she continued. “And he liked to remind all of us that you can’t get so caught up in who you are fighting that you forget what you are fighting for.”

Ms. Pelosi asked attendees how many had been mentored by Mr. Cummings, and at least a dozen raised their hands. She recalled that he had sought to mentor as many freshman representatives as he could after Democrats took control of the House in the 2018 election.

“By example, he gave people hope,” she said.

Ms. Pelosi had spoken at another funeral in Baltimore on Wednesday for her own brother, Thomas D’Alesandro III, a former mayor of the city.

Earlier in the morning, thousands of grieving Baltimoreans stood in looping lines as the sun rose outside of New Psalmist Baptist Church, which seats 4,000 people and filled up shortly before 10, with many still outside. It’s the same church where Mr. Cummings sat in the front row most Sundays even after he began using a walker and wheelchair.

Mr. Cummings’s body lay in an open coffin at the front of the church on Friday, his left hand resting on his right as mourners passed by and a choir sang gospel music. An usher stood nearby with a box of tissues in each hand.

Elonna Jones, 21, skipped her classes at the University of Maryland to attend with her mother, Waneta Ross, who nearly teared up as she contemplated Baltimore’s loss.

“He believed in the beauty of everything, especially our city,” Ms. Ross said. “It’s important we’re here to honor a civil rights activist who was still around in my generation.”

Ms. Jones, a volunteer coordinator for a City Council candidate, said Mr. Cummings had motivated her to pursue a role in improving her city.

“As a young, black woman in Baltimore who wants to be in politics, he inspired me,” she said.

Mourning residents stood in black coats, hats and heels and sang Mr. Cummings’s praises as the police corralled the extended lines of people who woke up early to pay their respects. Above all, attendees noted, he always looked out for his city.

“He never forgot who we were,” said Bernadette McDonald, who lives in West Baltimore. “He was a son of Baltimore and a man of the people.”

The big names on the service’s agenda, the television cameras lined up outside and the large crowd belied the way many attendees interacted with the devoted congressman, who lived in the heart of West Baltimore and would simply give a knowing nod to those who recognized him on the street. He carried himself like anyone else when running errands or taking a walk around the block.

“If you didn’t already know him, you wouldn’t know who he was,” Ms. McDonald said.

Mr. Cummings saw his profile rise in recent years as he consistently sparred with Mr. Trump, determinedly pursuing the president, his businesses and his associates as head of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform. Mr. Cummings became a leading figure in the impeachment inquiry and was said to still be joining strategy discussions with colleagues from his hospital bed.

Rhonda Martin, who works at a local high school, said Mr. Cummings had inspired the next generation of Baltimore’s leaders by speaking to students in schools around the city.

“He brought a message of hope and told students that he did it, and they can do it, too,” Ms. Martin said.

Mr. Cummings, whose parents were former sharecroppers in South Carolina, graduated from Howard University in Washington and earned a law degree at the University of Maryland. He was first elected to Congress in 1996 and never faced a serious challenge over 11 successful re-election campaigns.

On Thursday, Mr. Cummings’s body lay in state in the Capitol, the first black lawmaker to do so, and Republicans and Democrats praised his integrity and his commitment to his constituents.

Over more than two decades in Congress, Mr. Cummings championed working people, environmental reform and civil rights. He served for two years as the chair of the Congressional Black Caucus and frequently spoke of his neighborhood while pushing legislation to lower drug prices, promoting labor unions and seeking more funding for affordable housing.

Even in his war of words with the president, the battle made its way to Baltimore when, in July, Mr. Trump called Mr. Cummings’s district a “disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess” and appeared to make light of a break-in at Mr. Cummings’s home, during which the congressman scared an intruder away.

The president’s insults still anger Baltimore residents. “See? We’re not all trash and rats,” one congregant said as she sat down in the church on Friday.

Mr. Cummings responded to the president by saying it was his “moral duty” to fight for residents in his district. “Each morning, I wake up,” he wrote, “and I go and fight for my neighbors.”

Jennifer Cummings, one of Mr. Cummings’s two daughters, recalled early morning calls from her father on her birthdays and the ice cream they shared in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor.

Reading from a letter to her father, Ms. Cummings said her father had taught her to “love my blackness” by insisting on buying her dolls with brown skin and telling her to appreciate her lips and nose.

While she was proud of all the titles he held over his life, “perhaps the most important title you held in your 68 years on earth was dad,” she said.

One of Mr. Cummings’s brothers, James Cummings, said that in one of their last conversations, the congressman spoke of his heartbreak over the unsolved killing of James’s 20-year-old son, Christopher Cummings, in Norfolk, Va., in 2011.

The killing “haunted Elijah for the rest of his life,” James said.

Adia Cummings, the congressman’s other daughter, said Mr. Cummings always challenged her and her sister to be better people. And even though he would nudge her about owing him money, he rarely turned down her requests, even recently making sure that she could attend a concert for the rapper Cardi B.

“He didn’t really know who she was, but he went out of his way, even from his sick bed, to make sure I could go see her,” she said.

Maya Rockeymoore Cummings, Mr. Cummings’s wife and the chairwoman of the Maryland Democratic Party, gave a fiery speech that brought multiple rounds of applause and many congregants to their feet more than once. And while she did not cite President Trump by name, she invoked him clearly, saying her husband’s work had become “infinitely more difficult” in the last few months of his life when he “sustained personal attacks” on him and his city. “It hurt him,” Ms. Cummings said.

Looking at Mr. Obama, she recalled that Mr. Cummings had stood with the former president early and proudly. “But you didn’t have any challenges like we have going on now,” she added with a smile, as Mr. Obama nodded and responded with an appreciative chuckle.

Ms. Cummings said she felt as if people were trying to tear Mr. Cummings down, and that the celebrations and outpouring of love this week had assured her that he was sent off with the respect he deserved.

Two days before Mr. Cummings died, his wife said, the staff at the Johns Hopkins Hospital had wheeled him up to the roof to see the sun and look over the city he never left.

“Boy, have I come a long way,” he said, according to Ms. Cummings.

*********

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ila9182 · 5 years

Note

50 was so cute! Thank you! 48 maybe?

Thank you, anon, for sending me this ask and I’m glad you liked 50 as well! I’m sorry it took me so long to write this one, but here it is! This prompt takes place after 5x13 “White Lies: Part 3″. I hope you will enjoy it. ;)

The prompt challenge comes to an end with this one. I hope I didn’t bother you all with these stories and thank you to everyone who liked, reblogged and/or commented them! I really appreciate it!!

48. “Why are you crying?”

“Emily, honey, you know that I love hearing from you, but I’m getting a little suspicious here. You’ve already called this morning…” Sharon told her daughter as she put her mug down on the kitchen counter next to her laptop. She sat on one of the stools and eyed her daughter skeptically.

“Just calling because with this week off I am 100% sure you’re bored and you don’t know what to do with all this free time.” Emily replied with a smirk.

“Bored?” Sharon repeated, arching an eyebrow. “Lieutenant Provenza may be in charge this week, but he found a way to bring all the paperwork for me to file. He’s not a fan of those administrative tasks.” She explained.

“Well, I can understand that. It definitely doesn’t sound fun.” Emily reasoned.

“It comes with the job.” Sharon answered, rolling her eyes. “It’s not always fun.” She added, emphasizing the last word.

“How’s Andy?” Emily suddenly asked, catching her mother off guard.

Sharon stopped before the mug reached her lips. She put it down without a word and ran a hand through her hair as a strained smile crossed her features. “He’s good, just like he was this morning.” She added with a smirk at the familiar question. Although, she appreciated her daughter’s thoughtfulness. “He’s happy to be back at home, not complaining yet, but it has only been two days since he left the hospital. He’ll be bored very soon.” She added with another smirk. “He’s resting now. I have to check on him soon, he needs to check his blood pressure regularly.”

Emily nodded. She leaned closer to her laptop screen, resting her face on her palm as she asked in a serious tone, studying her mother, “And how are you, Mom?”

Her daughter’s question was blunt and Sharon wasn’t expecting it. Emily had already asked her how she was doing at the beginning of their call, but Sharon could tell her daughter was asking something different and awaiting another kind of answer than the one she had already answered to.

“I’m good.” Sharon quickly replied, a bit too quickly she realized.

“Mom.” Emily sighed. “You’ve been acting strong with everyone. With Andy and his family, the team… you don’t need to pretend with me, Mom.” She paused as she eyed her mother with a worried look. “It must have been really scary…”

“It was.” Sharon cut her short before assuring her daughter, “But I’m okay, honey, really.” Sharon took a deep breath as she whispered, “I’m glad he’s still here with me.” Her voice slightly trailed off, but she quickly regained her composure as she added hastily, “I have to go now, honey.”

“Mom.” Emily protested with a sigh.

“We’ll talk soon.” Sharon reassured her, “Thank you for calling. I love you.”

“Love you too, Mom.” Emily replied with a half smile.

Sharon ended the call and closed her laptop. She knew her daughter was right. She had been the cornerstone for everyone since Andy had collapsed in the Murder Room. Those had been scary and dark times. She couldn’t erase the memory of Andy’s terrified look as he was sitting on the floor of their workplace, his back leaning against the wall. She had ridden in the ambulance with him, clutching his hand as she tried to hide her own fear. Sharon had been strong for Andy, whispering reassuring words to him as she had stroked his cheek with her free hand. She had been strong for the team once they had joined her in the hospital waiting room. They had all looked at her expectantly as if she had all the answers, or as if she was about to break down at any minute. She didn’t. She had put on a brave face. She had even placed a comforting hand on Provenza’s shoulder and reassured him about his partner and friend’s condition when she was actually the one who needed support. The Lieutenant looked troubled and as much as he tried to hide his concern, Sharon could read it on his face nonetheless.

Sharon had been strong for Rusty because, even if he didn’t admit it, she knew he was getting more and more attached to Andy. The young man looked even more worried than the time he had found Andy unconscious on their bathroom floor. Sharon had called Andy’s ex-wife and children, she had dealt with everything on her own despite her team’s offers of help. She had also been strong for Nicole as soon as she arrived in the waiting room. The young woman was frantic and had cried on Sharon’s shoulder until she had no tears left. Once again, Sharon had held her, whispering comforting words to Nicole until the young woman finally calmed down.

Sharon had managed to keep all the pieces together that day. She was a reassuring presence for everyone, even though deep down she was shattered and terrified.

The overwhelming feelings of that day were coming back, and now alone in her kitchen she felt like she wasn’t strong enough to hold them back. Her chest tightened as she felt fear creeping through her body once again. She stood from the stool and took a few hesitant steps to stop in front of the opposite kitchen counter. She unbuttoned the top of her shirt as she ran a shaky hand over her bare skin, taking deep breaths. All the feelings she had been holding at bay were threatening her again as her mind went back to that day. She could have lost him. That thought alone was enough to push her over the edge.

Sharon gripped the counter as tears started pooling in her eyes. The pressure against her eyelids was getting too strong and before she realized, a few silent tears rolled down her cheeks. She felt the lump in her throat getting bigger as she held back a few sobs. Her shoulders began to shake with her efforts and they slumped as she lowered her head. The tears ran down her face before crashing onto the cold surface of the kitchen counter.

Sharon gripped the counter tighter and her knuckles turned white. Her feelings had won the silent inner battle she was fighting against them. She was surrendering to the emotions she had kept bottled up that day. She should have known that there was no running away from them. A sob escaped her lips. She covered her mouth with a hand to suppress the next ones. She couldn’t allow herself to break down this way.

“Sharon.” She froze when she heard his voice down the hall. He was supposed to be in the bedroom resting, not walking in on her in the middle of her emotional turmoil. He already had so much on his plate and having to worry about her was the last thing he needed.

She straightened her back and nervously wiped her tears away. Her face wasn’t even dry before fresh tears made their way down her cheeks. She tried controlling the shaking, but as a result, her shoulders trembled frantically.

“Sharon, what’s wrong?” There it was, concern. His voice was closer, and she knew he was slowly nearing her. She had to stop him.

“I’m fine.” She replied, her voice sounding hoarse and less firm than she intended. Not convincing at all, Sharon, she thought. “Go back to bed, you shouldn’t stay up too late.” She added, and despite the tears, her voice was firmer this time. She knew he wasn’t blind, she was aware her shoulders were shaking uncontrollably. She knew the fact that she wasn’t turning to face him would make him suspicious. She just hoped he would listen to her for once and head back to the bedroom, giving her some time to recompose herself.

“Sharon, you’re not fine.” He calmly said. “Why are you crying?” He asked, and she sighed at how stubborn he was.

Sharon felt him stop right behind her and she stiffened as she used her last strength to shoot back, “I’m not…” She stopped as the lump tightened in her throat. “I’m not cr-…” Another sob escaped her lips before she even realized it was coming. She covered her mouth with a hand, trying to muffle the sound and cursed herself for not being able to keep it together. She felt his arms encircle her, and she had the hardest time in not breaking down under his touch. She tried to gently move away from his embrace, but he tightened his grip on her as he leaned down to whisper in her ear, “Don’t.” Another strangled sob tore her body and he pleaded, “Sharon, babe, please, talk to me.”

Before she realized it, he had turned her in his arms, forcing her to face him. What he saw on her face hurt him more than the heart attack itself. He had never seen her in such a fragile state, and he felt sick because he knew he was the main reason behind her pain. He drew her closer and her head came to rest against his chest.

“Andy, you can’t st-…” She murmured against his chest.

He cut her short by saying, “Sharon, stop worrying about me.” When she lifted her head slightly to look at him with teary eyes, he added, “We’re moving to the couch, okay?”

Andy didn’t wait for an answer. He gently walked her to the couch, holding her against his side. He sat down and pulled her along, his arm sliding once again around her and bringing her closer. Sharon snuggled against him. He secured her in his arms, resting his chin on the top of her head. He slowly moved a hand to her hair and stroked them. The gesture wiped away the last strength she had, and she felt her walls begin to crumble. The usual soothing sound of his beating heart did the rest. She broke down without a warning as sobs began to rack her body. Andy was caught a little off guard, but he quickly tightened his hold around her fragile and trembling body. He knew she was letting go of all the emotions she had bottled up over the last weeks. He knew she couldn’t keep being that strong.

He soothingly ran a hand up and down her back as he felt her tears wetting his t-shirt. He had never seen her so broken and it scared him. It scared him that he had caused her so much pain. He wished he was able to take it all away. He nuzzled his face into her hair and left a few featherlight kisses. She progressively calmed down and he gently lifted her chin to meet her gaze. Two puffy and still teary emerald eyes looked at him and he dropped a kiss to her temple. Sharon briefly closed her eyes as he whispered to her, “Sharon…”

“I’m sorry…” She sniffled as she looked down, “This is the last thing you need and…”

“And this is not about me here, Shar’…” He softly told her, stroking her hair as he added, “Stop worrying about me and talk to me.”

She snuggled back against him and he felt her head shaking against his chest. They stayed in silence for a while until she trusted her voice again and finally spoke, “I thought I would have never heard that sound again.”

Andy frowned, as he wasn’t sure he had understood the meaning behind her words. He looked down and noticed she had her eyes closed as her head rested against his chest. She brushed a hand up and down his sternum, a delicate touch almost imperceptible, but he suddenly understood. She was listening to his heart. He opened his mouth to say something, but she was quicker.

“I thought I was going to lose you.” Her voice trailed off and she covered her mouth with a hand to stop another sob.

“But I’m here, babe…” He replied softly, moving a strand of hair from her face and placing it back behind her ear.

“But I could have lost you.” She insisted, her voice thick and filled with emotion.

“But you didn’t.” He told her, this time more firmly. “I’m here, I’m fine, and we’re going to pick up things where we left them, okay?”

Andy felt her nod against him and he tightened his embrace, his right thumb stroking her arm. “We’ll keep looking for the perfect house, we’ll go to the Dodger games, visit Emily and Ricky, spend time with Nicole’s family. We’ll do all the things we’ve always done or we have planned to do. We’ll keep working together, I’ll keep chasing the susp-…” He stopped mid-sentence when he noticed that Sharon had lifted her head from his chest and was throwing him a stern look. He chuckled and rolled his eyes, “Well, I guess work has to wait a little…and I may not run after a suspect for a while, I know.” He paused and added with a smirk when she was still shooting him that stare, “Don’t look at me that way.”

Sharon’s serious face progressively broke into a light smile. She shook her head and gently cupped his face with her hands as she told him, “You’re incorrigible.”

“Yeah, that’s why you love me.” Andy replied, pulling her closer, their lips meeting for a gentle kiss.

“I’ve obviously lost my mind.” She whispered against his lips once they broke off the kiss.

“That’s what I’ve believed from the start… since you agreed to date me.” Andy replied with a grin, as he moved a strand of hair from her face. “Or maybe since you offered to be a buffer for Nicole’s wedding.” He reasoned with another grin.

Andy’s face lit up when he suddenly heard a soft laugh escaping Sharon’s lips. He looked at her and noticed how her features had relaxed. How she finally seemed more peaceful, as hints of her previous breakdown had disappeared from her face. He leaned in for another kiss, this one more lingering, and she gently cupped the side of his face. When they pulled apart, Andy moved a hand to her hair, tenderly combing through it. Sharon closed her eyes and hummed as he whispered to her, “I love you, Sharon…and I want you to know that you can talk to me about anything. You can trust me with anything, we’re in this together.” He kept massaging her scalp as he added, “I don’t want Wonder Woman, I don’t need a woman of steel. I need and want you, Sharon, with all your strengths and weaknesses… all right?” he asked with a loving smile.

Andy noticed moisture return to her eyes, but it was there only for a couple of seconds. Once she blinked, any trail of new tears had disappeared, replaced by a warm smile. She nodded and took his hand in hers as she answered, “I know, Andy… and that’s why I love you.”

Sharon looked down at their intertwined fingers and stroked the back of his hand with her thumb. She then resumed her earlier position, with her head resting on his chest as she kept holding his hand. “Do you mind if we stay like this for a little while?” She asked, her voice sounding a little unsure.

“Not at all, Shar…” he replied with a sweet smile. He secured her in his arms as she closed her eyes, calmed by his soothing heartbeat. “Not at all.” He repeated, dropping a kiss to the top of her head.

#Major Crimes #Sharon Raydor #Andy Flynn #Emily Raydor #Sharon x Andy #Shandy #Why are you crying?#fanfiction #prompt #ilariawrites

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ipaydayloans · 5 years

Text

Unsecured loan

Unsecured loan is the most difficult to obtain. This is because it will be difficult for lenders to prove that they have guaranteed the interest. The risk for the borrower and risk for both lenders and investors that could arise from the default is even greater.

In the end, it is better to assume the default has occurred, so that you can get the funds available today.

If you do not, you may find it very hard to recover your equity. In some cases (especially if you only have one loan) this can make the situation even worse.

If you do find that your equity has been sold at ex-market value, the best strategy is to obtain an exclusive agreement between you and the lender. If the agreement is in writing, it can be offered, and the terms are confidential. If you feel it is still in the best interest of the investor and you want to recover your equity, you could request a formal recovery of those funds. If you do request such recovery, you will have to comply with the terms of the agreement and will require a third party to prove that such money has gone to your good will. You would also be required to make sure that the loan has been repaid in full. Once accepted, a formal recovery of the funds from the lender will be available for all of those who purchased the interest. The same way as if the loan has not been repurchased, you would have to make sure that the interest cannot be withdrawn. However, in these circumstances, there may not be much of a financial incentive to pursue a formal recovery for a loan taken out early. You would more likely want to seek a formal recovery from your government as this would allow you to put the money into a separate portfolio and to have it available for you later when needed.

Once you have secured the required rights to the investment funds, you must also take reasonable steps to protect against what are known as "redemptions" that may take place from the sale of the funds. If an investor has bought and sold the investment funds through the lending institutions mentioned above, they will likely notice the terms to those investments and the market value of the investments change in relation to the loan that were sold. In such a case, in most cases, you would want the loan to be put into private business and the interest paid in by a third party, which will provide a further level of certainty to the investor, to protect their money.

The fact that money is sold to a bank does not mean that the funds are returned

Unsecured loan is in default for at least 18 months," he says. "It's not always easy to get out of that. You're at risk of running up interest and possibly losing any future payment; you've got an opportunity to take it out of default and have the loan forgiven. But when you miss the 20th week, you're screwed. A big reason is that the law's written really tight. It means you're supposed to be able to do it within two weeks of the delinquency date. It's kind of hard to get that.

"What happened with my mortgage is quite amazing. I'm trying to come to terms with it all. Some weeks were worse than others. It was going on for almost three years and I only started to hear good things when we finally got rid of most of the defaults – the loans for $125,000 and up had been forgiven.

"But I didn't want to lose the last week of my mortgage. After talking with the loan officers, it's quite clear that they're not happy with what's going on with these guys. I'm trying to go as close as I can to letting them go while I still have this option. My heart has sunk when I think about the way it has to be done and the damage that has been done to my family and their kids who may end up with my house if things go wrong one more time."

When the loan officer for the state of New York, Brian Hamer, showed me a copy of the agreement, it seemed clear to me that my daughter was in danger, particularly given the fact that there had been no notice of default. Hamer explained that "the default notices were just for delinquent loans," meaning that even if a borrower did not take out a loan, the loan was still in default – just in another state. But when he added that the State Department of Banking's Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's complaint against a New York branch over interest rate-gouging there, and with the financial services industry itself having repeatedly stated that it would try for a "better" rate, he seemed less convinced.

Hamer then gave me a phone number to call to speak with the state's Comptroller for assistance. For $25 a minute, my daughter could put her call details in a computerised database, the state agency would issue a letter – presumably a notice of default – to send my credit management company – which, as of October 22, 2015, had been frozen to avoid any legal action arising a low-interest rate, non-government backed money.

The loans cost the U.S. Treasury roughly $20 billion just this year as they are held in a system called the Federal Housing Administration (FHA).

The FHA is part of the Social Security system and protects both you and others. It also provides a system to create and sustain job and economic opportunities for those in need for an income stream, as well as a retirement security mechanism for those born in these areas.

If you're looking for a loan as a low-interest, non-government backed money, go to http://ipaydayloans.tumblr.com. Please consider donating at this link. If you find an inaccuracy, let us know.

a good thing and they don't like it, especially in times like this."

Some experts say the move risks damaging the already fragile global financial system.

"This would only create uncertainty and could create even more financial volatility. As the global financial system remains fragile, it is difficult for policymakers to know what to do next — to provide more stability, make the markets more price sensitive, or adjust existing regulations to protect the economy's long-term position," said Jonathan Smith, chief economist at RBC Capital Markets.

One of the key concerns about a move to a securities-based global payments system such as Visa or MasterCard is that it's likely to raise the cost of doing business for consumers and businesses.

The move by the Trump administration is expected to put even more pressure on companies to reduce or eliminate their reliance on middlemen — and to increase the amount of cash in their pockets while at the same time forcing more people, especially millennials, to cash in their credit cards to get by.

S&P says that at this point, companies are being too cautious.

Unsecured loan is the same thing, but with a different price structure. And the difference is dramatic. Under securitization, if you get the loan first signed off on, at the end of the day, your collateral will be secured by the bank. But with Securitization Loans, the borrower has to have the loan sign off on. So the loan cannot be secured. Your collateral is gone. If a bank fails, or the borrower gets a default, they don't own it. You own the loan.

We've heard the argument made that under securitization, there are no liens on collateral. So that makes the loan less risky if you're on it. But it also means that you have less collateral — and less risk. So that's not always a net positive. Even though I think that would be really valuable, I think that Securitization Loans would hurt the middle class most, as they don't own the loan they're on — and if you take out a loan for the value of the collateral, you may not be able to sell the collateral.

I'm not saying it's absolutely not important that we have Securitization Loans, I'm merely talking about the arguments.

Ricky: There was a major report from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency about something called "negative interest rates" and they were talking about whether these "negative interest rates" were a good thing or not. They said that some credit card companies were using those negative income tax credits in their promotional promotions that they were paying for, and the way they were marketing them was to say that they were paying lower interest rates, which is really good but not very effective at lowering interest rates. And we don't know if that's true as there are so many ways to lower interest rates.

That's something that I'm worried about because this whole "negative interest rates" thing. The bottom line is, how do you deal with negative rates when they're higher than anything you've ever seen? Well, what have I really learned over five years in this industry — credit card companies do not actually use such rates.

John: That's correct. And it's been demonstrated by a study by the Bank of New Columbia about negative interest rates. And they studied five years long. And every year over 5 years they found over 200 percent, which should be low enough so that the banks do their best to get them to zero. But each year they did not come out with calculated from credit score and credit score bonus amounts for one borrower.

In other words, when an insured loan is secured, it does not exist in the same account as another insured loan, so your account will have two separate insured loans.

For borrowers with low credit histories but strong credit, you must create a separate insured account in addition to your secured loan account.

How Does Guaranteed Term Loan Works out to Me?

The above illustration from the National Credit Union Administration page on secured loan repayment shows the terms of a guaranteed loan for a consumer using a secured credit card. With a guaranteed term loan, the customer will continue servicing the card until the balance in the secured loan is paid back.

A guaranteed term loan loan gives a consumer the best of two worlds with no fees. There's virtually no chance of the customer defaulting on the loan, but he or she will continue to make payments on the card for the rest of the life.

It's important to understand the terms of each secured loan loan before moving forward with the next installment of your secured loan repayments.

Signed Statements of Guaranteed Term Loan Agreement

There are a few different forms of guaranteed guaranteed term loan agreement (SLOLA). One of them is the SLOLA form of a contract signed by your insured lender to you. It may be in writing, fax or in the electronic form, so check with your lender.

The SLOLA forms below are offered by numerous leading banks and credit unions.

As with a home equity line of credit, all SLOLAs can differ from one lender to another based on their scope of operation within the banking industry. That's a common difference for both personal and commercial loans.

Related Federal Credit Union Loan Limitations to note from the National Association of Title IV Banks:

If you're in a qualified home equity loan, you must pay the federal minimum of 5.65% on your SLOLA.

If you're a business owner, you may be required to offer a 60/40 share of your home equity in order to qualify for a guaranteed term loan, but this doesn't apply if you are in a qualified home equity loan.

If you're a self-employed person living in the United States (as a landlord or owner of your own business), and you have a mortgage, you'll pay the same federal minimum credit-limit of 5.85% on your SLOLA as you currently do on

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freedom-shamrock · 5 years

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Exceeds Expectations

Also on AO3 This follows the Improvements story “Dressed for Success,” though it can be read on its own. This is also day 23 of my ML WIP-Completion project.

It was late, and all Adrien wanted to do was go to bed, unfortunately his father had other ideas.

"Adrien," his father said, his voice sharp in the quiet of the mansion.

Adrien looked up and mentally slouched in response. He'd only just come in the front door, and there was his father at the top of the staircase, looming down at him in what had become his traditional we-are-having-a-conversation-whether-you-like-it-or-not mode. "Good evening father," he said, not bothering to mask the weariness in his voice. He'd just worked a fourteen hour day, and he didn't care if his father didn't understand how exhausting runway was.

"We need to speak about this evening," his father said, clearly ignoring every cue Adrien sent him through body language and tone. Or maybe he was oblivious. That seemed too charitable.

"Can we do this tomorrow?" Adrien asked. "I'm beat."

Gabriel shook his head. "This should not take long." He turned on his heel and strode back to his office.

Adrien briefly considered ignoring the clear summons and letting his father see what it felt like to be ignored for a change, but knew he'd end up with some other unsavory job or task as a result. Last time they fought, Adrien suddenly found himself added to multiple underwear campaigns. The photoshoots didn't bother him, since he had about as much physical modesty as an actual cat, but the uptick in rabid fan interactions was not worth the risk. They'd gotten more lewd, too, and that kind of grossed him out.

Plagg wriggled in his pocket, something he'd started doing when Adren was frustrated, and for reasons he couldn't understand, it calmed him. So he was able to drag himself up the steps and into his father's office without letting the irritation get to him.

"You wished to see me, father?" Adrien declared as he crossed the threshold into his father's atelier. He'd taken to announcing his entrance this way in the past year, hoping to point out how rarely his father actually talked to him personally, and how it generally had to do with work. When it had no obvious results, it went from an attempted notice to something bordering pure sass.

"I wish to discuss your presentation for this evening," Gabriel said, straightening up in his chair, and pushing aside the tablet he'd been focusing on despite the fact that he'd summoned Adrien not two minutes earlier.

"I see," Adrien said. While he knew he could draw this out just to toy with his father, he was too tired for that to hold any amusement tonight, or rather this morning, as it was nearly three. "Let's just skip the niceties and get straight to the point where you tell me what I did wrong so I can apologize and get to bed," he suggested.

That prompted an unexpected reaction. Gabriel's eyes widened and he frowned. "I wasn't aware that you'd done anything wrong this evening. On the contrary, I was going to compliment you on your music selection and clothing choices."

Adrien stared at his father in disbelief.

"However," Gabriel continued, "if there's something you need to confess about your performance today that I was previously unaware of, by all means, feel free to do so."

Adrien scowled across the desk at his father. "Seriously? I can't win with you." He shook his head. "You don't compliment anyone , least of all me. I can't honestly recall the last time you told me you were proud of something I'd done, so you'll have to forgive me my assumption." He paused to gather his thoughts from his exhaustion-muddled brain, speaking up before his father could respond. "I handled myself like a proper Agreste today. I performed my walks and poses as I have been trained to. I was professional and represented Gabriel to the best of my ability."

Gabriel let out a huff. "You're getting emotional."

Adrien rolled his eyes. "I need to go to bed. Unless you want fatigue to be featured on my face in tomorrow's publicity piece."

"Fine." Gabriel glowered at him. "I will make this quick. Your work in the show was professional, as expected. Your performance at the after-party exceeded my expectations."

Adrien stared at his father in shock. "Exceeded expectations?"

Gabriel nodded. "Your music selections added to the ambiance in a way that suggested adequate familiarity with the setting and it's needs. The music was neither too loud, quiet, lively, or dull, so it brightened the atmosphere."

Adrien managed to keep his mouth in check when he really wanted to sass off about how he'd spent his whole life both in this environment and playing piano, so of course he had the knowledge to pick the right music. Normally he was eager for any shred of positivity that could be interpreted as praise, but in the last few months, he'd grown weary of scrambling for such scraps.

"That wasn't the surprise, though," Gabriel admitted. He steepled his fingers in front of his chin. "Your apparel for the after-party could not have been better chosen had I done it myself."

"They were your designs," Adrien said, shrugging. He knew he'd been right in enlisting Marinette's help, but he'd merely hoped to avoid a scolding and hadn't anticipated praise.

"True," Gabriel agreed. "But they were not pieced together as I'd originally intended them, and the way that was handled enhanced your appearance while minimizing your temporary defects."

"It's called a growth spurt," Adrien grumbled. "You wanted me taller."

"Yes," Gabriel said with a sharp nod. "And while it's temporary, the transition is ungainly."

Adrien reminded himself, yet again, what Marinette had told him. She thought he was impossibly beautiful no matter what his father said.

"The only reason you didn't upstage the show-stoppers, is that your clothes were slightly older designs, still fresh and intriguing, but not flashy." Gabriel stood up. "The match-up was innovative, brilliant, and the fit was perfect."

Adrien nodded. "I would be happy to express your appreciation to Marinette for her assistance, then."

"Marinette?" Gabriel asked. "As in Marinette Dupain-Cheng?"

Adrien nodded. "She came over a few weeks ago and helped me pick my look for the after-party. She told me what needed replacing in a larger size and re-tailored everything to ensure a good fit."

"Hey Marinette," Adrien called, jogging to catch up to her on the sidewalk approaching the school.

"Welcome back Adrien." She smiled at him, and it brought him some unexpected happiness. "How did it all go?"

"Really well, actually." He was still a bit baffled by the odd three A.M. conversation with his father. "And honestly, I think a big part of it was because of you."

"Me?" She seemed genuinely surprised. "I hardly did a thing."

Adrien shook his head. "I was pretty nervous about the after-party," he admitted. "I knew the music would be fine, but… I was really unsure about the rest, and my father has been on my case about representing Gabriel in the right fashion." He grinned at his own pun.

Marinette scowled a little. "He needs to lighten up. You're his son, not an employee or indentured servant. And it's a design house not an empire."

He laughed, unaccountably struck by the irony of her words. "Honestly to hear him talk about it, I am the scion of a noble house, far more important than the common folk I surround myself with." He snorted. "Anyway, your help with my suit made me feel a lot better, because even if he came down hard on me for failing to do my best, at least I had evidence that I'd gone out of my way and sought the best resources to fill the informational gap he'd left for me ."

Now she looked angry, and that hadn't been his plan. "Adrien, you're making me worry. More than I already did."

"Sorry, I'm not good with words, especially when I'm excited." He beamed at her. "He loved the outfit! He actually complimented it. You made him regret not making me a headliner." He shrugged. "Though to be honest it was nice to have a break from that pressure." He was getting off track, dammit. "Ugh. Let me start over." He took a deep breath and straightened up. "Thank you so much for helping me; it reduced my stress for the whole event, which allowed me to be at my best." He held out his arms and tilted his head before pulling her in for a hug.

"Okay, okay. You're welcome." Marinette giggled. "Now put me down."

"Oops." He hadn't realized he'd picked her up. "Still not used to being so much taller than you," he admitted, setting her back on her feet and letting go.

"I'm glad it went so well." She patted his upper arm. "And hearing this actually explains a few things."

Adrien thought for a moment, but spoke up when she didn't continue. "Explains what?"

Marinette rolled her eyes. "Nathalie stopped by yesterday with information on the internships that will be available at Gabriel this summer. It was… awkward and seemed really out of the blue."

"That's… unexpected." While he liked the idea of working with Marinette, the thought of her working at Gabriel made the hair at the back of his neck stand up. He'd heard that it was a hard place to be an intern, and that the position generally involved fetching coffee and doing administrative stuff, with occasional on location gopher work. "Didn't you already apply for summer internships?"

Marinette nodded. "And I've actually heard back on three of them, two yes and one no."

"So you're not going to apply for one at Gabriel?" he asked.

She patted his shoulder. "I'd love to work with you again, Adrien. But I want nothing to do with your father."

Adrien grinned. His father was so used to getting his way, this would come as quite a surprise. "I approve of your plan. I never get to work with interns anyway."

Planned to do this yesterday, but felt a bit bleh after too much wassail and tasty food at game night Saturday.

I still have 5 WIP pieces to write, and it's safe to say those won't get all finished today. Alas. But ideally this week yet.

#Miraculous Ladybug #Fanfic #My Writing #Improvements #mlfluffiction #WIP challenge

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horrorhouse · 5 years

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A Response to Josh Gad

On August 28, 2019, actor Josh Gad decided to post a lengthy Twitter thread regarding our political climate. I decided I wanted to post it in its entirety as one long letter instead of just posting each individual tweet and then give my response point by point. So here we go.

I don’t want to be the guy always shouting at the top of his lungs about the same thing. Life is too short. So this (I’m hoping) will be the last time I try to put into words how I feel about the current political situation we are in and reach out to those of you content with where things are right now in our country. So here we go. I know some of you wanted and hoped to throw the whole system out and see what happened if we disrupted political norms and elected a “guy who says it like it is” and in a weird way, I guess I even understand that impulse. But this is where we are now objectively: Donald Trump has never been fit for office and it appears that he is mentally unhinged. We can talk around it. We can play word games. We can debate what that means. But by all appearances he is truly a “madman.” I know it sounds funny and entertaining to hear the absurdity of the President of the United States threaten to nuke a thunderstorm to send it away or get angry at a country for not selling him another country but it’s not funny. It’s actually debilitatingly [sic] sad. Because our lives aren’t a reality show, even if he thinks he’s living in one. We have all lost the plot. We are chasing him down a rabbit hole of insanity and avoiding real issues like gun violence, immigration, health care, poverty and most importantly the very real threat of climate change, something this man doesn’t even believe exists because apparently he knows more as a realtor than the entire scientific community. We aren’t on the precipice of catastrophe or at the doorstep of doom...we are sadly past it. We need leadership to help us formulate how we adapt, grow & tackle environmental changes unlike any humanity has seen in the last few thousand years. But we don’t have that. Instead we have a man more interested in who likes him & who doesn’t than in anybody’s welfare currently reading this thread. I know some people out there believe he must be supported because he represents the religious and moral values you and your family share. But, the truth is, I know nobody really believes that because each and every single version of religious texts I’ve come across say that lying, cheating, stealing, coveting, and deceiving are not moral attributes worthy of lauding. He’s the definition of a fraud. You know it. I know it. Hell, even Fox News knows it. For them, it’s just another inconvenient truth. This isn’t about moral leadership. If you can sleep at night telling yourself that this President is a morally righteous, mentally sound, truthful man, I envy you. I wish I could fool my brain into believing a single syllable of that sentence. I’d have much fewer gray hairs. But I’m not living with my head in the sand. I can, sadly, see what a child should be able to see...we are all in danger as long as this demagogue is in the Oval Office. He is a monster. A racist white Nationalist, who doesn’t even bother using dog whistles, but is singing out loud for all to hear. Our allies are now our enemies. Our enemies are now inside our gates making a mockery of our system while our President cheers them on. 2020 isn’t an election year. It’s the single most historically important moment for our country in the modern era. We have already failed this test once. If we fail again...there is no do-over. History will bury us in its annals and assail us like those fools whose mistakes we repeated because we were too greedy, stubborn or polarized to do the right thing. After all, this is no longer about political differences. This isn’t a football game where we’re all on different teams. This is one union. One country under God that has been through hell and back but carried a torch of greatness on its shores promising something better than anywhere else in the world...opportunity. “The American Dream.” For far too many that dream has become a waking nightmare. Let’s wake ourselves up. Let’s come together. Before it’s too late. Register. Fight. Educate. Learn. Read. Resist. And most importantly. VOTE. Vote like your life depends on it...because this time it does.

Josh, I hope that you have the chance to read my response and consider what I have to say. Part of the problem with the condition of our country is the divisions created when people aren’t willing to listen to and respect each other’s differing viewpoints. First of all, you say that you don’t want to be the guy screaming about the same thing at the top of your lungs and life is short, yet you say you’d have much fewer gray hairs if you could go to sleep at night believe the President is a morally righteous, mentally sound, truthful man. If life is so short, why are you keeping yourself up at night over your own personal beliefs? It’s self-sabotage, and maybe you should consider seeing a doctor for the benefit of your mental health and also a cardiologist so you don’t have a coronary. I voted for President Trump, and it wasn’t to throw a wrench in the system and shake up “political norms”. I weighed my options. I didn’t vote for him in the primaries. But between Trump and Hillary Clinton, I chose who I felt at the time was the lesser of two evils. Voters had no real yard stick with which to measure Trump’s political accomplishments or failures. We had one for Hillary, and clearly the American people didn’t want her in office. She has a history of racism going all the way back to her time as First Lady of Arkansas. There’s video of Hillary on the campaign trail from March 2016 at a coffee shop in Minnesota when she snapped at a young female person of color for questioning her on whether she planned to address the diversity of elected officials. Not to mention the emails that leaked days before the election no doubt had an affect on voters. Her history with her husband’s victims didn’t help her, either. The President isn’t avoiding issues like gun violence, immigration, health care, poverty -- you just don’t agree with what he has done on those issues. He’s addressing the issues and looking for bipartisan solutions. For one thing, he instituted a ban on bump stocks. He pressured Mexico to crack down on migrants passing through their country to get into the United States (the majority of whom were entering the country illegally -- you can hate the law all you want but until it changes, it’s the law that exists and should be enforced), his administration has expanded access to prescription drugs and the slowdown in prescription drug price growth during his time in office has saved over $26 billion. With regard to poverty, President Trump created 4.7 million jobs in his first two years and lowered the unemployment rate to its lowest in recorded history, particularly for African-Americans and Hispanics. I’d love to hear what your solutions are for these issues. As for climate change, President Trump said climate change is a complex issue and added “I’m not sure anybody is ever going to really know” the cause. There are several theories that have been explored by scientists and numerous solutions presented, both small- and large-scale. Some aspects of earth’s core temperature changes have nothing to do with man - they’re do to natural environmental effects. So how do you intend to completely eradicate global warming? I know the President isn’t perfect. I know he’s not a paragon of moral virtue. But in my opinion, he’s still a better leader than Hillary Clinton would have been. At this point, you sound like someone standing on a street corner holding a sign that says THE END IS NIGH. If anyone’s mental state should be considered and questioned, perhaps it’s your own. Just from reading your tweets, it comes off that you’re some foaming-at-the-mouth lunatic.

#Josh Gad #politics #Donald Trump #President Trump #fearmonger #celebrity #Hollywood #Liberal #rant #response #wtf

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