#also. one-shot protection. not explained. there are several items which can and will completely fuck you over because of it.

[tragicallycrispygirl]

funniest part about risk of rain two is that the game just fucking lies to you

%15 chance (+%5 per stack) to take no damage on hit except that's a fucking lie it's actually a base %13 because the increase is hyperbolic and they just did that for the first stack too??? so you need like 1,000,000 stacks to get %100

you go on the wiki and every page just has "correction: the description is fucking wrong for no reason"

proc coefficients exist except for 1 stat (they're also hidden fuck you) and "TOTAL damage" is just not explained and also the luck mechanic from 57 leaf clover and purity is just *completely* insane madness???

shrines of order exist. why. those are explained but I genuinely don't think there's a single use case for them. unless you want to lose.

amazing game 10/10 i want to inject the soundtrack into my veins

[kogo-dogo]

i like your skyrim stuff and i wanna know more about the funky little dudes you posted in those “sentences” lol. instead of asking for more snips

You have made a mistake. Prepare for an essay.

But, joking aside, they’re Morrowind characters. I do like Skyrim, but Morrowind is my favorite game of all time and the entire reason I got into the TES fandom years ago. I don’t talk about it much on here because everyone is here for Half-Life and HRV, but... you know what? I’mma take this opportunity. To yell.

About The Guys(tm).

So, basically, in my Personal Canon, I don’t just have a Nerevarine (i.e. Protagonist) character. I have an entire crew of people who help him get through things because it just seems... more realistic for my Extremely Flawed and Terrible Nerevarine. Also, I just had a lot of characters conjured up as a teenager and it was fun to evolve it over time so they’re all friends.

They are, as follows:

- Jo’Karsa (a.k.a. “Karsaga”). Battlemage born under the Atronach. Afflicted with Wombburn. Also the Nerevarine. He’s an abnormally large Cathay-raht who has had an unusual upbringing. He was originally an orphan plucked off the streets in Corinthe and trafficked to Morrowind where he was sold as a slave. As fate would have it, a houseman under his owner took a shine to him and stole him away when they fled to Cyrodiil to avoid political assassination. Karsaga has been raised Telvanni in Imperial territory so, despite being a mighty brute of a Khajiit, he has an extreme affinity for magic and an equally extreme disconnect from his Khajiiti roots.

He speaks like a Dunmer, carries himself like a Dunmer, and has very Telvanni sensibilities. He also has an extensive criminal record from his time spent as a bandit outside of Cheydinhal, and that is eventually how he ends up on the prison boat that sends him to Morrowind. He has a bunch of aliases and an unhealthy penchant for drink and smoke. Not a fan of skooma, though. As gruff and sarcastic as he is, he has a very silver tongue and a way of winning people over and talking himself out of trouble.

Also, “youth born under a certain sign?” Nah, this bitch is 34. And smells like a wet dog.

- Dasrazel. Altmer Nightblade and Quarra vampire. He contracted his vampiric curse while trying to save his lover from the clutches of an undead menace during the Second Era, after a life working various quasilegal oddjobs that brought shame on his noble family. In life, he was a likeable but lowkey individual, and in undeath he’s still very lowkey... but perhaps not as likeable. He has to take a low dose of a calming potion to keep the inherent, violent bloodlust of his Quarra curse at bay, and it does a lot to deaden his emotions. Combine that with hundreds of years to learn how to not give a fuck, and you have a very blunt, stoic, matter-of-fact creature who only very occasionally makes quips and usually just wants to be left alone.

He is Karsaga’s closest ally, right hand man, and platonic soulmate. They met after Karsaga robbed him blind at a bar (thinking him to just be some weird, frail elf), and Dasrazel took pity on him after Karsaga ran him through with an iron saber and panicked when it... did nothing. Their bond is one of a mutual distaste for most people and Dasrazel’s desire to have companionship again.

They’re very much bros, even if Dasrazel spends most of his time not understanding why Karsaga is the way he is.

-  Neira Brenur. Dunmer Witchhunter and low-ranking member of House Redoran. She’s the daughter of a Camonna Tong member and an Ashlander woman, though her mother is dead and she spends a lot of time trying to distance herself from her racist father. She joined Redoran in hopes of atoning for the crime of just being born into a bad family, but has a really difficult time fitting in. She’s very meek and empathetic and does better in controlled duels than actual combat. The idea of actually hurting an opponent makes her sick to her stomach.

She kind of just happened to Karsaga one day, courtesy of him running afoul of her not-so-popular friend, Vandrith (we’ll get to that trainwreck later). She mainly acts as a translator for Vandrith and tries to play mediator when Karsaga starts getting too aggressive with others. She’s in good with some odd folks in Redoran and a very aggressive supporter of the Tribunal Temple, which makes it hard for her to wrap her mind around Karsaga’s existence as the Nerevarine.

Also, the fact she’s an absolute pushover means she just accepts the less-than-savory people Karsaga pals around with. She’s got a big heart and feels actual pity for his blasphemous, undead, and criminal friends. They’re good people on the inside (probably).

- Vandrith Valen. Dunmer Ordinator and conglomeration of a lot of factors coming together in the worst way possible. He is naturally “blessed by Azura” and has some degree of prophetic power, though he’s choked it down after a life of being raised Indoril. He also came to the unfortunate realization after being stationed on Vvardenfell, that he is also a descendant of House Dagoth and is haunted by the Poison Song, a “song” sent out by Dagoth Ur that warps the minds of those who are of his blood and turns them into Sleepers and Dreamers.

These two traits do not mesh well and make Vandrith more than a little unstable.

Vandrith is... prone to erratic behavior and violent outbursts and is largely under the care of his paternal uncle, Tuls Valen, the head priest of the Ald’ruhn Temple. Vandrith is also a clever and tricky bastard who has been trying to figure out how to discern Dagoth Ur’s plans from the Poison Song in order to prevent bad things from happening. Usually, he can keep things under control, but extremely bad visions, close proximity to items/places corrupted by House Dagoth, and stress can cause him to be difficult.

Beyond this, though, he’s not what you’d expect from an Ordinator. He’s very witty with a somewhat bawdy sense of humor, a very devil-may-care attitude, and he’s a huge fan of causing mischief. He forced his way into Karsaga’s social circle due to his absolute certainty that Karsaga could bring down Dagoth Ur, and Neira is his closest (and for a long time only) friend, who has figured out what all of his weird ramblings mean.

- Bashinga. Sorceress and Aundae vampire. She is an old acquaintance of Dasrazel’s who has ties to Telvanni, the Mage’s Guild, and several circles of warlocks and witches. She’s very much a self-serving sort, more interested in the acquisition of power than the wellbeing of Morrowind, but she is fiercely protective of the people she deems worthy (and she has a soft spot for Neira she can’t really explain).

Once upon a time, she was a dancer and performer with a traveling circus, and her fall into undeath and wizardry was a happy accident after being taken as cattle by rogue Aundae. She’s got a good set of vocal cords and can move with grace and ease, but she speaks very bitterly a lot of the time and is difficult to get along with.

She’s one of those people who Karsaga immediately took a shine to because they both like to sit around and bitch about people. Dasrazel and Bashinga mostly get along by the time-honored tradition of “two very gay individuals being catty at each other as a sign of affection, though outsiders would think they hate one another.”

- Jai Swift-Fly. Cathay assassin and member of the Morag Tong. She was born and raised in Elsweyr in a more tribal environment, and is an old friend of Vandrith’s (odd, considering they met because she took a grey writ to knock him off and, instead, he knocked her out). She mostly comes into the fold because Karsaga needed somebody to break into the Ministry of Truth to free Mehra Milo, and she came highly recommended (by Vandrith; Vandrith recommended her). 

She’s a married mother of two, is big and strong and very proud of being big and strong, and a crack shot with a bow. She’s also deaf as hell and communicates through a series of homebrew gestures. Her decision to stick around and help Karsaga after completing the job she was hired to do stems primarily from her extreme curiosity. She has no stake in the Nerevarine Prophecy or this group of losers, but by god does she want to see what it looks like when a god dies.

Fun fact: Jai is dead by the events of Skyrim, but two of her descendants remain. Shevah and J’Rakka. They’re a brother-and-sister duo. Shevah is as much of a curious, troublemaking adventurer as her so-many-greats grandmother. J’Rakka is a werewolf who mostly hunts bounties to make a living.

- Dravyn Telvayn (no picture of him, sorry D:). Dunmer assassin and member of the Morag Tong. Former highwayman and current Berne vampire. Husband of Jai and perpetually confused, mainly over the fact he has kids with Jai and... well, every book he’s read has indicated that that should be impossible for a variety of reasons. He lives in the sewers of the Arena canton in Vivec City and is allowed work in the Morag Tong due to his efficacy at eliminating very high risk targets, though he’s basically “on his own” if he ever gets caught. They’re sure as fuck not giving him writs of execution to present to guards when the Tong could end up fucked over if their relationship with a vampire gets out.

He’s mostly in the background and tags along due to his extreme dedication to Jai. He doesn’t get along with hardly anyone but her, though he is the one who coined the term “Council of Accidents” in relation to him, Dasrazel, and Bashinga. He feels a loose kinship with them in that they’re all members of different vampire clans, but all members whose sires want nothing to do with them, rendering them outcasts. Even after the events of Morrowind, he keeps in infrequent contact with the others. 

After Jai’s death, he acts as a weird “ancestral guardian” to his own descendants. As of the time of Skyrim, he spends most of his time trying to keep Shevah from getting killed. He is very tired. She is a lot.

[foxymuses]

an incomplete list of headcanons for sirius black:

there was a period of about 6-8 months between running away/being disowned and receiving his uncle’s inheritance when sirius had absolutely nothing to his name but the misc junk he’d shoved in a bag when he left the house to go to james. the potters, ignoring sirius’ claims they didn’t have to, bought him a moderate amount of items including but not limited to clothes, school materials, and various items for the room he’d already claimed at their house. when his inheritance kicked in, he tried to pay them back. they refused.

sirius was always more afraid of his father than his mother (which is the opposite of regulus). the reason is that his mother was more concerned with appearances outside the family, but was content to simply act as if sirius didn’t exist when they were at home, which was fine for both of them (and on some occasions, the worst that would happen is she’d scream and yell and be generally unpleasant, and true she’d be the one to force a hair cut or destroy his ‘revolting’ muggle/gryffindor items). however his father was the disciplinarian. his father rarely raised his voice, but was the first to raise a hand or wand to correct behaviors or punish misbehaviors, and though sirius would stand up for himself and was not scared into silence, there were many instances where he would show up to the potters in the middle of the night, or return from mandatory holidays during the school year, with signs of magically induced injury.

following that, sirius is always the first to jump to the defense of others, completely disregarding his own safety or the danger of the situation, and has been known to laugh in the face of those that think they can fight him, and generally doesn’t react to anyone who rises to attack him either verbally or physically, but whenever his father even shifted slightly, sirius would tense and brace, and there were several instances in public where a disagreement would start and though often the marauder’s were nearby and out of ear shot, they’d know things were going poorly because sirius, who never ever shows fear to anyone, would flinch

it’s clear from prisoner of azkaban that sirius could have escaped at any point. all he did was become padfoot and get past the dementors who weren’t looking for or caring about animals (literally his words). there is no true reason he had to wait twelve years except for dramatic story telling. that being said, the shock of the situation prevented any of this from logically settling in his mind for the first few weeks, and then after that, the dementors and their constant soulsucking presence did make it easier for sirius to blame himself for james and lily dying. he convinced them to make their secret keeper peter instead of him, he didn’t try hard enough to keep them safe, he should’ve actually killed peter, fuck what’s happening to harry, where is he, does anyone care about him, is he being taken care of, what’s remus doing, does remus think sirius did it, does remus hate him, is remus okay, it’s another full moon please let remus be okay, fuck if he gets out he’s going to strangle peter --- on and on, and it definitely gave him a huge amount of guilt on his shoulders, and regret, and despair, and while i personally don’t think it would have taken him 12 years to finally fucking decide to leave, it definitely did take several, especially since telling time within the walls of azkaban is near impossible

ON THAT NOTE, HOWEVER, it is this very guilt and anger that allowed him to muster the determination to finally fucking escape. even amidst all this guilt and fear and sorrow, sirius was strong enough to stay sane under the influence of the dementors and his own perceived failure, that he consciously made the decision to trick his way out. it was this very fury he felt towards peter and the injustice that he suffered because of his coward of a supposed best friend that fueled sirius’ ability to withstand the trails of being a prisoner at the worst wizarding prison. once his guilt subsisded enough for pure unadulterated hate to seep in, it was just a matter of deciding the best time to stage an escape

I REPEAT, I DO NOT BELIEVE IT TOOK HIM 12 YEARS at most, i would figure, personally, it happened in four or five. which, while following my canon divergent main verse, would still allow time for sirius to clear his name and fight for custody of harry, which he does successfully, by my canon, when harry is about seven. SO EVEN IF sirius isn’t instantly cleared as my main verse would like, he still winds up a single dad.

he has horrible nightmares after azkaban, regardless of when he gets out or how long he was there or whether he ends up raising harry. i personally would have it so that he and remus end up living together, both because sirius has his inheritance to support them, and because they’re the last two marauders and trusting others is hard for sirius to come by after everything, so living with remus is Safe and Easy, and he does everything he fucking can to make up for all the full moons he missed, but regardless of how Hard he tries to get back to some semblance of a normal life, he has severe ptsd from prison and he doesn’t sleep well and he doesn’t eat much and he drinks more (in verses where he doesn’t have custody) and he smokes a shit ton more and he spends more time as padfoot than he does as a human because being a dog is just so much simpler and he has fewer worries, and remus is fucking worried as shit about him because sirius was always the strongest of the four of them (fight me on this i dare you) and to see the confident, arrogant, and generally easy-going carefree rebel that was sirius black in school turned into a jumpy, irritable, shattered shell of himself is hard and sirius never truly recovers from that damage, he just gets better at hiding it, and he does a hell of a lot better at healing when he does have custody of harry because harry gives him purpose in a way that remus can’t.

when sirius inevitably comes across peter again, he does try to kill him. whether he genuinely fails or subconsciously stops himself because peter, as much as sirius resents and hates and would love to grind him into little rat pieces, was a friend and was someone sirius trusted and cherished and would have protected with his life, and no matter how much he very much wants to kill the bastard, he can’t

shifting gears a bit, but sirius had never and still doesn’t really see himself ever getting married. he never even wanted kids until harry came around, and even then, the only kid he’ll ever have is in my canon divergency where he raises harry himself. in that verse he is more open to a co-parenting relationship (re: when he’s with @gavrele‘s gabe, or if he were to be with remus or another marauder’s era character who survived either by au or in canon), which can be considered romantic or merely a mutual desire to raise this orphaned child, but in that instance, he still probably wouldn’t want marriage, because it makes him seriously uncomfortable just thinking about it, and at the very most he would just agree to mutually wear signifying rings but not actually make it official, so that way if at any point he does feel weird about it he won’t feel bad about taking the ring off for a few days until the feeling passes

he learns of regulus’ dying while he’s in azkaban and listen canon sirius was very ‘meh’ about the whole deal, which really pisses me off, so my sirius was very torn. and it doesn’t help that most people just write reggie off as disappearing, they don’t know the story, they just assume he died in the war or voldemort disposed of him or something, doesn’t matter, he learns that regulus is gone, and his father is gone, and his mother ends up dying shortly before he gets out, and sirius is alone really and truly, and when he returns home for the first time in years, he manages to convince kreacher to explain the situation because even if he doesn’t particularly like kreacher, they both loved regulus, and sirius crafts a makeshift grave for his brother which he visits reguluarly, and though he doesn’t usually say much except “hey reg”, the first time he broke down sobbing because he tried so hard to get regulus to see the right side of the war, but he didn’t try hard enough, and he should’ve worked harder to keep reg safe, what an awful brother he was, he only ever thought of himself, if he just took regulus with him when he ran away maybe they could’ve avoided this, fuck he’s sorry he fucked up, he’s so proud that regulus stood up to voldemort in the end, he doesn’t care if it was for selfishness or fear or whatever, he’s so proud, he wishes regulus would know how proud he is

he actively keeps harry as safe as possible, doesn’t let half the shit that happens happen to him, fully supports and listens to him whenever the kid says ‘something is going on”, talks with him through it, tells him all the stories of james and lily that he can, never treats harry as less than his own blooded son because to him harry is his son, but he also never tries to replace james with himself, and harry knows how much sirius loved james and lily and how sirius only wants harry to be safe and happy, and merlin did he cry the first time harry called him dad and told him that he knows sirius isn’t his real dad but its okay to have more than one dad, he still loves james too he just loves sirius as much, and when he saw sirius almost crying, he asked if that was okay, and sirius could not express how absolutely perfect that was and later when talking to remus, remus had to hold a conflicted sirius for at least half an hour because he adored the idea but god he misses james so much, he wishes this wasnt the situation but it is and fuck it hurts (remus is uncle, by the way)

he literally stands between snape and harry, and dumbledore and harry, and does not let lucius anywhere near harry (and only allows cissa after a tentative no-children meeting, where they agree to not be enemies but rather awkward cousins like they are, and sometimes even let draco and harry play together) and harry is raised knowing about the prophecy, and since he’s raised in the wizarding world he’s not a commodity, by the time he starts hogwarts, everyone has kind of gotten over the hype so he can be mostly normal, and yeah strange things keep happening but the second harry tells sirius (because harry is raised in an open and loving environment where talking about things is encouraged), sirius does shit about it, and yeah voldemort wasn’t vanquished, he is still waiting, and sirius can’t be everywhere, but when harry says voldemort is back, sirius fucking rallies and essentially one-man-armies the ministry into fucking doing something about it because he lived through that hell in his last few years of hogwarts, he lost friends to it, he is not going to watch it happen again and nothing is going to hurt harry period

naturally, this means he doesn’t die in the department of mysteries because when the dreams start happening, harry talks about them with him, and they work it out together.

sirius doesn’t get a job because he doesn’t need one, and all of harry’s inheritance from james is purely harry’s, sirius doesn’t touch an ounce of it, and in fact regularly adds to it of his own inheritance, but sirius is seen roaming random places offering assistance, usually in regards to muggle nonsense (think hands on mechanics stuff) because he’s good at it and he doesn’t know what to do with his time, but he never lets them pay

he helps fund the weasley’s prank store. ron is a little odd, and hermione is sometimes annoying, and boy does he have a soft spot for neville because sirius knows about his parents, and you can bet that rather than lifting the map from filch, sirius straight up gave it to fred and george, and remus later confiscated it from his now-permanent DADA position (or whatever position remus wants, tbh) and sirius got an earful before telling remus he knew the other would give it back to them, which he did

i could continue but i should probably start another post to do so SO THERE YOU ARE

[fieldbears]

Washed-Up Stucky MNF/Fic Writer Provides Endgame Opinions

I’m going to try to tackle this linearly, at least to begin with:

I am very much Team Bored With MCU Hawkeye, but I want to give sincere props for the cold open, which I think accomplished several things simultaneously: recapped the consequences of the last film (since, hey, it’s been a fuckin while), set the tone, and began Clint’s narrative arc.

That said, jesus, I’m still irritated by the shoe-horned family to begin with. First they were invented for convenience and narrative stakes, and then their final, ultimate reason for existence was to be temporarily fridged. Take a moment to imagine a world where Clint was the circus runaway loner he was supposed to be, who only had his coworkers as found family, who either responded to The Snap by throwing himself harder into his teamwork work OR went rogue because his sense of justice and agency was so fucking destroyed by what happened. He didn’t need a blood family to have the arc he had. And he didn’t even need the arc he had. But this is a bitchfest about a choice made many years ago, not made in this final movie.

The first third of that movie was rough. The whole thing had the narrative flow of “A Series of Related Short Stories Played One After the Other”, but the first third seems to be Failing To Establish the New World and then Clumsily Establishing The Emerging Situation.

The establishing shots and scenes to show the audience what The Snap’s consequences were worldwide were... lacking. It’s dark? No more baseball? People are relying on natural light instead of interior lighting, but this is also happening at Avengers HQ, where they clearly still have power and internet access to work their tech, so... was it just an aesthetic choice? I feel like the film tried to spend time showing us what the consequences were for the average New Yorker, but instead we get a weird Canonly Gay Russo Character who gave a good performance that tells us about the human loss but not about the mechanics of this new world. We get the ‘no baseball’ shot and all we get afterward are ‘people miss the missing people’. But restaurants still exist? Businesses are functioning? (Wouldn’t New York run kind of smoother if it wasn’t overpopulated?) I feel like we were invited to start thinking about how this dystopia works, but were never given answers. (There are so many interpretations of how things could go wrong if certain people just disappeared, and their knowledge/access were suddenly unavailable, and none of it was explored, even briefly, outside of establishing shots.)

The Garden Planet - it’s discovery, the traveling to it, the fight there - lacked emotional grounding in a way I find hard to explain. The audience was excited for Brie Larson being a fucking boss, and the quick execution of the grab-him-and-cut-his-arm-off plan was satisfying, but the twist and subsequent letdown was just a weird beat after a slog to get there, after waiting on a deep letdown beat from the last movie.

Last thing about flow and emotional beats, because I want to move on to character analysis, and this is a huge one for me: Clint’s fight in Tokyo and Steve’s fight with himself were some of the biggest missed opportunities in the entire film.

Not counting the football field brawl at the end, which I don’t count as a real fight scene, these are the two major fight scenes of the entire film and as far as I can tell, there was no effort made to make these showpieces. They went to the trouble of bringing Clint to Bladerunner Central, and pit him against the last bastion of aesthetic-obsessed mafia in the world. The panning camera in the interior as Hawkeye fought goons brushed past lazy fight scenes that only showed who was winning, not the brutality that Clint was supposedly falling into, not the grit of this new awful world, just... shapeless dark bodies getting thrown through windows? And on top of that, they could have made up (or picked from canon) any Big Bad to pit him against outside in the street, and we get an Orientalist sword fight that could have fit in nicely on a CW superhero show, and some of the most unnecessary exposition dialogue I have ever heard. Someone bothered to weave Clint’s arc in earlier, with Rhodey explaining to Natasha that Clint’s gone International and also Worryingly Dark. Why the fuck do we have the ‘I’ll give you anything you want’ line, on the rotten cherry on top of ‘stop being mean to the yakuza, we didn’t start it’? You already covered his motivations with the cold open.

And while Steve’s fight ended in a FABULOUSLY HEARTBREAKING WAY, the fight itself was nothing - you can pick little character details out like how they both ditched their shields almost immediately, and it was funny that Then-Steve mistook Now-Steve for Loki in the first place, but it was still a completely lost opportunity to get one true superhero battle in this three-hour slog. Both Steves could have gotten up and carried out the rest of the narrative after a decent brawl, but instead they fall a great distance after some blocked shots and it... was nothing? Missed opportunity for some cool shit.

Okay, skipping to character assessments now:

Clint’s character has been mishandled from the beginning and this seemed to be the “better late than never” eleventh hour arc. Except the end of the arc is unclear - it made sense for him to fall apart after losing his Shoehorn Family, but how did Natasha’s choice to fall do anything but fridge someone else, with more agency this time? It makes Natasha noble, which she already was, and it made her win against Clint, which I appreciate, but Natasha didn’t need salvation through death and Clint learns nothing by getting them back, just experiences relief.

Bruce. I want to say, first, that I love Hulk in a Cardigan. Cardihulk can stay. I want fanart, I want t-shirts, give me all of it. But Bruce’s explanation of “I scienced it so I could get the best of both worlds” only gives us half of the acceptance that Banner’s character is already working towards. As we saw most explicitly in Ragnarok, the Hulk isn’t just a physical form, he has his own separate consciousness, originally defined by rage but revealed to be more complicated. Bruce merging into Cardihulk seems to have... erased Hulk’s separate consciousness without merging it into himself? If there had been some acknowledgement of a second voice still within him that shot out opinions or demands for certain menu items in the diner, this would have been a much cleaner end to his arc, which has been equally messy between actor and narrative shifts.

Speaking of Ragnarok... it’s time! Are you ready? Have you read articles about the Gambit Gambit too? Are you fucking depressed that a fat suit was used for comedy gags in the year of our lord 2019? Because I was. The Russos seemed to... not struggle with what progress Ragnarok had put onto Bruce and Thor’s characters, but reject it. This movie’s Thor was anxious for laughs, was desperate for easy answers to a a feeling of lost heroism, and it didn’t feel like a familiar character. The time-travel scene with his mother wrapped it up very elegantly, and was well performed, but that scene didn’t need to follow a series of “chunky drunk in sweatpants” jokes to show us that Thor was struggling. Everyone in the film is fucking holding on by their fingernails, but only one is played for cheap laughs.

At least we get the bisexual Asgard lady king we deserved.

Tony got the right death. He got a hero’s death and Pepper’s last lines of “you can rest now” were exactly the right lines to wrap up an arc characterized by fear and a desire to protect and control at any cost. I knew the MCU was never going to really acknowledge that Tony’s The Problem, even with lines like ‘you should have let me do the fascist robot thing, that was gonna work fine’ thrown around pretty much as soon as he touches down on earth again.

I’m not sure if there’s much to say about Natasha. It was fitting that she was running HQ, that she was struggling, that she was rejecting emotional help from Steve but clearly still close with him. Seeing her break down after hearing the report on Clint felt right after, I think, being told by several directors (or making the personal acting choice? idk) to just be as flat and as decolletagey as possible. And again, while I feel like she would be self-sacrificing on that cliffisde if given the opportunity, and that she would win, the narrative choice to place her there and have that be her end didn’t really give her anything she didn’t already have. She had nothing to prove.

I have a hard time really laying out my thoughts on Steve without launching into the pregnant absence of Bucky, but I’m going to try. Chris Evans did a good job being the emotional heart of a really fractured story with a lot of conflicting pieces. Seeing him lead a talk therapy session after The Snap seemed very out of character for him until one realizes that Sam isn’t there to lead it himself. His scene offering help to Natasha was another good scene between them proving that not every m/f relationship has to be sexual to be interesting or add to the plot. His leadership speech during the Stupid Fucking Slow-Mo Heroes’ Walk to the platform was well done and makes me think of what could have been for the MCU, if they’d ever just let them be a cohesive found-family team for twenty minutes and let them fight some doom-bots or something. Fuck. Imagine.

Something weirdly satisfying about the deceitful ‘hail hydra’ line in the elevator. Yes? Yes.

The hammer scene was satisfying to me without being too gratuitous, but I’ll acknowledge that some people weren’t into it. Having paid more attention to Steve’s arc than most, I’ll argue that he earned it several times over.

His ending - that is, the secret life he alludes to but doesn’t explicitly reveal to Sam - is earned too. I’ve read at least one thing saying that Steve’s arc was all about him learning to let go, but that’s... never what Steve does. Not at the end of any arc, of any comic story, does Steve let go. Not of his principles, not of the people he loves, he is always “Thinking... Thinking About Bucky!” and getting in fights he can’t necessarily win. So I don’t think his final ending is ever Learning to Let Go. I think it’s fair that it’s Just Once, Just This One Time, Getting What You Want And Getting To Enjoy It.

And now I’m backtracking to Bucky. I’ve read one article already that theorizes that Steve’s arc, which was highly prioritized, included literally as little direct interaction with Bucky as possible because... the MCU? the Russos? Marvel?...  is aware that Steve/Bucky is the most popular same-sex ship in the MCU. And that’s tiresome as fuck but I think there’s some truth to it. I wonder if, like in Civil War, we’ll hear later from the actors that a lot of contextual one-on-one scenes were shot and then mysteriously cut from the final edit.

I will say that in my head, Bucky is relaxed when Steve goes back in time for the final time, and lets Sam goes to talk with Steve one-on-one at the bench, because Bucky is not worried if Steve will come back, and does not feel a need to check on Steve on the bench. Because, like Peggy, Bucky has been getting secret visits too. Maybe as far back as during his time in Wakanda, but certainly since the final fight with Thanos. Bucky was calm because he already knew. He didn’t miss Steve because Steve hadn’t given him an opportunity to do so.

d

[davebanksmedia]

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A continuation from Life in the City of Angels: When You Can’t Get Published, Fuck It, Give It Away!

Chapter One link:https://davebanks.wordpress.com/2020/06/10/life-in-the-city-of-angels-when-you-cant-get-published-fuck-it-give-it-away/

Jimi Hendrix’s version of ‘All Along the Watchtower’ was blasting out from Mark Hufnail’s BMW stereo, fuelling our adrenalin and chest-beating machismo. During Jimi’s solos, I strummed the invisible strings of my air guitar and glanced over at Mark, catching him head-banging to the beat.

Two middle-aged white guys, reminiscing about hippie living and experimental drug days, we were now living on the highs adventure brought. Potential ‘fixes’ dangled from the grueling schedule before us to shoot three documentaries throughout Middle Egypt, along the Nile. With some security concerns, Mark and I drove from his Burbank office to the west side of Los Angeles, for one last advisory meeting with the only Muslim we knew, Attallah Shabazz.

After directing Discovery Channel’s ‘Eco-Challenge, Australia’ – Mark was the Executive Producer – we’d gained a reputation for productions in remote and hostile locations under adverse conditions. We’d delivered a five-hour adventure race on time and on budget to the Discovery Channel and now we were ready for our next big challenge. Mark’s company, MPH Entertainment, had been contracted to produce three documentaries: ‘Akhenaten, Egypt’s Heretic King’, the ‘History of Sex’ for the History Channel, and ‘Tutankhamen, Egypt’s Boy King’ for A&E Network.

All three had to be shot simultaneously in sixteen days, to produce seven hours of programming. Before any overseas assignment, it was my responsibility to budget for and rent the cameras, audio gear, and small lighting package, as well as estimate how many cases of videotape we needed to take for the shoots. Before leaving the States my anxiety started, not from the threat of kidnapping by terrorist or being shot at, but due to the hell of red tape: the filling out of the carnet form or Merchandise Passport. A ‘carnet’ is an international customs and temporary export-import document that’s used to clear customs in foreign countries. Successful completion means you don’t incur duties and import taxes on your gear, or ‘tools of the trade’, if they’re to be re-exported within twelve months.

With ten anvil cases of gear, cross-referencing serial numbers and descriptions of each piece of gear was a tedious and daunting task. If just one serial number was off by one digit it could mean spending precious time and baksheesh (bribe money) in a foreign Customs office, sorting things out. The last thing I wanted to explain to a burly, foreign custom agent is why my boxer shorts had yellow smiley faces on them, having packed them in the equipment cases along with my other clothes.

Being a boy scout taught me to ‘be prepared’; if you know that there are no McDonald’s in the Sahara desert and little time during the day to stop and eat, you pack away enough food for an army. The most important thing to take, however, when shooting in exotic locations, is toilet tissue and baby wipes.

Having spent time in the Middle East previously, I took it upon myself to research the locations, assessing any potential risk. I was well aware of the current affairs in the Middle East and I was able to identify and assess a number of specific threats, not only to our production but also to us.

Beneath the massive limestone cliffs near Luxor is one of Egypt’s most popular tourist attractions: the Mortuary Temple of Hatshepsut. This was the site of the Luxor Massacre; on November 17, 1997, 62 people were killed – mostly tourists – by Islamist extremists and the Jihad Talaat al-Fath (Holy War of the Vanguard of the Conquest).

As we went into preproduction for the three documentaries – on February 23, 1998 – Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, a leader of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, along with three other Islamist leaders, co-signed and issued a ‘fatwa’. This called on Muslims to kill Americans and their allies, saying it was their duty. The declaration was made seven months prior to our scheduled departure to Egypt.

I’d also read somewhere that Osama and Zawahiri hated Americans so much that they wouldn’t even drink a Pepsi. On top of all that, there was rumored to be a bounty of $16,000 for every American’s head in Egypt. I found this a bit insulting: why couldn’t they round it out? I thought I was worth at least $20,000.

Since the Luxor Massacre, tourism had been pretty much void there. To capture or kill a western film crew like us would have been equivalent to bagging a top prize. Protocol suggested that I went through specific official channels. I presented my assessment and ‘deal memo’ to one of the producers. In my deal memo it specifically requested that MPH accepted financial responsibility to have my body shipped back to the States, should anything have happened to me.

To my surprise and shock the producer said, ‘No deal’.  I can only assume that she was ignorant of current affairs and only perceived the rest of the world as a studio back-lot. Unfortunately for me, her world revolved around recreational television, celebrities and Hollywood gossip. This was a serious issue that couldn’t be handled by a mid-level producer so I gave the assessment to Mark. That is how we got to be on our way.

We were meeting Attallah Shabazz at a kosher Italian restaurant. Ms. Shabazz is the eldest daughter of El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, better known as Malcolm X, the powerful civil rights activist of the ‘60s. Mark and Attallah have worked together on several television productions and have become very good friends over the years, to the point that Mark’s daughter, Megan, refers to Ms. Shabazz as ‘Aunty Attallah’. I’d also worked with Ms. Shabazz on various television shows in the past, but I hadn’t had the opportunity to get properly acquainted.

We walked into the restaurant. Sitting at a table alone, in the middle of the busy eaterie, we could not help but notice Ms. Shabazz immediately. Strikingly beautiful, tall, and wearing her trademark African print pillbox hat, she acknowledged our arrival with a broad smile that seemed to light up the room.

Mark set the stage to our trip, telling Attallah that we would be the first American crew to travel by vehicle through Middle Egypt in ten years, according to our fixer in Egypt. Our security was our foremost concern; we’d be two unmistakably-American white guys shooting at various locations

Attallah interrupted Mark. ‘You know, I don’t thing you have anything to worry about, traveling through Middle Egypt,’ she reassured us. ‘The Egyptian government cannot afford another massacre, it would be devastating to their economy. You will be well protected. Think of it as an adventure, don’t let the threat of a small group of extremists hold you hostage.’

We placed our orders for our meal and our conversation turned to shop talk and a bucket full of scuttlebutt. It’s traditional amongst our staff and crew to collect the best pithy quotes during production which we then use as a catchphrase during shooting when things get a little too heated. Over our kosher pasta with meatless sauce, we told Attallah that we’d collected three favorite quotes for the History Channel’s documentary, the ‘History of Sex’:

‘Does the composer actually see the show he’s composing?’

‘Regardless of their academic achievement and expertise, try not to use any male or female archeologist over forty years of age’.

But the killer quote, and my favorite when shooting ancient Egyptian statues, was: ‘You can shoot as many penises as you want, as long as they don’t move’.

*****

We landed in Cairo around mid-afternoon. I was still a bit spaced-out from the residue of the Ambien still in my system and I gave off an odor like fermented Gouda cheese. It had taken us close to eighteen hours to get there, not including the ten hours we’d took to prep our gear before departure. In customs, with all ten anvil cases of equipment, we started the tedious process of cross-referencing the serial numbers of the gear against our carnet. A short, oval-shaped Egyptian customs official, in a blue shirt with wet stains under each arm, raised an eyebrow. There was a bead of sweat resting on the top of his pencil mustache that I couldn’t stop staring at.

              The larger gray camera case he found to be empty of the Betacam camera. I was holding it in my hands after carrying it on the plane with me. Inside the case, in place of the camera, were a dozen or so boxer shorts bearing acid-yellow smiley faces, which prompted a smirk from the agent. ‘My underwear,’ I said, pointing at the shorts.

‘Yes, yes, very nice,’ the agent said.

‘Jesus, Dave, can’t you wear regular underwear, like ‘tighty-whities’?’  Mark asked.

‘I, er, have a problem with chafing. I’ve big thighs. Boxers really help with that problem.’

‘But couldn’t you just buy regular boxers?’

‘These were on sale,’ I protested, ‘besides, I’m going to throw them away after I wear them.’

Pointing at the camera case then the carnet, in broken English, the oval-shaped agent asked, ‘Where is this item, the camera?’

‘This is the camera,’ I said, holding the camera up further and pointing to it.

‘But it’s not in the box. The carnet says ‘camera and case’. I need the camera in the case.’

Standing before him, with the camera case at my feet, I pointed again to the camera I was holding. ‘This is turning into a Monty Python skit,’ I thought. ‘This is the camera,’ I repeated, ‘I carried it on the flight so that I could use the camera case to store my clothing.’

‘I understand. But I need the camera in the box.’ This time, his voice was raised.

‘Do I understand you? That if I put the camera in the box, you’ll be satisfied?’

Opening the camera case, I pulled out my boxer shorts and all the other items I’d put in there and placed the camera into its case. I smiled at the inspector who remained stony-faced. It suddenly hit me: Cha-ching, cha-ching, cha-ching.

              In my mind I heard Pink Floyd’s ‘Money’. The signs for baksheesh were simple – how had I missed them? The term ‘baksheesh’ describes tipping or, as the local authorities call it, ‘a charitable donation’. I call it ‘bribery’.

The government officials could have held the camera gear in protective custody until an ‘understanding’ was reached. Other signs of baksheesh could be: incorrect stamps in your passport or ink of the wrong color; your visa looking forged because the official emblem is smudged, usually after a government official has rubbed his thumb across the stamp, purposely smudging it. My favorite was the palm extended with a smile: simple, to the point and immediately recognizable for what it was. Baksheesh is a common practice across most of the Middle East; it’s common for western film crews to carry large sums of cash, just for these ‘unseen expenses’. Especially American film crews – it seems that we Americans have a reputation for throwing money at any problems we encounter. Good old American know-how.

Once our payment had been graciously accepted we cleared Egyptian customs. Porters loaded the gear onto a flatbed dolly and wheeled it out to the curb. By the time we’d finished loading the van we’d spent about $350.00 – and one carton of Marlboro cigarettes – in baksheesh…I mean, ‘charitable donations and tips’.

On the way to the hotel I decided to ride on the roof of the van with the cases of gear, to shoot B-roll of as we traveled from the airport to downtown Cairo. The driver of the van sped across El-Galaa Bridge that crosses the Nile and an insect the size of a ping-pong ball smacked me between the eyes, leaving little red blotches on my left cheek that looked like a target. I hoped that wasn’t a sign of things to come.

Our schedule was grueling and left so little opportunity for rest and recuperation that I was confused as to what day of the week it was as we rushed from the Pharaonic Village, Giza, to the Cairo Museum. Just like all shoots, we hit the ground running, apportioning no time to acclimatize. With pressure to shoot three documentaries there was no time to appreciate Egypt and its culture, it was just ‘wham, bam, thank you, ma’am’.

For two sweltering days we’d been inside the Cairo museum shooting Paranoiac antiquities, artifacts, and ancient stone penises (but not the moving kind). Alone, and in a rare moment of quiet, I was on the second floor of the Cairo Museum framing the camera to shoot an artifact belonging to the most iconic of all Egyptian pharaohs: the solid gold mask of King Tutankhamen. The 11kg gold mask sat behind protective glass on a high pedestal and I’d found just the right angle to shoot the mask which didn’t also capture my reflection in the glass. I had King Tut all to myself as I began my work.

Then, from nowhere, hordes of tourists from Germany swarmed in, surrounding me and the exhibit. The lens of the camera blocked the tourists’ view; there was much pushing and shoving as they tried to get closer – so much so that the camera and tripod were nearly sent flying. I stepped back from the gaggle of Germans and could not believe my eyes when I noticed several wearing lederhosen. It was freaking hot – at least 28°C – with high humidity and no ventilation.

One man, in the shortest shorts I’d ever seen, started to pick up the tripod and camera to move it. ‘Sir, don’t move the camera,’ I warned.

In a thick German accent, he turned and snapped, ‘You shouldn’t be here! This is for tourists!’

‘I understand, sir. We’ve all come a long way to see King Tut. Just leave the camera alone. Okay?’

He persisted, putting his hands on the tripod. I stepped forward and removed his hand, which is when he elbowed me on my left cheek. It was bang on the place where the kamikaze insect had whacked me several days before.

                  ‘Ouch!’ I muttered, before tensing, ready to defend my space. Sanity prevailed for just a moment as I thought about Mark, and that the last thing he needed was me being thrown out of the Cairo Museum for fighting with a tourist. Luckily, at that moment, a woman – also in leather lederhosen and thigh-high white stockings – grabbed the man’s arm and started scolding him in German. None of the other tourists seemed interested in our struggle for territory as they snapped pictures and left. Now, at least, I was alone with the king, sporting a painfully bruised cheek.

Eventually, we’d shot every stone penis in the museum – erect and non-erect. Our work was over in Cairo and now it was time for our road trip through Middle Egypt.

Attallah was right: we were escorted by seventeen Egyptian bodyguards as we traveled south along the Nile Delta to Luxor in Middle Egypt. Our caravan was made up of several vehicles, including a sky-blue armored personnel carrier complete with fifty-caliber machine gun, and a black 4×4 Mercedes-Benz SUV that carried our four bodyguards. They sat in comfort, in their polyester suits and sunglasses. Except for the front windscreen, the side and rear windows were bulletproof glass, tinted almost black. In the middle of each passenger window were gun ports that looked like small, black puckered lips, ready to give any adversary a stinging kiss of death. On occasion you would see copious amount of smoke stream from the gun ports; most of the time the bodyguards sat in their SUV with the air conditioning on full blast as they played their favorite Egyptian pop music. As a result, the SUV vibrated with a ‘thump, thump, thump’. Jimi Hendrix, it was not.

In contrast, we were stuck in a white minibus, with painted hieroglyphic symbols and a giant portrait of a pharaoh on the hood. The interior seated roughly ten passengers; it would have held more but our camera gear filled the back of the coach. With our security so obviously in tow, this bus shouted ‘tourist on board!’

Driving in Egypt is not for wimps or the faint of heart, which is why I was happy to let Mohammad, our driver, take the challenge. I’d assumed we were safe outside the city of Cairo, where car horns blast continually, insults are spat and universal hand gestures given at the slightest provocation; little did I realize just how dangerous the road to Luxor was. Most roads had two lanes of tarmac, but the condition of the ground varied greatly. The scariest part was when giant trucks frequently passed other trucks already passing cars. I lost count of my ‘sphincter twinges’ during the day but they went off the scale when we drove in the dark. It was a Mad Max movie in reality; the Egyptians didn’t use their headlights until they thought they saw an oncoming vehicle – then they’d flash their lights. Thank God we were in an official convoy, with an armored personnel carrier leading the caravan.

We made numerous stops along the way, shooting B-roll to enrich our documentaries. I shot video and still photographs at each location for ‘cut-away footage’ that could be added to scripted voice-overs or expert interviews. This adds greater dimension to the storylines in our productions, an alternative to the traditional ‘talking head’ pieces. As we continued our trek to Luxor day turned to night. Suddenly, our motorcade came to a complete stop. We were near our destination of Al Minya, at a goat crossing.

I grabbed the camera and jumped out of the van. I started shooting the goat herder and his goats against the van’s headlights when four tourist police intervened. With their Uzi machine guns they hustled us back into the van.

‘Jesus! What was that all about? It’s just goats,’ said Mark.

‘Maybe someone just got his goat?’ I chuckled at my own joke.

One of the security men from our convoy came into the van, still wearing his sunglasses. ‘Keep down! Keep down!’ he said. ‘A madrasa is down the road: the most radical of Islamic schools in Egypt. We believe Osama Bin Laden is inside. The goats are a way to stop people, so they can see who approaches. Just stay down.’

There was a lot of movement outside the van and raised voices. The goats still surrounded us. A second bodyguard came to the door. ‘The local authorities and the village elders fear retaliation from Islamic fundamentalists at the madrasa for hosting you Americans. We cannot stay here or in Al Minya. We have to find another place to stay the night. Please, stay down, and do not get out of the van.’

We waited, keeping a low profile as our security team herded the goats out of the way. The goat herder had disappeared. After traveling south for half an hour, our security team found an abandoned hotel outside an unnamed village. Oddly, there was a flickering light-bulb several floors up. Despite our hesitation, we had been at it for sixteen hours and we were dead tired. We carried the cameras and battery chargers up the dark, shadowy, concrete stairs that offered no handrail. I was so dazed from lack of rest that when I plugged in the charger for the camera batteries I forgot that Egypt’s electrical current was 220v. I neglected to plug in the transformer and the charger blew like an indoor firework display. As the sparks flew, I grabbed the plug and pulled it out of the socket, only to get a jolt. ‘Crap! Crap! Crap!’ I shouted.

‘Are you okay?’ said Mark.

‘Yeah, I’m okay. I just feel like a complete idiot.’

‘You’re tired, Dave, don’t beat yourself up. We’ve another charger,’ said Mark.

As I moved away from the socket I heard a loud crunch. Lifting my boot, I saw the largest cockroach I’d ever set eyes on. The floor of the building was concrete and it was cold; the walls looked to be peppered with bullet holes and the windows didn’t bear glass but iron rods shooting up from the windowsill.

Mark looked out. It was deadly quiet outside. ‘Hey, Dave, there are guards outside, on the ground. I think this is serious.’

The flickering light was a beacon to a frenzy of moths, unidentified flying insects, cockroaches and five-legged bugs, the like of which I’d never seen. We were too exhausted to care and slept on the floor, only to have the creepy-crawlers roam freely on and around us. ‘Mark, are you awake?’ I asked.

‘Not really. It’s difficult when you have creatures crawling on your face. Shit! One just tried to crawl up my nose! Jesus H Christ.’ Mark was now sitting up. He was pale with bags under his eyes and desperate for some sleep.

‘Hey, why don’t we use the djellaba I picked up in Cairo?’ I suggested. ‘We could wrap it around ourselves like the Shroud of Turin. We could wrap our kefflyehs around our faces too, to keep the marauders away.’

‘Great idea. Let’s do it,’ said Mark.

So, there we were: two guys from California in Middle Egypt, beneath a winking light on a concrete floor, shoulder to shoulder and draped under a makeshift shroud. Neither Mark nor I remembered much of the drive from the abandoned ‘roach’ hotel; we slept most of the way. We eventually pulled up at a deserted parking area. Before us was the Temple of Queen Hatshepsut, which sat atop a series of colonnaded terraces, accessed via long ramps that were once graced with gardens. Built into the limestone cliff face that towered above the temple, there were three layered terraces reaching 29m high.

It was midday, and at least 40°C. Walking up the ramp in the scorching heat was going to be challenge. I drank my last bottle of hot orange Fanta, grabbed the camera and started shooting Arab workmen breaking up the limestone walkway to the temple. It seemed to me to be perfect B-roll for the documentary, but what I didn’t realize at that moment was that they were replacing the bloodstained path where the 62 people had been massacred nearly a year before.

Hot, hot, hot! The tripod legs burnt if touched; the metal of the camera was sizzling and I could feel the heat of the scorching sand through my Doc Martin boots. I took off my kefflyeh, soaking it with water and placing it over the camera, so as not to burn up the electronics. Our Egyptian crew stayed in the van with the air conditioning on and with the hood up to keep the engine cool. Our four bodyguards sat in the comfort of their Mercedes-Benz SUV, smoking and listening to music. Mark and I continued to shoot for two hours, taking breaks in the shade of the Temple’s columns. The Sahara heat was unrelenting and oppressive, though, and I gave up when the glue on my boots began to melt. Because my kefflyeh was on the camera, the back of my neck was naked to the sun. It was now horribly blistered. Back in the van, a sunburned Mark took a long drink from a Fanta he’d kept hidden.

‘You bastard!’ I said. The sun’s heat lost its grip as I stepped into the van. Mark leaned over and pulled out another warm Fanta, handing it to me. ‘Cheers, Dave. You ready to go home?’ he said.

I’d lost all reference to time. I had no idea what day it was or how long we’d been in Egypt. This often happened to us when documenting fragments of time long since gone – you lose your own place in time.

We barely made our flight back to the States and had to sacrifice taking a shower and changing into clean clothes. I wasn’t too upset; there’s something magical about carrying the sands of the Sahara in your boots with you as you arrive home.

Days later, I was back at the NBC Studios. The guests that night were David Spade and Kate Capshaw, the musical element provided by Deana Carter. I was still painfully sunburned and therefore moved slowly; I could continually smell the odor of fermented Gouda and, during rehearsals, I found a strip of bubble wrap that seemed to resemble the blisters on the back of my neck.

During lunch at the NBC Commissary I told my cousin, Hank Geving, who was also a cameraman on the show and dedicated reader of Ancient Egyptian history, about Queen Hatshepsut and her temple. She was the first great woman in recorded history, the forerunner of such figures as Cleopatra and Catherine the Great, and female pioneers of our own age, such as Madonna. He listened intently, and it gave me a huge glow of satisfaction to have stood where she had, centuries before. Many people living there don’t acknowledge that there’s life outside Hollywood. How wrong they are.

Cue The Camels: Chapter Two, Al Minya, Bed Bugs and Sex. A continuation from Life in the City of Angels: When You Can't Get Published, Fuck It, Give It Away!

[dinkydruid]

I fucking love u take care of ur body!

Hi I love you please get your flu shot! I want you to stay safe and healthy and not be miserable! I want you to feel good and successful, and I know getting sick can throw everything all into chaos, at the very least. Influenza can also be very dangerous and even kill you, or someone you love who is immunocompromised. (That means their immune system can't fight as hard as it should, if you weren't quite sure!

Now I'm gonna tell you a little bit about the flu shot in a grossly oversimplified way! If you're super interested in this, or super knowledgeable and better at explaining things than I am, and/or you want to fact check me, please feel free! I'm just trying to break this down in the metaphors and explanations I personally resonate with, in the methods I learned in college to best understand this without being too science-y and convoluted.

The flu shot won't give you 'the mini-flu' because that's not how it makes you safe! It's not quite the same as, say, getting the chicken pox on purpose as a kid, as all of the gen-x-ers, almost all of the millennials, and even some of the zoomers did, so you don't get it as an adult; that's contracting a live, fully functional virus when it was considered safer to do so (don't do this anymore! There is a chicken pox vaccine! Kids have died too, chicken pox is never completely safe!!!) because the ramifications, while severe and unpleasant, were much safer! It was not the best alternative, but it helped us not die at the time. The flu shot is NOT like that, when you dig any deeper into immunization. Immunization and tolerance, while very similar to us science laymen, are definitely not the same thing.

The flu shot (the most common way to get this vaccine, though there are other methods) has two compositions. The most common version is made up of a strain of the flu that we call 'inactivated' which is a polite way to say very, very dead. You're just showing your immune system the pattern(/corpse, as I like to think about it), and it's knitting (or performing construction on, building, creating a spell for, whatever you prefer!) a special flu-shaped net. It's just preparation, you're not making your body tolerate the flu. It's not iocane powder ;3 you don't have to build up an immunity; in fact, this is basically a shortcut to reasonable immunity without all the damage to your body that building up a tolerance can cause. Building a tolerance to a toxic substance or virus will... Probably just make you dead. 0/10 do not recommend.

The second, and SLIGHTLY less common but still completely safe and great, form of flu shot is just one single tiny gene from the influenza virus. There are eight genes total in Influenza A and B, which are the two most common flu viruses that affect humans. They all have an effect on making you sick and work as a team, but the gene they take from the virus is, to oversimplify, a blueprint. It does not, and cannot, infect you with the flu (as long as your immune system can handle vaccines, and if you know you have a condition that doesn't allow you to get vaccines, you already know all of this!) One single gene from a pumpkin does not a jack-o'-lantern canvas make. One single gene from your best friend is not the same thing as your best friend. It's just a little part of what they're made out of! You'd much prefer to chat with the whole person, I promise. Genes are terrible conversationalists. In the same way, you don't need to be afraid of one single gene from the flu virus, because it's just a building block! Singular genes are just as terrible at being viruses as they are at comforting you when you're down.

Some people report some mild side effects; soreness around the area of the shot, bit of a headache, very low-grade fever (technically within the flux of human temperature as it were!) and/or achy body. There are two very good pieces of information regarding this:

These side effects are not known to last more than two days, and in many people go away in the exact same day, and

In several blind studies where half of the sample population received the inactivated flu vaccine and half received a salt-water placebo, the ONLY symptom reported differently between the test groups was the localized reaction, a.k.a the swelling, redness and soreness of the injection site, which part of the body the person had the shot injected into.

This tells us that there is a good chance that, when you feel icky after you get your flu shot, it's just a placebo effect, or to grossly oversimplify again, its your subconscious telling you, "you know that was a shot. you know it had a 'disease' in it. you know diseases make you feel icky. feel icky right now you bastard I demand it and I will NOT stop until you acquiesce."

LASTLY, like I mentioned, some people can't get the flu shot! You might get the flu and get so lucky that you are okay, you recover and go back to your life. But maybe, before you started feeling sick but after the flu started living in your body, you picked up an item at the grocery store, realized you didn't really need it, and put it back. Then, the caretaker for a person with cancer (or literally any other medical condition that affects your immune system, including being on prescription immunosuppressants) went shopping for them and picked up that same item. they brought it home, along with the flu virus that was on your hands from blowing your nose or coughing or just scratching your face. You'll never know it, but that person with cancer just might die of the flu. They were so busy trying to beat that cancer that their immune system just couldn't handle fighting off the flu as well. I'm not saying this to make anyone feel guilty. As sad as it is, and as incredibly specific as that example is (because it happened to someone I was close to), it happens, and other situations where germs were spread accidentally, more often than you think. if we don't educate people of the sad possibilities, those sad possibilities will become sad realities, more often than not. Now that you know this, you can do something about it! You can protect yourself, your loved ones and strangers.

And if you're thinking to yourself, "that person knew they had a compromised immune system! Why weren't they more careful?!" Then I have some news for you.

That is a VERY selfish and not nice thought, and I know you have more compassion than that! This world doesn't exist for abled people with zero health concerns only. It isn't fair AT ALL to expect someone to never interact with anything or anyone that hasn't been sanitized and health tested. Isolation leads to depression, hallucinations and suicide. Disabled people don't deserve to die because they are disabled. People with terminal diseases deserve to make the absolute best of their time here. They deserve it so fucking much, to live just as fulfilling a life as everyone else. They deserve your respect, NOT your pity. They aren't mistakes, and they aren't a 'situation' for you to shove into a corner and throw a tarp over so you don't have to think about things that inconvenience you. What I'm saying is, your choosing convenience, in combination with exhibiting a lack of consideration for others, can kill.

It is literally impossible to do the aforementioned living like bubble boy where nothing and no one can ever come in contact with you unless they are 100% positively without a doubt in no uncertain terms truly honestly unquestionably free of every contaminant that could harm the immunocompromised individual. Like, if you don't believe me, try it. You can't do it. Even if your life depended on it. The world is full of random variables and sudden surprises, and humans can make mistakes in the most dire of situations. Master swordsmiths have cut off their fingers. construction workers that have been working construction for 45 years have slipped off of scaffolding and fallen to their deaths. Doctors have accidentally nicked arteries and killed their patients on the table, despite having the steadiest hands in all the land, the most compassion and understanding for their patients and the most dedication to their Oath. Accidents and mistakes happen to everybody. Now imagine if every move you made was a scalpel cut that could nick an artery. That's what it's like living severely and lethally immunocompromised. At least, that's what it was like for me. Every single move you make could be a death sentence. Every new item in your house could contain the one little seed that pushes you over the edge.

SO! Now, if you didn't know before, you know the BASIC science behind the flu shot, why it's totally safe for you and morally necessary if you care about others, and why you should get one! It's good for YOU and YOUR safety because its not a super low probability that you will die (especially if, like me, you are low-income), and it's also about others and their health. It's about everyone. You can get them for as cheap as free from many clinics, or for like $4 at Walgreens, if you're in the States! I haven't got much information for outside the states, so if you live in a country that isn't the US, please help me learn!

I LITERALLY LOVE YOU. PLEASE BE SAFE AND TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF AND HAVE A GOOD WEEK AND TREAT YOURSELF TO SOMETHING NICE, BUY SOMETHING OR TAKE A NICE BATH OR DO A THING YOU LOVE, AND JUST TRY TO REMEMBER THAT I SAID YOURE VERY IMPORTANT AND THE WORLD WOULD LITERALLY SUCK MAJOR BALLS IF YOU WEREN'T IN IT. I would personally be crushed. No joke.

If you read all of this, thank you so much. I know it's long, but it's so important, it's so necessary and it's so easy!