#though it is starting to add to a growing conspiracy theory of mine

[sweettjrose]

So....

This is happening.

You can watch the video here.

[revolution-john]

My Childhood Trauma PTSD as Triggered by the Following Movie Montage

by BENJAMIN DREVLOW

That scene in American History X. You know the one. Or maybe it was Higher Learning, I always get those confused. That curb stomp scene always reminding me of the time I tripped and face-planted in the barn while corralling bull calves, to get castrated, my two front teeth chomping down on all that jagged concrete and manure, it adds a different flavor to the recurring nightmare I have, though in my case, usually nothing to do with race relations. I wonder if everybody else who watched that movie also missed the whole point of it. Except the Curb Stomp. Everybody remembers where they were when their stoner friend with big ideas about ending racism across the world made them watch the movie with the Curb Stomp.

~

Mel Gibson getting drawn and quartered in Braveheart. You may take our lives, but you will never take… our… FREE-DOM!

~

Mel Gibson ripping his shoulder out of its socket in Lethal Weapon.

~

Mel Gibson torturing the shit out of Jesus, then blaming the women and Jews for everything, including his drunk-driving and plummeting career options.

~

Fuck pretty much any Mel Gibson movie. Except maybe that one with him and James Gardner and Jody Foster and all their comedy hijinks. It’s the gambler one but not The Gambler. But now that I think about it, isn’t Jody Foster a big Mel Gibson apologist? So I guess fuck that movie too.

~

Any movie where somebody gets shot or stabbed or thumbed in the eyeball or has one or both of their eyeballs squeezed or ripped out, which always reminds me of that time I got elbowed right below my eye but also on the eyeball and it literally pushed in my eyeball a millimeter and I still get double vision to this day whenever I line up a shot playing pool or line up a screw to hang a photo on the wall or sometimes re-hang the toilet paper dispenser next to the toilet. I’d been playing pickup basketball and my buddy who was like four inches taller than me elbowed me on a rebound and like I say I went down and lay there on my back and then all the blood started pooling in my eye socket and I couldn’t see anything and my friend couldn’t see my eyeball and he kept hissing through his teeth grossed out by it but then telling me it would okay and the whole time lying there thinking I’m thinking about my eyeball I’m thinking of the scene in Any Given Sunday where the guy’s eyeball is just lying there on the football field. I’m thinking of that closeup all the way to the hospital when they unwrap the mummy gauze from around my head and the ER doctor breathes a sigh of relief after peeling off all the dried blood to reveal that I needed fifteen stitches and I’d broken my orbital bone, but I still had my eye.

~

Any movie where somebody’s sitting there reading a book before bed, watching TV, gossiping with girlfriends, when the camera pulls back only to zoom back in on the dark night window behind them—cue the string section.

~

If I had to choose one, I’m thinking of that one zombie movie, something 28 Days something but not the one about Sandra Bullock finding love with Viggo in rehab. It’s not even about the zombies. It’s about the dark night window, not to be confused with the Dark Knight window, sorry that was a shitty pun for no good reason whatsoever, but also maybe not completely random with the guy from 28 Days also having played the scarecrow in Batman Begins where he sprays people with a drug and makes them see their worst fears, which never really did it for me, at least not like the secluded house with the zombies lurking around. I grew up in a big old farmhouse out in the barrens of northern Wisconsin. Lots of windows, no shades. In so many ways I grew up in the dark. It wasn’t the zombies I worried about. It was the methheads. Which, sure, I guess if you’re getting technical about it, same thing, fine, you win, I’m scared of zombies.

~

The Zapruder film, but as replayed by Kevin Costner in Oliver Stone’s fever dream of a conspiracy theory. The magic bullet, back and to the left, back and to the left, back and to the left. How it gets stuck in my head, JFK’s exploding head replaced with my brother’s exploding head, sometimes my own, except unlike my brother and JFK, my head’s still mostly intact. Back and to the left, back and to the left. Sometimes I think about that too with that one Seinfeld episode with Keith Hernandez and the magic loogie, but usually the loogie gets replaced with a bullet and Kramer’s head gets replaced with my brother, mine, back and to the left.

~

The sound of the gun shots in the final scene of that Tom Hanks movie where he plays himself again, a good guy, a family guy, a sly sense of humor, but this time a mob hitman with a strained relationship with his oldest son. The look on Tom Hanks’ face walking back to the house from the ocean—having survived it all, the hit that his old mob boss Paul Newman had put out on him for putting a hit on his old mob boss’s son as played by James Bond who also played Ted Hughes in that movie about Sylvia Plath killing herself. But this is past all that, it’s the happy ending. They’re on beach somewhere, white sand, somebody’s house that Tom Hanks and his kid are going to live in now. The silence before and after. Jude Law! It’s Jude Law’s face, his eye all fucked up, how did it happen, I don’t really remember the specifics but I remember the specifics. Bang, bang, bang. I think it might’ve had something to do with Jude Law being a photographer, like one of those where you pose with your kid or something or say you get promoted to head CEO or godfather of the family. Smile. Click, click, except in this case with a gun.

~

The gunshot at the end of American Beauty, pretty much the same thing, different movie. Chris Cooper confusing Kevin Spacey as gay but before Kevin Spacey actually came out as gay and a sexual predator. Not that the latter necessarily had anything to do with the former. Neither in the movie nor real life, well not really, but sorta. You get the point.

~

Jared Leto as Angel Face getting his face smashed in by Ed Norton as Brad Pitt as Tyler Durden’s split personality in Fight Club. Not so much Jared Leto, but the wet mushy sounds of it. That part on the audio commentary where Chuck Palahniuk and David Fincher defend the violence of the movie, Fincher pointing out that he was not glorifying violence, he was making it realistic. That’s what it sounds like to punch your opponent into the concrete, Fincher says and Palahniuk laughs and agrees. Don’t worry I’m not going to make any puns about the first rule of fight club.

~

That part of that one weird depressing Robin Williams’s movie where Robin Williams’s kids get killed in a car accident while backing out of the driveway on the way to school. The one where Robin Williams later on gets plowed over by a truck going the wrong way while Robin Williams is out trying to help another couple who’d been injured in a different car accident, but before all that his wife kills herself because she can’t take it and then Robin Williams goes to the suicide afterlife to save her. But then there’s fucking Cuba Gooding Jr. who—spoiler alert—turns out to be the ghost/angel of his dead son who then explains to Robin Williams that his wife/Cuba’s mother can’t be saved because she killed herself. It doesn’t matter that she had a pretty fucking good reason too, she’s still stuck face down floating around in that black swamp of bodies of everybody else’s killed themselves and nobody’s getting to heaven. That shit really messed me up—not the car accidents, but the afterlife for selfish losers like me who kill themselves. And/or my brother.

~

The bulging vein in Tom Cruise’s head from Magnolia. Respect the Cock and Tame the Pussy, Respect the Cock and Tame the Pussy. I think probably my therapist would have some thoughts about all this, and some questions. Questions and thoughts.

~

That one version of A Christmas Carol where the Ghost of Christmas Past undoes his robe to show off the alien children living under his robe.

~

I got the worst set of blue balls you could imagine while taking my best friend’s girlfriend to Baz Lurman’s remake of Romeo and Juliet. That Romeo and Juliet. I missed most of it, I kept having to go to the bathroom to masturbate in agony and to no avail. Leo and Claire Danes are hot and heavy on an acid trip, and every time my best friend’s girlfriend reaches for a handful of popcorn she makes sure to wipe the butter off on the inside of my upper thigh. This is what I get for being the good guy of falling on the grenade for my best friend, the grenade in this case being Shakespeare and my best friend’s hatred of literature.

~

Mark Wahlberg’s flaccid rotten dick in Boogie Nights.

~

The Secret of the Crying Game but not in a transphobic way. No, it’s the smallness of it what got me back when I watched it as a teenager. The tenderness. The growing tent in my pants at its sudden appearance on the screen. Maybe you don’t believe me but I was a naïve podunk kid from off the farm. I didn’t have cable. I didn’t have access to the internet. His/her (now their) secret opened up a lot of questions for me. I often dream of dressing up in drag and someone sucking my little bitty dick and if that makes me a little bit gay or maybe bi or what’s it called, body dysmorphic. I mean I guess it doesn’t matter anymore, it’s the new millennium, we’re all a bit sexually confused aren’t we?

~

This one porno my friends and I watched at somebody’s uncle’s cabin up in the U.P. for a three-on-three basketball tournament. The Snapping Pussy. The sound her vagina made, like somebody really dramatic at clicking their tongue and slurping a half-empty malt the same time. The scene of us boys all sitting there with our boners watching a porn and wanting to masturbate but not because we were all boys and we were afraid we’d be gay. Not that there’s anything wrong with being a little bit gay.

~

There was this made-for-TV movie, me six years old and home alone while my big brother, supposed who’d to’ve been baby-sitting me, the only time he ever babysat me that I can remember, maybe because his one time—that time—he didn’t actually babysit me. He went out to a party, while I watched the made-for-tv movie about some kid who’d watched his mother get murdered, and then goes mute, keeps drawing these pictures of Peter Pan and Captain Hook. The kid’s grandfather, one of those big hooks, like the one in I Know What You Did Last Summer, but this was long before that, though I’m not sure it was before the book. Did you know that there was a book I Know What You Did Last Summer? I mean this isn’t about the book or the movie, this is about that kid whose grandfather had molested his daughter for years and then as an adult gutted her with a fishhook and then how he’d then come back to finish the job with his mute grandkid, I don’t know how this movie ever got green-lighted (green-lit?) for TV, but then it’s weird to even think about those made-for-tv movies and if they actually existed or if I’m just making this whole thing up, but then my brother, we had a walk-in basement at the time, this being before I’d accidently burned that house down with two space heaters stolen from the barn, before my brother’d killed himself, he’d come back late, or probably it was only eight or nine, but I was young and alone out in the woods where we lived, and he’d come back through the basement, which was attached to the family room, where I’d been watching and then all of a sudden that kid on TV was being stocked by his granddad with a fish hook and the door to the basement was opening, and for god knows why I’d turned off all the lights to watch the scary movie by myself, and it turns out it was just my brother who’d go on to kill himself in like a year, maybe six months, and he was just playing a little prank on me, or maybe he’d just come through the basement for some reason, he was always hanging out down there and tinkering around with things, but in my mind, I can remember that exact look on his face, that smirk, even in the dark, the light from the television in a blacked-out room, a blacked out house, reflecting off those pop-bottle glasses of his, the shiny too-big-for-his-face silver frames. My mother always tells me I should try to remember the happy times I had with my brother, and honestly, I can’t, I can only remember that smirk, those glasses, the handle turning a moment before he appeared.

~

Any and all sequels where it turns out that the dead character didn’t actually die at all, or maybe it’s magic, or maybe there’s time travel.

~

Any happy ending ever.

~

Every ending in my worst nightmares involves everyone I’ve ever loved or hated, their faces turning to snake faces. Snakeheads, snake arms, snake butts. Snakes snakes snakes. They slip out of their clothes and come up from under my bed, slither under my covers. They bite me, they kiss me, poison me, they consume me whole and regurgitate my bones. That’s how they always end. Me dead and abandoned.

~

That scene in the first Indiana Jones with Indiana Jones and getting trapped in the cave with all the snakes. I hate snakes. All my worst nightmares turn to snakes. Fuck snakes. This all might have something to do with my undersized penis. If you want to go down that path. The Secret of My Crying Game.

~

Has Mel Gibson ever made a movie with snakes? I don’t know, you tell me, but fuck that movie if he did. Mel Gibson is snakey enough on his own.

~

BENJAMIN DREVLOW is the author of Bend With the Knees and Other Love Advice from My Father, which won the 2006 Many Voices Project, and the author of Ina-Baby: A Love Story in Reverse, which was  released by Cowboy Jamboree Books in 2019.  Buy his books here. He is currently at work on a novel, a novella, and a collection of story-poems. He serves as the Managing Editor of BULL Magazine (@BULL_magazine_) and is a lecturer at Georgia Southern University in Statesboro, Georgia.

[psychicbluebirdpainter]

My Constant

Summary: This is set in TRR Book 2 Chapter 11. After their pool game and all the talk about dating, Drake’s about to leave for his cabin but something stops him. This also involves a small theory of mine about the conspiracy against MC. Hope you enjoy!

Pairing: Drake X MC

Disclaimer: I don’t own the characters. The characters and some of the dialogues belong to Pixelberry Studios.

Author’s Note: My MC’s name is Anne Boleyn because I admire her so much and when I saw a book called The Royal Romance, it just felt right to name my MC after her. I even named the Prince, Henry (after Henry VIII); but then, throughout the story, I felt like there is a really special connection between MC and Drake. So my LI is Drake now.

Word Count: 2000+

After another game night, Anne and Drake are walking back to train, side by side. It is past midnight and the streets are almost empty. They are in a comfortable silence, filled with a mix of emotions. For a second it feels like they are the only people in the entire world, but that feeling disappears quickly when they reach the train. Anne opens the door and walks in, Drake following close behind.

They quietly walk towards Anne’s cabin and as they reach her door, her chest feels heavy thinking that their time tonight has come to an end. Again. Like it always does.

Drake’s voice interrupts her thoughts. “I had a good time tonight.”

Anne turns and studies him for a long second. His face is all serious but his voice is soft and gentle and she just wants to be wrapped up in that softness. Finally, she smiles. “Me too.” Before he can say anything, she adds “Next time, we should go on a real date.”

Drake’s surprised by her response. He doesn’t quite know how to respond to this, to her. Taking her on a real date… This is one of the many things he wishes he was free to do with her. But it just doesn’t seem possible to him. Not now, not ever. He spent so much time, trying to convince himself that he was in an impossible situation and being with her could never be more than just a fantasy. Even though things have changed a lot between them for the last couple of weeks, he still doesn’t fully allow himself to believe that they can be truly together some day.

“That wasn’t… I mean, not that I wouldn’t, but…” He gets flustered but when he sees a hint of a smile on the corner of her lips, he stops mumbling. “…Wait. You’re teasing me, aren’t you?”

“Only a little.” she smiles. She loves it when he gets all flustered but then she grows more serious as she tries to imagine how a real date would actually go with him. “Be honest. If we’d called it a real date, would you have taken me anywhere else?”

“Tonight? No.” His answer is instant and certain.

“How about on another night?” She is suddenly very curious.

He smiles slightly, shaking his head. “We’ll have to see.” He can’t deal with the dangerous thoughts running through his head when he thinks about the two of them. Together. On a real date. With all his guards down. No, it’s best not to think about that.

He looks at her, with a little sadness in his eyes. “Sleep well, Boleyn.”

“Goodnight, Drake.” Her voice slightly trembles as she tries to give him a smile and fails. She isn’t ready to say goodbye yet. She never likes it but tonight, tonight is different. All night, she tried to hide it, tried not to think about it, put on her game face and playful smile and acted like everything was all right. But everything was not all right. With all the drama that’s been going on, and the new information she learned only a few hours ago, the idea of the former King himself plotting against her… She’s scared. For the first time since she came back to court, she finally understands Drake’s concerns about her safety. She never took it as seriously as he did and was only after clearing her name, but after everything that’s been revealed so far, she truly feels frightened, if not terrified. And the only person in the entire court, no in the entire world actually she thinks to herself, who makes her feel completely safe, no matter what situation they are in is about to walk away. And tonight she just doesn’t feel strong enough to let him.

Drake stops at the tone of her voice and the expression on her face. He takes a step closer to her, studying her intently. Suddenly she seems so fragile. She is usually so strong and playful with a bright smile on her face which he adores and shining eyes, but right now there is something else in her eyes. Something that makes him want to protect her from everything that might hurt her. Fear. He sees her fear. “What is it, Boleyn?”, he whispers.

Under his intense gaze, Anne starts to feel overwhelmed with her emotions, with everything she feels, longing, lust, fear, joy, sadness, all at the same time. A tear escapes her eyes silently. She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath, trying to calm herself. “Can you stay with me for a little while longer?” she whispers back, her voice almost non-existent.

Drake’s heart breaks at the sight of her. He never saw her like this before. He can’t leave her like this, but he can’t stay either.

“Please.” She opens her eyes and sees the conflict on Drake’s face. She knows how hard this must be for him and she knows that she is being unreasonable, and she hates herself for this. But she can’t take it anymore. She feels so small and all alone in this place. She needs him.

Drake nods silently, giving in. He knows that this is probably not a good idea, but he doesn’t find it in himself to leave her right now.

She steps inside her cabin and sits on the edge of her bed. Drake carefully checks out the corridor, making sure there is nobody to see them, before following her inside and closing the door behind him. He leans back to the door and sighs.

“What is it, Boleyn?” he asks once more, giving her his full attention.

For a moment, Anne seems to have difficulty finding the words, not quite sure where to start. But when she meets his concerned gaze, everything she’s been keeping buried inside all night starts to pour out of her. She stands up, walking back and forth inside her tiny cabin.

“I talked to former Queen tonight, before the opera. She didn’t deny that she favored Madeleine above everyone else during the social season, but she also said she had nothing against me and a small part of her actually wanted to see me succeed. She told me, she understands how Henry feels about me and she was the reason I was allowed back in court. When I brought up Bastien during the conversation, she didn’t seem affected at all by the mention of his name, but she did tell me that she and Bastien weren’t in fact very close. She said Bastien used to be extremely loyal to Henry’s late mother, and he is closer to former King than he is to her. And for some reason, I believed her. She was sincere. Besides she has her own guards and servants to carry out her orders. She wouldn’t go to Bastien for something like this. So that leaves behind two people. The former King… And Henry.”

Drake interrupts her immediately. “Henry loves you.”

Anne stops pacing, turns to face him and sighs. “Yeah, everybody keeps telling me that. But think about it, Drake. Bastien was extremely loyal to Henry’s late mother. When she died, he probably became more protective of Henry, more than ever, right? I don’t think Bastien would do something like this, something that affects Henry like this, without his knowledge.” She puts up a hand when she sees Drake’s about to protest again. “I’m not saying, Henry was the one giving Bastien orders. I’m just saying… I think he knew something was up.” She stops for a moment, choosing her next words carefully. “On the night of the Coronation, Henry came to me. He… He told me he wanted to meet me before Coronation. Alone. He said… He said he was done waiting.”

When she sees the pained expression on Drake’s face, she quickly adds. “I said No.”

Drake’s face relaxes slightly and he lets out a silent breath.

She continues. “I didn’t think anything of it at first. But then the time of Coronation came and all hell broke loose. I was forced out of the court and Henry made his decision without even blinking an eye. Sure he seemed not happy about it, but he certainly wasn’t surprised either. It was like he knew something like this was gonna happen, and he wanted to spend some alone time with me before it happened, one last time.” She sighs heavily. She thought about this before, but never could admit to herself, until tonight. She feels panic starting to rise inside her chest. “Drake, do you realize what all this means? You are the one who told me that Bastien would feel obligated to obey unconditionally to only a few people and this conspiracy must be going really deep. Now we know that Bastien is real close to former King and that he was extremely loyal to Henry’s late mother, which means he is probably extremely loyal to Henry himself. What if the former King is the one who gave Bastien orders and Henry knew about it and has been lying to me, to all of us, all this time?”

Drake feels shock and anger welling up inside him. First Bastien, and now his best friend Henry? No, it can’t be, he thinks to himself, shaking his head. Henry wouldn’t use her like this or do or allow something that could put her in danger. But he has to admit that she has a point. And if she is right about all this, then she might be in more danger than he ever imagined. And there was no one to trust. No one.

He looks at her panicked, frightened face and for a second imagines the worst. His heart sinks, he can’t bear the idea of losing her. In two long steps, he closes the distance between them and pulls her close to him, one hand on her back holding her against him tightly, the other caressing her dark, velvety hair gently.

She lets out a sigh and returns his embrace, putting her arms around his waist and resting her head on his strong chest. “I’m scared, Drake.”, she whispers. “For the first time since I came back here, I’m really scared.”

“I know.” His voice is a low whisper as he tries hard not to give away that he is scared too. Probably more scared than he ever was in his entire life. He holds her gently for a while until finally, he feels her body relax in his arms.

Still holding her close, “Did you talk to Henry about the new information you learned tonight?”, he asks quietly. He feels like he has to understand this situation as well as he can.

“Yes, he was waiting for me at the opera. I told him the conversation I had with the Mother Queen. He seemed angry with his father and promised that we will confront him together as soon as we have the chance.” She feels Drake nodding slowly. “But I don’t trust him. I can’t trust anybody, anymore.”

Anne pulls back her head slightly and looks deep into his eyes. “Except you.” Her hand reaches to cup his face, caressing his cheekbone with her thumb. She is suddenly overwhelmed with emotion. “Everything feels like falling apart lately. And in all this craziness, you are the only person in the world who makes me feel completely safe. You are the only person who makes me feel like I’m home. When everything is falling apart, you are my constant.”

Drake’s heart warms at her words. He can see that she means what she says. And he knows exactly how she feels. He feels the same way about her. Losing his family made him feel so alone and broken for so long. He never thought he would care for or feel connected to anybody ever again. All that changed with Anne.

Keeping her gaze, he slowly leans in and his lips find hers in a tender kiss, pouring all his love into the kiss. Their kiss deepens as he runs his hands up and down her back and her hand moves to the nape of his neck pulling him closer. But then he pulls himself back and rests his forehead against hers and whispers. “And you are mine.”

Anne closes her eyes and smiles. She can feel his breath on her face and his strong arms around her body. She feels like nothing can hurt her when he is by her side. She wants to stay in this moment forever. But she knows he has to leave soon. She opens her eyes, looks at him and whispers. “Thanks for listening, Drake. I feel better now.”

Drake smiles back softly. “We are in this together, Boleyn. We will figure this out. I’ll keep you safe, no matter what. I’m here for you and I’ll be here for you, until the very end. Don’t ever forget that.” He kisses her once again before pulling himself away from their embrace. “But it’s really late now and you need to get some sleep.” He leads her to her bed. “I will stay with you until you fall asleep.”

Anne follows his lead, lays on her bed and watches Drake as he puts the covers on her carefully. He takes a seat on the chair next to her bed and caresses her dark hair gently. “You are safe now, Boleyn”, he whispers.

She feels the warmth of his hand on her hair and her whole body relaxes. She gives him a tired smile and soon she’s fast asleep wrapped up in his warmness.

Making sure she is asleep, he presses a feather-light kiss on her forehead and gets up to leave. Before he opens the door, he looks at her one last time. She looks so beautiful and peaceful. His heart aches from the intensity of the feelings he has for her. He doesn’t know what the future holds for them, but he knows that he will do everything in his power to keep her safe. He can’t lose her.

He opens the door and walks out, closing the door behind him as quietly as he can. He walks to his cabin with a heavy chest. He has to think through all of this and come up with a plan. With no one to trust, he has to be more careful than ever. I promised I’ll keep her safe, he thinks to himself. And I’ll live up to that promise or die trying.

[delicadenza]

The Long Way Home: On Love, Departures, and What Detroit Means to Me

(What originally started off as a little thought-seed about the Very Specific way I imagine my precanon Phichuuris turned into a grossly long-winded ramble about the nature of love???? I don’t know how to explain, omg. I’m so sorry.)

The fourth episode of Yuri!!! on Ice was a pivotal episode for me for many reasons. Prior to that my investment in the series’ early episodes was always tempered by a kind of caution—I’d been enjoying the push-and-pull between Yuuri and Victor as Yuuri struggled to come to terms with the fact that his idol had taken any degree of interest in him and Victor attempted to draw him out of his shell, and seeing the seed of what would eventually develop into a complex dynamic between him and Yuri Plisetsky, partly admiration, partly rivalry, partly a care and concern that neither of them quite knew how to express. But likewise I’d made it a point to be a little guarded—to hang back and wait until fuller character arcs for the protagonists and for the people in their world began to emerge before I gave the series my heart and soul. (I was a little scared, do you see? I didn’t want things to just turn out like another carrot-and-stick game between the shy anxious boy and the hot foreign guy he’d idolized forever who had taken a sudden and inexplicable interest in him. It didn’t help matters that at the time all the conspiracy theories floating around were that Victor was evil, or that he was dying. But anyway.)

All of that reserve flew out the window by the fourth episode, which essentially took the little hints the earlier episodes had been making at the characters’ hidden depths and cranked them up to eleven. There’s so much wonderful insight that comes out of this episode—from the by-now iconic “When I open up, he meets me where I am,” to the way Victor challenges Yuri to put together his own free skate as a way to build his confidence. The conversation they both have with Yuuri’s former coach, Celestino, is especially telling of Yuuri’s personal challenges and what he needs in order to grow: Victor asks, “Why didn’t you let Yuuri choose his own music?” to which Celestino replies that he chooses the music for his skaters unless they tell him that they’d like to pick their own. He proceeds to add that Yuuri only brought him a piece once, but that he’d gone back on it when asked if he believed he could win skating to it: “Please choose the music for me after all, Coach.”

In a sense, this conversation with his former coach reveals to Victor how past!Yuuri failed a kind of test—one that had to do with his capacity to trust his own choices—and that present!Yuuri now needs to face and surmount a similar test before he can move on. The difference is, of course, that Victor’s not going to let him give up on himself. Where Celestino withdraws and lets Yuuri fold, Victor insists on pushing. I also like how this short conversation is illustrative of the fact that, for all that it didn’t work out between them, and for all that his methods differ from Victor’s, Celestino knows Yuuri and has his best interests at heart, and understands what he needs in order to succeed, even if it’s not something he can help Yuuri with at this point.

Suffice to say that there’s a lot to like about this episode, a lot to love, but the real kicker for me came a little under ten minutes in, when Yuuri’s slumped at his desk at a loss as to what to do with his program, and he’s scrolling through his Instagram feed. He sees a friend of his is practicing in Thailand—and right then and there, he calls this friend. Yuuri, who’s anxious and overthinky and shy and has such a hard time opening up to people, just calls up this random boy from Instagram in the middle of the night, like it’s the most natural thing in the world. He greets him with “Sawasdee krab.” Cue me bringing my hand to my mouth in dismay—He has a Thai friend and he’s greeting him in Thai, oh my god. I felt the axe hovering above my head about to drop.

Suffice to say that it was love at first sight for me, as far as Phichit Chulanont was concerned. From his very first appearance as a smiley image on Yuuri’s phone screen, he exudes a natural warmth and an effervescence that it’s difficult to look away from, and that have proceeded to endear him to the fandom surprisingly thoroughly for a supporting character without too much screentime/internal monologue time/poignant backstory reveal time. But more than that, it was the ease with which I saw him and Yuuri talk to each other that intrigued me, and the idea of their shared past—“Detroit’s boring now that you’re gone!” he said, and I felt the axe smash me right down into extrapolation hell, because cute former rinkmate? Cute former rinkmate whose wiki entry later told me was also a former roommate? Look at all the fanfic waiting to happen.

(Spoiler: Happen it did, and then some.)

I think one of my favorite things about fanfiction—possibly my favorite thing—is that you never start from zero. There’s a joy to be derived from building upon the foundations of a preexisting universe—taking the characters and fleshing them out in ways that canon doesn’t get to, dropping them into entirely new scenarios or even entirely new worlds, exploring “what if” scenarios. In other words, the act of filling in gaps.

I love visiting other people’s worlds to play. Add to this the fact that I’m the kind of person who enjoys thinking a lot about how our pasts shape who we eventually become, and who can get pretty obsessive about going back over my own memories with a fine-toothed comb and trying to trace how the various people I used to be might have been built, brick by brick, experience by experience, into the person I am now. So maybe it only stands to reason that I’d latch on to the idea of Yuuri’s time in Detroit, that long formative period in his life that’s talked about in canon but we never actually get to see except in the tiniest glimpses, and turn that strange obsessiveness of mine toward extrapolating the life out of it. Or, well, extrapolating the life into it, I guess I should say—making it real, trying my best to build it into a world of its own. I’ve never been to Motor City myself, but in the process of all this extrapolation I’ve looked at so many maps of the city, so many long lists of shops and restaurants, so many photos in particular of the Detroit River and of Ambassador Bridge, that it kind of makes my head spin. The imaginative exercise has made Phichit and Yuuri’s Detroit so real to me that sometimes I think I can almost smell the air. It’s honestly kind of weird when I stop and think about it, but that’s what the imagination can do if you take it and run with it.

Yuuri leaves home at eighteen, and spends the next five years in Detroit. He trains under Celestino, goes to college, makes it to his first Grand Prix Final. It’s never established in canon how many of those years he spends living with Phichit—usually I go with around two, on the assumption that Phichit moves to the US at eighteen, as Yuuri does, though this varies depending on who you ask—and how they come to be such good friends, different as they are. In other words, lots of gaps to fill in. Lots of room to play, and to extrapolate.

In the Detroit that I imagine, Yuuri and Phichit go to school and train together. They do the groceries and the laundry. They explore the city. They get hamsters. Somewhere in the middle of everything, Phichit gets his driver’s license, which means long late-night drives in Celestino’s car. Sometimes they go to parties. Sometimes they dance. They eat and watch TV and clean up their apartment and study together, and eventually they push their beds together so they can sleep next to each other too. Probably in that shared space they talk more and more deeply with each other than they ever have with anyone else. (Needless to say I was happy beyond words to see that little flashback in episode 11, where Phichit tells Yuuri about his dream to skate to “Shall We Skate?” at a major competition, and how important it is that Yuuri be there too when it finally happens. Needless to say at least three friends who saw it before I did were kind enough to tweet me a warning that the episode was going to kick my ass. Shout-out to my friends. I love my friends.)

In my imagination, all of this leads to them falling in love, though weirdly enough that’s almost beside the point—secondary to the fact that, somehow, they come to love each other. More on the difference between those two things in a bit.

Yuuri tanks at the Grand Prix Final in December. He returns home to Hasetsu in March of the following year. In the intervening months you can imagine him as caught in a kind of downward spiral—how depressed he must be from what he imagines is the worst performance of his life, how lost he probably feels. The competitive season has ended early for him, and he’s right about to finish his college degree, so in a lot of ways he’s at a crossroads, and there are a lot of things he’s unsure about. Should he leave Detroit or stay? Should he keep skating, or start trying to imagine a life where he does something different? Can he see himself taking over the family business, even?

What little we learn from canon about Yuuri’s eventual decision to leave Detroit is zeroed-in on Yuuri to the exclusion of everything else. All we know is that he doesn’t think that what he’s doing is working anymore, so the only decision that makes sense to him in this time of intense personal crisis is to seek a change of scenery. We learn that he’s trying to recover the love for skating that he’s somehow lost along the way, and the way he’s decided to do it is to make his way back to his origins. We see him return to Hasetsu, his hometown, and skate Victor’s “Stay Close to Me” program for his childhood friend Yuuko, a nod back to when they were little and fell in love with skating copying Victor’s iconic performances. We’re not told anything about what he’s chosen to walk away from, what he’s decided to leave behind.

Detroit City is one of those things. Celestino is one of those things, as is Phichit, as is the skating club they practice at, and the place where they live, and the hamsters. And it’s possible from here to spin out versions of this story that are sad and painful and poignant especially with regard to Phichit’s place in this quite complicated order of things—to look at it from bittersweet pining Phichit angles and I’m-sad-I-couldn’t-help-you-love-skating-again angles and I-know-you-don’t-love-me-like-I-love-you angles, and from here it makes sense that in some imaginative spaces this develops into a deep undercurrent of helpless sadness that those Phichits carry with them into the canon timeline, sometimes past it, sometimes forever. And I get the place those Phichits grow from, I do. I know what it’s like to love someone you’re scared you can’t help because you don’t completely understand what they’re going through, and how easy it is to feel like you failed them, and to carry that with you so long it starts to feel like part of you—but that’s another story for another time, and the bottom line is that, with all the respect due the imaginations of others, my particular imagination always gives me back something different.

My imagination hits a wall whenever it tries to imagine Phichit wishing that Yuuri might stay when he knows he’s not happy, or that he isn’t growing. I can’t see Phichit looking at Yuuri and feeling like he’s the one that got away. In some versions of this story, sad!Phichit exists, but mine isn’t one of them. It can’t be, just because my imagination—the tiny, not-so-significant-for-all-its-obsessive-extrapolations little theater of my mind—doesn’t play it out that way for me. I’ve already told you that I’ve watched them fall in love; now I see them not so much fall out of love as decide that it might not be good for them to be in love anymore if they’re going to be apart in such a big way, and that this decision is just one of the many things Yuuri has to set in order if he’s going to go home. And he needs to go home, if he’s going to move forward with his life. I’d like to imagine that, not only does Phichit know this, but he commits wholeheartedly to helping him. Because, any way you want to slice it, he loves him.

Phichit knows that Yuuri needs to go—and yes, this knowledge is a sad thing, but that’s not all it is. I want to think it’s also a decision that makes sense to him. For one, he’s a skater himself and knows how ephemeral their existence as professional athletes is and how tumultuous lifestyle setups can be when your craft necessitates you shuttle back and forth all over the world. In addition to that, though, there are certain things I imagine someone like him—someone who by every token seems to be such a giver, such an emotionally generous and caring and other-directed person—would probably understand about the nature of love.

It’s easy to see the act of letting someone go, of ending a relationship, as essentially black and white. If you really loved this person, you would never have left them, or if you can’t make someone you love stay with you, then you’ve failed them and yourself. But the thing is, a lot of the time it’s not like that. It’s entirely possible to love someone a lot and still need to recognize that your time together has run its course, at least for now. It’s a loss that needs to be grieved, for sure, and it can feel like your whole world has been turned on its head because suddenly you’re missing an important presence, so many routines have fallen through, certain places look weird to visit now without them beside you. I know.

But the sad thing about getting stuck on what-might-have-beens and if-onlys is that you miss the possibility of something good coming out of that necessary separation—which you probably can’t think of at all in that moment, I know. It’s hard. Sometimes you can’t even imagine what life would be like after you let someone go, because naturally human beings find comfort in consistency, resist change because the unknown is frightening. If you let someone go, how can you be sure you’ll ever reencounter each other? How do you know you’ll ever be happy again?

On the flipside of that, we talk all the time about how love is wanting the best for the other person. I think what we talk about less often is that part and parcel of wanting the best for someone you love is giving up control over them and their decisions—trusting the other person to know what’s best for themselves, to do what’s best, to make their way back to you eventually in the ways that are best. Or maybe not, if life happens and leads them so far away it doesn’t make sense to reconnect; that’s the risk you take. But if you do find your way back to each other, after you’ve had the chance to be apart and grow up a little bit and become essentially new versions of yourselves, how can the chance to pick up again be anything but a gift?

There’s a very specific nuance here to the act of letting go. It needs to be total. You don’t let go halfheartedly, while still partially clinging, still wanting to hold on. You don’t let go kind of hoping to be vindicated somehow for your selflessness. You let go with grace, in good faith, and trust the process that may or may not bring you and the one you love back around. (The feelings are running high at the moment, so let me pass you briefly to Maya Angelou, one of my favorite poets, who captures the idea of true unconditionality better than I ever could: “I am grateful to have been loved and to be loved now and to be able to love, because that liberates. Love liberates. It doesn’t just hold—that’s ego. Love liberates. It doesn’t bind. Love says, ‘I love you. I love you if you’re in China. I love you if you’re across town. I love you if you’re in Harlem. I love you. I would like to be near you. I’d like to have your arms around me. I’d like to hear your voice in my ear. But that’s not possible now, so I love you. Go.’” The last words are gratitude and acceptance. That imperative she ends on is really, really important. She said Go.)

One of the things that makes Yuuri such a compelling protagonist is that all throughout his narrative the biggest, most frightening, most important struggles are against himself. His greatest battle is the battle to recognize himself as a person of worth, and so much of that has to do with how he learns to recognize love—to recognize himself not just as someone who’s capable of immense love but as someone who is loved. It’s a battle you see him begin to win in (again!) episode four—which practically deserves an Oscar just on its own, IMO—and it’s a thing of joy to see him work at it, sometimes mastering his demons, sometimes folding under them, but always coming back a little stronger each time.

It can be terrifying, paralyzing to realize that you are loved. Often it makes people push others away—don’t look at me, don’t care for me, I’m not worth your time or attention, direct it at someone or something more worthy—but I like to think it can be inspiring too, and that there’s so much strength to be gained from resting securely in the love of others. And I don’t mean this in the sense that you have to constantly depend on others to build you up because you can’t do it for yourself; rather that sometimes it’s enough to recognize that you’re not alone, to draw strength from that and to become, in turn, a more loving person. Yuuri starts off utterly unable to imagine what Victor sees in him—which, if you think about it, dovetails entirely too well with his difficulties with accepting support from anyone else in his life—but everything is changed by the fact that Victor insists, continuously, that it doesn’t matter. He won’t be beaten down by Yuuri’s stubbornly deep-rooted poor opinion of himself. Instead, it becomes a challenge: Try to see in yourself what I see in you. Try. Try your hardest. Use your imagination.

I haven’t spoken a lot about Victor in this rambly, weirdly convoluted little essay, I realize. Part of it is because I never quite feel like I need to—so many wonderful things have already been said about his and Yuuri’s relationship, and about how important they are to each other’s journeys toward becoming more loving people and learning to own what they do and who they are. Part of it is also because I’m looking at him right now as a link—albeit a singularly important one—in a chain of events that precedes his and Yuuri’s relationship and spirals incessantly beyond it. And that’s one other really wonderful thing about love, I think—that love in the true sense doesn’t close the world. Instead, it opens up the world; it makes everything look more whole.

In light of all these things, I find it so compelling that so much of what Yuuri learns, through Victor and everyone else, is retrospective—that not only is he loved and supported and believed in now, but that he always has been. Victor helps him see something that’s existed all along—that love has passed from person to person and from place to place and that never for a moment has Yuuri been without it. For one reason or another he hasn’t always felt it, recognized it for what it was—anxiety, terror, the impossible standards to which he holds himself—but it’s an idea we see him grow into little by little, with help. And by the end, when he’s running down the sidewalk in St. Petersburg toward Yuri and Victor and thinking “We call everything on the ice ‘love,’” he knows. Suddenly it makes sense now how everything that came before had a hand in bringing all of us here to each other; suddenly it makes sense that all of us are meeting here, where we are.

Let me wax extra self-indulgent for a bit and talk about one imaginary scene I always go back to whenever I think about Yuuri and Phichit. Whenever I think about Yuuri leaving Detroit, I always think about Phichit taking him to the airport. Twice now I’ve written out that scene in a fic, Phichit behind the wheel of Celestino’s car (legally borrowed, this time, because it’s an Important Day), Yuuri in the passenger’s seat playing the music as he’s done on so many similar drives that I’ve imagined. Except this drive is a little different, because it’s the last for the foreseeable future. They see the end coming; they’re moving together towards it.

It took me a while to figure it out well enough to get it down in words (instead of, you know, emotional keysmashing) but now I know why I always imagine things this way. I understand why I need to put Phichit where I do, right on the knife’s edge of that departure, carrying him all the way to the last possible moment before the separation happens. I think at the heart of things it’s me trying to emphasize something to myself about goodbyes—that yes, they’re sad, and they hurt, and for a long time you’ll inevitably miss the person or place or thing you’ve let go of. Sometimes deeply, sometimes for a long time, like an arm or a leg or a chunk of your heart. Of course you will. But then I think about Phichit and Yuuri in that moment I imagine, idling in the airport driveway—and part of my mind is already flashing forward some months later, to that first Skype call and Phichit’s smiling face on Yuuri’s phone screen, forward still to Beijing and Phichit turning up by chance in the very hotpot place Yuuri and Victor have decided to eat at—and I can’t help wanting to believe that that’s not all there is.

I want to imagine Phichit smiling at Yuuri across the car, maybe squeezing his hand for courage and good luck. I want to imagine in that moment things are as simple as they’ve always been between them—that while it’s not easy, because departures never are, these two silly boys rest secure in the knowledge that they’ll always have each other even when they’re not side by side, that it won’t be impossible to pick up again anytime they get the chance to. That’s how much I want to believe they trust each other, how important they are to each other—and how much I want to think that holds, no matter where they go and what they choose to do.

A couple of days ago a friend of mine pointed out that in Japanese the expressions mata ashita and mata ne, which mean see you again, are so much more common than sayonara, which signals a more permanent, or at least a more long-lasting kind of goodbye. I think about how in my native Tagalog the word for goodbye—paalam—has its roots in the verb alam, which means “to know.” When you say goodbye to someone—pamamaalam—you’re letting them know something, and somehow in my imagination that act of telling someone that you’ll be leaving works to make the absent person even more present. Weirdly enough it helps me remember the idea of returns.

I love these boys too much—and I want to believe that they love each other too much—to keep them stuck on the idea that they’re losing each other. (Is such a thing is even possible?) I much prefer to put them in the space of “see you again,” of “catch you when I do,” like it’s not a big deal at all, even if at the same time it is. Imagine Phichit laughing and saying, “Text me when you get home,” which is something most of us have said to our friends at one point or another before parting. Never mind that home is across the sea, on the other side of the world, fourteen hours away. Imagine how strongly he’d need to believe that the two of them have the power to collapse that distance, make it feel like nothing. Imagine that Yuuri, for all the things he’s afraid of in that moment, kind of believes it too.

There’s a tiny amount of actual footage from the show to go on, so maybe I’m making mountains out of molehills here, but from the very first moment I ever saw Yuuri and Phichit interact, I’ve been struck by how simple things seem to be between them. I love that. I love that it’s uncomplicated, that the only way they seem to know how to be with each other is just tender and joyful and pure. I really love the idea that it’s possible to be that way with someone that you may have loved differently in the past, and that you can acknowledge how important it was to you without necessarily wanting to bring it back again, because that would take away from the integrity of what you share now. And while you can remember the then as something beautiful, so is the now in its own way—and that it’s okay, you’re here, you can be happy now with what you have.

Even if you don’t imagine them as having been in love before, look at how present with each other these two are, in the instances that they have to reconnect. They’ve been apart and come back together, attentive to how much they’ve grown but also to how little certain aspects of their relationship have changed. One of them can call the other in the middle of the night and greet him in his native language, like it’s the most natural thing in the world. They smile at each other on the phone. They bump into each other in a foreign country and sit down, organically, for hotpot. They allow themselves to be proud of each other, to cheer each other on in competition: He’s giving everything he has to this season, too.

In all instances, they’re still them, only grown-up enough now to stay in each other’s lives by choice. That’s what holds, regardless of where they end up or what they do or how much time passes in between. The next time I catch up with you, we’ll probably be totally new people, but I know that over and above everything else these moments are a chance to rediscover you, again and again. Even with the people you know best in the world there’s always something new to learn—and I choose to keep learning. That’s how much you mean to me.

I don’t want this to be a utopic scenario, something that’s thought of as unrealistic or too good to be true. It’s real and it can happen, and it’s worth all the work.

The tenth episode shows us a pair of photos of Phichit and Yuuri at the Detroit Skating Club, taken at an unidentified point in their shared past. The first is a selfie at the entrance, where they have their thumbs up, and they’re laughing. The second is of them posing on the bleachers while Celestino sits in the background, looking away, thoroughly unamused.

I look at Yuuri in these pictures—take in his smile and his silliness and how comfortable he looks in his own skin—and I can’t bring myself to think of those days as any less real than the days leading up to his departure. It’s easy to conceive of Detroit as the place Yuuri chooses to walk away from, the place he needs to leave so his story can begin. But it’s also a place with stories of its own, and even if canon never reveals them to us, it’s not difficult to imagine the ways Yuuri himself is touched by them even as he moves on.

I think this could be true for him as it’s probably true for many of us: you need Detroit to make it, in the end, to St. Petersburg, that wonderful faraway ending-place that you probably thought existed only in your dreams. You may not be in Detroit anymore, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that it was a false start or a waste of time, or that it was never important—in fact, it’s precisely because you aren’t there now that you can maybe now begin to comprehend what it did for you, looking back over your shoulder in memory at all the places you’ve been and seeing with a clarity you didn’t have before just how far you’ve come from where and who you used to be.

On the one hand, of course you remember how hard things used to be. But maybe, just maybe, as you sift through all the things you remember, you’ll find that in more instances than you might originally have thought, you were happy too.

You don’t need to go back to Detroit, even. In a way, you never left—you carry that truth with you. You were happy then. You are happy now. All of it is real.

[rickjsposts]

Hammer day Friday, -.5% this morning, The fed, political hysteria. My thoughts

New Post has been published on https://www.rickjshandicappingpicks.com/30329-2/

Hammer day Friday, -.5% this morning, The fed, political hysteria. My thoughts

The indexes are off about .6% 30 min before the open. TLT is +1% @CL is -.20% and vix.x is +9%. This is a negative premarket.

After the hammer on Monday, it would be nice to get some follow-through, but so far it looks like the chances of that are slim today.

I have a number of swing positions on at the moment, and I imagine if we get a drop today I will be out of many. These are tough markets to trade right now as the ups and downs tend to wiggle you out of trades. But still, in the end stops are the only way to go.

Except of course for mean reversion. I closed out my 2 SPY positions on Friday for a nice gain. These have been by far the strongest of my trades this year. The only caveat is with mean reversion you take a big loss once in a while. It comes with the territory:)

On the political front its the normally manufactured hysteria. Some things to look at through the mist are 1. The Fed and 2. the amended Nafta agreement.

Powell is behind the curve. Why I have no idea. I am not much on conspiracy theories, but needless to say, he is overlooking the geopolitical turmoil. Rate cuts should be dramatic right now. Instead, he is still in cautious mode:(

The Nafta agreement is purely political. I see little to no chance of it getting through the house. Even though it is a great agreement for the U.S. the House is not going to give Trump a win heading into 2020. My guess is they will add a poison pill to the bill that will kill it.

On the geopolitical front, the world is a mess. Yellow vest protests are growing in France, Hong Kong is now in on the act raising the American Flag. This is not going to end well for Hong Kong. China will be brutal in quashing this.

Trade with China is not close to being settled, and N. Korea is starting to act out again. A lot going on geopolitically. And all is potentially market-moving.

I posted my NFL and College Football special on the main portion of this site and also sent out an email to people that have expressed interest in the past. The response has been the best since I started some 16 years ago.

While many handicapping services come and go, at 10x the price of my subscription, mine has stayed solid over the years producing positive EV plays consistently.

If you have ever sat at the poker table with me you know that I am a pretty conservative gambler:) I pretty much play a % game with a few twists. But overall it is a positive EV play. That is the way I approach sports handicapping and the markets.

If you have an interest take a look at the post and send me an email if you have any questions.

As a part of my sports handicapping subscription, I send out almost all of my trades via Viber. This has been a nice value-added feature of the handicapping service. At $49.00 a month for all sports plays I handicap, you get most of my stock trades. With the NFL almost here, its time to consider joining us.

If you want to follow some of my thoughts typically given after the open you can go to @rickjswings. Typically I talk about the overall day expected with the markets and also give some levels on the ES and NQ for failed breakout scalping.

It’s my private twitter feed for the stock market and its free. 

Sports Handicapping is the subscription-based part of this site. But considering the cost of joining it’s almost free:)

Good Luck Today

RickJ

RickJ’s Handicapping Picks

https://rickjshandicappingpicks.com/investing

Skype: Ricca

[douchebagbrainwaves]

THE VENTURE ANIMAL

I recommend to people who are bad at explaining, talking to people who don't understand it are driven to invent conspiracy theories to explain how you'd figure out the right thing to do. I was in college the rule seemed to be asleep, but when you're making a decision impetuously, you're all the more reason for startups to present to them. Larry Mihalko was mine. They will be the thought: are these guys the next Google, you shouldn't be discouraged by the comparatively corrupt test of college admissions, because it's a collection itself.1 In the middle are doing something like an experimental science. There is hope for a new Lisp, and Smalltalk the fact that the best strategy is to get the permission of investors to care about valuations. Tell Kids May 2008 Adults lie constantly to kids.

And yet it doesn't seem American.2 It was no coincidence that the first problem to solve here, but certainly succinctness is a large, existing population of stodgy people. It was common in the 1990s, except then people who had made Lotus into the star it was. If you could think of an idea?3 A few days ago I suddenly realized Microsoft was going to take, and the crew at Carson Systems for making everything run smoothly. A new Lisp would be a flaw. The owner wanted the student to pay for the smells he was enjoying. Reporters like definitive statements. Jessica was boiling mad that people were doing it. But those seconds seemed long.

And the misleading ways of investors combine horribly with the wishful thinking of inexperienced founders. I told them it would be even more impressed with that. It did not help, either, that suits took over during a critical period. This proves something a lot of thoughtful people in it, and he was pretty much a throwaway program and keep improving it. It Can Be Fun The good news is, if you kept a carriage, no one ever called us on it. At any given time get away with changing more than you actually are.4 Don't raise money unless you want to really understand it again when you return to school in the fall with all the people who talk about it.5 Was it because the founders are effective.6 Incidentally, this thought experiment: suppose prep schools supplied the same superior education but had a tiny.7 If you try to optimize it.

Revenue Loop. Probably the biggest lie told in schools, though, is that the payoff for avoiding tax grows hyperexponentially x/1-n to see if this fate can be avoided. Joel Lehrer and Peter Eng for answering my questions about patents, and as far as I know, unique to Lisp. You can tell the difference between the two elsewhere, but essentially a startup is the second hardest part of that is the larval stage of most software. Blue staters think it's subjective, and red staters think it's for sissies.8 Students be forewarned: if you write them in Lisp? Com/6. N things for n 3. If you argue against censorship in general, just as low notes travel through walls better than high ones.9 But the American startups we've funded will attest that I say the raison d'etre of classical scholarship was a kind of argument that might be a good language, as everyone knows, should generate fast code.

That's true. I was working for Yahoo when Google appeared, and Yahoo didn't understand search. Corollary: Avoid starting a startup at 30. When would you ever want to do. So if you suppress variation in wealth, because as well as you can, because fundraising is not merely that it's longer. But not so lucrative or prestigious as it was meant to be used to prove startups don't need VC-scale funding, and investors would appear too, because determination is the main reason is that the spinal cord has the situation under control. The wartime versions were much more cynical. But perhaps worst of all, governments. 034. Editorials about athletes' or CEOs' salaries remind me of early Christian writers, arguing from first principles about whether the founders had: Apple, Microsoft, and they can cause surprising situations.10 The old ideas are so rare that the best ideas look initially like bad ideas at first.11

Notes

This is an acceptable excuse, but that this was hard to predict precisely what would happen to their stems, but it might bear stating even more clearly. It seems as dumb to discourage that as you get, the owner shouldn't pay me extra for doing badly and is doomed anyway. 16%.

It doesn't happen often. I don't mean to kill their deal with the other hand, launching something small and traditional proprietors on the expected value calculation for potential founders, like wages and productivity, but it's always better to live. The ironic thing is, obviously, only Jews would move there, and on the server. For example, there were no strong central governments.

As Paul Buchheit adds: I switch person. One thing that drives most people realize, because the median case.

Stone, Lawrence, Family and Fortune: Studies in Aristocratic Finance in the last step is to carry a beeper? Though they are public and persist indefinitely, comments on really bad sites I can imagine cases where VCs don't invest, it is to do. I was a kid.

I should degenerate from Subject foo not to make software incompatible. That would be a special title for actual partners. There are lots of customers is that as to discourage risk-taking.

A servant girl cost 600 Martial vi. Sparse Binary Polynomial Hash Message Filtering and The Old Way.

Even now it's hard to say that it had no idea what's happening till they measure their returns.

When Google adopted Don't be evil, they only even consider great people. In practice sufficiently expert doesn't require one to be a good idea to make more money.

It's a case in point: lots of customers you need to, but as an example of computer security, and are often surprised by this standard, and are often surprised by this, though.

She was always good at design, Byrne's Euclid. They'd freak if they make money for. Again, hard to mentally deal with them.

Yes, actually: dealing with the Supreme Court's 1982 decision in Edgar v. This prospect will make grad students' mouths water, but one by one they die and their flakiness is indistinguishable from those of dynamic variables were merely optimization advice, and only big companies to say yet how much he liked his work.

[artsyarchangel-blog]

GunBreaker Chapter 1 Part 3

7

Slowly, people started to come around to me. “He might be a troll, but isn't he way to serious about this? Like, we are the ones making fun of him, this can't be entertaining for him anymore...”

“Maybe he is just legitimately insane.”

“Or maybe he has a point...”

“What, erase all guns from this planet? This is bullshit.”

It was at a very sluggish pace, yet I could see some positivity. People started to doubt themselves, maybe, just maybe there was some truth to my teachings. The hit count on my blog and on my channel also climbed steadily and some people were even saying they “might look into this”.

An euphoric feeling in my chest, I was even more resolved. Do you see, Hermes? We can do it, people can help themselves, you just have to be persistent in spreading the truth.

Now I really started to break the law though, it wasn't enough to just spread my message online, I wanted everyone to know, be it the net-generation, kids my age or the old man, who never quite got the hang of technology. Everyone needed to know what happened behind these walls and how we can change it. So I bought some spray-cans, pulled a hoodie over my face and hit the town, as soon as the sun went down. “Wake up, sheeps!” “Gunbreaker will liberate you!” these phrases were soon spread all over the walls, underneath some brigdes or on the broad site of a train. Pretty clumsily too, I'm sure it was hard to read, especially at night, but it was there, in their faces and I felt proud and accomplished. Flyers I threw all over the walkways, the adresse of my net-blog written on it. I certainly gave the police enough reason to go after me and in hindsight, this was so absolutely moronic!

Given everything I knew or believed to know, how could I pull such a stunt?!

If they caught me, they would have straight up put a bullet into my head or maybe torture me for information first. Teenagers really feel like they are invincible, it's scary... .

My actions were certainly noticed, even if I the city was huge and I only vandalised a really small district. My home district, incidentally, so stupid, the thought makes me cringe.

Just how wrong this all could have gone...

Pictures were taken and posted on the net, feeding my myth, the myth of the Gunbreaker. Seriously, at this point, I was like an urban legend, everyone talked about me.

“Did you see? It was written all over the district!”

“Yes, I go through there on my way to work, was it really him?”

“This happened in Ravenstar, right? So weird...is this an uprising?”

Now the circle of people who really knew about my ideals was still relatively small, I might blow it a little out of proportion. I certainly wasn't e-famous and I also never got any news-coverage on a big network. Thank God. But people recognized my name and I received messages, almost daily. Hate-mail mostly, but slowly, there were words of encouragement.

Outside of all the fuss, I never told anyone, not a single person in my admittedly small, social circle. At least I had that much foresight, as if I wasn't bullied enough at school, running around, throwing conspiracy theories around would have only made it worse. But the school talked about the Gunbreaker, obviously, it was their town that was dirtied by all the ugly graffiti, impossible for them to miss it. It wasn't all that interesting, the gossip in my class, just a mirror of the internet comments, only voiced this time. Well I didn't attend school all too frequently anyway, so I only catched some snippets. When my friends talked about it, I felt like a masked vigilante, some kind of superhero and when they asked me about my opinion I just said:”Meh, probably some loser living in his mom´s basement.” Gotta keep it cool after all, can't raise any suspicion.

This went on for a while, my popularity steadily rising and as other people started to look into the matter, researching, basically asking what the hell actually happened behind these walls in their own, long blog-posts, I received another E-Mail. “Bloodedge” , that was the name displayed as the sender and of course I remembered him, it wasn't so long ago. Curiously I opened his message:

“Yo, man! The Net is on fire, you're really making a change! Well, that's how I feel at least, but the bois over at HERMES don't really share my opinion. They're probs just jelly, right? Anyway, if there is anything I can do to help, totally tell me. We're going to tear their asses down, these government shitbags.”

This was great, I had my own sidekick. Naturally, I motivated him further, told him simply to imitate my actions. In other words, hit his district the same way I hit mine. I think they call that “Inciting an offence”, add this to my growing criminal record. He did it, too! The next day I saw a bunch of pictures, sprayed words similar to my own work, even signed as the GunBreaker.

Again, the clicks kept on coming and more conspirators joined me.

They introduced themselves rather similar to my dear and bloody assistent, ready to prove themselves after Hermes couldn't give them what they were seeking. The thrill of a real revolution, it was the same thing I was looking for after all. I was way in over my head here, some teenager leading a rebellion.

But as young folk tend to do, I simply didn't give a shit about that, just doing what I thought was right, no matter the consequences. In a way, that's rather admirable, even we adults should take some risks from time to time, standing up for what we believe in. Let's be real though, I wasn't all that idealistic, as i said, I was just a bored teenager. The only weird thing is, despite all that, despite the growing scale of the little Gunbreaker-operation, the police never came after us, they never conducted an investigation and they never silently arrested us. Was that it, the power of the five Warlords, the quiet power leading our very lives. Laughable, I only grew more confident as time went on. More and more people believed us, our voices were heard, questions were asked and even the media started to show interest!

Once, on an ordinary day, the sky bleak and covered with grey clouds, someone wrote his query into a rather popular forum. That he'd like to look into these allegations, that he started to believe that there was something wrong in our world and that he'd find the ones responsible and expose them. A huge report on a major tv-network was about to happen, as soon as he'd got the clear of his editor and then nobody could pretend they didn't see the lies anymore.

Yes, this was it! The breakthrough, the final attack. First we would riot and save our glorious Metropolis Ravenstar and then, after we achieved this, the other four cities would be next.

Beware, Warlords, this was the day of your reckoning!

This reporter guy, he never gave his name, since it could put him at risk, promised to interview me personally, the legendary Gunbreaker! We even set a date, obviously we would communicate via  video, so I should get a cool looking mask. As I browsed through various online shops in the search of my perfect outfit (thank god I never actually got the chance to wear any of it, my personal favorite was the glowing skull-mask after all) the day of the scheduled interview drew ever closer.

And as it arrived, I never heard from him again.

No posts, no mails, not a single call. He never left me his contact-info, so there was nothing I could do. Honestly, at this point I think they just killed him, neutralized him before he could become a problem. And this trend continued! Suddenly all my contacts disappeared one after another, never to be heard of again. Now there weren't as well known as I was, but by the time even the Bloodedge vanished, people were spreading dark rumors. That the government finally catched up to them, that they were tortured, probed for information and ultimately killed off.

Fear started to spread, the kind inhabitants of the internet started to wonder if maybe, they should stop talking about war, about massacres behind the wall and return to their quiet, ignorant lifes. While I did my best, really gave it my all to quell these concerns I trembled behind my flat computer-screen. I could barely hit the keyboard, the way my fingers were shaking. This was bad, it was way to weird, how could they all just up and leave? All of them, there was no other explanation, something happened to them.

And I would be next.

Will they at least keep my family alive? They never did anything wrong after all, why should they suffer for my reckless crimes. Really it was a dread I would not feel for many years afterwards, the imminent threat of my life ending any time now.

But in front of my audience, my fans if you will, I played it cool, Problem was, nobody cared about me anymore, it was all just about these mysterious disappearences, so slowly, my message died down.

It was then that I received a light in my darkness, a ray of hope that might just save me. I had a high opinion of Hermes after all, so soon I found myself face to face with him again. Figuratively speaking of course. He didn't waste any time bringing his point across.

HERMES: We wish to cooperate. Your cause is a just one, however, the ship you set out with received crippling damage and won't be able to carry you to your destination. How about you board our vessel instead? After all, our destination remains the same.

Now I could have continued to stay cool, to keep up my composed facade but I was just scared shitless.

GUNBREAKER: Yes! I mean, that is an interesting propostion. Actually, please let's cooperate. Together we might be able to change something.

HERMES: We are acknowledging your position and what you were able to achieve all on your own, so...

GUNBREAKER: Please, just take me under your wing. I don't care if I am just a code monkey or your personal servant!

HERMES:...we would grant you a position befitting of your abilities, at the side of our best and brightest.

After this exchange, there was an awkward silence, no words appeared on the sreen for a while. Cold sweat ran down my back, did I blew it? Did he now think I was absolutely disgusting, some basement-dwelling virgin who lost his mind at the mere sight of danger? Well, I let you know we lived in an appartement, there was no basement.

HERMES: Why don't we continue this personally? We are sure we can work this out and we also understand that you are frightened. It is a difficult position to be in after all, no one here can even imagine how you feel. After all, we'd never draw this kind of attention to ourselves, knowing our dangerous enemy.

I could practically see his mocking smirk. Or theirs, he kept speaking like there's a whole group behind his name.

HERMES: There is an abandoned toy shop not far from your location. We'd like to meet you there, if you feel that you can trust us. Please know that we also put our trust in you, never before have we decided to reveal our face. This offer is not to be taken lightly. Meet us at 2100 tomorrow evening, we will wait for you exactly thirty minutes, but if you fail to arrive in time, there won't be a second chance. We will cease all contact, you will be on your own.

He never even waited for my reply, after he told me of the plan, he was just gone. No chance to talk back, all I could do was follow his directions exactly as told. I actually knew of the toy shop he mentioned, I passed it sometimes on my way to school, when I was feeling adventurous and picked the alternate route and of course I sprayed it with graffiti when I was spreading my message. A huge, kinda creepy building with a giant stuffed bear on top? That certainly attracted attention, a perfect target to vandalize.

So this was to be the place where I'd find my destiny. So be it.

Honestly, I am kinda bluffing here, my actual thought process at this time looked more like:”OHSHIT, whatdoidowhatdoido, WHAT THE FUCK DO I DO NOW?!”

Even Hermes started to give me some seriously bad vibes, being all smug, so high and mighty. Like he enjoyed my misery. It was a fleeting thought however, then in the end, I had no choice in the matter. They would come for me, whoever they were and they would hurt and kill me and maybe even my family. Never thought that I actually cared that much about my parents and my little sister, but here I was, priotizing their safety over my own.

But why tomorrow, I could barely handle the wait. Feeling antsy all day I hardly slept, always half expecting for someone to break down my door and take me away, dragging me past the corpses of my family members. Indeed, my thoughts went to a real dark place there, but why not? Reasons I had enough, people didn't just vanish off the internet after all. Okay, I mean, they did sometimes, then they surfaced again after weeks or months of absence, it happened. Maybe they just needed a change of pace, a new identity, a new screen-name and a new community. Or maybe their parents grounded them, taking away their internet-access. It was all possible, on an individual level at least. But all of them, in the span of just a few days? Impossible, something got to them, they really died, I was certain of that. Someone like the warlords, they wouldn't just question you and leave you off, scot free and with just a friendly warning. They would silence you, permanently.

To prevent that, I snuck out of the apartement, careful to wake no one up as I treaded carefully through the living room and out of the door, closing as slowly as I possibly could. Not an easy task, considering my shaking arms, but I managed to do it. Frankly, this wasn't the first time, obviously, though I was never this anxious before, somehow, back then there seemed to be no stakes involved.

Dressed in a grey hoodie, concealing my face god knows why I slowly walked down the stairs. While it was true that the toy store wasn't far from here, I still had to take the train. Reaching it by foot would have been possible, only I just had an hour left at best, so taking a long walk was out of the question. As I made my way to the station I couldn't help but look around, almost jumping out of my skin at every noise, every stray cat moving about in the shadows. It was almost unbearable, every hair stood on end and my heart seemed to be resolved to burst out of my chest. My breath came hard and fast out between my teeth and I had to steady myself at the corner of a street. Did I have a little panic-attack? It was certainly possible, but I had to compose myself, otherwise i'd attract the eyes I so desperately seeked to avoid. In a way, I already looked up to no good anyway, with the hood covering my face. Like a small, skinny drug dealer, I never dared to take it off though. Like they knew my face, of course they didn't, I just... I was confused, can you really fault me for losing my head a little. So I arrived at the station, there were only a few people, it was late after all and a week day to boot, so I was only surrounded by the night owls of this district. And they looked at me funny, of course they did, some kid with a hood, hands buried deep in his pocket, while looking nervously around, shaking all the while. At least I graduated, from a dealer to an addict.

That was fine, it was alright if they perceived me like that as long as no one could identify me as the rumored, the infamous Gunbreaker! I gripped my shaking arm, hard enough until it started to sting and I had to clench my teeth. It was time to end this, never again would I speak that name, I learned my lesson, just...let me survive this, I'm begging you, whoever's in charge of my fate, don't let it end here. People around me started to check the time, I could see them looking briefly at their phones, twisting their faces in annoyance.

The train was late, it was plain to see.

But that wasn't actually possible, haha, it couldn't be late, I needed to get their on time. 9 pm, that's what he said, he'd vanish exactly half an hour later, never to contact me again. So it could not be late! My eyes were glued to my phone, displaying 20:35. Not even an hour left, but then again, the train was only five minutes late. He'd arrive any second now, surely.

So while I stood there, in horror on the brightly lit station, people were slowly leaving the station.

Another five minutes passed, then ten, then twenty.

Until I could only clench my fists, while the tears flowed freely under my grey hood.

Only when there was no way to reach the store in time would the train finally arrive at the station. I boarded it regardless, clinging to this tiny hope that maybe, a one in a million chance, Hermes would still be waiting for me. My heart skipped a beat as the battered door actually creaked open, but as I squinted into the darkness I soon found out:

There was nothing, no clue, no notes, not even the lingering presence of a human being. Maybe he toyed with me from the start, maybe Hermes wasn't even real, not the one I imagined at least...

8

And that was the end for the Gunbreaker.

Not me as a person, nobody ever came for me. While I was devastated, scared out of my wits to the point where I slightly worried my family for a few days, even a whole month almost, nothing ever happened. There was no police force, no assassins, never a mention again of these warlords. Even the Net went silent on these topics, but to be honest, I never really dug all that deep anymore.It was over and done with, I didn't want any part in it anymore. Purged it all out of my memory, Hermes, Decoy, Bloodedge, all these stupid names, I tried not to think about them anymore.

And life became easier!

My grades went up, as I attended school more regularly, I spent more time with my friends, even found myself the occasional girlfriend. Certainly lost my shut-in card over these last highschool years, even if I still enjoyed some video games. They didn't consume my life anymore though.

The only downside of it all? I lived in blissful ignorance.

Somewhere in the back of my head I still remebered the video that started it all, this dreadful execution so on some level I was still very much aware what exactly took place behind the massive walls surrounding my existence. I just didn't care anymore and in some ways, I think that's worse than not looking for the truth in the first place.

Guilt however, was never an emotion that burdened my carefree days, I simply told myself that it was all fake anyway. Not an unreasonable assumption, given that I never received any proof and yet I just knew it to be true. Yes, there were some details that I missed, something was definitely fishy, but I was convinced.

Convinced of the existence of the warlords and their schemes. Yet I chose to ignore it, for my own happiness, leaving the presumed millions of corpses aside.

And so I stood on another station, the subway this time, roughly four years, staring bored down on my phone.

It was at this time, my red-headed destiny passed me without even looking twice.