#/ someone take him to task and sue him for emotional damages.

[moonspower]

vi: *opens his mouth*

everyone around him: you better shut the HELL up. right NOW.

[k-dokja]

Plz plz plz write more Owen knight head cannons 😩

You know, I wrote like, 50 headcanons on the other posts, so my brain is empty at this point. If you ask for more than this without a specific topic, you’re getting the horny. 

— Owen is not that big on getting tattoos himself, nothing against it, it’s simply his preference to not get too many body modifications. If he gets any, he'd want to get tinier ones, under his ear or on the side of his wrist. It won’t be too conspicuous and he'd need a good reason to get one. 

— He'd love to get a small one with you, a matching tattoo is adorable in his eyes. The design will be handled beforehand and he will get a good tattoo artist for the task. If he’s going to do it once, then he better gets it from somewhere nice. Researched the tattoo artist thoroughly before he got there with you, he’d want someone specialized in the style he wants, too. 

— This boy knows he’s pretty, okay, he says as much when he shows up. Not even a disguise can hide his good looks. He got hit on by others even when he was out with you before, he’s always pretty blunt about his rejection for them. He’d turn cold up until they left, unable to deal with their shameless actions using anything but rudeness.

— Then immediately turns over and be all happy and smiley with you. He'd even coddle you extra because he doesn't like you seeing him as anything but warm and loving around you. Needless to say, don't worry about his loyalty, worry about the people he rejected because they might sue him for emotional damage.

— Likes holding your hand even when the two of you are sitting down. He often plays with your hand absentmindedly when he's talking with others. In fact, if possible, he'd have you sitting on his lap while the two of you are out together. It gives him easy access to kiss your shoulder, neck, or cheek and make him feel secure when he can hold you close. Nuzzle on your shoulder as well.

— This one is a special breed of boyfriend who's delighted to go shopping with you, mostly because he spends a lot of time picking out brands and selecting the materials. Probably even more than you do. Let's face, the one getting tired will be you because the athlete here is him. Although, he will treat you after the shopping trip, so not too much of a loss then.

— It's a toss of a coin whether he will pick out something good for himself or not. He actually has a pretty good fashion sense but he has the bad sense of sticking to mostly famous brands. If he got to explore and went out of his comfort zone, his fashion sense would develop wonderfully. 

— For you, however, he has a pretty good eye for female fashion, especially if you're into sporty casual. As mentioned before, he got a good handle when it comes to the quality of the products you’re buying. 

— Even if you don't plan to cycle with him often, as long as you show interest in cycling with him, he will get you a really good bike model. Good for beginners, light, has the safety on since you're only cycling casually. He also finds the idea of you sitting on his backseat adorable. Might get one of those bikes for you, mostly so that he can take you out on a ride when you want to go but doesn't want to cycle.

— Doesn't like being away from you for too long, even if there's a good reason. Wants to video call you pretty much every night. Even if not much happened to your day, he still wants to hear about it. If you're gone for more than a month, you'd have to stop him from trying to book a ticket and get to you. Pouty for a good day afterwards, too. 

— Most of the time, you have to tell him that you’ll do this and that for him if he’s willing to sit still and wait for you to come home. Although, do think it through before you make any promises about what you'd do for him when you're back. Because he will remember.

— Whenever you get sick, people always have to tear him from your bedside for him to get anything done. He'd text you every hour to check on you while he's away unless he knows you'd be sleeping. Will kiss your forehead every time he arrives and every time he leaves. His hand would be holding yours the entire time, too.

— Whenever he showers alone, he often goes with cold water and he doesn't linger too long in the bath either. However, if you're showering with him, he will endure hot water if he has to. Honestly, often because of the height disparity, he won’t get any hot water of his own.

— Loves it when you wash his hair for him, but only when you're taking a bath together. Because when you're showering, he has to crouch, which aches the neck and the back. Either way, expect a lot of kisses and a lot of touching from him because he can't keep his hands to himself, this close to you.

— He often wakes up early for his training. It has become a habit now for him to get up before you. He always showers in the morning, too, it refreshes him for the day. By the time you wake up, he's already preparing breakfast. You'd soon find out that he is the mythical creature called an early bird, while you're probably...some type of permanently exhausted pigeon.

— However, if you tug on his sleeve or try to pull him back to bed by any capacity, goodbye to the rest of his morning schedule because he's not going anywhere. If you try to instigate something, then say goodbye to the rest of his morning, too. Unless there is something important on his agenda, then the rest of the work day is cancelled. He has a more pressing matter to attend to, you.

— Owen feels a sense of entitlement over you once he begins to like you, even if he does eventually listen after you knock some senses into him. In general, as long as he gets to monopolize your time, he’s pretty good at spending quiet time with you. 

— You don’t really pay attention to how often he spends time around you until he’s not with you and someone suddenly asks, “Hey, where’s Owen?” and you look at them all confused like you aren’t his keeper.

[thegirlwhorunswithwinchesters]

Request: “#100 with Dean + ‘younger reader’, smut, fluff” by @emoryhemsworth​ 

Prompt: “Everyone keeps telling me I should stay away from you.” 

Pairing:  Dean x Reader 

Word count: 3.1K  

Warnings: Mentions of age difference, smut, way too many words to call this a drabble (sue me) 

A/N: This one got away from me a little bit. Let’s just all agree to ignore the word count. Also, not entirely unimportant: the Reader has a specific age in this fic due to part of the request being for them to be younger, as noted above. 

Beta: @princessmisery666​ 

JJ’s Rockin’ 100 - PROMPTS || MASTERLIST || ASK BOX 

(gif)

Dean let the Impala roll into one of the empty spots on the motel’s parking lot and shifted his Baby into park. He leaned back, allowing a heavy sigh to pass through his lips. When he glanced up, he caught a glimpse of his reflection in the rearview mirror. He decided he had definitely seen better days.  

The vampire nest he had been tracking, had been easy enough to take out. It was the place they had chosen as their lair that had done most of the damage to his appearance. That dusty old house had been leaning heavily toward a true vamp-cliché.  

Dean hated clichés. Especially if they contained filthy dark basements with earth flooring instead of concrete. One dive to dodge an assault and he had been covered in dirt.  

He reached up to wipe at his face, but the movement just made things worse. A low groan rumbled from his throat. At least the nasty bloodsuckers had gone down fast, and he could get some satisfaction out of that.  

Part of the day’s success was thanks to the other hunter that had been in the room.  

With Sam gone to help out Rowena with something out west, Dean had set off on this hunt alone. He had been in town for less than two hours when you found him. There was something in the way you looked at him that gave Dean an inkling of your intentions, and they didn’t seem to be strictly case related. 

It had been a while since Dean worked with another hunter, whom he had never met before. He had been surprised at how easy it had been. Especially since both of you had not exactly been able to focus solely on the tasks at hand.  

The first couple of comments had been innocent enough. He liked how he could make you bite your bottom lip with a few simple, well-timed words. And he certainly didn’t mind the suggestive remarks you had slipped in whenever the moment allowed for them.  

Another one of those inappropriate pieces of commentary was flung right his way when Dean stepped out of the car. He saw you leaning against your own vehicle a couple of spots down, a smirk on your alluring lips as you took in the sight of the dirt-covered hunter.  

“You are one filthy man, Winchester,” you said, pushing yourself off against the side of your car before making your way over to him.  

How was it you had only a few smears of dust on your shirt and he got the full facial? Not fair.  

“You don’t know the half of it,” he heard himself respond before he could think better of it.  

The smirk on your lips only grew. “Need some help cleanin’ up?” you asked, voice airy and casual but eyes darkened with an underlying, less innocent, motive. “’Cause if so, I’d be happy to offer you my services. I’m really... thorough.”  

Dean’s eyebrows shot up for just a second. He caught himself and quickly turned his expression back to neutral. “Right,” he said, clearing his throat when it suddenly felt awfully dry. “Think I can handle it. I’m quite the expert at getting those hard to reach spots just right.”  

He shut his car door a little harder than intended and started for his motel room, leaving you behind on the parking lot to mull over his words.  

The thought of you followed him into the shower. As he rid his skin of dirt, Dean couldn’t help but imagine it was you who was touching him. Your hands, rough from hunting but skillful and efficient. He could already feel his cock beginning to harden.  

There was still a voice inside his head telling him to walk away from this, to block it all out and ban it from his mind. That voice had been there since the moment he had laid eyes on you. There was no doubt you were younger than him, and not just by a year or two. Calling Bobby to check if you were legit – as he did every time before trusting someone new to hunt alongside him – had confirmed his suspicions.  

But the chemistry was there. The constant flirting. There was no denying that damned sexual tension. It hung in the air between you and weighed down on his conscience. Still, so far, it had done jack to keep him from flirting with you and augmenting the flames.  

You were an adult. He knew there was nothing wrong with the thoughts he was having. But he also knew he had changed over the years. His days of sleeping around with whomever he could persuade with a mere look, had long since ended.  

Dean muttered a few curse words he had picked up from his dad at a very young age and turned off the meager shower stream. After taking care of his little problem, with nothing but you on his mind, he got out of the tub and grabbed a towel.  

Fifteen minutes later he was hunched over the trunk of the Impala, forcefully stuffing his duffel bag alongside his machete that still had some vamp blood on it.  

“Not leaving without saying goodbye, are you?”  

Dean turned around to see you walking over to him across the parking lot. He could tell you had taken a shower yourself; your hair was damp and you were wearing a different set of clothes. Now that the hunt was over, you seemed to have traded your practical jeans and a t-shirt for a denim skirt and a yellow top with thin straps Dean would have loved to slide off your exposed shoulders.  

“Don’t tell me you’re going to get all emotional now,” he said, trying to force his eyes to focus back on your face.  

You scoffed. “You make me feel a lot of things, Winchester, but sentiment isn’t one of them.”  

Dean closed the trunk and walked around the car. He wasn’t sure if he was doing it simply because he had finished packing up his things, or if he felt the need to put some distance in between the two of you. There was no telling what he might do if you got close enough for him to see whether you were wearing a bra underneath that top or not.  

You didn’t notice his futile attempt and just continued to slowly close the gap.  

“I was thinking,” you spoke, “maybe we could go grab a drink. You know, celebrate our win from earlier?”  

Dean watched as the space between him and you grew smaller with your slow approach. “Not sure there’s much to celebrate, sweetheart,” he said, hand already on the door of his car as if he would jump right in and speed off. “This was probably one of the easiest hunts I’ve ever been on.”  

“That’s because you had me covering your ass.” Your grin turned cocky. Dean decided he liked that look on you. “But you know what they say; it’s important to celebrate the small victories every once in a while. Besides, from what I’ve heard, you’re not usually one to shy away from a drink or two.”  

By the time your lips stopped moving, so had the rest of your body, leaving the two of you only inches apart. Dean noticed you were about to take a final step so your bodies would be touching. He took a step back in an attempt to keep that from happening, but soon felt his back pressing against the side of the Impala.  

Dean cleared his throat. Why did it have to keep feeling so dry? 

“That so?” he said, trying to keep up the casual façade just like you seemed to be doing so effortlessly. “What else have you heard about me?”  

“Not much,” you simply shrugged, “except...”  

You paused and took a moment to glance up at Dean through your eyelashes in a way that made him want to groan. But he clenched his jaw and suppressed the urge.   

Dean had a few ideas of the things other hunters out there were saying about him. The Winchesters had a reputation, as a family, but also individually. Whatever it was you had heard, he had a feeling it wouldn’t surprise him. 

He coaxed, “Except?” 

You were still glancing up at him in that irresistible way when you told him, “Everyone keeps telling me I should stay away from you.”  

If Dean hadn’t been so busy staring at your lips as they moved, he would have laughed. “Everyone’s probably right.”  

“Probably?” you repeated. An eyebrow shot up, pulling at your perfect features, while you seemed to be measuring the seriousness of his words. After a moment of contemplation, you decided, “I’ll take my chances.”  

Dean felt his brain scrambling for a way to respond. If the dumbfounded look on his face wasn’t giving him away already, the strain in his jeans probably did the trick.  

But your expression changed when he remained quiet. He watched you take a step back, giving him room to breathe. You turned your head but he still managed to catch the look of hurt that flashed through your eyes. It made his insides twist painfully.  

“Right,” you spoke as if you understood. Your head bobbed in a curt nod. “I’ll let you get back to packing.”  

You were an open book in that moment. Dean could see the doubt all over your features. You were most likely wondering if you had read the signs wrong. He had to admit, he had let himself go a little when flirting with you these past few days. But it had all been so easy, felt so natural, with you.  

Dean dragged a hand over his face and took a deep breath. When he noticed you starting to turn away, he said, “Listen, kid-”  

“I’m not a kid.” Your tone was harsh and judgmental. The look of hurt on your face made way for obstinacy.  

Yet, still, Dean couldn’t help but scoff at your words.  

The thunder in your eyes told him you didn’t like his reaction. “Ten years isn’t that much, Dean. I know you know it, too.” You weren’t wrong, but damn if he was going to admit that out loud.  

“Eleven,” was all he said instead.  

Your answer came quickly, “I’m turning thirty in three months.”  

“Right, which means, as of right now, you are twenty-nine. Which makes me over a decade your senior.” Dean was still debating whether or not this argument was even worth it.  

He should have expected your response, but it still managed to catch him off guard.  

“And?” Your tone was challenging, clearly daring him to give you a good reason why any of this was an issue.  

Dean only pursed his lips and narrowed his eyes. He looked over your face, took in your features and stopped at your eyes. They were hard; stubborn. But there was also still that clear hint of lust he had seen every time you had looked at him during the vampire hunt. He knew that was what it was, because he felt it, too.  

“And...” he started slowly, dragging out the word. Dean was trying to buy himself some more time to think this through, even though, deep inside, he knew he had already made his decision.  

There was a spark between you two that could no longer be denied the opportunity to turn into a sea of flames. Just because this wasn’t usually his thing anymore, didn’t mean he should deny himself what he so clearly wanted. It was obvious you both wanted this, and as long as you were two consenting adults, Dean knew he shouldn’t get in his own head so much.  

You had heard about his reputation and still you wanted to get closer instead of run the other way. Who was he to dismiss your grit? There was no need for him to suppress his urges when you were so consciously drawing them out. The only need he had to listen to was the one causing the indomitable pull he felt toward you.  

“...I’ll be expecting you to get the bill since it was your idea,” he finally finished his response.  

There was nothing subtle about the way you reacted when you realized you had won the argument. “I better get my wallet, then,” you said, clearing your throat and straightening your top as if you still thought you could pull off playing it cool.  

Dean watched as you walked away, eyes on your swaying hips until they disappeared around the corner of the motel.  

Once he was alone, he let his body fall against the Impala and heaved a sigh. It took him about ten seconds to make a decision. Now that he had let go of any unnecessary thoughts holding him back, he had a clear view of what he wanted. And he wasn’t going to get it standing and waiting around.  

“Screw this,” he grumbled to himself as he started for your motel room.  

You opened the door at the same moment Dean lifted his hand to reach for the handle. A look of surprise took over your face but you quickly recovered and stepped aside. You didn’t say anything, just let him inside with a simple nod of your head.  

Dean looked around the motel room as if he was interested in the musty décor. He heard you close the door behind you but he didn’t turn around.  

“Thought we were going out for a drink.” He didn’t have to see your face to know that cocky grin was back. He could clearly hear it in the amused tone of your voice.  

“I was thinking,” he said, finally turning to look at you, “maybe we should take care of the more important business first.” He watched your face for any possible last indicator that he wasn’t supposed to be here. “I’ll take you out to dinner after.”  

That last word hung in the air between you two for a moment, until your lips caught it and you repeated it back to him in a question.  

“After?” Your grin dissolved slightly and your face grew more serious. There was that hint of lust again, only this time it started to take over in your eyes until it was all Dean could focus on.  

Instead of specifying things for you with words, he thought it best to let his actions speak for him. He was in front of you in a second. His hands grabbed your shoulders and pressed you up against the door. Rough fingers slid down to your waist and found their way underneath your top, gripping your waist tightly.  

“Which restaurant are we going to?”  

Your question was about the last thing he had expected to hear – and Dean had heard quite a few strange remarks during sex over the years.  

“Hm?” was the only reply he could give you. He was too busy pulling off your top and pressing his lips against the base of your neck to care much for conversation.  

“It’s just that I’m really picky about the things I put in my mouth.” 

Though you tried to sound serious, it was clear to Dean you were playing games, just like you had been doing these past few days. Clever, dubious words in an attempt to throw him off. It was the breathlessness with which you spoke that gave away you wouldn’t be able to keep that up much longer.  

Dean needed you to give in. He needed you. Period.  

“I’ll take you someplace nice,” he promised against your collarbone, his fingers now working your skirt, struggling to get it down with you still pressed against the door.  

You reached up and put your hands against his chest, pushing him back only slightly. Then you took your skirt and panties off in one motion, leaving you naked in front of the hungry hunter.  

“Such a gentleman,” you responded, biting your lip as you watched Dean take off his own clothes in record time.  

His hands were back on you in a flash and this time his lips found yours. They were rough, demanding, but you had no trouble keeping up. “You’ve got me all wrong,” he growled before pulling at your bottom lip with his teeth. He pulled your body against his own and he could feel his hard length trapped between the two of you, pressed against your belly. “I’ll show you.”  

Dean hooked his hands behind your thighs and lifted you up in one smooth motion. He carried you over to the bed, placing you down on the mattress before positioning himself between your legs.  

“Look at you,” he said huskily. He took his time drinking in the full sight of your naked frame. “All of this, for me.”  

Your eyes met, charging the electricity that was coursing between you. Dean bent forward and kissed you hard. It only lasted a moment before he moved down, covering your neck, your collarbone, your chest. He paused at your nipples, giving them a little extra attention. They were already hard and ready for him, but he continued to suck and pull until you were arching your back.  

His lips traveled further down, pressing sloppy kisses to your stomach. The closer he got to your core, the more impatient the noises sounded that were coming from your throat. They were like music to his ears, so Dean willed himself to go a little slower.  

Your hips bucked restlessly but he used his large hands to grab a hold of them and pin you back down.   

“Isn’t this the way you like it, sweetheart?” he spoke, lifting his head to catch your eyes. They were pleading, desperate. It made his cock twitch. “Thought you liked to play games.”  

You threw your head back and groaned. He could feel you trying to buck your hips again.  

“Dean.”  

The breathy way you moaned his name was enough to throw Dean’s will for payback out the window. He let go of your hips to spread your legs a little wider. His head found its way between your thighs.  

The sounds you made when his eager tongue entered your wet entrance were almost as sweet as the taste of you.  

That afternoon, Dean showed you exactly the kind of man he really was.   

By the time you had relieved each other of all pent-up frustration, you were too tired to go out. Instead, Dean ordered takeout. You laid next to each other in the small bed, eating and talking together.  

Once the food was halfway gone, your hands were on him again and Dean pulled you closer.  

The rest of the day, neither one of you left the room.  

[itsclydebitches]

Welcome back, everyone! 

We’re now on Chapter Eight and once again the story is told from Velvet’s perspective. So our starting question is: why is she getting the most attention so far? If memory serves, the PoV order has been Coco, Velvet, Sun, Fox, Yatsu, Velvet, Scarlet, Velvet again — meaning that in a text balancing eight main characters, so far four of them have received a single chapter, two (Sage and Neptune) zero chapters, and one three chapters. That seems rather imbalanced. I suppose it makes a certain amount of sense if we factor in RWBY viewers’ familiarity with Velvet, but I’d wager we’ve gotten far more screen time with Sun overall. My only point being, why Velvet? It’s not that you can’t make her a focal point of the narrative, I just haven’t seen anything to explain that choice in the first 100+ pages. Her perspective hasn’t brought anything unique to the story, something we couldn’t have gotten from the seven other characters involved in these events… but here we are, back with Velvet for the next six pages.

Yeah, this chapter is short. Silver lining?

We learn that Team NOVA is on their second mission — why bother showing us the first when they’re an entirely new, volatile team, right? That would be silly! — escorting a technician “through the Grimm-infested mountains just outside of Oscuro Combat School.” So Shade students regularly conduct real huntsmen work but throw a fit over having to spar with one another? Interesting. See, if I were a civilian who got even a glimpse of what goes on inside these schools, I would not trust these kids with my life. 

Lo and behold, things go horribly! We learn right off the bat that “The technician had been knocked unconscious in a skirmish with a band of Dromedons.” For those of you with an iffy memory like mine, these are the camel-like creatures that spit acid and… that’s about all we know about them. That’s really all we need for this scene though because this grimm nailed the tech in his leg, a wound which now requires “serious medical attention.” Great. Gus Caspian, who I learn is a younger friend from the previous novel, is trying to treat the wound as best he can, clearly a little freaked out about being here, “but apparently Oscuro teachers didn’t coddle students any more than Theodore did.”

Do you expect them to? Despite Atlas being the only one who combines their academies with their military, we can’t pretend like these schools aren’t teaching teenagers to wield deadly weapons and kill things with them. There’s no institution on Earth (or Remnant) that should “coddle” those looking to take on that responsibility. I mean yeah, we had moments where Ozpin encouraged them to be kids, like after the food fight and during the dance, but he still took a hard stance whenever there was an actual lesson in the works: “No. You will be falling.” Based on the age of the students, the academies are akin to colleges. In real world college if you don’t do your work or don’t pay attention in class, well… nothing that bad happens. This is by no means a call to not do you work, merely an acknowledgement from a formerly grade obsessed student that individual test scores really don’t have the impact on your life that it feels like they will at the time. Trust me on this. So yeah, some leeway is great in the real world… but when the students are fighting monsters and defending others from death? Then the schools should absolutely discourage any slacker-esque attitude. The concept of any institution “coddling” huntsmen is horrifying. 

Note though that the chapter starts after all the action has taken place. We skip the rest of reinitiation. We skip NOVA’s first mission. We skip the attack that landed Velvet in this predicament. It’s not automatically a bad technique provided you’re skipping over boring parts to get to the interesting bits… but this isn’t interesting. We learn almost nothing new from this scene: Velvet misses her old team, her new teammates don’t believe in her, Nebula is mean. Those are the emotional beats here — things we’ve known for at least three chapters now. The only thing that’s introduced is the advertisement on Gus’ scroll, which could have been been added to any other scene.

Let’s revise a bit: 

We get to see the battle against the Dromedons wherein Velvet uses her camera, revealing her weapon to Team NOVA and earning more of their respect. Information about Gus’ improvement is shown through his combat abilities as he’s unexpectedly chucked into this battle (perhaps with him using his semblance to further his growth there too). While taking a hit he loses his scroll, slightly damaging it. In the aftermath Velvet retrieves it for him and finds this ad displayed, growing curious. Over the course of Gus’ explanations the rest of Team NOVA is clued into Velvet’s worry and suspicion. What’s wrong? It’s just an ad. But you’re clearly hiding something… Now, does she tell her new team about the Crown, or keep it silent and risk the tenuous trust they’ve just created?

Why is Myers skipping over all the action and potential growth?

Instead we get the boring stuff. Velvet admires Gus’ uniform because of how it’s built for the heat and recalls that “Coco had been messing around with new outfit designs for Team CFVY.” I swear though, 95% of my enjoyment with this novel comes from the throwaway details. I would actually like seeing how Coco combines her personal love of fashion with the necessity of designing combat gear appropriate for the environment. Maybe they frame it as merely a hobby outside of their huntsmen work, giving them an excuse to keep helping their former teammates. That could be cool! 

Though of course, this is the series where Cinder, Neo, Hazel, and Emerald all walk into the ice Kingdom with skin bared, so...

(You all are going to freeze to death, have fun.) 

“Velvet’s ears swiveled around, listening for danger.” That’s anything detail I like. At the very least Before the Dawn remembers that Velvet is a faunus and frequently incorporates that into her character. She’s on the lookout because other than Gus tending the unconscious technician, she’s alone “on the sidelines.” It’s framed simultaneously as the group rejecting her and as an unavoidable necessity: “it wasn’t like she didn’t have an important task of her own [repairing the relay], one that none of her teammates had the expertise to perform.”

Wait. Why does Velvet have this expertise?

The justification is that she’s “handy with electronics” and “Anesidora was incredibly complicated, and she’d designed it herself,” but that’s like saying “I built a computer so I’ll come fix your refrigerator. That’s easier.” I don’t know, maybe someone with the ability to build a computer from the ground up could figure out a refrigerator on the fly, but they feel like different skill-sets to me. All electronics are not built the same and claiming that because you understand one you automatically understand all others — even supposedly simpler pieces of tech — seems a little suspect. If that were the case, we’d have no need for experts who fix your phone, your television, your toaster, and your watch. Surely if you understand one you understand the others, right? It’s the same assumption here: If Velvet can understand building a hard light weapon, then she must understand relay communications too!

…right.

She even goes so far as to say that they “probably should have left the technician at Oscuro—she could have done this on her own” yet just a few minutes later it’s, “Velvet double-checked everything. She didn’t know what was wrong. She glanced back at the technician, Gus still at his side. The guy was out cold. He’d taken a pretty hard knock to the head. Well, she had tried.” So she’s confident enough to think that the technician is unnecessary one moment and then looking to him for help the next? Which of course isn’t followed by any sort of revelation. Velvet doesn’t acknowledge that her knowledge isn’t as specialized as she had assumed it was, or that huntsmen rely on non-combat experts for other things. She just shrugs and…

…kicks it.

Yeah. Velvet’s skill amounts to kicking the box until it works. Which, of course, it does. 

I can’t with this novel.

More seriously though, that’s terrible characterization. Not only does it undermine Velvet’s actual skill to reduce it to being “handy with electronics” — isn’t every huntsmen “handy with electronics” then, considering they all build their gun/energy/dust weaponry in school? — but it adds another layer of supposed uselessness to the adult professionals around her. Theodore doesn’t teach them anything because, as their headmaster, he’s removed from everyday interactions. Rumpole can’t be trusted now and every lesson she tries to impart is rejected. The unnamed technician who is referred to only by his professional title is deemed unnecessary, knocked out, and then indeed proves useless when Velvet magically does his job for him. So why are any of them in school? Why aren’t they just running the world with their superior knowledge and skill-sets? Every time the RWBY franchise puts its characters in a position where they might actually learn something through failure, it pulls back at the last second. ‘Never mind, they actually knew this all along!’ Or, ‘Never mind, the things they’ve been taught are stupid, so best to forget them!’ I struggle to understand what kind of story I’m reading — or watching — when the characters are already framed as perfect. Or rather, flaws absolutely exist (as these recaps attest), but the story pretends they’re not there. 

I hesitate to use the term “Mary Sue” here due to its origins and history. Meaning, the Mary Sue was conceived of as a parody, a deliberate exaggeration to comment on the types of characters written in the Star Trek fandom. Then people began using “Mary Sue” as a catch-all term for any female character that people deemed too talented (regardless of how talented their male counterparts might be), we started acknowledging the sexist undertones of that, then started reclaiming the term as something to celebrate and embrace… but we haven’t quite gotten there yet. “Mary Sue” is still a pretty loaded name to force on a character and it carries a lot of implications that I absolutely do not want to attach to Velvet. Yet it’s also the closest term I know to describe the act of an author giving a character what feels like a badly justified skillset. Such as “handy with technology” actually meaning “can fix anything powered by electricity or Dust as the plot needs.” 

Velvet is the action movie hacker going, “I’m in” is what I’m getting at. It’s not a compliment lol.

During all this grimm watching and relay fixing, Gus wants to know why they don’t just high-tail it out of there. Especially since the person they brought to do a specific job can no longer do that job. Mission’s a bust. Velvet gives what sounds like a decent explanation: “Retreating from Grimm isn’t an option when you’re fighting this close to a settlement. If we leave without destroying them, the Grimm will just look for another target.” AKA the settlement itself. 

Thing is, by this logic any grimm that are currently close enough to attack them are already close enough to the settlement to latch onto those people as the next target. They’d pick up on the civilians whether Velvet’s group was there to kill them or not. The group is there though, so they feel responsible, but why not just head to the settlement anyway? If the grimm follow you, fine. You can still fight them AND you now get the additional benefit of any other huntsmen/students who might be there. If they don’t follow you, great. If they were close enough to the settlement all along… again, this was always going to happen. 

Which, to be clear, isn’t the worst stance to take. I understand them wanting to avoid any potential risk by leaving/leading the grimm towards anyone else. I only want to point out the additional stupidity of fighting them when you’ve already got an unconscious civilian in your care, a barely trained student, and the whole reason you came out here might now be for naught. Yeah, Velvet gets the relay working with her magic kick and yeah, the rest of the team handles the grimm just fine, but none of them are able to see into the future and know that both these events will occur. Gus’ ‘Why are we staying here? It’s dangerous and pointless’ question has merit.

But of course, no one in RWBY would ever consider retreat. It’s a very iffy characteristic at this point. 

We learn — or at least I learn now — that Gus’ semblance is the ability to enhance others’ emotions, so basically the opposite of Ren’s. That would indeed be incredibly handy provided he has good control over it. We get another reference to Yatsuhashi’s “meditation exercises” that helped Gus’ grandfather in the last novel. Velvet theorizes that his improved memory has more to do with Yatsuhashi’s semblance than any generic meditation: “No one knew for sure what Yatsuhashi had done with his Semblance when he’d tried to heal Edward’s mind … even Yatsuhashi wasn’t sure. His ability was to erase memories, but it was possible that there was more to Yatsu’s Semblance than that.” Um… subtle yikes? Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad things have turned out well for the guy, but if I were the grandfather—or a family member of his—I wouldn’t really want a student messing around with my mind when he “wasn’t sure” what he was doing. Especially when the base skill is to erase memories, not recover or strengthen them. Honestly, I love taking a good look at fantasy series because half the time you realize how horrifying things actually are, once you strip away the common place aspects of these skills. An equivalent third year college student is running around experimenting with peoples’ memories to see if he can achieve something other than erasing them. Great!

The good thing is that Yatsuhashi is just as suspicious of this power as I am. Velvet things that he “hated messing with people’s minds.” Understandable, bud. I’d hate the ability too.

While they’ve got this time alone, Gus mentions that he had planned to contact Velvet soon anyway. Two of his classmates have gone missing and though his school has told Shade about it—there’s at least some of that additional info that Rumpole mentioned—he wanted to let her know too because remember, no one in this franchise trusts the professionals to fix problems. It’s a mindset I’d better understand if the professionals were actually inept. Or the protagonists weren’t training to be those professionals. It’s still exceedingly weird to me that there’s so little respect and trust for huntsmen while they desperately try to become huntsmen…

Something something broken systems, but RWBY isn’t interested in exploring that. 

So yeah, Gus ropes Velvet in with the hope that she can help. He says that they were last seen attending a new club called Mirage that hosts one-on-one fights for a championship title. So… it’s not really a club, right? Sure, sure, we’ve all seen Fight Club, but generally that’s used to describe dancing, not fighting. It’s a rather misleading term for what they were actually looking for. No one else finds this odd though. Nor that the information was sent out to select, powerful individuals. Nothing shady about this, folks! Velvet obviously recognizes all these details—a club, powerful semblances, a crown in the advertisement—and asks Gus to pass it along to her.

Our plot forwarded ever so slightly, their conversation ends as Arslan calls Velvet on the now fixed connection. One of the first thing she says is that Octavia used the other students as bait for the grimm.

At least Velvet shares my reaction: “What?!”

Octavia then takes an already bad situation and makes it that much worse. Listening in, she defiantly says, “That’s right. And it worked. It’s called strategy.” She confirms that the students are “mostly” okay and taunts Velvet about inviting them to her “Baby Brigade and you can all cry about it!” I hope I don’t need to take up precious document space by explaining how awful this is. Overlooking the fact that these would-be huntsmen are willing to put their younger peers’ lives in danger like that—and then mock them for needing mental health resources after the fact—why is Octavia the one pulling the murderous Mean Girl act? Yeah, she was an asshole during reinitiation, but wasn’t the whole point of that to demonstrate that she and Velvet got a little closer? Even if she won’t admit it? She saved Velvet from flying down that hole, but now she risks the lives of students at least three years her junior? If anyone should be this violent and antagonistic towards Velvet, it’s Nebula. The most she’s done for Velvet is offer a hand up, otherwise we just watched her express glee in getting to fight her and mock her for not abandoning Beacon… the same sort of behavior we’re seeing from Octavia now. Does Myers think that these two characters are interchangeable? That he can just pick one willy-nilly per chapter and let her play at being Velvet’s Mean Girl?

As a lovely anon reminded me recently, these are also the girls that were created and backed by fans. If I had put money and creative energy into these OCs, I’d be pretty frustrated with how the RT team has been treating them.

Arslan at least is complimentary towards Velvet for fixing the relay—“Truly, great work today”— and Velvet herself is appropriately shocked at Octavia’s behavior. That’s more emotional consistency than I’ve come to expect of this book, so I’ll take whatever little bits I can get.

Arslan signs off with plans to meet back up soon and Velvet thinks about how “everyone was safe after the mission, which was no small thing.” I’d agree… except for Velvet’s early thoughts about how easy this mission supposedly was and Octavia’s decision to put her teammates in danger. It sounds like if anything did go sideways, it’s in part because you chose to enter this overconfidently and then actively made it more dangerous.

Finally, the chapter ends with Velvet believing that she might be able to make her new team work with time. Our final line, in its own paragraph is: “If they had time.”

Am I the only one who finds this weird? The line reads like an omniscient bit of foreboding. Velvet thinks about how she just needs time and we, the reader, hear that this won’t be possible. Except this chapter is told from Velvet’s perspective. So why does she think they might not have time? Because of the Crown? I assume there will be an attack towards the end of the novel—can’t have a RWBY story without the final, epic battle—but right now Velvet has no reason to believe that an attack is imminent, or that the teams will change back, or anything else that would interfere with her hopes of strengthening this relationship… so why the rather confident sounding pessimism? I don’t know. I don’t pretend to know anymore lol.

At least this chapter was short? As said, silver linings. We’re still treading water though: Velvet’s bond with her new team seems to have regressed after two missions, rather than improved, and Gus didn’t reveal anything we didn’t already know, just further confirmed it. I assume that next chapter Velvet and the others will visit Mirage. Let’s hope something actually happens then. 

See you! 💜

[Ko-Fi]

[incoherentbabblings]

An Endless Hope (1/9)

After a horrendous blizzard falls over Gotham, Tim undergoes a sharp change in character before disappearing. Upon discovering what has become of him, Stephanie sets off on a solo journey in a magic realm to bring him home, meeting some faces which seems awfully familiar along the way.

New fic time! Archive Of Our Own Link Click Click!

“Can’t believe he’s gonna be forty-five.”

“I know, right?”

“Bruce’ll be an old man soon.”

Tim tutted, herding Stephanie down an aisle with the metal cart he was pushing. “Don’t tell him that.”

Stephanie scoffed. “What? Has he got a younger clone of himself in a giant egg somewhere ready to pop when someone utters those words?”

Tim stopped pushing the cart, turned ninety degrees, and gave Steph an indescribable look.

“I was being sarcastic, Tim.”

Tim said nothing, then slowly rotated back to push the empty cart, Stephanie trailing behind.

They’d gone to the garden centre because Stephanie was willing to look everywhere and anywhere for inspiration for Bruce’s upcoming birthday. Tim, ever dutiful, followed along. It was a rubbish time of year to go to a garden centre – late January – as the entire place was filled with on sale Christmas decorations and half dead flowers that would no doubt complete their journey to the grave if buried in the frigid soil. The poor choice of plants was reflected in the number of customers, of which there were maybe three others trailing up and down the greenhouse aisles.

“I guess that’s not fair,” Stephanie continued to voice to the relative silence, only the distant tinny music and the dodgy wheel squeaking as they rolled along filled the lulls in conversation. “That would make Alfred positively decrepit.”

“And that he is not.” Tim said very firmly.

“No…Oooh?” Stephanie became distracted. “Oh, Tim look at these!”

Heaving the cart round the corner after her with an almighty sigh, he found her standing next to small potted flowering plants. Stephanie was pilfering through them, looking for particular colours.

Tim peered at one of the little cards slotted in the soil and chortled.

“Roses? Really? Steph I’m not sure roses are gonna cut it for Bruce’s forty-fifth.”

“Oh, don’t worry about that you big baboon—”

“’Scuse you.”

“– I’m looking at these for us, not him.”

Tim gazed at Stephanie. Stephanie, in her bright blue hand knitted beanie that she had made for herself over the Christmas break to distract from finals. Stephanie, in an oversized fluorescent plastic jacket (the kind that belonged in an early episode of Power Rangers) that somehow managed to make her look twice as wide than she truly was. Stephanie, with her flushed cheeks from the cold and little pearly teeth showing off in a big grin, golden hair bunched up into two pigtails that fell down her back.

Tim couldn’t help it; he melted a little at the sight of her.

“You’re staring.” She murmured, not looking away from her task.

Tim sucked on his teeth. “Maybe I want to. That allowed?”

“Sure. You have my permission.”

“Gracious.”

Tim pecked her on the cheek, causing Stephanie to laugh like a snorting pig. With a little happy noise, she found the two plants she wanted. One lilac and one deep red bunch. They didn’t look like ordinary roses to Tim, not like the kind you would pick up from a convenience store in a small bundle for an anniversary. No, these roses were flatter and broader, and he could see a number of buds on both sets of plants.

“I want these.” Stephanie said. “Help me pick two nice boxes to put them in?”

“Do we have space on the windowsill?”

They didn’t have a garden. Not truly. Though Tim’s apartment did allow roof access, it was not really the place to be growing a little garden. They also didn’t really have a balcony to fill with plant pots. Places for greenery were limited in their home.

“They’ll fit.”

Tim nodded, and she sat them down in the cart. A moments silence passed, and she pouted.

Sighing, Tim breathed, “What is it?”

“Ask me why I want them.”

Nodding with his entire torso, Tim moved off, heading towards glazed plant pots and boxes.

“Why do you want them?”

“’Cause they’re pretty.” She skipped after him and saw as he ran his tongue along his teeth, amused at her glib nature. “Aaaaaand, I wanna do an experiment.”

“Experiment?”

“Yes. I gathered you like those.”

“Steph.” His tone was a gentle warning.

“’Kay, ‘kay. Sorry. I just thought…” She paused, tapping her nails against a terra cotta pot. The sound was nice to listen to. “Well, you know how people say you should live together before you get married? To make sure you can actually stand being around each other twenty-four-seven?”

Tim clenched his jaw and nodded. “Yes?”

Stephanie said nothing, gnawing her lip. Tim tried to comfort her, to reassure her, by smiling, but even he felt it come across more like a grimace. Setting the empty pot back down, Steph leaned over and selected two narrow glazed boxes, ones long and slim enough to slot on their windowsill.

“It’s the same with kids. You gotta do a test run first. A proper test run. And I don’t mean what I did when I was fifteen.” She laughed uncomfortably, then looked very sad. Tim went to grab her hand, but she snatched it back and snorted, bravado back in place. “It’s a challenge. We can’t have a kid until we can keep a pet –”

Tim couldn’t help it, he finally butt in, exclaiming, “Who said we’re having children?”

But Stephanie soldiered on, “—And we can’t keep a pet until we can look after a plant. Both of us.”

“I… I’m nineteen Steph. We can get a plant in ten years or so.”

Weird conversation.

Stephanie sighed, setting the plant pots in the cart. “I feel old. Much older than twenty sometimes.”

“We’ve been through more than what some people experience in a lifetime.”

She patted his cheek. “I guess so.”

“You can still be a kid.” Tim said later as they loaded up his car. No luck with finding anything for Bruce, but at least their living room windowsill would look nice. “There’s no timeline for this kind of stuff. Well, in your own head at least… society may side eye it but honestly –”

Stephanie slapped the trunk down with a loud slap and changed the subject. “I’ll think of something else. Don’t suppose he’d want a scarf or anything?”

“If you made him one Steph, I’d think he’d like that.”

“Huh.” They both got in the car, Tim in the driver’s seat, Stephanie googling nearby craft stores. “There’s a thought. I can pick up some nice wool round campus on Monday.”

Tim paused after he lit the ignition, eyebrows furrowed in thought. A moment passed, then he turned the car back off, and rotated to look Stephanie in the eye. Warily, she watched him.

“You mean it,” He asked, “about the whole plant thing?”

She growled, growing defensive. “I want to look after something and do it well. Sue me that it’s just starting off with a plant.”

“No, no. I get that. I mean do you not feel like a kid anymore?”

The bubbling anger melted away, and she cooed sympathetically. “Do you?”

“Did I ever?” Huffing, he tapped the steering wheel, then he looked distinctly guilt ridden. “No. That’s not fair. I did. Especially compared to you.”

“My childhood was mediocrely bad, Tim, but I did have one.” She tugged his earlobe. Tim frowned at her downplaying her pain, as always. It was impossible to get her to be serious about herself nowadays. Tim’s pain she took seriously. Cassandra’s pain she took seriously. Damian’s pain she took seriously. Her own pain though… “No comparing hurt. How does that help you or me?”

“I know, I know,” He conceded. Then he was silent, musing something still.

Stephanie’s hand moved from his ear to his jaw, cradling it. Lowering her tone, she asked,

“Where’s your head taken you?”

“I’m gonna be twenty this July.”

“Mhhmm! It’s a big one. The end of your teenage years.”

“I just… don’t know if we’ve got to do everything we should have done. I mean, so much of our adolescence was taken up with…” He trailed off. “And what makes an adult an adult anyway? I mean, look at Bruce.”

“I try not to.”

Tim actually giggled. “I just mean, he has the emotional maturity of a ten-year-old.” A sudden idea came to Tim, and he perked up in his usual manner once hit by his clever notions. “Hey, how about we travel over the summer?”

“What?”

Tim started the car back up and began the drive to his apartment on Park Row.

“It’s your final year at college, and you’ll be turning twenty-one in August. I’ve got my twentieth in July. Let’s do one last hurrah. Go to Disneyland.”

As they exited the parking lot Stephanie burst out laughing.

“Is that what childhood is? A trip to Disneyland?”

“No!” He exclaimed, face red. “No, that’s not what I meant… I just mean… I just mean…”

“Be selfish for a while. Forget all those responsibilities for a few weeks?”

“Yeah. You deserve that.” Breathing a sigh of relief, he smiled. Stephanie had a knack for cutting through to the bone of an issue. She understood what he was trying to say.

“So do you.” She smiled and tapped his cheek fondly, then settled in for the drive.

They got stuck for twenty minutes trying to cross from one island to another, but it didn’t bother either of them. Stephanie playfully being bad at singing at whatever nineteen eighties anthem came on over the radio. Tim knew she was just playing. She was as good a singer as she was a pianist – unpractised and a little clumsy – but it caused Tim to stop and watch every time. Her screeching to Take on Me was not her best effort, but it made Tim smile all the same.

She snatched the keys and rushed inside when they got back, leaving Tim to trundle behind her, balancing pots and flowers in his arms.

“I seriously have to look after this plant?” He moaned. With a grunt he got down on the floor by the window, setting everything out in place.

“Yes,” muttered Stephanie, throwing towels on the floor and reading instructions online of how to transfer plants from pot to pot. She had thought ahead – for once – and realised that maybe flinging dirt around would damage the living room rug.

Stephanie had moved into his apartment last August, about four months after they had returned to being a couple. For honest and goodness for real this time.

Dick and Babs had made many a teasing (but fond) comment. Cassandra and Duke had been happy, but largely unaffected by the decision. Damian had not been impressed. Jason really didn’t care.

Bruce had said nothing, which was somehow more worrying than his usual disapproving grunts.

So they had, for the most part, been left to it. Stephanie had swiftly turned the apartment (and the Nest) into as much her space as Tim’s. He didn’t mind, as she had a knack for clutter which made the town house feel less like a base and more like a home. Nothing made him feel more happy than coming home from Wayne Enterprises to see Steph sat on the floor, battered laptop on the coffee table, highlighted pages and mugs scattered everywhere, as she screwed up her face trying to write another essay on John Locke and Jean Jacques Rousseau’s theories on social contracts. The normality was an anchor, one he had so desperately needed in recent years.

Stephanie, meanwhile, had relished the chance to have her own space. To leave her mother had been hard, harder than she had realised at first, but it wasn’t like she wasn’t on the phone with her twice a week, and still compelled to attend scrabble night every Friday (Tim semi reluctantly in tow occasionally). She just hadn’t realised how difficult it would be to leave again. Even if it was, this time, under totally normal circumstances. Every kid has to move out, right? And it’s not like she’d never see her mother again, right? Stephanie’s mother was an adult, she could take care of herself. Steph wasn’t needed to watch her night and day.

But still, there were days when she craved her mother’s morning waffles, or warm shaky hugs.

Tim was a pretty good substitute though.

Speaking of, Tim crawled over to her, snuggle bug that he was, not so subtly looking for affection. He grabbed one of her pigtails and tugged the elastic off so he could braid her hair. She really had let it grow to a ridiculous length, long enough for Bruce and Babs both to chide her. One day it would get caught, or someone would grab it, or it would catch fire or something. The honest reason for letting it grow was…well it was embarrassing and shallow.

Steph sat quietly, letting Tim very carefully and methodically Dutch braid her hair, as she read. Even now, after several months reunited, she could tell he was still testing boundaries. Not just with what she was comfortable with, but also himself. Casual intimacy. Frightening stuff. Well, maybe for him. Steph adored the attention and giving attention in return. Tim’s affections were not to be tolerated, or even endured. They were something to enjoy and indulge in. They were something to grow obsessively fond over, especially after the dry spell of their late teen years. She had got it back and was not going to let it go again so easily.

So, she let him hold her hand whenever he reached for it. She let him lean against her during long hours of stakeout during patrol. She let him kiss her whenever he wanted. She wanted it too. Constantly. Like she was playing catch up with the last three years.

Tim finished one braid then shuffled around so he could start the second. Stephanie sat still until he finished his task, then signalled for him to pay attention as she moved her lilac roses into their new home. He observed carefully, as Tim never half-assed anything, then he cautiously began to pack fresh soil into his glazed box. Stephanie watched him and his concentrated face. Furrowed brows, chewed lips, unsure but steady fingers. Very slow. Very methodical. Textbook job.

He looked at her when he was done though, expectant of some sort of comment. Still desperate for approval.

“Good.” She said, raising her eyebrows. She sat the two boxes on the windowsill, slotting them into place. “Now don’t let it die.”

*****

“Before you all head out for the night, I believe you have some gifts that require opening Master Bruce.”

Bruce peered over the half-eaten slice of cake Alfred had baked yesterday evening and swallowed dryly.

“Right.”

Tim could tell Bruce was just a little disappointed at the showing for his birthday. He would never admit it, no, no, but still. Dick, Jason, and Babs’ absence was noted. They had been good though and posted their presents ahead of time. Well, Dick and Babs had. Jason had sent a card. Which was both more than he had done some years and less for others, so the family all took a card as a good thing. Babs had wrapped up a large basket of bat memorabilia that would unironically get usage up and downstairs.

Dick had forwarded a photo album. Bruce’s lower lip had wobbled (once) on the first page, then he did not look any further into the album and shut it. Probably would cry over it at four am later this morning bundled up in bed. Or at least that’s what Tim imagined he would do.

Cassandra had made an actual teapot during her day classes. It was very cute, albeit just a little lumpy. Damian had done a painting. Duke had bought a pair of nice cufflinks. Tim had been as subtle as a brick to a glass greenhouse and had bought two vouchers for a fishing trip. Bruce had noted to check his diary tomorrow, hearing the pleading in the present for alone time.

Stephanie rested her present reverently on the table in front of Bruce. He eyed it and her a little suspiciously, which Tim tried not to get offended over on Steph’s behalf. He knew she had worked stinking hard on the present. Harder than anything she had ever made for herself. Not as hard as the gloves she had made Tim late last year though. No, he had seen her cursing up a storm trying to get those black and red fingerless mittens right, but she had – just in time for Christmas.

Point was, Stephanie worked hard when she sewed/knitted/embroidered, and Tim hoped Bruce wouldn’t do anything too callous when he opened the gift.

She had indeed knitted a grey-blue zig zag patterned scarf. It was thick, warm, and long. She had carefully embroidered the edges with golden thread. It was nothing short of a labour of love.

Bruce saw this, did the thing where his lip quivered, and quietly thanked Stephanie.

“Happy Birthday!” She replied, smiling brightly.

“It’s very well made.”

“I tried.” She teased gently. Tim squeezed her hand.

“Can I see?” Duke asked, to which Bruce handed it over. Duke whistled. “Can I get one too?”

“Sure.” Stephanie shrugged, still grinning. “It will cost you though.”

“Aw, no fair.”

The wind picked up then, howling louder than it had all day. The windows of the manor creaked, and even in the dark, everyone could see the sudden blizzard that had begun.

“Snow?” Cass asked. “Since when?”

“The weather does that. It changes.” Duke noted with a shrug. Even so, he seemed to regret speaking the more the wind screamed.

“No. Not like this. Rain sure. Sleet sure. Not a blizzard.” Tim peered out the window. “That doesn’t come from nowhere.”

Tim watched as there was already a solid layer of ice on the floor, the snow less like fluffy crystals and more like hail. The skies above churned rolled up clouds. It was harsh and ugly.

“No way.” Duke murmured, seeing the weather deteriorate.

Stephanie did not miss Bruce silently sigh at his pile of presents, the physical proof of how fortunate his life had become in recent years, despite the sometimes oppressive setbacks. It was just a moment, then the Bat was in place.

“Let’s head out. This doesn’t look natural. Split up and hunt for causes. Manmade or otherwise. Help anyone who seems stranded.”

Damian finally piped up. “Are we splitting into pairs?”

He crept towards Stephanie. Without Dick in Gotham she remained the person he was most keen (if Damian could be such a thing) to work alongside. Bruce notwithstanding.

“Damian go with Duke. Cassandra with me. Stephanie and Tim.”

Well never mind.

Stephanie pinched Damian’s cheek, and he groaned and twitched away, running downstairs.

They all made their way to the cave, Alfred opening up the clock, when Stephanie looked back, seeing Tim was still stood, still as a statue, watching through the glass.

“Tim?” She called.

His right hand twitched, hanging limp next to his thigh, at the sound of her voice. Almost reluctantly, he replied,

“…Yeah?”

“Ready to go?”

She held out her hand for him to take, though he was still looking out the window. Slowly he turned at the hips, head remaining still, staring at the storm. When her hand found his, he shuddered, like the warmth of her fingers and palm shot straight through his arm and up through his chest and head. He finally whipped round to look at her and smiled tightly.

“Ready. Sorry.”

Stephanie said nothing and pulled him away from the window.

[thesnapewecandreamof]

I’m so glad you liked Matthew’s character Anon! Let’s get the continuation first and then I’ll ramble on so people not interested could skip that part! Song is Everything Stay from Adventure Time.(Part of the reason this took so long was bc I was searching for an appropriate song and I always get lost in youtube!)

Everything Stays

- Despite regaining consciousness, Severus was not out of the woods yet. It took weeks, many potions, and an infinite supply of patience for all parties involved. 

- The healers informed Matthew that there was nothing they could do for the nervous damage Severus suffered and Matthew insisted he be the one to tell Severus the bad news. 

- He was a healer himself and he has been tasked with telling the bad news to many families before but despite that he tried to stave off the inevitable. But he knew the pain would be greater the more he stalled so one night, after the Hogwarts staff have left and Severus just finished his meal, Matthew sat on the edge of the bed and took the potion master’s hand in his. His heart panged  at the title.

- Severus looked at their interlocked hands and sighed, “It will never go away would it?” Matthew has once again underestimated Severus, his eyes met black and he bit his lip to hold in the tears. “You have been looking a bit anxious the past few days and since the healers are certain I wouldn’t be keeling over any time soon-” Severus shrugged, not finishing his sentence.

- “I’m sorry.” Matthew tightened his grip as Severus’ arm twitched. He refused to let his emotions get the better of him and the healer in him took the wheel. “I’ve contacted some colleagues, they might find something to help with the spasms and the twitches but-” Matthew stopped, electing to shrug himself. 

- He felt the pressure of Severus squeezing his hand and he smiled as tears fell.

Let’s go in the garden, you’ll find something waiting. 

Right there where you left it, lying upside-down.

- It was difficult. Severus eventually grew weary of maintaining the mask and Matthew found it frustrating how he cannot heal the person he cared for most.

- “You should have left me to die.” Severus said once when the fits got too much, when his whole body seized. Matthew sees it in his eyes whenever he knocks over a glass of water. All of their utensils are now plastic and Severus scowls at it whenever he could. “You know I couldn’t do that.” Matthew replies, ever patient.

- “I have no use. I was a potions master, Matthew, now I can’t even hold my own spoon for Merlin’s sake!”

- Matthew himself couldn’t always be the patient saint. He was a healer and he had a duty to his patients. When he comes home, exhausted and wanting nothing but to sleep, he sometimes let’s out the infamous temper of his and he and Severus would get into a row. 

When you finally find it, you’ll see that it’s faded

the under-side is lighter when you turn it around.

- They now have someone to always watch Severus when he was away. During a week-end when it was only Severus and Matthew, the healer had to put a vial of muscle relaxing potion in the bedside table so that he could answer an emergency floo call. When he returned it was as if a fog rolled in their bedroom despite it remaining the same. There was something different but he couldn’t quite place it. He asked Severus if everything was alright and he said that nothign was out of place so Matthew chalked it up to nerves and stress.

- That night he heard shuffling and soft muttered curses. He woke up to Severus trying his best to remain silent as he packed away clothes. “Are you planning a surprise trip? Our anniversary isn’t for another three months.” He yawned though he was alert and awake.

- Severus sighed and sat down, facing away from him. “I don’t belong here, - no, don’t say anything- I don’t Matthew, I-” Severus took a deep breath, “I’m tired.” And Matthew listened to Severus as months of pain and frustration is finally let out. How he feels worthless, feels like he’s holding Matthew back, making himself a burden to the healer. Matthew’s heart broke as he saw Severus trying to keep himself together, his muscles twitching, making him even more frustrated. The grace his love once had is gone and Matthew feared something more was missing.He lowered himself to the floor and leaned his forehead on the back of Severus’ shoulder. 

- He whispered every argument he has, planned responses to what he knew as coming and added new things he thought of as he spoke. Severus remained silent through his talk and he allowed Matthew to help him back to the bed. 

- The next day Matthew and Severus spent a day in the garden and though it was difficult, Severus was set on ushering life to Matthew’s lifeless plot of land. Any distraction was welcome and should this fail, surely there were others he could turn his attention to? He already received a dictaquill from a former student, but he could only talk for so long before growing bored himself. 

Everything stays, right where you left it

Everything stays, but it still changes

-It wasn’t an overnight fix. They still had fights, normal rows that couples have. They still work through Severus’ depression and Matthew always makes sure that any glass in the house was charmed unbreakable.

- When the first row of flowers bloomed, Matthew nearly teared up at the sight of Severus’ smile.

- When Severus grew more confident and grew some magical plants, Matthew was stunned at how Severus could say such a self-deprecating joke and have the gall to wink at him. 

Ever so slightly,

 daily and nightly

- When Matthew found himself with Severus, lying under the shade of a tree and the smell of flowers surrounding them, he looked back on all the things they’ve been through. 

- All the pain of thinking it was the last time he and Severus would see each other, the worry every time he had to treat his lover, the anger at how Severus could leave him every time in order to play the perfect spy. Matthew still had nightmares about finding Severus on the verge of death, nightmares only Severus himself could comfort him from. 

- He could feel his eyes water when he thought of how things could have ended so horribly. He felt Severus’ hand jerk in his before the comforting pressure he grew to love. He looked to the side and saw Severus with his lip upturned and he grinned.

In little ways,

when everything stays.

I didn’t want to make it too angsty! Anyway, so glad you enjoyed Matthew’s character anon, I wasn’t too sure people would like him. I don’t create too many ocs and I prefer to use canon characters only in my fics because A. it takes me so long to find a good name, B. I already live in fear of making canon characters a mary sue, I think ocs are a higher risk in that department but that could be just me.

I’ll write more of Matthew and Severus when inspiration strikes or if someone has a prompt for them. 

I’m working on yet another wip in which Severus suffers from long-term cruciatus so I didn’t want to elaborate too much on stuff here lest I become even more repetitive. 

[freedom-of-fanfic]

I'm kind of torn on the Mary Sue issue. On one hand, I don't care what anyone writes for their own amusement, but writing is still an art that does and should have standards for professionals. As someone who has degrees in writing and does it as a profession, it's a little insulting to be told that the work your poured tons of research and time into is on the same level as amateur self-insert fic. That's why I advocate for different standards for fandom vs pro work.

I feel you, anon. and I have a lot of respect for people like you who got degrees and write professionally, because words are held rather cheap with the internet being around and anyone who can get paid to write words impresses me to some degree. but:

 I’ve always felt like comparing fanfic and original fiction to be not exactly congruous? and 

I think Mary Sue suffers from maligning because she’s disproportionately evoked by the youngest/least experienced of writers.

this got … pretty long … so i’m dividing it up a little for ease.

the concept of ‘standards’

first of all, I also advocate for different standards between published/professional/marketed works and fan works, but I do so because of 1)potential spread and 2)they aren’t accomplishing the same thing.

In general, a fanwork will have limited appeal outside of the fans of the canon the work is based in; they cannot stand on their own without some additional effort. Further, fandom has its own language to some degree or another, and fanworks are frequently best understood in the context of other fanworks, like scientific papers citing other scientific papers in passing because the audience is expected to be other scientists in the field who have read it. In other words: the audience is probably fairly niche and in on the ‘lingo’. its potential damage circle is therefore relatively small. if somebody fucks up their research for a fic, it’s nbd, for instance.

On the other hand, an original work with a professional marketing team will certainly reach a much more diverse audience and probably a much larger one. It’s therefore responsible, imo, to be proportionately aware of the potential impact of the subject material and approach it accordingly (though true fiction will always have an unpredictable effect on any given individual, so there’s only so much the creator can do). I’d expect accuracy where research was done, if for no other reason than to avoid spreading false information to such a big potential audience.

and of course I’d hope that if somebody is being paid to write, their grammar/prose/proofreading will meet a certain standard of readability. (the same cannot be expected of free works done for fun that take a few minutes to post on the internet.)

having said that: standards for quality fiction writing will always be subjective. I’m always going to have questions about why The Sound and the Fury is an American classic (I couldn’t make sense of it no matter how hard I tried).  What gets published can be as simple as having good luck with the slush pile reader that day. I’ve seen fanfiction complimented with incredible research: there’s a Tokyo Babylon work-in-progress with an author who has traveled to fic-relevant locales to nail story and character details. I feel the line is blurring these days, especially because there are people who make a living off writing commissioned fanfiction now (too small-scale to be an IP concern, of course).

I think the fundamental difference between fanworks and original works is not quality of the work itself or effort expended.  It’s related to structure and aim. 

Fanworks, even AU fanworks, are like interior decoration. A 'good fanwork’, even an AU fanwork, works within a pre-built framework to elaborate on or add to or evoke what drew its audience to the framework in the first place. 

Original works build a whole new house, creating a new framework from bare construction materials to draw in and house the emotions of its readers. (and then maybe its readers decorate the house with their own fanfic.)

tl;dr: if an AU fanfic was so different from canon and the characters were so OOC that the author can shave the serial numbers off and repurpose it as an original story, it might be a great original work. But it wasn’t a very good fanfic, was it?

why is mary sue so offensive to us?

I don’t know if you’ve ever read the post Mary Sue, What Are You?, but what I keep coming back to is its iconic opening. the author describes an OC at length: orphaned as a child when her parents were killed in front of her, she decided she would dedicate her life to fighting for justice. She grew up to be rich, athletic, beautiful, sexy, angsty, a genius, undefeatable in a battle of wits and agility, and everyone who meets her is instantly lovestruck. In other words, a classic Mary Sue …

but also Batman with female pronouns.

I think one could argue that Batman is not always well-written, but the relevant point here is that Batman - and Mary Sue - might be 99.9% perfection in the shape of a human around whom the universe revolves, but if its their own canon and the universe doesn’t recognize their perfection the way the reader/writer does, it’s not really 'bad’. (And there’s something to be said about why giving this power fantasy male pronouns seems to render it so much more palatable than female pronouns, but for more on that I point you to the referenced essay.)

Your ask is worded to suggest that Mary Sue is synonymous with unprofessional writing. I … kind of agree? Mary Sue is frequently the main character of Baby’s First Fanfic, and let’s be real: Baby’s First Fanfic is often being written by somebody who might be as young (or younger than) 12-13 years old, with all the inexperience, grammar mistakes, and lack of training that suggests. and as far as characterization goes, I think that anyone who takes decent writing classes will be discouraged from writing a Mary Sue. But like Batman, Mary Sue can be a perfect princess and get away with it under certain circumstances.

I posit that Mary Sue characters (or Gary Stus) - whom I will call Flawless OCs from here - are not really a problem on their own. Further, Flawless OC is more agregious in fanfic than original works. Because what makes the Flawless OC so irritating isn’t their perfection, really: it’s what the character’s presence must do to the universe (which is, in the case of fanfic, the universe the reader came to experience in the first place) that’s the real problem.

To show what a good fighter Flawless OC is, they defeat the best canon fighter.

Flawless OC has a backstory more tragic and painful than the most tragic canon backstory, and they cope with the trauma of it better.

There’s no room for Flawless OC because canon wasn’t holding a spot open for a self-insert, so now there’s a 6th Lion or a 10th Fellowship member or a Second Child Who Survived Voldemort.

The entire universe bends to ensure Flawless OC has perfect luck; their enemies are helpless before them. Everything seems to go their way except in the chapter where the their love interest is supposed to rescue them from danger. (the rescue goes flawlessly, of course.)

Depending on the author wish that Flawless OC is meant to fulfill, Flawless OC will defeat any undefeatable enemy, solve the unsolveable problem, be the envy or lust object of any character, etc etc, often without regard for the original context of the enemy/problem or the canon personality of the character.

In short, Flawless OC usually have two major issues: 

they render canon irrelevant to glorify Flawless OC, and 

the universe constantly validates their choices to a degree that wrecks narrative suspense. 

what makes each of these things 'bad writing’ is different.

The first problem I mentioned - warping of mythos, plot, and characters to accomodate the Flawless OC - is a fanfic problem.  Canon-warping absolutely allowed, but what makes it fanfic - the canon source that acts as our shared experience and usually our main reason for being a potential audience to the fic - is almost always nigh-unrecognizable. That makes for bad fanfiction, but it doesn’t always make for bad fiction. Change all the parts of canon enough and you’ve arguably got an original work. It might even be a good original work if the author has writing skill.

The second problem - the validation of the universe - is what makes Flawless OC a dull read in any context. If Flawless OC wants something, you know they’ll get it. If Flawless OC hates someone, you know they’re going to catch hell. If Flawless OC needs to be vulnerable for their love interest, something just bad enough to make them vulnerable will befall them. The perfection of the OC is less of an issue than the lack of meaningful conflict. (A character can have no faults and still be interesting to follow if they must struggle against a universe that doesn’t care.)

to wit:

there’s a fantasy book by David and Leigh Eddings - The Redemption of Althalus - that I read long ago. it stuck with me to a peculiar degree because for a book with such a unique conceit, it was incredibly boring. This is published fiction: it had editors, a marketing team, and was written by professionals with lots of experience! But looking back, none of this saved the story from featuring Gary Stu in a universe that catered to his every need.

The main character, Althalus, is ostensibly a person in need of redemption for being such a bad person all his life and never punished for it, but he’s a loveable, quick-witted rogue almost from the start. To 'redeem’ himself, he’s tasked with saving the world from Enemies (we’re told they’re evil, but I don’t think we see them more than once or twice).  Protected by the Goddess of Luck - literally - for the entire novel, there’s never a single moment where Althalus’ victory over the Enemy is in question. He never does anything really awful that would explain his need to be redeemed (in fact, it turns out the Luck Goddess is the one who protected him from punishment all his life). The enemy is weak, forgettable, and constantly outwitted, and the protagonists, supposedly people of gray morality, never did anything worse than be snarky.

The unique conceit that kept me reading was the House at the End of the World. Being the home of the Goddess, it had doors that opened to anywhere on the planet. but for an idea with such double-edged possibilities, it turned out to be an impregnable fortress of Good. The House and its owner were the forces that bent the whole book’s universe to the inevitable triumph of the main character and his companions.

A counter-example might be Miraculous Ladybug. I’ve often wondered if Mary Sue could be written well and be likeable, and Marinette - the titular Ladybug - is probably close. She’s good at almost everything and always outwits her enemies; even when she seems confident to the point of arrogance, it’s justified by her endless successes. (Her only real flaw is being clumsy when she’s distracted, and it only happens when it’s conveniently cute. this is a walking Mary Sue cliche.) Her power is to be lucky, after all.  

However: even though everything ends up right for Marinette at the end of every episode, she’s not rewarded when she acts poorly towards others. She causes herself problems when she does. Her luck powers give her the ability to bend the universe a little, but the universe is otherwise unforgiving; she’s subjected to the same banalities as everyone else and learns to be a better person along the way.

OTOH if you put Ladybug in another canon with a makeover to recast her as Flawless OC, changing everything so she could occupy a central role like the one she has in her own series, she’d be insufferable: hence Ladybug is a solid example of how a Mary Sue can prosper provided she’s in a universe designed to both feature her and contain her powers for the sake of Good.

I apologize for how long a reply this is. Still: I hope it successfully illustrates for you that:

though original writing and fanfic writing use the same tool (words), and both can use them masterfully, what original writers like you do and what fic writers do are, in general, very different things.

And Mary Sue is what you make of her. In the right universe, she’s just a very lucky person. :)

[barbecuedphoenix]

Say Gardienne had a bad life, wasn't close to her family, no real friends, etc. What would the boys do if she reacted to their little potion stunt with happiness instead of despair, since now she really doesn't need to return, with no one to miss her.

Well this is an interestingtwist. 0_0 It makes me wonder if this should have been canon. Because it caninstantly resolve the conflict on what to prioritize: a.) honoring theGuardian’s life in the human realm and avenging the injustice of her staying inEldarya, or b.) leaving her to discover her destiny in the faery realm, matureas a person, and build a new life, persona, and relationship there with noqualms.  

Frankly, given that it’s adating sim with episodic updates and not a visual novel with aplotline determined in advance, the logical solution would be to focus onOption B entirely. Apologies to the Earth First! party in the fandom. >_>

So I’ll be happy to experimentwith this alternate plot-twist, Anon. ;)

Note: Below you’ll find amixture of in-game facts picked up from Youtube walkthroughs of Episode 13, andsome personal expansion (such as the way the potion works, laws governing itsuse, etc.) It’s headcanon, not canon. ;)

Note #2: For a full diatribe dissection on why I think an angsty Guardian accepting the potion willingly has a lot of potential for the game’s storyline, check out the analysis/extrapolation here. And feel free to leave your own thoughts. :) 

Ezarel

What does he know about the Guardian’s past?  

Only a little. From a fewpassing, deadpan references, he knows the Guardian has lost people close tothem. Yet he never bothered to ask further: these days, who hasn’t lost loved ones? And from the waythey carry themselves– straight-backed, matter-of-fact, and unfailinglyconsiderate to others (very Valkyon-esque, now that he thinks about it)–Ezarel is inclined to believe that he doesn’t have to worry about them. They’rea smart character with excellent control of their own emotions, and no need fortranquilizers to get to sleep. So as far as he’s concerned, he has no reason topry into their lives, professionally or personally. Let them keep theirsecrets.

How does he react to Miiko’s order to ensure the Guardiantakes the potion?

It feels like a nzmabe’s handhas reached into his gut, and is throttling it for all its un-life. Miiko can’tbe asking this from him. Though hewas responsible for some pretty horrific concoctions– explosives, acid baths,and corrosive lime mixtures for El’s never-ending war against the wilder fey–,this potion violates an entirely new set of ethical principles. She wants himto turn an ally into a living ghostas opposed to a traditionally dead one, without their knowledge or consent; tosever the cognitive and emotional bonds of a living community, again sansknowledge or consent. This course of action violates the basic autonomy of asentient mind and an individual identity; in a time of peace, it’s practicallyillegal.  

Only Miiko is now exploitingthe pinpoint-sized loophole in the ancient laws of the land: if the drinker willingly participates in the creationof the potion, then they would have given their consent. Ezarel promptlycorrects her: ignorant consent doesn’t count as willing consent. And it’s thisprinciple– among others– that he’s prepared to defend with fire. In the backof his mind, he wonders what he once saw in his old colleague when he supportedher ascent to leader of the Guard.

Then it dawns on him thatMiiko is intent to see this through;if he declines to help, she’ll find someone else to goad the Guardian intopreparing the spell. Perhaps even an amateur alchemist armed with just lethalresolution… who might have no experience with a volatile reagent like theWaters of Lethe. One misstep won’t lead to just the erasure of their memoryfrom other humans, but faeries as well; a concentrated dose would even destroytheir own memories. And that’s an accident that Ezarel can’t allow to happen ingood conscience.  

So he accepts this unsavorytask, with a bitter taste in his mouth. Never has he imagined applying hisskills for this when he took the helmof the Absynthe Guard. He can only hope that there won’t be a reprise withinhis career. And that no one else will learn of the crime he’s committing topreempt a deeper tragedy.  

How will he react if the Guardian, on knowing the truthabout the potion, actually accepts it?

Ezarel will actually splutterfor a moment: don’t they understand the ramifications of this ritual? It’sbeyond alchemy: a potent spell encapsulated in a bottle that effects humanpsyches in a vast cascade across the energy network of emotions, feelings, andmemories that starts with them, and will permanently sever their sole link tothe human world. They’ll become a living ghost. They need to understand thatthis is a horrible idea.  

But when they flatly tell him thatyes, they’re sure, Ezarel– still flabbergasted– starts to get ticked off: howcan they be so calm about this? Theremust be something critical they don’tunderstand. Hell, if he’s in their place and knows what’s about to happen,he’ll flat-out refuse. (And if he lost this fight, he’ll summon a lawman, andthen call up a trial no matter what for this technically illegal procedure.)

He starts energeticallyexplaining to them– again– why they should refuse, now going against Miiko’sorders. If it comes to it, he’ll even let them sue him for conspiring with that nutcase kitsune. But the Guardian cuts him off and tells him, with a wan expression, that he doesn’t knowa thing about the life they left behind. Becoming a ghost won’t be a tremendous change.

That finally shuts Ezarel up.And he starts to listen– still shocked, but intent onunderstanding this perplexing puzzle– to their life’s story. He learns aboutthe loss of their parents back when their age fell under two digits: one fromnatural causes, the other from government intervention when they proved apt at ignoring their child. Though by then, the damage was done to their hearing from an untreated infection in one ear, and their scalp from when they had to shave it from sequential lice infections. He listens to the cycle ofdisplacement, neglect, more secondhand abuse, and eventual abandonment thatplayed out over and again as they grew up, shunted arbitrarily through fosterhomes, and along the systems of welfare ostensibly made to help other cast-offslike them. He hears about them falling through the cracks in life when theygrew past the age when the city would look after them: their health tenuous,their finances worse, their higher education shelved. Still keeping that rovinglifestyle as they searched– on their own– for a place to stay and makesomething of themselves for anything more than six months. And he remainssilent as they explain the patterns of loss– in both figurative and literalsenses– for family, friends, and the people they could have called both, untilthey learnt to rely on no one, and expect nothing at all from the rest of theworld.  

The telling takes over anhour. Ezarel has to get up twice to trim the wick from the nearby lamps, but hekeeps listening.

By the end of their story, hehas no words. Humans have very peculiar ways of causing misery to their ownbrethren. It’s a broad crime beyond anything that can be helped.

He doesn’t try to convincethem again when they break their silence, requesting the potion one more time. Thoughhe does make a half-hearted, half-joking final check on whether there’s any soulthey’re remotely sorry for leavingbehind. For liability’s sake. The way they smile wearily, and joke back thatthose they feel for probably half-forgot about them already, makes Ezarel wantto bite his tongue in half. This is definitelypast the time for jokes. The more he scratches the surface, the moresadness he’s bound to uncover. And he has no idea what he can do to help.Beyond giving the Guardian what they’ve asked for.

How will he help the Guardian with the potion?

So Ezarel offers a quiet apology, mentally kicks himself a second time for mouthing something soinadequate, then shuts up for good as he prepares the drink, with the scrupulousattention to detail that’s second nature for him once he walks into a lab. Heconducts a final check of the potion’s efficacy (exactly 0.005 moles of theessence of Lethe; they did well all right), pours it into a sterile tumbler,disposes of the rest of the batch to avoid misuse, and serves the tumbler tothem. And then retreats to the corner of the bench, keeping a respectful distance.

When they take the cup, he reelsoff an intensive, final explanation of the immediate and residual effects ofthe spell, as it ruthlessly sets out across the ether to eliminate theirpersonal signature from the collective network of thought and emotion. It’s anexplanation that he formerly intended to withhold from them; but now it’s theirright to know, and he has no fear of their reaction. When they thank him– witha minute smile– for his full disclosure, Ezarel shrugs it off with a lump ofunease in his throat and a faint joke: there are plenty of other things theycan thank him for in the near future; this potion isn’t his idea. But this is their decision, and their life from here on.

Still, he finds his fingertipstwitching and his eyes skittering down when they drain the cup in one quickswallow, like knocking back whiskey. Whether it’s from lingering guilt at thetotality of the Guardian’s departure from their world, or discomfort at theirdisturbing certainty, he can no longer tell.

Nevra

What does he know about the Guardian’s past?  

Next to nothing, and thatrankles him a little: he’s not the head of El’s information network fornothing. But this Guardian is particularly canny in redirecting conversationsaway from their past, even when lubricated by faery wine and among friends. Sowhat information he has picked up camefrom observing their habits: their unspoken familiarity with locks, the waythey stick to the peripheries of a group conversation and scan a room like ahawk before even taking a foot inside, the peculiar times that they takeshowers, and how they never leave their food and drink away from their own eyes.All without the Shadow Guard quite training them.  

They have a past, he can tell.And because of that, Nevra doesn’t dig more than usual; it’s information that’sbound to be sensitive, and warped with rumor if it comes from anyone else’s lips.The Guardian will need to trust him first before they can disclose their life’sstory to him.

How does he react to Miiko’s order to ensure the Guardiantakes the potion?

Nevra is very much against Miiko’s decision, and he doesn’t mince his wordswhen he tells her. She’s ordering them to invalidate a life that’s still beinglived– an innocent one of all things–, and sever nearly all their worldlyconnections without their knowledge or consent. She’s ordering them toreconfigure the minds of a hundred or more people unable to fight theirdecision, erasing what love and experiences are there, and embed a new truth inthem. He doesn’t know where her scruples are taking residence right now, but that is wrong. And that’s coming fromthe head of the Shadow Guard.

But here the constraints ofsaid position spring up to choke him. Nevra soon realizes that if he publiclyprotests the decision, and turns against it, what little unity is left in theGuard will be shaken. People will wonder if the Shadow Guard can be trusted tosupport El if its own chief defies orders from the top. His rivals vying forhis seat will finally find an excuse to band together and depose him, ensnaringhim on false charges against his loyalty to El. And if he loses the trial, he’llhave to leave El and the Guard. And bring Karenn with him back into thehinterland, because she will follow him anywhere, even fight viciously for him…and he’ll no longer be able to protect her in El’s toxic environment on stepping down.Provided that he isn’t arrested and excommunicated first.

To prevent all of that fromhappening, to prevent discord in the Guard and keep his own world from crashingdown… he’ll have to do the unthinkable and sacrifice the Guardian to appeasehis boss’s paranoia. Miiko points out– with unintentional malice– that he’s theone their problematic recruit trusts the most… and will suspect the least. He’ll have to help themprepare the ritual.

Nevra’s decision is clear. Buthe begins to withdraw from his social circles and even Karenn, losing sleepevery night until the day of reckoning. He’s no alchemist or sorcerer, but heknows enough about the potion’s effects to know this ritual is unequivocallywrong. With permanent consequences for a person who has done nothing to theGuard, except for being spotted by a hostile human once. And of all people, it’s someone whose affection and regard hewants to earn.

As much as his hands are tied,as real as the danger is to him and Karenn–and perhaps the rest of El– ondisobeying, Nevra knows he’s still a coward for following through.

How will he react if the Guardian, on knowing the truthabout the potion, actually accepts it?

Nevra is well and trulyshocked. For a disorienting moment, his anxiety from the past fewdays combusts in his stomach; he wonders if his lack of sleep is catching up tohim, and scrambling what his keen ears have picked up. But when the Guardianreiterates their decision, with a calm, wry smile, he has no choice but tobelieve them. Though with no small internal outcry: are they simply acceptingthis as inevitable?  

So he assures them empatheticallythat they don’t have to accept this,that they’re under no obligation to follow through (like him). That he’lleven– the idea finally dawns on him, with the two of them alone in the lab– discardthis potion, destroy the papers, and falsify what happens here to Miiko, to letthem keep their own life. And to hell with the mercenaries on their way to El; ifthey have a faery spy here, then they’ll simply leak the Guardian’s existenceto the rebels again after this ritual is finished, and the conflict willcontinue. The Shadow Guard will find another way to head them off; they have his word. Butwhen the Guardian interrupts him with a sharp ‘no’, Nevra is stunned again:they don’t just want to disappear; they haveto disappear.

At last, they tell him abouttheir life before falling into Eldarya: the uneasy home they left at a youngage, where the averted eyes and ironclad silence allowed a relative to hurtthem with impunity, forcing them to hit the streets before they were old enoughto legally pick up a cigarette. The year of scrambling on their own, sleepingin their car even as frost bit their toes, until they found an older manwilling to shelter them, love them, refrain from judging them… and who convincedthem to help him with his ‘side job’. Just until they scraped together enoughmoney for a new start elsewhere. Which was how they learnt some of therequisite skills of the Shadow Guard: hitting the streets, parking lots, andcampuses, playing off the despair and the anxious physical needs that shackledcustomers, and not sparing the kids their age who were still in school. All fora new start that was pushed back to the murky future, month after month. Untilthe law caught up to them during one campus sting; with them unable to cough upthe money for a lawyer, and their lover and partner choosing that moment to letthem take the fall, they spent the next few years learning the life of ajuvenile inmate. They didn’t even have the satisfaction of watching karma taketheir old partner: on being released, they discovered their apartmentrepurposed, and their ex in a cell on the other side of the country… and a fewmonths from parole. They knew in their bones that he was going to track themdown to ‘reconcile’ and ‘help him get back on his feet’… with whatever thatmight entail. And, given their own dire financial straits and dearth of friendsafter being released, they’ll be hard-pressed to refuse his offer of another‘new start’. Falling through a mushroom ring was perhaps the best thing thathappened to them.

By the end of the Guardian’sstory, Nevra is left with only an urge to pull them into his arms. And he doesso. Because after everything he has just heard, he’s at a loss on what else hecan do. There are some marks and some lessons that can never be erased from alife. When the Guardian stiffens like wire in his arms, the salt smell of tearsreaching his nose, he promptly moves to shush them, to reassure them (or bothof them) that from now on, it will be all right.  With him, they won’t ever have to worry. Andwhen they break into a laugh– half skeptical, half relieved– he finds himselfkissing them quiet along their hair, their eyes, and finally on their mouth,the way he had wanted to for months. And when their fingers dig into him, heobliges their need: letting them hold onto him tight as they kiss him back.

How will he help the Guardian with the potion?

Only after the tension fullyleaves the Guardian in his arms does Nevra recall he still has an unenviablejob to do in this room. Though now the situation has been flipped onto itshead. At last, he confesses his own reasons for coaxing them into crafting thepotion, and then drinking it: trading one truth for another, suddenly afraidthat they’ll question why he was involved in this sordid business at all. Because thelast thing he wants is to be seen as another treacherous man in their life.  

But the Guardian surprises himagain by forgiving him, pressing a tiny kiss to the corner of his jaw, andjoking about how they’re now doubly concerned with taking the potion to savehis job. Nevra has to shut his good eye to keep the lump in his throat fromescaping, tightening his arms around them as relief snaps the tension windinghis body like a spring for days.

When they finally move to thepotion on the lab bench, he doesn’t quite let the Guardian go. Instead, hepours the flask with one arm still looped around them, then steadies their handand the small of their back as they accept the tumbler, holding them close. Ifthey’re going to do this, they’ll finish it together.

But when they raise the cup ina wry toast, and drain it, Nevra has to press his mouth to their temple, unableto watch them swallow the drink. Instead, he breathes in the smell of theirhair, distracting himself from that deep foreboding in his chest at theinvisible forces he knows are now unleashed, erasing the Guardian in his armsfrom the lives of a hundred or more. For good and ill.

Valkyon

What does he know about the Guardian’s past?  

Valkyon doesn’t know a thing,and frankly, he suspects that he knows the least out of everyone in HQ: it’shard to miss the way the Guardian clams up around him whenever they fumble an assignment. Even though he already told them– on the day of their first panicattack in front of the ocean, and other occasions since– that he’ll neverjudge them for admitting their own weaknesses, that acknowledging them isalready a mark of bravery in his eyes. Still, some habits and some fears rundeep; Valkyon knows better than to sit his recruit down and ask what made themthis way. The Guardian will tell him on their own time, and only then.  

How does he react to Miiko’s order to ensure the Guardiantakes the potion?

His instincts are singing thatthis is not a good idea in theslightest. The Guardian won’t forgive such a profound violation of their trust,and their own right to maintain their identity and roots. But then, thequestion occurs to him on what will happen if he lets this pot bubble under asealed lid. How long will it take for those human mercenaries to storm HQ–again– and make off with the Guardian on their ill-advised rescue mission? Howmany casualties will they leave behind this time? The fort is understaffed asit is. It doesn’t take Valkyon long to run through calculations, using theestimates from last year on the enemy force’s numbers as well as what he haswitnessed on the field recently… and the final sum of every scenario is a much emptier fort. It’ll be a messy raid, no question. 

He will be failing his ownduties as the Obsidian Guard’s commander if he allows this metaphorical powderkeg to remain in HQ. Not unless he snuffs out the fuse and curtails the comingconfrontation that he has overheard with his own ears… using a very esotericpotion.

If those mercenaries only knewabout the Guardian by hearsay, then the potion is a moot point. Butone of the rebels had described them with enough disturbing detail to count asfirsthand knowledge. And that, unfortunately, meant his recruit had todisappear.

So Valkyon gives his assent,the only one of the three Guard heads to do so from the onset. All whilelocking down the doubts and the objections stirring in his chest, with thatsteely will that has earned him a local reputation of ‘Last Man to Be Trifled With’. To prevent another carnage, and tosave the Guardian, this has to be done. In fact, he’ll do the deed himself,to spare his colleagues from both the Guardian’s anger and the moral burden.

How will he react if the Guardian, on knowing the truthabout the potion, actually accepts it?  

At first, Valkyon feels a hardweight plunge through his gut as the veil of secrecy– his one shield from theGuardian’s moral outrage– is stripped away within six words: they know, and they’llaccept it. Another few moments pass before his mind registers the second halfof their answer. And then he is fully thrown for the loop, at a genuine lossfor words: this is not part of the plan. Though logic tells him that theGuardian’s knowing consent is a favorabledevelopment– because it means no resistance or worrisome grudges from hisrecruit; a clean procedure by both legal and ethical standards–, a seam in hisheart finally starts to tear, now that the armor he has girdled his conscience with has been broken. And he begins to wonder if he wants to go through with this.

They read his hesitationbefore he can voice it: gently, with a sad smile that tugs him again out of thesoldier’s mien, they tell him that they would be glad to disappear, and finallyremove the burdens that they’ve saddled their acquaintances with for themajority of their life. It’s high time their old friends let go of them. And this revelationshocks Valkyon for a second time, finally sparking a question from him, soft and astonished: why? Though he knows regret only too well, it’s another matterentirely to want to vanish from the sphere of loved ones.

At last, in a voice so soft hehas to strain his ears to catch the fall of their words, the Guardian tells him their story. Starting with the accident that took the lives of their father– theironly family– and a stranger on a highway. Sparing, with a certain black irony, only theperpetrator of the crash: themselves. 

When the Guardian’s voicebreaks at the first mention of their father in who knows how many years,Valkyon stops them, grasping them gently by the elbows to bring them back tothe present, assuring them that they needn’t tell him anymore. But they shaketheir head, lining their voice with iron, and insist that they need to tellthis story now before wiping the slateclean; this is their final chance to own up to everything.

So he lapses into silenceagain, and lets them; honoring their need to redeem what they can, to crackopen the shell they had built around themselves, and share the narrative theyonce considered criminal, or still do. 

They tell him about the dark years after the court hearing when grief and guilt worked in concert to sheathe them from the rest of the world, from any emotion at all besides sudden, precipitous drops into despair. The downhill slide from school, work, friends, and what peripheral family they had left, until they found themselves hooked onto sleeping pills and hard liquor, living in a rehabilitation center. Where they were kept afloat by the efforts of a persistent social worker, and the generosity of a grandmother with some conscience– who routinely visited to implore them to wake up and get their spine back, because it was expensive keeping them in the center. And when her predictions were realized and the money ran out within a few months, they re-entered the working world– just weaned of their vices but still not quite healed–, resorting to lonely midnight-shifts at the back of restaurants and convenience stores. At least part of which was motivated by the need to dodge a few loyal friends, colleagues, and teachers still searching for them. Their only company during those days was the social worker from the rehab center, who stopped at their dingy hostel to check on them once a week, paying for lunch and a coffee, and for an hour taking them away from the other young burn-outs who lived with them. That was the narrative of their life until the day they pulled themselves together to embark on their first hike in years. Granted, they never expected to disappear the way they did, but this potion would be a boon in the long run: one more burden off the lives of the people who still remember them.

Their voice has barely risen above a conversational whisper. But the force of their grief,and the lingering guilt, seems to pull Valkyon lower to the floor the more he hears. Until at last, when they fall silent themselves, he reachesforward– in a gesture so natural that he doesn’t give it a second thought– andgently wipes what tears have escaped with the edge of his thumb, their cheekresting in the warm cup of his palm. Which, ironically, seems to spill more; what’sleft of their stoic mask cracks, and they hold his hand against their cheekuntil the fitful trembling of their shoulders stops.

How will he help the Guardian with the potion?  

Valkyon doesn’t dare speakuntil the shivering leaves them, though he doesn’t move his hand away either. In a low murmur, for their ears only, he shares the lesson that he himself learnt: no amount of sorrow or guilt canjustify the past, or cheapen it. What has happened has happened, regardless. So what matters most is to correct oneself and one’s actions today to prevent areprise of their regrets. And from what he has seen since they arrived here,they’ve proven themselves to be a pillar of strength. Even if they don’t quitesee themselves the same way.    

When the Guardian squeezes hishand and kisses his palm, their smile still tremulous, his mind promptly takes asnapshot of this moment, then locks it away inside the vault of his memories. Onlythen does he return, reluctantly, to the task at hand, which he has beenordered to see through by whatever means necessary. Though now, with a willingparticipant, he can freely speak his mind to comfort them on the sacrificethey’re prepared to make.

The effects of the potion arepermanent, he reminds the Guardian gravely; there is no known counter-spell.From here on, only Eldarya will be their home. But if it’s any comfort, theones they love best– both passed and extant– will never leave their memories; they’ll always beimprinted in the way they speak, the way they carry themselves, the decisionsthat their heart makes to be moved or otherwise by the world around them. Theirloved ones from before have contributed the most to making who they are today. That’san intrinsic truth that this ritual– or any ritual– can never change.

When the Guardian finallyreleases his hand, it’s only to switch it to their palm. And he lets them holdonto him, their fingers laced tight through his, as they accept the flask passed to them, smile at him gently over therim, and tip it back. Valkyon doesn’t allow himself to look away: it would onlydemean the responsibility he has undertaken, and the total sacrifice that theyhave accepted. 

It’s only afterwards that herealizes that the Guardian isn’t holding his hand to comfort themselves, but tocomfort him.  

…I think I went over my writing cap for angst-per-page. It’s all your fault, Anon, for sending such a weightyrequest. ;)

If you enjoyed this three-partscenario, and even if you didn’t (which I won’t blame you for), drop me amessage and let me know what you think. My inbox is never closed to feedback. :)

[declankhan]

Litigation Law Firms

In today’s litigious society, it is an almost certainty that everyone knows someone who has battled through some legal obstacle. We are a litigation law firm that helps people just like you recover from loss or exercise your rights under the law. Another almost certainty is that, with tens of thousands of civil lawsuits filed every day, chances are your turn is coming, if it hasn’t already happened.

Why is this so? Why has litigation increased so dramatically in just 50 years or so? Is it because Americans are injuring each other more than we did two generations ago? Hardly. The root problem, unfortunately for America, lies elsewhere.

A more likely scenario is that, as America grew rich beyond the wildest dreams of our Founding Fathers, the meritocracy that had been “The American Way” for more than 200 years gave way to something else.

It may be that life had become increasingly easy for most Americans. Even as early as 1960, President John Kennedy saw something corrosive happening to the character of America and Americans, when in his Presidential Inaugural Speech he said, “Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.”

So affluent has America become that Americans have come to believe increasingly that every problem can be solved with money. Ignored is the real tragedy of modern America. As it has grown rich and richer, our country has become more and more removed from the ethos of personal responsibility and accountability that made America strong, powerful and respected. No longer self-reliant, Americans have begun seeing themselves as victims of every mishap and misfortune that comes their way. They have come to believe that they have the right to sue for every right they think they have. Forgotten or ignored is the fact that with every right – every freedom, if you will – comes a corresponding responsibility, and that the two are inseparable.

Americans have come to believe that nothing is their fault; that someone else is always to blame. They also have a growing sense of entitlement to compensation from anyone and everyone or any entity or entities that may have contributed in any way, direct or otherwise, to any injury, real or not, regardless of personal fault.

Seizing on society’s growing sense of victimization and entitlement, predator-attorneys helped convince much of the public that it has a “right” to sue neighbors, friends, even family members and employers, doctors, businesses and industries for whatever “wrongs” may occur.

Through advertising, media hype and the actions of lawyers and courts, much of society has been convinced that victimization and entitlement are normal, acceptable forms of behavior. Accordingly, we have been taught that harsh, aggressive, and vengeful pursuit of cash compensation for real or imagined “wrongs” is the new “American Way.” And it is as American as baseball and apple pie.

Trial Lawyers in Utah

Worse yet, when victimization is rewarded, it becomes legitimized and reinforced in ways that ultimately are destructive to the so-called “victims” and to society as a whole.

Fifty years ago, most of our parents or grandparents wouldn’t know how to find a lawyer let alone engage one. You just didn’t sue anyone. It wasn’t done. If you got injured, insurance would cover the claim or the offending party would pay the cost of the injury, if you were lucky. Everyone involved chalked up such experiences to the school of hard knocks and went on with their lives. We used to think, accidents happen! No one thought about punitive damages or compensation for trauma, mental anguish, or emotional distress. No one even knew what those terms meant. Not so today.

Confronted by the overwhelming litigation that surrounds us all and the disdain society feels toward lawyers, it is no wonder a poll by Harris Interactive concluded that 54% of those surveyed do not trust the legal system in America, while 83% believe the system makes it too easy to file frivolous lawsuits. In another Harris survey, only about 11% of the public said they had confidence in America’s law firms, which is only slightly higher than confidence the public has in the two lowest rated institutions surveyed – Wall Street and Congress. Even more revealing than the public’s negative attitude toward law firms is a Gallup poll that ranked lawyers next to last in honesty and ethics – just a hair above used car dealers. My, how far the mighty have fallen!

Despite these deep-felt negative apprehensions about the law and lawyers, an American Bar Association survey of its members incongruously indicates that 80% of the respondents think that, “In spite of its problems, the American justice system is still the best in the world.” Now that’s denial. “Of course, these poll results were reported by the news media, so they could be wrong,” says Dave Barry, the popular American satirist. “There might not actually have been any polls; it’s possible that some reporter just made the whole thing up. But I don’t think so.”

Despite such broad-based and growing public distrust of the civil justice system and disdain for lawyers, the public nonetheless appears undeterred in its headlong rush to get whatever it can from whomever it can.

Free Initial Consultation with a Litigation Lawyer

When you need a litigation law firm to help you with a lawsuit, call Ascent Law for your free consultation (801) 676-5506. We want to help you.

Ascent Law LLC8833 S. Redwood Road, Suite CWest Jordan, Utah 84088 United StatesTelephone: (801) 676-5506

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Repost: http://www.ascentlawfirm.com/litigation-law-firms/ “Steven E. Rush / Divorce Lawyer Utah” http://www.ascentlawfirm.com/

Repost: https://stevenrushutah.wordpress.com/2018/02/25/litigation-law-firms-2/ * Steven E. Rush * https://stevenrushutah.wordpress.com/

[weepingblizzardqueen-blog]

Are You Injured From An Accident? Check This Out!

Has a person triggered to a damage? Are you taking a look at many years amount of rehab or medical care for doing this? Then, there is a pretty good chance that you may have purpose to sue them to your accidents. The following can help you make a case versus the person who have hurt you. In the event you don't want to splash out on lawyer's charges, and you will easily confirm one other person was in the wrong, see if you can figure out an out-of-courtroom arrangement using them. Their insurance firm will gladly accomplish this as they're in no hurry to attend court, so you'll wind up on top. Question your family and friends for personal trauma attorney recommendations. There are many accidental injury legal professionals on the market, due to the substantial amount of dollars they can make, but that does not mean they are all excellent. Should you not have an attorney under consideration you ought to seek the assistance of people you know and trust. One of the more typical varieties of personal injury law suits involve injuries from your flawed product. Merchandise available on the market have to be safe for usage, and once it can be proven an item will not be the company might be held accountable. You and the legal professional have the obligation of demonstrating the merchandise is not harmless. Examine accidental injuries lawyers. There are many injury attorneys out there but unfortunately a number of them are sharks. Contact your neighborhood Far better Enterprise Bureau and always check out online for testimonials. Generally although, the easiest method to find a good personal injury attorney is via word of mouth. When visiting a lawyer's website, get around for the About Us portion. This article will provide you with information and facts like the attorney's specialty, the area in their place of work and several years in reality. Numerous attorneys in addition have a testimonial site. On this page it will be easy to see about different instances from your client's perspective. A wonderful way to look for a injury legal professional for your personal case is to apply testimonials. Obtaining recommendations from co-workers, family members, or buddies is a wonderful way to define your legal professional research. Several of these people have gone through the same procedure as you may. This enables them to give you beneficial information about the procedure and the way they became popular using their lawyer or attorney. Meticulously go through authorized advertisements of private-injuries legal professionals to determine the validity of the exercise. Sometimes, a lawyer will guarantee that they can succeed for you when it is really an out of the question circumstance to calculate. Neglect more than these attorneys because they are basically looking to reel you in for the investment you bring to the kitchen table. Constantly communicate with your accidental injury legal representative to be linked to your circumstance. This is very significant as lets you know what is going on and makes you truly feel a part of the group. This will minimize the stress and panic which you have if you show up in judge. Whilst a fresh legal professional may be enthusiastic, an more mature legal professional can have much more encounter. Try to aim for Fresno Personal Injury Law Firms when picking a legal professional to represent you. A center-old attorney who has existed the prevent but nonetheless has some push in him will be your best choice in court. If you hire a personal injury attorney and you may not consider they are having the task finished, flame them. You will be purchasing their services and really should not need to deal with substandard final results. Get a accidental injury lawyer who seems to be prepared, smart and knowledgeable to give you the very best possibility. Don't think twice to discover authorized recourse adhering to a physical injury. After a particular time period, you might not possess legal recourse. You should talk to a lawyer without delay and find out about due dates just before totally figuring out if they should start up a situation. In case you are in soreness right after a crash, be very vocal regarding it and never attempt to contain the emotions in. This is certainly a bad idea mainly because it will offer another party leveraging throughout a lawsuit. They may reason that you never ever mentioned that that you were injured during the crash. Report every little thing. Everything about your trauma and how healing is originating together to what is happening together with your scenario has to be composed down. It is vital to be arranged when you are involved with any lawful situation, however in a private damage situation, what exactly is happening along with you will be the proof. You are already in monetary stress or else you wouldn't be setting up a personal injury situation. You may have health-related monthly bills and misplaced income to deal with. You cannot pay out a good deal for fuel or long-distance mobile phone monthly bills along with everything that! Engage a community lawyer and stay away from a bunch of dollars. When you are injured because of a vehicle accident or as a result of carelessness of some other, usually visit your medical doctor at the earliest opportunity to look for the certain level in the injury. A doctor offers you documentation that could afterwards enjoy a significant part in helping a legal action to acquire compensation. Choose a personal injury attorney you could like. You may be pondering company is enterprise and why should preference someone be part of it. But bear in mind: you'll be investing considerable time as well as collectively and the overall process may be stressful. It'll be much easier to take care of if you love your legal representative. Usually do not think what accidental injuries lawyers say inside their Television set advertising. Attorneys often boast concerning their potential to assist you to obtain a arrangement whatever the trauma you sustained. You need to go with a reliable and experienced legal representative that does not have to operate TV advertisements as a way to entice clientele. If you might be involved in a private injuries suit, it is very important place the information on the accident in creating at the earliest opportunity following the automobile accident. Information of an accident may be more challenging to recall even though a couple of days, so writing stuff lower instantly is the easiest way to make certain no crucial details are lost. Your circumstance will be stronger when you keep to the simple published advice out of this write-up. Meanwhile, no scenario will ever be foolproof in relation to personal injury, information is strength. It can be vital that you comprehend the process of suing a company for personal injuries and you find yourself with the legal professional having an increased recovery rate.

[tnaog-blog]

Network Update 9/28/17

Greetings from Superintendent Terry Bailey:

Everyone goes through discouraging times, including you and me. The storms of life are real. No matter what you are going through, remember that someone else is going through even tougher times. For example, take a look at Texas, Florida, Puerto Rico, and Mexico. Storms have taken a huge toll in both property and emotional damages. So many in Texas, Florida, and Puerto Rico have been significantly impacted by hurricanes and in Mexico by earthquakes. Tim Barker, South Texas District Superintendent, reports that 33 Assemblies of God churches and 18 pastors’ homes have suffered varying degrees of loss. Rebuilding and returning to normalcy is going to take many months and even years. For many, the daunting task is a very discouraging process. Thank you for responding generously, whether you are making donations through the Tennessee Ministry Network or Convoy of Hope. Your giving is making a difference. Let’s continue partnering to rebuild these devastated areas.

What do you do when you get discouraged? Carey Nieuwhof recently shared on Facebook Live, seven things he does when he gets discouraged. They are:

Remember your calling. God got you into it. He'll get you through it.

Shift the weight. Sometimes I forget it's Christ's ministry, not mine.

Do what an emotionally intelligent person would do.Because on my bad days, my inner toddler comes out.

Find some quick, easy wins. Like cleaning your desk.

Call a friend. Loneliness is a choice. So is community.

Get some rest! 70% of discipleship is a good night's sleep (or a nap...go on... take one!)

Don't quit. I'm convinced you're most tempted to quit moments before your critical breakthrough.

No matter what you are going through, “let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up" (Galatians 6:9).

Love and appreciate you much! Terry G. Bailey

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"Secrecy is the enemy of intimacy in marriage."

If you think that you (or your spouse) has let a friendship go to far, please take immediate action to create healthy boundaries and restore healing and trust in your marriage. Here are the 10 signs you’re having an emotional affair. If ANY of these are happening with you OR with your spouse, please take immediate action before it’s too late…

Read Full Article Here

Successful Marriages Need Passion and Perseverance

Why do so many marriages end in divorce? Why do so many husbands and wives simply give up? They lack grit.

Watch Video Now

Reinventing Yourself

Every leader reinvests him or herself. I know in my life, I have been through many reinventions. When someone comes up to you and says “Hey!! You are still the same as 5 years ago.” Don’t take that as a compliment. If you are still the same as 5 years ago you didn’t reinvent yourself, because life will take you to a place where you have to reinvent yourself.

Intercessory Prayer Needs

Mike Tullos (retired pastor) has been in rehab.  

Pastor Chuck Catalfu, pastor at Smartt Assembly, lost his son, Jino Catalfu, last week.  

Pastor Mike Vandergriff (New Tazewell) for complete healing.

Steve & Vada Allen, Bobby & Shirley Bowen, Gene & Heather Burgess, Virginia Chapman, Don Churchwell, Loni Dobbins, Lynn Drumwright, Gaylon & Mary Echols, Gary Ferrell, Pastor Noble Gammon, Winnie Grimes, Julie Headley, Bud & Sue Hudspeth, Pastor Jerry & Roxie Jochem, Kathy Kelly, Wanda Kramer, Frank & Sue Livesay, Joy Middlebrook, Pixie Moore, Janett Ogg, Wesley Payne, Gail Poore, Rob Ratze, Tony & Sheri Ray, Margaret Ridley, Mary Rose, Rebecca Sample, Wayne Simmons, Shirley Smith, Doak Turner, Larry & Carol Vine, Jimmy Williams, and Bobby Willeby.

[pressography-blog1]

3 Suggestions For Coping with Sexual Harassment On the Activity

New Post has been published on https://pressography.org/3-suggestions-for-coping-with-sexual-harassment-on-the-activity/

3 Suggestions For Coping with Sexual Harassment On the Activity

This weekend, the net changed into abuzz with the information that a former Uber engineer had long gone public with damning claims: Uber isn’t a tremendous area to paintings, and permits an opposed work environment for its girl engineers. I could have informed you that even though they have got in no way been my customer; they’re competitive, take no prisoners fashion and their clean refusal to pay attention to criminal suggest turned into a trademark of this to me. Seasoned tip: businesses that don’t listen to felony suggest additionally don’t provide their HR any electricity (and they tend to be very poorly educated).

                                      Coping with Sexual

Password Suggestion List

The gist of the story is a woman engineer, Susan Fowler Righetti, who takes place to be making a name for herself as a professional in her subject, had a horrible time running for Uber. She became immediately propositioned via her manager (and when I say straight away, I suggest inside some hours of him turning into her supervisor), and things went downhill from there Give Us Life.

I wish I could say I was bowled over by using her tale. I wasn’t. I’ve heard worse. What I used to be surprised through turned into her willingness to publicly percentage it. Due to the fact, Uber knew and counted on an almost standard reality: women and those of color don’t record discrimination or harassment once they price their career. And nearly each person at Uber values their profession greatly.

A few people might also disagree, however, I’ve seen my share of conditions that show this to be real. I recognize of a scenario at a regulation company where a rainmaking companion had intercourse with a summer season partner. Of route this tainted her revel in, and I’m a hundred% sure, from private information, that she felt pressured into the connection. Useless to mention, she didn’t go back, specifically after an uncomfortable conversation with HR due to a sincerely awkward scenario. And you will by no means recognize who she is. because of the path, she didn’t sue, despite the fact that she becomes essentially told not to come back returned.

Why might a female deal with what Susan Fowler Righetti treated, and not sue, now not bitch publicly whilst at Uber (inclusive of, it seems, even an EEOC charge)? I’m able to come up with a few examples, but the first-rate is Ellen Pao.

When employment lawyers like me consider sex discrimination and well-known woman, we consider Ann Hopkins. Do you know she never worked everywhere else in her profession, however, PriceWaterhouseCooper?

There’s an actual price plaintiffs pay for making their dispute with their employer public, specifically if that plaintiff is a woman. I’m positive you’ve got visible many situations chronicled right here at ATL.

What’s my recommendation for a person who is incomparable footwear to Susan Fowler Righetti?

1. recognize what you want. Think lengthy and hard approximately what the favored outcome is, and what you’re inclined to do to get there. Are you inclined to take the danger that you will never work within the industry again? Are you geared up to move on immediately? Is your business enterprise the sort of place where bigotry and harassment are possibly a part of the way of life? Regularly, with ladies, in particular, they will have an aim of creating the location better for female personnel. but unfortunately, one employee can’t do this. Sometimes even elegance moves aren’t capable of changing deep seeded problems with an enterprise’s way of life. You have to decide what you are preventing for an if it’s miles surely well worth it or even feasible to achieve.

2. Have to assist for what you are claiming. lamentably, he-said, she stated has a tendency to fall in want of the business enterprise When push comes to shove. Even the EEOC is reluctant to take an aspect without A few concrete proof. One of the things that Susan appears to have executed nicely turned into documenting events. it’s far possibly that right now, someplace, she has copies of the inappropriate messages from her manager. The identical messages she gave to HR. I hate to mention it, however, snapshots or it didn’t appear is pretty essential for “proving” harassment. And even then, it may no longer be sufficient.

three. It all comes all the way down to cash. The principled ladies I come upon are Often aghast at this, however for every employer, claims of discrimination and harassment constantly come right down to dollar values. How lots do they need to pay to make All of it go away. And a touch acknowledged fact is, these claims are capped with the aid of federal and nation law. So even when you have all the evidence you need to expose how awful the enterprise became, if the maximum damages don’t contact their backside line, not anything can also exchange. certain, small employers can research right away how dangerous it is to have a tradition like this. however, for Uber, they may don’t forget this the price of doing enterprise, and discover their “excessive performers” are worth a few discrimination court cases.

I Suppose that anybody experiencing something like Susan did at Uber should at once attain out to an employment attorney. And I discover it sickening While an agency may be so callous, and dishonest, approximately a scenario along with an antagonistic work environment based totally on gender. Similarly, I strongly consider Uber knew lengthy before Susan wrote this weblog put up exactly what passed off. but I additionally would no longer want all and sundry to get worried on this struggle without knowing what they’re up against. And being in reality prepared for a fight. If like Anne Hopkins, you’re willing to spend your whole profession at the organization you’re ready to sue, it could work out for you. but, if like Susan Fowler Righetti, you’re considering going public together with your employer’s misdeeds, make sure you’re a posted professional in your discipline and have already got a new corporation covered up. Have receipts accessible, to preserve the organization from getting too gregarious in their response. And be prepared for a backlash. Because sadly, telling the reality can ruin your career.

Sexual Harassment and sex Discrimination Answers

Sexual harassment is a shape of sex discrimination that violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Title VII applies to employers with 15 or more personnel, which include country and nearby governments. It additionally applies to employment organizations and too hard work agencies, as well as to the federal government.

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Unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal or bodily conduct of a sexual nature constitute sexual harassment When this conduct explicitly or implicitly affects an individual’s employment, unreasonably interferes with a person’s paintings overall performance, or creates an intimidating, adversarial, or offensive work surroundings.

Here are A few Frequently Asked Questions:

What’s sexual harassment?

Sexual harassment is defined as “unwelcome sexual advances or behavior.” Sexual harassment consists of quid Pro quo harassment or an opposed or offensive work surroundings. Sexual harassment is any sort of sexual conduct this is unwelcome and/or beside the point for the work region. Sexual harassment can take many forms: verbal harassment, e.G. Sexual or grimy jokes, visual harassment, e.G. Drawings, emails, and so forth., physical harassment, and sexual favors, e.G. Sexual advances, disagreement with sexual demands (quid pro quo sexual harassment). in the painting’s place, sexual harassment can come from the owner, supervisors, managers, and co-people. Sexual harassment does not most effective arise within the location of the painting; it can arise off-web page at workplace capabilities and parties.

What’s quid Seasoned quo sexual harassment?

Quid Seasoned quo sexual harassment takes area When a supervisor or someone with authority over your Process needs sexual favors from you in alternate for a promotion, raise or A few another advantage, which includes preserving your Task. The call for sexual favors can be explicit, e.G. “if you have sex with me, I’m able to sell you,” or it may be implied from unwelcome bodily contact which includes touching or fondling.

What should I prove to prevail in a motive of motion for quid Pro quo sexual harassment?

You ought to display that a manager, or a person with authority over your Process, explicitly or implicitly conditioned an Activity, retention of your Task, a Process advantage (improve, business trip, or A few another benefit), to your popularity of sexual behavior. You have to demonstrate that a harasser is a person with authority who can have an effect on situations of your employment. You also ought to show that the sexual conduct become unwelcome.

How can I prove that the sexual behavior became unwelcome?

The sexual behavior has to be unwelcome. You can display that the conduct was unwelcome via showing which you: explicitly rejected his/her sexual advances; you suffered emotional misery; your Activity performance deteriorated; you prevented the harasser; you informed pals and/or circle of relatives of the harassment, and also you instructed an enterprise representative of the harassment. Each case is exclusive and your case may additionally or may not include a number of these examples.

What are my treatments in a quid Pro quo sexual harassment case?

The law gives that You can recover damages from your business enterprise as soon as you’ve got validated that you have been deprived of a Process gain, or suffered a detrimental employment movement, e.G. Failure to promote, termination of employment Because you refused to accept your supervisor’s sexual needs.

What To Do If I Assume I’m the victim of Sexual Harassment?

keep a report of the activities surrounding the sexual harassment, include the date, time, area, and who became a gift. Your notes might also turn out to be very essential in litigating the case, however, undergo in thoughts that those notes can be required to grow to become over to the company for the duration of the discovery segment of litigation. Test the enterprise’s employee handbook, if one exists, to determine if the enterprise has a technique for coping with sexual harassment proceedings. If the agency has a method for submitting a sexual harassment complaint you have to follow it.

If you do not complain to the agency, the business enterprise can effectively protect itself from legal responsibility with the aid of arguing that it become now not privy to the problem, and therefore was not able to treatment the hassle. But, if the trouble isn’t remedied, You may want to talk to a lawyer for a recommendation on how to document a formal criticism with the precise federal or country or city enterprise. You can nevertheless need to talk with a legal professional before you report the complaint with the employer to ensure that it is communicated as it should be.

List of Good Passwords

as soon as I inform my company approximately the sexual harassment, what have to my organization do?

once the agency knows or should recognize approximately the harassment, it has an obligation to take immediate and suitable corrective movement to stop the harassment. The enterprise’s response has to be moderately calculated to give up the harassment and if in advance field did no longer stop the harassment, more severe discipline is needed.

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Litigation Law Firms

In today’s litigious society, it is an almost certainty that everyone knows someone who has battled through some legal obstacle. We are a litigation law firm that helps people just like you recover from loss or exercise your rights under the law. Another almost certainty is that, with tens of thousands of civil lawsuits filed every day, chances are your turn is coming, if it hasn’t already happened.

Why is this so? Why has litigation increased so dramatically in just 50 years or so? Is it because Americans are injuring each other more than we did two generations ago? Hardly. The root problem, unfortunately for America, lies elsewhere.

A more likely scenario is that, as America grew rich beyond the wildest dreams of our Founding Fathers, the meritocracy that had been “The American Way” for more than 200 years gave way to something else.

It may be that life had become increasingly easy for most Americans. Even as early as 1960, President John Kennedy saw something corrosive happening to the character of America and Americans, when in his Presidential Inaugural Speech he said, “Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.”

So affluent has America become that Americans have come to believe increasingly that every problem can be solved with money. Ignored is the real tragedy of modern America. As it has grown rich and richer, our country has become more and more removed from the ethos of personal responsibility and accountability that made America strong, powerful and respected. No longer self-reliant, Americans have begun seeing themselves as victims of every mishap and misfortune that comes their way. They have come to believe that they have the right to sue for every right they think they have. Forgotten or ignored is the fact that with every right – every freedom, if you will – comes a corresponding responsibility, and that the two are inseparable.

Americans have come to believe that nothing is their fault; that someone else is always to blame. They also have a growing sense of entitlement to compensation from anyone and everyone or any entity or entities that may have contributed in any way, direct or otherwise, to any injury, real or not, regardless of personal fault.

Seizing on society’s growing sense of victimization and entitlement, predator-attorneys helped convince much of the public that it has a “right” to sue neighbors, friends, even family members and employers, doctors, businesses and industries for whatever “wrongs” may occur.

Through advertising, media hype and the actions of lawyers and courts, much of society has been convinced that victimization and entitlement are normal, acceptable forms of behavior. Accordingly, we have been taught that harsh, aggressive, and vengeful pursuit of cash compensation for real or imagined “wrongs” is the new “American Way.” And it is as American as baseball and apple pie.

Trial Lawyers in Utah

Worse yet, when victimization is rewarded, it becomes legitimized and reinforced in ways that ultimately are destructive to the so-called “victims” and to society as a whole.

Fifty years ago, most of our parents or grandparents wouldn’t know how to find a lawyer let alone engage one. You just didn’t sue anyone. It wasn’t done. If you got injured, insurance would cover the claim or the offending party would pay the cost of the injury, if you were lucky. Everyone involved chalked up such experiences to the school of hard knocks and went on with their lives. We used to think, accidents happen! No one thought about punitive damages or compensation for trauma, mental anguish, or emotional distress. No one even knew what those terms meant. Not so today.

Confronted by the overwhelming litigation that surrounds us all and the disdain society feels toward lawyers, it is no wonder a poll by Harris Interactive concluded that 54% of those surveyed do not trust the legal system in America, while 83% believe the system makes it too easy to file frivolous lawsuits. In another Harris survey, only about 11% of the public said they had confidence in America’s law firms, which is only slightly higher than confidence the public has in the two lowest rated institutions surveyed – Wall Street and Congress. Even more revealing than the public’s negative attitude toward law firms is a Gallup poll that ranked lawyers next to last in honesty and ethics – just a hair above used car dealers. My, how far the mighty have fallen!

Despite these deep-felt negative apprehensions about the law and lawyers, an American Bar Association survey of its members incongruously indicates that 80% of the respondents think that, “In spite of its problems, the American justice system is still the best in the world.” Now that’s denial. “Of course, these poll results were reported by the news media, so they could be wrong,” says Dave Barry, the popular American satirist. “There might not actually have been any polls; it’s possible that some reporter just made the whole thing up. But I don’t think so.”

Despite such broad-based and growing public distrust of the civil justice system and disdain for lawyers, the public nonetheless appears undeterred in its headlong rush to get whatever it can from whomever it can.

Free Initial Consultation with a Litigation Lawyer

When you need a litigation law firm to help you with a lawsuit, call Ascent Law for your free consultation (801) 676-5506. We want to help you.

Ascent Law LLC8833 S. Redwood Road, Suite CWest Jordan, Utah 84088 United StatesTelephone: (801) 676-5506

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